Rated M: This is the last chapter that will be rated T; the M rating will apply to all following chapters. Read at own discretion.

Disclaimer: JK Rowling is the true author of Harry Potter; I am just merely a peon basking in her shadow.


Chapter 2

I try to feed myself. Mum has cooked lemon peppered chicken breast and rosemary potatoes. Green beans lay untouched, pushed off to the side of my plate. I am not a fan of green beans. I look at the food. She has made this for me. She has done so much for me. Am I really going to bring this up now?

Mum is to my left at the end of the table and Father is to my right facing her. Two vacant seats are on either side of me. Rose and Hugo are usually seated there. Lucky me gets to be the barrier between their constant bickering and pinching whenever I'm home. Uncle Harry is sitting across from me with Aunt Ginny beside him.

Ideally there would be more seats at the table, but Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny do not have any children. My understanding is that they do not find the world safe enough to bring a child into it. Not with Harry's status under the current Ministry at least. But they hope that will change soon.

Harry and Ginny have lived with us as long as I can remember. Nobody in the home has a job though. It wouldn't be safe. Harry has a small fortune that we live off of. Every once in a while he disappears past the elm tree out front in a magically conjured disguise. The elm tree I've feared all my life. My mum used to tell me stories of dangerous monsters and scary men who would want to hurt us waiting on the other side. I understand now that there are just wards put in place to keep us safe. But there are scary men who want to hurt us. Only two weeks ago, I met one face-to-face.

I am picking at my food again. Pushing pieces back and forth on the plate, conscious of the little screechy sounds the fork is making as it crosses over the ceramic. I can see out of my periphery that Father has stopped eating and is staring at me bitterly. I know it is childish, but it only makes me want to do it more.

I have never gotten along well with my father. Perhaps I really shouldn't call him that. It's an old habit in my head, but I have stopped whenever I address him. My mum was angry with me when I started calling him Ron last year. Said something about 'disrespecting my father.' A lick of flame touches the inside of my abdomen when I think about it after what I know now. Disrespecting my father. She knows the truth. How could she say that to me?

It's not like he ever treated me as a son. More like a disgusting parasite, sucking the attention from his wife, and tainting his home with evil. I was old enough to remember what it was like after Rose was born. I had grown up assuming my fath…Ron was just a cold, distant person. Or maybe he just hated kids? I remember pondering all the different excuses for why he treated me like something repulsive on the bottom of his shoe. But then, when I was 8 years old, Rose was born. I was excited. I had a new baby sister and the look of happiness upon my mum's face made me ecstatic. My mum is an angel when she smiles. But then I saw Ron's face. How warm and proud he looked. Growing up I had dreamed of what that face shining down upon me must look like, and there it was in front of me.

Some children might have taken it out on their new little sibling, been jealous of the attention they were receiving, but I loved Rose. I used to play with her little red curls, try to make her giggle with funny faces and 'forbidden' magic tricks, levitating her toys into her crib when she cried or making her dolls dance a routine for her when she'd been awoken by a nightmare.

No, I took it out on myself. There was something wrong with me that Ron didn't approve of, there was a reason why he was never proud of me. I was different.

"Will you just eat your damn dinner already!" He's yelling at me. I look up at him passively. Take a potato and, as dramatically as possible, pop it into my mouth. He's glaring at me. Now this is the face I'm used to. I look down again at my food. My mum has stopped eating now as an uncomfortable silence permeates the table. She's staring at Ron. She doesn't like it when he yells at me. But she's never had the courtesy to give me a reason why he yells. And she knows the reason. This thought makes me angry. I decide to go for it.

"Ron's not my father is he?" My mum drops her fork like I just transfigured into a grotesque spider before her eyes. Harry and Ginny are exchanging nervous looks. Ron hasn't stopped glaring at me. It's silent for a few minutes. I just stare at my mom, waiting patiently for the shock of the question to settle, and the truth to come forward. I will not be lied to anymore. She's calming down now. She's looking at Ron and back to me, as though she wants him to help her. Had they really planned to never tell me? The silence is excruciating at this point.

"No, I'm not." Ron finally breaks the silence. His voice is entirely passive, no emotion. The only other voice I know him to have besides the yelling. My mum looks like she's fighting back tears. This is too soon for her. I should have waited. No, I'm going to be selfish for once. I needed to know.

"Why have you kept this from me?" I'm looking at Mum again. She's not avoiding eye contact anymore. She's looking at me with a mix of shock and confusion. I've asked the wrong question. She's suspicious suddenly. I mean the clues are not hard to pick up on once somebody exits denial to recognize he's no relation of mine, but I should have asked "Who is?" She knows I know. I didn't want to have to explain myself, explain the meeting I had only two weeks ago. Harry is scanning my face just as intently.

"What are you hiding, Godric?" My mum speaks slowly. This question makes me angry.

"What am I hiding?" My anger is evident. She wasn't expecting this response. Perhaps she was expecting me to shy away from the question, act guilty for finding out on my own. But no, I'm not the one who should feel guilty right now. "Answer my question."

"Don't talk to your mother like that!" Ron is yelling again. Such a surprise that he's not helping the situation. I'm starting to lose control of my tongue, and I can feel raw power building in me. I'm not usually an angry person, but I lose control of my power pretty fast when pushed. I try to quell it, but with Ron here, it's not going to be easy.

"Ron! Stay out of this right now!" Mum can see it. She knows I'm about to lose all composure. She doesn't want her husband to get hurt. She knows I can hurt him. We're still glaring at each other though.

"Godric." I break the eye contact with this imposter of a father. I turn to my mother. I want to hear what she has to say, before I make my ultimate choice.

"What you have to understand, honey, is that we were only trying to protect you." I was expecting this response, and I'm not happy with it. It isn't enough.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" She's pondering the question. Personally, I thought it was a simple 'yes' or 'no.'

"I had intended to when you came of age." Another predictable response. For some reason all this predictability is making me angrier. I still feel as though there is no truth, nothing I didn't already know.

"I met Him." It comes out before I can stop it. The uncomfortable silence is back. Mum wasn't expecting this. I get a strange feeling of pride looking at the shock on all of their faces. I had my own secret, and it's bewildered them.

"How could you betray our family like that?" Unfortunately, Ron was the first to talk. I'm dumbfounded.

"How have I betrayed the family?" I'm confused. I don't understand what he's saying. I look to my mother. Her eyebrows are furrowed; she doesn't know what he is talking about either.

"You went to Him. You're already a Death Eater aren't you?" His voice is filled with loathing and repulsion. My jaw literally drops in surprise. I go to Him? I must look comical, and he's left me completely speechless.

"Ron! How can you suggest such a thing!" My mum is angry, but I hear hurt in her voice.

"Oh come on, Hermione! I predicted it all along. I knew the little bastard would grow up to be just as evil as the blood that's in him. He looks just like him, Harry says it all the time! And he's just been manipulating you like the slimy Slytherin he is!" I'm hurt. I stare down at my plate as he yells. I foresaw him ruining this somehow, but like this? I don't know how to react and I can hear my mother start to cry. I've hurt her. Does this make me evil?


Ginny is still talking up at the podium, and all I can think about is how clearly I remember the night Godric left. After six months, it hasn't faded and it probably never will. Not now.

It started and ended with Ron. I want to forgive him for the way he treated Godric as I watched him grow up. He never saw the sweet, intelligent little boy I saw. He only saw Him. And Godric did look like Him. Harry reminded me all too often. Except the eyes, he always noted. He had my eyes.

I try to understand how Ron could have looked into my eyes and seen beauty in me and look into those little clones and see irrefutable evil. Sometimes I fear Ron created something that Godric wasn't born with because of what he thought he saw. How tragically ironic.

Godric was nothing like his biological father. Besides his exceptional magical abilities and Hogwarts house, I know his personality was all his own. He was modest and quiet. When he was made a Prefect, he didn't boast. He never tried to draw attention to himself. His grades were remarkable, and he had my thirst for knowledge and love of reading. He could be charming when he wanted to be, but I fear his isolation from children his own age made him rather socially awkward. He didn't like social situations and didn't really know how to behave in them. Even when we had family over, he stayed to himself. But the one thing that made him so very different from that monster was his ability to love. Godric's eyes shone with love every time he looked upon me when he was young. He would sit in my lap underneath the old oak for hours and smile up at me as we talked, melting my heart every time. He loved his little sister, Rose. He would do whatever he could to help me when she was a baby. I am sure he loved Hugo, but Hugo did not come along until after Godric started Hogwarts, and I fear he missed out on a time to bond with his little brother.

Godric starting Hogwarts had been a big deal in our household. Harry and I had been wary of it. It was dangerous; he was in the open, away from the safety of our wards. What if someone found out which Weasley he was connected to? He could jeopardize us all. But Ron, oh how Ron insisted he be sent to Hogwarts. I see now he had only wanted him out of the house. He never liked how much Rose looked up to her big brother. He was afraid of how she would be influenced.

Rose was devastated when she returned from Molly and Arthur's to find Godric gone. We couldn't tell her the full truth just yet of course. She didn't need to know about where he went or why. But when she was told he had left and may never return, she cried for hours. She still calls for him when she gets nightmares. But she must really understand now that he is never coming back.

If only Ron had kept his mouth shut. If only he hadn't provoked Godric. He'd screamed at him, accusing him of going to his biological father, of becoming a follower at the age of fifteen. I never got to hear the truth. I will never know how Godric found out who his real father was. If Godric sought him, or if he was recruited at Hogwarts like so many stories in the Daily Prophet read these days.

The window panes had all burst simultaneously. He had pushed Godric too far. He stood up and screamed at Ron. Told him how sick he was of being treated like a monster. How he was leaving now, going to 'where monsters like me are accepted.' I tried to stop him. I grabbed his sleeve, tried to pull him away from the door. Ran after him as he headed toward the old elm. Ron had followed me, held me back. I tried desperately to break free, I didn't want to lose my baby boy. He yelled after Godric. Screaming about how at least we could forget about him now and not have to worry about what a disappointment he'd become. How he was dead to us. I turned around and shoved Ron off of me. His words disgusted me. I turned around to my little boy who had stopped just beyond the elm outside of the wards. He was staring at me, like I had been the one who said those nasty words. I could see his eyes, my eyes, and the hurt behind them. And then I saw the young man before me change. The hurt quickly fade and coldness replace it. And without another word, I watched as my boy disappeared, as my worst nightmare came true all those years ago when I told him never to cross the old elm where all the scary men could hurt him.


A/N: I would like to give thanks to Auntleona0 for all her help! Without her I would not have had the confidence or determination to post this brainchild of mine! And for those of my readers who are fans of the Vampire Diaries, she has many lovely stories for your reading pleasure so check her out! As a reassurance, all the chapters in this story are completed and ready for posting, so expect very regular updates. As always, R&R!