This I admit, virtually wrote itself. This is the second in what is clearly to become a series of character portrayals in a variety of formats. This is a sister piece to Giving Up; the look at life where no-one caught the breaking child and now they have to pick up the broken pieces. As said before, this is dark, it is potentially triggering and you have been warned. Also, pretty please REVIEW! My single review is sitting lonesome and it makes me sad. I like reviews. I love reviews. They are the highlight of my weeks and make writing worthwhile. Please review; even if you hate it.

And so, with no further ado, welcome to the shards of glass that have been left behind. Try not to cut youself.

Chapter 2: A Father's Sorrow

Dear Minerva,

It is with a heavy heart that I pen this letter and yet I know that in the penning of it, I show myself to be the greatest coward of all. I should speak to you face to face, I should speak to Albus face to face and yet, I can't. I find myself writing to you instead. Were it Molly in my stead, she would have no issues with marching up to the gates of Hogwarts to face you both down. But Molly hasn't left the house in weeks and so there is no one to shoulder the responsibility for this other than myself. It is not a responsibility I take lightly and it is certainly not one I commit to without grave doubts and hesitation. However, I don't think I have a choice.

I am writing to inform you as Head of Gryffindor House and as Deputy Headmistress that Ginny and Ron won't be returning to Hogwarts this year. They probably won't be returning next year. I don't know if they will ever return. It is hard to see this family of mine that I care for so deeply tearing itself apart at the seams, and yet that is what it is doing. Ron is lost, broken, floundering in a sea of remorse and guilt despite what young Harry's note said. He's not always been the best of friends as teenage boys are wont to be, and that perhaps stabs at him more than anything else. The most heart-breaking thing of all is how he wonders if he could have changed things. If he'd have stood by Harry in the first task of that Triwizard Tournament, if he'd have just thumped Percy for Merlin's sake, if he'd have woken up sooner. If… if… if…So many if's.

But at the end of the day, there are no if's that matter anymore are there? Harry is gone, by his own choice and his own hand, with no-one there beside him to watch him leave us. And my boy is breaking. His heart, his soul, his mind is breaking. I can't expect him to go back to the dormitory where his best friend left the last words he would ever write. I can't expect him to walk those hallways and those corridors or sit in the classes that he should be sitting in with Harry. I can't do that to my boy, Minerva. I just can't. Maybe Molly could. She always was firmer than me, stronger than me. Me? I just want my boy to stop hurting. And returning to Hogwarts will hurt him more than anything I can think of right now.

Is it a curse of mine to watch my children break? Ron is the second, you know. And I'm even more helpless now than I was with Percy, because this time it isn't my fault. I wasn't the one who broke Ron, it wasn't my words that pushed him to this juncture. No. It was a boy I loved as a son, who I would have taken in as one of my own. I tried, you know. I tried to get Albus to let young Harry stay here more often. I know Molly tried. Molly pushed even harder than I did. But we didn't know enough, we weren't well enough informed, it was for the child's own safety that he had to stay with those relatives. His safety.

Did he tell you about the bars, Minerva? The bars that my sons pulled out of his window when Harry was twelve years old? My thoughtless, reckless and utterly irresponsible sons who should have known better. Did you know that my boys flew a car out to Privet Drive in the middle of the night to rescue my Harry James Potter? It was the first time I'd seen the boy. Fred and George told me and I thought they were making it up, trying to get out of trouble. I thought they were exaggerating. I asked Ron last week. They weren't making it up, Minerva. The muggles put bars on my surrogate son's window. The barred his door and they put food through a flap that they use to feed animals through. Animals. He was twelve years old.

Did he tell you about the cupboard, Minerva? The cupboard that he grew up in despite those relatives having a spare bedroom? The cupboard under the stairs that his Hogwarts letter was addressed to? Ron was the one who mentioned that to us. Molly took it up with Albus and he said he had handled it. I don't know how those relatives of his managed to raise a boy with such kindness of spirit, such gentleness of heart and yet with such a fierce, protective nature, I really don't. He should never have turned out the way he has. By all rights and purposes he should have been bitter, callous, cruel even. Not kind, considerate and humble. I could go on, but I'm too tired. I'm too tired to even be angry anymore.

I think you loved the boy, Minerva. I think you loved him as Lily and James' son. You may even have loved him for his brash, reckless, irrepressible nature. Or perhaps for his gentle, caring and self-sacrificing attitude. I truly do believe that you loved the boy. And I believe you are mourning for him. But I have to wonder if you ever bothered to know the boy. Truly, fully know him. Because I don't think that he was brash, reckless and irresponsible because he was a typical Gryffindor. Molly and I, we've had many discussions about our Harry over the years, but it is only now that we have come to understand that he truly never realised how much he was actually worth.

Harry never learned to mindlessly respect authority because the authority he grew up with was cruel and pointlessly, randomly unfair. He learned to obey in sight because that was safe. But he learned to do his homework by torchlight under his duvet because his relatives wouldn't let him do it in the day. He learned to sneak around, to hide from them and to find ways around authority, because authority has never been fair. Authority has never been just to him. Authority has never been even handed. And I have to wonder whether Hogwarts showed him anything different really. Was authority ever fair? Did punishments fall upon those who deserved them? Were Hogwarts Professors permitted to bully students within their own classrooms? I think you know the answers to those questions as well as I do.

But more importantly, how often did Harry sacrifice something; his choice, his freedom, his very life, for someone else? For the school, for Hagrid, for my daughter, for my son, for a girl who he didn't even like very much at the time but later became his best friend, for a mass-murderer on the run from Azkaban. For the sister of a foreign girl on the opposing team to himself. For Cedric. For Cedric's father. For Sirius. When did he ever do anything for himself? When he did, he killed himself. What does that say about his self-worth? All these times we celebrated his bravery or berated his reckless attitude, did any one of us ever take him to one side and ask him why? Did any one of us explain to him that it wasn't his job to save the world? That the adults would look after him?

But honestly, Minerva, I think Hogwarts has failed my children badly. Perhaps Molly and I need to take a level of responsibility here as well, but I don't think anyone could argue that Hogwarts has not been a safe and secure home for my four youngest children. The twins perhaps are a rule unto themselves, but this time I think they had the right idea last year. Hogwarts was not safe for my children and they were right to leave it behind. Hogwarts hadn't been safe for quite some time. How many disasters have my children so narrowly dodged over the years? They courted death no less than three times in their first year alone to hear Ron tell the tales now.

Tales told through butterbeer, tears and when Molly's not around, a touch of firewhiskey. After the first evening, I have tried to avoid Molly being around if I'm honest, Minerva. If she knew a fraction of the danger our boys had been exposed to these last few years… I thought the Triwizard Championship was bad enough. If it had been Ron exposed to a Hungarian Horntail, you'd better believe that he'd have been out of Hogwarts faster than you could say fire whiskey, let alone drink it. We said then, you remember. We argued for Harry. But Albus knew better. And so he had to face up to the challenges alone.

And because of that, my little boy is breaking. Oh, I know, my Ronniekins isn't so little anymore. But he'll always be my little boy. All of them will be. That is the curse and the joy of fatherhood. I get to see these wonderful boys grow into fantastic young men and yet they are always my babies. And he is falling apart. His whole world has come apart at the seams because his whole life revolved around Harry. From the day he met Harry, Ron couldn't talk about anyone else. He used to write home. Sporadically, but he'd write. And it was always Harry this, Harry that. Since that fateful train ride six years ago, they have been closer than brothers, and brothers are something I know quite a lot about. I have enough sons to be quite the expert on the matter. Harry and Ron were as close as Fred and George most of the time. They were twins in all but name, birthday and mother. We'd have fixed the latter for them, if we'd have been permitted.

Of course, at times, Ron has been resentful of his best friend. At times he thought he hated him. Because wherever Harry was, Ron walked in his shadow. Harry shone with a light that Ron could never rival. He was always the side-kick and never the hero. Always the backup. Never the centre of the story. And that stung his pride. Just like Harry's wealth did. The fact that Harry could throw galleons around and barely notice and Ron, well, couldn't. None of us can. I've never been successful enough and we have far too many children to ever be rich. And that stings Ron more than it stings any of my other children. Harry seemed to have so much, so easily that Ron had to work for; the fame, the love, the wealth. It's natural for a teenage boy to be jealous of that kind of attention.

But you see, now that Harry isn't here, Ron is constantly in the shadows of an absence of light. An utter absence of Harry. It's as if the very sun has been swallowed leaving only darkness in its wake. He still talks to Harry, you know. He mutters or makes wise-crack remarks and waits for the resulting snicker and I watch his face fall when he remembers it isn't coming. He saves things to share with his best friend instinctively. Ron talks to him as if he was there because Harry is the only person my son knows how to talk to. He stopped talking to me and Molly years ago. Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in his chest and I don't know if it is ever going to heal. I don't know if it ever can.

Losing Harry has left a gigantic hole in my entire family, not just Ron. Harry saved my baby girl, he saved my life, he defended the honour of my family. Harry became a member of my family. That is something that can never change. I am honoured that he chose my family to love, to trust, to come to. I am so grateful for that love, and not only because over the course of the last six years he's saved more of my family than should be possible. I wish we'd been able to keep his love and his friendship longer. I wish he wasn't gone and not just for Ron. I wish I had been there for him. I wish he felt able to reach out to me. Reach out to Molly. Reach out to anyone.

We'd have been by his side in a heartbeat had he asked us to. We owe our lives, our family to that boy and that was a debt that never could have been repaid. I had looked forward to the day when I would welcome him into the family formally, the day when he would walk down the aisle with my baby girl. But even without that, Harry was already like family to me. He was already as much a son as my own sons. And so my children have not just lost their love or their best friend, they are mourning the loss of a brother. To have lost him in this way, to his own hand, is almost a burden too much for them to bear.

At the end of the day, I cannot know what made a child I loved as a son choose that hopeless, final act. I have no way of knowing what thoughts were going through his head. All I can think of is how alone he must have felt. How bitterly, helplessly alone he must have felt as he wrote those final words. I haven't seen the note. But my Ron recited it to me. From memory. Tears streaming down his face, voice cracking under the pressure and the strain, eyes filled with grief, pain and shame he recited it to me from memory, Minerva. How many times has my boy read that final letter to be able to do that? Or is it simply that the sight of it has burned its way into his very mind and soul? The last words of his dearest, most precious friend.

Ron will never hate Harry, you know. Not even after this. Not even now, when his heart has all but been pulled out of his chest and carved into pieces. The time they spent together will be forever engraved in my boys heart, forever enshrined upon his mind. In time maybe the sharpest, the most jagged edges of his pain will wear away, maybe he won't cut himself so easily on the cruel fragments of his memories. That time isn't now though. It won't be tomorrow, it won't be next week, it won't even be next month. And I am going to give my son room to mourn, to grieve and to feel whatever he needs to feel. I will let no man take any more from my boy. Not while I am still breathing.

So I'm sorry, Minerva. I'm sorry that I have not the courage to say these words to your face. But Ron will not be returning to Hogwarts and neither will Ginny. I do not trust Hogwarts to keep them safe. I just wish that I had done this last year. I wish we had taken this step then and perhaps avoided all that has befallen us since. I wish beyond all wishes that I had spoken to the boy last summer; any fool could see how much he was struggling. I wish I had not assumed that Albus or you had it all in hand.

I wish things had turned out differently. However, the time for wishing is past. The time for action is here. And now, I must act. I must protect my children as I have failed to do thus far. Hogwarts will take no more from them.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Weasley