The One That Mattered
starfilledDREAMER
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. End of story. This was made for the "First Love" Challenge at the HPFC.

"People don't marry their first love."

See, I've never heard a truer statement than that in my life. I don't even know were I heard it first. All I know is that my mother told me that when I was fourteen, naïve, and in love. I remember asking her about her and Dad, how they met and stuff. Mum stuttered and avoided the question as long as I had been asking it; all from the rip age of seven years old. I was never one for happily ever after, like the Muggle fairy tales are so fond of. But I did want to know about a real life love story, my parents' love story. Without it, me and my brothers wouldn't have come to exist.

But like I said, Mum dodged the question like a bullet, even though it was an innocent and normal question for a seven year old girl. I let it slide until I was fourteen. I was tired of not knowing why my parents got married, where they met or how they fell in love! I wanted to draw comparisons between my mother and I, between our love stories. And now I wished I had just let it go, let it slip from the recesses of my innocent mind. I was changed that summer. It was all downhill from there.

Because, you see, my mother had been in love with her best friend. Not my father, whom she barely paid any attention. In the end, she ended up loving my father, but I always thought you were supposed to marry your one true love. Wouldn't your first love be your one true one?

No, not Mum's. Not mine, either, now that I think about it. I mean, sure, I always thought that I would marry him. But I didn't. I didn't fall right out of love, you know. No, it took a lot of help and support. Because, I may have loved him… But he didn't love me. Unrequited love. It really stings, you know? To see the boy you love, love someone else. It's kind of worse when the girl he loves happens to be one of your closest friends.

Yes, you heard right. Everyone thought that they would get married, make babies, grow old together. It was always Fred and Angelina, and George and Alicia. I was the young, awkward fifth wheel hopelessly in love with my best friend. There was no one else for me.

Sure, I had my share of boyfriends, but I didn't love any of them. Not like I loved Fred. He was special. I don't know if it was the infamous Weasley hair. Or maybe it was the way his eyes always twinkled when he was up to something mischievous. Or it was the adorable sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of his nose and onto his cheeks.

It could have been his natural ability to make me laugh when I didn't even want to cry, or his Quidditch ability. All I knew was that I was in love with him. And at the time, that was all that mattered. But then his advances on Angelina became almost as bold as Lee's, and it was much too unbearable to watch.

Oliver found me on the Quidditch Pitch that night. It was a particularly chilly night in early in the school year. The first Quidditch game of the season had yet to pass, but it was coming close. I don't even know how Oliver found me. Or, really, why he would even bother coming after me. We had got to talking, about topics that elude me now. All I remember is that when he helped me up he held my hand longer then necessary.

Oliver helped me a lot that year. Well, we helped each other. He helped me to get over Fred, and I helped him become slightly less fanatical about Quidditch. Or, well, that I tried to do. But Instead I helped him come up with new plays, most of which we never even used in the season.

It was Oliver's last year. I had grown to love Oliver. Not nearly the way that I loved Fred, but close. I was afraid that him leaving would tear our friendship apart. That June was horrible. The last day at Hogwarts was memorable though. We had taken a walk around the grounds, just a little before we were to board the train for Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. We were both early risers; the early birds decided to go for a little walk.

It was bittersweet. I had cried terribly the night before. I was afraid that without Oliver there I would revert back to my old ways, go back to loving Fred. I made him promise me that even if he was some popular, busy, amazing Quidditch star that he would write me. He promised me. And then he sealed the promise with a sweet kiss. It was my first kiss.

The next two years were nothing in comparison. It was basically breath, eat, work, sleep, repeat. Sure there was Quidditch, but that also included Fred and Angelina, who happened to be Captain. The only thing that kept me going were Oliver's letters. The were few and far-in between, but he only promised that he would write. Not that he would write often.

Would it be too horrible to say how happy I was that Fred and George up and left Hogwarts in my sixth year? It was an amazing exit, that was without a doubt. And, yes, I did miss them. But it was just easier. The hurt of feelings unrequited were raw, the wounds just ready to begin healing, after two years. And then came my seventh year at Hogwarts, were I spent most of it in St. Mungo's. Long story short: someone Impervoused me and or Rosemerta and gave me a cursed necklace. Leanne, bless her, thought I was acting funny and wanted to take a peak at what was in the package. The package ripped, the necklace touched my finger and bam, I landed myself in a bed in St. Mungo's.

It wasn't all that bad, to be honestly. Not that I remember half of it anyway. But I remember that Fred and George came to visit. So did Angelina and Alicia. But the most important visitor was Oliver. It was in April, the end of April. The first time I had seen him in three years. And feelings I had buried in my fifth year resurfaced once I saw him.

We started to date after I graduated. It was touch and go, what with his Quidditch career and the war. It was… scary, to say the least. I was always afraid that he would never come back to me, that I would never be able to tell him what he truly did for me when we were still in school. It scared me to near death. Every time Oliver walked through the door of my flat, my heart sighed with relief.

And then it came time for the Final Battle. I thought I was ill prepared for the fight, but I found out I was more than ready. Dumbledore's Army in my sixth year really helped me to prepare for that moment when I would be up against Death Eaters, battling along with teachers and peers alike. So many died that night.

Including Fred. When I saw him in the broken and battered Great Hall, his face twisted into a laugh even though his eyes were dull, I broke down. I kneeled at his side and sobbed out everything that I could never, ever tell him when we were in school. About how I loved him when I was fifteen, about how he was my first love. About how he broke me when he went after Angelina, the pretty African that I call my best friend. All the while the Weasley family must have heard me sobbing my eyes out, my thoughts out, my unrequited feelings finally breaking the surface to me first love.

I still can't believe he's gone. I keep expecting him to come around the corner with George, Angelina laughing on his arm when I'm in Diagon Alley, around the corner from George's shop. It took a while to sink in that he wouldn't be coming back. It was a hard year after that. Oliver, he was so amazing to me. We moved in together that year. He hadn't proposed yet, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time.

When he did, it was sweet, simple. I was twenty-two, he twenty-five. I had been in love with him since I was eighteen. We married a year later. It was after our honeymoon that I discovered I was four months pregnant. I hadn't even noticed. I was so excited over the wedding, finally marrying the man of my dreams. Because, you know, you don't always marry your first love. If that was the case, everyone would be getting married young, like they did in the early 1900s.

The thing about love is that you're supposed to fall for the wrong person. You have to fall for the wrong person so that you'll know the right one when he or she comes along. And you'll know they're the right one for you. It's just that connection you learn to understand after a while. And when I look at Oliver, just simply look at him, I relearn that connection time and time again. Throughout time love doesn't die: it get's stronger, growing with each moment spent together, each fleeting glance of a man and wife.

I told the story to my six year old daughter. She was innocent and asked me the same question I asked my mother. Only, unlike her grandmother, I did not skirt the question with orders to go to sleep. I answered truthfully, leaving out, of course, the more gruesome parts such as the war and Fred dying in battle.

"So you're saying Daddy wasn't your first love?" Little Rachelle looked up at me sleepily. Her eyes are just like her father's, both a sin and a blessing.

"No, he wasn't my first love," I said with a nod, glancing over the head of my daughter to her father, our son cradled in his Quidditch trimmed arms. Our second born, little four year old Sofia, leaned on his arm, gazing at her new baby brother. I looked back at Oliver, how proud he was to have a son. He looked up at me, almost as if he knew I was looking at him. He blew me a kiss and I smiled, blowing one back, before returning my gaze to our daughter. "He was just the one that mattered."