House: Ravenclaw

Year: Pre-Hogwarts (Stand-in for sunsetandstars, Year 3)

Category: Themed: Understanding {empathetic}

Prompt: White

WC: 2,138

Notes: Post-Hogwarts, Canon-compliant

This is the sort of dress my dollies might've been wearing when I was little girl, before I used magic and played on racing broomstick toys. I never had many dolls. The ones I did have looked like this strange ensemble I've let my mother talk me into wearing. It's not bad, really, and I think it does look quite lovely now that I'm all put together.

But I can't shake the feeling that this isn't anything that I would have normally chosen for myself.

Folded sheer fabric with white polka dots spotting the see-through material down to my elbows. The sleeves have this peasant blouse sort of cut that makes it look like a bell or a flower with my forearm poking straight through middle of it. As for the rest of the dress, it's quite like any of my other summer dresses. It's boxy but not too tight or constricting. There's a satin band around my waist that is tied into a massive bow in the back at the base of my spine.

Of course, the bottom is just as ostentatious as the sleeves. The polka dot sheer acts as a sort of slip in multiple layers. The white is more solid where the dress sort of cuts off at my knees, but the sheer goes all the way to floor, so I can see the whiteness of my skin just barely and my feet shaking inside of my shiny heels. My eyes work their way up, noting the massive bow sewn to the side of my dress and ask myself why it's even there. How unnecessary it is cannot be properly described. As my gaze settles on my face in the reflection, I can tell that despite how pale I am and how white this dress is, I'm not washed out and sickly. Then why do I look so miserable?

"Knock, knock," my mother's voice erupts unexpectedly causing me to jump. Hand over my chest and eyes downcast, I turn to meet her. "Hey, mum."

"You're all dressed!" she gasps. Truth be told, she didn't tell me she wanted me to wear her wedding dress. She got it out and showed me. It hung in my bedroom for a long while as I searched for other dresses. In the end, I tried it on late one night when I was getting frustrated that I couldn't find anything I actually liked and once it was on… I kind of just felt stronger?

I hadn't known my mother to be a slender woman, honestly, because she was always the full and plump woman I see today. I never thought of her as unhealthy because she was soft and loving in all of the ways that I've always thought mums were supposed to be. Getting married is a big deal.

Getting married means that I'm sharing my life with someone and that probably at some point there'll be kids to share it with too. Am I really mother material? I like playing Quidditch and playing pranks on my brothers. When other girls were interested in going on dates and snogging, I waited for someone I actually liked to come along. I was emotional about it but not the way my friends were - not in such a way that it was obvious to everyone around me. Sometimes I heard people whisper that I had a hard exterior. I wasn't the girl in the class you wanted to pick a fight with because I was kind of scary.

In short, I was a lot like my brothers.

And that's as simple as it gets, I think, because I really am. How does one girl grow up with six brothers and avoid being like them? We are as much our siblings as we are ourselves. I never had a chance to be properly girly with all the pinks, reds, and purples. Or maybe it's not that…

I never chose that kind of life.

"What's wrong sweetie?" she asks, seeing the horror in my face that I can only feel in my bones. I want to cry but I don't want to smear my make-up or look flush when I walk down the aisle. This is the only proper wedding we've had since Bill and Fleur, much to my surprise. George and Angelina got married on a whim, as anyone would have expected. Percy and Audrey had a small work to-do and then celebrated with the family afterwards. Even Ron and Hermione didn't have anything special when they decided to get married. They did have a service but it was super casual. Hermione wore a blue dress with sneakers and Ron wore jeans.

I wanted a nice wedding, honestly, at some point. Now that it's here, I'm not so sure. About the wedding, about the future, about anything…

So I sit down and tug at the ugly bow that I kind of want to rip off. "I don't know if I've thought this all the way through."

"Of course you have, Ginny, dear," she shushes, pulling her wand out and removing the bow from the dress as if she's reading my mind. Giggling at its absence, I lift my chin to meet my mother's eyes. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are shining, the way they always are when I need them do be. How can I ever be like her when my looks are calculating and hard? "Daunting, isn't it?"

"What was it like when you married dad?" I ask, never having wanted to know before now. We never hear stories about when they were young, not even now when we're grown up. For as long as I've been alive, it's been stories about Charlie when he was toddling around naked in the living room while she scolded Bill for knocking something in the house down with his mischievous behavior. Or a story about the twins pranking Percy, something gone terribly wrong in some way or another in every rendition; and sometimes Ron would be the butt of some joke for being so different from the other boys. I don't even remember hearing stories about myself.

"Much the same, I'm afraid," she asserts, interrupting my train of thought.

"Really?" I ask.

My mum shrugs before joining me on the bench. "I was the only girl too, you know," she starts. I did know this, I think, but I've long forgotten. Mum did have brothers. I don't recall their names and I ache with embarrassment. I should know more about her life. "We wrestled in the garden, ran laps around the house, and the number of indelicate jokes we made behind our parents' backs? My mother always said I'd never be a fine lady, though I don't think she meant it cruelly."

Imagining my mother acting like me, or one of her sons, is no easy task but I think I can see glimpses of that past self. She showed me what a warrior she was during the war; she saved me from what I had thought would be certain death at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange. But I can see it now, I think, the twinkle in her eyes.

That twinkle wasn't always one founded in motherly love. "Did you think you'd have seven children when you got married?" This is my other worry. Harry and I should've talked about having a family but neither of us has even made a passing jab about being parents. In some way, perhaps we assumed that it would come up eventually if it must? I don't know, and that's what so scary about all of this.

"I didn't want kids, actually," she coughs, trying to hide her smile and laugh.

Mum tells me about the war and the Prewett family status. She didn't feel that she'd make a strong wife, let alone a decent mother, and besides it all she didn't want family statuses influencing how her children were to be raised. In her eyes, none of that was fair. So she didn't want to have a family. "And your father knew it, too, when we got married. Neither of us could have predicted we'd have seven of you lot running around our house."

I laugh too, thinking of my dad's face when my mother would've come to him saying she was pregnant. The shock it must have been. "And so quickly!" I comment to her, thinking about how young there were to marry and how old Bill is now. She wouldn't have been married for too long.

"It was a shock, and I wasn't nearly as ready as I would have hoped, but you never really are in that situation." And I just know that she understands my fears. She doesn't have to explain it any further and she doesn't have to offer me anything else. My mum got married to man that she truly loved with no plans to be a mother and now she's the best mother I could imagine. Nobody could make up a better woman to play the part, as far as I'm concerned, and yet it what she'd originally wanted for herself.

I stand up again, looking in the mirror at the dress. It isn't so bad without the bow now and the waves of sheer and the white polka dots remind me of empty paintings. The white canvases are blank slates with pictures to be made upon. I can understand now why brides wear white, and I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with purity.

This life that I'm about to share with Harry Potter is brand new. The story has been told thousands of ways by thousands of people, people just like my parents, and no matter how prepared (or unprepared) I am for what comes next – this is my story. I see my mother hovering behind me with tears welling up in her eyes. "I never did say how much it meant to me that you chose to wear this dress, Ginny," she mumbles despite her throat tightening.

"You don't need to, mum," I say with more calm than I've felt in weeks. "I wore it because I wanted to be more like you." The smile I share is lopsided, I can see the angle of my deep red lips, but I'd rather look a bit odd than to start crying now. My mother's tears, however, are falling freely as her lips curl upwards. She comes over to kiss my cheeks before saying that she loves me very much, and also that she must go get my dad because it'll be time soon and that she wants him to have a chance to get a cry in before he takes me down the aisle too. "Oh, mum," I say, thinking that my father would never cry over a pretty dress for a moment.

But I realize I don't really know for sure, and then I nod at her. "I'll get my bouquet ready, yeah?" My mum nods as she goes, forcefully looking ahead to do her job as she always has done. I hope someday that if I have a child that he or she will look upon me with the same love and adoration as I do to her now.

My bouquet has white flowers, everything is white and I hated it until a few minutes ago, but now I'm kind of happy for it. In our sea of blank slates there would only be two colors that everyone will remember from this special day: my red hair and his green eyes. Those are the parts of ourselves that will never change. I am fiery and passionate about all that I do in my life, and nothing more so than my love for Harry Potter. As for him, his eyes are proof that he has weathered the darkness of the world only to still find something to smile about. Between us both, I truly believe that we can do anything.

My father opens the door, grinning from ear-to-ear, the way we Weasleys often do, and he speaks barely in a whisper. "I remember when your mother was wearing that dress, you know. I hated it until I saw her in it."

He fumbles a bit and pulls out a picture from the inside pocket of his jacket. Frame in white, pictured in black and white, and dressed in white my mother wearing this exact dress. Her head is flying back while she holds a glass in her hand, laughing at something I can't see in this snapshot picture. Her hair is wild but beautiful, and her slender body moves with such joy. Molly Weasley, by that point, happier than anyone should dare, and yet she's done it anyway. "You make a beautiful bride."

"So did she," I say. "So did she."