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It’s raining the day they meet.
Susan had been on the run for so long, that she forgot what it was like to receive a genuine smile, but his is warm and real. Her parents had left the country and she was in between Hogwarts and London, passing information from Dumbledore’s Army to the younger members of the Order of the Phoenix.
She likes to think that she’s making her aunts and uncles and her grandparents proud.
Susan spent minutes and hours and days missing her family back when she had the time to waste. Now she tries to stay one step ahead, one step in front of the ‘Aurors’ with snakes and skulls on their arms. She spends her time listening into cracks in the walls, to keyholes, to whispered conversations that no one is meant to overhear.
It’s one of the few things that Susan has always been good at. She had a way of slipping into the back of rooms, of going unseen. The Weasley twins wished that they had her talent, they tell her that when she shows up in the backrooms of pubs, houses, and stores, with an oral report of what she’s heard.
She hopes that her Uncle Edgar and Auntie Amelia are proud of her work.
Susan likes to think that she spent years at Auntie Amelia’s side, watching her work and interrogate the bad guys and the Aurors. Auntie Amelia wasn’t one to take no for an answer, she wasn’t one to take nothing for an answer either.
Susan had wanted to be her when she was little, an Auror first, then Head of the DMLE. She loved playing in her office while her mother was teaching and her father was running the shop. Her parents had own an apothecary, had being the keyword. It was sold within days of her Auntie Amelia’s murder.
Auntie Amelia’s house had been seized by the Order of the Phoenix, by its younger members at least. Oliver Wood lived in the building just down the street, he had broken in and put the wards back up after reading about the murder.
Neville Longbottom had wrote Susan during the summer, asking for a hiding spot. The Weasley twins had come next, almost a whole year later, helping Lee Jordan set up his radio show, using Susan’s Uncle Edgar’s old equipment from the First War.
She liked to think that everything went downhill from there, but that wasn’t the truth.
It was Hestia Jones’ letter, asking Susan if they could hide a Muggle family in the house that put everything on the backburner. Her parents didn’t know about the Order, they hadn’t wanted to ever know about it. Her father had lost a brother and a sister, he had lost his nephews and niece to the fight against Voldemort.
Susan wrote back, just a single word on a scrap of old homework. Parchment was hard to come by when everything she owned was in boxes.
Yes.
She didn’t step foot in the old house again, but the Weasley twins, Lee Jordan, Oliver Wood, Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin and her ever growing stomach all returned.
Susan knew that she was better off not knowing, not ever meeting the Muggles living in her Auntie Amelia’s house. She knew that they had probably taken down the photos of her uncle and aunt and cousins that she never got to know. They had probably packed up all the china and put it in storage to use their own. They had probably rearranged the furniture, making the house their own.
Or worse, they kept everything as it was.
It had been as if the Heavens had given up on holding the rain back the day that Susan Bones met Dudley Dursley.
~`~
Susan was six months old when her family was killed.
She never got to know her Uncle Edgar, her Aunt Eleanor, or her cousins Jacob, Daniel, and Clara. She grew up with stories of them, stories of her uncle’s work at the Ministry, stories of her aunt’s underground daycare business, and stories of her cousin’s adventures.
She wished that she got know her family. She wished that she knew them in real life and not in the memories and stories of others. Her parents told her stories that were edited with fuzzy details that she would never know were true or not.
Susan was six months old when her uncle, aunt, and cousins were killed.
~`~
Their oldest was a little boy named Jacob Edgar.
Jacob was her oldest cousin’s name and Edgar had been her uncle. She would never know that Jacob used to laugh anytime someone said the word pudding or that Edgar used to smell like aftershave and broom polish at any moment. She would miss them every day of her life, but her son made it easier to
But her son Jacob liked to run around in the backyard and blow bubbles. He liked to sing along with radio even if he didn’t know the words. He liked to watch both football and Quidditch, and he liked to play both of them too. He was the best flier in his Little League Quidditch team, even if his broom never went above three feet.
Jacob had her strawberry blonde hair and freckles, he had chubby legs and blue eyes, he had a crooked smile and loved to wear yellow and green clothes. He would be their only Gryffindor, a proud lion who would make them proud.
Jacob was born in the middle of the night, Susan had been in labor for fourteen hours and the whole time had remembered telling herself that she never wanted children.
Then he was there, with ten perfect little toes and ten perfect fingers. Afterwards, she would never think about the hours she spent in pain, waiting for him, because by then it was irrelevant. She had a baby, a son that was all her own.
~`~
He knocked her down, the rain was ice cold and Susan was drenched without her umbrella. She looked up at him only to see a tall blonde head and large hands reaching for her. Her first instinct was to hex him, but he pulled her to her feet before she could reach for her wand.
“I’m sorry, I should’ve been paying attention,” said the man. He had a good foot over her and she didn’t want to think about how many pounds.
“Its fine,” said Susan, tired. Suddenly it was all she could do to keep from yawning, from throwing herself back down on the ground to sleep.
“Let me make it up to you,” said the man, “there’s a coffee shop around the corner, let me buy you something, let you get dried off.”
It was the nicest thing that someone had offered her in a long time, though she knew that it wasn’t one hundred percent true. Justin and Ernie and Hannah were all at Hogwarts right now, covering for her absents, and they would greet her with tea and sandwiches and the news when she returned. Her friends would always be there when she needed them, wanted them.
Susan wasn’t the youngest member of both the DA and the Order, but she was the most active of the youngest of the two groups. Neville and Ginny and Luna were too busy keeping the DA together to help the Order too much, while Fred and George and Lee Jordan were too wrapped up with the Order to help the DA too much. Cho Chang was hiding herself at the Ministry, sneaking information out to the DA and Susan, who in turn gave it to the Order.
Susan was the middle ground. She had work to do for both sides and she certainly didn’t have time to get coffee and scones.
As if he knew she was wavering, he smiled at her. It was like the sun was shining down on her, warm and unwavering. Already it made the rain feel a little less cold, a little less harsh.
“Okay, let’s go then,” said Susan, and with a turn on her heel as if she was going to apparate away, she led the way to the coffee shop.
~`~
Susan hid in back corners and listened.
She reported and took mental notes, remembering key words for later use. She remembered street names and building descriptions, she knew the names families who were evacuated by the Order. They ran through her head like a nursery rhyme, dates and numbers always came easy to her, names too when she focused a little.
There was a war going on, she had to pay attention.
She remembered that she used to doodle in the margins of her textbooks, she used to draw on her homework. A year ago the very thought of leaving Hogwarts during classes scared her.
But then Dumbledore was killed, before that her Auntie Amelia was murdered by Voldemort, and in the first war she lost her Uncle Edgar and his family.
She used to just be a school girl with half of her family killed off.
Susan used to get distracted like any other bored teenager while in class. She once had the luxury to not pay attention. She was challenged, but not focused. Her mother, the Muggle school teacher, gave her tips on combating her ADHD in her youth.
At Hogwarts she threw them all away. She let herself get distracted because she could, she could do what she wanted. The only punishment she ever received was a concerned conversation from Professor McGonagall.
Susan started to hide after that, she hid between Ernie and Justin, behind Hannah. She let herself become small and hidden.
She never stopped listening though, filing names and dates and keeping her notes locked away until later.
~`~
Eleanor Lillian was their next child. Eleanor was Susan’s aunt’s name, while Lillian was his aunt’s name.
She had Susan’s curly hair, and though it was blonde her first year, it was dark red by the time she was two. Eleanor had brown eyes and his nose and his ears and his chin. The rest of her was all Susan, was all Bones.
Eleanor was quiet and at Susan’s side at all times. Once she started to crawl, then walk, then run, she followed behind Susan at all times. They spent all of their time together, whether they were chasing after Jacob or making dinner or going to the grocery store, they were together.
Susan loved it, not ever wanting to let her baby out of her sight, out of her reach.
Eleanor was her mini, wanting to dress just like Susan, wanting to spend her days in the kitchen watching Susan make potions for her clients. At first she slept in a sling attached to Susan’s chest, then when she grew too big, she sat on the counter top and stirred her cauldron or handed her ingredients.
Often times Susan would wonder if Eleanor would get to have a better potions professor than her, one that didn’t play favorites or tried to make their students feel dumb. She was a smart girl, her Eleanor, she would be their Ravenclaw, her one and only act of rebellion.
She was, after all, just like Susan.
~`~
The coffee was bitter, but hot. The scones were fresh and warm in Susan’s hands. And the man introduced himself as Dudley Dursley.
He was seventeen, a Muggle, and his family had recently moved to London part way through the last summer. His only family was his parents, he had an aunt, uncle, and cousin that died when he was too little to remember them.
Susan could relate.
There was a part of her that found him endearing, warm. He was big, in both height and size, but she noticed that a lot of it seemed to be muscle. He didn’t have any friends in London yet, he wasn’t good at school, he was afraid that the other students saw him as a bully.
Susan related to this too, or at least the being bad at school part. Her best subject was potions, but she chose not to move forward with potions if it meant having to deal with any more favorite playing Slytherin professors.
She struggled in Transfiguration and did okay in Charms, she liked Defense Against the Dark Arts when Harry was teaching them two years ago. She liked Herbology, Professor Sprout always made her feel at home, and she also enjoyed Astronomy, but she knew she would never find a career that was just potions, Herbology, and Astronomy.
“Are you playing hooky too then?” asked Dudley, leaning forward slightly to hear her answer as behind them the door chimed loudly.
“Yes,” answered Susan, as she eyed the man and woman who headed to the counter. They were both wearing all black clothes, and they were completely dry though they didn’t have an umbrella with them. “I’m visiting my aunt, she’s ill.”
“Oh,” said Dudley looking down at his coffee, “I’m sorry to hear that,”
“Yeah,” agreed Susan, as the man and woman sat down at a table with their coffee. She ignored Dudley as he said something else, as the man had rolled part of his jacket up, revealing a snake and skull on his inner forearm.
“Dudley,” said Susan in a whisper, making him lean forward close to her. “In about one minute, I want you to walk out the door and not look back.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” asked Dudley, but Susan turned to him, looking him in the eyes for the first time since the man and woman came in.
“Because I told you too,” said Susan, and he nodded, as if this was the only answer he needed. “I’ll meet up with you if I can.”
“Okay,” said Dudley, then he looked down at the watch on his wrist.
“Go,” whispered Susan, after a minute passed, “I’ll come find you.”
As soon as she heard the chime over the door, all Hell broke loose.
~`~
The first trip to the kitchens had been Hannah’s idea.
Hannah grew up always hungry, her father’s music shop always on the verge of closing. Her mother was always between jobs, serving at restaurants until she snapped at the owner or a customer and was let go.
Susan couldn’t relate.
Susan grew up fed and happy and well. She grew up with her parents happy with each other and never fighting.
But it was different at Hogwarts. The food was filling and comforting, but it wasn’t right at the same time. Susan grew up eating fish and chips in the back of the apothecary, she grew up eating cold sausages while her mother graded papers in her classroom, she grew up eating Shepard’s pie from the diner a block away from the Ministry in her Auntie Amelia’s office.
Susan grew up eating take out and cold meals while being shuffled from place to place. Having breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the same time every day wasn’t the life she was used to. But eating her fill was.
The first trip to the kitchens had been Hannah’s idea, but it became Susan’s habit.
She started taking food so she could have cold sausages while writing essays in the library. She took scones just to have them become stale for weekday mornings when she wanted to lay in bed for a few more minutes. She took tea bags to brew tea every night before bed.
Susan always wished for fresh hot food when she was little, but after being given the chance to have it, her childhood forced her to turn it away.
~`~
Amelia Clara was their third. She was named after Auntie Amelia and Susan’s cousin. Susan always hoped that they would’ve been close, Clara was only sixteen months older than Susan when she died.
Amelia looked just like him, same blonde hair, same smile, same nose, but her eyes, her freckles. She was always smiling, from the moment she was born, she laughed at one month old and then didn’t stop.
Susan hadn’t been surprised when she became a Hufflepuff, Amelia was like Hannah. She was warm and loving and loyal. She was happy and bright and kind.
She was always on the move, Amelia didn’t learn to crawl then walk, she only learned to run. Jacob, who was four years older became her favorite play partner, they would run around in the yard at all times.
She was also the loudest, Amelia woke up each day smiling and laughing and waking up the house with her. She would always come into their room at full speed and start talking a mile a minute.
If she wasn’t out in the yard with Jacob or asleep, she was sitting on the kitchen floor with Eleanor, a box of crayons between them. Someday, Susan knew, they would make it to the table, but someday wasn’t now.
~`~
Susan left the coffee shop, leaving behind a bunch of shell shocked Muggles and two stupefied Death Eaters. The real Auror’s were on their way, but Susan wasn’t going to be there to meet them. Instead she left the mark of the Phoenix, the signature she had taken up since Dumbledore’s death.
“Susan,” said a voice from behind her, and Susan stopped in her tracks. She had expected Dudley to go farther, to do as she asked.
She turned on her heel and looked up at him, Dudley was almost too tall for her too look at him properly. “I told you to get away from there!” said Susan, she could feel herself getting more worked up than she wanted to be.
“I had no idea what you were doing,” said Dudley as he fidgeted where he stood, “I started walking away, but then I heard the noise and saw the lights and I started heading back.”
“Oh,” said Susan, smiling up at him, because his concern was refreshing. “I was fine, I promise.”
“What did you do back there?” asked Dudley and Susan sighed.
“Dudley, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy, but you’ll have to believe me,” Susan told him, looking up at him, “I’m a witch, I used magic to sedate that man and woman who came in after us. I go to a school for magic called Hogwarts and am part of two underground rebellion groups called Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix.”
“I knew you were a witch,” said Dudley and Susan took a step back.
“How?” asked Susan, “you’re a Muggle, you’re not supposed to know anything about the Wizarding World!”
“My cousin is a wizard,” explained Dudley, “you might even know him. His name is Harry Potter.”
Susan stared at him, not just because she did know Harry, but how did she happen to run into his Muggle cousin of all people.
“You told me your cousin died when you were a little kid,” said Susan, not knowing why this was the stance that she was going to focus on. “You lied to me!”
“I just didn’t tell you that he was alive,” said Dudley, “it’s not like you didn’t lie to me about being a witch!”
Susan was quiet and looked up at the sky, the rain had drizzled out, and she could see the clouds beginning to break up. She loved watching the sky after a good storm, watching the clouds break up and disappear.
“Maybe we should start over,” said Susan, looking up at Dudley.
“Okay,” said Dudley, holding out his hand. “My name is Dudley Dursley, my cousin is Harry Potter, and I’m seventeen years old.”
Susan smiled, “my name is Susan Bones and I’m a seventeen year old witch, it’s very nice to meet you.”
They shook and Susan could’ve sworn she felt a spark when they held hands. It felt as if she was holding her wand for the first time again, it was like a rush of warmth in her hand and in her chest.
“The same,” said Dudley, returning her smile.
~`~
Susan was sixteen when Auntie Amelia was murdered.
It was pissing down rain at her funeral and her mother made a comment about it being the same at Uncle Edgar’s funeral. Susan had tried to not cry, to be strong for her parents, her aunt, herself. But she stood in the rain and it quickly became clear that no one would tell if she was crying.
She had been scared the year before when ten Death Eaters had escaped from Azkaban, but her Auntie Amelia hadn’t been worried. She only put up her wards when Susan’s father had asked her to, had told her that Susan wouldn’t visit unless she did when she told him no.
To Susan, it meant the start of the endgame. If her Auntie Amelia was killed, then the end had be close behind. It had been the last time she stepped foot into her house, quiet for the first time in two years.
The buzz of the wards was gone, killed off with the castor.
Susan had cried that day for the loss of her aunt, for her uncle, for her cousins, for the family she never knew. She even cried for her grandparents, who had been killed before she was born.
Susan wrote to Nymphadora Tonks that night, under the covers of her bed. Tonks had written her back with a list of questions and a mission that Susan set out on in the early hours of the morning. She hadn’t slept through a night since, she stopped doodling on her homework and textbooks too.
There was a war raging outside her window, her front door, and just like that Susan was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. She was filling the shoes left for her by her grandparents, by her uncle, by her aunt.
She was avenging them in the only way she knew.
~`~
Daniel “Dannie” Oliver would be their last baby. He was named after her cousin and her father. He was born at thirty weeks and had been a surprise to both of them. Susan hadn’t known she was pregnant until she was about fifteen weeks along, but after checking in with Ernie, they knew that he was okay.
Dannie was five years younger than little Amelia, so once he came home from St. Mungo’s, Susan got the house to herself and Dannie. She kept him tucked up against her in the sling she had used for the girls. He slept more than anything and Susan couldn’t help herself from checking on him every few minutes.
Dannie was so fragile that she was scared to put him down, to give him away. It made her feel better knowing her children were at school for most of the day.
When he was big enough and strong enough to hold his head up, she started to set him up in the high chair. Eleanor would stand in front of him and read to him which ever book she was reading in school. Jacob would stand and make funny faces and teach him all about Quidditch and football, setting up the radio for them to listen too. And Amelia would sit on the floor and draw picture after picture for him to look at.
At night, Dudley would cradle him in his hands and sit in his arm chair watching him sleep until he couldn’t any more.
When he got older, those first few months would become a secret, which Susan would keep to herself. He would become just as playful and happy and sweet as her other children. He would grow to be as tall as Dudley, with curly blonde hair and freckles, with her brown eyes and his chin.
He would grow up to be a Hufflepuff, so sweet and so kind. He would take every trait of those Susan missed, Tonks’ clumsiness, Uncle Edgar’s versatility, Auntie Amelia’s stubbornness, Cedric’s optimism, and Hannah’s hunger for more.
Dannie was their last baby, but he was also their most giving child. He was the one to fit into the Bones’ shoes.
~`~
Susan loved the rain, she met Dudley in the middle of the rainstorm, they got married in the middle of a rainstorm, and she gave birth to both of her daughters in the middle of a rainstorm.
She knew that Dudley also loved the rain, he always talked about the day they met and how she hexed two Death Eaters in a Muggle coffee shop. But the first thing he always mentioned, always said, was that it was raining.
Susan didn’t see Dudley until long after the war, long after the cleanup, long after she left the Ministry to find her own happiness.
She met Dudley again in a small café in London, not far from the place where they first ran into each other. He was sitting at a table with a large coffee and a scone in front of him, his laptop open in front of him. Susan came in from the rain and recognized him immediately, with his blonde hair and blue eyes and large frame.
Susan expected him to not remember her, but he looked up and smiled at her just like when they first met.
He bought her a coffee and both of them another scone, then they sat and caught up on where their lives had taken them. Susan wasn’t sure where her life was taking her, while Dudley had become a guidance consular for the local primary school.
They made plans to meet again, then again, then he asked her on a date. One date turned into another, then another, then another before he brought her back to his home.
It was Aunt Amelia’s old house, and Susan was surprised to see the furniture in the same spot it always was. The china was still in the cupboards, which Dudley made her a cup of tea with. The only difference was the photos, she could tell that they had been rearranged, as if someone had taken them down and put them back up in the wrong spots.
She saw old photos of herself from when she was a kid, photos of her cousins who she never knew, photos of her parents and aunts and uncle from when they were young.
There was also a photo of Dudley and Harry Potter, both of them smiling and laughing in the camera. Susan hadn't seen Harry in a while, more so because she tried to avoid the so called “Golden Trio” and the rest of the Gryffindors that she knew.
Part of her knew that she didn’t belong, but the rest of her felt so at home, so happy to be there.
They move in together after a few months, mainly because Susan gets evicted, but she’s happier with Dudley anyways. She loves it when he comes home to her, and after a few weeks she breaks out her old potions books and gets to work.
It takes a while, but she goes to the apothecary in Diagon Alley, getting herself a long list of ingredients and a new cauldron. She takes out an ad in Witch Weekly, then in the Quibbler, and finally in the Prophet. Slowly, she starts to get a following, a loyal following of witches and wizards who commission her to make potions for them.
It starts to pay for itself when she gets a letter from Hermione Weasley asking if she would be willing to help put together Werewolf care packages. The first payment she gets is enough to put a down payment on a house that they had been looking at for a long time.
With the second payment, they pack their things and move.
~`~
Susan thought that the Auror’s needed her.
She liked to think that she took after her Auntie Amelia, following in her footsteps. But then she watched her friends find happiness. She was invited to weddings and baby showers and birthdays. She stood on the edge and listened to conversations that she was welcome to join.
Neville left the Auror’s first. She was his partner through the worst case she would ever work. They recaptured the Lestrange brothers and saw them put away in Azkaban where they would die.
Susan then watched Neville marry Hannah and have a perfect set of twins. They had one boy and one girl and Neville went to Hogwarts become the new Herbology professor.
Susan would always remember the ever changing flowers that he kept on his desk in the tiny cubicle they shared.
She watched as everyone else paired up, Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, Dean and Pavarti, Ernie and Rose, even Justin found the perfect man for him. Susan didn’t need love, but the thought of it made her heartache.
The day she left the Ministry, she walked up to Harry and told him that she needed to find her own happiness. He told her that she deserved her peace.
Susan was ready to run away from the Wizarding World and it’s reminders of her lost family. She was ready to move on, to forget the pain. She was ready to say goodbye to the only thing she knew.
She stepped out into the rain that morning and let it wash her guilt away.
~`~
Harry’s youngest child is ten when they have Jacob. Lily is so sweet and so kind and so helpful that Susan doesn’t ever want her to leave. Ginny brings her around every Saturday afternoon and Lily coos and plays with Jacob while Ginny makes dinner.
Dudley adores Lily too, thinks that she’s funny and the smartest ten year old he ever met.
Harry always comes around, just in time for dinner and Lily is always glued to his hip when he arrives.
Susan never got to have cousins, she never had the chance to be close to them, but she’s sure that Dudley and Harry don’t have the right dynamic. They smile and greet one another, they make the smallest of small talk, and then they’ll sit in the quiet while everyone else continues on.
She hopes that Lily, James, and Al are close to Jacob. She hopes that her son gets to have a relationship with his cousins, his family.
It became clear to Susan that her parents weren’t going to come back in the year after the war. They had given themselves a new life away from what they lost. Dudley had walked away from his parents after the war, or more accurately, he refused to leave when they packed their things to leave. It broke their relationship, with Dudley choosing to stay behind in the ‘freaks’ house and go to school to become a ‘pansy’ consular.
Susan had never been impressed with Dudley’s parents, not since he told her about how his family had treated Harry while they were kids.
She knew that Dudley hadn’t always been a good person, but she knew that he had taken the strides to become a better person.
She knew it by the way he smiled and hugged Lily, how he always made Ginny laugh by picking her up when she hugged him, and how he held their son, so carefully in his arms.
~`~
Susan doesn’t know how to live like a Muggle, even though her mother is one. It’s always a little funny to her to watch Dudley move about their home. To watch him turn on lights with the switch and to watch the telly and use his computer.
In her childhood home, magic had been second nature. She grew up with the floo and moving pictures and stories of Hogwarts given out like treats from her father. She went to Muggle primary, she kept herself guarder from the Muggles though.
But Dudley knew about magic, just as her mother had, but it was still taboo to him. He spent almost a whole year under the protection of Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle, but his childhood of his parents being afraid of the unknown kept him from experiencing it.
She’s sure that it won’t work when they first move in together. That he’ll throw her out as she Charms the pots and pans to wash themselves, as she summons plates for them as she makes bacon and toast and eggs. She’s sure that he’ll run screaming as the radio plays another ad for Quidditch tickets.
Susan doesn’t know how powerful love is yet.
She doesn’t know that Dudley is scared every time she waves her wand in that first month, sure that his tongue will swell up or he’ll grow a curly pig’s tail. He doesn’t ever tell her that he’s afraid her pepperup potion is actually poison. He doesn’t tell her any of this because his love makes him brave.
Susan doesn’t know that the reason she could hide in the back of rooms and listen to hidden conversations is because of the love placed on her from her family. Love put there by her grandparents in 1978, her Uncle Edgar in 1979, and most of all, her Auntie Amelia in 1996.
Love kept her hidden, kept her quiet, kept her protected.
~`~
Their new house wasn’t very big, but Susan had a knack of making room in small spaces. There were three bedrooms, one for them, another for Dudley’s office, and the last for a nursery.
Susan always found herself blushing when she thought about it, but her growing stomach was making itself known quicker and quicker with each day.
She had taken a pregnancy test a week after they moved in. She took another after they came home from the courthouse two weeks later. She took a third one a week after, when Dudley asked her why she had been sick.
He smiled and kissed her and reminded her why she loved him.
They had been together for twelve years, and had met almost twenty years before. Susan had never imagined she would be having a baby, or be married, or have anyone else in her life. She never thought that she would have this life, as she had lost so much over the years.
Jacob was born, then two years later they had Eleanor, then three years later came Amelia, and Dannie came five years later, so small and so fragile. She loved them more than her own life and would die for them.
It made her realize how her family could sacrifice themselves, how they let Voldemort kill them to save others.
Her children, her Dudley, they were all she had.
~`~
It was raining the day after the Battle of Hogwarts.
Susan carried the bag she had packed months ago to disappear with over one shoulder and her wand in her hand.
She let the rain wash over her and tried to forget the faces and bodies in the Great Hall. She had been to more funerals than she wanted to count in her lifetime.
It’s the first warm rain of the year, and it feels wonderful as it matts down her hair and makes her clothes grow heavy. Susan would remember this day until her dying breath.
She would remember the rain washing away all the dirt and blood off of the grass. She would remember hearing about the lake flooding along with the Great Hall. She would remember feeling as if all the secrets she kept in the war were being washed away.
Most of all, she would remember the sound of three little kids laughing and playing. Of a mother calling them in and a father telling her to let them play a minute longer. Of a sister, an auntie, laughing at them all as she went out to play with the children.
Susan would never know that her Uncle Edgar and Aunt Eleanor loved the rain, that her cousins loved to play in the puddles after a good storm, and that her Auntie Amelia loved to chase after them and get just as dirty.
Susan was okay with not knowing.
~`~
It was raining the night they moved into their new house. It was raining the day they got married. It was raining the day the met.
Susan loves the rain, and so did Dudley.