July, July
author: Sirikit
rating: K
summary: In the
summer after sixth year, Susan makes her choice. (Susan gen)
a/n: Many thanks to Summerborn for her beta-ing and support!
This is the story of the road that goes to my house
And what ghosts there do remain.
---
Just one week home and her body is used to home hours again. Susan tries her best to keep busy, finding things to do to pass the time. She's taken up knitting again (sock tally: three and a half), and since this past Monday she's seriously invested herself in the survival of the petunia beds (status: uphill battle). Perhaps next week she'll tackle organising her parents' cellar, especially the corner where the cardboard boxes hold Aunt Amelia's things.
All of Aunt Amelia's life, she corrects herself, darkly.
---
She receives owls every day for a fortnight. It's more than usual, even for hols, and Susan tries not to think too hard about why.
Hannah's letters are long and sedate and worrying. Susan's pretty sure Ernie just owls everyone the same glib assurances. Justin, trying to be cheeky, sends his letters by Muggle post and writes about Muggle things he think would amuse her. Megan owls brief, sunny notes, and every now and then there's a daft post script from Eloise in the margins. Zacharias never owls any of them, but one day his mother sends them all invitations to some fancy-dress party. She knows they're not meant to accept, but she finds it funny that Zacharias is apparently attempting to be friendly in his old age.
Somehow, they all refrain from making plans to visit one another. After a while, the weather turns warm and the owls taper off.
---
A few days later and her mum wants a carton of orange juice, some digestives and a Muggle magazine (whichever one looks most interesting). Susan takes her time as she flies, making lazy circles over the dirt road that leads to their house. The sun warms the crown of her head. Should've worn a hat, she thinks, but remembers that all of her hats are pointy.
She lands in the empty car park at the edge of town and transfigures her father's broom into a handbag. She picks at her clothes, feeling self-conscious. She knows she can never pass for Muggle, but she's pureblood enough to not consider this a failing.
---
In the evenings her parents nod by the fire as if they were people twice their age. The wireless sits on the edge of the mantle beside the rows and rows of family pictures; it plays something catchy and nostalgic, and the picture of 11-year-old Uncle Edgar dances along.
Susan sits a little away from them in her favourite armchair, the one that used to be in her grandmother's sitting room, legs crossed at an awkward angle, and waits for-- what, exactly? There's no breeze tonight even if she opens the windows all the way; summer is bearing down and the garden outside is humming with insects. She pats the seat cushion, wondering where her knitting needles and that fifth unfinished sock went.
The wireless suddenly chirps in the middle of the song and there's a silence, then white noise. Susan tenses, her heartbeat in her ears and her right hand gripping the wand that never leaves her side.
But then the a cheery voices comes on and it's the just the latest update about the match in Portree. Arrows for the win.
---
She's out in the garden sprawled on a blanket beside the petunias, reading one of her mother's novels with the horrid covers. Susan moves her elbows so that they aren't pinning her hair down. Her gaze falls on her hair falling over her shoulders and floating away from her top in a cloud of-- what was that word Justin taught her? Static. She smooths her hair and begins to plait it, and to her the movement is as automatic as breathing.
She pauses, and her hands drop away from her shoulder. The static reclaims her hair and her vision is clouded by uninteresting shades of ginger and blonde. She knows from pictures that she has her grandmother's hair; she knows from memory that she has Aunt Amelia's.
Susan leaves the book face down in the grass and there's a slight fizz of insect life as she gets to her feet. The good scissors are kept in the cupboard above the sink.
---
One morning her dad rushes through breakfast like a whirlwind, eating quickly and making lots of noises but never saying anything. Her mum looks concerned, but doesn't say anything either; he's been doing this every now and then since his sister's funeral. Before he rushes off to the farm he gives the pair of them a long troubled look. Susan tries to ignore it, but largely fails. She's never seen him look so old.
Everyone's got older, she muses to herself, then leviosas the dishes to the sink.
Afterwards in the bath she slides her hand across the steamy glass and stares at herself, looking for her family in her features.
---
She reads books she doesn't like and knits things she would never actually wear. She tends the flower beds, which dislike her immensely. She runs errands for her mum and helps her dad with the animals. Some nights she can't sleep and spends the hours counting the lights of the Muggle houses in the distance. She spends her mornings scouring the papers and spends her evenings listening to the wireless, and there are times when she doesn't hold her breath, waiting for news.
She writes letters that she can never send, and writes a few more that she can. Her wand is always with her and she watches the horizon for owls.
---
It's early when Susan wakes up to the sound of wings flapping outside her window. Susan blinks to alertness, then bolts out of her sheets and out of bed. The floor is cold, she thinks abstractly, her bare feet sliding across the boards. She unlatches the window and grabs the letter out of the owl's beak. It squawks at her, so she tosses it one of Sickles she keeps in a pile on the windowsill. She slams the window shut before it can beg for a treat as well.
It's barely dawn and so she calls up lumos on her wand; the blue shadows disappear. The envelope just says her name and her address and nothing else, but she'd recognise Ernie's obsessively neat script anywhere. Her hands shake a little, and she realises the parchment smells faintly of burnt feathers.
In the second before she tears it open, she hopes rather than believes that everyone is alright.
---
It's Zacharias, of all people, who shows up in her fireplace unannounced in the middle of a July afternoon. Thank goodness she recognised him through the green smoke; she already has her wand out, pointing menacingly.
He looks at the wand that's aimed at the space over his heart but doesn't say anything. He's got his wand in hand too, gripped tightly. They both lower their arms at the same time and it's almost like a greeting.
"Something's happened," he says, curt as ever. His eyes sweep around her parents' sitting room. "I need to ask you t--"
'You don't need to ask me," she interrupts. Susan feels the world spinning and holds on, passing fear and anger and exhilaration and leaving her with this.
She nods at him. "I'm ready."
Feedback is lovely and amazing. Lyrics and title from the Decemberists.