"summer romance"
~susan/roger~
There are bad times ahead. Hell, there are bad times now. Her family are among the first victims, more loss, more grief, and it won't end here. But the summer is like a bubble. Like a pause before a plunge; like a deep breath before a leap. In September, she will join the fight and face the darkness, but there is a month before that time. A month in which the days drift by and she can pretend that there are happy endings.
He nods seriously when she brushes up against serious topics, but she knows that he does not really understand how bad it is going to get. He has never lost family members; he is an optimist who likes to laugh, and that's what she loves about him, but sometimes her heart aches for his innocence (because even though he's older than her, he's oh-so-innocent), and how vulnerable it makes him.
He takes the fear away though, and when she is with him, she can laugh again. They go on long rambling walks through the countryside near his home, in beautiful places where the threat of Voldemort seems far away, and he kisses her under the full-leafed oak trees, and they lie in sunny fields, legs tangled together, her hands running through his brown curls, and she almost believes that things can still be all right again.