A/N: This is apparently a multichapter now. God help me. Big thanks to Wendy Brune for the beta read, and please drop a review to let me know what you think!

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Chapter 2: Actual Worst Weasleys

Thank Jesus for Dom because I don't know how I could possibly stomach this Weasley reunion shit without her, I really, really don't.

I don't mean the ones at the Burrow. Those are a ball. My grandparents are just the sweetest little people you'll ever meet in your life. Granddad Weasley's radically uninterested in the cousin politics, and Grammy Molly's got a real disdain for it. Most of the cousins are the worst ever, but Granddad, Grammy, and Aunt Hermione always seem legitimately interested to hear me freak out about whatever we're reading in Muggle Studies while Grammy throws quadruple helpings of food at me. Even more than that, though, I like listening: to Uncle Ron's jokes and his bickering with Aunt Hermione, to Auntie Fleur's fussing, and to the stories—Uncle Bill's and Uncle Charlie's stories about other wizarding cultures and everybody's stories about the war. Uncle Harry tells the best ones, and the ancestors' aren't too bad, either, to be totally honest, because the dad-'stor was like a bloody self-employed secret agent in the Ministry for the whole last year of it, and the mum-'stor joined the D.A. under the Carrows and Headmaster Rapey Snapey. It does draw lots of attention to the ancestors' six-year age difference, which is awkward, but my aunts and uncles at least don't treat it like a big, weird thing. They met after the mum-ancestor dropped out of Hogwarts, through Aunt Ginny, who was in her year at school.

Nah, going to the Burrow is a grand old time; it's the ones up at school that are the massive problem. They're the sister-Molly's little pet project, of course. I swear, that girl should have been the one in Slytherin more than me, even. I can kind of see it: she's got that bighead Gryffindor ego thing going for her where she thinks she's right about everything and anybody who doesn't line up deserves dishonor on their cow and all this stuff. But she's all about honing connections, like her two life aspirations are basically to get crowned Slug Club Prom Princess and for Grammy Molly to peg her as the next Weasley Christmas host in her will, and she's just the exact same person as the dad-ancestor. The two of them would have been two peas in a snake pod if the Sorting Hat knew what it was doing, which obviously it doesn't because it's a pushover around anybody who, A, doesn't take it seriously the way I did and, B, takes longer than the five and a half milliseconds it spent on Al's head. Straight up, I'll bet you anything Molly picked Gryffindor because it'd be best for her reputation, just as much as I'll bet that the dad-ancestor picked it because he didn't have the guts to write home with any other verdict. How's that for irony, right? He proved himself in the end there with the Ministry mole thing, I guess, but it took him long enough.

Anyway, though, yeah, so in this whole effort to prove herself a worthy heir apparent to the Christmas party, Molly does this thing where she rounds us all up every month or two for dinner with these fancy invitations by owl and everything, as if she needs to hassle some poor school owl for nothing every month to dash around the Great Hall passing them out to validate that she's a budding grownup or something. Seriously? Seriously, I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to just flit around the Hall for all of five minutes to do it herself and save the poor creatures the unnecessary labor. The dad-ancestor spectacles and the feathery little brown bob cut she's rocking make her look practically enough like an owl to pass for one.

She didn't waste any time with it this year, either; school's only been in session for two weeks by the time the first powwow rolls around. Today's festivities are going down out by the lake, where Molly's commandeered the ground below that big beech tree for a picnic. We don't all fit on the blanket, which is annoyingly Gryffindor scarlet. It's like everything my sister does in my presence is a tactical slap in the face. Either I'm wrong and very narcissistic, or I'm right and she's the actual worst.

The numbers of us in other houses are starting to even out, though, thank God. There's me and Al, and then we've got Dom in Hufflepuff and Louie and Rose in Ravenclaw, poor things. Well, Louie's all right—he doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks of him, which really isn't surprising, just look at who he's got for parents—but Rosie's not holding up great, from the looks of it. Hilariously, she and Al are pretty much actively jealous of where each other ended up. You should hear them going at it at this picnic right now, I swear to God.

Oh, right, allow me:

"…Just scared because Dad jokes about disowning anyone Sorted into Slytherin. Lucy's in Slytherin, and she and Dad get along beautifully, don't you, Lucy?"

Good thing I chose now to tune back in. "Peas in a bloody pod," I say tonelessly, absently ripping out and shredding a fistful of grass.

But Al insists, "You're not there. None of you are up there in the dormitory to hear them whispering about how the famous Harry Potter must be so ashamed of me."

Shaking her head, Dom says, "Don't listen to them, Al; they're just fishing for drama, same as people do everywhere."

"And anyway," Rose continues, her voice rising into a squeak, "nobody bad even gets put in Slytherin anymore. I'm the one with Scorpius stupid Malfoy in my house and year, and he already hates me, like it's all my fault that his stupid dad is the butt of everybody's jokes all over the castle. I didn't ask my dad and his dad to hate each other. That's been going on since they were our age."

"At least Ravenclaw is supposed to be about intellect. Your house stands for something admirable. What's there to admire about only being out for yourself?"

"Getting driven and fulfilled from wanting to do something productive with yourself is just as respectable as anything else the other three stand for. It's all fueled by this cultural insecurity that anybody who wants a career is doing it for the power they get over other people," says Dom. Love her so much. "You just never got exposed to any other mentality about it because everybody who raised you is still living in the cult of Dumbledore—"

But James gleefully interrupts, "You're going to hurt his feelings if you keep trashing his namesake in front of him. Poor widdle Albus Severus Minerva Poppy Irma Potter."

"I will hurt you," says Al in disgust.

"Dominique," Vic says before James can retort, "the incentive to exist in order to produce is the most capitalistic drivel I have heard all week." She shakes beachy tendrils of hair out of her face as she bends forward to fix herself another slice of mushroom bruschetta.

"Right little anti-hipster you are," Louie remarks airily.

Leave it to Molly to bring bruschetta to a picnic. You see what I'm dealing with here? I almost feel bad for her—almost—because she's so out of her element with the cousins: she and Vic have the pretentious thing in common, yeah, but it's a damn loud group with opinions that can't be squashed into little boxes for manners, and none of them really like her the way she's gotten the elders to fawn over her and her sucking up. Of course, none of them like me, either, and she hasn't been much help in that department, so it's hard to muster up too much pity. At least Dom likes me, although then again Dom likes everyone, and then I'm still working on Al—slowly, might I add, since he's definitely, definitely avoiding me. It has to be the Slytherin thing, which is just… dumb, honestly, and counterproductive, when you think about it. It's going to be a long-ass seven years for him if he doesn't make some allies and learn how to live peaceably in that tousled head of his.

It's inconvenient I don't like chipping in much around the Weasley when the elders aren't around, because if being forcibly thrust halfway onto a blanket together by Molly is going to be the only times I ever see him, that's not going to be much of an opportunity to get to know each other. Wish I had cousins here on the mum-ancestor's side. I mean, I have cousins on the Renault side, but they're all Muggles, and that's hard with the whole International Statute of Secrecy crackdown going on.

Thankfully, Louie chooses this moment to notice that it's almost two o'clock, which means Muggle Matinee Hour on the WWN. Molly fishes her radio out of her bag and dicks around with the dials for a hot minute, and before you know it, James is bitching loudly about how sick he's getting of Adele's crooning, and Vic is defending her honor, and Dom's hoisting me up to my feet to dance.

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Dance party runs overtime, so I end up having to bail early so that I can douse myself in a nice Disillusionment Charm and set off for The Three Broomsticks in time to meet Angelina. So we're sitting here chugging butterbeers, and she keeps on giving me these looks like she knows I was lying about it being a Hogsmeade weekend. The place would be a lot more crowded with people a lot closer to my age if it were, and I don't think McGonagall's ever scheduled one this early in the term before, so it doesn't exactly take Auror-level powers of deduction to figure it out. I mean I'm surprised Angelina said yes in the first place when I owled her about meeting up with her here. Not like she knows me well enough to owe me any loyalty—I like all my aunts and uncles better than they like me, I'll bet you anything, and anyway Angelina and Uncle George don't get out of the house much to even come see the family at the Burrow, and for that matter Angelina's technically not even my aunt, even if she's as good as one, since she and Uncle George haven't gotten married or anything. And she doesn't know my mum-ancestor much, and she doesn't like the dad-ancestor much, so it's not like we have this big parental connection, either. Maybe she feels sorry for me. Maybe she thinks we can feel sorry for each other together, except actually, I don't feel sorry for Angelina at all. Wish I could be more like her and not care what everybody thinks.

She doesn't mention the part where I'm out here illicitly—and I'm not about to take crap for that anyway, honestly, because you wouldn't believe how hard it is getting out of the castle after the admins found all the secret passages during the Second War and I put in effort to spend time with the woman—but when she's done letting me talk about sex ed and James trying to set up Wi-Fi and what a little prick my sister is, she does ask, "So what's the reason you wanted to meet up, Lucy?"

It's a fair question. Embarrassing, maybe, but fair. I push my mug in circles around the table a little and tell her, "I just hate them so much. All the Weasleys at school except for Dom are terrible, and we're all assholes in Slytherin, which is great but sort of—isolating sometimes, I don't know."

"Honey, you aren't an asshole," says Angelina gently, but I shake my head and say, "No, but I am, but it's great, though. We just all abuse each other and don't have to worry about, you know, like social codes or anything. Not like with Molly, or my dad-ancestor, who's just…"

Smiling, she supplies, "I know Percy's a handful, but he does love you very much. Even if he has a hard time with the dad stuff—"

"Oh, believe me, he does," I say.

Angelina laughs and takes a swig of butterbeer. "I know he seems stiff, but he's doing his best. I think it's probably harder for him to talk to you and your sister than it is for the two of you."

"He and Molly get along just fine. She's practically an exact replica. She's basically a female, social climbing version of him."

"Talking to you, then. I think what might be giving him trouble is that you're not inhibited like he is."

That, maybe, but probably more so the fact that I'm so irreverent. I like to think it's one of my defining qualities. Not all the time—I've got mad respect for the war fighters—but unlike the ancestors, I get that the world doesn't care about who's got how much PTSD anymore, and I can roll with that just fine.

Well, most of the time, I roll with it. I guess my personal exception there would be Uncle George and Angelina, huh?

When I ask her how he's doing—all casual-like, but she probably sees through that, too—her mouth darkens, and she starts bouncing one of her legs. "I think he's holding up a little better lately. He's started going back to work at the joke shop a couple of days a week, and being with Ron is always good for him. He says he wants to pull things together a little for when the baby comes, and he might be being a little over-ambitious about his limitations, but…"

"Has he been seeing the Healer still?"

"No, he stopped going in after something like three or four appointments. They don't train them the same way they train Muggle therapists—wizards are awful at learning anything that doesn't involve magic—but he couldn't see a Muggle about it, not with the Statute of Secrecy still in place. Can you imagine trying to work through your emotional baggage and leave out the fact you're a wizard? It's in every aspect of our lives."

"I heard in the Daily Prophet that they've been gaining support for a bill to ditch the Statute of Secrecy," I remember suddenly.

Amused, Angelina remarks, "You're reading the Prophet now?"

"Yeah, I took out a subscription at the beginning of the school year. Also one for The Quibbler because you can count on Xeno more than them to be honest about what's up, but the ratio of actual news to whack-job stuff every month isn't the most reliable thing in the world, so I thought I should get both to be safe." I can feel my damn face starting to heat up.

"You might want to try Witch Weekly if you're taking your politics seriously," says Angelina. "It still has recipes and rubbish every issue, but what people don't talk about is that the main features are all on strong witches these days. They did a great profile on your Aunt Hermione's work at the Ministry a few months back—I can mail you my copy to borrow, if you'd like."

"Sure, that sounds cool."

"That's my girl," Angelina says. It's nice being somebody's girl. Not like I've got anything of that magnitude going on for myself up at the castle. "But to get back to what you were saying—yes, there's getting to be a lot of demand to abolish the Statute, but so far that's mostly celebrity and popular support. No one in Magical Law Enforcement has worked up the courage yet to draft and spearhead an actual bill for it, I think because they're afraid of what the consequences might be. But if you ask me, at the rate we're going, it's getting to be more complicated trying to uphold the Statute than it would be to iron the kinks out of a plan to end it. I hear it's a nightmare for the Obliviators trying to erase all the record and memories of Muggle-born kids when they turn eleven and then stay on top of keeping the rest of us under the radar."

"My thing is like with how Molly and I basically got cut off from our Squib uncle on the mum-ancestor's side after he got married and had his kids. That's a whole mess with all the laws about what Muggle relatives are or aren't allowed to know and which ones have to have their memories wiped. Don't tell Granddad Weasley, but I wouldn't want to marry a Muggle ever if the laws don't change; I wouldn't want to cut anybody off from their family."

"No, we can't fault each other for that," muses Angelina.

She offers to meet me again here next Saturday, and I swing by the far edge of the village before leaving to read up on BBC and Tumblr on my usually-defunct phone. No way I'll catch up on all the Muggle news or my entire dash before I've got to go back and work on my essay for Charms, but hey, I'll take what I can get when I get a chance to step out of the wizarding vacuum that is our collective lives for a couple hours.