Princess; George Weasley

one

Waiting is something I've been doing my whole life. It's an experience everyone encounters at some point. Never once has waiting been so absolutely heart-wrenching. Never has it made my palms sweat or made me break down into tears. Now, I'm waiting to leave the last place that feels like home, and it's doing all of those things.

My father enters the room quietly. His pale, rectangular face is the first thing I see. It contrasts against his black robes and the dark hallway behind him. Although he is fairly young, I notice a new wrinkle on his face almost every day. I guess teaching and the new stress isn't doing him well. I always wonder how he is as a teacher. He's standing there emotionless, waiting for me to do something.

His faint footsteps die out, and he continues to wait. He realizes I'm not going to say anything and opens his lips slightly. "Claudia," he whispers.

I think I hear a trace of sympathy in his voice, but when we make eye contact he's still wearing the same cold, plain expression.

He refuses to break down about my grandmother. If it were up to him, I wouldn't mention her at all. I hear that there are different ways to grieve, but his way isn't easy for me to understand. Showing no emotion at all. There's no sadness behind his eyes, and not a trace of remorse. He doesn't flinch when she's mentioned, and he definitely doesn't speak like she's just recently passed. He acts like the wound is already mended, and no scars are there to remind him of his feelings of misery.

I was at Ilvermorny when she died.

After being pulled straight out of charms class, I was told my father was here to visit me. The five minute walk alongside my groundskeeper was enough to make my head race with thoughts. Did I do something? Why would my father be visiting when he had class? Even with the time change, my father should still be teaching. 

I was anxious and excited for some strange reason. This was the craziest thing possible at the time. I quickly learned it's best not to predict how crazy life will get because it can, and will always get worse.

Then, I was left waiting. The groundskeeper went in the principals office to see if it was okay for me to enter. I could here my fathers rather unique, nasally voice. He was talking in a quiet voice despite the room being soundproof. When the door closed, something in my gut shifted. What if something worse than me just being in trouble happened?

I had a feeling, and I didn't want it to be right. I couldn't fathom something being wrong with my father or my grandmother.

Finally, I was told she was found dead in front of her stairs the previous night. Muggle police arrived that night and declared her dead. They believed that she fell on her neck and died instantly.

I was angry, I really was. For winter break my father made me stay with him instead of with my grandmother in New York. He didn't tell me why, and still won't. When I brought this up to him, he showed me emotion towards my grandmother for the first and last time.

His mouth split open, and his eyebrows creased upwards. He shook his head slightly, and suddenly looked less harsh or intimidating. He looked more human. I swear I saw his eyes well up for a minute but I doubt it.

That night my father went back to London. He has another group of kids that seemed more important to him than his own heartbroken daughter.

We wouldn't have a funeral for grandma. She wouldn't have wanted that. Some days I wish we did. Others, I'm thankful we didn't. I don't know if it would have actually brought me closure. The idea of having it to move on sounds nice, but now I realize I probably wouldn't have been able to manage it. I finished the school year, depressed. Not talking to anyone besides Opal. And on some days, myself. The days I remembered I was actually a sad excuse for a human, not just a brain.

I still feel like a shell of a person half of the time.

Waiting for the explanation to why my father came for a visit wasn't nearly as bad as waiting to be torn away from the place I call home. My father wasn't there most of the time, so it's not like I have anywhere else. After my mother died when I was an infant, my father took me to New York. I still don't know why he'd rather have my grandmother take care of me. I probably reminded him too much of my mother, apparently I was almost a spitting image of her.

"Claudia," my father repeats. Absolutely no trace of sympathy was in his voice this time. "We don't have time for you to be stubborn."

We have to leave at exactly one o'clock. I have no clue why we'd have to leave in the dead of night but here we are. My father has his ways and doesn't bother to explain them to me.

"Can I have a minute?" I knew the answer but I ask it anyways. I need to soak this place up one more time. There was no way I was going to let myself forget this.

"No."

He doesn't say anything more, or anything less. My father is desperate to get out of this house. Memory's of my grandmother floods his memory. Unlike me, he doesn't want that. Of course, I'm sure it's not as many as his childhood home back in England, but he's known this one for as long as I've been alive. I know for a fact he'll never return to his childhood home. He didn't want to even before my grandmother died for some reason. I know he had friends that grew up near him, so I always wonder why.

I slowly step out of the windowsill I'm sitting in. I look around my room. The middle of the floor could use dusting due to the olive green rug sitting on it for fifteen years. The walls had little holes in them from me hanging stuff up with thumbtacks. My father took all of the stuff in this room to his co-workers already. We're going to stay there awhile. At least until we can find a new house or apartment.

My father and I walk out of my bedroom and down the wide hallway. It used to have bright, lovely paintings of different landscapes, but now it's empty. The walls are wearing a sad beige color that sucks all of the energy out of you. My father refuses to keep any of my grandmother's paintings, and is in the process of selling them all. He's letting me keep my favorite though, as long as I promised to keep it out of his sight.

It's a colorful piece of a tulip field. I remember sitting alongside her as she sketched it, and judging her when she added colors that didn't make sense at the time. It pains me to think my father is okay with selling things my grandmother put her heart and soul into.

As we walk into the kitchen, I begin to feel nauseous. I'm tired, upset, and probably a little bit delirious. The creak of the old floor boards give away our location.

"Floo powder," my father says hastily. He handed me the fine, green, sand-like substance before stepping into our fireplace with me. I see the kitchen across from me.

I throw it on the floor, harder than I probably should, and my father says an address I've never heard of. I see the kitchen across from me.

A wave of nostalgia hits me. How I wish to make strawberry bread with her one last time. I can feel her delicate hands over mine as we lay flour over the cutting board. I wish I was young enough to get away with poking smiley faces in the dough. I really am not ready to let go of this place quite yet. I pinch myself to get rid of the tears welling in my eyes.

Then, the kitchen is gone.