It's never been obvious who started it.
Never. Molly knows that you can never say never. Which is a saying she loves, and she knows she's one of those annoying mothers who always tells her children to "never say never" when they say, "I will never want summer to end" or "I'll never like school."
But, she knows her reason for saying that all the time is a good reason. Maybe she's not as thin as she was when she was sixteen, twenty – but a lot has changed, and she's not ugly. Just pleasantly plump, she likes to think – and that is what Arthur tells her now when she comes to bed.
She said she would never be a child. And now, she is always a child. Oh, she functions wonderfully. She has a realistic world-view, she knows how to cook clean sew and run a household like a ship. She has raised seven children – and none of them have died (though it's her worst fear that soon, they will), and all of them seem to be doing all right, she tells herself. Bill and Charlie have wrenched themselves from poverty by doing well in school (well, alright, Charlie was pretty average in everything but Care of Magical Creatures, but the talent's served him well), Fred and George seem to be doing alright with the mysterious cash they got to start their business (which she knows they must have gotten from somewhere but is too scared it was something illegal to ask). Ginny is growing up a little bit of a firebrand and seems to be taking after Fred and George (heaven help us), but she does fairly well in school and seems healthy.
There are two she is worried about.
No one talks about Percy, so though she misses him like any mother would, and doesn't understand really why they can't all just get along, she won't talk about him, either.
Ron is the one who fills her thoughts. She worries about him.
She worries about what she's done to him. Or maybe it's what she does to him.
And this is why she's a child, the thing she said she never would be, ever. He keeps her young, alive, grounded.
Maybe she should've said she never wanted to grow up. Because it seems that way, now, and she's so confused. She used to hate being a child, being misunderstood and shunted aside and left alone in a house full of older, brighter, prettier sisters with auburn locks that made hers look like frizzy oranges.
Which is why she loved Arthur when she met him out on the front lawn at five. His hair was just like hers.
And that is why she loves Ron particularly; his hair is like that, too. Tightly curled and the colour of a carrot. None of her other children really have hair just like that . Bill's is straight, the twins' is wavy and darker, Percy's is just darker, Ginny's is wavy and just more red. Charlie's is almost blond. This baffles her, as she was so sure all her children would look just like her (or maybe skinny, like Arthur. She is the one Charlie and the twins get their stockiness from).
When she finally got to be an adult, she found no one understood you any more than they had when she was young. Arthur did, but Arthur is older than she is and doesn't make her feel young at all. She loves him. But he isn't sprightly, he doesn't have sparkling brown eyes like a pixie. They're her eyes. Arthur's are blue.
And these eyes would look at her, and they made her feel beautiful, when they got back from Hogwarts one year and he was sixteen and she's going grey at her temples (for witches live longer than anyone else), and he licked his lips absently (they're cracked and broken, you see, oh, lips) and asked for more lemonade. But "you'll hurt your lips". And she knows what he's thinking when he says, "well, you're my mom, you can kiss them better when I do," with the twinkle in his pixie-eyes. So she does.
Which is why she wonders where she went wrong with him. Oh, she's thankful, she loves him the way he is (she loves all her children the way they are, of course) – but, she never felt the need to lick her lips suggestively at her mother. Or even her father, for that matter.
However, she supposes she shouldn't be surprised and hasn't been quelling these new feelings Ron seems to have for her now. He says he loves her like a son loves a mother.
She tells him she's the only mother he's ever had, so he can't say that this is really normal.
He says, "no, but neither are we, mum," and she must admit that this is true, as she teaches him by example just what never to do to his children.