Fandom: Harry Potter
Year: Around 2023. Rose is 17. Hugo is 15. "The Wart" is 11. (For reference's sake: James is 18, Albus is 17, and Lily is 15.)
Characters: The non-canon character of "The Wart" as well as Hermione, Ron, Rose and Hugo, and some references to other characters. Hugo and Ron are chosen in the FF listing. Let's just pretend that Rose and Hugo existed as we know them, but so did this small, less important, inferior feeling child who was in the shadows.
I'm referencing tons to T.S. White's The Once and Future Kinghere. It is one of my favorite books and while reading it I realized how the similarities could be referenced, not to mention that the stories of King Arthur are already referenced greatly in the Weasley family canon and Rowling has admitted that the book has been a huge influence in Harry's and Dumbledore's characters. I do believe the book is in the public domain, but I tried to quote it where used directly, italicizing to stay somewhat in style. 'scuse me. The title is a play on what Lancelot called himself, "The Ill-Made Knight."
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The Ill-Made Weasley
"The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life— even when he was a great man with the world at his feet—he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand."
The Wart was barely even a Weasley. He didn't deserve to be one.
The Wart was called the Wart, because it more or less rhymed with Art, which was short for his real name. He tried to pretend it didn't bother him, but it did. It always did.
The Wart never understood it, but it did not make him feel good because Hugo seemed to regard it as making him inferior in some way. Hugo taught him that being different was wrong. Nobody talked to him about it, but he thought about when he was alone, and was distressed. He did not like people to bring it up. Since the other boy always did bring it up when a question of precedence arose, he had got into the habit of giving in at once before it could be mentioned. Besides, he admired Hugo despite all of the bad things he did to the Wart and was a born follower. He was a hero-worshiper.
The family seemed perfect when he wasn't thrown into the mix.
Head Girl Rose and Prefect Hugo –with matching heads of red hair inherited from their father and curls from their mother; both having dashing good looks and brains too large for their skulls; Perfect Gryffindors with all the daring, nerve, and chivalry one family could take; both of their parents bringing in a terrible lot of Galleons from high ranking jobs in the ministry; friends of the family with more enticing stories about adventure than the children's stomachs could bear. An ancient ginger cat, a terrier that only barked and nipped at females, and a scraggly-haired Otterhound named Ruby gifted to Rose the year she was eleven by an almost-giant that the Wart was afraid of, just because of his sheer size, and a trio of owls – one for each of the two perfect children, and one for their parents to share.
He didn't fit in with anyone.
And especially so when he was with the children of the friends who had enticing adventures. He knew the truths behind Quidditch champion James, sweet and kind Albus, and clever Lily: James's real desire was to work with his Uncle George in the joke shop, not to play Quidditch. Albus was a Slytherin in the most vile sense of the word – he was anything but sweet or kind. Lily was a pathological liar, a gossiper, a cheater.
He knew these truths, and they hated him for it.
He was never as wonderful as anyone else was.
And no, he was not a real Weasley.
His parents (Hermione was his mummy through and through, but Ron was just Father. To Rose and Hugo, he was Daddy) were never sure of what to think of the boy.
Through his veins coursed the blood of a pure family mixed with the blood of one of the most powerful muggle-borns in history, yet it was of no use.
Most children started exhibiting small signs of being magical at about four years old. Rose had been three. Hugo five. For the Wart, three, four, and five passed. As did six, seven, and eight. And so on.
When the Wart was nearly eleven, and had never done magic.
They didn't talk about it much, or ever bring him anywhere to be examined, because it made Ron too upset.
Year after year he was brought to Diagon Alley to shop for Hugo and Rose's books and wands and robes, his mother always bought him little toys and treats while her other children and husband were off gaping at new Broomsticks and discussing who would win the World Cup that year. George would always give the boy his favorite new Weasley Wheezes to use, he told him with a wink and a whisper, on Hugo or Fred or James.
He was five years old when Rose went off to Hogwarts, and did not go to the train station with them. Ron did not want him to be seen.
Hermione planned on sending him to a Muggle school.
It wasn't that Ron really hated or even at all disliked the child – far from it. He loved the boy – his calm and gentle nature, his little smile, his full heart. But he wanted to his family to be normal, his children to be equal and happy and given all the things he did not have when he was small (new robes, unused textbooks, coordinated owls). He didn't want to be gossiped about, whispered about, or stared at.
Hermione always scoffed, and told him to stop acting so much like a pure blood. She felt he needed to be treated just the same as the other children. Just because he was a squib didn't mean he wasn't their child, she would tell him, again and again and again.
"Don't you remember your childhood?" She'd say. "Don't you remember being overshadowed by Bill and Charlie and Percy? Don't you remember feeling like you were loved the least? Imagine what this feels like for him! Can't you empathize with what he is going through? Imagine going through every day of your life watching other people do things with ease that he will never have the capability of doing. He shouldn't have to feel unimportant and unloved every single day of his life! He is an outcast by nature, you shouldn't feed his insecurities. Can't you wrap that through your teaspoon sized brain?"
He did. And he did. And he did. And he did. He knew all of it, and he felt sorry for the boy.
But he just wanted normalcy, and to have the Wart was to have anything but.
On the day he was to turn eleven, he slept in his parents' bedroom because he had had a nightmare because of thunder and lightning filling up the world outside his house and could not fall back asleep. His mother's arms wrapped around him tightly as she whispered into his ear, "I love you no matter what you can or can't do, Arty. You're my baby boy."
He tried to make music out of the sounds of the drops of the rain hitting different materials of the house in different pitches to help him sleep, to make the rain less frightening. He did this often. He told this to Hugo once, wondering if the older boy did the same, and the Wart was laughed at.
The rain finished with a lingering goodbye and sometime during the night the clouds gave away to clear sky. The moon rose in its awful majesty over the silver tree-tops. All was moonlit, all silver, too beautiful to describe. But the Wart was afraid of the dark, and instead of looking out the window into the starry dark sky, he looked for constellations in the freckled shoulder of the father who had always been embarrassed by him.
He was not brave. He was not smart. He did not like to read, or boss people around, or play Quidditch. He couldn't make friends like Rose, he couldn't make jokes like Hugo. He did not have red, bushy hair (or reddish fur, like the dogs and cat) and bright blue eyes and pale skin and freckles.
His hair was a dirty blonde and limp, his skin a tanned colour, a stark contrast from his siblings and his parents. He had no freckles to speak of, save for a large dark one on his cheek, under his left eye. Every time his mother looked at him, every day for his entire life, she tried to rub it off. As if someday it would be dirt. As if someday she could change it.
He shouldn't have been allowed to be a Weasley. He couldn't even do magic.
The Hogwarts letters came a few weeks into July, on a day the Potters visited and had plans to go to Muggle London – something the children had been excited about for weeks. A grey coloured owl that reminded Ron of Errol (in looks, not in coordination) swooped in their kitchen window and dropped both families' envelopes - addressed to "the Children of Ron and Hermione Weasley" and "Albus and Lily Potter" onto their table.
The Wart buried his face in a copy of the Beedle the Bard. He wanted, even if only for a moment, to not exist at all. He thought it would be easier that way. For everyone.
A letter proclaiming Rose Weasley as Gyffindor's Head Girl, and both Lily Potter and Hugo Weasley fifth year Gryffindor prefects, four lists of spellbooks. An uproar arose, congratulating the three. James snickered and patted his smaller brother on the back in a sarcastic sorry for not earning a position like his sister and cousins.
But there was an extra letter. Ron picked it up and read it to himself.
"Merlin's pants," he murmured, his face pale and his voice much too high. "Not possible. Absolutely not possible."
Hugo ceased it and read it aloud.
"Dear Mr. Arthur Weasley,
"We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment."
His voiced faded slowly towards the end, and the group all had their eyes laid on the Wart.
Hermione looked as if she were about to cry.
James was the first one to act, pulling his wand out of his pocket and giving it to the Wart.
"No, please don't," the Wart said quietly.
"Just give it a wave, please."
He did. A plate on the table shattered.
Hermione really did start to cry, then. "How did they know? How didn't we? How… Sweetheart, have you ever done anything magical before?"
Rose looked frightened.
Ron knelt down in front of the Wart. "Arthur," he whispered, taking the boy's shoulders in his hands, "My boy."
"No," the Wart said, "Please stand up, you are making me unhappy."
"I knew there was something special about you the first time I laid my eyes on you."
"Don't!" he cried feebly. He did not want the attention; he was not used to it; he did not deserve it.
"We'll have to go into Diagon Alley straight away; you know what? We'll get you a nice owl, any owl you want. And I believe the Scamander boys will be first years this year! They're quite odd, really, if they're anything like their mother, but you guys, I'm sure you could be great friends."
Hugo stood behind his father and looked straight at his brother, his eyes wide with fascination, and it was more than the Wart could bear.
"Oh do stop," he cried, "Of course I can make friends with them, if I have got to go to Hogwarts, and oh, Father please do not kneel down like that because it breaks my heart. Please get up, and don't make everything so horrible. Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never been magical at all."
And the Wart also burst into tears.