Author's note: Is my timeline right, for the age of all the next-gen Weasleys and their births? Absolutely not, but let me have this. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights
QL: Montrose Magpies Round #9, Chaser 2: The number 9. Prompts used: Colour: Orange, Word: Absence, Dialogue: "Take a chance. What harm can it do?"
Warnings: Character death; loss of a grandparent
The Last Nine Pieces
"Gran," Molly said as she walked into the room. "Dad sent up some tea for you."
Gran looked up from her usual spot—close to the vent, far from the window and its drafts, in a comfortable chair that was close enough to the radio that she didn't need to crank the volume to hear the programs. She looked up from her current project, which was the same baby quilt she'd been working on for weeks now.
"How thoughtful," Gran smiled. "Can you bring it here, sweetheart?"
Molly nodded and went to put the cup down on the side table by her namesake. Gran put a cold hand over hers and patted twice. Molly knelt down next to her and toyed with the end of the quilt. There were some yellow pieces in it and even a scrap of pink, but the quilt was overwhelmingly orange—whether it was a dark orange like autumn leaves, a bright carrot orange, a deep kind of pumpkin pie orange, or a bright and summery shade. Orange everywhere.
"Did you pick that colour because it's like Uncle Ron's favourite Quidditch team?" Molly asked as she looked at the tiny little stitches Gran had used to piece the quilt together.
"Yes, dear," Gran said. She took a sip of her tea, the cup trembling in her hands as she raised it to her lips, and then put it down. A few drops splattered on the side table next to her.
"So this is for Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione's baby?" Molly asked. "What about Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry's baby?"
"I have one for them too, don't you worry little miss," Gran smiled. "I've made a quilt for each of my grandbabies, and I won't stop now. These might be my last two, you know."
"Uncle George says that Weasleys are like bunnies and we never stop having more of us," Molly said.
"Uncle George should mind what he says in front of little ears," Gran said, even if she smiled. It made the wrinkles in her face look deeper. "Have you seen my scissors, dear?"
"They're next to you," Molly said. She reached up to pass the scissors to her grandmother.
"Of course they are, silly me," Gran said. She was still smiling though, as if it was funny that she got scatterbrained like that. Molly knew that it wasn't though. That was why her parents had moved to the Burrow after Grandpa had died; to make sure that Gran wasn't alone and getting lost like that.
They had moved the summer that Molly had turned nine, when Gran had refused to leave the Burrow behind. Dad had decided to come to her instead of putting up a fuss. It was different from living in their flat in London. Their neighbours were further away, if they needed to shop they had to walk all the way down to the village. But there were good parts too. Molly liked feeding the chickens in the yard, the ghoul in Uncle Ron's old room was showing her how to swear in Ghoulish, and she liked being allowed to fly on a broomstick if she stayed hidden by the apple orchard. Even if she thought that she and her cousins had found all of the house's hidden nooks and crannies, she kept finding new hiding spots the longer she stayed in the house.
Gran snipped the thread she was sewing with and tried to tie a knot with her thread. She tried once, twice, three times and then Molly held out her hands.
"Can you manage it, sweetheart?" she asked.
Molly nodded; Dad had shown her how to tie knots when they had been doing renovations back in the summer. Sewing thread was thin, but she was able to do it.
"Thank you, Molly," Gran said. She examined her work. "There we are. All the piecing's done."
"It's pretty," Molly said.
"I'm glad you think so," Gran said. "I hope your little cousin agrees with you."
"We'll find out pretty soon," Molly shrugged.
And they did, and since it was a boy Molly won a sickle from Uncle George because he was running a betting pool and had let her play so she wouldn't tell her dad.
His name was Hugo, which was a good name for a baby as short and stumpy as he was. Molly got to sit on the couch and hold him with Aunt Hermione, when they brought the baby to Uncle Harry's birthday party. He had very blue eyes.
Uncle Ron came by one day with Rosie to show Gran a picture of the baby sleeping on the orange quilt she'd made.
"Does he love it?" Gran asked as Rosie balanced on her knees.
"He does, Mum," Uncle Ron promised. "It looks great in the nursery. Hermione loves the colours."
That made Gran smile.
"I better finish the other one for Ginny's little one," she said.
"Can I help?" Molly asked, thinking of the way her grandmother had needed help with tying the knots last time. Maybe she'd need help with other things too.
"Of course, dear," Gran promised. "I should probably teach you how to sew before you go off to Hogwarts this year, shouldn't I? Your father was never one to tear his robes in class or Quidditch, but just in case…"
"I'll learn to do all that with magic," Molly told her.
"So soon?" Uncle Ron asked with a grin. "Even I can't sew with magic, Mol."
"There are some things that are just better done by hand, Molly," her Gran said before kissing baby Rosie's cheek. "You'll understand one day."
Molly should have known something was wrong when she got to Headmistress MacGonagall's office and saw her other cousins there—Victoire and Dominique had been pulled from the Ravenclaw Common Room, and Roxanne should have been woken up from the Gryffindor Common Room too except she'd been sneaking around after curfew so they actually found her on the ninth floor. But the news was bad, so nobody mentioned it.
"I'm sorry," MacGonagall said. Molly thought she meant it. "Your grandmother was truly an exceptional woman."
Molly nodded and looked at her feet. She knew her cousins were sniffling, but she didn't want to cry just yet. If they were really being sent home, she might have to keep it together for Lucy.
But she really, really wanted to cry.
Since Winter break was so close anyways, they didn't go back to Hogwarts after the funeral. It was fine, but it wasn't as much fun being home when Gran's absence was all over the Burrow. There was a lot of family coming in and visiting, so there was never a lack of company at least.
Nine days after they came back, Uncle Harry came by to drop off Jamie and Al and a duffel bag of their things.
"Thanks for taking them, Audrey," he told Mum.
"Of course," Mum said, balancing Al on her hip. "You just get to St. Mungo's, alright?"
Uncle Harry nodded and then knelt to take Jamie by the hand.
"Jamie, can you look at me for a second? I need you to be really, really good for Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey, alright?" he said. "That would mean a lot to me and Mummy."
"I'm not gonna get the new baby a birthday present if I'm good on the day she's born," Jamie said.
"That's reasonable, but it means you have to be good, alright?" Uncle Harry said. He kissed the top of Jamie's head. "Love you. I'll see you soon, alright? Then you can meet your new brother or sister."
"Okay," Jamie said with a smile.
"Go hang your coats properly please, try not to track melted snow on the floor," Dad said in that slightly ruffled voice he always used when the house needed to be clean and he was realizing just how dirty everything in the world was.
Molly grabbed Lucy and dragged her back onto the carpet and made her take off her boots and winter clothes. She watched as Dad whipped something that looked like frosting in a bag.
"Who's birthday are it?" Lucy babbled as she too noticed the frosting.
"It's nobody's birthday, but we're going to have a bit of a luncheon tomorrow—did Mum not tell you?" Dad said. Molly didn't know what a luncheon was, but usually if there was a lot of food in the house it meant family was coming over. "We're going to get to meet your cousin Lily."
"A baby's coming!" Lucy said gleefully.
"That's right, Lucy," Dad said as he added more food colouring to the icing, biting on his tongue as if he was mixing the world's most explosive potion.
"Is everyone coming?" Molly asked as something clicked.
"Everyone and their dogs, yes," Dad mumbled to himself.
"Puppies!" Lucy gasped.
"No—no, sorry Lucy, no dogs in the house, it's just a turn of phrase…"
"Puppies!" Lucy said, clapping her hands and giggling excitedly.
Molly didn't pay attention to Dad's explanations as he tried to deescalate the puppy excitement, because she was too busy trying to figure it out. If the baby was coming to meet the family, where was its quilt?
The fact that her parents had slowly but surely been packing up Gran's things didn't help Molly as she tore through Gran's bedroom and the boxes in it to rummage for the quilt. She started to panic a little bit when she didn't find the quilt under the chair where Gran had sat and crafted, where she'd often asked Molly to grab something for her. But, thankfully, the shelf full of yarn in the sitting room hadn't been touched yet. She found the quilt, folded up and hidden behind a few skeins of orange yarn that looked like the one Mum had used to make Ron's Chudley Cannons sweater last Christmas.
It was a pattern Molly recognized because it was a log cabin quilt; it was made with a single square of fabric in the middle, surrounded by rectangles that built the blanket up the same way you'd build a cabin. Gran had used pale blue and turquoise and white fabric, which made for a beautiful quilt.
Molly was just wondering how in the world she would wrap it when she realized that she had a bigger problem. The last nine rectangles on the quilt were cut and prepared, but they had yet to be sewn in with the others.
Oh no.
Gran had run out of time.
At this point, Molly could have panicked. But she didn't, because her Gran hadn't panicked or scrambled or rushed. She had always gone about, trudging on surely and steadily even when her hands shook and her memory fogged and her eyes put up a fight instead of focusing.
So Molly didn't panic. She just did what she'd done for Gran a thousand times and went to find a sewing needle.
"Take a chance," she said to herself as she tried to thread a needle. "What harm can it do?"
She worked on it until Dad came to herd her to bed, and then she rushed upstairs and hid the quilt under her bed so that she could finish it later. She had to pretend to be asleep when Mum came to check on her, but then she popped back up, turned on her lamp, and started stitching again.
She was bad at it.
Like, very bad.
The needle never went where she wanted it to go and it poked her fingertips again and again. Threading a needle was stupidly difficult. The pieces never stayed in place, no matter how she pinned them. She'd sewed half of her first piece, feeling quite proud of herself, before realizing that she'd sewed it with the wrong side up so she'd have to pull out the few uneven stitches she'd managed and start over.
The clock downstairs chimed midnight when that happened, which was when Molly realized how badly in over her head she was and how badly she needed Gran to show her how to sew again and how badly she wanted Gran to be there. So it was also when she burst into tears and tried to hide her face in her pillow to stifle the sounds until she could get it together. Lucy was in the next room and the walls were thin, after all…
But the door opened anyway and it was Dad, wrapped up in a bathrobe and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. His glasses were upside down.
"Molly? Sweetheart?" she asked. "What's wrong? Is that blood on your fingers?"
"It's because I'm bad at sewing," Molly said even if the words didn't sound quite right through her sobs.
"It's because you're…" Dad looked around, confused. "Molly, what's all this, then?"
"Baby Lily's quilt," Molly said. "But Gran never finished it. She died too quick."
"She… oh, Molly," Dad said. He crossed the room quickly and Molly found herself holding out her arms to him even as he walked, and burying her face in his chest when he sat down on the bed with her.
"You tried to finish the quilt for her, is that it?" Dad asked when she settled down.
"I'm so bad at it," Molly hiccuped.
"You're not bad, you just need to practise," Dad said. "And it's very, very late, sweetheart."
"Gran could always sew," Molly sniffled. "She could always make beautiful things. But I can't even if there's only nine squares left…"
Dad squeezed her tight.
"Do you know why the things Gran makes are so beautiful?" he asked. "Why they're so special?"
"Because she made them."
"That's right. Because she made them for us," Dad said. "Because she used her hands to make them, and thought of us, and put love in every stitch she put in. That's why. So, really, those stitches you made are just as beautiful as anything your Gran ever made. There's just as much love in it.."
Molly sniffled and wiped at her eyes.
"I want to be good because I get it right," Molly said quietly. "Because I'm good like her."
"I know," Dad said. "I know. But what you've got so far isn't anything to cry about, yeah? It's beautiful too."
Molly nodded.
"I still want to finish it though," Molly said.
"We should," Dad said. "Well, we have all night, I suppose."
And so Molly took the sewing kit out from its hiding place under her pillow and passed it to Dad.
WC: 2424