Molly Weasley is the embodiment of my every aspiration in life.
Enjoy.
/
A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares allthings and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
-Agatha Christie
I.
The first time she sees him, he is nothing more than a lost, uncertain little boy with big green eyes and good manners.
Once the train pulls away in a cloud of steam, she takes a morose Ginny out for an ice cream before going home. She sends her daughter out to muck the chickens, pours herself a cup of tea, and sits at the kitchen table to think.
Dumbledore was very secretive, even with the Order, where exactly he had sent the boy to live. She has supposed all these years it was family of some sort, but it would have had to be Muggles – James Potter's entire family had been wiped out, much like the Prewetts.
More details stand out to her, as she peruses the chance meeting at King's Cross. His trunk and owl all seemed brand new, and of very nice quality. This doesn't surprise her, seeing as the Potters were quite well off and James was an only child. But the clothes the poor dear was wearing…
Molly frowns and sends her empty teacup over to the sink with a wave of her wand. She doesn't understand one thing about Muggle fashion, but how anyone could wear such baggy, faded clothes and call it becoming was a mystery to her. It looked as though his shirt was about four sizes too big for him – though to be sure, he was an awfully small thing. His young face had been almost peaky.
Well, she decides, if there is one constant in this world, it is the quality (and abundance) of the food that comes out of the Hogwarts kitchens. Young Harry Potter will fatten up in time, surely.
She makes a mental note to write Ron and admonish him not to ask the poor boy any questions about You-Know-Who, and sets about doing the laundry.
The twins are only given three detentions apiece before Christmas, which Molly gladly accepts as their gift to her. Ron writes frequently, but only of the useless tidbits of information that eleven year old boys think is crucial for their mothers to know: Quidditch scores and which subjects were the hardest and which classmates were the most annoying (she fights a smile at the four paragraphs her youngest son dedicates to a Miss Granger – he reminds her so strongly of Fabian sometimes that she is torn between laughter and tears).
To her surprise and pleasure, Ron has become fast friends with Harry Potter. Who, according to Ron, is polite and kind, if a bit quiet, and is "absolutely brilliant" at Quidditch.
She encourages the friendship, as any mother would when their child writes of such a positive influence, and it isn't until after Halloween that she decides to put her official seal of approval on the matter.
Dear, why don't you ask Harry if he wants to trade off houses for the holidays? I'm sure he would be glad to introduce someone from school to his aunt and uncle, seeing as it's his first time back. And your father and I would be delighted to meet him. He sounds like a very nice boy.
The letter she gets in reply sends her into a rage that is unprecedented, except for the time ten-year-old Charlie attempted to force baby Ginny's magic by dropping her off the garden shed roof.
I don't think Harry's going home at all for Christmas, Ron writes. I asked him about trading off and he looked kinda scared. He says his aunt and uncle hate magic, even tried to keep his Hogwarts letter away from him when it came! I don't think they're very nice Muggles, Mum, when we were on the train he said he had never had any pocket money and always had to wear his fat cousin's old clothes. I don't think they want him to come home for Christmas. I don't think he's even expecting any presents from them.
Arthur watches her bang and slam pots all over the kitchen for two days after that. And then she starts her Christmas jumpers two weeks early, because there's an extra one this year.
II.
Her sons show up at the crack of dawn, in a stolen bewitched car and a Harry that looks far skinnier than she remembers from the train station. He is still wearing baggy clothes, though at least someone has thought to fix his glasses properly instead of the poor dear taping them together.
He stares at everything and everyone in her house like it's Hogwarts all over again, full of never-before-seen wonders.
Dishes that wash themselves and knitting needles that click away unassisted would surprise anyone raised by Muggles, so his curiosity does not bother her.
What does bother her is the fact that he eats like he expects his food to be taken away at any moment, and that whenever he drops something or knocks over a vase or accidently slams a door he looks at her with big, nervous green eyes as though bracing himself for a blow or a scolding.
She ignores the urge to take the bloody car back to Surrey herself and give those Muggles a real reason to hate magic, and instead quits fussing at the twins for making too much noise, so that Harry will soon see the Burrow is not a place where he has to live in fear.
Bars on his window, indeed, she fumes one morning. The children are all out playing Quidditch, though Harry had actually asked her if she had any chores that needed doing before Ron had drug him outside.
She takes out her anger on the breakfast dishes, and then makes an enormous treacle tart for dessert after supper.
/
The letter from McGonagall makes the entire world tilt on its axis. Arthur holds her hand tightly as they hurry to Dumbledore's study, the Transfiguration teacher sweeping ahead. The halls are empty, with everyone sequestered in their common rooms, and for a moment Molly aches to hold the rest of her children close, to make sure they are safe.
But Dumbledore is grave, graver than they have ever seen him, and cannot even give them much by way of explanation. Someone presses a clean handkerchief into her hands, someone else tries to get Arthur to drink a cup of tea, and she is on the verge of screaming when the door opens.
Harry is pale, still too skinny, and covered from head to foot in filth and blood. His robes are torn, as are Ron's, and there, standing between them –
"Ginny!"
Over the next few days, the whole story comes out in many fits of tears and many nights of terrible dreams that wake up her eleven-year-old daughter in cold sweats.
Ron's participation earns him a proper scolding, with even his father joining in every few sentences. But at the end of it she hugs him tightly, just so he knows she is proud of him all the same. Because if her own children will not protect each other when she is not there – who will?
The moment the question pops into her head, she snorts.
Harry will, of course.
III.
Egypt was precisely what they all needed. Ginny's smiles are more frequent, if not quite as bright as they used to be. But she has not had nightmares in weeks, and Ron's new wand seems to give him a desire to return to school rather than simply dreading it.
Arthur – wisely – does not tell Molly of Harry's incident and disappearance until they are back home, packing their things to stay the remaining days of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron. Still, she is glad to see him, safely off the streets.
He has grown a couple of inches, which if anything only makes him look skinnier. She fusses at him to eat extra helpings of every meal, makes him and Ron both check their trunks in equal measure. Ron huffs in irritation, but Harry only nods and scurries off to do her bidding – and not so fast that she doesn't see the odd glow in his eyes he always gets under her mothering.
/
She sends an extra batch of fudge for his Christmas present – dementors of all things, as though the poor dear needed something else to cope with – and admonishes the twins and Ron to make sure he takes it easy after a fifty-foot drop off a broom.
Quidditch. She shakes her head and reminds Arthur to make sure and get an extra ticket for Ron's friends for the World Cup, and glows with pride when Ron informs her that Harry has learned to cast a real Patronus.
IV.
The morning paper brings the nightmares of her childhood roaring back to life, and she suffocates them all in equal measure when they come trudging across the lawn.
Harry looks worried, in those quiet sunny days full of Quidditch in the orchard and meals eaten out in the garden, but he is polite as ever and his appetite seems to have multiplied by ten overnight. She cooks and fusses and goes to buy his books and makes sure he has enough quills and ink to last him the term – and all the while thanking Merlin for Dumbledore's promise of an Age Line.
/
Ron's letters are suspiciously void of Harry at first. She thinks maybe he is trying to keep her from worrying, but then Charlie writes to her after the first task to assure her of Harry's wellbeing, and Ron's next epistle is nearly four pages long and talks of almost nothing but Harry.
A row, then, she thinks, and sends a batch of Ron's favorite biscuits just for him.
/
It is stupid, utterly stupid, to have been upset over magazine articles and falsified interviews. Molly sits in the hospital wing that is empty and silent and tries to keep her temper somewhat under control.
"Molly, if I knew where he was, I would go fetch him; he was bleeding and the last thing he needs is to answer Dumbledore's questions. But the Headmaster insisted."
Molly knows Poppy is telling the truth, but she fidgets in her seat all the same. She tries to forget the look on Harry's face when Dumbledore pulled him away from the Diggory boy, tries to block out his cries of sorry sorry I'm so so sorry to Amos.
He is only fourteen, but when Dumbledore brings him through the door Molly takes one look at his face and knows that the small, uncertain boy with the kind manners and easy smile is gone.
She watches him sleep, notices that he is pale and still underfed, that even with the potion his body does not truly relax. She fusses with his sheets, enforces strict silence from the others, and when those big green eyes open again she wants to weep at the innocence that was there only this morning (not that there was much of it to begin with).
He fights any show of emotion, as fourteen year old boys often feel is expected of them, but Molly puts her arms around him and strokes his hair as he falls asleep, somehow knowing that the last time someone held him like this was in a little house in Godric's Hollow.
V.
She is expecting it, but the change in Harry is still hard to witness. He is angry, quiet, and so prone to outbursts that poor Hermione's nerves are frazzled before they even get their school letters.
Another son making prefect is reason enough to celebrate, even if she manages to spoil the mood by a boggart taking full advantage of her overactive imagination.
She doesn't miss the shocked look Harry gives her when he sees his own dead body on the floor; part of her wants to shake him. Has he forgotten that Sirius isn't the first person to take care of him?
But after that, Harry lets her fuss over him a bit more than usual. He almost seems guilty for the stress that the Order (or, rather, the necessity of it) is bringing them all, though it is surely not his fault.
He also clings to his godfather, though, with the desperation of a lion cub. Her mother's heart is stung but she cannot really blame him, as much as she wishes at times that Sirius would keep his mouth shut. She contents herself with piling food on Harry's plate and tries to pretend that all of this is from being fifteen, and not mainly from being tortured in a graveyard.
VI.
She is expecting, in the aftermath of losing his godfather, for Harry to be even surlier than before. Which is why she is pleasantly surprised when he seems to regain some form of his usual good cheer, helping with chores and playing Quidditch in the orchard.
Ron tells her that Dumbledore spoke with him, shared more secrets about his parents and You-Know-Who and she supposes that it is Harry's right to know, but that doesn't make it less hard for her to imagine him, skinny and now over a foot taller than he was two months ago, sitting alone in the Headmaster's office and grieving in a way that not even Molly's cooking or fussing can heal.
But he comes home for Christmas, and when the Minister storms out of the gate and Harry comes inside with his jaw set, Molly is so proud she could cry even more than she already is for Percy.
And then McGonagall Floos them, and she is left staring down at her firstborn, her baby boy, carved up like a butcher's block. Fleur takes over his bandaging with admirable poise, which is all the proof Molly needed to know that the French girl has what it takes to be a Weasley.
/
The full story of Dumbledore's death registers with her in bits and pieces – that night was so fraught with fear and the awful uncertainty of Bill's health that not much of anything that was said stuck. But when she learns that Harry was with his mentor, saw the curse cast and even tried to catch Snape, only to return unsuccessful and find Dumbledore's body –
She wants to scream.
This boy, with the green eyes and nice manners and easy smile and ability to ease Ron and Hermione down from each other's throats…how much more must he lose? She wants to go outside and bellow at the sky. What else must be taken from him? He never knew love until he came under her roof, the school where he has almost died at least once a year has been safer for him than his own family's house.
He has been torn apart, and been forced to put himself back together only because the world needs him to, and when it is done hiding behind its savior it rips him open all over again. His heart is scarred, and Molly is terrified beyond words that one day soon it will be beyond healing, that he will refuse to care or love any longer simply because it has never brought him anything but pain.
VII.
Bill's wedding is the one bright spot on her horizon.
The security measures in place make everything at least twenty times more hectic than normal, but Weasleys have never done anything by halves and Molly supposes the wedding of her firstborn could not be an exception. It would probably bring bad luck.
Harry has been avoiding her eyes since everyone's arrival at the Burrow. It is not hard for her guess why, with the way his jaw tightens every time George walks into a room and shouts at everyone as though deaf. Everyone else's laughter seems to make it worse, until Fred makes one too many puns and Harry shoves his chair back from the table and goes outside without looking at anyone.
"Did I – " Fred frowns.
"Nah." Ron, her barely-seventeen-year-old, follows the friend who has both nearly gotten him killed and saved him in equal measure. "He's just being a self-deprecating git, is all. He'll be all right."
The boys have a heated discussion in the garden, which ends with Ron shoving Harry nearly into a bush full of gnomes. But when they come back inside Harry looks calmer, and looks right at Molly when he thanks her for dinner.
/
They disappear from the wedding.
And then one spring evening, Bill arrives shouting in the yard, and they leave for Muriel's because her children are at Shell Cottage and were captured by Death Eaters and –
She takes a deep breath, acutely aware of Ginny's presence next to her on Muriel's sofa.
They got away, she reminds herself. They got away, and you'll see them again soon, and everything will be fine.
She's wrong.
/
After six Christmas jumpers, endless meals, a year of not knowing whether any of them would live to see tomorrow, and a battle that broke stone and smeared blood on marble floors and left her son, once so golden and full of warmth and laughter, lying cold in the ground under the oak tree near where the kids played Quidditch in the summer – well.
A lot has happened.
But Molly knows that one thing has not changed: this boy, with the big green eyes and nice manners is hers, in all the ways he has never been Petunia's, in all the ways he should have been Lily's.
His smiles are not as quick; gone is the boy who daydreamed of skiving off class to go fly his broomstick outside. Instead he spends nearly all his time at the castle, repairing walls and corridors. When he is not there he is at the Ministry, testifying in the seventy-eight cases of accused Death Eaters.
And when he is not there, he is not at the Burrow. Not at first, anyway. Come to find out, he was simply hiding in a room at the Leaky Cauldron in between times, perhaps getting four or five hours of sleep, until one day they all had enough and Arthur went with Ron to fetch him.
(He shuffled over to her immediately and mumbled he was very sorry for making her worry, he didn't want to be a bother and thought they would like some time to grieve – she hugged him tightly, mostly to stop the ramble. He patted her back and ate four helpings of everything at dinner before he collapsed into bed and didn't move for sixteen hours.)
He is putting back the weight she spent years coaxing onto his gangly frame; his hair is long, enough that he keeps it tied back in a messy knot on the back of his head. He doesn't shave regularly, and the oldness in his eyes will never go away.
But Molly heard him laugh this morning, and that is enough to keep her going for now. She has lost one son, she cannot bear to lose another – even this one, to himself.
She is not so foolish, though, to think that everything is back to normal.
Some mornings there are bags under his eyes that weren't there the night before. Some days he doesn't speak a word, and merely sits, lost in thought. Some days he cannot get enough of his godson, and others the mere mention of Teddy will make his jaw tighten and those green eyes will grow glassy until he mutters an excuse and flees the room.
Harry Potter is a man – a man, her mother's heart sighs in bittersweet pride – of untold strength. His scrawny, teenage shoulders have borne the heaviest burden there is.
But sometimes, he needs to let those shoulders droop just a bit. And in some strange way, she is glad it is here, at the table where she has fed him and fussed over his shirt collar.
Molly could not sleep, which is not uncommon. But Arthur was snoring beside her and with both of them missing sleep nowadays she did not want to wake him. She wrapped her dressing gown tightly around her, and puttered down to the kitchen, in hopes that a cup of tea would do the trick.
Harry is seated at the scrubbed kitchen table, with a cold cup of tea sitting in front of him. He is wearing one of her Christmas jumpers and a ragged pair of sweatpants; he is unshaven and the knot of his hair has mostly fallen down, a few strands clinging to the elastic out of stubbornness.
He does not notice her, not at first, and she feels strangely honored to see this side of him, all sleepy mussed edges, with no attempt to hide the weariness that settled into his too-young bones long ago.
When he does spot her, he sits more upright and scrubs at his face quickly – but not quickly enough to hide the shining tears on his face.
Having experience in such things, Molly bustles about with the kettle. "Mind if I join you, dear?"
"'Course."
She is facing away from him, and bites her lip. He sounds so old, so tired. He is seventeen.
Once she is seated beside him, though around the corner at the head of the table, he takes out his wand and pokes at his own cup to warm it again.
"Couldn't sleep?"
She hums. "I imagine we're all going to need time, to adjust to not having to look over our shoulders every minute. Arthur is out, though, so one of us will be well rested."
He manages a tiny smile – nothing like his usual impish grin, more of a bare twitch of his mouth than anything – but Molly grabs at it with both hands.
"Harry, dear, you've been sleeping the worst of all of us. You really ought to try and take the Dreamless Sleep Potion they sent home from Mungo's."
"I have." He sips his tea, and she recognizes the signs of a teenage boy who wants to avoid a conversation. "Doesn't work."
"Dear – "
"They're not dreams, Molly," he says, with the sharp tone of someone who has realized the conversation they don't want to have is in fact happening, whether they like it or not. "They're memories, and I can't forget, no matter how much I want to."
Molly sits quietly, at a loss of what to do next until she sees his chin tremble.
"I wish I could forget," he gasps, and she's standing next to his chair before she even realizes she's moving. She pulls his face into her, as she did her children when they were small and bumped their heads or skinned their knees. His arms wind around her, shoulders shaking with sobs, seeking an anchor in midst of the storm that has been raging inside him since he was hardly older than his own godson is now.
"Shh, darling," she croons, stroking his messy hair and pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
She begins to rock back and forth as the Boy Who Lived falls apart in the only mother's embrace he has ever known.
/
I made myself cry for this so you guys bETTER LIKE IT.