The Importance of Being Different

Hope was getting quite big now, she was three and a half months old and looked more like Remus by the day. Anne was sat in a rocking chair in the nursery rocking her back to sleep and singing a lullaby to her softly as Hope drifted back off to sleep.

“Rocking rolling riding, out along the bay, all bound for morning town, many miles away,” she sung softly, as Hope eventually fell asleep.

Anne got up and tucked Hope into her little cot with her toy rabbit.

“You’re a natural you know,” whispered Remus from the doorway where he had been watching them.

“It’s nothing,” shrugged Anne as she left the room and closed the door.

“Do you need any help with the packing?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she nodded, “you’ve got your own packing to do.”

Tonight, was the fourth of April, tomorrow Anne was getting married to Irwin, the Lupins were moving back to Elm Grove in a few days after that.

She headed up to her bedroom where there a was a huge number of empty cardboard boxes and an empty trunk waiting to be packed.

“Here goes,” she muttered as she started to pack methodically.

There was several boxes of clothes for the charity shop, because she had grown out of them, including her first ever set of dress robes that she had worn to the Yule Ball with Irwin three years ago.

When she reached the school uniform, she seemed uncertain, eventually she decided to give away her black school skirts and white school shirts, but she kept her two Ravenclaw jumpers and her Ravenclaw robe, she just couldn’t seem to part with them.

The rest of the clothes she folded away carefully into her self-expanding trunk that Remus and Sirius had got her nearly seven years ago when she had started school, at least this would make moving slightly easier.

Then she hit the books, she wasn’t going to throw any of them away but she had so many now; her children’s books, seven years’ worth of textbooks and extra-curricular reading, she had least twenty encyclopaedias just for History of Magic.

She stopped when she reached her muggle childrens books, she had a feeling that her and Irwin were going to need the fairytale books fairly soon as they couldn’t wait to start a family. But then there was one set of books that she thought might come in useful now.

“Livi,” she called knocking on Olivia’s open door.

Olivia looked up from where she had been reading the Chronicles of Narnia on top of her bed.

“I’ve got something very special for you,” said Anne as she carried the books into the room, “these books have got me through a lot of tough times, but they’re yours now.”

“Anne of Green Gables?” asked Olivia as she read the cover of the boxset.

Anne nodded.

“She looks like you,” said Olivia as she looked at the girl with the bright red plaits on the cover of the first book.

“She does doesn’t she,” Anne chuckled lightly as Olivia looked through the set of well-read books.

“Are you all ready for tomorrow?” asked Anne.

“Yes,” Olivia nodded enthusiastically.

“Will there be cake?”

“Of course, there’s going to be cake Livi,” she beamed, “it’s a wedding.”

“How many people will be there?”

“A lot more than I’d like,” sighed Anne. She would have liked to have had a nice quiet wedding with just their close friends and family, but it had somehow turned into a society event with nearly two hundred people coming, not to mention a reporter and photographer from the Daily Prophet.

“It doesn’t matter how many people are there, as long as you look pretty and get to marry Irwin.”

“You know what,” said Anne getting up from the bed and kissing her lightly on the top of the head, “you’re right.”

She continued to pack steadily when Sirius knocked on the open door with a cardboard box.

She looked up from the books she was packing as he came into the room.

“We thought you might want these, they’re your favourites and it doesn’t seem right for you to leave them behind.”

Anne went through the box and found about two dozen video tapes. Some were musicals like West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Grease, others were Disney princess films, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella. At the bottom of the box were her Michael Palin travel documentary tapes that Remus had recorded for her.

“Thanks Sirius,” she said getting off the floor to give him a hug.

Anne headed back up to her room to finish packing her last few things. She was just putting her last book into her trunk when something fell out of it.

It was one of her Michael Palin travel books that she had been reading before going camping with Harry, Hermione and Charlie last July.

She picked it up saw that there was something written on the back of it.

Dear Anne, whatever happens over the next couple of years with this stupid war, never forget we are always here for you, love always, Anthony and Persephone.

Anne turned it over and found a moving photograph of Anne, Irwin, Anthony and Persephone.

The photograph had been taken less than a year ago, during the Summer term of their sixth year. They were sat at their usual double table that they had pushed together and were studying and talking away, and Michael had taken a quick photograph. It was a perfectly ordinary scene that could have been seen anytime walking into the Ravenclaw Common Room over the last seven years, they were just working and talking. They looked so happy, but Persephone and Anthony had been dead for four months now.

She stared at the photograph for a moment, Terry had just cracked a joke off camera trying to make them laugh. Irwin was laughing raucously at the joke as always, Anthony was smirking and shaking his head as only he ever could, Anne was biting her lip to stop herself from laughing and trying to concentrate on her work and Persephone was smiling and chuckling slightly as she tried to find the right page in her potions textbook.

She looked at her watch and saw that it was one o’clock in the morning. She shook herself out of it, placed the photograph carefully back in the book and packed the last few things away before packing her suitcase for the next fortnight, and another smaller bag for tomorrow.

In her bag for the honeymoon she packed her passport, some summer dresses, a couple of pairs of shorts and some t-shirts, some pygamas, her wash bag, and a few books. Irwin hadn’t told her where they were going, but he had said it was abroad and warm.

That just left the bag for tomorrow, hairbrush, make up and a change of clothes for the plane which they were getting after the wedding. The dress and the jewellery were already waiting for her at the Scamander’s.

She checked her watch again, it was now half past two in the morning, they were leaving in six hours, she needed to get some bloody sleep.