astra inclinant, sed non obligant ; the stars incline us, they do not bind us

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Arden Diggory was never quite like her family. She didn't know what it was, really, whether it was because she didn't aim to work in the Ministry of Magic, generally spent her days at school generating a mass of friends and pissing around with them whilst somehow maintaining pretty good grades (she was smart, that she had in common with them) or if it was because she just didn't hold magic as in high esteem as them; didn't believe it to be her most important characteristic or defining moment. She just had it, and she treated it as such. 

The rift between herself and her parents had begun early. She didn't eat her vegetables enough, refused to do any homework for the tutor they had hired to give Arden and Amos the best possible start to their joint education once they began Hogwarts, and was just generally argumentative. She didn't like the dress her mum had picked out for an occasion, didn't like how her father didn't seem to pay much attention to her and spent more time with Amos playing Quidditch and hated how different they seemed to treat her forever do-gooder of a brother in comparison to her. 

She wasn't even that bad, but she allowed their assumptions of her to be her base and only built upwards. If they believed her to be such an awful person, Arden wouldn't hesitate to become that person. There was no point in trying to change their mind, and she had absolutely no plans  to continue her relationship with them the moment she could live beneath anyone elses' roof. So she became the person they thought she was, someone outgoing, daring, kind and fun - lovable to everyone else but them.

Arden wasn't a Hufflepuff either, which had broken her father's heart. Her rebellion against her parents expectations was only beginning then, and the moment she sat down on that stool in front of crowds of other witches and wizards and forced the Sorting Hat to put her anywhere else - she was what they supposedly called a 'hat-stall', but in Arden's case it wasn't on account of the hat's confusion but her argumentative state and iron-clad will to be placed in any other hat that caused the groundbreaking eleven-minute consideration. She would later turn this into anecdote for which the main focus was how much she annoyed the other students; as she sat down, proud, at the table for Gryffindor students a flood of complaints was all she heard until the feast appeared. 

Gryffindor was a better suited house for her, so she didn't mind so much when her mother and father expressed their disappointment in the next letter sent. The tone varied so much from her twin's, which was singing his praises for something he had no control over. And as that idea solidifed in Arden's mind, so did the fact that nothing she did would ever be good enough for them, and Godric, she was going to act like it.

And thus came an onslaught of letters home from her head of house, detentions for not doing homework, for talking too much in class, wandering around the school past curfew, slipping dye into Slytherin water pipes before daily showers, stealing from the kitchens, being found with her friends in the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, detentions for everything she could ever get a detention for. By third year she was in the Quidditch team whilst Amos failed his tryout for the second time, the biggest 'fuck you' she could manage to her father and then winning the House Cup, spending her days running around the castle in a mixture of attending classes and skipping.

By fourth year she had dipped into the dating scene, exclusively dating those her parents would not approve them with hints of smiles to a fifth year Ravenclaw she had bumped into once in the library, promising her knew mentor in the form of seventh-year Molly Weasley that she wasn't drinking at the Quidditch celebration parties. They got rather close that year, Molly becoming a sibling figure that she never would achieve with her brother, who she had only grown further apart from.

She went back home for summer by then as well; Christmas, Easter and half-terms were just too much hassle for her to deal with. Arden got enough from her parents when she was at school in the form of many, many Howlers, and just didn't want to experience that at home.

It had taken a while, and he had watched on as she dated a scary amount of Slytherins and other Gryffindors in a single year in attempts to push herself into self-destruction and fufill her parents' propehcy for her, but it was in Arden's fifth year when the now sixth year Ravenclaw named Elias August had asked her out. Her parents knew they had lost her when summer came and they stood on the platform waiting for their children, both of whom had just completed their O.W.L.s, and they found their daughter walking hand-in-hand with someone who fitted a description in Amos's letters perfectly. And she was smiling up at him, and spending her entire summer writing to him and meeting up with him. 

His influence reigned her behaviour in a bit, and Arden was a little more focused during her sixth year, a smile on her face as she watched her boyfriend graduate. He began his training as an Auror as soon as he left school, but even that didn't stop them from continue their almost perfect relationship, and now that she was in her final year, Arden could actually make plans for her real life - with him. She already knew what she wanted to do; begin working at the Daily Prophet or one of the many wizard radio shows, and with him as an Auror it meant that they would no doubt continue to live interesting lives.

And although she was quite the rebel, Arden didn't quite mind the idea of being there for her boyfriend after a hard day of training, as long as it didn't interrupt her own plans. 

But they wouldn't make it that far.

Arden was seventeen when she didn't return to the castle after the Halloween visit and instead stayed the night in the Three Broomsticks. She was only a month or so older and staying back for Christmas holidays when she was spending nights in the Hospital Wing for a bout of sickness that she swore was a bug, but Madam Pomfrey approached her and quietly informed her that she was pregnant.

Arden was freshly eighteen when she told Elias August she was pregnant and deciding on keeping it. Elias was teary-eyed and smiling, but solemn weeks later when she had to visit him in St. Mungos after an incident during his Auror training, and as only eighteen when even magical medicine couldn't save him, leaving Arden alone in a world where, really, she had no one. 

Grieving was placed on hold when Madam Pomfrey and Minevra McGonagall, who both agreed to help her keep it a secret, told her it could hurt her baby, if she still wanted to keep it. And Arden couldn't think of anything she wanted more. Her parents hated it when she told them, even though it wasn't even born yet, and they hated her for being so irresponsible. 

She had expected this response, but before she had had Elias. Arden was alone in the world by eighteen with a baby on the way, and she had N.E.W.T.s to get through first. She would graduate at the end of June, in her eighth month, and then she wouldn't even have her school friends to keep her company.

Molly Weasley was three years out of Hogwarts, rosy-faced, married to her high school sweetheart and rocking her seventh-month year old baby through the noise of a summer storm when there was a knock on her door and she opened it to find her old tutee, tears bleeding from the corners of her eyes and clutching her Hogwarts trunk, drenched in rain. Molly had invited her in, woken Arthur from where he had fallen asleep by the fire, exhausted from having his own newborn, and both had stared as Arden had opened her coat to reveal a belly swollen from pregnancy.

Arden had lived in the spare bedroom of The Burrow for a month when she gave birth to her daughter. August-Louise, one for her father, and one for the author of her favoutie book. Arden had been eighteen when her very best friend had come into the world, and had cradled her in her arms with no intent of ever letting her go. 

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Bill Weasley thought that he fell in love with August-Louise Diggory when he was five. 

Not because she was pretty, although all the other kids in Ottery St. Catchpole said she was the prettiest and always made sure she was the princess in their games of Knights and Dragons, but because she was definitely his best friend and he definitely got on with her the most.

He had told her as much, to which she told him that he shouldn't be so silly, and then asked if he would like to come over for dinner - her mum was making toad in the hole again, and they had stawberries for pudding. 

They had grown up together; Molly had insisted upon allowing Arden and her newborn daughter live with them right up until the point that she had somewhere else to go, somewhere not too far and whilst she had the job to pay for it as well. She couldn't turn her away, knew that she would hate her if she did, and her and Arthur quite liked the extra company, and the childcare for Bill when they were busy with work and chores. Molly cared far too much about the poor girl to turn her out at any point, and what Molly said went. Not that Arthur would have done any different either.

August was nearing her second birthday when that finally happened. Arden had been left a small sum of money by an aunt who had died, and combined with the plentiful hours she had been working as a secretary in an office the next town over, she had the ability to buy one of the small  houses that ran just off of Ottery St. Catchpole's high street. 

It was small, but it was home and in walking distance of the Weasleys. 

Arden, who had been alone in the world for so long, found herself a best friend in her daughter. She was always there, babbling away on the small sofa tucked into their living room, singing away to the nonsensical tune of some muggle TV show, falling asleep on Arden's lap as she read The Tales of Beedle the Bard in the evenings. And when she got older, she was there to go on shopping trips and call her mum pretty when things got a little tough, always ready to offer a listening ear. 

And in her time off, August quickly turned to books and spent far more time with Bill Weasley. They had grown up together, after all, the couple of years in The Burrow lay a foundation for it to build even further, spending almost every day together - muddy shoes and damp denim hems, scabs on their knees and bruises on their elbows became their normal. It wasn't only Bill who August got along with as the many other Weasley siblings joined them, and suddenly their summers of games and playing outside the lopsided home grew a whole lot bigger.

And as August developed a yearning to spend every second outside with her closest of friends, Arden managed to progress with her wishes of becoming a writer. After a long while and many visits to the Daily Prophet offices in Diagon Alley, Arden got a job there. She was to write a new column - one that was small and the higer-ups didn't seem to think much of in that day and age. But the woman didn't care - because she was supposed to be meeting famed wizards and witches to collect interviews that would also double for the information placed below their moving portrait on a Chocolate Frog card.

Which was how she met Newt Scammander (a dream for any young wizard who had studied Care of Magical Creatures throughout majority of their Hogwarts career). He was nice, far nicer than she expected, and Arden's skill and knowledge of magizoology seemed to come in handy; Newt continued to keep asking her over for cups of tea, and wished to meet August as well. It would be there that Arden's quietly-kept concerns to do with her daughter's magical status diffused entirely; during a visit to meet Newt's newest addition to his collection of animals, a small crup puppy, a bookcase had very almost fallen on her head, only stopped by an invisible magical force. 

Arden rejoiced, and this display showed that when it came to the two best friends turning eleven, they would recieve their Hogwarts letters and have a definite companion when they went to school.

The year after Ginny - the last of the clan and the only girl, someone who August quickly grew to love - both August and Bill made their way to Hogwarts. Both, much to their parents joy, were sorted into Gryffindor (it carried on family tradition and pissed off a certain daughter's parents even further). And now that August-Louise was at Hogwarts, it gave her a chance to properly meet the women who were her godmothers.

Professor Minerva McGonagall hardly favoured her students. She wished to remain as fair as possible and do her job well; there were far too many idiots in the world for her not to try her very hardest to give many of the more potential idiots (who had wands - there were idiots, and then there were idiots with wands). But she had failed that resolve on several occasions. And the very first time, it was when a terrified Arden Diggory, already half-way estranged from her family and pregnant, appeared in her office alongisde Madam Pomfrey who was the very first to know of her condition.

Then, Minerva had decided that her resolve meant nothing if it meant she couldn't support her students. She wasn't going to have children, she knew that, but in the face of someone who couldn't even turn to her own family for help and love, Professor McGonagall knew that there was a role she could meet somewhere between the middle of being their teacher and safeguarder and caring of their wellbeing on a more personal level. She wasn't going to allow Arden Diggory to fall into ruin. No, she was going to help her - and she was going to make sure she had the best and most comfortable final year at Hogwarts one possibly could. 

Madam Pomfrey was, admittedly, was not trained in the procedures needed for a pregnant student. It happened far more often than people thought, but nobody was as determined to keep their baby as Arden Diggory was, and she wasn't going to try and convince her otherwise if that was the path chosen. However, it meant that several times in the year Arden would need to be escorted off of schoool property and taken to the nearest clinic.

Which thus lead to Arden being coached through majority of her pregnancy by several very Scottish nurses and doctors, met by her boyfriend when possible and escorted by Madam Pomfrey or Professor McGonagall. It was also the two women so devoted to their jobs and helping this student who had to break the news of his death to her. They stuck to her through everything and yet, after she found herself taken in by Molly and Arthur Weasley and moving into her own home, it was rare for Arden to be able see the two women who had helped her so much.

But now, as the terror of the whirlwind of August-Louise descended onto Hogwarts, they were lucky to not face that understandable, faultless fate. Madam Pomfrey kept a watchful eye over her as she ran circles around other students alongside Bill Weasley and herrself, patching her up whenever there was a singed eyebrow and a disgruntled Severus Snape, or a scrape on her knee or she had managed to rise the highest out of the all of the first years partaking in a flying lesson and taken a tuumble that ended up with her broken arm and tears bleeding from the corners of her eyes.

And Professor McGonagall was attacked by her more... intelligent side, which happened to include quite the ability to make sarcastic comments and talk rings around anyone. But she was a sweet girl, far too sweet to hurt anyone really, and Minerva found herself as fond of August as she could have expected to be. She was skilled at almost all of her lessons, excelling particularly in Care of Magical Creatures like her mother, as well as Transifguration, Potions and Herbology. 

She would enjoy her schools, August easily achieving the highest grades possible in her OWLs, joining her best friend in being labelled as Gryffindor prefects, and spending all of their holidays in the exact same place. When it came to her final year there, Arden was most pleased to find that her daughter didn't become pregnant but instead was Head Girl, and graduated with ease. 

And now, August was out in the world with millions of prospects in front of her. Bill had already achieved his goal and was to be hired as a Curse-Breaker for Gringotts by the end of the summer. She was yet to decide her path, but in the days of sun in the countryside surrounding Ottery St. Catchpole, she had more than enough time to decide and only hope that complications wouldn't present themselves throughout.

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