Fumbling Grace
Prologue
There are some people out there that you are unable to pin a personality to. Their emotions and actions flutter about, changing from somber to ambitious to hysterical to loving. There are those people who mystify the world, who enchant and embrace each individual person. There is one such girl whom this story is about.
She was Maya.
She could be nothing more than she already was, and she knew such. She lived her life to its extent; she lived it as best she could.
Others were not the same. They did not like her. They did not like her when she was calm, they did not like her when she was wild. They ignored her when she was quiet and they hated her when she was loud.
So she was what she wanted to be.
She would live to no expectations. It was the last thing her mother said to her before she died. She remembered that day clearly in her mind as if it had been yesterday, the way her mother laid pale and sick in the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed. The way her hand laid limp in her daughter's hand, the way her eyes seemed hollow and empty as she told her she loved her. As she said to live her life the way she wanted, not as others would have it.
And then she died.
To speak the word die is to speak vaguely. No one ever truly dies. They leave their footprints on the hearts of those they have touched, and they live on that way, dancing to the rhythm of loved ones' hearts. Singing to the tune of a person's thoughts. They never really die.
And so Maya's mother lived on within her daughter's young body. She died at age 28, but she lived for so much longer. She lived through the child of her womb.
Everyone treated Maya like she was fragile and could be broken at any time. She had been so close to her mother, so sad when she died. She had stopped speaking for weeks at a time. But suddenly, on a sunny day in spring three months after the woman's death, Maya spoke again. And she lived.
Maya hated the way people continued to treat her. She drifted from groups of friends, from the wild ones, to the studious ones, to the middle of the roaders, if such groups can be distinguished at the age of nine. She did not want to be fragile. She was not a thing that could be broken, and she would not be treated like one.
The only one that treated her strong was her father. But then, he was a busy man and had appeared to feel nothing when his wife of ten years had died. He had told his eight year old daughter that he was sorry for her loss – not his loss, her loss – and then he had returned to work, leaving his young daughter to care for her even younger sister.
They were the two flower children, with the pure last name. Maya and Aimee Rosewind. The flower, pureblooded family, full to the brim of crackling magic.
For three years, Maya cared for Aimee, who was a year younger than she. Maya became the mother of the two. The one who made sure the house elves did their jobs, the one who sent for things when they were needed.
But when Maya turned eleven and received her letter to attend the magical school Hogwarts, Aimee took over the household. And the next year, Aimee left for school also, and the elves held rule until Mr. Rosewood returned home from work once in a while.
Maya continued to be Maya. She remained the mother child.
Aimee was still the younger, babied child.
Mr. Rosewood never changed from the overbearing, under caring father.
Mrs. Rosewood lived on.