A/N: Thanks again to my amazing beta-reader, dogstar-ebony.
Reviews will be highly appreciated!
Disclaimer: no, I still don't own Harry Potter or any of its characters.
MOLLY'S CONCEPT OF SILENCE
Silence was a long forgotten concept to Molly Weasley. It reminded her of a time in which The Burrow was a one-storied house at Ottery St Catchpole, inhabited only by the newlywed Weasleys. At least, that is, until their firstborn came, and that had been almost half a century ago. From that day on, not only had the family grown, but so had the house, the noise and her heart.
Even when her youngest daughter left for Hogwarts, leaving the house apparently motionless, there was always that feeling that something bad was about to happen buzzing in her ear. And her kids never did anything to prove her wrong. She was used to her previous five children getting into trouble - no, scratch that, four, for Percy was everything but a troublemaker until the day he joined the ministry and broke her heart. But her two youngest weren't satisfied with breaking the rules. They seemed to have the urge to get into real danger. And that used to make her heart pump so hard that, inside her head, it was louder than all the noise the seven of them could make when they were together.
And as soon as the danger was gone, the house was filled once again with joyous laughter, and the sound of little feet running and chubby hands clapping. The already unstable house was presented with a few more rooms to welcome the new son and daughters in law, and the many, many grandchildren. And to Molly, things were again the way they should be. The incredibly large table had a place for each Weasley kid, and the older ones would assist the younger ones during the chaos that was lunch time at The Burrow.
But, one by one, they too started leaving for Hogwarts, and they left Molly missing a few decibels on the orchestra that was her kitchen. And yet, nothing could prepare her for the day her two youngest grandchildren waved her goodbye from Platform 9 ¾.
When she woke up the next morning, the sun was already crawling along the window-sill, smiling foolishly at her, unaware that the silence she was about to endure would be more painful than the noises from the Last Battle that still haunted her dreams.
For a second, Molly thought she was still dreaming. Then, when logic returned, she decided she was imagining things. There was a familiar kind of atmosphere about that morning, and, as ridiculous as the notion was, she could swear she had awoken to a morning around 35 years ago. But what brought her to her senses was that, even from upstairs, she couldn't help but noticing that there was one voice missing its echo. If it wasn't for that, she would have been shocked when she entered her kitchen and found six of her seven children kneeling around a box, arguing loudly, but inches taller, and with a few wrinkles already tattooed to their faces.
"What's going on here? Weren't you lot supposed to be at work?" Molly asked with a suspicious look.
"Muuuum! What are you doing up so early?" They all cried, each one in their own timing, making the sentence incomprehensible to untrained ears.
"Yeah! It's not like you have any grandchildren to take care of today," Ron shrugged.
Seeing the look on their mother's face, the one that was usually followed by a stream of tears, they all started hitting him on the head or anywhere else they could reach.
"Way to go, Ron! Real smooth!" came as a new chorus of five voices.
They just stood there, staring at each other for a few seconds, none of them willing to be the one to explain, until Molly finally snapped. "Okay, if you are here to comfort me, then maybe you should have owled me before, and I'd have prepared a proper breakfast!"
Realizing that they still weren't looking at her, she decided she would find out what was going on, just like the old days. Shoving Percy to his side, she tried to reach for the box in George's hands.
"Nooooooooo!" was the general response. After a few seconds of renewed siblings' argument, Ron pushed Ginny to the front saying "Come on, Gin, you do it! You're the baby! She won't get mad at you!"
Suddenly, a series of images started flashing through Molly's mind, yellowed, like a slide show of really old photographs: a broken lamp, a broken window, a broken broomstick, a teddy bear floating in the living room, a five-year-old Ginny with bright blue hair, a ten-year-old Ron with burned eyebrows, the twins grinning maliciously over a piece of parchment. At this particular picture her heart skipped a beat, and starting to feel nervous about what the grown-up version of her kids could have done to demand such statement, she gathered all the authority she still had over her children.
"Come on you lot! Spit it out! What have you done now?"
When Ginny saw her mother's hands resting on her hips, she finally realized that it wasn't the cuteness factor, her last place in the arrival line, or her extra X chromosome that always left her with the dirty job. No, it was the fact that her brothers could only pull up their Gryffindor courage when they were facing something as trivial as dragons or Dark Lords. Never their mother.
"Listen, Mum. We know how upset you are about not having any children around. Lily and Hugo just left, and Victoire and Teddy don't seem to want any kids anytime soon…"
Unable to contain himself, Bill groaned, "They'd better not!"
"So..." Charlie said a little louder, trying to avoid a new argument, "We decided to do something about it."
"What? Is that a baby you have in that box? Which one of you had it?"
Fearing for his mother's sanity, George pushed the box into her opened arms. Molly, abandoning all caution she used to have when touching an object that had been handled by one of the twins, laid the slightly moving box on the table and opened it.
Inside there wasn't just one baby, but several puppies, sleeping nuzzled against each other.
"Bloody brilliant, isn't it?" Ron stated with a grin. "Seven! One for each of us!"
Molly was still overwhelmed by the surprise when George approached her and handed her a puppy with long black hair. "That's Bill. And now you can do to his hair whatever you want to. Shave it off if you feel like it! We just couldn't find one with a stupid earring!"
With a murderous look, Bill took his canine version in his hands and gave his mother another one. "This one, I reckon, is Charlie."
"See how heavy he is? He's the strongest of the bunch. Just like me!" Charlie added with a proud smile.
"And this one," Percy said, picking a white puppy with brown spots up, "It's me! See the spots around his eyes? Just as if he were wearing glasses!"
"And this little one is the only girl. Me!" Ginny said with a girly smile.
At this point, the puppies were all fussy, going from the arms of one person to another. One, though, remained sleeping at the bottom of the box, breathing loudly.
"Guess who that one is, snoring like that!" Ginny said with a mocking tone.
"Hermione doesn't have a problem with my snoring," Ron mumbled like a stubborn child.
"I wonder why she doesn't have a problem with you!" George replied matter-of-factly. "And those two," he added pointing to two identical cream puppies, "That's me. And that's Fred. Or that's Fred and that's me, I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter. You'll find a way to tell them apart, just like you did with us."
Molly was speechless. She had tears threatening to fall, and all she could do was hug them. Over and over again. And while she was there, hearing her grown-up children laughing and talking, and the small barking on the background, she came to a conclusion. She hadn't actually forgotten the meaning of silence. It had muted. To her, that was silence. The sound of her loved ones filling her kitchen was what would set her mind in peace.
To Molly Weasley, the absence of sound was now as undesirable as the pain of losing one of them.