Title: broken melody

Summary: You want to write a symphony about the way her eyelids flutter when she's dreaming. / Molly, Roxanne and waltzing alone. for allie & hpfc.

Notes: This was written in a bit of a hurry so it's a little chaotic and metaphorical and plot? What plot? This was written for Allie (the Molly to my Roxy), the Andrea Gibson competition, and for Camp Potter. Still, I really, really hope you enjoy the style and the characters I've used and, well, I just hope you like it! Thank you!

"To think, a sweater is made entirely of knots. My stomach could clothe a village." - Andrea Gibson, Yarn.

The first time it happens, you don't think twice.

She is a whirlwind of brown hair and blue eyes and she's kind of maybe perfect. She sweeps you off your feet and pulls you into a waltz you can't hope to keep up with. Is this what you fought for, darling? Is this how you'll die?

Part of you hopes so.

But you press your lips to her cheek, and it's a splash of colour in your black-and-white movie world. Amaranth shines like silver on her lips and you want to kiss your fears away.

She's your cousin, babe; didn't you know that it doesn't go like this? What kind of fairytale has two princesses? This ballroom is a hallucination, darling, your ball gown is a sweater, and it won't last as long as you hope. Your heels echo too loud and your heartbeat is the soundtrack to your life.

Ba bum. Ba bum.

Don't flatline, sweetheart, or the music will stop.

You are a Gryffindor and you have always lived on the tightrope, leading a different type of dance. She is a Ravenclaw and she is different, oh so different, and sometimes, she doesn't care less what your family thinks. Your mind whispers Freddie, Freddie, and you wish you were the same.

(She will pirouette her way to stardom, and you will hang onto her coattails and hope for the best.)

((You are a melody that will always be left unfinished.))

The worst thing is, you can't hate her for it. Because she's Molly fucking Weasley the Second, and if there's anything she does, it's look after family. Oh, she thinks she's better than them, in a way, but they are her children.

You think that maybe that's why she strokes your hair when you're sleeping, or why she never really kisses you.

There is no right or wrong, here, doll. You're just waiting for someone to tell you otherwise.

And maybe you can try and convince yourself that you are in control here, but you've always been a sucker for blue eyes and there's nothing you love more than getting back at your family.

"No one said it would be easy," Molly murmurs into your wrist, and it's as soft as starlight against your skin. Part of you wants to kick her and bruise her and ruin her and turn that pretty skin red and violet and black and blue. You want to break her.

She is your melody to ruin.

You want to take her back to the burrow and say, here, here is your golden girl in all her glory, doesn't she look pretty, see how the bruises match her eyes.

But then part of you wants to wrap her up in your arms and never let her go. You want to use her skin as a stave and whisper music notes into the dimples on her cheeks. You want to write a symphony about the way her eyelids flutter when she's dreaming and how your toes curl when she smiles.

You want to make her smile.

So this is the price you pay, darling, for fighting back, for kicking down bridges, for personifying kissing cousins.

Because Molly is the girl who's perfectly content in an apron and baking cookies and waiting at home for her husband with her picket fence and two point five kids. She wants to dance in the kitchen and sing into a spatula and she is perfectly happy just doing that.

(She'd prefer a stage, but no matter.)

And you?

Well, sweetheart, you kind of fit the starving, brooding artist role quite nicely. You live on stale coffee and cigarettes and jumpers with holes and you never stutter when you write. The words don't tell you if you laughed or cried while writing them; you wait for the ink to run when you throw it against the wall but you kind of wish it won't.

There are some stains that don't fade so easily.

When you paint, sometimes you fling acrylics at the canvas and hope for the best. Other times, you spend hours mixing watercolours just to draw Victoire's make-believe daughter's make-believe eyes. The words you write are angry, but you can't bring yourself to care.

Because Freddie dear doesn't go to lessons and he's been screwing girls (and boys) since the age of fifteen, and all you wanted for him was better.

You tried to bear the weight of his name and your family on your frail shoulders, but you can't even hold a violin, angel.

When he got himself into good old golden Gryffindor, you cried yourself to sleep, because that was the end of your brother and the end of his innocence and the end of your broken melody. Gryffindor, Gryffindor, the home of the brave. You never wanted him to be a hero.

(You kind of got your wish.)

Now, let's look at your family. Let's see if the devils have escaped from hell after all.

Victoire, dear, she still says she's pregnant but you were the one who held her hand when she miscarried. She'll drown herself in alcohol before the year is out, if she doesn't set herself on fire first.

James and Dominique are sitting in a tree, apart from Dom's looking to hang herself and Jamesie doesn't believe in happy endings.

Albus is a Slytherin to the core and look where it got him; sitting atop the Astronomy Tower with Scorpius Malfoy on his lap. He'll find himself a good Muggleborn girl soon, he promises, but he's got his fingers crossed and Daddy's too blind to see it.

Rosie's walking down the red carpet in all her Gryffindor glory and you all know she's never looking back.

Lily Luna Potter lives in emerald city, and she's got Teddy, so maybe they're coping alright - apart from he was Victoire's toy first, and she's not going to forget it.

Hugo watched his best friend kill herself and now he doesn't talk. You think that the sight of her smile choked him and the stench of her blood made its way down his throat and never really left. You think that if he talked, he'd be sick.

Louis is wearing make-up and his mother's high heels and most of your family wouldn't even recognise him - her, you whisper - now.

And Lucy, darling, is trying to follow in her sister's footsteps, but her green tie and hard eyes prove otherwise.

How beautiful is your family now, Roxy? How perfect is your glowing celebrity status? Sunglasses don't hide the shadows, dear, or the bruises, and no matter how many tabloids you smile from, you all get home and wait and curl up in the dark and kind of wish you were dead.

Maybe you already are.

But back to the matter at hand, sweetie - Molly Weasley is a dancer and you are the frail curtains she wraps around herself like a sweater. You were never made to agree.

Skip to the present:

You've both left school, now, and you're sharing a flat with your cousin. They whisper best friends to your faces but gossip about something more behind your backs. Paparazzi line the streets and you wonder how it got like this.

Freddie dear's doing his NEWTs, but he's sneaking cigarettes behind the greenhouses and remember, darling, you taught him well.

It's a simpler life, like this. You're waiting for something better.

Then bang - crash - look what happened sweetie! The world hates you after all.

They find Victoire lying on her welcome mat, and it's kind of grotesque when you notice that the blood matches her lipstick.

James and Dominique fell out of the tree and ran away, and no one can find them; no one really wants to try.

Albus falls off the Astronomy tower.

And that is that.

Strangely, you hear about Rosie on the Muggle news one day. It turns out that she is just another one of those "infamous tragedies" so now she lives in rehab somewhere in America, and none of you visit her. It's better that way.

Lily and Teddy break up, so Lily dyes her hair black and listens to music that screams more than it sings, and you try to ignore the scars on her wrist.

(They spell out Victoire.)

Hugo hangs himself in the same spot in the same bathroom where his best friend slit her wrists; it's ironic, because he never used his throat for anything but breathing anyway. In some sick way, you know he's happier there, and so you can't bring yourself to be sad.

Fleur forces Louis into Muggle jeans and cuts his hair and tells him to stop being childish. She doesn't see that he hates her.

Lucy runs away from home and one day, doesn't come back. Audrey sits at home and waits at the door for her daughters and her husband to come home. No one has the heart to tell her that Percy left years ago, and Molly can't look her in the eyes, and that she was the one Lucy was running from.

Isn't it sad, dear?

So, in the end, you and Molly turned out alright, and isn't that twisted?

At least, when the time comes, you have the courtesy to leave a note. When she's sleeping in your beat-up sweater, you tuck it in her hand and she murmurs the same names over and over. You know she's thinking about the ones that can't come back.

(Whenever the world is quiet, you hear them like a ballet tune in the back of your head - Victoire, Albus, Hugo, Victoire Albus Hugo, VictoireAlbusHugo-)

Don't you think that you deserve better?

You travel the world and drink in everything (VictoireAlbusHugo) your cousins will never get to see. Paris sings like Lily used to (so you scratch her name into the Eiffel tower and cause an uproar) and Prague has the same smile as Louis (so you graffiti a boy in a dress and wait for someone to find it). Bangkok rings and burns like Victoire and Berlin twirls like Molly and broken melodies.

You reach America and kiss Rosie on the cheek and straighten her pillows and think if this is the land of the free, then what do you call the rest of the world? You write her a melody and write it in sharpie on the walls.

Tibet is quiet and thoughtful and you take a picture, hang it in an art gallery, and simply call it Hugo.

They think it means something. You think it used to.

Molly is waiting for you to come home, and you are waiting for her to find you.

You reach Malaysia before you wonder what you're running from. Your ghosts aren't yours, not really, and anyone worth staying for has already gone. (You write a poem and leave it for someone better to find.) You spot James and Dominique in Dublin - which is soft and wild and shines like Paris at 4 in the morning - but you never speak to them. They look happier here, and they introduce themselves as Victor and Alice.

You could take the knots in your stomach and weave the prettiest words and wrap them around their shoulders, but it still wouldn't keep them warm at night.

You sneak into Cornwall one evening and stand in a church and before you know it, you are carving Freddie into the stained glass windows.

Part of you hopes you'll be caught.

There is a girl you meet in Luxembourg who wears red lipstick and a choker around her throat and likes to smoke cigarettes on the highest buildings she can find - you fuck her and leave her a little bit more broken than before. But you leave her a drawing of her sleeping and you hope she keeps it.

A boy in Morocco has black hair and brown eyes and a jumper with holes and lips that taste like chocolate. He's different and daring and you dump him once you reach the border.

(You paint him and leave him to dry in the sunlight.)

You're sitting in a temple in Rome when you see her; she's leaning against a pillar and part of you wants to scream because it's over two fucking thousand years old and what the fuck do you think you're doing you bloody lunatic but the bigger part of you wraps your arms around her neck and whispers don't leave me.

She's been waiting, she says, for a letter, a word, a poem, a note.

You tell her you left a trail around the country and you were just waiting for her to listen.

(In another life, she keeps waiting and you're stabbed on a street corner in Madrid. You die alone in the silent hospital bed and you think, four down.)

But in this life -

in this life she weaves a broken melody in the space between you and you finish it with a kiss. She curls her fingers around your wrist and her hand shakes and she says she can save you. You realise how much worse she had it; you loved them like family but god knows, no one loves like Molly Weasley.

So Molly draws a tremble clef in kisses on your cheek and you tap a staccato beat in the place between your shoulder blades. You're tired of dancing, but you're not yet ready for the music to stop. You knot your fingers together and finally, finally, breathe.

You are done waiting.