Molly Weasley never thought it possible that one of her family members could perish right before her very eyes. Sure, everyone dying was her boggart but that didn't mean that she had to actively fear it, right? And, she didn't have to worry, right?

The red-haired woman was so wrong. She was naive to think that her family could survive this war unscathed, especially after what several families had gone through. The Abbotts. The Bones. The Longbottoms. And poor Harry Potter, having to deal with the Dursleys because his parents were so coldly murdered. Molly had tried convincing Dumbledore to let her take care of the boy, but the stubborn old man was so adamant that he had to stay with the abusive family.

It just wasn't fair. Neither was Fred's death.

"Molly, where do you think we go when we die?" Arthur asked Molly after Fred's sorrowful funeral. No one should ever have to bury their son, especially when they have a twin that lives with them. Molly was so worried for George; he wasn't taking Fred's death well at all. He had cried more in the past month than he had cried in the past eighteen years.

"I like to think that there's a heaven above," Molly whispered, afraid that she would cry if she dared to speak any louder. Her voice wavered and tears formed in her eyes. She wasn't sure what hurt more; losing Fred or knowing that her George had lost his twin. The older woman took a wrinkled tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at the tear ducts of her eyes, unable to stop the tears from flowing.

Arthur draped his arm around his wife and pulled her into a hug, letting her tears dampen the shoulder of his shirt. He missed his son more than anything in the world. He would give up his own magic just to have his son back alive. "I miss him a lot Molly," he cried, unable to stop the tears, "but we have to stay strong for George."

"It's just so hard, Arthur," Molly bawled, having lost the battle against the wave of emotion that swept through her. "It's just so hard."

That night, the two of them laid restless in bed. They were accompanied by the soft snores of their kids, and Molly envied them, for they could fall asleep and she couldn't. The red-haired woman didn't doubt that they were grieving, everyone was, but she wondered how sleep came so easily to them and yet it eluded her.

Arthur wasn't faring much better. His head was filled with endless memories with Fred- and George (the two of them were practically inseparable as children) and this made Arthur wish that he had memories of just Fred; to learn what he was like as a person. Fred and George leached off one another to the point where he wasn't sure who was who in his memories and this hurt him so much. The man wished he could distinguish the two, but his memories made that impossible. And now, at this moment, it seemed like it was just him and Molly left in the world.

He paused his thoughts for a moment and listened to Molly's uneven breathing. Surely that meant that she was awake as well. There was a question that burned at the back of his mind and he couldn't answer it. Little did he know that the same question was itching Molly as well. The woman knew that her husband was awake as well; she could just tell.

"Arthur," Molly whispered, "What will you do when I die?"

"I'll be right beside you," He whispered, not wanting to wake the kids. If they were anything like him and his wife, sleep would have eluded them to the point where they were exhausted and couldn't do anything but sleep. Such a thing hadn't happened to him or Molly yet.

"What about the kids?" Molly asked, unsure what Arthur would do with the kids once she died. They were growing older and didn't need their parents to survive as they once did. In fact, they were soon going to get married and have kids of their own, and Molly would finally have the grandkids she always wanted. The thought of such perplexed her, it seemed like just yesterday she was pregnant with Bill and picking out stuff for the nursery with Arthur.

"They can survive Molly. Soon they'll move out of the Burrow and have kids and we'll be proud grandparents. We'll have tons of little feet running around and it'll just be like the old days when we were young parents. Don't you miss those days?" Arthur answered and asked at the same time, running his mouth with whatever he thought of.

The woman nodded. "Despite having kids, we were so naive. Especially to think that they'd all make it to our current age." This statement made her cry a little bit. Fred's death was too raw for her not to cry whenever she thought of it.

Arthur rubbed Molly's back. "The world wasn't at war back then. We couldn't know what would happen. We just have to cherish the memories that we have and hope that the pain will die down a little bit."

"Is that even possible though? Back when we just had Bill, it seemed like we were attending weddings every weekend-- and now it's funerals every week. I miss those days, those days of feeling like I could conquer the whole world. The days where I wasn't grieving constantly. The days where I could go to bed and everything would be magically fixed in the morning." Molly dabbed her misty eyes with her fingers as she tried to make herself stop crying.

"We still had funerals back then. Remember Lily and James? Emmeline's? Even your brothers'? And we'll still have weddings to attend. Remember Bill's? Soon we will have even more as more and more of our kids start dating and getting married," Arthur replied, passing his wife a tissue to use. "The thing is, you can't split the world into good and bad or black and white. There's so much range."

Molly blew her nose into the tissue. "But what will happen when all the kids move out and it's just me and you?"

"We won't be lonely. I know that we'll have our kids visit fairly often; that's for sure. In fact, even if it is just the two of us, our love will keep us happy."

Words: 1088

Prompt: [Character] Molly Weasley

Story Type: Standard

House: Gryffindor

Position: Year 7 stand-in