*In thirteen years of marriage, it's the first time that Arthur truly doesn't know what to do. He stares at the clock hands on the table and understands immediately what's happened, and his heart sinks horribly, but there isn't time for that now. Swallowing back the tightness that warps round his throat, he looks more closely at Molly's face, re-reading her posture and pallor and tone into a horrible understanding - she's been up God knows how long, the twins died sometime in the night, and she hasn't - won't, can't - accept that fact. So she's been down here cleaning, making enough toast to feed the whole village, because her baby brothers are dead.
Alright.
After a moment more of standing very still, Arthur crosses to Molly and lays a warm hand on her shoulder and bends to press a kiss to the top of her head. He stays like that for a few seconds, squeezing his hand to make the tremor there stop, and shuts his eyes hard as he breathes in the scent of her hair, and prays for her sake that the levee won't break until he can get the boys out of the house.
Straightening slowly, he squeezes her shoulder one more time and clears his throat. He feels ill, and goes to get a scrap of paper from the nearby desk, speaking as he scrawls off a quick note to Muriel.*
Did it break, dear? Terribly sorry. Careless of me.
*Her voice is shaky, still, and she lets out a long and shuddering breath before speaking again. Her eyes wander over to his and the truth is evident in them: she needs him to take this one. She is capable of managing breakfast, and that is all.*
*And he will take it, because what else can he do? Another look at Molly and he stops writing; Errol won't get to Muriel fast enough. He's just going to have to send the boys by Floo and give Bill a note for her. Crossing out a few words and re-writing things, he folds the parchment and hesitates for a second on the way to the stairs. Taking each move very carefully, he drops into a couch at Molly's side and covers her hand with his, pressing it hard and speaking gently.*
*Molly had burst into tears only yesterday because Charlie brought in a bug. Over the weekend she'd sat on the kitchen floor and outright wept because she burned the bread, and had explained to Bill inbetween wiping her eyes with the dishcloth that pregnant ladies had all kinds of funny drugs shooting around their bloodstream and he needn't worry. She'd stumbled on an old Christmas card from Mum and Dad and sniffled a bit over it and that had been only last night.
The hands are off the clock, and her baby brothers are dead, and her eyes are dry. It's remarkably surreal. She blinks.*
*Okay. So that's where things are; he'd been half afraid of that, but at least it means he can get the kids out of the house before everything breaks, and after that -
After that, Arthur's working without a net.
Swallowing again, he kisses Molly's shoulder and keeps his voice as calm, as steady as he can.*
I'm going to get the boys up and send them to Muriel's, and then I'll be right back. You stay here, alright, Molly?
*After echoing it, Molly folds her hands around each other--stubby-fingered, red-knuckled from cleaning. They aren't lovely hands. She blinks at them for a moment, and then presses them to her mouth.*
*That isn't what she means and they both know it, but Arthur says it firmly anyway. As for himself...he considers taking a piece of toast just for Molly's sake, but he doesn't have the stomach for it.
Making himself move, he squeezes her shoulder as he stands, and then vanishes upstairs to try and do in five minutes what normally takes at least half an hour. Getting six boys, all between one and ten and two of them trouble multiplied, dressed and down to the fireplace is no small feat, but Arthur manages it. Bill's first, and he helps - the child is a saint, Arthur thinks sometimes, the way he is with his little brothers - keeping the twins bundled shoulder to shoulder in a sleepy blanketed huddle as he frog-marches them downstairs. Charlie's fine - seems to sense something's wrong, like Bill - and Percy's too obedient to be much of a problem. All in all it goes more smoothly than Arthur would've hoped, though he hates the look Bill gives him as he reappears at the bottom of the stairs, Ron in his arms. The boy's standing there near Molly with one hand on George's tousled head, clearly aware that some fundamental shift in the family's whole axis has happened, and his eyes ask what his words only hedge at.*
Dad - ?
*He wants to lie. Arthur rarely lies to his sons, but he wants more than anything to tell Bill it's going to be fine, that Mum's just a bit tired and it's all going to be alright. But the words fail in his throat, and he shifts Ron into one arm as he goes to scoop a handful of Floo powder from the jar on the mantle.*
You're just going to Auntie Muriel's for the day, Bill. *His voice is an undertone; this isn't for the other boys, who are mostly too sleepy to listen anyway.* I'll explain everything later. Take care of your brothers - I'll come get you this afternoon. Alright?
*Bill nods, too solemn for a ten-year-old, and Arthur's heart aches at the gravity in the boy's face. With a last regretful look at him, he tosses the powder into the fire and firmly tells it where to take them, and sees them all in safely, Ron held securely in Bill's arms. It's only then that he can look back to his wife, at the twisted bits of metal under her hand. He debates just running with her charade, but the idea of letting her just lock everything out....*
*She tries, really she does, to hold it together for the boys. But the little troop of them sleepy-eyed and confused are the first real concrete bit of proof that things are Not Alright and that they will never be, not really. She doesn't move but her eyes get larger and larger as they file neatly into the fireplace, and once they're all out of the house and Arthur comes back she takes a long, shuddering breath.*
Ehm. No. No, they haven't, not yet.
Maybe--
*But there it is, like something out of her wireless serials: at just the right moment, ding-dong, someone's at the door, hi-jinks ensue. Molly looks past Arthur at the front door and bursts into tears.*
*Arthur rather hates their front door, he thinks in a disjointed way, because the only people who use it and the sort who don't actually know his family - everyone they know comes in through the kitchen, always - and usually come with bad news.
He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to hear that those two boys are dead, not from someone who comes in through the front door and didn't even know them. (He still thinks of them as boys, sometimes, still remembers them as the cheeky eleven-year-olds he'd met on a train so many years ago, all bright smiles and freckles and good-natured pranks the entire ride to Hogwarts. The prefects had all known off the bat that the Prewett twins would be trouble, and Molly had been horrified, and Arthur had secretly thought they were magnificent.)
He goes, though, because someone should and Molly can't. As he'll do so much else in the next few days, he does it for her, to spare her having to hear this. It goes exactly as he'd thought it would: he steps outside and shuts the door behind to keep their words from drifting to his wife, and the two solemn Ministry employees regretfully inform him that Gideon and Fabian Prewett were murdered by Death Eaters during the night, the case is under investigation and they'll be kept informed, the Ministry is so sorry for their loss, the Prewetts were truly heroes and their deaths will be deeply felt by the whole country.
Arthur listens, sick and silent, and all he can think of the whole time are two little boys on a train years ago.*
Alright.
After a moment more of standing very still, Arthur crosses to Molly and lays a warm hand on her shoulder and bends to press a kiss to the top of her head. He stays like that for a few seconds, squeezing his hand to make the tremor there stop, and shuts his eyes hard as he breathes in the scent of her hair, and prays for her sake that the levee won't break until he can get the boys out of the house.
Straightening slowly, he squeezes her shoulder one more time and clears his throat. He feels ill, and goes to get a scrap of paper from the nearby desk, speaking as he scrawls off a quick note to Muriel.*
Did it break, dear? Terribly sorry. Careless of me.
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*Her voice is shaky, still, and she lets out a long and shuddering breath before speaking again. Her eyes wander over to his and the truth is evident in them: she needs him to take this one. She is capable of managing breakfast, and that is all.*
There's, ah, toast.
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...Molly....
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The hands are off the clock, and her baby brothers are dead, and her eyes are dry. It's remarkably surreal. She blinks.*
Ehm.
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After that, Arthur's working without a net.
Swallowing again, he kisses Molly's shoulder and keeps his voice as calm, as steady as he can.*
I'm going to get the boys up and send them to Muriel's, and then I'll be right back. You stay here, alright, Molly?
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*After echoing it, Molly folds her hands around each other--stubby-fingered, red-knuckled from cleaning. They aren't lovely hands. She blinks at them for a moment, and then presses them to her mouth.*
No one's going to eat the breakfast, are they.
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*That isn't what she means and they both know it, but Arthur says it firmly anyway. As for himself...he considers taking a piece of toast just for Molly's sake, but he doesn't have the stomach for it.
Making himself move, he squeezes her shoulder as he stands, and then vanishes upstairs to try and do in five minutes what normally takes at least half an hour. Getting six boys, all between one and ten and two of them trouble multiplied, dressed and down to the fireplace is no small feat, but Arthur manages it. Bill's first, and he helps - the child is a saint, Arthur thinks sometimes, the way he is with his little brothers - keeping the twins bundled shoulder to shoulder in a sleepy blanketed huddle as he frog-marches them downstairs. Charlie's fine - seems to sense something's wrong, like Bill - and Percy's too obedient to be much of a problem. All in all it goes more smoothly than Arthur would've hoped, though he hates the look Bill gives him as he reappears at the bottom of the stairs, Ron in his arms. The boy's standing there near Molly with one hand on George's tousled head, clearly aware that some fundamental shift in the family's whole axis has happened, and his eyes ask what his words only hedge at.*
Dad - ?
*He wants to lie. Arthur rarely lies to his sons, but he wants more than anything to tell Bill it's going to be fine, that Mum's just a bit tired and it's all going to be alright. But the words fail in his throat, and he shifts Ron into one arm as he goes to scoop a handful of Floo powder from the jar on the mantle.*
You're just going to Auntie Muriel's for the day, Bill. *His voice is an undertone; this isn't for the other boys, who are mostly too sleepy to listen anyway.* I'll explain everything later. Take care of your brothers - I'll come get you this afternoon. Alright?
*Bill nods, too solemn for a ten-year-old, and Arthur's heart aches at the gravity in the boy's face. With a last regretful look at him, he tosses the powder into the fire and firmly tells it where to take them, and sees them all in safely, Ron held securely in Bill's arms. It's only then that he can look back to his wife, at the twisted bits of metal under her hand. He debates just running with her charade, but the idea of letting her just lock everything out....*
...No one from the Ministry's come about it yet?
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Ehm. No. No, they haven't, not yet.
Maybe--
*But there it is, like something out of her wireless serials: at just the right moment, ding-dong, someone's at the door, hi-jinks ensue. Molly looks past Arthur at the front door and bursts into tears.*
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He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to hear that those two boys are dead, not from someone who comes in through the front door and didn't even know them. (He still thinks of them as boys, sometimes, still remembers them as the cheeky eleven-year-olds he'd met on a train so many years ago, all bright smiles and freckles and good-natured pranks the entire ride to Hogwarts. The prefects had all known off the bat that the Prewett twins would be trouble, and Molly had been horrified, and Arthur had secretly thought they were magnificent.)
He goes, though, because someone should and Molly can't. As he'll do so much else in the next few days, he does it for her, to spare her having to hear this. It goes exactly as he'd thought it would: he steps outside and shuts the door behind to keep their words from drifting to his wife, and the two solemn Ministry employees regretfully inform him that Gideon and Fabian Prewett were murdered by Death Eaters during the night, the case is under investigation and they'll be kept informed, the Ministry is so sorry for their loss, the Prewetts were truly heroes and their deaths will be deeply felt by the whole country.
Arthur listens, sick and silent, and all he can think of the whole time are two little boys on a train years ago.*
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