Snapshots of a Summer Loved Solo

✿Backdated✿
July 4, 2021

It had come to the time during her visit home where she decided to make the small pilgrimage to her grandmother’s grave. The daisies were in a bright bloom, welcoming her to the person she would forever love most. If it weren’t for her grandmother, she would’ve never gone to Hogwarts (if that was even possible, Willow honestly wasn’t sure). Her parents were incredibly iffy on it, it was a lot to take in for a couple of muggles that practiced their own kind of witchcraft. To send their daughter off to this, a boarding school no less, well they just weren’t sure. But her grandmother had been ecstatic. To see how excited her grandmother was, it was hard not to get excited about it herself. To her grandmother the discovery of a different magic was not something to be terrified of, but exhilarated by. Willow’s parents even got mildly chastised for reacting like some non-Wiccans do to their own practice. That was really what started them on the path to really consider the opportunity Willow was given.

Sat beside Rowena on the couch they poured over every detail of the letter, reading it hundreds of times probably. Trying to take in every last drop of its magical essence, Rowena insisted it had a unique type of energy, though Willow couldn’t really feel it. Nevertheless she cherished the time of hypothesizing and preparing for a new magic world with someone that was purely excited about it. The soon to be badger was really apprehensive about it, soaking in the energy from her parent’s as well as Rowena created the first swirl of hesitation about the world she was soon to belong to. Behind her parent’s backs Rowena tried to get Willow to do more accidental magic. It didn’t work at all, but it sure gave her a bunch of memories of them in the backyard. Willow would be waving her arms frantically and making silly noises, unsure of what was required to cast spells, and her grandmother did it with her to see if they had overlooked her for Hogwarts. Surely she could enroll late, right? A world of unknown also meant a world of new possibilities, at least that’s what Rowena insisted.

Rowena was the one that constantly talked her parent’s down off of the ledge of worry. Late nights of tea and furrowed brows as her grandmother emphasized what a waste of an opportunity and potential it would be for them to refuse Willow attending. Her mother, Rowena’s daughter, was the one worried most. As the school year came closer Dorion was often teaming up with her grandmother to help Owena through her worries. In hindsight, Willow couldn’t exactly blame them especially after all that had happened her first two years. If they knew half the stuff that had happened perhaps they would’ve attempted to pull her out. Despite all the trauma, setting people on fire, getting stung by a mosp and being carried by Flash to the hospital wing, going through her first breakup, the brutality of her last Quidditch game, she wouldn’t trade it for never knowing about the wizarding world in the first place.

If there was a place for Willow to release all of her worries into the wind it was here. Sitting in a field of daisies and talking to her grandmother. There were never secrets between them, and she knew that her grandmother would take them to her grave. Haha, get it? Dead grandma humor. Willow couldn’t help but giggle having that thought. Her mom discouraged that kind of humor, but her dad secretly encouraged it. It was Willow’s way of coping and he saw that. Especially since it still hurt, not having her grandmother there.

The path to the grave was familiar. When they first built the path and started planting the flowers it felt foreboding and gray. It was hard not to believe that over time Rowena’s energy had filled the ground of her burial place, making the daisies bloom a little brighter, make the grass a littler greener, and the trees a little stronger. That was one thing that was so nice about the Anderson belief system that they had developed over many years. No one was ever truly gone, but their energy was recycled into the Earth. Even in the wintertime when everything became barren and covered in snow, Willow swore the flowers and trees died later than to other ones. Though that might’ve been her childish wonder trying to cling to someone so important to her. Anything to distract from the fact that the closer to Yule she got, the closer she was to having to acknowledge another year without her.

After taking the trek in silence, the only sound being the soft grass beneath the soles of her shoes she floated down to the ground like a dandelion seed being carried on the wind. She closed her eyes and let her fingers dig slightly into the dirt as she sang the song her and her family always did when visiting the grave.

In the circle of Earth and Sky
my heart flies to yours;
we gather, we remember,
and the pattern endures.

There was a long moment of silence as Willow sifted through a mind filled with things to talk about. Trying to figure out what she needed to get out. Her brows were furrowed tightly together creating wrinkles that seemed out of place on a face that was usually full of sunshine. It was never this hard. But after two years at Hogwarts and feeling like she had completely changed from the eleven-year-old that she started as it all felt like it was getting harder. With a sudden choked sob, she opened her mouth to let whatever needed to get out, out. “I wish you were actually here, to see everything. Even the bad things, the bad parts of me. It will never be the same without you here.” Warm tears fell down Willow’s cheeks, carving rivers onto her cheeks.

It was a realization that she had made countless times. But it didn’t make the hurt of it go away. While the grief struck her less often it still struck hard when it did. Shaky hands that had started an attempt to make a daisy chain moved from the delicate process to wrap around her own waist. Sobs wracked her body as all of the stress of the past year ripped their way out of Willow’s throat. “Mom and dad try their best, but they’re not you. You always had the perfect things to say, the perfect hugs, and warmth. I don’t know-” She had to pause to breathe as the words fell out of her like a newly flooded waterfall. “It seems like it's only going to get harder. It's scary… everything in Hogwarts and the wizard stuff.” Her hand gesticulated around her, as if the darkness still followed her here. “You were so excited about it. But… there’s more to it than light and cool magic and flowing robes and… and… neat classes. Defense Against the Dark Arts is scary, the history of the Wizarding Wars is terrifying. I thought it was supposed to be good! It was supposed to be great!”

A new feeling of anger towards her grandmother surfaced. A feeling that she had felt before, but never towards her. She was always the one that helped her out of it, not someone that brought her into it. Her fingers dug into her sides as she grappled with the ever flowing tumbling of feelings that were clawing their way up her throat. “You said it was going to be fun and fantastic. I thought it was supposed to be all good. But, it's not! It's just as scary as this world, but now there’s things that are even more dangerous.” Willow really didn’t know the scale of danger of the muggle world, not at her age. But all she knew was how awful and terrifying the wizarding world felt to her right now.

How dearly she missed her grandmother, how badly she desired for everything to make more sense than it did. For there to be more goodness than bad. But in every world the sun would eventually set, and the darkness would spread. The tragic events that occurred over and over at Hogwarts were undeniable. As they continued to happen to every house, against every student that ended up in its path, it felt like something that was more and more out of control.

Desperate sobs landed on soft petals of white and lingering pollen from the spring season that was unhearing, and exclusively comforting. It was the only place she could cry like this, the only place she felt truly safe. The place where she let everything that weighed on her finally drag its way out.

Eventually she let herself slowly fall to her side, landing with a soft thud of the Earth that always caught her. There was a reason that she felt so close to the element of Earth, why it was the center of her practice at home. It was always there to catch her, to hold her and cradle her back to health. To her it was unmatched in the way it seemed to care for her compared to every other element. As she laid there in the field, the crying eventually faded, the sobs quieted to soft sniffles, her arms that had been more tense then she remembered slowly unwrapped to rest one hand on her grandmother’s grave. There was no apology that fell from her lips for the anger she felt. Her hand slowly fell from the grave, heavy with the realization that truly everything had changed for her.

There were no goodbye prayers or songs sung as she took the long path back to her home.

Some days it was easy to cope, but today… today it was hard.