Prologue.

"Grandma?"

Lucy opened the door in a wide arc. She leant the weight of her body into it when it caught and jarred and wound her neck around the doorframe. The Burrow kitchen was her favourite place to be, where it was no-one else's, and Molly Weasley - the seeming conductor of several, frantic kitchen utensils – was her favourite person, with that frenzied, flushed face. The gleam in her eyes was so much more pronounced when she was all frizzy, and busy.

Her grandmother cast her an over-the-shoulder glance and waved her in with an airy hand and called –

"One minute, dear."

So Lucy breathed in the heady, earthy Burrow scent, and let her fingers chase the smoke leaking back out through the open door as she came to the long, wooden table. She leant over it, onto her nimble elbows, and rested her chin in her hands, where she had a decent view out of the window.

The weak sunlight cast her many cousins, uncles and Auntie Ginny as silhouettes at the end of the garden. She slipped a nimble hand round the back of her neck, stroking the short, soft hair at the base of her scalp as she watched.

Uncle Harry and Auntie Ginny had polarised. She couldn't hear them from here, though she could tell that they were Quidditch team-choosing all the same. The outlines of Albus and Rose clapping beater's bats together jauntily, and moving to join Uncle Harry were hazy in the heat. Cousin by cousin by uncle, they dribbled to either side; Bill, Ron, George, Charlie, Teddy, James, Victoire, Dominique, Fred, Roxanne, Lily, Hugo and even nimble, little Louis. They were all chest bumping, slapping hands and huddling feircley close in all their Weasley-hood glory.

Lucy dragged her eyes away, to find she was being watched. Molly Weasley was leant with her back to the hectic cookery, hands splayed out on either side of her, gripping the work-top. It was so easy to get lost in those bright eyes, or the folds of her soft skin, or to bury your face in her frizzy, greying hair.

"Aren't you going to join them?" She asked softly, moving over the the wooden table too. Lucy looked at her, straight on, as her brow puckered in a frown.

"I've never ridden a broom proper though. Dad doesn't like us to ride brooms, Gran. You know that."

Yes, Gran knew that, though she cocked her eyebrow at Lucy all the same and whispered –

"Because that would stop a Weasley," Lucy's eyes turned steely, locked fiercely with her Grandmother's. "Hmmm… But you're not much like Ginny, are you."

It wasn't a question, and she continued quietly, "Do you know that the boys said as much the same thing to her as your father says to you now? But your Auntie Ginny learned anyway, in the dead of the night instead."

"But I'm not like Auntie Ginny," Lucy urged, earnest and wide-eyed; she leaned in, as though telling a secret. "And I'm… I'm,"

Her gaze wandered to the window-view of the garden again. Her dad and sister were huddled together close-by, over a large volume, heads bent together seriously.

"I'm not the brightest witch to set foot in Hogwarts either, like Molly. I think that dad lumps us together, though. Molly was never interested in Quidditch, and that suited him fine, so he didn't think to ask me. But I'm not the fiery Weasley who tells him that, and I'm not the one who sneaks broom-practice anyway, or plays Quidditch, or makes mischief, or… Or, even has Freckles!"

She wasn't tearing-up, or wistful, but confused, as she watched nothing in particular, but with such focused intensity that you would have thought that she was.

"I don't know what it is Gran, except that I don't really… I don't make the cut."

"Lucy!" Molly admonished seriously, "Don't let me ever hear you say that again. "

She lowered her face to look her Granddaughter in the eye and gripped her hand tightly for good measure. "You don't have to 'make the cut', silly girl. You're Lucy Weasley – and you can be any kind of Weasley that you want to be, because you'll still be a Weasley. You might not know what that is yet, but when you get to Hogwarts you can work it out. In the Gryffindor common room, toasting your feet against the fire, you can know who Lucy Weasley is."

Lucy dipped her head in a low nod.

Doubtfully.