Littoral: pertaining to the shore of a lake, sea, or ocean.

April 28, 2023

The beach never changed. In nineteen years, it had looked exactly the same. The same grainy sand – millions of insignificant little granules that had arranged to show a thousand footprints meandering to and from the water. The same waves – different water, but the same energy – pounding their relentless battle with the land, gaining some each day only to have it taken away. The rocky cliffs presiding over it all, born of millennia of wear. It had all been here exactly like this for nineteen years. For much, much longer than that.

And it would stay here exactly like this for many thousands of years more. No matter what happened, unconnected from the swiftly changing lives of the people who played out their heartbeat-long lives on this shore, none of this would ever change.

It was not like Louis Weasley to be introspective. His mind wandered among the clouds, far away, preoccupied with other things and places and dreams. He looked perpetually to the future or to the never-in-a-million-years-but-it-would-be-nices. He was cheerful and easy-going and more or less content to drift wherever he fancied regardless of who came with. And because of this, people often forgot, or never knew to begin with, how philosophical he could be.

But today, as he stood on the shores of the sea that had been his backyard for his entire life, all of that introspection he'd avoided for so long was catching up to him.

"Hey."

Louis didn't look around. He might not have even heard the voice, but she knew he had. Dominique swung her bare, freckled legs over the low wall that separated a stone path from the beach. She swept her short, wild, red hair into a haphazard ponytail to get it off of her neck, and began across the sand, stopping when she drew level with her brother.

"Thought I'd find you down here. 'Course that's mostly because I didn't find you in your room or the kitchen or the Quidditch grove or even the broom shed."

Louis shrugged. "Your powers of deduction are marvelous, Dom," he told her, but his voice lacked the usual wry, sarcastic note that usually prompted his sister to throw something at him.

Dominique watched him out of the corner of her eye, pretending to stare out to the horizon at a bobbing, red sailboat. He was taller than their father now, thin and casually slouched with his hands in his pockets, his red hair windswept, and his bright blue eyes uncharacteristically distant.

"You thinking about tonight?" she murmured, knowing the answer. Louis was not a complicated person, and it was always fairly obvious what brought about his moods.

"Suppose so," he shrugged. "It'll all be different…."

"Well it's not as if you're going to another planet," Dominique snorted, perhaps sounding more derisive than she meant to. Honestly, he wasn't the only one who had to say goodbye.

"Practically," Louis retorted, the faintest hint of a sulk in his voice.

Dominique rolled her eyes. Her brother would always have a bit of seven-year-old boy in him.

"In case you've forgotten, Oh Exiled One, you were the one who's been itching to floo out of here since you figured out there were dragons in Romania. You've been begging Mum to be happy about your adventure for a year."

"But now I'm actually leaving," Louis protested. "In three hours, I'm going to be gone for good! The next time I see you, Vic'll probably have a whole slew of rugrats and you'll be married to some jerk Quidditch player and James and Fred'll be on probation from the Ministry and Molly'll be vice junior undersecretary to the guy below the Minister of Magic himself" – he drew a great, shuddering breath – "and I'll probably have a beard."

Dominique stifled a chuckle. She couldn't help it. Her brother's eyes had gotten wider and wider with every prediction and now he ran a hand over his smooth jawline as if expecting facial hair to pop into existence at any moment.

"That's a lot to accomplish by Christmas, Lou," she pointed out. "Uncle Charlie comes home every Christmas at least. It's no longer than you used to be at Hogwarts for."

"That's different. You all were at Hogwarts with me. Point is, Dom, I'm gonna miss everything. Everyone's gonna go on living their lives and one day I'll come home and only know it's home because the beach looks the same. Dragons are brilliant and working with Uncle Charlie is all I ever wanted to do for ages, but I didn't really think about what that meant, you know?"

"You're not going to miss everything," Dominique scoffed. "We still have owls, you git. And they do give you time off for, you know, important things like your sisters getting married and having kids and your cousins going to jail and… well, probably not for whatever Molly thinks she's going to accomplish, but we're all trying to find excuses to get out of that one anyway. You're not going to miss anything."

"Uncle Charlie did," Louis said very quietly.

They were quiet for a moment.

"Not everything," Dominique countered.

"A lot of things," Louis murmured. "He wasn't there when any of us were born. He couldn't get time off for Uncle George's wedding. He wasn't 'round when you and Roxie got to play that halftime game with the Harpies or when Granddad got his Order of Merlin when he retired or that time Al was in St. Mungo's…. When you say the whole family's going to be there, you don't mean Uncle Charlie and you won't mean me either."

Dominique felt her temper fair. She couldn't explain why. Except that maybe Louis was saying things she'd been thinking ever since she'd heard he was really taking off for Romania, and her natural impulse as his big sister was to mock his worries until they no longer seemed worthy of being anxious over, but she couldn't do that because for months, now, she'd wanted to say all of that to him herself.

For a long time they looked at each other, sneaking glances out of the corners of their eyes. Louis was practically begging to be reassured (he was due to take a national port key in two hours and fifty-three minutes after all). And Dominique was chewing the inside of her cheek and trying to settle on what exactly she wanted to say to her brother now that he had stolen her argument.

At last, as the sun began to sink rapidly toward the sparkling horizon, she turned, swept the loose tendrils of fiery hair out of her face, and said simply, "You're not Uncle Charlie."

"But –"

"Look, I don't pretend to know everything – or really a whole very much – about him, but I reckon Uncle Charlie was running away from something. From responsibility or war or – hell, I dunno, some girl – or whatever, but I reckon he just wanted to get away when he left. And you just want to get to something, and that's different."

Louis opened his mouth, looking skeptical and decidedly un-reassured, but Dominique clapped his shoulder, forestalling him.

"Make it different, okay, Lou?" Dominique turned, heading for the house glowing warmly up on the cliffs above them. As she reached the wall and climbed over it, she added over her shoulder, with the barest trace of a smirk on her face, "And no matter what, at least the beach'll always be here for you."

A/N: Ah, longer than intended. But Louis and Dominique make me smile. And where else could this little word go? Well, I suppose the Hogwarts lake shore… anyway, reviews are wonderfully lovely. Hope you enjoyed! I promise, I'll eventually get around to the other next gen….