A/N: I may just be doing 13 or 14 chapters to this story instead of 12…Luna's kids need stories too, don't they?
12 Things about Roxanne Weasley:
1. Roxanne loves being a Gryffindor. She loves adventure, exploring the castle after hours and sneaking into the Forbidden Forest. So many of her cousins do the same, she knows, but she's the only one who never gets caught. Roxanne has always had extraordinarily good luck. She won't tell anyone, because she will see the sadness in their eyes and on their faces and there's nothing she hates more than that, but she secretly credits her luck to Uncle Fred. He's her guardian angel, she knows. Freddie might be his namesake, but she privately thinks of the dead man as her own.
After all, she was born on the anniversary of his death.
2. Roxanne loves coffee. The smell, the taste, the glorious rush of caffeine, everything about coffee delights her. She'll drink it any way it's served, but she especially loves the way piping hot coffee burns her mouth and throat as it goes down. She drinks it slow, savoring each delicious sip. At Hogwarts, it's harder to get. Everyone drinks pumpkin juice ad the professors disapprove of their students living off of coffee. Luckily though, he dad told her just how to get into the kitchens. The house elves love her, and every time she visits them, they serve her a cappuccino with a little design made of cocoa powder and foam on the top. They make her delicious desserts too; her favorite is Dobby's renowned Bakewell Pudding. He always adds blackberries or cherries to it just for her.
Her Uncle Fred loved coffee too.
3. Roxanne loves that she is just a little bit different than her cousins. Two of Bill and Fleur's children may be beautiful blondes, and Harry's sons may have his unruly black hair, but the rest of her cousins are all pale, freckly, redheads. She isn't and she's proud. Her black hair is straight and thick and while she's not dark, she's got more color than the rest of them, a lovely shade of her favorite milky coffee. She has her dad's blue eyes and her mom's lean frame and she is the only Weasley girl who doesn't sunburn.
She's proud of both sides of her family.
4. Freddie doesn't think their parents love each other. He thinks their mom settled for the twin of a man she couldn't have and that their father wanted someone who would let him grieve in peace. She knows he is both right and wrong. They hold onto Uncle Fred a little too much, mourning him so much that it makes them silent and gets in the way of their own happiness. But they do love each other. Angelina makes George Baked Alaska every Valentine's Day, and he brings her home a bouquet of red daisies, heliotropes, and yellow tulips. Freddie might not speak the language of flowers, but their parents do. There were always red daisies, to tell of beauty unknown to the possessor, heliotropes, to show devotion; and red tulips, to signify the declaration of affection.
Roxanne understands that flowers are a beautiful way to say "I love you."
5. She cannot bear to see her brother so unhappy. He is not the same irrepressibly charming boy who made her laugh, but a viciously witty teen who is killing himself with melancholy. She can't help but pick fights with him and the first time he makes her cry, she decides it will be the last. She doesn't talk to him for five years, which is sickeningly easy to avoid doing, and avoids him at all costs. She's probably making him more miserable, she knows, but she cannot bear to watch the frown lines between his brows and next to his mouth deepen anymore.
She learned to hate sadness when she was young.
6. Her favorite song is by an old blues singer named Eartha Kitt, "I want to be evil." Roxanne agrees. She's always been a good girl, and sometimes she wants to upset her entire family the same way Molly does with a feral grin and a bat of her pretty blue eyes. Roxanne knows she won't though; she likes happiness too much to really want to upset anyone. What she really wants is to have fun. Molly and Albus have the kind of dangerous fun she only imagines having, they drink and smoke and duel and get into fistfights (not like Hugo, whose wrathful violence is more like a blitz attack than an actual fight, and there is no joy there), and above all they live without fear of consequences, without a thought to fear or future sorrow.
Roxanne always fears the consequences.
7. Lysander Scamander is cheery and jovial and reminds her of a merry sort of Nordic bear. He's just a two years older than her, but he is twice her size and his wildly curly blonde hair is always long enough to flop into his eyes. She finally settles on the idea that he is rather like an overgrown cherub. Everyone is always in a good mood around him, even his Slytherin twin (who frightens most people, truthfully), though they rarely talk at school, and you can't help but giggle at his nutty ideas and joyful, pleasant humor.
She loves to laugh.
8. Lysander is big and brave (he is a Gryffindor, after all) but he doesn't like to fight because he knows he can hurt people and when a Slytherin insults his mother in front of the entire Great Hall, it isn't impulsive excitable Lysander that punches him, but his twin. Lysander pulls the normally cool and collected Lorcan off the boy, but not before his nose is broken. It was lucky he was there, Roxanne thinks staring at the way the sixteen year old boy's arms bulge as he works to hold his brother back. No one else would have been strong enough to prevent such a big teen from attacking again. He whispers something in his brother's ear and Lorcan pulls himself upright, straightening his clothes and adjusting his hair and tie. They are identical, Roxanne knows, but even without the house colors on their clothes she knows she could tell them apart.
Lysander is always ready to smile.
9. They don't see eye to eye, she learns, Luna Lovegood's sons. Lysander is so much like their mother, more rational maybe, but just as free spirited and Lorcan isn't. He is the most cynical person she has ever met, even more than her cousin Louis, and when his brother coerces Lorcan into joining them for a picnic so his two favorite people in the world can get to know each other, Lysander laughingly tells her that he's always seen the bad in the world. "When we were exploring the German Alps, all he could see was the Nazis. In India, wives burning on the funeral pyre. Russian? Rasputin and Communism." Lorcan rolls his eyes but he doesn't disagree. They aren't twins like her father and his brother were, she thinks, one soul in two bodies, but yin and yang. They are mirror opposites, light and dark spilt into two beings.
She isn't like her mother after all.
10. When Freddie introduces her to Maria, she is struck by how perfect the woman is for him. She understands his anger, but she doesn't let him dwell on it and she makes him happy. After their marriage, Roxanne knows Uncle Fred was watching out for her brother too. Freddie showers Maria in jewels and silks and she dances around the house with him, both of them singing out of tune to silly love songs. She loves pranks and her crafty mind is without cruelty. She's feisty and fun, and Roxanne is not surprised that everyone in the family loves Maria. She loves her too, because she brought Freddie back to them.
The family dinners grow bigger and more wonderful every year.
11. Lysander asks her to marry him two years after she moves in with him. He serves her breakfast in bed, and she nearly chokes on the engagement ring he's hidden in her muffin. He saves her, laughing, and they both laugh through the proposal. She can barely answer through her tears of mirth.
They laugh at the wedding too.
12. When Lysander has a problem, he doesn't turn to her. It used to bother her, early in their relationship. He goes to Lorcan first, whose advice is often downright malevolent and who can usual be counted on to fix the problem for his minutes-younger brother without telling him. It makes Lysander mad when he does, but she understands. Her dad was the older twin too. When they have their first children, two beautiful twin baby girls, she wants to name them after Fred and George but her brother has beaten her too it. Luna Georgina and Angelina Fredericka are beautiful names anyway. When she has twin boys, she names them Fabian Lysander and Gideon Lorcan. When she has her next set, a boy and a girl, she declares that she is done, no more babies. Godric and Godiva are soon followed by Alice and Annabelle, however, and she beats her cousin Hugo's record baby count by one when they are joined by Rolf and Roland. Two months after her father dies, she finds out she is pregnant again. She knows the names are taken, but she names the redheaded boys Fred and George anyway. Maybe this time, there won't be any unhappy endings.
Her house is filled with laughter.