Author's Note: I don't own any of J.K Rowling's characters. I see this more of a character's insight, inspired by a prompt base competition.
Sleeping With Ghosts
Arthur Weasley was just like every other ten year old boy. He was wide-eyed with curiosity about the world, fascinated by the simple functions of every day items. He got excited by toast popping out of the toaster, and the way the bread crisped and burnt. He got scared by pretend monsters under his bed and in his closet. He laughed at jokes and cried if his brothers pushed him over. He broke his toys in fits of anger and he scrapped his knees. He was selfish, impulsive and cruel like any other ten year old. He often felt unloved like them, ignored like them and confused like them. He was just like them. However, Arthur Weasley was not like other boys his age. He didn't play in the garden with a shovel and a plastic bucket. He didn't build sand castles or make daisy-chains. He didn't pinch or punch his siblings at the beginning of each new month. He didn't scream in mockery that girls had 'cooties'. He didn't go to their schools, wear their shoes or climb their jungle gyms. He didn't even have a single one of them as his friend. He was nothing like them, not even a part of their individual world. He had his own separate existence, away from them, amongst them, but not with them. He flew on brooms and shooed away garden gnomes. He could perform magic and they didn't. He wasn't suppose to know about their world, but he did and he was obsessed. He wanted to know how every function of their humanity worked. He wanted to understand what every plug and cork did. He wanted to dissect the entire world like he could do to a frog, so he might grasp their vast expansion of earth. He wanted to know why they had electricity, trains and cars when the Floo network was available. He wanted to know why they were regarded as another species entirely. Arthur felt like an alien invasion in their beautiful planet, even though he looked like them. He had their eyes, skin and hair. He could laugh, eat and dance like them, but his world wasn't theirs. They were separated from him by a wall of judgement and prejudice. They were suppose to be disgusting, when they were just intriguing. They were the other half of his empty heart. They were just Muggles with unfiltered blood pumping through their cholesterol clogged arteries.
Muggles. Everything about them seemed other-worldly to the ten year old boy. He couldn't understand what made them different, and he became fixated on the never-ending questions. He craved to tear them apart with his hands, tinker with their machinery so he might understand the differences between their races. All of his ten years, Arthur's curiosity had been fed by the tales of exotic lands, finding snippets of information about their existence from the tongues of passing-through relatives. His hunger for knowledge burnt like a steady flame, forever growing inside of him until the point of obsession. He became a collector. The smallest rift-raft or junk from their homes, he took and treasured like keep-safes. He destroyed all the small gears in their clocks, pulled out all the stuffing in their soft toys and plucked out their laces. He stored them in the chest drawers in his bedroom, in the nooks-and-crannies of his mattress and in his pockets. He lived with their secrets in his hair, running through his mind and expiring on his tongue. He bubbled up with a soda-sickening nausea each time something was destroyed beyond repair. It filled him with an ever-lasting dread that he may never find the answers, and it isolated him from the breathing household of chaos. Arthur was alone in the world, left to his craft of intrigue and fantasy. His mind ran away with him and he became increasingly paranoid that his cheek-pinching relatives might invade his bedroom. Inside they would find his private sanctuary away from the noise of his parents and the travelling family members. He feared they could destroy everything he held dear to his heart. Arthur Weasley could count on his family to ruin his only paradise. They ignored him so often that he felt like he was drowning in a crowded room, screaming at the top of his lungs. He felt abandoned by the whole lot of them.
The Weasley household was one of commotion and love. Every weekend, another family dinner was held, piling up the pandemonium of laughter and ravaging until it was a normal part of daily routine. His parents were home bodies by nature, cheap in their taste but filled to the brim with generosity. They could never turn away a soul begging on their doorstep, and Arthur was more than use to finding the couch occupied. Money was spread thinly between the three brothers, and attention was spread even more thinly. The ten year old struggled to get noticed over his brash and loud-mouth brothers. He went through the motions of life, simply staggering by and growing into a deeply eccentric, shy individual. He seeked solace in his bedroom, drowning out the turbulence of life with his fix-it hands. Today was no different from yesterday. It didn't feel like any different from any other day to Arthur, except maybe for the change in the weather. The summer had dissolved into a grey haze of cloud and bitterness, sinking into the cracks of the old creaking home. A warped laughter echoed around the walls, followed swiftly by the clanging of cutlery and banging of chairs as his parents set up another weekend feast. The glass shook in the wind, transforming the abode into a living monster. The floorboards groaned with each step and the skeleton of the building struggled to support the weight of the plaster. The door bell constantly chirped with its annoying sing-song every few minutes as the smell of burning soup lingered about. The beast of life screeched and clawed with excitement as Aunts socialised in the sitting room, beckoning the boy in the corner toward them. They pinched at his skin until he was flushed with pink and embarrassment. The uncles roared with great laughter like wildebeests, standing near the empty fire place. His mother doting on every guest with care and consideration as his father played a game of wizard chess with his brother. Every inch of the homestead became alive with racket, erupting into babble and discord. Their conversations rowdy, their voices boisterous and yelling. Escape was futile for his younger brothers, having their rosy cheeks prodded and investigated, but Arthur had been clever. He had been alive a few more years than them to know when to avoid the ruckus.
He could always tell when the circus of Weasley relatives with their pinching fingers were coming. The night before the storm was always one of preparation. His mother made a list about ten inches long of all the things she needed to do, bribing her children into helping with extra cuddles. Usually, they were forced to consume the burnt food and clean out the dust from the corners of her furniture. Arthur knew with horror that the clan of unruly members would descend upon them, and promptly shut himself in his bedroom to avoid the whole chaos. The night before the storm was always the most uneasy sleep. Arthur would toss and turn, moaning and groaning in the fear of his aunt's clawed fingers pinching his skin. Sometimes he really hated his family. They constantly ruffled up his hair, asked too many questions and invaded his privacy. They usually weren't interested in him. Arthur didn't like the spotlight like his brothers. He couldn't be bothered with his aunt's greasy fingers or his uncle's lies. He was simply not interested in participating in an event that happened every other weekend. So while the children played with the trinkets from the Magic world, Arthur isolated away in the world of machinery and solitude. His brothers could have their brooms, pygmy puffs and potions; he only needed couple of buttons, a knick-knack or two, a feather and a clapping monkey. These things made Arthur happy. He would squirm with glee with the arrival of each new novelty and the chance to gain insight into its mechanisms. His curiosity would burn steadily, setting him alight with hunger to explore the unseen.
The world around Arthur Weasley's imagination was one of oddity, reflected by the contents of his bedroom. Away from his relatives, Arthur had retreated to the compounds of his world. It was a small sanctuary from the chaos breathing in the walls, and the only quiet place in the entire house. Sound almost couldn't penetrate except when it escaped through the cracks in the doors. He was left alone, completely with his thoughts. His small agile hands brushed the shiny metal with intrigue as his jaw firmly set. The bright orange walls set off his blazing red hair as the ten year old bowed over the contraption. His fingers working nimbly to pull apart the apparatus to its smallest compartments. Tiny flecks of silver scattered his study desk as an eerie stillness settled into the old bones of the ancient bedroom. It would shiver with each passing wind, but the place was numb from the emotions downstairs. Nothing disturbed the dust particles twirling in the dead air. His twenty cymbal clapping monkeys, objects pulled from the devastation of Muggle trash, sat in restrained appraisal against his windowsill. Their instruments trembling in the howl of the glass as their big eyes settled uncomfortably on the boy's neck. Each of their grinning faces turned on Arthur as he focused and tinkered with the object in his palms. Small robots of mismatched machinery staggered in drunkard patterns across his desk. Their wind-up gears cranking silently with each movement as the boy yanked out another piece of the object. His fingers were slick in grease as he gritted his teeth, his blue eyes watering with intense strain. Working on these minuscule thingamajigs was fiddly and tiresome work. He found it rewarding and unlike other ten year old boys, Arthur didn't frustrate easily or wish to run and play. The world was a mystery to him, something he desired to uncover more than anything. After all, the art of tinkering was better than pinching fingers.
Nothing was more thrilling than the whistle of engines, the chime of clocks and the clasp of cymbals. Everything about this craft was deeply exciting to the curious ten year old. He ignored the stiff silence that bathed over him like warm water, concentrating on fixing together the trinkets. Eventually, the gadget would be reinvented into its new purpose by his skilled Muggles trash were his ultimate treasures. He was thankful for them, in a way. They brought another light of diversity to Arthur's dull universe. Why on earth would he want to participate in family nagging when he had all of these gems? That was [i]so[/i] boring! Biting his lip in anticipation as the device fell to bits in his palm. His blue eyes widen in confusion, chewing on the inside of his mouth as he stared at the minuscule shapes. There were circles! Tons of loop-a-loops that never ended, swirling around in a circle. It looked delicate like glass and shined like a diamond. He whistled impressed as he leaned back in the hard wood of his chair. He had never seen anything like this before. Something so fragile and tender, something so unwanted by the world. A prize in the rotting heap of society. It was beautiful. He carefully placed it down on his notepad and panicked briefly. The object almost disappeared against the heavy strokes of black ink, hiding amongst Arthur's various drawings. However, with a quick roam of his quill's nub, he found it again and situated it upon the white of the paper. Its fine silvery liquid staring out at him, like a star in the hollow black night. Smiling to himself in a deep slumber, Arthur almost missed the bellowing crash from downstairs.
Lucky for Arthur's fate, accidents happened twice in the Weasley house.
Another bellowing screech leaked through the cracks in his door. The noise disturbed the peace inside of the room, forcing the outside world into his own. Startled, the boy glanced around, his eyes slipped pass the statues of monkeys and walking robots to the door-frame. He shook with fear as another screech turned into a sing-song voice, forcing a shiver up his back. It was his mother. No, worst that that. It was his mother calling for him, penetrating his little world with her nasal voice and bursting his bubble. No, actually, it was twenty times worst than that. It was dinner time. He felt his throat get all dry and his skin sweat with nerves. Dinner meant spending time with his aunts and uncles, amongst the haystack of animals and the real world. There was nothing worst. Shaking with fear, Arthur pulled himself with a great struggle, out of the chair and stood. The room would quickly retain its quiet form, but he would never get back the guts that had fallen out of his stomach. For now, like his rattled confidence, the room was disturbed. The line of musical monkeys stared straight through the ten year old boy with a ravenousness hunger. The ballerina quivered in her box, her face turned toward the mirror. The robots had slowed to a crawl, creeping across his desktop. The non-magical posters glared at him, mute and expressionless. The sheets on his bed disturbed as his spirit. Arthur sighed in despair, walking across the space toward the door.
The boy almost didn't notice the way fear crept upon him until he swung the great oak from its hinges. The creaking echoed through the silence, introducing Arthur to the clanging downstairs. But it was not so much the confrontation of his aunts downstairs that Arthur feared; it was the door itself. He was afraid to close the door behind him, and essentially away from his world. He dreaded the moments where he had to leave his universe and enter theirs, but today, that was okay. Dinners had become such a part of his regular routine now, but still something made him too scared to close it. He wasn't frightened of the monsters underneath his bed that might crawl out to give him a jump. He was scared of the secret he had been told. His grandfather had told him one evening, before giving Arthur the passion to tinker, that life came to toys the moment the door closed. He had been so secretive about the whole ordeal and Arthur had no desire not to believe him. Every moment he closed the door, he knew and felt life erupt behind it and without him. Life grew in the absence of him and he was envious of it. Arthur longed to break the secret's magic. He wanted to capture the moment his toys sprung to life, but he was never successful. So, everyday, he was scared of closing the door and missing it. He didn't want to go down and play happy families. He wanted to witness some piece of true magic. Biting his lip, Arthur played with the door and looked over his toys lying about. He tried to remember exactly where they were, as in a childish hope he might thwart them if they did move, but no ado. He had no such luck, but after all, luck was never much on the Weasley's side.
Unfortunately, a pain of hunger and his mother's bellowing scream of impatience forced Arthur to close the door. Nothing. No sounds, no rush of feet. Just nothing. The ten year old leaned down, pushing his eye right against the keyhole and stared into his room. It was like glancing into the heart of the unknown, the lost sea that only sailors sailed. Everything was fine, everything was predictably normal. It never crossed his mind that his grandfather could had lied to him. He simply didn't think like that. Taking a step back from the door, he watched in anticipation, hoping for a glance but nothing changed. Nothing except the arrived quietness downstairs, which in this household only meant one thing. They were eating and likely everything in sight. Arthur knew that if he didn't get to the dinner table, he would miss out on the good parts of the meal so he shrugged with disappointment. Turning his back on the door, he took three steps away when he heard it. It was so quiet at first that it was easily missed, but he was sure he hadn't dreamed it. A faint clapping of two cymbals hitting together, fuelling his imagination. The toys! They were coming to life in his absence. Rushed with joy, Arthur quickly retraced his steps and once again, pressed his eye to the keyhole. However, he was only met by disappointment. Nothing was moving now that he looked and everything inside the room mocked him. He felt the creepy grin of his monkeys actually laughing behind his back. Arthur realised with an overwhelming dread, he didn't like them so much now. Shivering at their smiles, he turned again, leaning his back against the door and waited. Nothing happened and he wasn't too stupid as in to wait forever. He wouldn't get any dessert if he did that! Taking another step away from the wood, he felt defeated.
But just as silently as before, the cymbals started clapping again, whispering into the landing. The music was like a soft heartbeat, hard to capture but steady. He stopped to listen, hearing the tinkering of his monkeys clap together their cymbals. One by one, another instrument joined in, adding to the strength of the sounds. Excited now, Arthur's curiosity and knack for inventing just had to test it. He took a step backwards and the sound weakened as if the life in his room knew. If he took a step forward, it strengthen. With this new information, Arthur almost too happily fled to the other-side of the landing, across from his bedroom. Each toy was now banging together, creating beautiful if not surreal music. The clash of the cymbals, the soft melody of the ballerina whose music box had never worked and the whirl of his robots. He could imagine each of his toys like stringed puppets, dancing around in the empty space causing chaos. Chuckling with elation, Arthur couldn't take it anymore. He had to see this spectacular event. His grandfather had been right!
If he was fast enough, he might stun them!
Although Arthur ran like the gawky boy he was and sprung the door open, nearly pushing the thing off its hinges, they thwarted him again. With surprise, the second the door was open, the music had long died and the creatures in his bedroom stared at him in greedy satisfaction. His face fell as he stared into the isolated space, his mother hollering again. Every item, down to the smallest thing, was completely in place and not even one of the cymbals trembled like it had been used. The thought dawned on Arthur like a bee's sting that he may never ever witness it. He would never see the moment when his toys were alive. Filled with that realisation, Arthur closed the door and entered another orbit. His parent's one to be exact.
The dinners, feasting and laughter; these things made up his parent's universe. It was no room for games and childish imagination. There was no chances of toys that coming to life. It was only cheek pinching, sickly smelling perfumes and unruly belting. Nothing Arthur liked. He felt so separated from them. For him, it was like living in two worlds in the one house. He had a better chance of uncovering the purpose of a rubber duck than he had of being like any other 'normal' ten year old boy.