Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise.
A/N: Just a short piece I started a while ago and only finished recently.
Here are some words;
Will you take them away?
Some better ways for
what they mean to say.
Puzzles and rhymes,
Geography and time.
Or a kiss, like praying.
Hugo, to his father's bafflement, enjoyed reading romantic novels.
He liked them; he liked people falling in love and happy endings, and he wasn't ashamed to admit it. James and Fred thought it was hilarious. Grandma Weasley had once called him fondly 'an incurable romantic.' Mum had laughed at that, and said that that was all very well, but it was a shame he had also inherited his father's incompetent and tactless approach to all things romantic. Rose had snorted and asked Mum if Dad, like Hugo, had had all the instincts as well as the the skill of a ten-year-old girl when it came to romance. Mum had said no, he had had the skills but not the instincts, which had at least saved the people around him from disastrous interferences, even if it had meant that his own romance had taken a while to get off the ground.
That was a bit unfair, Hugo thought (on himself, not on Dad). Okay, so he was better at dealing with other people's love affairs than he was with his own. And admittedly, some of his plans for other people had gone a little bit wrong. But not all of them; he liked to take credit for some of his cousins' more successful relationships.
It had always seemed easier to concentrate on other people than on himself though.
He'd had the odd girlfriend, mostly back in Sixth and Seventh Year, when he'd suddenly shot up and found himself taller than his dad. They had been nice, but nothing special. He was still waiting for true love to blow him away. According to the books he read, you knew it when it hit you. So far, it hadn't. Part of him admitted that he shied away from his own feelings; other people's were safer. The other, larger, part of himself didn't bother to think about it too much and just kept going in his easygoing way, waiting for the right one to arrive and assuming he'd know what to do when she did.
She was extraordinary; he knew that from the moment he first set eyes on her. He was fascinated by her, because she was the only Muggle his own age he had ever met. But he was also a little resentful, because he was eight years old, and he had been excited to be going to stay with the Potters all by himself, and then she had turned up, along with her family, and suddenly it hadn't just been him and Lily staying up half the night whispering and giggling. She had been there too, and Lily was distracted, and they couldn't talk about fun stuff, like Quidditch and Hogwarts and what they were going to buy from Uncle George's shop, because the girl was there, and she was a Muggle and didn't know about those things.
Hugo didn't really know what to talk about without talking about magic, so he had ended up staying silent and listening to the girls.
She was pretty; even at eight he thought that. She had rich, dark brown hair (like her mother's) and a wide, laughing mouth, and a nose that turned up very slightly, and stars in her soft deepsea-blue eyes. And she had looked curiously at him, and said, "You don't talk very much, do you?" and he had been mortified.
The next time he saw her was when they were thirteen years old, at the Potters' again. He wasn't very good at talking to girls, especially not girls he thought were pretty, so he sat miserably again, watching her and Lily chatter like a pair of starlings. At one point, she looked at him, then giggled, leaned over to Lily and said something behind her hand, with more giggling, from Lily as well. Humiliated that they were laughing at him when he was sitting right there, he had glared at them, got up and left the room. He had gone and spent the afternoon with Albus, who seemed surprised at his gloomy mood but, being Albus, said nothing.
"What was the matter with you?" Lily asked him later. He just glared at her. She knew what the matter was. She must know. She was a traitor; they were supposed to be friends, but she had laughed at him with that stupid stuck-up girl with the stars in her eyes.
He didn't see her again for a long time, but he heard about her every now and again. He couldn't help pricking his ears up whenever her name was mentioned, although he really didn't know why he should.
So he knew about the horrible time there was when her mother was ill, and the eventual – and inevitable, it seemed – culmination in her mother's death, when they were seventeen. The Potters went to the funeral, but Hugo didn't; he hadn't known any of the family well enough. He wondered how she was, but when he asked Lily tentatively whether she was all right, his cousin looked unhappy.
"We don't see her any more" she said quietly, "After her mum died, her dad... told her some things. She knows about us being witches and wizards. It really freaked her out, so she doesn't come here any more."
And Hugo was annoyed; annoyed for the miserable look on his favourite cousin's face, because she had lost somebody she had considered a friend, and annoyed on behalf of the magical community. He had been prepared to feel sorry for the girl, after she lost her mum and everything, but she was obviously as stuck up as he'd always thought she was. He knew – from the odd comment from his parents – that Uncle Harry's Muggle family had always hated him being a wizard. Obviously, she was just the same.
It wasn't until after he'd finished Hogwarts that he met her again. He bumped into her – literally – coming out of a Muggle café in Brighton.
"Oh!" she staggered and clutched his arm.
"Sorry," he apologised automatically, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she looked up at him, and astonishment registered on her face, "It's Hugo, isn't it?"
"Grace," he said stiffly, remembering that since she found out that the Potters were magical last year, she had ignored them, "What are you doing here?"
"I go to university here," she told him, "I've just started this year. Geography..." she broke off, looking up at him. There was a sadness in her eyes that he didn't remember being there before. Of course, her mum had died. They still looked like stars though, those eyes, and her hair was just as brown and just as soft.
"Sorry," she added, "I'm rambling. What are you up to these days?"
He hesitated. He worked for Gringott's, following in his Uncle Bill's footsteps as a Curse Breaker. But he wasn't sure how well it would go down if he started talking about curse breaking for a wizarding bank.
"I work for a bank," he said eventually.
"Oh, in finance?" she asked.
"Sort of," he agreed, after another hesitation.
She too appeared to be hesitating.
"I thought..." she said hesitantly, "Oh, never mind. It sounds stupid. But Dad told me you all..."
"I'm a wizard, if that's what you mean," Hugo said. He wasn't quite sure if this girl was really supposed to know, but Uncle Harry knew that she did, and obviously no Memory Charm had been performed on her. Clearly it was okay.
"Oh," she said quietly.
"D'you have a problem with that?" he asked, a bit too loudly.
"No!" she said at once, going pink, "It's just..." she looked miserably at him, "When Dad told me about the Potters and all the rest of you, I couldn't believe it. I thought he was going mad, and I was terrified. Mum had just died, and I thought I was going to lose Dad too. Maybe that sounds really selfish, but that's how I felt. And then he insisted it was true, and got Uncle Harry in to prove it, and I just... freaked out. How was I supposed to cope with that, on top of everything else? I still... I... well, it's just weird. That you've all got wands and can use them. If you wanted, you could kill me, right now, just by speaking the right words!"
Hugo looked shocked.
"But I wouldn't..."
She smiled slightly.
"Well, thanks, I'm glad of that."
"We're not all that bad, you know," he said seriously, "We're just... normal people, like you."
There was a slight pause.
"I... know," she said at last, "I just... Well, magic's something you believe in when you're little, you know. And then you learn it doesn't exist. And finding out it does is just... scary... Especially when you find out half your family aren't who they always pretended to be," she looked up at him, and he was horrified to see tears in her eyes, "That hurt, you know, Hugo. To know that all those times I came over to Uncle Harry's house, and played with Lily... all those times me and Lily told each other secrets and I shared everything with her and thought she'd shared everything with me... All that time, she was hiding things from me. Lying to me about where she went to school and what she did there. You all had all these secrets, and I was left out of them..."
"But we couldn't help it," Hugo protested, "We weren't allowed to tell you!" he hesitated for a moment, remembering the times he had come over when Grace was there, "I was jealous, you know," he said candidly, "Of you and Lily. I wanted to join in, but I was no good at pretending. I didn't know what to say without telling you..." He trailed off, remembering how they had laughed at him, and how much it had hurt.
"Oh," she said, her voice small, and looked up at him again, the tears mercifully gone, although her eyes were still hurt and confused, "I... I wanted you to join in," she said at last.
Hugo couldn't help laughing in surprise at this, although he wasn't really amused.
"No, you didn't," he reminded her, "I was the stupid one who didn't talk, remember? You laughed at me..."
This time, it was surprise in her blue eyes.
"I laughed at you? No I didn't, Hugo... when did I laugh at you?"
He reminded her of the occasion, and of how she and Lily had giggled behind their hands, the sense of humiliation coming back to him, even after five years.
"Oh," she said again. She bit her lip, and colour flooded her cheeks as she hesitated. "I do remember that, but..." he paused, "Oh, God. I suppose it was a bit mean, but I didn't..." she looked up at him, her expression torn between amusement and mortification, "You really want to know what I said to Lily that time?"
He opened his mouth, then hesitated, because he wasn't sure he really did want to know.
"Okay then," his mouth somehow said for him, the words sounding defensive to his own ears, "What did you say?"
Suddenly, she wasn't meeting his eyes any more, but was gazing at the pavement, although she was laughing embarrassedly.
"I told Lily her cousin was really good-looking."
For a moment, he was silent, as this sank in.
"Wait... what?" he said, in a strangled voice, "You thought..." Suddenly, he was laughing, and she was laughing too, and the restraint and awkwardness and resentment was blowing away with their laughter.
"And I couldn't talk to you because I thought you were pretty," he confessed, shaking his head at his own idiocy, "I was only thirteen, okay?"
"So was I," she pointed out, then smiled at him, and the stars were back in her eyes, "Thirteen-year-olds can be pretty bloody stupid, can't they?"
"Yeah..." he said, although his voice was suddenly serious, "But so can eighteen-year-olds..."
"Yes," she agreed softly, and looked at him, the smile faded to just a hint around the corners of her mouth, "They can. Do you still think I'm pretty, Hugo Weasley?"
"Depends," he grinned at her, "D'you still think I'm good-looking, Grace Dursley?"
And perhaps, just perhaps, it was the beginning of Hugo's own happy ending.