what do you think about the ship between walburga black and euphemia potter?
while it's probably tempting to call the ship a copy-paste of nobleflower or jegulus, there's one pretty big difference: walburga and euphemia both lived and died in the lives set out for them, and what's more, they actually got to live those lives rather than dying young. effie was at least 60, i'd say, when she passed from dragon pox, and i'm pretty sure walburga lived to at least the end of the first war, so that's better than most marauders era characters.
james lived a life he loved but died young and regulus lived a life he hated and freed himself with death; alice lived a life she loved but lost her mind young and narcissa lived a life she also loved, until a certain point, then she realised the gilded teeth of a trap were closing in on her family and managed to escape with them, and her life, and she had everything she wanted but she grew old without alice.
but walburga and euphemia are not like either of them; euphemia lived a life she loved and walburga lived a life with most things she wanted but not what she needed.
euphemia and walburga go from
enemies with opposing ideologies
to a tentative kind of friends where walburga still believes in pureblood supremacy, but euphemia can afford to ignore that because she's still a pureblood, and therefore not directly affected by walburga's bigotry, and euphemia is still a staunch supporter of muggle and muggleborn rights, but walburga can afford to ignore that because effie is a pureblood, after all, and there aren't so many people with blood so untainted anymore— every drop of pure blood is precious blood, regardless of the opinions of the vessel
to lovers, who still don't agree on the important things but love each other with passion to rival the sun
to enemies, who scream and fight and argue and fundamentally disagree on so many important things, but still, in the end, make up
to lovers, who still don't agree on the important things but love each other with passion to rival the sun
to enemies, who scream and fight and argue and fundamentally disagree on so many important things, but still, in the end, make up
to lovers, who still don't agree on the important things but love each other with passion to rival the sun
to enemies, who scream and fight and argue and fundamentally disagree on too many important things to overlook
to strangers, who see each other on newspaper headlines announcing their marriages and children's births and pass by each other in diagon alley and avoid each other at king's cross station and are always, always, haunted by what could have been. strangers, who grow up and grow old with a piece of their heart on the other side of a war.
effie and wally's love was fiery and short; their lives were not. they both had fifty odd years to mourn and reflect and regret. effie lived a life she loved but wished until she died that she'd managed to save wally; wally lived and died in the walls of 12 grimmauld place and did not let herself admit, until her eldest boy runs away to effie's son, that she wished she'd been saved too.
there's a special kind of tragedy in that they had decades to live and love and regret,
in that they watched their first love marry someone else and grow old with them
in that they went from soulmates to strangers
in that one day, they realised that someone they would have recognised (to paraphrase madeline miller & robin stevens) by the sound of their breaths and the shape of their hand and the way their feet fell on the floor was now someone with lines in their face and strands of grey in their hair that they were not there to see grow
in that they had whole lives apart from each other. not a few short years like jegulus, not one of them going insane young and the other not really getting to see how the former would have been like with decades of life etched in her soul— no, they both lived and got married and had kids and had. whole. long. lives. apart from each other. they existed just outside each other's orbit for decades, strangers when they should have been soulmates.
but uh yeah i'm completely normal about them
