It might have been one of the longest days in Molly Weasley's life, but she found little sleep. Bone-tired exhaustion couldn't lull her, nor the promise of a future finally without war.
Fred was dead.
She wasn't a stranger to a long night awake. She could remember staying awake all night long, just outside her mother's bedroom when her brothers Fabian and Gideon were being born. She was just six years old then but determined to meet her little brothers the first chance she got. Twenty-six years later, she sat the whole night weeping over their murder, a week-old Ginny clutched in her arms.
Then there were the long, happy nights she spent around Hogwarts, sneaking around the castle with Arthur's hand in hers. Or those long hours spent labouring over each of their children, all pain forgotten as they were passed into her arms for the first time.
No, Molly Weasley was very familiar with nights without sleep.
This night was inconceivably different. The very air of Hogwarts was thick with grief, and Molly already told herself that at first light she was going to return to the Burrow. She needed to be at home, away from the place that once held only memories of exams and teenage romances, but now had become the place that her son, along with many others, were killed.
She sat beside Arthur, in the empty classroom their family had been given for the night. He couldn't sleep either. Their hands were intertwined, and on the conjured bed just across from them, Ginny's tear-streaked face was visible in the moonlight. Percy, George and Charlie took the other three beds. Bill and Fleur had found their own room, and Ron had gone off with Harry and Hermione. She had tried to insist that they all stay together, the mother part of her (her entire being) desperate to watch over them and make sure they were okay. There wasn't much fight to her at that point though, and they soon went off their own way.
At first light, Molly reminded herself, she'd leave for the Burrow, to gather whatever wasn't destroyed by Death Eaters, and to start repairing the home that every one of her children had been born and raised in. They deserved to have a place to go back to, sooner rather than later.
Arthur stood up, carefully extracting his hand from hers, and wet eyes followed him as he set about making two cups of tea from the small kettle they'd conjured earlier in the evening. "What are we going to do, Molly?" There was a tiredness to his voice, not unfamiliar but vastly more painful to hear on this night.
"Don't worry about that now, love," she whispered, standing up to be beside him, the place she always felt safest and strongest. Leaning against her husband, she felt his arm reach around to hug her. "We'll go home in the morning, and we'll figure everything out then."
There was going to be so much to do, and she wasn't sure she could manage it beyond the fact she knew she needed to. They needed to repair their home, to help each of their children come to terms with the war's end over the coming days and weeks and months. And, plan Fred's funeral.
The absolute ache in her heart hadn't dimmed since she first saw the pale, cold body of her son. She didn't think it ever would. It had sat deep inside every part of her, all that pain and anger and sadness, as she fought Death Eaters. As she murdered Bellatrix Lestrange.
Molly had never thought she'd see herself murder someone for as long as she lived, but then in the heat of battle, she was forced to see a curse headed towards her daughter, her youngest, her baby (as mothers were prone to think of their lastborn, regardless of age). It had taken nil thought to become a murderer in the name of her children. She would even describe it as feeling good, triumphant, to take the life of the woman who mocked her son's death, had attempted to murder another of her children, and who had murdered and tortured hundreds of others. Molly couldn't find it in herself to regret any part of it.
It didn't feel like Fred, or Remus, or Tonks, or any of the countless other victims of this war, were avenged. She wasn't sure it ever would. Useless deaths, all of them. With lives ahead of them and loved ones now parted forever. From the moment she learned of her son's death, she was positive that she could have killed Lord Voldemort without a moment's hesitation.
Molly turned to face Arthur entirely, leaning her head to his chest and wrapping her arms around him tightly. The picture of Fred, eyes unmoving, his warm smile frozen over forever, was etched in her mind. She just wanted her baby boy back, to hear his laugh after yet another terrible prank, to apologise to him for all her harsh words over the years. She only wanted the best for him, and it had taken far too long to realise she was the one who was wrong about what that meant. She wasn't sure now if she had ever made it clear to him just how proud she actually was of him. For the joke shop, for the way he always tried to leave people laughing and happy, for the brave and wonderful man he had become.
She wouldn't make that mistake again. Tomorrow, and every day afterwards, she would make sure none of her other children would ever feel that way.
"Let's go to bed, love. It won't be long until morning."