A Belated Thanks - Harry Potter Fanfiction
Harry stood by the cold, iron gate for a moment, before lifting the latch and entering the churchyard. The sun had almost set and the gravestones threw strange shadows up all around him.
“Lumos.”
The light from the tip of his wand led his feet along the path the coffin had taken that afternoon, borne by Bill, Charlie, Percy, and George. Her death hadn’t been unexpected; she wasn’t as young as she used to be, and it had been a particularly cold winter. But nothing could have kept Molly Weasley inside the house. She still kept up her old routine: feed the chickens, collect the eggs, water the garden, chase away the occasional gnome from the wild roses...
Harry paused for a moment, reminiscing. He remembered helping Fred, George, and Ron de-gnome the garden the first time he had visited the Burrow. Mrs Weasley’s hugs as he got off the Hogwarts Express at the end of every eventful school year. Mrs Weasley trying to keep him, Ron, and Hermione apart to stop them going off hunting Horcruxes by themselves. Mrs Weasley nearly knocking down an invisible Harry as she ran at Bellatrix Lestrange.
He smiled to himself sadly.
Harry wished he’d thought to do this before she’d passed away, but that couldn’t be helped now - and he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t live with regrets. So he’d come to talk to her grave in the hope that she would hear him, wherever she was, and know he was thinking of her.
He stepped off the path and wove his way between marble angels and granite crosses to a perfectly white headstone which almost glowed in the twilight. Glancing around self-consciously, he lowered himself to the grass in front of a freshly dug pile of soil.
“Mrs Weasley,” he started awkwardly, then shook his head and tried again.
“Molly. I - I came back this evening to tell you something I should have said forty-odd years ago,” Harry said in a rush, looking down at the grass he had nervously started pulling through his fingers.
“I'm sorry I kept putting it off... until... until it was too late. Well, ‘thank you’ is what I'm trying to say. Thank you for being a mother to me - at Hogwarts, and afterwards. Thank you for sending me my first ever Christmas present in my first year.” The corners of Harry’s mouth twitched as he remembered his surprise. “And for every year after that.”
He stopped suddenly, looking up at the stone as if he were looking into her eyes. “And I never repaid you; although not even all the gold in Gringotts could buy a mother’s love. I'm sorry...”
Harry’s voice cracked. He looked back down at the grass as a drop of salty water fell from his right eye onto his hand.
“Most of all, thank you for adopting me as your son in all but name; especially because you already had your hands full. Because if I hadn’t been able to experience what Voldemort had taken away from me, I probably wouldn’t have been able to defeat him.”
Harry looked up again in sudden understanding, a fierce light burning in his emerald eyes.
“Dumbledore said the power I had was Love - but, really, it wasn’t my Love, it was the Love that you, and everyone else, had ever given me, stored up inside my soul. So, in all honesty, you were the one who defeated Voldemort, simply by caring.”
Looking up at the sky and the bright stars, Harry chuckled; he could see Sirius.
“Wherever you’ve gone, Molly, I hope you know what you did for me, and how grateful I am. Thank you.”
With that, Harry got up, dusted off his robes, and turned towards the gate - a smile on his face and peace in his heart.