This will probably end up being nothing more than a ramble, but I was wanted to share this idea of a fanfiction I've had since... well, it feels like forever, really. Since I first read/watched Harry Potter, back in 2008 (I am quite ancient).
Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall got married at some point of their busy, enchanting lives (am I the only 6 year old who watched the first film and thought that they were a couple for some reason?) and they had two children: a daughter, Winifred, and a younger son, Robert.
Winnie is lively, kind, eccentric and mischevous, sweet, smart and curious. She has a soft, melodic voice; she doesn't do small talk, just big talk; she's honest to a fault. She has her mother's auburn hair and her father's pale blue eyes. She loves music, and theatre, and literature. She has a particular interest for all things muggle. No wonder she ends up being Lily Evans' very best friend at Hogwarts. She only looks too happy about the hat screaming "Gryffindor" the second it glazed her hair.
Robert is shy in comparisson, incredibly smart with an unmatched interest for knowledge. He has his father's ginger hair, and his mother's deep green eyes. He shares most of his older sister's interests, and he thinks she's the coolest person to ever live. He's kind and gentle and can twist the truth if that means protecting the other person's feelings. He spends almost five minutes in darkness, as the Sorting Hat tried choosing between Gryffindor and Hufflepuf. A relieved smile tuggs at his lips when he finally sits down next to Winnie. It's almost too obvious that at some point he becomes friends with Regulus Black (though Sirius' little brother would never admit so).
Minerva and Dumbledore were good friends with the Potter family, and it's absolutely no surprise that James and Winnie grew up to be joined at the hip. It was no wonder either that they eventually best friended Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, and that the five of them became the most mischevous and playful students to ever walk Hogwarts.
No one batted an eye when Winnie and Sirius began dating, nor when James started dating Lily, they expected as much. Just as they expected that they would eventually join the Order of the Phoenix, for that meant fighting against evil and darkness and cruelty.
Few would've expected they would be turned into martyrs, at twenty years old.
Even less would've expected Robert would die, fighting for the cause.
But no one expected Sirius to betray his best friends.
No one expected James and Lily to die but a year after their sweet baby was born.
No one expected they would finally defeat Voldemort, but at what cost.
Out of all the things she had dreamed about, she had never expected she'd ever be left all by herself. Grieving her brother, most of her family, all five of her very best friends.
She'd never expected something to ever feel worse that falling victim to Crucio, yet she would've earnestly taken uninterruped hours of the unforgivable curse if that meant seeing her friends, just maybe once again. For what meaning did life even had without them? Without her sweet brother to laugh at her jokes? Without her darling James to make her giggle? Without her so very dear Lily, to share life with?
Dumbledore should've expected Winnie would try to keep Harry from the Dursley's, to raise herself. Arguing the boy deserved a, broken— yes, yet loving mother. As he should've expected her to attempt the unimaginable when he explained why she couldn't.
Not once in his life, would Dumbledore ever expect he would have to erase his darling daughter's memories, so that she could attempt for a life with peace, though that must not even be an option for her any longer.
Winnie became a Healer, as everyone had expected. During the War she'd become Poppy's most important assistant, she'd always loved Healing, and always had a particular talent for it. She's never loved St. Mungo's mundanity, but she eventually became accustomed to it.
Just as she became accustomed to this young man who would frequent the same bar as her after work. Aiden, his name was. He had gone to school with her, but was a Slytherin student. He had begun working at the Ministry soon as he finished school, and had become a very young member of the Wizengamot.
They eventually married each other, and despite how boring and dull that life was compared to what Winnie had once dreamed, images she could not remember, she was happy. They even became parents to two little children: Beatrice and Maxwell.
Winifred was very grateful for her husband, and absolutely adored her children. She had a job she was content with, a life with seeming no complaints.
She had countless different reasons to be happy, yet countless different theories as to why she was always so sad, so utterly devastated.
Have I been always this hollow?
The story begins during Harry's third year, when an all too known criminal scapes prison, and an unlikely professor joins Hogwarts, memories start flooding into Winifred's mind, as she begins to get glimpses of what her life had once looked like.
