Author's Note: Hey everyone! This was written for the Globetrotter Drabble Competition off the Harry Potter Challenge forum posted by why the caged bird sings for prompt #23 Dublin. Special thanks to NiftyGirl for betaing. Additional thanks to TheHaloFreak for her suggestion. I got closer, but I still used some of my 10% leeway. I do not own Harry Potter.
The baby couldn't sleep. The sudden fever that had burned through him that morning continued to rage despite all of Molly's best homemade remedies. No spell offered Ronnie any relief, he continued to wail, his tiny fists balled as he screamed up at his helpless mother.
She had had five sons before Ronnie, five strong, hearty boys who had all suffered burning fevers in their infancy. They too had wailed and cried and been unable to sleep. But their fevers had burned for only a few hours before Molly had discovered a charm or a potion that had broken it and they had fallen to sleep. This fever however, Molly could not find a remedy for and poor little Ron continued to sob.
"I know," she comforted, taking the baby into her arms. "Shhh now, everything will be alright." She tried to be reasonable, to remind herself that babies often got fevers and there was no need to worry yet, but despite her attempts at logic, Molly Weasley was terrified. What if there was nothing that anyone, even a proper healer from St. Mungo's could do and her son simply had to suffer through. She clutched her baby closer to her chest as if by holding tight enough to him she could save him from this illness. "Don't take him." she said quietly. "Please don't take this boy from me." She rocked Ronnie, gently closing her eyes and begging quietly to whatever force of the universe might be listening. "He's mine and you can't have him."
As a child Molly had never thought much about raising sons. She'd always imagined a daughter, a little girl who she could teach to cook and pass on the same knowledge her mother had passed to her. But so far she had been blessed with six sons. Six beautiful, perfect boys who she loved more than anything; six boys who lived in a world where every day there was more trying to hurt them than fevers. She was beginning to see that she could not protect them from that world, but if the world thought they were going to take away her boys, it had another thing coming.
As if to prove her point, she held her baby a little closer. Anything that wanted to hurt him would have to go through her first, as she silently promised to protect him from all harm, Ronnie stopped crying. He looked up at her, Arthur's blue eyes gazing out of his tiny body. She knew that it was a lie, that she would never be able to protect him. He would suffer from heartbreak and injuries the same as the rest of her sons. It was true, this was a frightening time to live, and no doubt Ron would suffer for that as well. There wasn't anything she could do really; life would do to him whatever it would, but as Ronnie began to drift off Molly silently vowed that she would always do whatever was in her power to protect him, and if all she could do was to hold him while he cried and promise that she would never stop loving him, then that was what she would do.