Chapter 33 - Rhiannon Potter
The anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts was being hosted at the castle in the morning. Molly and Arthur meanwhile hosted everyone at the Burrow for a family dinner to celebrate Teddy's first birthday which was earlier in the week but coincided with a full moon.
Ginny announced at dinner that she'd signed for the Holly Head Harpies and Angelina jumped out of her seat with excitement and news of the same. Lee announced he was going to be traveling as a sports writer and commentator for the upcoming season. George and Angelina casually announced their engagement, knowing it would take Molly out of her chair.
The tables in the living room were already covered in knitted clothes for their anticipated granddaughter, Fluer was certain she was having a girl even though it was still very early. Remus looked very run through the mill, but his spirits lifted as his son dug his hands into a homemade cake and smeared it happily down the front of his face. His heart nonetheless looked astonishingly heavy in the absence of his wife. Charlie was on his wavelength most of the evening and took the little one on his hip to give Remus space to grapple with the weight of it all.
"You're good with him," Remus said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand and taking a napkin to get whipped cream out of his sandy brown eyebrows. Charlie smiled weakly.
"He's easy to love," Charlie said as he put Teddy on his shoulders and let him pull his hair which had gotten much too long and messy along with a short beard that was rough around the edges.
"I hope you don't feel quite this empty..." Remus whispered. Charlie paused and took the boy back in his arms to hand to Remus. "I miss her."
Charlie could see from his anxious eyes he wasn't talking about his wife. He clenched his jaw hard with a completely undistinguishable mixture of worry, resentment, longing, and sympathy for Lizzie. It wasn't as though anyone stopped looking, they simply resigned that she didn't want to be found. Charlie thought perhaps she was hiding in plain sight as he read reports of things he knew to be connected to Lizzie that others necessarily wouldn't. When the orphanage they visited was flattened, and when graves across the country connected to the war were embellished with enchanted lilies, the same he watched grow on Fred's gravestone the day of the burial, he knew it was Lizzie. When a headstone for Sirius Black appeared next to James Potter in Godric's Hollow and when Kreacher was missing from Grimmauld Place, he knew it was Lizzie. When all but a fraction of the money was depleted from the Black family vault and deposited into the Weasley vault with instructions on even distribution across the family, along with Remus getting notice that a vault was opened in his name with the Potter fortune, he knew it was Lizzie.
"She's closer than we think..." Charlie said quietly. He didn't talk about Lizzie too loudly with his mother or Hermione in the vicinity, not to mention Hagrid. Ron would become too somber for conversation and Hermione would retire to spend the rest of the evening fighting anxious tears and feeling abandoned. Ginny was furious with Lizzie and you could see her blood ignite at just the mention of her name. They'd all looked tirelessly to no avail.
When Hermione and Ron came back from Australia to help her parents recover and stayed at Shell Cottage, Hermione hadn't left the bedroom for weeks once they'd exhausted all the places Lizzie might have been hiding. Everyone's owls went unanswered.
Remus seemed to understand it better than anyone, he felt lost and alone with his son, but unlike Charlie, didn't harbor resentment. Him and Arthur were similar in that way and Bill reminded the family often Lizzie had never been alone, even when left alone. This was a life she had no point of reference to. Charlie reasoned as such, but the rejection and abandonment kept him awake at night, while the worry often brought tears to his eyes. Hagrid was oddly quiet about all of it, but it brought intense sadness to his heavy demeanor.
Charlie wandered outside by himself after dessert. He breathed in crisp air, and thought he heard the motor of an engine from the side of the house. He didn't inspect right away because the brightness of the stars caught his attention for a long moment.
When he slowly wandered and rounded the corner of the house near the shed with a glass of scotch glued to his hand, he stopped in his tracks because his heart caught hard in his chest. Charlie stared disbelievingly at the girl standing facing Fred's grave. He approached her but she wouldn't turn to make eye contact with him. Her green eyes were swimming in tears and she clutched tightly at a child sleeping in her arms with her small head pressed tightly over Lizzie's heart.
Lizzie's lower lip trembled and she stifled a sob. She looked incredibly weak and more terrified than he'd ever seen her, but something about her eyes were different.
Her face contorted in silent pain and Charlie's chest heaved with astonishingly heavy breaths. He stood in front of her while his heart hammered hard in his temples and they were silent for a long moment.
"Please don't ever forgive me for this. I - I didn't know how to come back sooner..." Lizzie said quietly with a shake in the wake of an uncharacteristically small voice. Her whole body was shaking in fear and he put weight on her arms to steady her anxiety. He looked across the lawn to see Sirius's old motorbike that had long been missing from his father's shed. There were no words. He stared at who she was holding in complete shock.
"I didn't know - what was going to - happen -" she could barely get her words through constriction in her chest and his ached something mean. Charlie's eyes welled rapidly and he held Lizzie's face in his hands, planting a long kiss on her forehead with trembling lips.
His hands shook when he tried to take the baby he wasn't sure Lizzie had ever once let go of. Lizzie watched his whole body crumble. "You had her alone?" He whispered. Lizzie nodded and swallowed a hard sob.
"I couldn't get - that night - out of my head..." she said and he knew immediately what she was referring to, the shame he'd been trying to live with resurfaced rapidly. "I thought she'd be cursed. I thought - I thought -" she was shaking her head in wide motions as tears streamed.
"I left to be alone in my head... for the first time... to see if I even knew myself without his constant presence. But I wasn't alone, found that out quickly, and I got scared. You were - possessed - I thought she might be his... somehow... I didn't- I can't explain it..." Lizzie's voice was weak and strained to string the words together. Her body shook uncontrollably.
"She's..." he started to say.
"Beautiful. She's beautiful. I thought I knew love but I didn't - not until now... I was wrong. She's not his. She's yours. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I took that from you. But I'm bringing her back and if you can't - if you want me to go. I will. Her life without me might be a blessing, I'm just sorry," she breathed.
Charlie shook his head in disbelief. "I never want you to go. Lizzie, you're home. You don't need to go anywhere..." he said almost outraged at the sentiment. "Please don't go anwhere," he whispered and broke down in tears as he finished his words. She nodded into the hand pressed against her cheek.
"What's her name?" He whispered and held her tight in his arms. She looked like more like himself than Lizzie, he thought, but knew most babies did. He washed over in complete shock and love, Lizzie's heart broke with guilt and she swallowed hard. "When was she born?" He asked with some trepidation since Lizzie wasn't saying anything. She was small but not a newborn.
"She came early on New Years Eve..." Lizzie said remembering it vividly, the trauma of it, she'd never say out loud that it was worst day of her life, because it was supposed to be the best.
The front door opened and shut and Lizzie jumped with some reservation. "Is everyone here?" She asked, hearing the commotion. He nodded.
"Teddy's birthday..." he said quietly. Lizzie looked punched in the gut at that and shook her head with more bubbled over guilt.
"Where have you been?" He asked nervously, hoping his daughter wasn't born in cave somewhere.
"It's a long story," she said apologetically.
"You should come eat and I'll get you set up to get some sleep. You have no idea how relieved they'll be to see you..." Charlie said reassuringly.
"Can you... get Remus first?" Lizzie asked painfully. He stared at her for a moment then stood up with his daughter, who surpringly hadn't stirred or shed a tear in his arms even though she'd not once left Lizzie's in four months. "Charlie..." she said, unsure of what his intentions were as he went toward the door. She felt glued to the ground in deadlock on what to do. It didn't sound like he'd went inside when hurried footsteps came back. Remus looked pale. He looked between Lizzie and the baby in Charlie's arms with intense sadness and then scooped Lizzie into a bone-crushing embrace before she asked for her daughter back, painfully feeling the emptiness in place of the weight she'd grown used to.
Nothing prepared Lizzie for the silence that washed over the Burrow. The silence was so loud it woke her baby enough to look around and quickly hide her face in Lizzie's shoulder with shyness. Teddy, on Remus's hip reached out to touch the smaller baby's hair curiously and she grabbed his finger. Tears fell down Lizzie's face when she smiled weakly at this. Charlie was getting blankets to make up a place to sleep while Bill tried to break his attention and gauge his brother's reaction. No words were spoken but there was an embrace between the two in which he cried silently into Bill's shoulder.
"I knew you'd be back one of these days," Neville said innocently to break the silence. There was something Lizzie could read that made her think he knew, and considering the relationship with Aberforth, it wouldn't surprise her. He was sitting very close to Ginny who had a vice like grip on his hand trying hard not to be angry and feeling deadlocked between hugging her friend and possibly slapping her.
Molly was first to give Lizzie a hug. Everyone's questions trickled into the air but Lizzie didn't have words to answer them. They all sounded like mush in her ears.
Lizzie knew she looked different, thinner in some places but slightly heavier in others like the hips and chest for obvious reasons. She wore glasses because her sight was still bad on the left. She carried herself weakly. Her hair fell an inch above her shoulders and shaped a tired face that still had a remarkably larger and more noticeable cut from the duel that won the war.
"What's her name?" Hermione asked after sitting next to her on the sofa. Lizzie looked up into her face and saw relief and sadness. Everyone was waiting for her to say something, anything, but words caught in her chest and she felt mute again.
Lizzie caught sight of her record box under the player in the living room and handed the baby carefully to Hermione who took her awkwardly with trembling hands. She silently rummaged through the records and put one on the turnstile.
'Rhiannon' by Fleetwood Mac broke the air and she sat down cross-legged on the floor, closed her eyes, and listened to her favorite song for the first time in what felt like years.
"Rhiannon... but I've been calling her Annie."
Lizzie looked around at the familiar faces and felt intense shame. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't have an explanation or excuse. There was no home, just wherever I was and she was..." Lizzie watched Molly take the baby from Hermione and melt with love for her first grandbaby.
Ron sat down and hugged Lizzie tight around the head. "Well, that's two weddings we need to plan for, oh my goodness," Molly said and Lizzie's heart skipped. She looked at Charlie with wide eyes and shook her head. He frowned at her slightly but only saw fear in her face and understood.
"Mum..." he said awkwardly.
Molly was rambling off at an almost manic pace. "Molly - I don't want to get married," Lizzie said suddenly. It stopped her silent and she looked between Lizzie and Charlie curiously.
"You had a baby - " she said, confused.
"I've never wanted to marry," Lizzie added. "I just - just not right now - I'm not saying no - I -" but Charlie stopped her because she felt shame for rejecting him when she still wanted him.
"I'm not going to make you do something you don't want to do. I wouldn't dream of it," he said and the words hovered between them with more weight than anyone realized. She nodded and nothing more was said.
Lizzie explained where she was to Charlie when they were alone in a room. Lizzie set Annie in a bassinet he'd fashioned and then crawled into Charlie's arms. He traced over a scar on her abdomen that wasn't there before.
"You were scared of me?" He asked. Lizzie shook her head.
"No, I was scared of her," she whispered.
