Gift for: nyladnam04 - How it begins again [2/4]
Title: How it begins again
Gift for: nyladnam04
Author: aperfectsong
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG
Word Count: 12,713
Summary: After the last battle, life at the Burrow goes on. A story in four chapters and four perspectives (Ginny Weasley, Molly Weasley, George Weasley, and Harry Potter)
Author's Notes: Sorry, I couldn't really work your quote in. But I hope it's in there somewhere in spirit. I got in most of your requested items though, so I hope you enjoy the story! Sorry about the length!
return to part 1
Chapter 2. Portrait of a mother (after the war)
Molly Weasley stands alone in the kitchen taking long sips from a lukewarm cup of tea. She is neither tired, nor thirsty, but swallows mouthful after mouthful out of dutiful habit.
She is dressed for a day of homemaking: a long paisley housedress, patched and sewn together where the material became too thin. The dress is covered by a white apron with careful embroidery on its ratted edges. On the front, a long, thin pocket, perfectly at arm’s length, houses her wand.
The paint on the ceiling is beginning to peel, she notices between sips. And the windows need scrubbing. Her eyes travel to the sitting room where a pile of soot sits on the carpet in front of the fireplace and Ron-sized footprints track it up the stairs. She sighs. Tea first. She takes a long sip and turns to the window.
Outside, Molly’s youngest winds her way down the garden path, more alive than Molly has seen her in months. The thought occurs to her that perhaps she should have given Ginny more to do around the house since she’s been home. Then her world-weary seventeen-year-old daughter could have spent less time locked in her room or flitting around the garden at night on broomstick. Less time in spent in silence and solitude.
Taking care of her family was the very thing that snapped Molly back to life again after the funeral. All of her children were home, even Bill and Fleur, even Charlie. She had meals to prepare, a house to keep clean, a garden to tend, shopping to attend to, the comfort of her guests to insure, and a brood of hens whose eggs don’t collect themselves. Hardly time to take a deep breath, let alone stew in the despair she kept hidden close to her heart.
Though she couldn’t help but be reminded of the days after her own brothers were killed, back during Voldemort’s first war, when she had thrown herself into taking care of the children-there were so many young ones about the house then, and her youngest still on the way. Her only daughter - born of all those old sorrows; carried, then set adrift on a sea of worry, fear, and yes, Molly acknowledges, grief. Can something like that be passed on to a child? That understanding of death and loss? Even when she was young, Molly thought she saw it, or imagined it, in her daughter’s eyes. As if she not only understood death, but also watched it with dread and defiance as it buzzed around their heads. As if she had been waiting for it, expecting it to strike.
She never witnessed any acknowledgement of it in her twins. Not until death’s hand tugged at Fred’s collar, dragging his shadow onto the next life. She couldn’t make sense of it: it seemed that all her twins’ energy, all their joie de vivre should have kept them tethered to this life. It had been Ron and Harry and Arthur she worried most for. The guilt of that realization kept at her those first few weeks.
But she should have known. Death is an indiscriminate foe. There is no such thing as safety in times of war: first her brothers, and now, her son. Her bright-eyed, brave, and beautiful son.
Molly dabs the corners of her eyes with the edge of her apron and washes her empty cup of tea.
They didn’t come through unscathed, not any of them. Coming into adulthood right at the time of war, the way she did, the very thing she worked so hard to spare them from. She had never wanted her war to become her children’s war. She would have given nearly anything to prevent it.
She still dreams of her poor lost boy. Only they aren’t exactly dreams. More like memories. Early on, she would wake transplanted to the days before the war and for a few sleepy moments, breath easily. But re-memory would come fast and sharp: draining air from her lungs, tears from her eyes. Her son. To know he would never grow older than he had been in that last moment.
She closes her eyes and takes deep breaths. She has a house to clean, vegetables to pick, a meal to prepare, a family to heal and care for. But how long, she wonders, will healing take? How long until they escape this sea of sorrow that war has made of their lives?
Sometimes she forgets the war is really over and that much of the danger has passed. Out of habit, she finds herself watching the family clock with that same worried trepidation. She is still afraid for them. Maybe it is a mark of having survived two wars fought so close to home, both within the same eighteen years, this fear that she will always carry in the hollow of her bones. Is it the same for her children? Do they, like she does, grasp their wands when a loud noise startles them? Or when a door opens too suddenly? Or upon hearing the pop of apparation close by? Do they, too, live their lives in anticipation of the next great danger or tragedy? And will this fear be another thing that slowly trickles away along with the passage of time, like anger, like grief?
Molly withdraws her wand and casts a scourging charm on the table and floor. In the sitting room, she scoops up the soot with an old metal dust pan, and with her apron, wipes Floo Powder from the photographs on the mantel. The carpet takes a little more effort to work clean with the combined power of magic and manual labor. And then, with the opportunity of Ginny being out in the yard, she goes into her room to collect dirty laundry.
Stooping down to pick a pair of socks, she notices a letter under the bed, under siege by a family of dust bunnies looking to make it a home. Molly goes back downstairs for her dustpan and broom and scoops them up.
“Now what are you doing here?” she address the dust bunnies. “Let’s get you outside.”
They move and jiggle in the pan, but allow her to bring them out the garden door, where she sets them down on the path. “Go on now.” They hop away into the bushes.
Molly glances toward the orchard where Ginny and Harry are still picking apples. Their backs are toward her, but Ginny’s hair blazes forward in the breeze. From this distance, Molly can make out a few red apples dotting the upper branches.
Back inside, Molly resumes collecting laundry. She climbs the next flight up to Bill and Charlie’s old room to collect Harry’s from the basket in the corner.
Then she pulls open the door to George’s room, setting the laundry basket down in the hallway. She allows her eyes to skim over Fred’s bed and dresser. There is a photograph of the twins and Percy in their school robes centered on top of it. Molly allows herself to stare at their young, smiling faces, watches them wave at her for a few moments before she forces herself to turn away. She knows most of his possessions are still at the Diagon Alley apartment none of them can bear to visit, or in the closed trunk at the foot of the bed. She rests her hands on the surface of the dresser and they come away dusty. She sighs. Then she opens one of the drawers. A too-small jumper with an orange-stitched F stares back at her. Another drawer contains mismatched socks and a few t-shirts. She pushes the drawer closed and the brass latch quivers in place.
How can George stand sleeping in the room where they grew up together? All of those memories. The walls are covered completely with posters of Quidditch stars, muggle rock musicians and photographs of the twins with their friends at school: Fred and Angelina Johnson in their formal wear before the ball, George with his arm around Katie Bell on the dance floor. There is a photo of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, back when Oliver Wood was captain and Harry was a first year. Molly can’t bring herself to look at the others, to see the two of them together and smiling anymore. She picks up George’s pile of laundry and rushes from the room.
Downstairs in the scullery, she fills a large basin and leaves the clothes to soak in soapy water. In the kitchen, she begins a grocery list. She lets thoughts of each item occupy her.
Molly is in the middle of writing ground ginger when the kitchen door opens, startling her. Her quill scrapes upward in a scribble and Ginny rushes into the kitchen red faced with Harry following at her heels.
“The apples?” Molly asks.
Her daughter does not turn, but continues on toward the stairs. Her head is angled downward so that Molly cannot see her face. It seems obvious that her youngest is crying, which even Molly knows is rare. Something happened. Immediately, Molly imagines the worst.
“Are you okay, Ginny? What happened? Is she hurt? Did she fall?” She addresses the last two questions to Harry, as her daughter just continues on up the stairs.
Harry obediently turns around and responds, “She’s okay. Just… she’s fine.”
Then Molly realizes what must have happened. Some sort of argument. Part of her wants to scold Harry for whatever he must have said to make Ginny cry, but some other part wants to thank him for finally getting through the shell Ginny has spent the greater part of her life erecting. There’s something about being the youngest child in a big family, and the only girl besides, that brings on the necessity of such a barrier.
Upstairs, Ginny’s door clicks closed. Molly knows it’s too late for Harry to follow. In that same moment, he seems to realize it as well. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
“The apples are outside. I’ll go get them,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it, dear. These two old legs aren’t good for nothing yet.”
“I’ll get them,” Harry repeats, more adamantly this time.
So she lets him go, but stands in the doorway looking after him. When he is close enough to the orchard, he skillfully levitates both heavy baskets and brings them into the kitchen.
But after setting them down, he seems at a loss of what to do next.
“How about another cup of tea, Harry?” she asks him, already filling the kettle.
“Thanks.” He sits down at the table and runs a hand through his unruly hair.
She feels like she has to say something. So she opens her mouth and lets the words tumble out. “I can’t say I completely understand any of my children, or what they’re going through right now, Harry. But that one, she’s always needed an extra shove. It’s the Prewett in her. My side of the line is all stubborn and independent.”
At this, he smiles, but doesn’t say anything.
“Are you doing alright?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Weasley.”
The tea kettle begins its high-pitched whistle and she pours the boiling water over tea into two mugs. Retrieving the sugar from a cabinet, she levitates the cups to the kitchen table and sits down across from Harry.
He reaches for the mug, touching it with a fingertip to test the temperature. He spoons sugar in and swirls it around.
Molly tries not to, but finds herself looking at the lightning bolt scar. A part of her thought it might disappear with Voldemort’s death. She doesn’t know why she thought that. Physical scars, emotional scars, they never truly heal over completely. Deep inside her, she knows this. She looks away.
“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do after the reconstruction? Are you going back to school?”
He takes a sip.
“I’m not sure. Kingsley seems convinced I could pass the Auror examinations on reputation, but that doesn’t seem fair.”
A thought occurs to her that nothing so far in Harry Potter’s life has been determined by what’s fair. But it is not something to voice aloud to the young man.
“I heard that the new Headmistress is planning an accelerated program to make up for the questionable instruction last year. And for the muggle borns who couldn’t attend.”
Harry nods at this. She is sure he already knows. Probably from the Headmistress herself. Or maybe from the Minister of Magic.
“It would be nice to be at Hogwarts again. How is the rebuilding going?” she asks.
“Seems to be on track. They’re on schedule to open right after the New Year.”
“I’ve been dreading it,” Molly admits. She removes the tea bag from her mug and sets it down on the saucer.
“Mrs. Weasley?”
“You’ve all grown so much,” she manages, and then looks down at her tea cup. “Maybe George and Percy will stay here for a while. But not forever. Can’t keep them forever. It’s just so quiet here when everyone is gone to school. Too many empty rooms.”
Harry doesn’t hazard a reply.
“And I know the war is over and it’s safe out there now. But it doesn’t stop me from worrying. At least with everyone home, I know they’re safe.”
“They’ll be safe,” Harry tells her.
She looks over at him. This boy. She remembers Hagrid carrying his limp and lifeless body up to the entrance of Hogwarts. It was his sacrifice, not her own wand, that saved her daughter’s life. It was his sacrifice that saved all of them.
This child. This orphaned child. He is sitting across from her in her kitchen and she feels a glow emanating from him, something she hasn’t been able to correctly identify before this moment. This glow of life coming off him radiates toward her. Some kind of raw and untouched magic, older than time. His will to live catches her, mid-breath, and something in her shifts.
“I can’t help her,” he says. “I can distract her, but that’s it. She won’t talk to me about it.”
“Harry.” Molly extends her hand across the table and lays it atop his. While hers is marred by wrinkles and purple veins, his is lined with nameless white scars. The words come to her swiftly and purposefully, as if plucked, ready, from the tree branches outside. “Everyone has to navigate their own path out of despair. You can’t just lead her away from it.”
A wisp of steam comes off of the hot mug. Molly watches it dissipate and ascend. Harry’s response comes slow and Molly can hear in it the history of his own sorrows as plainly as if he were voicing them aloud. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
continue to part 3
Gift for: nyladnam04
Author: aperfectsong
Pairing: Harry/Ginny
Rating: PG
Word Count: 12,713
Summary: After the last battle, life at the Burrow goes on. A story in four chapters and four perspectives (Ginny Weasley, Molly Weasley, George Weasley, and Harry Potter)
Author's Notes: Sorry, I couldn't really work your quote in. But I hope it's in there somewhere in spirit. I got in most of your requested items though, so I hope you enjoy the story! Sorry about the length!
return to part 1
Chapter 2. Portrait of a mother (after the war)
Molly Weasley stands alone in the kitchen taking long sips from a lukewarm cup of tea. She is neither tired, nor thirsty, but swallows mouthful after mouthful out of dutiful habit.
She is dressed for a day of homemaking: a long paisley housedress, patched and sewn together where the material became too thin. The dress is covered by a white apron with careful embroidery on its ratted edges. On the front, a long, thin pocket, perfectly at arm’s length, houses her wand.
The paint on the ceiling is beginning to peel, she notices between sips. And the windows need scrubbing. Her eyes travel to the sitting room where a pile of soot sits on the carpet in front of the fireplace and Ron-sized footprints track it up the stairs. She sighs. Tea first. She takes a long sip and turns to the window.
Outside, Molly’s youngest winds her way down the garden path, more alive than Molly has seen her in months. The thought occurs to her that perhaps she should have given Ginny more to do around the house since she’s been home. Then her world-weary seventeen-year-old daughter could have spent less time locked in her room or flitting around the garden at night on broomstick. Less time in spent in silence and solitude.
Taking care of her family was the very thing that snapped Molly back to life again after the funeral. All of her children were home, even Bill and Fleur, even Charlie. She had meals to prepare, a house to keep clean, a garden to tend, shopping to attend to, the comfort of her guests to insure, and a brood of hens whose eggs don’t collect themselves. Hardly time to take a deep breath, let alone stew in the despair she kept hidden close to her heart.
Though she couldn’t help but be reminded of the days after her own brothers were killed, back during Voldemort’s first war, when she had thrown herself into taking care of the children-there were so many young ones about the house then, and her youngest still on the way. Her only daughter - born of all those old sorrows; carried, then set adrift on a sea of worry, fear, and yes, Molly acknowledges, grief. Can something like that be passed on to a child? That understanding of death and loss? Even when she was young, Molly thought she saw it, or imagined it, in her daughter’s eyes. As if she not only understood death, but also watched it with dread and defiance as it buzzed around their heads. As if she had been waiting for it, expecting it to strike.
She never witnessed any acknowledgement of it in her twins. Not until death’s hand tugged at Fred’s collar, dragging his shadow onto the next life. She couldn’t make sense of it: it seemed that all her twins’ energy, all their joie de vivre should have kept them tethered to this life. It had been Ron and Harry and Arthur she worried most for. The guilt of that realization kept at her those first few weeks.
But she should have known. Death is an indiscriminate foe. There is no such thing as safety in times of war: first her brothers, and now, her son. Her bright-eyed, brave, and beautiful son.
Molly dabs the corners of her eyes with the edge of her apron and washes her empty cup of tea.
They didn’t come through unscathed, not any of them. Coming into adulthood right at the time of war, the way she did, the very thing she worked so hard to spare them from. She had never wanted her war to become her children’s war. She would have given nearly anything to prevent it.
She still dreams of her poor lost boy. Only they aren’t exactly dreams. More like memories. Early on, she would wake transplanted to the days before the war and for a few sleepy moments, breath easily. But re-memory would come fast and sharp: draining air from her lungs, tears from her eyes. Her son. To know he would never grow older than he had been in that last moment.
She closes her eyes and takes deep breaths. She has a house to clean, vegetables to pick, a meal to prepare, a family to heal and care for. But how long, she wonders, will healing take? How long until they escape this sea of sorrow that war has made of their lives?
Sometimes she forgets the war is really over and that much of the danger has passed. Out of habit, she finds herself watching the family clock with that same worried trepidation. She is still afraid for them. Maybe it is a mark of having survived two wars fought so close to home, both within the same eighteen years, this fear that she will always carry in the hollow of her bones. Is it the same for her children? Do they, like she does, grasp their wands when a loud noise startles them? Or when a door opens too suddenly? Or upon hearing the pop of apparation close by? Do they, too, live their lives in anticipation of the next great danger or tragedy? And will this fear be another thing that slowly trickles away along with the passage of time, like anger, like grief?
Molly withdraws her wand and casts a scourging charm on the table and floor. In the sitting room, she scoops up the soot with an old metal dust pan, and with her apron, wipes Floo Powder from the photographs on the mantel. The carpet takes a little more effort to work clean with the combined power of magic and manual labor. And then, with the opportunity of Ginny being out in the yard, she goes into her room to collect dirty laundry.
Stooping down to pick a pair of socks, she notices a letter under the bed, under siege by a family of dust bunnies looking to make it a home. Molly goes back downstairs for her dustpan and broom and scoops them up.
“Now what are you doing here?” she address the dust bunnies. “Let’s get you outside.”
They move and jiggle in the pan, but allow her to bring them out the garden door, where she sets them down on the path. “Go on now.” They hop away into the bushes.
Molly glances toward the orchard where Ginny and Harry are still picking apples. Their backs are toward her, but Ginny’s hair blazes forward in the breeze. From this distance, Molly can make out a few red apples dotting the upper branches.
Back inside, Molly resumes collecting laundry. She climbs the next flight up to Bill and Charlie’s old room to collect Harry’s from the basket in the corner.
Then she pulls open the door to George’s room, setting the laundry basket down in the hallway. She allows her eyes to skim over Fred’s bed and dresser. There is a photograph of the twins and Percy in their school robes centered on top of it. Molly allows herself to stare at their young, smiling faces, watches them wave at her for a few moments before she forces herself to turn away. She knows most of his possessions are still at the Diagon Alley apartment none of them can bear to visit, or in the closed trunk at the foot of the bed. She rests her hands on the surface of the dresser and they come away dusty. She sighs. Then she opens one of the drawers. A too-small jumper with an orange-stitched F stares back at her. Another drawer contains mismatched socks and a few t-shirts. She pushes the drawer closed and the brass latch quivers in place.
How can George stand sleeping in the room where they grew up together? All of those memories. The walls are covered completely with posters of Quidditch stars, muggle rock musicians and photographs of the twins with their friends at school: Fred and Angelina Johnson in their formal wear before the ball, George with his arm around Katie Bell on the dance floor. There is a photo of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, back when Oliver Wood was captain and Harry was a first year. Molly can’t bring herself to look at the others, to see the two of them together and smiling anymore. She picks up George’s pile of laundry and rushes from the room.
Downstairs in the scullery, she fills a large basin and leaves the clothes to soak in soapy water. In the kitchen, she begins a grocery list. She lets thoughts of each item occupy her.
Molly is in the middle of writing ground ginger when the kitchen door opens, startling her. Her quill scrapes upward in a scribble and Ginny rushes into the kitchen red faced with Harry following at her heels.
“The apples?” Molly asks.
Her daughter does not turn, but continues on toward the stairs. Her head is angled downward so that Molly cannot see her face. It seems obvious that her youngest is crying, which even Molly knows is rare. Something happened. Immediately, Molly imagines the worst.
“Are you okay, Ginny? What happened? Is she hurt? Did she fall?” She addresses the last two questions to Harry, as her daughter just continues on up the stairs.
Harry obediently turns around and responds, “She’s okay. Just… she’s fine.”
Then Molly realizes what must have happened. Some sort of argument. Part of her wants to scold Harry for whatever he must have said to make Ginny cry, but some other part wants to thank him for finally getting through the shell Ginny has spent the greater part of her life erecting. There’s something about being the youngest child in a big family, and the only girl besides, that brings on the necessity of such a barrier.
Upstairs, Ginny’s door clicks closed. Molly knows it’s too late for Harry to follow. In that same moment, he seems to realize it as well. He sticks his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
“The apples are outside. I’ll go get them,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it, dear. These two old legs aren’t good for nothing yet.”
“I’ll get them,” Harry repeats, more adamantly this time.
So she lets him go, but stands in the doorway looking after him. When he is close enough to the orchard, he skillfully levitates both heavy baskets and brings them into the kitchen.
But after setting them down, he seems at a loss of what to do next.
“How about another cup of tea, Harry?” she asks him, already filling the kettle.
“Thanks.” He sits down at the table and runs a hand through his unruly hair.
She feels like she has to say something. So she opens her mouth and lets the words tumble out. “I can’t say I completely understand any of my children, or what they’re going through right now, Harry. But that one, she’s always needed an extra shove. It’s the Prewett in her. My side of the line is all stubborn and independent.”
At this, he smiles, but doesn’t say anything.
“Are you doing alright?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Weasley.”
The tea kettle begins its high-pitched whistle and she pours the boiling water over tea into two mugs. Retrieving the sugar from a cabinet, she levitates the cups to the kitchen table and sits down across from Harry.
He reaches for the mug, touching it with a fingertip to test the temperature. He spoons sugar in and swirls it around.
Molly tries not to, but finds herself looking at the lightning bolt scar. A part of her thought it might disappear with Voldemort’s death. She doesn’t know why she thought that. Physical scars, emotional scars, they never truly heal over completely. Deep inside her, she knows this. She looks away.
“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do after the reconstruction? Are you going back to school?”
He takes a sip.
“I’m not sure. Kingsley seems convinced I could pass the Auror examinations on reputation, but that doesn’t seem fair.”
A thought occurs to her that nothing so far in Harry Potter’s life has been determined by what’s fair. But it is not something to voice aloud to the young man.
“I heard that the new Headmistress is planning an accelerated program to make up for the questionable instruction last year. And for the muggle borns who couldn’t attend.”
Harry nods at this. She is sure he already knows. Probably from the Headmistress herself. Or maybe from the Minister of Magic.
“It would be nice to be at Hogwarts again. How is the rebuilding going?” she asks.
“Seems to be on track. They’re on schedule to open right after the New Year.”
“I’ve been dreading it,” Molly admits. She removes the tea bag from her mug and sets it down on the saucer.
“Mrs. Weasley?”
“You’ve all grown so much,” she manages, and then looks down at her tea cup. “Maybe George and Percy will stay here for a while. But not forever. Can’t keep them forever. It’s just so quiet here when everyone is gone to school. Too many empty rooms.”
Harry doesn’t hazard a reply.
“And I know the war is over and it’s safe out there now. But it doesn’t stop me from worrying. At least with everyone home, I know they’re safe.”
“They’ll be safe,” Harry tells her.
She looks over at him. This boy. She remembers Hagrid carrying his limp and lifeless body up to the entrance of Hogwarts. It was his sacrifice, not her own wand, that saved her daughter’s life. It was his sacrifice that saved all of them.
This child. This orphaned child. He is sitting across from her in her kitchen and she feels a glow emanating from him, something she hasn’t been able to correctly identify before this moment. This glow of life coming off him radiates toward her. Some kind of raw and untouched magic, older than time. His will to live catches her, mid-breath, and something in her shifts.
“I can’t help her,” he says. “I can distract her, but that’s it. She won’t talk to me about it.”
“Harry.” Molly extends her hand across the table and lays it atop his. While hers is marred by wrinkles and purple veins, his is lined with nameless white scars. The words come to her swiftly and purposefully, as if plucked, ready, from the tree branches outside. “Everyone has to navigate their own path out of despair. You can’t just lead her away from it.”
A wisp of steam comes off of the hot mug. Molly watches it dissipate and ascend. Harry’s response comes slow and Molly can hear in it the history of his own sorrows as plainly as if he were voicing them aloud. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
continue to part 3