For Katy's Lucky Dip challenge on HPFC - to base a fic off, she gave me a title, Molly and Fabian as characters, a fabulous song, Kite by U2, which can be found at www (dot) youtube (dot) com /watch?v=yhqxCuBCgMg, and two prompts which I failed dismally at using. Sorry. But it was a fun challenge.
Anyway, enjoy :-)
"You can join if you need to," Molly stammered to Fabian, turning away from her brother before he could see her cry. "I mean—I mean, if you want to."
Fabian hesitated by the door, the door that Gideon had strode through a moment ago unable to look back. Gideon was the softer, quieter of the twins, but Fabian had always needed his sister's protection more. It was something in the way he fought, or loved, or worked, with his whole heart and soul. When he'd poured everything into something that only crumbled when he turned his back, Molly was there to pick up the pieces.
Gideon didn't need that. Everything about Gideon was calculating and shrewd, and he wasn't one to throw his passion away heedlessly. He loved Molly as much as Fabian did, but Fabian depended on her more than anyone in the world.
"I know I can, Molly," Fabian finally replied when the silence between them grew too tense. And he did know. He was a man; he was twenty one, nearly four years out of Hogwarts, and with as much of an idea of what he wanted to do with himself as when he'd first stumbled to the stool to be Sorted. Even an older and wiser sister couldn't tell a twenty one year old man what to do.
"It's Dumbledore, after all," Molly continued, speaking more to the wooden spoon she held in her hand that she'd carried in from stirring a pot of stew in the kitchen than to Fabian. "Dumbledore's one of the most powerful wizards in the world, and he knows what he's doing, trying to oppose He Who Must Not Be Named. And if he wants to gather a bunch of—Phoenixes?" (Fabian nodded) "—together to help that end, then I've no doubt he'll succeed." This time she knitted her hands together, looking at the creases of her thumbs instead of her dearest brother.
"It's for you we'll be fighting," Fabian said softly, taking the spoon from her and laying it on the table beside them before taking one of her plump hands in his own callused one. "And for Bill and Charlie and Percy and little—little Fabian Junior in there."
Molly snorted, fingers splaying across her just-swelling belly. "Is that what you think we're calling him?"
Mustering up a cocky grin, Fabian replied, "Only if he's lucky. If he's not, you'll call him Gideon."
Molly just shook her head and smiled at her brother, biting her lip. "You'll be late," she told him, decisive because Fabian needed her to support him if he was really going to follow his brother into the Order of the Phoenix, and she wouldn't be able to support him in about thirty seconds, because Molly Weasley was about to turn into a crying mess.
"I don't care," he told her. "Gid will hold my seat for me."
"You'll look like you're sloppy and don't care."
"I don't."
"Just go, Fab," Molly choked, trying to force a laugh out of her throat ahead of a sob. "For me."
"For you," he sighed placatingly, and he thrust the wooden spoon back into her hands, kissed her forehead, and slipped away.
It's for you we'll be fighting, Fabian whispered to Molly, and the door slammed behind Gideon, and her brothers were gone gone gone, and she was no longer a sister, just a woman who had lost like everyone else these days.
They weren't afraid to die, so they'd taken on a suicide mission, Apparating into a nest of Death Eaters to try to catch them off guard. And some of those Death Eaters had limped into Saint Mungo's the next day with varied excuses about the injuries they'd sustained, but more hadn't been taken enough by surprise; had grabbed their wands and fired spells and killed Gideon and Fabian Prewett.
And Molly was alone alone alone, tied to the earth by her boys and her Arthur but not seeing any of them, only Fabian telling her It's for you we'll be fighting and the door slamming behind Gideon and them coming in from countless missions, Gideon guarded and silent and Fabian breathless with the exhilaration of being alive where so many others weren't.
"If you were fighting for me you would have stayed alive for me," Molly murmured, sending dangerous words out her bedroom window as she waited up for Arthur to come home from the Ministry. "Because even if I let you join because I was selfish and wanted my children to be safe, to grow up without war, to have the best protection in the world, you and Gideon, I never thought you would die."
She'd never said that aloud, how selfish it had been to encourage her brothers into the Order—at least, to not discourage them, to not make them understand that it was their lives they were throwing away for the cause. They'd done it unconditionally because that was how their family was, but now Molly was alone trying her best to protect everyone, and only losing more and more each day.
But she deserved it all. She deserved to have everything else stripped away from her, darling Arthur and stalwart Bill and jolly Charlie and Percy with all his affected, funny airs.
She deserved to lose all her boys, because she'd let her brothers go to their deaths. And because she deserved it so much, she vowed to hang on as tightly as she ever could.
He was her brother all over again, Frederick Fabian Weasley was, and as soon as the dust settled around He Who Must Not Be Named's death, Molly could feel in her breast that he had died just as valiantly, just as needlessly.
She followed the part of her that knew when her family was in danger to an empty classroom and she curled around her son's body and stroked his soft hair and touched his cold hand and sobbed and sobbed over him like she'd never been able to over her brothers, her brothers who had been sent back in hexed, bloodied pieces. It was her penance for letting one Fabian out of her grasp, carelessly enabling his death, that this Fabian now lay before her and would never breathe again, and maybe it was penance somehow too, for taking Fred for granted that he now lay before her and would never breathe again.
And maybe it was He Who Must Not Be Named, or maybe it was Dumbledore, for both had garnered immense, powerful, foolishly brave followings that gave everything for their beliefs. Maybe those men had swallowed up Fred like they swallowed up Fabian, spinning both boys—men—through their spiderwebs until they were released, cold, empty, for Molly to cry over.
He Who Must Not Be Named and Dumbledore were both gone, but so was Frederick Fabian Weasley that Molly had needed more than anything to be there to celebrate with her, because at least she would have gotten her brother's namesake out alive. At least then she would have done something right.
Now she'd done nothing right at all, and the ghosts swirling around Molly Weasley at the end of the battle grinned at her; reminded her that even though she was afraid for them to die, they were just afraid to not have lived before.
They had lived and they had died and they had never said goodbye, so now, in the heat of the end of an era, Molly said it for them.
I'd love to hear your thoughts.