i quite like updating more than one chapter at a time. the next chapter is long, almost 7,000 words so it can really be split into two. but it just didn't feel right to.

Little Glass Houses

Chapter Twenty-Two

Verdict

One Month Later (Current Time)

Molly Weasley fumbled as she was called. Her legs felt like they were the consistency of orange marmalade as she made her way up to the stand. Oh, dear, her head swarmed with thoughts.

She wondered whether she should've left her tattered, rose-coloured handbag with Ginny, because it felt heavy in her clammy hands. And it didn't look nice now, did it? And she'd heard that these jury-type people looked at things like handbags and how sad you looked and what not. Did she look sad enough? Like the mum of a victim? Because she felt like her smartest dress robes suddenly looked frumpy and awkward, especially with the way that her clunky brown-leather belt tugged against her soft belly. She couldn't cry on demand anymore. She'd cried and cried and cried until there were no more tears left in her. Should she say anything about that? Should she mention that she'd cried herself to sleep every night after? Or that she—

Anais smiled at her weakly. Molly ruminated over possible questions and answers. She felt as if she were about to re-sit her Transfiguration finals thirty years after she'd left Hogwarts. Should she be sad or firm? Sweet or tart? As she swore under oath, she tried not to look at Penelope Clearwater, who looked more like a sweet shop assistant or a lovely niece than a vindictive woman. She's doing it right, Molly thought somberly. And they'll let her go after she'd stabbed my son three times in the chest because I've not worn the right frock I bet.

Had Hanford instructed Penelope to wear those pastel-pink robes and put her hair up in those childish buns? Had he told her to go to the salon after she'd nearly murdered her ex-fiancé?

My son, Molly's heart sunk into her chest. She's put my son in a coma after she's had cake with me the night before! And I'm supposed to just stand here and smile at her? Smile at the bloody jury that has more power over my son's future than I ever could?

They shouldn't be able to decide when they don't even know… when they haven't even seen…

So far, the trial had been rather dreary and dreadful. Hanford had massacred every single fact that had been brought up in trial and was making Percy out to be some sort of vile sex-obsessed narcissist. She daren't look at the jury, because of course, they'd see her as that poor mum, the horrible mum, the heroic mum. You're neither of those things, you're just a mum, Audrey told her softly the first day that she'd met her. And a fairly good one at that. But she didn't look like the spitting picture of perfect motherhood when she was stood in front of her son's lifeless, limp body as he was breathing through a self-oxygenating tube.

"The Aurors were called in to investigate after the incident occur," Anais offered a reassuring smile towards Molly, "The Wizarding Criminal Investigation Division—the WCID—was involved, weren't they?"

"Yes," Molly answered, relaxing. "They said that it looked like an… attempted murder."

It still shocked her. It was the kind of gnarly thing you read on The Daily Prophet whilst you were eating your breakfast and wondering what the world had come to, not something that happened to your hefty nine-pound baby that was three days overdue.

"Yes," Anais nodded her head.

Hanford scoffed, but Anais' face stayed indifferent. "This was concluded because as mentioned by junior emergency room resident Lavender Brown, if he hadn't been brought in the time that he was, he surely would've died within the hour of the trauma," she said. Molly mutely nodded her head, feeling her heart hang heavier in her chest. "This, and with testimonies from the victim's family that the victim himself was afraid that such an event may occur, concludes that. The lead Auror, who has thirty years of experience of cases with such calibre, agrees to the fact that this is a case of attempted murder." She paused. "And this case is being tried as attempted murder—despite multiple attempts at getting the charges lessened."

Molly couldn't help but look back at Hanford. He looked irritated at that jab at him that was for sure.

"Yes," Molly whispered. "Yes, it is." Charges lessened? Penelope stabbed her son in the chest three times! He needed two tubes just to drain out a litre and a half of blood from his lungs! And they wanted to lessen the charges?

Anais offered another reassuring smile. "Despite multiple accusations being made about the victim, it was very well established, time and time again, by our emergency residents and by the Aurors of the investigation that there is irrefutable evidence to suggest that Penelope Clearwater was involved in several injuries that the victim had sustained over the years. Evidence was found when it came to collecting rape kit samples, fingernail particles that belonged to her, and other such things in several instances. The evidence found was mentioned time and time again as undeniable evidence."

Molly felt herself relax. That sounded good, didn't it? Because it was undeniable. This woman's prints were all over her child and it had been documented for years!

She paused for a few moments then asked Molly, "He never said anything, did he, Mrs Weasley?"

Molly's voice broke when she answered, "No." Nothing to let them know before. "Besides, the…him telling us that she'll kill him if he goes back. But nothing before, so…so we didn't know that it was true what he said. We had no inkling, but…but I still wish that I could've gone back and made him stay."

There, that didn't sound like she was teeming with self-loathing at night now, did it?

"I'm asking you, as ladies of gentlemen of the jury," Anais turned to them with a stern expression. "I know that you cannot imagine a secret of this calibre being kept from the family, especially when the extension of the injuries were so devastating. But I dare to remind you about what this family had been going through at the time. During the time that all of this had begun, he was an impressionable fifth year." Molly froze, because she hadn't known that. This was a new piece of information for her. He was living with them when it had started. He was just a child. "Of course, it hadn't been that bad at the time, but wand analyses done by the hospital staff suggested that it had started at around that age based on odd markings and questionable scars." Anais shook her head. "That's a long time, isn't it? Ten years?"

Ten years of being abused, Molly sobered. Ten years of them not knowing. How could that be true?

"You can imagine that a prideful, young man wouldn't want to have the details of his relationship shared with his family members," Anais mentioned. "According to the testimony given by Ginevra Weasley, he'd tried to keep their relationship a secret to try to keep family members from teasing him. And the couple were not publicly out until much later. So, you can imagine that the details of this relationship were extremely closeted at that point."

"Objection," Hanford retorted. "Speculation."

"Overruled," the Chief Warlock replied almost immediately. "It's not speculation, Hanford. This was confirmed by multiple testimonies that the victim was a private person, even from the defendant herself. You've even just mentioned it a couple of hours ago," he reminded him. "Proceed."

Hanford looked irritated but had given up at that point. He nodded his head.

Anais turned to walk across the room, using hand gestures. "So, you have a relationship started at that young of an age, with all these very intense feelings and expectations," she said. "And according to our myriad of psychiatric healers, both the victim and the defendant, by their pre-trial psychiatric evaluation, were deemed as narcissistic and controlling based on the testimonies from the victim's and the defendant's families. So, according to the relationship experts we had bought in on this case, they believed for some time, that relationship must have been a power play almost." She let her hands drop to her sides. "According to them, they believed that there was likely a power dynamic where they both fed of each other's self-confidence and sense of superiority. At the time, they believed that the victim did not come forth because he did not want to reduce that sense of entitlement that he had and risk seeming weak," she was now reading from the clipboard in her hand.

"Well, that was until something happened that struck that power play straight off—and that was the fight that happened in 1995 that led to the victim being into a very vulnerable position when he left his family home. Open to questioning himself and his values, and easy to manipulate. This, along with the several other events that have occurred including the death of his son and his brother, maintained that state of vulnerability and impressionability. Not to mention that for that period of time during the war, he and the defendant were the only ones communicating with each other. There was no outside influence to address the toxic state of the relationship," Anais kept reading. "So, we had someone that was open to ideas that were not true and had come to believe them as fact. This is someone that believed that was stuck in between believing that he wouldn't be believed if this were brought to court and believing that this kind of relationship was normal because he'd lived through it for years."

She went to stare back at Molly, who smiled very weakly back at her. "I know that the role of the family was brought in again and again, but ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you must also understand that after the fight, they were not in contact. The defendant and victim lived together and were exclusively the only ones communicating with one another. The family was not aware of this relationship. There had been no red flags, not even by testimonies of people outside of the family that knew both the victim and the defendant well. The victim had spent years living with the defendant, and by the time that the war had ended, and the victim and the family were starting to talk to each other again, so much has changed that communication became difficult. This is by no fault of either the victim, or the victim's family. This is just an unfortunate incident, an accumulation of a very unfortunate series of events. The family did not stab the victim. They did not coerce the victim into intercourse. They did not manipulate information throughout this investigation to make themselves seem virtuous in the face of a devastating event. They are not the ones on trial here."

Molly had forgotten why she was there until Anais had turned to address her after her spiel was over. "After the victim was shifted to the intensive care, what happened thereon afterwards?"

Molly looked down. "They said that…that he was very ill," she shuddered at the thought of the hospital blur, the kaleidoscope of busy nurses bristling about, the sight of the monitors, the smell of the sheets. "The wounds that he had, the one on his arm and on his stomach, were very badly infected. And they said that…that he was septic." They said that he was dying too. They were sure that he wouldn't make it; that he'd die that day, but he held on somehow. Just by the skin of his teeth it looked like. "The infection had gotten to his blood and they kept him on strong potions. I've…I couldn't ever ask him why he let it get so bad. He had fever and was shivering all the time when he was there."

"There was a very interesting discovery, wasn't there about these organisms?" Anais said quietly.

"Yes, it was the same organism that they had in the paediatric ward—well, they've had an outbreak of that," Molly explained. "And Penelope worked in the paediatric wards. They think that she'd scratched him with her—um… her fingers, because they could find evidence of that sort of thing, and that was how he got sick."

Molly was blathering on now. She'd made it plenty obvious that Penny was the reason, didn't she? They were going to think that she was overbearing and trying to prove a point and—

"Yes, that's correct," Anais' voice brought her back to reality. "One more thing, did you ever ask the Auror department about the fact that he'd managed to smash a table when she'd pushed him back? Because a point," she subtly looked back at Hanford, "that was mentioned before during this trial was that it sounded rather unbelievable that the defendant, who is a very small woman, was able to push a man back into a table with enough force to break it." She laughed a little vacantly. "It's a rather sexist comment I believe."

"It is," Molly didn't care about that though. "Yes, well—Percy was already starting to become ill with the infection, not that he had said anything at the time, so he was weak when she had pushed him. Not to mention the fact that he's not a big lad himself. He's gotten so thin it's not hard to imagine a strong gust of wind carrying him away really." She could remember how much smaller Percy looked like in the hospital bed. His sallow skin, his body disappearing underneath the sheets, the oxygen being pumped into him. He looked more like a vegetable than a human being. The first time she'd seen him, she thought that that was it. He was going to die. He was on his way onto being gone and everyone felt the same way too. Even now.

"Thank you," Anais concluded. "That'll be all."

When Molly went back to her seat, Arthur squeezed her hand. "Well done," he'd said, as if she'd really done something wonderful.

After that, they waited for the jury to convene and they just spent the longest time trying to figure it out. Molly thought that she must've gotten arthritis from the all the sitting she'd been doing in the last few days.

There was such a silence in the room that you could barely talk about anything without the conversation dying out in seconds. There was staleness to the air. Molly must've drunken more awful coffee in that day than she had in her entire life. She'd barely slept the last few days, weeks—it was almost a month since Percy had been sent to intensive care and had been intubated. He was so ill that she swore that his lips had gone blue sometimes and his whole body sometimes just went cold and limp. There were days where he didn't have much oxygen in him, or days where he had blood in his tubes. They'd put him on a warming blanket, but he looked so weak and corpse-like. Molly had a hard time believing that there was any oxygen going to his brain. Mentally, Molly was prepared to receive news, any day now, about Percy passing away.

"Fifteen," Molly said suddenly whilst they were all sat there in silence. "Fifteen."

Bill beside her flinched. "Merlin, he was a kid," he said quietly. "I…he never…"

That was really a decade, a decade of being abused right under his own parents' nose and they hadn't ever suspected a thing. A decade and he had never said anything about it, and he left after a fight to go to someone that hurt him, raped him, did vile things to him on a regular basis because he didn't want to be at his own house. Thoughts like that kept Molly up all night, wondering why he never said anything.

Arthur looked like he was about to have a wobble himself. "I know," his voice was soft. "Hey," he loosened his grip on Molly's hand. "Look, we're doing everything right now. That…that has to matter for something. It's not anyone's fault that he's never said anything."

"Dad's right, mum," Ginny tried to say, but she didn't sound very encouraging. "We couldn't have known."

Molly nodded her head somberly, but she didn't really think things would be in their favour.

And it was a sobering, sickening reality when they'd come to announce the jury's decision and they'd let her off. When Molly heard the verdict, when she heard that Penelope was NOT GUILTY, her heart froze in her chest. Even though she knew, she knew deep down that they'd lost it, she still was hoping to be proven wrong. When they'd left that courtroom, the whole world outside felt cold and grey. Molly tried to wipe away the tears that were falling down her cheeks, but she didn't really care. They'd let Percy down for the millionth time in a row. Her child was a perfect vegetable. He only existed because he was hooked to a machine that had settings on it. Settings. Bloody settings. What a disgusting, terrible world that would let a woman walk free after what she did to him, unspeakable things that you wouldn't think of doing to the most horrible Death Eater, much less someone that you had a child with!

When they got home, they had the most boring dinner of chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Molly hadn't even bothered to salt the oven dish properly because she didn't bloody care. What did it matter? They were plenty lucky, considering that Percy was currently getting all his nourishment from a can.

"What…what do we do now?" Ginny suddenly asked in the middle of their dinner.

Molly's eyes had been welling up all day, but she hadn't had a proper cry yet. She thought that maybe she'd just go upstairs and cry until she felt exhausted. "I…I don't really think that there's anything to do, love."

"It's not fair," Ron said. He was playing around with his potatoes after salting them. He looked glum. He was still in his clothes from that morning and didn't seem like he was in a hurry to change. "She can visit him, you know, if she wants. She can talk to him and go see him and…" there was a flash of rage in his face. "After all she bloody did to him, she can still…" his voice wavered. "It makes me sick. Really does."

Bill nodded his head, placing his hand onto the table. His eyes were bloodshot. He'd barely been sleeping too. "I can't look at him tomorrow," he finally said in a weak voice. "She can go out and go to work and shop and get a new flat tomorrow like everything's normal and he's in a fucking coma…"

There was a collective silence around the room.

"We should pull the plug," Arthur stiffly said. It was painful to even think about, but every time that they went over to see him, he was sicker than the day before. It had gotten to the point where it looked like the tube was deflating and inflating a fleshy balloon. He looked less and less of a person every day. "It's…it's the humane thing to do." He was spiking fevers every few days, shaking and gagging on the tube whenever the sedation started to wear off. The healers didn't think that he was going to come out of it. They were fully under the impression that he was going to die no matter what they did. "Bill is right. He's…he's just suffering now, isn't it? It's just…we're keeping it on just for us, not for him."

"No," Ginny looked at Arthur with big, brown eyes, but even she didn't sound convinced when she said it.

Molly wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. "Darling, your… your father has a point," there it was. Defeat.

They'd given them the option ages ago, but Molly couldn't bear the thought of it. But the more time passed, the harder it was to imagine Percy coming out of that. "Y… yeah," Ron nodded his head. That was how bad this was. That there was a round of people around a table, ready to end Percy's life because it was just so bloody pointless. Because he was already gone. He was only alive because of the machine.

Then the dam broke. It started surprisingly with Charlie. He started sobbing, the real throaty sob that came from a loss that you could never replace. The wails reminded Molly of losing Fred, of having to say goodbye to him and she found herself sobbing too. Then the rest of the family came in, like a disoriented, disorganized symphony. Each one of them echoing pain and misery.

By the time that Molly had gone to sleep, it must have been two or three in the morning, and then she woke up an hour after, thinking of Percy coming in from Diagon Alley with an ice lolly in his hand. He'd have white chocolate smeared all over his face, along with vanilla cream.

There was that one time she could vividly recall that he'd said that he wanted to tell her something. He was fifteen. It was two o'clock. His eyes had gone somber. At the time, he only cared about his O.W.L's and whether he'd manage to fill his plate up with potatoes before Ron, the twins and Ginny scoffed the lot. But that afternoon, he zoned out into space when she was talking, and then he smiled at her but she didn't think he was really listening to her. She'd thought maybe he was just tired. When she'd waited for him to tell her what was on his mind, he just shook his head and asked her if he could borrow a couple of Galleons to get some new robes. What if he'd wanted to tell her and she'd done something to make him think that she didn't want to hear any of it?

She walked into Percy's room, tears running down her cheeks. And when she got there, she found George lying there, clutching onto his plaid duvet as tightly as possible and looking like a little child.

"Mum," George sat up, his thin hands were shaking. "Mum," his eyes were glossy and pained. "Mum, I can't lose another brother. I can't."

"Love, I…I think we already have," Molly didn't know what else to say. They'd told them a few days ago, rather adamantly, that Percy was just wasting hospital equipment at that time. They thought that was the most horrible thing they'd ever heard, but there was just something so…so final about what happened today. What happened after this? Were they going to wait for Percy to die naturally, like the healers said, with a chest infection that his poor body couldn't fight off? "Do you…do you really think that he'll come out of it?"

George shook his head, closing his eyes. "No," he whispered. "No."

They had breakfast at five in the morning. Molly didn't know how many toasts she'd eaten. She couldn't remember clearing the plates. She showered but she couldn't really recall putting her robes on, or what she'd chosen. All she knew was that she was hearing the scraping of plates and the murmurs of small conversations. Nobody slept that night. Everyone was drowsy with red eyes. Nobody really cared about the food, but they polished off breakfasts that they hadn't tasted and talked about things they didn't really care about. By eight in the morning, most people were at work, going about their very normal day. Meanwhile, the Weasley family was trudging towards one of the most painful experiences of their lives. How was that fair?

Ginny had even reached out to hold her hand. Her little girl, who didn't need a single thing from her in years, reached out for her hand and Molly couldn't even grasp it properly.

The intensive care unit even smelled of death and antiseptic. As they walked over to cubicle eight, the one with the lazy writing, Molly let out a deep breath, bracing herself to see him. It had been a month and still, she couldn't stomach the sight of him. Arthur reached out and opened the drapes. That was when they'd usually be finding an unconscious Percy with a million and one wires connected to his small body and a tube shoved down his throat. He looked more and more vulnerable every time they looked at him.

But when they opened the drapes, they didn't find that. Instead, there was Percy licking the cream in the middle of a custard cream, and looking like he was caught with his—well, his hand in the biscuit tin, wouldn't work here, would it? He wiped away the cream from his face and looked down, his shoulders rounded, and his cheeks flushed and pink. Beside him, with a hand on his thigh was a sweet-looking Audrey, who was wearing a pair of old robes and looked like she hadn't slept through the night either.

"Percy?" Arthur sounded out and he said it so quietly, as if hearing his name would absolutely shatter him.

Percy looked up with bright blue eyes and smiled back weakly.