So, I watched this short video on Youtube by Jim Henson in the Storyteller series called the Soldier And Death. Totally check it out. And a little bit of their idea on Heaven sort of stuck with me, and this idea for a one-shot was created.
NoelleLaBelle came up with the title, because apparently, in her own words, I suck at them. Which is true.
Please read and review. I'm Percy Weasley, an attention whore. Humour me.
Waste Not A Weasley.
Fred woke up in a painting.
Well, no. It was a field – Paddington's Field actually. His Dad used to take him and George there when they were littluns after the long days of running their Mother ragged. They had only been around five or six and she had used to cry in exhaustion, "Arthur please. Just for the afternoon. Let them run wild as much as they like. Tire them out for this evening. I need a break…"
He had always felt bad about wearing her out, but he could never help it. There was just too much to do in so little amount of time during the day – how could anybody expect him to sit still? And so his Father would make her a cup of tea and make her sit down, and then with one hand on each shoulder of his twin sons, they would disapparate in a wisp of smoke to the magical kingdom of endless grass where they would run like mad until they finally dropped down beside each other breathless.
He sat up now, in the field of his childhood, alone, without George and without his Father. But it wasn't the same field – and yet it was. The same sprigs of flowers he remembered were scattered throughout the countryside, but the colours were heightened. The mauves and pinks were not the brittle pastels they had once been, weighed down by the sweltering of the heatwave that had passed over one summer, but were instead drenched in colour, as if the meadow were covered in a vast magic carpet of flowers. Silver wisps of breeze fell about the air and playfully tugged at his arms and when he looked up, the sky was of an impossible blue. Bright and beautiful, with tattered fragments of white clouds skidding across the sky, as if time were moving at a faster pace. He vaguely had a recollection of a Muggles Study class when he was younger, of flicking through Professor Burbage's books on Muggle Art. And while art in general had not interested him much, his eyes had gazed a little while at the dream-like brushstrokes of Claude Monet. He was in a painting.
What was he doing?
Why had he woken up here?
He seemed to recall he had been laughing with Percy. Laughing with Percy. He hadn't laughed with Percy since he was…
And then there had been a mighty explosion. And pain had torn at him, but only for a few moments, with such cacophonic sound, and then he had woken up here.
Georgie!
The sudden thought split through him and he stumbled forward impulsively – George – he had to find George – he'd be around here somewhere, he was always around somewhere. There had never been a time without George, from the dim memories of early life where he could remember being curled up with him in the cot, to breaking free from Hogwarts under the tyranny of Umbridge, on their broomsticks like revolutionaries. "Vive la revolution!" George had hooted in the wind…
It seemed to make sense now that he was walking that he was in some sort of painting. Or at the very least there was no need to question it anymore. He looked down at himself and wondered how he had ever gotten so clean. His hair hung loose down his shoulders like it had those few years ago when he had grown it out…Why he had grown it long, he couldn't remember, but at the time, he…
Things were different here. Time seemed to be sliding past, at such a fast rate. The sky was darkening, and he felt as if he had been walking for eons. The field just didn't seem to end.
It should end.
Surely it should end…
There should be a road. There had been a road. It was…A road – wasn't it? There…No…It was always this long field…Right? Yeah…The field just always seemed to go on forever…And he'd run through it…With…There was his brothers…Yes, he'd run through it with his brothers…Someone calling, appealing to him…Freddie, wait up! Wait! Wait for Ginny! Dad said to wait!...But it was forgotten, the moment it passed through him…Yeah, he'd run through it with his brothers…Or…No…He liked going by himself…
…He would go on his own like this.
The night moved over the field like a favoured Winter cloak, swathing around him in the inky blackness and soon he could see a lake appearing. This seemed odd, he didn't know why it should be here, but the small boat in the water seemed to be waiting for him. A moon appeared in the sky, with stars showering down over the edge of the horizon and galaxies exploded ahead in a way he was sure had never been possible before…
But he couldn't remember…
The boat rocked in the gentle waves as if beckoning for him, and he stepped in and lay back, looking up at the impossible beauty overhead. The sky for some reason made him think of pudding and lemon meringue pie and pumpkin juice and the familiar clinking of spoons against plates and the contented weariness after a good feast, and as he drifted off to sleep the boat slid through the night.
The next time his eyes opened the world was aglow. The night had not yet passed into dawn, but the moonlight glittered down and he noticed that the boat had stopped. He sat up and looked about and stood as he saw a large gate, of elaborate design, curved and twisted like the roots of a giant oak as if it had grown from the very depths of the earth. He didn't recall anything anymore. He didn't recall the explosion, or Percy, or the young man he had been looking for who he had never forgotten before. He did not remember that he had even forgotten anything, all that he knew lay behind the gate. That everything he needed to know lay behind it.
And waiting by the gate, a man jumped up from where he had been sitting. A young man, with long dark hair, and an old smile, with the most striking grey eyes he had ever seen.
"Hey," the young man said with a grin, "Weasel."
Yeah…Weasel…For some reason that sounded right.
Yeah. He's Weasel.
"Hi," he replied and moved forward, holding out his hand, "Have you been waiting long?"
The man did not answer him straightaway, just looked him up and down, before his smile broadened and he shook his hand, "It doesn't matter. You arrived at the right time…You're what we've been waiting for."
He smiled at the thought that he could be of use, and the dark haired man continued, "We're missing a piece you see. A rodent. The other one was diseased. But weasels aren't. They're cunning, but they don't hide in shadows and the dark. Their home is a burrow..Yeah, we've found our replacement piece."
The man with the grey eyes then put his arm around his shoulder and they moved towards the gate where it opened and two other men were waiting. One with messy black hair and the other had a gentle smile.
"Prongs! Moony!" the man said to them with a laugh, "Our fourth Marauder has come home!"
Weasel smiled, as for some reason at that moment no truer statement had ever been spoken and the one with the messy hair known as Prongs moved over to him, throwing his arm around Weasel's other shoulder, "Ah. You're right Padfoot. He's just what we've been looking for."
Moony with the gentle smile dug his hands in the pockets of his cardigan and inspected Weasel for a few moments as they both started to walk forward and said thoughtfully, "You know…I think in time…We really ought to expand for a fifth…"
Padfoot looked to him curiously, "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Prongs answered, with a nod, "Yeah, a fifth...But not now…Not right now…"
And Weasel's smile deepened at this and the four stepped through the entrance, and the gates closed and Fred was no more.