It began, appropriately, with a roar of ferocious anger. "Fred! George!" Some argument, a bit of laughter, and usually a telling off by Mum often followed this pairing of words. I would come to feel a certain affinity for that phrase; a glowing warmth from my past that I would miss after the two had moved out and begun to live on their own. At the time of this incident, I still had many carefree years before I would know this feeling. I had only recently begun to distinguish the twins from each other, a difficult thing for anyone having met them, much less a nearly five-year-old sibling.
Of all my brothers, and I have many of them, Fred and George probably best represent what I loved about my childhood. I love all my brothers dearly, but they were constantly present, constantly laughing, constantly showing the world what a clever mind and willing sense of humor can do. It can move worlds. It could also move my brothers to anger, particularly their two year-older brother Percy. He said it the most, an irony I see clearly, now. His seriousness, even from those earliest days of my memories, was important. He had shared with me, thinking me unknowing or remembering in my younger days, his hopes and dreams. I felt sadness at his overbearing anger towards play and silliness and undying need to succeed. It was not his fault. We are what we are.
He, the antithesis of the twins and - as he always reminded us - little more than a year away from his introduction to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, stood glaring down at them, shouting about their latest exploit against him. This day, it seems, they had somehow fashioned a harness atop his pet, Scabbers the rat, making him pull a toy box that somehow continued to grow in size and weight the further he went.
It was brilliant, "unintentional" magic, but Percy did not seem as amused as the twins or me. Ronald was off in a corner playing with hovering Quidditch toys, urging them to pass a small, petrified nut through a hoop he had created out of felt and pipe cleaners. Dad had made the toys fly, buying the characters secondhand from a Muggle shop he frequented for batteries or some other trinkets. They weren't real Quidditch toys, but they looked close enough for Ron, young as he was.
The elder brothers weren't present, neither were our parents, I remember distinctly. Mum would not let me tag along when they left or brought them back. I was much too young for the city. So I was told. Regardless, this was a special day, especially for me. My brothers were finally coming home. School was out. Our parents were driving them back from London this afternoon. Percy, standing tall, in his ten-year-old second-hand sneakers, had promised to keep an eye on the children. He had called us children, according to Fred, since he was seven.
Percy knelt down on the ground, cradling the poor, extracted Scabbers from the contraption, facing the smiling duo with a look of burnt custard. Neither seemed concerned at his affected anger. "You two have crossed the line this time! Wait until Mum hears about this one!" The pair laughed again, giving each other a look of glee.
I stood off to the side, giggling with that sweet innocence born in extreme youth and later lost to bitterness and time, sadly, in most people. "And look," he continued, grimacing, "at the example you're setting Ginny! She's at such an impressionable age!"
"What about Ron?" Fred spoke with a glimmer in his eye. "Isn't he impressionable?"
"We wouldn't have it," George followed, "if we were only ruining a single sibling at a time."
Percy glanced over at the distracted Ron, and responded, "Don't change the subject! What you did was hurtful to Scabbers and probably against Wizarding statutes..."
"Oooh, I could do with some Wizarding statues!" Fred said, sounding awed.
"We could make them play with Scabbers, when Perce isn't listening," George added, under his breath in a way meant to be heard by all.
"Statutes! Statutes! " Percy roared.
"Relax, Percy," Fred said.
"You'll give yourself a sore throat," George finished, smiling as much as his twin.
I watched this exchange with interest, seeing each statement, clever and wondrous to a five year old, passed between them in the mysterious dance of the conversational argument. The glow of laughter about the twins reflected as a mirror the angered redness of their older brother. A decision forms in the mind of the elder. He picks the dignified retreat. As a ten-year-old, Percy retreated with dignity in a huff, muttering something about telling Mum...
As Percy's head, held high and back, passed through the doorway, the twins and I fell to laughing, and hard. Fred was nearly in tears; George was feeling great pain in his side from the laughter. I had not achieved that level of hilarity, yet. I laughed in mimic of them, falling to the floor as they did, laughing beyond my comprehension of the joke at hand.
Ron looked up at the intensity of laughter, witnessing from afar the tears and sweat, the beet-red faces. A Quidditch toy struck him in the eye, and he yelped in pain. This only brought further laughter from George, who witnessed it. By symbiotic connection, Fred, too, redoubled his guffaws.
I remember walking to the window. It was pristine to the north and dark to the west. The sky above was a subtle grey mixture, swirling softly under invisible hands. Cloud tendrils flowed in and between the buildings in far off cities, and hovered like a landing bird above the small town of Ottery St. Catchpole, our home. As with any child's memory, there are gaps. How we went from laughing to walking into town I could never remember. The twins, my only companions, flanked me as a guard and unofficial MCs, announcing in their own way everything that came along.
"And to your left, you'll see the old church, where George once convinced Percy we had hidden his book up on a rafter," Fred said, wistfully reminiscing.
"He spent three hours searching before he realized and came after us," George continued.
"That was one beautiful day, Ginny. You'd have loved it."
The town of Ottery St. Catchpole was the playhouse of my family, especially Fred and George. Although they barely knew any of the denizens, what with their mother's anxiety about anyone discovering what we were. She had honed a constant threat and guilt into my older brothers well before I came around.
None of us, not even the flamboyant twins, had ever done openly public magic. There had been narrow escapes, of course. However, the Muggles never knew we were more than local children, and never had a reason to suspect otherwise. I hadn't done any unintentional or intentional magic yet. No one worried about it. Well, maybe I did a little, but only from the teasing twins and Percy's stern world of anxieties.
Today, Fred and George were going to take me to a very special place. In the shadow of Mum, I scarcely left the house in my first few years of life. The twins wouldn't hear of that remaining the case. Ron, I think, had only looked up quietly as we walked hand in hand in hand out the door.
The air was stagnant, quietly awaiting the winds and pressures that had enveloped the air above and to the west. It created a dismal sort of oppression, falling as an unhappy cloak about the houses of the township. The anticipation of rainfall and windfall kept most people indoors. Only a few stragglers remained to occupy the main road through town. This was my first impression of the village. I saw few people and felt the presence of even fewer. The mood and edginess of the passersby diminished the life they presented.
I remember the looming tower, just on the far side of the town. It was felled by a Muggle wrecking crew when I turned nine. The town council had declared it unfit for human use, or some other specific offense against existence. It seemed a mountain, though my family assures me it was hardly taller than the church, steeple included. Reflecting, I suppose the slimness of the tower made it seem ever higher. I have vague impressions of this tower, but I have seen too many to match up a particular piece of the tower to a piece of that image. This is the case, I mean, for the outside. I know the inside better than anyone else does.
It was, indeed, in rotten shape, even then. The internal structure, which was bare and unconcealed, was largely made up of rotten logs that had once stood proud and true, relics of the glorious trees they had been. Now, sodden with moisture and threadbare with the strain of support over time, they resembled more the naturally felled logs that inhabit deeply seeded forests. It is some wonder no one had ever died within it.
Silently, for once, the twins urged me onward, just ahead of them. Their sudden quiet inspired a sense of holiness, of sanctity that my home had never had, even in that earliest of moments when consciousness first begins to form. The home of the Weasleys was nothing if not iconoclastic, at least in the irreverent purity of life within. To the twins, the purveyors of chaos and misconduct, these hallowed places, remote and untouched by the villagers, were sanctuaries. At least, the first moments reflected their awe of such a solitary ownership. They were kings in their own special palace. In addition, they had let me enter and ascend before them. Such kindness amid siblings was new to me.
I remember the uncertain shifting of my worldview as I rocked foot to foot slowly forward. Vague echoes remain of reassuring phrases Fred and George passed up to me; even in reverence, they had a tone of utter sarcasm and laughter. I felt that mixture of fear and curiosity that drives a child to further action.
Atop the highest point, beyond the tightly twisting and unusually long-seeming journey upward, a small loft with hardly any headroom stood poised above the earth. It fed out into a tiny patch of balcony overlooking the town of Ottery St. Catchpole. At the far end, the Burrow stood, remote and forbidding in its eccentric design. The majority of homes and businesses stood a single story, hugging the ground as clumps of browning, rain-deprived weeds. The tower was a tall dandelion; the Burrow an awkwardly rising flower, harmed by sunlight and crunched as under a giant's footprint.
I paused uncertainly in the center of the room, staring vaguely through the heavy mists and wisps of hovering cloud beneath the weighted sky. The air took on that moistened quality of the world outside, a lightened difference from the ancient decrepit state of the air on the stairs below. No breeze floated in through the window. I felt, for the first time in my young life - that I can recall - that desire for the coolness of a summer wind through a window.
I turned about. Fred and George, my big brothers, were standing nonchalantly by, as if waiting for a sign. I saw the passive, relaxed look on their faces, something uncommon on spaces so often reserved for devilish mischief and laughter. Just the sight, that unnatural look of non-guilty calmness brought on a laughter that I could not control and they did not jump in to help sustain it.
After a few moments, I felt the formal air about my brothers and wondered if I was in the wrong to have laughed. Their solemn smiles told me not to worry. Fred began to speak, taking on the most officious tone, one he had no doubt gleaned from Percy. I held my hand to my mouth to keep from laughing at it. George had the look of constipated laughter, but kept still.
"As you know," Fred said, "George and I are forever locked in combat with the forces of silence and quietude."
I nodded, not sure exactly what they meant. George continued.
"The preeminent party to this is our older brother Percy," a gleam filled his eye. "He is its greatest advocate, at least."
"Now, to be forward, George and I do our best at this battle, but it is a trying battle," Fred stated, regally turning aside with hand covering his lowered eyes. "And we would like -"
"you," George continued, "to join us in our escapades-"
"as queen lieutenant!" Fred finished.
I wasn't quite sure what this meant. I do know that I liked the term 'queen' in there. My associations with queenliness had always been positive: from the earliest fairy tales, to the stories of the ancient witch queens of distant lands, before there were things such as Ministries. In a sense, the queen seemed an older ideal. It represented that which was not of the current conforming rules. I now know more of the regal rulers, but then it was all magical play. It was romantic to a child's mind. To be called a queen was flattery of the highest order for a little girl of five. You could keep your lieutenant-ships and battles with symbolic ideas.
From the glow on my face, they could see I was delighted. I did not speak overmuch at that age. I feel I was more like a sponge, observing and learning about that which makes up the surface of my world. Later, not too many years after this, it was hard to make me shut up. They still can't. With my obvious assent, they had me kneel before them, my five-year-old self being uncertain as to why.
Out of Fred's pocket came a book of jokes and pranks of some renown. It at least was well known to the Weasleys. We had all been living under its thrall for some time, through the twins, of course. In a few months, Mum would find it, and that would be the end of that. I can still feel my ears ringing in the aftermath of her anger over it.
George helped me place my hand on the book, and I swore an oath upon it. I wasn't sure what it meant, and it still somewhat confuses me, but such is the art of hilarity and sarcasm. I traipsed through the words, in repetition of Fred or George; I cannot remember which, as a child lost in a wood. Evidently, that I say the exact words they said did not matter so much as getting the gist of the matter. Here is what I remember of that oath:
"I, Ginevra Molly Weasley, do swear to fight the evils of boredom by any means necessary, wage a war of attrition upon the quietude of souls and floating denizens of the deep, live by the code of the twin jokers of fate, delve deeply into the minds of the dullards - the better to insert more life, to live no moment in mediocrity, to shine like the star for which we all are born, and to bask in the light of the candle. So I do swear."
There were other parts. It seemed to last interminably. Every stanza ended in the phrase, "So I do swear." It felt like locking one's self into a contract through each part of it. Often afterward, I wondered if they had likewise taken Ron aside and had him swear up on the book or some other trifling symbol. Or was I special? I like to think the latter, but I have no desire to ask.
As I spoke my final phrase, locking with some finality the complete oath, nature seemed to seal it with an effortless drum roll. Lightning! Wind! The tower was pummeled with air, creaking unmercifully as it was tugged and released, tugged and released. The rain beat down upon us, flying in through the open windows and a million slim cracks that dotted the walls. I was peppered with moisture before it occurred to me to move. Fred and George, their farce of a ceremony cut short, took me by the hand and led me down the stairwell. The look of worry on their faces was eerie in the darkening gloom of the descent.
It worried me more to see that than the sounds of the growing storm. I was used to storms. Ottery St. Catchpole often went through gale seasons of snow and rain and hail. I couldn't say what worried them most, from the getgo. I did not know the state of things, then.
That year, the Muggles had begun a renovation on their irrigation and water channeling of the area. With farmlands abounding and rainfall scarce in certain critical seasons - and overabundant in others - this countryside was in serious need of water channels. Therefore, partway through, the foreman had realized a few serious mistakes had been made. No blame was pointed, except at diplomats disconnected with the actual construction. The delay cost more money, and had the small side effect of significantly flooding the area about Ottery St. Catchpole. Now, it hadn't had a hard enough rain yet to test this theory. That night would prove it.
Even as we made our way onto the pavement at the base of the tower, the water was rolling diagonally across the path before us. It barely covered the cobblestones, but the speed of its motion and the sight before us struck a fearful chord. A near river of water covered the streets of the town. It was very thin, but had extended to such a length and had filled so quickly that it was alive.
We raced, Fred and George half-dragging, half-leading me through the twisting path around rising pools and sudden bogs. The town of Ottery St. Catchpole had become an instant swamp, filled with the same dangers and trembling fickleness. Cries arose from the houses nearby as families realized their plight. The sullen wail arose before us, crossing behind; it approached as a wall of vibrant air threatening to hold our flight.
Small animals, unearthed as their homes were flooding over, fled in the opposite direction, passing swiftly and unheeding by our ankles. I noticed there were no birds around, none at all. Even as we ran, the rain drenched every fiber of our clothing; anything that could moisten was engulfed. A literal river seemed to roll over me, as though I were a part of the inch-submerged pavement about me. The water rose.
Every footfall left a sudden vacuum, a hole that collapsed upon itself, tossing water in jets both before and behind. I found the water riding up towards my lower thighs, and I ran with the animal panic I had inborn. George and Fred had never looked afraid. If they could stand up to their mother's telling-off, what need they ever fear? They were ashen with a cold, tortured gleam in their eyes. A mixture of guilt and fear as an emblem upon their faces was all that was definite from above me. I felt so small, smaller than ever I have felt in my life, next to those tall, towering visages. They were far from adulthood, but they were strong men to me.
It was a dazzling sight. The lights of every home erupted as lanterns were lit and feet flew in and about, precious items were lifted and trudged up thin stairwells, hopefully to the safety of the second floor. The falling onslaught caught and bejeweled in the light, blurring the world and making the way less clear, the path less complete. Ahead was the bridge. After that, we'd have a straight shot uphill to the Burrow.
The small canal, typically empty and dry, was overflowing. The thin and rising town water was directly level with the overflow, increasing it all. The bridge was shaking, being torn asunder by the force of the water tugging at its base parts. An ancient relic of the township's ancestors, it had seen many more a storm than its brothers and sisters in the surrounding towns. It was ready to give up the ghost. Even I could see that. And it was terrifying to behold.
The bridge was thin. We had to cross it one at a time, in a line. Fred ran across to test it. The shape buckled, but did not break under his weight. He turned, and beckoned back. George positioned himself behind me and urged me across the wooden monstrosity. I was terrified, but took a few meager steps. The world swayed. I could barely see Fred, though a bare twenty feet ahead. I could hear the echo of a cry from his side. I thought he was urging us on. If so, it worked. I kept moving.
Midway across, a sparse moment from completely crossing, the bridge had held its all long enough. As a piece of cereal left too long in its milky broth, the bridge dissolved beneath our feet. We tumbled, George left and I right. My feet landed hard on a submerged rock. The canal was not so deep at my position. I could feel pain swell within my right foot; it seemed to echo in watery ripples. I was up to my stomach in water.
I had little time to look around me, only seeing George fall hard upon a floating bit of bridge nearby - rather like a raft - and that he had blood rushing out from around his knee, before I felt ill from the incredible pain I felt and retched. My stomach was empty; the world about me was filled, as if it had taken on a heavy meal. It ate everything that it came upon, even my breakfast.
My nausea passing, and leg numbing, I saw George attempting to stand upon the wooden raft, looking intently for a rock trail that would allow him to trek to where I stood. Fred was nowhere to be seen. The rain was too dense. I realized that I had fallen back closer to where we had started than where we were headed. I was upstream of where George was fighting the current. It was only then that I realized what a strain it had been not to float off down the river immediately. That, more than anything, had buckled my foot beneath me.
George seemed to have found his trail. He was hopping, painfully, several feet from rock to rock. I stood there, mutely, holding back the tears that welled up from the whole moment. It was a lot to take in for a child my age. I could hear the beginnings of his attempts at a voice, calling across for me to wait where I was and to "hold still, I'm coming." I obeyed.
A crash of lightning lit the scene more fully. I saw what he did not, concentrating as he was upon the rocks just beneath his feet. A large log, actually an entire tree, I could see, was barreling down the rapid river flow. I was in a space that would be brushed with the thinnest branches; George, from his pace and direction, looked as if he would take the brunt force of it. I let out a mute scream, not releasing a breath from my body, but watching in horror as the tree mounted upon him.
His eyes glazed with fright, and his jaw hung for an instant. He slipped backwards even as he tried to dodge left and right, both legs fighting for their own respective directions. I saw my brother lifted and tossed six feet backwards, disappearing into the water and bobbing upward in time for his assailant to renew its assault. Both he and the tree disappeared into the misted distance. He was gone.
I cried wretchedly. It was my fault. I had let George continue unwarned. I had seen the danger. I had let him come to me, when I could have gotten across faster. I had killed my brother.
Such thoughts as often pass through one's head, and they strayed through mine at that moment. I wanted to undo it, to go back and stop him, to save him! I wanted, more than anything, to be stronger, braver, in that past. I wanted nothing more. I think, to this day, that is the most need I have ever felt.
I stood beneath the open sky, completely alone, tragically set apart, fighting hard not to imagine what Fred would say, how he would be, when he knew. The tragedy of it was too strong. My young mind was simply unable to believe. The complete rejection was what caused it, I think.
My childish shriek that flew from my mouth took on a life. It tore from me, taking the sorrows and pain out of my mind and into the world. The lightning exploded before me. It was the most beautiful sight. White, searing light countered its brother rain and forced its retreat; sister wind held back and watched, quietly, for that single instance. It is little wonder the Greeks thought of lightning as a thing from the gods. Nature bent around it, giving it the space it needed. She held the rest of time, luxuriously enjoying it, but His destructive instant could not be outdone. The enveloping sound of thunder, an explosion in my tiny ears, absorbed and coalesced with my high-pitched scream. All was white and black.
George was calling out, about to leap from rock to rock towards me. I could see him clearly: not an illusion, but real. "How?" and "For what purpose?" are questions that still rebound upon the surfaces of my mind. At that moment, though, I had only to take advantage of it. I ran.
The slick surfaces of the hidden rocks nearly carried me under a dozen times, but I leapt from stone to stone, outracing the silent approach of that malignant tree. George's halt and shout of alarm told me it was fast behind me. I saw and passed the spot upon which I had seen George crushed, and as George came toward me, I registered a brief relief upon his face. He scolded me shortly, a very un-George-like thing to do, for not listening to him, as the tree silently slid past. All I could do was cry into his shoulder.
I do not remember anything from then until we reached home except the soft feel of his shoulder against my bleary eyes. Somehow, they managed it, those tall men of mine. I could not feel anything. The pain in my leg had ebbed, but I remember seeing it bleeding fiercely.
Mum was furious, of course, but grateful we were all right. Percy's self-righteous smirk could not deter my tearful happiness. I cried longer than was normal, I think, for my parents believed I had caught cold. I was rushed to bed, and my brothers, co-conspirators of mine, kissed me on the forehead, eyes mirthful, almost forceful now, but they were still Fred and George. I do not think the others ever quite grasped the complete disaster we had all so narrowly avoided. Fred and George were accustomed to stretching the truth to protect...well, their hides. I said nothing, one way or another, about the incident. I think it was best for all.
Mum still scolded them for days, taking ample opportunity to ground them in various ways fruitful to her. Charlie and Bill seemed mildly amused at the trouble the twins had caused, not having seen much but a rising pool of water at and surrounding the remains of the old bridge. Ron was oblivious to the whole thing. I would have been, had I not been involved so intimately. It is scary how the memory haunts. He continued playing with his artificial toys, dreaming the imaginary dreams of childhood.
Officially, the twins witnessed my first foray into magic. I had "accidentally" set fire to a book of Percy's after he had been mean to my dollies and me. This was a few months after The Incident. They didn't bother to mention it to Mum. Percy thought they had done it, as always. My parents saw another such display. I fell over a box in the hall and bounced off the floor as though it were soft rubber. That said, I still wonder if either event was my true first magic.
Knowing now what I know of the subjects and varied aspects, I still cannot shake that perhaps ego-formed wonder I had had since that day, that what I saw was real and that I had changed it. With no wizened witnesses, I believe I will never know for sure. It may not matter much after all. What does matter is that my brothers, the twins, my co-conspirators in crimes against boredom, and I survived a very, very frightening day in town. With that in hand, I can let the rest fall away. It really matters not.