Three Hallows, Two Weasleys and One Broken Girl

Epilogue: The Maiden

Viola, two morrows later, the epilogue.

If you were to ask muggleborn children what the most mystical things in the wizarding world were, depending on their intelligence they might tell you of the carts in Gringotts, the talking portraits, or the continued secrecy despite the ministry's endless ineptitude.
If you were to speak to wizardborn children they'd perhaps exclaim about the newfangled 'phones' where you could instant-owl your friends without doing battle with quill and ink, or they'd describe the continent hidden in a fold of space and the impossible trickery of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

As for adult wizards, most would laugh at the question, the more romantic speaking of love, the more jaded of corruption in a world of truth potions and unbreakable vows...But perhaps one in every fifteen people you pose such a question to will glance about before telling you of the Maiden.
The Maiden's age varies from account to account, but each wanderer she visits would agree on four things. One, that her hair is completely white. Two, though her purple eyes are clear and playful, a great white scar across her face makes you certain they should not have been. Three, not even the most mentally unsound and socially out of touch house elf could match her taste in fashion.
And four, had they not met her and heeded her advice, those wanderers' lives would have been very different and undoubtedly worse.

How they encounter her is never the same. Sometimes she is a waitress in a muggle diner, other times a hiker, a minister, a mushroom collector, a paragliding instructor, a druid, a wedding photographer, a bartender, a shepherdess, an Ancient Runes Professor, an unspeakable, a mongolian goat herder, a feng shui consultant, a hot air balloonist, a weird sister, a shop assistant at the ancient Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes...
No encounters with her were quite the same, but then again no one was quite the same after encountering her. Oddly enough, sightings of her were only described after seers and oracles across the globe lost their abilities. Oddly enough the reports of her varying age could not be placed chronologically. Some rather excitable soul in Ireland linked her with the triple goddess, but in the name of Victorian manners the general populace of the British Isles referred to her as the Maiden. Across the rest of the world she held different names, but since over the next few hundred years enough information was collected for people to be sure she was Irish, by the Thousand year mark, it was the title 'The Maiden' that prevailed.

There was much speculation but few answers. An obscure text written by an academic of little note, claimed that The Maiden was the lover of the great inventors George and Fred Lovegood, whose discoveries eclipsed even Merlin's contributions and ensured the lasting safety and secrecy of wizards even as muggles tried their best to destroy the planet.
Her justifications for such a claim were weak and anecdotal however, so all sensible wizards disregarded the writings of Alice Pandora Longbottom.
The very idea that the Maiden was merely time travelling, and not immortal. And that she lived with the two greatest wizards in history in a tiny apartment above a joke shop back in the Muggled Era. Ludicrous. Alice even claimed Fred and George Lovegood founded Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, which was very obviously named for the most Ancient and Noble family of Weasley and no name changing paperwork had ever been filed. The filing department of the British Ministry for Magic was infallible.

Alice Pandora Longbottom, daughter of the great Explorer Luna Longbottom and her husband Neville, went on in her documentation to claim that when not travelling to the future to give prophesies, The Maiden, whose name was actually Delphi (stolen without a doubt from Greek myth, Alice had no imagination) and she ran a boutique of colour and shape changing clothes, held an annual chocolate frog race in Hogsmeade in which the prizes were muggle things called tupperwares, and famously made her husbands dance in the centre of Diagon Alley whenever they misbehaved too much. The very thought of wise, noble men such as Fred and George Lovegood doing such things up into their hundreds was utterly scandalous. There were no records in the ministry of either twin marrying, the love of their lives having tragically died young in the First Battle of Hogwarts back in 1998. Longbottom's account was too unrealistic to be credible and with no other accounts, the famously secretive twins' lives were as well understood as the Hogwarts founders' and Merlin before them.

Alas, though Longbottom's accounts were preserved for the sake of prosperity, veritaserum could not be applied to written accounts, and even if it could, no one with sense would waste the valuable potion.

In the kingdom of the Dead, Fred and George Lovegood teased their niece relentlessly about how her accurate and detailed accounts were disregarded. Alice had inherited more of Augusta Longbottom's character than her mother's wildness or her father's patience, and was endlessly frustrated in her life trying to document and record both her family's many impossible achievements.

Luna had discovered Earth's eighth continent which she named Mordor, and with the genius of Fred, George and Delphi combined, they bent space to hide it from muggle technology and allow wizards to live freely and safely within.
Neville had created a hybrid plant that was easy to grow and whose leaves brewed in tea were twice as effective as the wolfsbane potion.
George revolutionised Potions through the introduction of what muggles might assume was the periodic table, if it didn't have 137 elements including jam, the sense of confusion, and gnome fart.
Fred invented three spells that disproved Gamp's Laws much to the outrage of a certain bushy haired minister of magic, as well creating a stone that drew ambient magic from the surroundings and enabled squibs to cast spells without personal magic reserves.
Meanwhile, Delphi prepared herbal tea for multiple deities every Thursday, steered the fate of the planet with three thousand years of foreknowledge and smuggled a subsection into the employee welfare act requiring that all ministry officials carry a pygmypuff with them when at work.

Alice had been very diligent in her documentation, but unfortunately for her, her family were a little too eccentric for her accounts to stand the test of time. Time themself didn't want the accounts to survive, in case other people were inspired by Delphi's audacity to bargain with gods.
But Delphi had never much cared for her legacy, neither had Fred and George. They cared for adventure, experimentation and each other, and even two thousand years after they left the messy mortal world, their hearts remained unchanged.

___

I'm sorry I drew this story out so much more than I intended! I hope it met expectations regardless, I tried my best in the circumstances, and it was my duty to do my best. Fred and George Weasley deserve no less.

Some of you might be aware I started writing an original story, which I finished back in July, and edited (with the help of some incredible beta readers) through to September. I've emailed some literary agents this last month, and if you'd like to keep tabs on that (pretty please, the morally grey knights of walpurgis energy is strong in this, and there's gay too) please keep this book saved or follow me on here. I'll post updates on how things go!
If no stuff publishing houses want to help me, I'll draw my own damn cover and self publish, and all your support would be dearly welcome!!

Here's the blurb as it stands so far:

The students of Tintagel are a strange mixture of noble children who know each other too well, and common born children who know nothing at all. Desdemona Gordan has a binding magical contract she wants destroyed and falls into the first category. Erebus Dugant acts like he has nothing to lose and only a pigeon brained child of tosher would place him in the second category.
They and their new dormmates navigate a mire of politics, seers, petty grudges, and sabbats. Not everyone comes out alive and with fortune tellers in the fray getting away with murder isn't as easy as a dash of arsenic in the tea. A Merlinian Britain is more peaceful and magical than an Arthurian one, but people at their core remain the same.

I dearly hope you'll like it, and him.

Goodbye for now, you beautiful creatures,
Whimsy