A/N This is my first Fanfic (Harry Potter is of course property of JKR) that I came up with while helping my friend research for her own story. I think it's nice and short-gotta love a quick read. The first line is the first line from Prisoner of Azkaban so it doesn't quite fit the story but I wanted to use it. Please read and REVIEW- it's so so sad when I see my story got a hit but no review to go with it.
Molly Weasley was a highly unusual woman in many ways. A sigh of relief passed through her lips as she eased her aching feet into the steaming tub of water. The kitchen, Molly's pride and joy and where she currently sat, was the crux of the home that best illustrated the weirdness of the Weasleys. Having large families wasn't so strange for wizards, nor was having kitchens with self-chopping-choppers and self-mixing mixers. However, the miss-matched furniture and clutter of foreign looking muggle gadgets (one of which Molly believed her husband called an "empty-three-player") would have caused many witches and wizards to scratch their heads, especially if they were more affluent. The Burrow had none of the sleekness that was in style at the moment.
The clock that hung from a wall in the living room was just visible from the chair Molly was resting in. This clock added to the uniqueness of their humble abode like nothing else. Eight of the hands, and there were nine in total, were currently pointing at "home." The ninth and longest hand, Molly's husband Arthur's, was still pointing at "work." Working late was not unusual for Arthur, who was currently sorting out an incident with a middle age witch and her rampaging ceiling fan in Ingleby Barwick
Molly let out another sigh as she thought about tomorrow when four of the clock's hands would be fixed on "school." Her eldest son, Bill, had just finished his seventh year at Hogwarts and was about to leave for a year long journey around the world to "figure things out." However, Hogwarts would have no lack of Weasleys come tomorrow. Her sons, Fred and George, identical twins down to the last freckle, would be starting their first year at the legendary school, and Molly was being torn in two just thinking about it.
Most mothers with two near-unmanageable troublemakers for sons would have been glad to be rid of them for almost 9 months out of the year. Most mothers, Molly had decided, were amateurs. Molly knew better and knew to brace for one stressful year. On top of the cabinet next to the stove was a box of about fifty bright red-envelopes. Half addressed to each Fred Gideon Weasley and George Fabian Weasley. Molly anticipated the massive amount of discipline owls she would likely receive for the twins and wanted to be prepared with a large stack of howlers on standby until she needed them. She hoped that this new caretaker would be able to keep them in line. Pringle, the man who held the position during her own school years, hadn't been quite up to snuff. The evil old man had been a right fiend with a cane but exceedingly stupid. If this Filch was anything like Pringle, Fred and George would be running circles around him about five minutes after sorting.
In fact, just today those two had managed to give her the worst migraine she had ever had, or at least the worst of the week. Molly had spent the last hour scrubbing at the face of her increasingly hysterical daughter. Fred and George had connected her freckles to spell-out an extremely rude word in bright purple ink across her face. It had been an exceedingly nasty trick as the ink seemed to be of their own creation and any magical attempts to remove it only seemed to make it more vibrant. Finally Molly had to resort to scrubbing it by hand to get it to fade, though it could still be made out if a person squinted hard enough.
Fred and George did seem sorry and kept swearing that they had no idea just how permanent their "Forever-and-a-Day-Ink" was. Expecting Molly to eviscerate them, the twins braced themselves for the worst...but it never came. She had barely reacted at all, actually, except for a few grumbles aimed at Ginny's yelling. The result was a sort of strange tension looming over the house all day. Molly noticed her children kept checking to see if she was likely to explode or catch on fire from suppressing the rage. Of course, what they didn't know was that there was no rage. In fact, when Molly first laid eyes are her graffiti marked daughter, the only reaction she had was an almost uncontrollable need to laugh.
Molly had not dealt with her feelings until now. She was, after all, extremely busy all day trying to sort out four of her childrens' school supplies as well as with the usual array of things that needed to be done at the Burrow. Therefore, she had not stopped moving since six that morning and had not really had time to think at all. Besides, it would not have done to suddenly burst out in tears in front of her children, as she was want to do whenever she thought about her brothers.
Gideon and Fabian Prewett had been her younger twin brothers. Molly barely ever thought about them and purposely kept them to the back of her mind where she wouldn't have to think of what a terrible loss they had been. The twins had barely known their uncles, having been only three when they passed, yet they bore uncanny likenesses that made it seem at times that Fred and George were channeling their namesakes. Today had been one of those times. Molly recalled a day when she had been around ten and woken up with a different, but no less rude, word written by connecting her freckles on her face. Her boys had upped the game it seemed because at least Gideon and Fabian hadn't used non-removable ink.
Molly's brow furrowed. It was difficult to imagine now, when everything was so peaceful (except at the Burrow, of course) how terrible it had been only a few years ago. Her beloved brothers hadn't been the only ones to die fighting, but they had certainly hit Molly the hardest. Silly as they were, Gideon and Fabian had grown up into the two bravest men Molly had ever known. Despite their many talents, the twin's ambitions had been almost non-existent as children. The only dream Molly recalled them mentioning was to become muggle football players, just so they could dazzle a crowd with their "skills" enhanced by their Hermes' Speed of Sound Magic Running Shoes, their own invention which allowed them to run as fast as a fully grown cheetah.
However, as soon as Gideon and Fabian had become of age, they had taken up the cause and joined the Order to fight Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Molly and Arthur had young children during the first war and had sat out of the fighting. Gideon and Fabian hadn't been so tied down and Molly could remember worrying most nights as her recklessly heroic brothers volunteered for the most dangerous missions. They would often joke to her that Prewett hides were thicker than any giants and Death Eater spells simply bounced off them. However, the Prewett blood in their veins had not been enough to match five senior Death Eaters. Dumbledore, himself, came to the Burrow to tell Molly of their death. Gideon and Fabian had fought with their last breath, destroying their whole apartment and obliterating three of the Death Eaters that came for them (the other two were now in Azkaban). The Prewett brothers deaths had been such an immeasurable blow to their side and to Molly's heart.
A tear slid from Molly's eye as she thought on all this. But that was war, wasn't it? The best of us die while the rest are left to pick up the pieces and fill in the holes that lesser humans could never fill. Molly couldn't imagine what she would do if another war started, unlikely though it was. She had seven children to worry about, even if none of them were babies, they were everything to her and she had to take care of them. She paused for a second and shook her head, knowing exactly what she would do. Gideon and Fabian had been her brothers and had died too young for two so great. If another war started, no doubt the Prewett blood would boil in her veins and Molly would do everything she could to fight for what her brothers had died for.
Breaking the unusual silence, a loud bang issued from the room above the kitchen. Molly looked out the window just in time to see the family ghoul flying in a wide arc over the cabbage patch and into a tree. Identical sniggering could be heard clearly coming from above and Molly jumped up out of her chair, face red with anger. She could feel her body puff up, readying itself as if for battle.
"FRED AND GEORGE WEASLEY YOU HAVE THREE SECONDS TO GET DOWN HERE AND BRING OUR GHOUL BACK!" As she bellowed, all thoughts of her brothers and war went out of her mind as the mini-fights (always grounded in love, of course) of everyday life took all her attention. Gideon and Fabian would come to mind on the occasion over the next two years, especially as her pile of howlers shrunk with every harebrained stunt Fred and George pulled. However, there would come a time in the future when her brothers would be the forefront of her mind as the Weasleys adopted the Prewett's legacy and took up their wands against evil for a second, but no less devastating, war. But that is another story to be told another time.
FIN