DISCLAIMER: All rights to the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. Summary quote is attributed to George Orwell, from his book 1984.

WARNING: This story contains references to violence, domestic and otherwise.

THE TRUTH

- a story told in three parts -

She couldn't stop him. But is that enough? Is that enough to allow her to look at the blood of her daughter smeared on the flagstone floor and tell herself that she did everything she could? No. The answer has always been definitively no. Yet here she sits.

Marcus is sitting on the floor, the body of their child folded in his arms like a rag doll. His tears disgust her. Large and wet, they quiver on his cheeks before running through the lines on his face and dripping on to the soft, downy head held just below his chin. She sits on the green chaise lounge with the white hibiscus pattern, her toes aligned and her hands folded like a proper lady.

It takes all of her self-control not to storm over to her husband and rescue her baby girl from his large, clutching hands. She wonders absently why the fierceness of her maternal instinct has only just kicked in now. Why now? She cannot peel her eyes away from the scene in front of her, and it is only a modicum of emotion that she allows to slip past her walls and spill over on to her cheeks. But a modicum is more than enough for Pansy.

The floo splutters spontaneously, but Pansy barely notices. Neither does she notice as Zylphia Flint steps out, her husband following behind her.

"My God," the older Mrs. Flint whispers, her hand covering her mouth, before her jaw sets into a firm line.

She snaps her fingers imperiously. "Zandy! Clean this mess immediately!"

The small house elf appears with a sudden alacrity, attacking the red stains with ardour.

"Marcus, darling, come here now, precious. Mummy's here, love. Nothing to worry about," She bustles over, attempting to pull her son into a standing position.

Pansy catches the eye of the older Mr. Flint, and she sees the barest hint of something in his eyes that makes her far more scared than words can describe.

"What have I done? What have I done?" Marcus rocks back and forth, the futile words leaking from his mouth seemingly of their own volition.

Pansy bows her head.

"Harold! For Heaven's sake, bring something for Marcus, and the child…. Well the child is…" Her mother-in-law's voice faded as Pansy felt herself leave her body.

It was at this point that she stopped listening. When she looked at the scene in front of her and saw. It's so perverse – that she sits there in her finery with her delicately lined face and her flaws and her dark eyes and her beautifully clean slate of a daughter – a child who has not so much as said a word, is broken and dead in the arms of the man that should have protected her above all else.

And watching, just watching, was the one woman in the world who should have done anything for her. Her mother.

It all catches up with her then. It is with an alarming certainty that she sees those small hands with their tiny half-moon nails, that she sees the large, dark blue eyes that stared up at her with such violent, innocent hope when she held her daughter for the first time. Her breaths heave, and Pansy knows that she is dangerously close to hyperventilation as she rises from the chaise lounge on shaky legs.

"Get away from her," It begins as a whisper, no more than a puff of wind.

"Get away from her!" She is ignored.

"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!" she shrieks, her voice long and cording, wrapping around the necks of the only family she has left.

Marcus just looks at her like a lost little boy, his hands still possessively clutching the small, limp body, and that is enough for her. She charges, face dangerously red, hair flying behind her like a wild woman, her hands reaching for something small and soft and warm and alive and finding nothing but hard air and –

"Stupefy," whispers a delicately aged voice.

And darkness.

At the age of four months old, Hestre Danette Hadria Flint was buried in an unmarked grave in an unremarkable corner of the Flint Estate grounds with black marks around her neck and a crack in her skull.

Within six months, Pansy was pregnant again.

She did not tell Marcus until she began to show. He was upset that she hadn't informed him earlier, and she had known he would be, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. At least while the baby was inside her, Marcus couldn't get to him (she just knew it was a him). And this time, Pansy vowed, she would protect what was hers at all costs.

Ron Weasley frequented the Honest Slytherin for the sole reason that, as one might guess from its name, it was not an establishment where his normal retinue of do-gooders were likely to find him. He could get positively sloshed in peace, and he had been right in assuming upon his first visit that a bar that could barely keep itself from being shut down by the health inspector was not likely to notice or care that the mighty Ron Weasley was one of its patrons.

At any rate, he found himself sitting on one of the filthy barstools throwing down something that tasted like it contained eighty percent alcohol as he tried to make himself forget. It had been five years since the war. Five years that were nothing but one day at a time, trying to find something to live for. That was what he struggled with the most. During those years at Hogwarts, he was, for all intents and purposes, one of four people who were responsible for single-handedly saving the Wizarding World. It was a burden, to be sure, but there was something heady about it, something lustful and base and positively desperate. He shouldn't be missing the days when he had to fight for his life – for his world. But he did, God have mercy, how he did.

"Another, please," He signalled to the bartender, noticing with a wince how dark and raspy his voice had become. Too much alcohol, cigarettes, and cheap women.

"Hey, man," a bulky, tattooed guy elbowed him hard enough to make Ron wince, "some broad waitin' outside's been askin' for ya, says it's important," he said, talking around a mouthful of slimy chewing tobacco.

Ron opened his mouth to ask the unlikely messenger who she was, but he had already lumbered away, knocking into tables and chairs in his unabashedly drunken state.

He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, feeling the stubble and wishing, not for the first time, that he had something more to offer. He always came up empty.

He wasn't sure what to expect when he left the swirling, smoky warmth of the pub, but it surely wasn't this. He had not spoken to Pansy Parkinson in years, and he hadn't expected tonight to be the one that would break that record. She had never been the sort of girl to capture men's attention – she spent her life waiting on the cusp of beautiful, with short, asymmetrical features that could never come together in the way she wanted. That was the saddest thing about Pansy Parkinson to him. She could have been perfect, but she was unfinished. It was the first thing he had noticed about her, and it appeared to have been compounded upon by the years.

"Parkinson. I – well it's nice to see you, I suppose, how have you -," She cuts him off abruptly.

"It's Flint now," she states, her voice almost harsh in it's overly defensive conviction.

His eyes flit unwittingly to her ring, an elegant, delicate piece (it doesn't suit her at all), before resting on her bulging stomach. He feels his eyes widen. She is very, very pregnant.

She follows the direction of his eyes, and a small smile appears on her face. "It's a boy, I can feel it,"

The smile fades abruptly. "Is there somewhere we can talk, perhaps somewhere less… public?" she asks, her voice almost nervous.

Ron nods, "Yeah, of course, come with me,"

When they arrive at his flat, Ron has the grace to be ashamed of the state of his bachelor pad, although he can sense that taking the effort to tidy things up would not be appreciated just then.

"Please, sit," offers Ron, gesturing to the messy purple chesterfield.

She sits heavily, the relief on her face palpable.

"Look, Weasley, I need you to know that I wouldn't be here unless I was desperate," he opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off. "Just let me finish,"

"As you have no doubt noticed, I'm pregnant. The baby is due any day now. Marcus has always wanted a large family, and when I married him, I wanted to give him that. And I did. I did. You see, this little one will be the third child I have carried to term, and I am determined that he will survive longer than a few months," Her eyes are wide and fierce, her hands clutched protectively around her middle.

"My husband is a monster. His mind is ill – when he gets angry he becomes a new person, a beast without bounds,"

Ron finds it hard to look at her. Her hands are shaking, her chalky lips quivering with indignation combined with more than a few drops of fear. She is strong – and he can see her in a different life, bright and vicious, a mother bear both gentle and unyielding, a mate with fire in her eyes and ice in her veins. But as it stands, she is sad and afraid and alone. She turns her head and looks down, and the livid bruise on the right side of her face is illuminated with a cruel clarity. Ron feels the anger, the unbridled, testosterone-fuelled dreams of violence that come with seeing a small, pregnant woman with a torn up face, and suddenly he feels ashamed. Of her and of him, and of what they have let themselves become.

"What I'm saying, is that when I woke up three months after my first daughter was born and found her broken like a ragdoll in my husband's arms, I told myself it was an accident. But the second time? The second time I couldn't fool myself any longer. I know that if this baby remains within my husband's reach, he will not live, and this is why I am asking you to take him in. I'm not saying forever, just until I can figure something out with Marcus,"

Pansy utters the last words with a conviction she doesn't feel, and Ron can see that in the frightened curve of her neck and the firm set of her mouth, illustrating clearly just how much effort it is taking her to force out these words.

"What? I don't understand what you're asking, Parkinson," Ron whispers, although he can clearly see the intention she has, secure in the knowledge that this is her only option.

"Please don't make me repeat it, Weasley. You know what I'm asking, and you know how hard this is for me. Please," He can see the saltwater trembling on her eyelashes, and he wants to punch something.

"God… this is so messed up..." Ron runs his hands over his face, his eyes tired and unseeing. "Why would you choose me, of all people? I'm a screw-up, Parkinson. Look at me. Is this how you want your son to grow up?" he asks tiredly.

Her eyes are fierce and dark, magnetic in their indelibility. He looks at her and sees the world. She looks at him, and sees a future that never was. Her eyes are cast down as she shuffles her slippered feet, curls of pitch-coloured hair falling around her face.

"I don't care what you think you are, Weasley. All I know is that when I needed you, you were there. You helped me, that day in sixth year, and I will never forget that. I know it's not correct or proper, but I'm asking you to help me again," Her words whisper past his lined face and slither down his throat into the warmth in his chest, and all he can do is nod.

At his nod, something fierce and utterly manic in its joy lights up Pansy's pale face, and Ron Weasley has never felt more like the man he had forgotten he was.

Zacharael Passchar Weasley (as was the name on his birth certificate) was born on November 9th, 2005. He had sweet, golden curls that neither Pansy nor Marcus could account for, and black, cat-like eyes that Pansy knew were all her own. She was glad that something, anything, would mark this baby as hers. He was beautiful and shocking and utterly perfect, and as soon as he was born, he was gone. Although it broke her heart into a million pieces, as soon as Zacharael was deemed stable and healthy, Pansy bundled him in his very own blanket, kissed him, and let him go. Her maid, Saskia, was to take him in utmost secretiveness to Weasley's crumbling flat, where she would be paid handsomely for her silence.

Once Zacharael was gone, Pansy lay in the large birthing room in the Flint Estate with bloodshot eyes and a void in her heart. Her pale hands clutched the sheets, her toes curled in panic until Saskia returned with the news that Zacharael had been safely delivered. She could not eat, she could not sleep. It was an eclipse. The chariot across the sky had fallen, her angel was gone, and she wanted to die. She wanted to sing to the heavens that he was safe, but at the same time, she thought that she would rather die than be without him.

She hadn't thought her plan through any farther than securing Zacharael's safety. She hadn't thought to imagine what Marcus would do, when he came to the birthing room to hold his son for the first time and the infant was gone. Some part of Pansy imagined that she should make up some elaborate lie, some tale that could explain her newborn's sudden disappearance. But now that he was safe, she realized that she didn't care enough to do so. She didn't have to comply with Marcus, to flatter his ego and please him in all the right ways to keep her son safe. It was just her now, just her and her sad, empty body.

So when Marcus ranted and raged and beat her until she couldn't see, she found herself unable to utter anything other than the truth.

"He's gone. My angel is gone, and you will never find him."

Ronald Weasley figured out early on that he was not cut out for fatherhood. After Pansy's first, awkward visit and his reluctant acquiescence, he had thought of the matter only briefly late at night, where it took on the qualities of a dream. He was still between worlds, a man with one foot out the door.

So on that cold, fall night, when the feverish, wide-eyed servant girl brought him the tiny bundle with fear and hope and wonder in her eyes, he was at a loss. He handed her the promised money, and then? He was left alone in his dirty flat with a tiny human, perfect in every way from his minuscule white toes to the fair silk that downed his little skull.

He sat in his flat as the tiny boy slept in his arms, and he came to the full realization of exactly what this meant. For all intents and purposes, he was a father. He knew that Pansy had had intentions to return after she was able to deal with Marcus, but he also knew Pansy, and he had known from the minute he met her that she was a walking tragedy. So Ron Weasley did the only thing he knew how to do when it came to children and flowers and feminine sensibilities.

He took Zacharael to the Burrow, where a beautiful, elderly ginger-haired woman took one look at him and knew that he was destined to be theirs.

"So, Ron, I know that everyone's been dying to know, but they're all afraid to ask. How exactly did you come across this child? Who's the mother?"

Ginny Weasley had never been good at subtlety, and delicate issues were not excepted. Ron started, almost spilling the tea he was carefully steeping.

"I've told you all before, Ginny. It doesn't matter where he came from. He's mine. His name is Zacharael Passchar Weasley and he's mine," he whispered the last word so fiercely that he shocked himself.

Ginny looked at her brother, sadness in her dark eyes. People never really imagined Ron as the heroic type, as that seemed to be Harry's job. But considering she was married to him, Ginny thought she understood Harry's particular brand of heroism, at least enough to know that it was nothing like Ron's. Nothing at all. Ron was the type of person who would never go seeking out someone to save. He didn't feel the need to put his neck on the chopping block in the same truculent manner as Harry did, but it seemed to Ginny that every time she turned around, Ron was there, helping someone new. She would never let him know, but she worried for him. She worried that his heroism was less a choice, like Harry's seemed to be, and more of a compulsion. She worried that he would spend his whole life in a desperate bid to save people in order to feel anything at all, only to wake up one morning and realize that he would have been a great deal happier had he let someone save him, just once.

And then, she would look around at her big, beautiful family with the toddling, golden haired boy with rich, aristocratic features who didn't look a thing like any of them, and she would see that saving Ron was exactly what this little boy had done.

"I'm sorry, but I can't stay long," Pansy whispers, one snowy, booted foot on the threshold of Ron's flat.

He looks around nervously before letting her in. "You know this isn't safe. What are you doing here?"

She opens her mouth to speak, but he shushes her. "Zach's sleeping,"

She takes a deep breath, her gaunt frame shaking so hard that Ron can swear he hears her bones clacking together.

"I need to see my son, even if it's just for a moment. I just need to look at him, to remind myself that he's real. He is the only thing I have left to live for, even now that he's more yours than mine,"

Ron can see the toll the years have taken on Pansy's face. Her forehead is heavily lined, her skin thin and stressed. Her neck is coloured a dark purple, and Ron realizes that he cannot remember what she looked like without her husband's handprints littered over her skin. He knows that since she smuggled out Zacharael, her life has been a living hell. Marcus is regressing day by day, and he feels sick every time he thinks of them together, of the monster that this tiny, broken woman shares a bed with every night. It makes him want to kill Flint, but he knows that he will never, ever do anything of the like, if only because he has a son. Ron has a child who relies on him for food and love and support and protection and who cries when he's not around. A child whom he loves more than life itself; a child he loves more than he could ever love Pansy Parkinson, no matter how perfect for each other he knows they would have been.

So with a quiet stillness in his heart, he leads Pansy to Zacharael's bedroom door, watching as it creaks open and the delicate moonlight slants across the tiny, sleeping body. He turns to Pansy, and it physically hurts to look at her, to see the violent love in her dead eyes and to know that she will never be anything more than this. This sad woman with shadows as deep as time beneath her eyes and a heart blackened by the realities of her life.

Standing there, he can almost imagine that they are a real couple, that they are a family and they're staring at their son with love in their eyes. He realizes suddenly that that is exactly what they're doing, because even though Zacharael might not actually be their son, he is theirs. When Pansy dies in a tragic way, and when Ron is an old man with nobody to love him but his doting, conciliatory family, they will both live on in that starburst of a boy, the cherub with wise eyes and a heart like blown glass.

Beautiful and changeable, and above all, theirs.

As Zacharael grows, his questions become hard and accurate, bullets that cannot be contained or explained. He is a smart boy, shrewd and beautiful and managing to combine the best traits of all his parents in a package that makes absolutely no sense.

Ron is consumed. Ever since that day in November when he sat on his threadbare couch and realized what the tiny infant he was holding would mean for him, his life had been altered so completely that those around him were more than a little shocked. He decided to actually use some of the fruits he had gained from his part in the war, buying a nice house in Ottery St. Catchpole for him and Zacharael to be close to the rest of their family.

"Dad?"

They're playing catch, the pig skin ball moving back and forth across the sky in a wide arch.

"Yeah, Zach?"

"Why don't I have a mother?" The voice is small, plaintive almost, and Ron feels something hard settle on his heart.

"You have a mother, Zach. Everyone has a mother,"

The ball thunks into Ron's hands, and he avoids looking at the child's face. Eleven years old, and Ron is continually surprised by what he finds in the black liquorice eyes of this boy who has become his son.

After an answer like that, a normal child would ask him, where was his mother then? Why did she leave them? What did she look like? Does she not love him?

Instead, Ron looked into those night dark eyes and found an understanding deeper and more ancient than anything he had seen in his life. So they kept on throwing the ball back and forth, trying to ignore the thread between them that before had been so light and delicate, that had become weighed down by the heaviness of all the things they could not say.

Pansy Rheanna Flint died on a Sunday morning, at the age of thirty-three. It was said that she succumbed to septicaemia after a routine procedure at St. Mungo's. There had been nothing that anybody could have done to save her.

All of the upstanding pureblood citizens unanimously decided to ignore the closed casket, the dry eyes of Zylphia Flint, and the guilt-hardened face of her husband Harold. Most of all, they ignored the feverish, unhealthy air that surrounded the grieving husband himself.

So what if a man has scratches on his hands and bruises on his knuckles? It does not mean he beat someone to death. There are always logical explanations for these things.

Except in some cases, there just aren't.

Author's Note: This story began as an entry to a challenge back in 2012. I never finished it, and obviously it's too late to enter it now. It morphed into something bigger than I thought, and I've been working on it on and off for the last three years. Your readership is appreciated, and I would love to hear what you think. Parts II and III to come soon.