The letter arrived over breakfast on the third of September. Molly was always delighted to receive word from one of her children (even though those from the twins were apt to hasten the greying of her hair), but with this one, she felt especially pleased, if a bit wistful as well. Truth be told, she had been worried for Ron as he entered Hogwarts; there were no boys of his age in the area and, as such, he'd always been a lonely child. From the content of the letter, however, Molly realized she needn't have worried. Ron seemed happy about his new friend, if a bit bemused thatHarry Potter, of all people, had turned out to be a quite ordinary though quiet boy who was interested in being friends with, as Ron put it, "someone like me."
Molly frowned when she read that, and when she sat down to compose a reply later that morning, she made a point of mentioning what an upstanding young man she thought he was turning into.
Molly received almost no word from Ron for some time after that first letter, save for a hastily scribbled note thanking her for the bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans and extra pair of socks that she'd sent him. It wasn't until the second week of October that her youngest son sent her a proper letter, and its length quite made up for his long silence. He wrote about having tea with Hagrid and how much he hated Professor Snape. His vivid, excited descriptions of how Harry had made the Quidditch team and subsequently offered to let Ron borrow his new broomstick had the curious effect of making Molly smile fondly while still feeling as if she might have a heart attack from worry for her boy's safety. His indignant descriptions of one Hermione Granger ("that stuck-up know-it-all"), too, elicited a smile, albeit for different reasons.
Later, she sent him a letter full of warnings to be careful and remember to do all of his homework and to be kind to people who were probably only trying to be helpful and an admonishment to write more often, all of which, she knew from long experience, would be mostly ignored, but which she felt compelled to give regardless.
The next letter from Ron arrived mere minutes before Professor McGonagall's all-too-familiar Notice of Misconduct (Ron's first; later, after Molly's terrified maternal rage had retreated to manageable levels, she would be perversely proud of the fact that he had made it a whole week longer than Fred and George had during their first year). Ron's account of the "Halloween Incident" was quite a bit more vague than Professor McGonagall's—the twins' influence, Molly supposed wryly. He hadn't, of course, been quite able to refrain from mentioning that it had been he, not famous Harry Potter or know-it-all Hermione Granger, who had defeated the troll in the end, although he did add (in an untidier-than-usual scrawl) that both of them had helped very much, too.
As she penned her reply, Molly reflected ruefully that she should have known better than to hope that her previous letter would have any effect whatsoever. This did not, of course, prevent her from expressly forbidding Ron to have any more dealings with trolls (or any other dangerous creature that should never have been allowed to set foot in a school, for that matter) and entreating him to be safe, to mind his professors, and to continue to be a good boy.
Ron's fourth letter was only a few sentences long. Harry, it seemed, did not expect to receive any presents at Christmas (and, Ron reported with a horror that was evident from the shakiness of his letters and the amount of underlining and exclamation marks that he had used, Harry seemed to think that this was a perfectly normal thing to expect). Molly could not be having with this at all, and so she resolved to begin knitting her Christmas sweaters a little early this year (she had some lovely green yarn that would go very nicely with Harry's eyes).
Two letters from Ron arrived almost a week after Christmas, the first in Ron's untidy scrawl and bearing the usual holiday "best wishes" and thank-you's and an inquiry after Charlie's health, the second in a handwriting which she did not recognize but which, she realized quickly as she read, belonged to a very grateful Harry. (Who, Ron informed her in his letter, had received a lot more presents than just Molly's sweater and pan of fudge, a fact which warmed her heart.)
In return, Molly sent two letters of her own, one attached to a photograph of herself, Arthur, and Charlie in front of the entrance to the Ridgebit Dragon Sanctuary in Romania, the other much shorter and to the effect that it was no trouble at all and she was delighted he liked his sweater and the fudge so much.
The letter that arrived over lunch one a dreary Sunday afternoon had been scribbled out so hastily that it was nearly illegible. Still, Molly had not had six boys for nothing, so it was the work of only an hour or so to decipher it. Although she remained staunch in her disapproval of Dumbledore's decision to allow an eleven-year-old to play such a dangerous sport of Quidditch and of Ron's deeply-held suspicions of his Potions master, Molly could not help but be impressed by Harry's five-minute victory. It was, Ron told her triumphantly, a Hogwarts record ("Hermione looked it up right after the match!").
Molly baked a small batch of peanut-butter cookies shaped like snitches and sent them along with a brief congratulatory letter to Harry, and in her reply to Ron, she felt obliged to point out that Dumbledore trusted Snape and to scold him for brawling in the Quidditch stands (even if she was privately sure that the Malfoy boy had deserved it).
A rather miserable letter from Ron some weeks later informed her that, while Ron had been in the hospital wing recovering from an injury to his hands, his two best friends had been caught at the base of the Astronomy Tower at one o'clock in the morning and taken to a very irate McGonagall, who had already caught the Malfoy boy and Augusta Longbottom's sweet but cripplingly shy grandson that night. "She took a hundred and fifty points!" Ron had underlined the phrase no less than five times, the last one scoring the parchment so deeply that it was nearly punctured. Molly could, of course, understand Professor McGonagall's point that three Gryffindor first-years had been caught out of bed on the same night and that some punishment had to take place, but she nevertheless considered a loss of one hundred and fifty points to be more than a touch disproportionate. (The detention, on the other hand, Molly felt was quite well-deserved.)
She wrote Ron to tell him so, although she had no fear that Ron would turn on his friends over something so petty as an unfair loss of house points (she had not, after all, raised her son to be That Sort of person) and her words were meant more for the benefit of Harry, Hermione, and Neville than for her son.
Molly received no less than four letters in the weeks that followed, each more miserable than the last. Ron unhappily described his friends' plight (to hear him tell it, the whole school had turned against them all and especially Harry, and as Molly remembered how fierce the competition for the House Cup could be during her own school days, especially among the younger students, was dismayed but not very surprised). The last of these letters was unsettling in a way that the other three were not, however, for Ron described Harry's account of their detention (in the Forbidden Forest, of all places! Molly would be writing to Professor McGonagall very soon) and their latest theory that Professor Snape was in league with a mysteriously-not-dead You-Know-Who.
She wrote her longest reply yet, making reassuring her son that You-Know-Who was dead and gone and had been for ten long years and trying to ignore the new, prickling fear in her mind that, try as she might, she could not quite shake.
You-Know-Who, it seemed, was not quite so dead as Molly (and, for that matter, Ron) would have liked to think. While Molly was not so surprised as her son by the revelation that Professor Snape was not, in fact, evil, she otherwise shared his sentiments of first terror (at You-Know-Who's appearance and attempt on Harry's life) and then relief (that Harry had defeated You-Know-Who once again) as she read his incredibly long and barely-coherent letter. Then she laughed and immediately felt guilty about it when Ron abruptly changed the subject to announce tragically that Gryffindor was dead last in the House Championship in his final paragraph.
Molly took more time than usual with her reply. At last she put quill to parchment and told her youngest son that she was very, very glad that he and his friends were safe and that Gryffindor was bound to have better luck next year. She sealed the letter and sent it off with a disgruntled-looking Errol, and quietly prayed that, next year, her children's education would be untainted by evil of any kind more serious than silly House rivalries.
AN: This is an older fic which I'm cross-posting from AO3 for purposes of balance.