Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHARLOTTE VIVIDLY REMEMBERS the day her father didn't come home. It was the same day she had received her Hogwarts letter, and she had sat by the front door for hours awaiting his return home so that she could share the exciting news. She had only realized that he wouldn't be coming home after her mother sent her to bed late that evening—four hours after he was supposed to have gotten off of his shift as an Auror.
Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and those weeks turned into months, and eventually, years. Maxwell Sangster wasn't anywhere to be found, but he wasn't dead either. She could feel it. He was just missing, and had been for over four years now, and she missed him more than anything. Her father was her rock, her world, her best friend (followed by Fred and George and Audra) and he was gone. It was a miracle that she and her mother were able to continue on so strongly when in reality it felt like their hearts had been shredded to pieces at every reminder or mention of him.
Now, on the eve of her fifth year, she found herself staring at the burgundy velvet armchair he used to sit in. It was almost always empty now. Celestia, Charlotte's mother, wouldn't dare to sit in it. Lottie would sometimes drag a warm blanket over and cuddle up against the armrest because it made her feel closer to him, wherever he was. She just couldn't believe that she was more than halfway through her years at Hogwarts and he hadn't been there to see any of it. The years she had spent waiting hadn't done any good after all.
She never stopped waiting, though, or hoping that he would come back despite the fact that even the top Aurors said it was unlikely. "We'll keep looking of course, Cel, but it doesn't look good. I don't want you to keep your hopes up." That was what Alastor Moody had said to Charlotte's mother just two years ago, after he had been pulled out of retirement to help on the case. But still, Charlotte kept hoping, because she knew that the day she gave up on her father was the day she failed him. She refused to let herself do so.
It takes a toll, though—especially when so far there's been virtually no evidence to support that her father is even alive, leaving her to rely on only her gut feeling. And so she leans on her wondrous support system, consisting of her best friends, her mother, her godparents and her godsister Tonks, but most of all Fred Weasley. He was the one who never failed to make her laugh, the one who kept her smiling even on her worst days. No one tried as hard to keep Lottie happy as he did, because goodGodric, he never wanted to live to see the day where his best friend ran out of joy.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
( emma speaks! )
hi lovelies! here's the prologue? type thingy? idrk, but here it is lol
chapter one will be out soon for those of you who actually read this lmao. i mentioned this in my james potter fic (which you should 100% check out if you haven't already) but i'm literally writing a hsmtmts fic so someone needs to stop me before i fuck around and actually publish it
