I
EUROPE AND WALES
Once he told her "Carpe diem."
So she did.
-:-
They're somewhere in Wales when he asks her. It's raining, pouring and they're in the middle of a narrow street, and when she kisses him after she says yes, she swears the rain lightens a little.
They skitter around Europe ("just one more city, Luc?") before he throws in the towel. "Sooner or later?"
"Sooner."
"Here? Or maybe…overseas?"
She's laughing, a light tinkling but whole-hearted laugh. "I drive when we get there."
II
NEW YORK
They decide to switch it up a bit. She buys two tickets to god-knows-where and tells him it's a secret and they're boarding in an hour.
They touch down in New York at midnight. They get lost in the airport (it's huge), but they find their luggage (eventually) and head out to find a taxi. Lucy takes charge, makes him pay.
Drugstore bathroom, one bottle of hair dye. Black. With that and a pair of scissors, she's a different person.
-:-
She's still a Weasley at heart. But Weasleys are ginger and she hasn't spoken to them in months. Sooner than she thinks, she won't even be one anymore.
-:-
It's a bit like Marco Polo, she thinks. Her family can't find her, they have no idea where she could be, but she's not one to care. Sweet little Lucy has eloped, and she couldn't be happier.
-:-
They sleep in a dingy motel near the city. She wakes up late and he's not there. She waits around a few hours and he finally shows up, the keys to their brand new used red convertible dangling from his fingers.
III
PENNSYLVANIA
She's laughing again. They're driving through fields and fields of green in Pennsylvania, singing loudly to trashy pop songs, and then they switched to country music. They flirt endlessly just… because. Nothing they do has much reason anymore. They do thing because they can and they will.
IV
TENNESSEE
They were going to get married in Nashville. Jeans and a tee shirt for him, Lucy in her favorite sundress, their precious country music quiet in the background.
But they don't.
They stay for a month doing as much as they can, yet nothing at all.
-:-
"I don't want to get married." No preamble. "Yet."
They're at the Stardust Drive-In. Their car doesn't stick out as much as it did in the city. It's dark. Fireflies swarm around them like tongues of fire. Lorcan's in the driver's seat, tee shirt and jeans. Their accents are slowly fading, colliding into a British/Southern drawl.
He looks over, and then down at her engagement ring on her left hand. "Okay."
"Okay? "
"You want me to say no?"
"No, but…I didn't think you would agree to hold off the wedding."
"Luc, I get it. You're barely legal here, you want a little freedom before we tie the knot-"
She laughs. "No, I want to marry you. But not yet. I just want to stay engaged for a while. Make more sense?"
"Ha, yeah. Alright Luc. Do you want to stay here, or keep going?"
V
ILLINOIS
When she stands on Sears Tower, it's like she's on top of the world. She has everything she wants and could ever need.
And then an oncoming owl shakes the solid foundation she's standing on.
Her grandfather, her Grandpa Arthur, is dying and her family needs her home. Lorcan looks at her gently and tells her she needs to go support her family.
-:-
She takes the next flight from the Chicago-O'Hare Airport.
VI
PARIS
She's just landed in Paris when whens she gets the other note from her family. Her grandfather has passed, and the family's alright. They need her to come home. She can't. She can cope on her own.
-:-
She owls Lorcan and tells him the news. He tells her that he's coming, stay in Paris.
-:-
He meets her on top of the Eiffel Tower. He takes her in his arms without a word and before she realizes it, she's crying for the first time in years.
He strokes her hair gently, whispering to her that it's alright, her family's okay, she'll get through it. Suddenly, she's in a mix and time and space, up and down, and she loses her bearing, but he's still holding on to her, and that's all she knows.
VII
THE BURROW
They stay there for a few months to help her family get through the loss. Lucy's Grandma Molly has expanded the Burrow (magically, of course), so she can stay there with Lorcan instead of at home. Home is not with her mother Audrey and her father Percy and her older sister Molly. Home is… where the people she loves live. They come and go at the Burrow, but they never come to Percy's. It's dark and cold, and the Burrow is warm, bright, and full of laughter.
Slowly, the laughter comes back, the candles are lit, and it's her home more than ever. After traveling, she longs for home, and where if her whole family can be there (as well as future family) the Burrow is just what she was looking for.
She seeks her solace in the backyard. Lorcan and Lucy walk through the apple orchards where the played Quidditch as children. They have no more plans for the wedding and no more travel plans, and the family is thrilled. Grandma Molly tells them to stay as long as they want to, it's great to have them home.
-:-
Molly comes along one day with Lucy as she walks through the apple orchards. "Grandma Molly wants you and Lorcan to have the wedding here."
Lucy looks up at her sister, unsurprised. "I know.
"You should do it."
"I know."
-:-
They're sitting at the table now. Grandma Molly, Ginny, Audrey, Fleur, Angelina, Hermione, and the other female Weasleys firing questions to Lucy about the wedding.
"Why do you want to have it here?
"Lorcan and I are at home here, Roxie."
"Who are you inviting?"
"Everyone."
"Who's the maid of honor?"
"Molly, of course." An apologetic glance to her cousins.
"I figured. So…what are you going to wear?"
Pause. "I hadn't honestly thought about it… Well, we were going to get married in Nashville. Me in a sundress, Lorcan in jeans and a tee-shirt."
"Lucy, honey, you don't really want that, do you?"
"Yes, mum."
"But-"
"Vic, I know you and Teddy had a big fancy wedding. I don't want that, and neither does Lorcan."
"But Lucy, you're only nineteen. If you look back in twenty years-"
"Rose, I may not want it then, but this is what I want now. I won't regret it because a simple wedding is exactly what my nineteen-year-old self wanted."
-:-
The wedding is just how she pictured it. The sun was setting just over Ottery St. Catchpole in the background, fading blue swirling into pink, orange, and faint purple. Their precious country music is rumbling in the background. The stars are coming out as they say the vows, her mother crys, her sister is there next to her holding roses, and Lorcan's in front of her whispering "I love you, I love you," as they make their first kiss as man and wife.
-:-
"Carpe diem," he said.
So they did.