Title: Oblivion
Rating: T (references)
Disclaimer: I own as much as every other fan in the world owns: Zip.
Oblivion - A state of being completely forgotten
A state of complete forgetfulness or unawareness
The deliberate overlooking of past offenses
She's getting married to someone everyone knows. He isn't a stranger, he isn't a Muggle - he isn't even a jerk. He saved the world, and he's good with my family, and he's polite, but not in a way that makes it look like he's trying too hard; and he looks at her like he loves her but he's incredibly sorry about something, and she looks at him like she loves him and he should stop apologizing.
She is still a newborn to me, eyes barely open, in my mother's arms. My mother is still years and years younger, without the blood stains and the tear stains, before 'mortal peril' was an option on the clock. And my sister, my little baby sister, is still wrapped away from the world, nesting in my mother's arms.
But that's a lie, because she is in his arms, and she laughs and sips champagne - and it's perfectly legal for her to do so, and I have to wonder if she's ever been drunk, and if so, what does she look like when she throws her innocence behind her and her fingers clench around a bottle, not my mother's hand? And when she crashes, which one of our brothers is there to catch her and tell her to go to bed and then make sure she gets there safely?
Or maybe it's him. It's probably him, and his arm is around her waist, and for goodness's sake, I didn't even know she had a waist. Her hair reaches her waist, and I never knew what it was like to grow up with a girl in the house, and her legs are long, and I wonder what they look like when she's falling. Our mother had said a while ago that she sprained her ankle. Of course, that's nothing now, what with the countless scars that invaded her skin and his and mine and everyone's. I wonder where we'd be without magic (well, dead), how much worse the gashes would look, and if there were gashes on her waist and how scarred she is. How scarred can she be, if she's still a newborn in my mother's arms?
I have three pictures of her. In one she is that pink-faced infant that I was given my few moments to know; the next she is eleven, finally fitting in with the rest of us, proud and thus gleeful and thus abashed; the next with a crowd of gangly teenagers, clumped around our makeshift but warm home - I am older than them, and I recognize the looks on their faces despite the fact that none of us ever bothered to know each other, but I pretend to know them so well, and everyone who's anyone knows that there is doom etched in their eyeballs, and that's what they get to see at night and dream of.
I wonder how bad her nightmares were after the war, and if he was there to quiet her, and it strikes me that she's probably not a virgin, and what's worst about that isn't that she's still a newborn in my mother's arms, it's that I missed the chance to beat him up. I didn't get to threaten him lovingly before he proposed, and I didn't get to tease him during and after the big moment. I wasn't even there, and I didn't even remember to ask anyone how it went down, and who saw it, and it doesn't pain me at all, because there's just so much else I've missed for work and pain and love and ramblings, and so it only pains me that it doesn't pain me, that I am immune.
A few days ago, we found ourselves alone in the kitchen with tea, before everyone else had awoken. She confessed to not being able to sleep all night, and I wanted so much to ask her if she was alright, if he was alright, if they, together, were alright, and if she was absolutely sure she wanted to marry him, but I also didn't want to ask. I was so accustomed to disconnection and thus oblivion and thus apathy. I stayed silent, and she decided it was high time for another confession, so she told me, blushing (that was my one second of relation, because we all look the same when we blush, and I would've laughed if only what she said net wasn't something that could stifle anybody's laughter), that she had no memory of me before she was seven years old. I smiled sadly. It was true, all of it, everything. I wish I knew her, but I didn't. I wish I could still know her, but she's off getting married tomorrow and I screwed up every drop of chance that I had.
I don't wish I'd stayed at home or nearby all my life, working with my father and my brothers, letting my mother fuss over me whenever she was in spitting distance.
I don't wish I came around for every single holiday, and I don't wish I'd visited the school, and I don't wish I had ever given up my opportunity to do what I want with my life.
But I wish I knew my sister.