A/N: Mizu, Mahoutokoro. This was written for the Mother's Day event on The Golden Snitch forum for Molly Weasley. Word count: 535
The Burrow was quieter than it had been in more than two decades, and Molly had no idea what to do with herself. She'd done her best to conceal how she felt about Ginny going to Hogwarts before the kids had left. Then there had been the debacle with Ron, Harry, and the flying car, which had been more than enough to distract her for a day
After she'd been told they were safe and sent off the Howler, however, she found the quiet catching up with her.
She wasn't crying. She had thought she would be, but the tears hadn't come yet. That night, perhaps, would be a different story. At least Arthur would be home then. She knew he felt it just as much as she did, and he wouldn't let her handle the feeling alone.
For the moment, though, he was at work, and Molly had to find ways to distract herself on her own.
It was early afternoon, but she'd already cleaned the entire ground floor of the house since she'd woken up that morning. Having a handful of children underfoot had taught her how to clean in a time crunch, and she'd grown so good at it that she was no longer able to take her time with her chores. It hadn't served as nearly as much of a distraction as she had hoped.
For lack of anything better to do, she wandered to the bookshelf. It had been ages since she had sat down to read for pleasure as opposed to looking up a useful spell or recipe. Seeing Lockhart at Diagon Alley not long ago had made her itch to sit down with one of his books. She hadn't yet read all of them, which hadn't been for a lack of trying.
Pulling one of the books off the shelf, she smiled at the wizard's own smiling face. It comforted her in a way nothing in the house could when it reminded her so much of her children. She settled down into her favourite chair and cracked the book open, soaking in the warmth of Lockhart's prose. There was something so charismatic about his words that Molly found herself swooning from them alone.
Thoughts of him in the bookstore came back, causing her to blush slightly. He'd been so kind to Harry, and it had only made her more fond of him. The boy had probably enjoyed meeting someone who could relate to him when it came to fame.
For the rest of the day, she read about Lockhart's adventures. She read with abandon, hardly noticing as time passed. When she did pull out of it briefly, to eat or to let Errol out the window, she felt the loneliness creeping back in, and she would make her way back to her chair and her book as quickly as possible.
As the days and weeks passed, the quiet would grow easier to handle. It wouldn't be nearly as lonely. By the time Christmas came in December, she had almost found peace in the time being alone afforded her, but for the first couple of weeks, it was the books that propped her up and made it all bearable.