A/N – Hello this is my entry to MorningLilies 'Forgotten Family ties comp' on HPFC, Please Read and once your done Review – Pretty please : )

For – MorningLilies 'Forgotten Family ties competition' on HPFC

Characters – Lucy and Arthur

Prompt- Candle

Of Purple Hair and Aeroplanes

Lucy's your little firecracker, feisty and out of control, like a firework – a Catherine wheel spinning across the sky and exploding, that's the thing about Lucy though, there has to be someone there to pick up the pieces, you like to think that's your job

o.0.o

You've known there was something special about her from the moment you first held her in your arms "we're calling her Lucy" Percy had said "It means light – suits her don't you think".

"It does" you agree.

o.0.o

On your sixty-fifth birthday she arrives with a badly wrapped present underneath her arm, "Don't be too disappointed" Percy mumbles in his ear "she chose it all by herself". You nod and wonder what exactly it could be, not that you have to wait long to find out – she shoves it under your nose proudly almost as soon as she's finished giving you a hug and a sloppy kiss on the cheek, "Open it now, Grandpa" she had demanded loudly, and you had, peeling off the paper and picking up the light book in one hand, lost for words

"Thank you Lucy" you say throat constricted "This is fantastic – it's exactly what I wanted", and it is – The way things work - Aeroplanes

o.0.o

You see every fight she has with her father, every defiant stare, through all the weeks she refuses to speak to Percy, refuses to look at him at Sunday lunch, You watch the family stare at her, listen to Audrey's half disguised mumblings about how "it's just a phase, she'll grow out of it soon" and George and Ron's not too subtle jokes about "how the hell Percy (perfect prefect Percy) got a daughter like, well, that." You know differently, of course, You've seen all of these kids grow up and watching Lucy, you sees a spark of yourself residing in her flowing dark red hair, see a familiar glint of George's mischief in her sparkling eyes, finds just a tiny fleck of Percy in the way she holds the model aeroplane – newly completed- up for inspection.

o.0.o

She dyes her hair purple and refuses to give her dad an explanation, doesn't meet his eye as he rants and raves about her "making a spectacle of herself".

She comes instead, to see her grandfather, perches on the edge of one of your rickety old chairs in the burrow's kitchen, helps you take apart a toaster. She tells you that no, she didn't mean to upset her father, she just wanted everyone to stop comparing her to Molly, "I thought" she explains "that if we looked a bit more different everyone would see that I'm nothing like her, that I don't want to be!"

And you nod, smile, pat her gently on the shoulder, whisper that she's her own person, that she can be whatever she wants to be. That you thinks is how she ends up working for you, in your office with no window and no secretary, just a precariously over full in-tray and a whole wide world of enthusiasm.

o.0.o

Your the one she tells all about her boyfriend, how her father doesn't approve of him – Lorcan Scamander, a wild blond boy, with strange, crazy, imaginative ideas. She tells you about Molly's fiancée, a smart, sensible man, who calls Percy sir, and asked him respectfully for Molly's hand in marriage. You sigh and look concerned in all the right places, laugh with her when she begins the story of how she'd brought Lorcan home for the weekend and how he'd set her father's work papers on fire trying to get rid of the Nargles.

o.0.o

You're the first one she tells that she's getting married – "bit of a shotgun wedding, if truth be told" she'd explained grimacing and you look up over the newspaper your holding at her tearstained face trying to work out if she's crying out of happiness or terror. You say congratulations, anyway, you know that no-one else will. A week later you're writing out the invitations together when she puts down her pen and asks you to walk her down the aisle, and you say, "Yes of course, if you're sure that's what you want". She replies that it is and so you do – a girl of twenty, dressed all in white, on the arm of her aged greying grandfather.

o.0.o

And you're the first one to welcome Lorcan to the family, pulling him aside after the speeches are well and truly over, you get a sense of just how right this boy is for your Lucy, you wonder if Percy has yet bothered to look past the young man's slightly eccentric demeanour and figured out just how much the man loves his daughter – somehow you don't think he has.

o.0.o

Lorcan repays the favour a couple of months later, telling you first, that Lucy has gone into labour. You can see the fear in his eyes – it's much too early, much, much too early. You follow him, and after scribbling a quick note to Molly, grabbing your jacket, you're out the door. The baby is born very prematurely and the healers say that they don't know if he'll make it through the night. You see the entire Weasley clan gathered together exchanging apprehensive, horrified looks, you watch Percy slumped back on his chair and Audrey crying softly on his shoulder. When you can't take it anymore you stand up sharply and wander away to the hospitals tiny chapel, light candle after candle in the hope that Lucy and Lorcan's son will be fine.

You must have fallen asleep because you're woken the next morning by a Lorcan gently shaking your shoulder. He answers your unspoken question almost immediately; with a wide grin, he announces that the baby's going to be fine, "Come up and meet him" he orders "Lucy wants to see you."

You follow him up the stairs and along a windy corridor until you reach a door, "just through here" Lorcan says, pushing open the door. You walk in, just behind him and take in the sight of Lucy sitting up in a bed cradling a tiny ginger bundle in her arms. You would have danced if your arthritis would have let you, and screamed with joy if you weren't so afraid of waking up the baby, so instead you give her a tight hug.

She bites her lip, nudging Lorcan – sitting on the edge of the bed- with her toe. Their eyes meet for a split second and when Lorcan looks away Lucy is smiling, "We're going to call him Arthur" she announces suddenly, "after the man who made the biggest possible difference to my life". You look at her awestruck and she hands you the baby. In that moment you realize that although you love all of your grandchildren equally, sometimes, just sometimes, you think Lucy might, might, just be your favourite