Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the works by JK Rowling. I, like so many others, am merely borrowing them as a basis for my own work of fan fiction.

Insanity

Chapter Three – Convincing Molly

November 6, 2001, 9:15am The Lion's Den, Godric's Hollow

Harry sat in the brightly sunlit kitchen of his home. When Harry worked with the premier Wizarding Architect firm of Pei, Wilbond, MacDonald, and Crawley to design his (and hopefully Ginny's) home, he had emphasized comfort, practicality, and security over everything else. The lines of the sprawling home with two above ground levels and two below ground levels were kept simple and clean. Large windows (made of spell-armored glass) set in thick stone walls let in plenty of natural light during the day. Hand-laid wood floors ran throughout the two main levels of the house, with area rugs strategically placed to soften the surface and provide islands upon which were placed the comfortable furnishings. The colors were kept fairly muted, with earth tones being the predominant color scheme. Splashes of reds and golds of various shades provided focal points and hearkened back to Harry's Gryffindor roots.

When he had designed the kitchen, he had planned for it to be one of the central gathering places of the house. It had smoothly finished golden oak floors, cabinets made out of cherry with a natural finish, and ceramic tile counter tops. It had the latest in both magical and muggle appliances, and was wired, like the rest of his home, with electricity. Fully one half of the kitchen, including a second oven, stove cook top, built-in grill, and sink, were sized to fit a house-elf or a child. To one side of the kitchen was an eating area with a cherry wood table and six chairs.

Being groomed in his training by Alastor "Mad-eye" Moody had left its mark on Harry, and he was almost as paranoid regarding his safety as his old mentor. One of the things he had decided to do was to prevent direct apparition into and out of his home unless the person apparating was specially keyed to the wards. Thus far, there were only two people so keyed – Harry and Ginny. Harry had not had the heart to remove Ginny's access, even though there was a chance that in her present condition she could enter with the intent to harm him. There was also no direct floo connection into the house. Additionally, wards had also been established to block portkeys from directly entering the house. Next to the main house was a sturdily built building that was used as the floo, portkey, and apparition entry point. The small building had thick stone walls shielded against all forms of magic, and two password locked doors that also used the latest in bio-recognition charms in a dual authentication scheme. On the wall next to the doors leading out of the building were two muggle intercom systems charmed to work in a magical environment. One door was labeled 'Main Entry' and the other was labeled 'Kitchen Deliveries Only'. A fact only known to close friends and almost family was that the preferred entrance was the kitchen entrance.

Anyone visiting the house for the first time, or anyone not pre-keyed to the door entry systems and given a pair of passwords, would have to contact the main house using the intercom and then wait in the entry building until Harry or a designated deputy could verify their identity and open the door. Two covered walkways led from the entry building to the front and kitchen doors of his home. Both doors had additional security built in, including a duplicate set of bio-recognition and password charm systems. The system was set up so that if Harry was home, nobody could enter the house without being admitted from within except for Ginny, but if he was not home, anyone that the doors recognized and had the appropriate passwords for the recognized identity could enter the house.

As Harry sat at his kitchen table, he sipped his morning coffee (made with two spoons of sugar and a large dollop of cream) and alternated staring out into the large back yard without seeing any of the fall color that was in prominent display on the trees outlining the quidditch pitch and rereading the information that he had copied down about the Atonement Bond. Dobby and Winky had both passed through the kitchen several times since he had taken his seat. In an uncharacteristic lapse of awareness, Harry had not reacted to their presence in any way. The soft chime announcing that someone had just entered the floo portal went unnoticed as well as the movement of the elaborate wizard's clock that hung on the wall of the kitchen. The hand with Molly Weasley's face moved from the 'away' sector to 'authentication accepted' and then to 'en-route to back door'.

Her shadow passing in front of one of the windows woke Harry from his musings and he grimaced as he heard a knock on the kitchen door. Only family and very close friends knew to use the kitchen door, and after the talk last night he was not really up to facing the lot of them this morning.

Sighing heavily to himself, he got up from the small kitchen table and moved to the kitchen door, drawing his wand on the way (old habits died hard). After checking the foe mirror placed discreetly on the wall next to the door, and casting a glance at the sneakoscope resting in a niche beside the mirror, Harry opened the door. Expecting to see a sea of red, he was a little surprised to see only one redheaded person on his doorstep.

"Good morning, Harry. Can I come in?" Molly's voice echoed the weariness that showed on her face, a weariness born of many late nights spent watching over her daughter's restless sleep, capped by a long night spent discussing Harry's presentation of the previous night.

"Of course, Molly, you know that my house is your house." Stepping away from the door, Harry ushered his almost mother into his home and escorted her to the kitchen table.

"Please, have a seat. Would you like some coffee or breakfast?"

Molly smiled in spite of her concerns over Harry's appearance. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and had obviously, like she and her family, missed out on a night of sleep, and yet he was still as gentlemanly as ever. "Coffee, please."

With a crack, Dobby appeared in the kitchen. "Good morning, Mrs. Molly Weasley Ma'am," he said in his squeaky voice. "Did Dobby hears you say you wants coffee?"

"Yes please, Dobby, thank you."

"Creams, sugars?"

"A little of both, please, Dobby."

A moment later, Dobby placed a full cup of coffee in front of Molly and vanished with another crack.

"He's efficient," said Harry with an embarrassed grin.

Harry and Molly sat in silence for a while. Molly studied Harry's face, seeing him for the second time in as many days without the concealment charms that he must have been using in public for a long time.

Finally, she broke the silence that had built between them. "Why, Harry?"

"Can I tell you a story, Molly?"

"You can tell me whatever you want, Harry."

"20 years ago, a baby did something that no one had ever been able to do before. He survived the unsurvivable, and in doing so, banished the most evil wizard that had ever been. A grateful world dubbed him The-Boy-Who-Lived, but no one bothered to ask the boy what he wanted.

"For his own safety, the boy was sent to his closest blood relatives. Unbeknownst to the world, these relatives, instead of loving the boy as their own, hated him and all of his kind and did their best to eradicate any trace of magic in the boy. For 10 long years the boy suffered under their control, until one day the magical world found him.

"He was brought into the magical world, introduced to new and wondrous things, and also introduced to a public that practically worshiped him for something he had no memory of ever doing.

"He went to Hogwarts, made friends for the first time ever, learned about magic, had adventures, and played Quidditch. He also learned to loathe his fame. And he also learned to be wary of public opinion since he found that opinion to be as fickle as the wind.

"He learned about his supposed destiny, that he was the one that had to kill the most evil wizard in the world or die by his hand. He found family and felt that he was loved and accepted for the first time that he could remember. He learned to love others as well, learned to reach out to people.

"And then, over the course of his sixteenth year, he slowly fell in love. When he was seventeen, he finally worked up the courage to confess his feelings and tell his love how he felt about her. On that day something wonderful happened ... he found out that the girl that he was in love with loved him the same way. That was the day his life changed forever. That was the day he first thought about what would happen after he defeated Voldemort, what his future could be like.

"In the company of his beloved, he experienced joy and wonder and love and happiness. With his beloved he was able to be himself without fear of being judged. With his beloved he learned to cry again, something he had not been able to do since he was little more than a baby. With his beloved his heart soared to new heights, and his dreams became reality.

"Well aware of his destiny, he worked towards the goal of removing the evil from his world so that he and his beloved would be able to have a future of peace and joy and children and family and wonderful lives together.

"And then it all came crashing down. One day he let his guard down and his beloved was taken from him, taken away by a spiteful, selfish boy who simply wanted to cause harm. Over the course of the next two weeks, the boy, who was now a man, eliminated the evil from his world. He killed the evil wizard and his minions and finally was able to rescue his beloved. In the course of the removal, and the killing, the man skated very close to the edge of darkness, and almost went beyond.

"Only to find that his beloved was broken beyond healing, damaged by the evil that had held her so that she could no longer call him her beloved. Driven beyond the realms of sanity, his beloved now hated him, could not stand the merest sight, sound, touch, or smell of him.

"His world was in ruins once again. Desperate to help his beloved, once all known paths had been explored and failed, he threw himself into finding a way to bring his beloved back to him. For almost two years he searched the world to find a way. Two years he spent living in a twilight world where the only thing that mattered was finding the way to bring her back.

"He spent all of his time on that quest, knowing that without his beloved his life had no meaning, the future was ashes, his dreams a bitter taste in his mouth. There was nothing to live for anymore, nothing that could ever replace her in his life, nothing that could ever give his life meaning again."

Harry paused in his tale to take a sip of his now cold coffee. He smiled sadly as he looked at Molly, taking in the tears streaming down her face.

The smile left his face and a sober expression claimed it as he remembered something that he needed to tell Molly. "I should tell you that I've watched Ginny over the past year or so."

A single raised eyebrow, eerily similar to one of his favorite expressions of Ginny's, was her only reaction, telling him that he'd better continue. "After I figured out that it was me causing her episodes, I tried to stay away ... for her sake ... and for your family's as well. I tried ... and I failed. You never changed the wards to keep me out, and so I would use my dad's old cloak and apparate to the Burrow. Most of the time it was during the day ... just to see her ... to hear her voice."

A quick glance at Molly's face showed that the eyebrow was still up, and the look in her eyes told him that she had not missed his use of the word 'most'. "Sometimes I would come late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, when I couldn't sleep, and couldn't bear to do any more research ... I would get overwhelmed with loneliness ... with missing her. And I would apparate to her bedroom just to watch her sleep."

Another quick glance at Molly's face, and the tinge of red he saw forming there, told him he'd better finish this confession before things got out of hand. "When I asked Ginny to marry me, I promised that I would protect her ... with my life, if necessary."

Harry grinned sheepishly as he heard an amused snort come from Molly at this statement. "Yeah, that went over really well ... almost queered the deal. Then she just got this almost evil smirk on her face and she promised the same thing back to me ... and told me that I'd better accept that or else I'd be living with snot and bats on my face for the rest of my short life."

Harry's face lost all traces of amusement as he prepared to continue telling his almost mother about visiting her daughter's bedroom at night. "When I was watching her sleep ... I would just stand there, looking at her curled up on her bed. It didn't matter if I came in the middle of winter or the middle of summer, she would always be curled up into a fetal position ... as if she were protecting herself. Sometimes, after I had just arrived, she would start to mutter and plead with me in her sleep ... as though she knew I was there, and was afraid of me. Once in a while she would have a nightmare of some sort, and would start screaming. I could hardly stop myself from holding her then ... but you always came to help ... you would always come in and fold her in your arms and hold on to her and whisper soothingly to her. I would always leave after you came in, because I knew she was in good hands ... and I didn't want to invade your privacy.

"See, the thing is, Molly ... I promised to protect her ... and I failed miserably. And I've seen the result of that failure ... I saw how badly hurt she was when we finally found her ... I saw what HE did to her ... and I've seen what its done to her mind and her heart and her soul. Her body has been healed ... but her mind and heart and soul are still as damaged as they were when we found her. For two years I've watched her go downhill, Molly. For two years I've watched her hide her pain inside where no one else can see it ... except for you, sometimes ... and me. I've watched her turn into a shell of her former self ... and I can't bear to watch it any more."

"Harry, it wasn't your fault ... we've all seen the after action reports. It wasn't your job to watch the triage area, your job was to secure the main entrance." Molly's face was lined with grief and sorrow, but her compassionate voice was warm and loving.

"I know it wasn't my fault, at least directly, but I still failed her, and failed in my promise to her. I have to atone for that mistake, Molly, I have to do this to make things right again. I just can't go on without her. I'm just not strong enough any more. I was telling the truth, yesterday, when I said I would not last another year without her. This bond is the only prayer that I have of bringing her back into my life. And I believe that the odds are strongly in favor of bringing her back from where she is now ... bringing her back to her family. Even if the worst happens to me ... if it brings her back ... it is a price I am happy to pay. And who knows, I may get lucky and things may work out in my favor for once."

"Harry, I love you just like my other children, you are as much my son as Ron, or Fred, or George ..." Molly's voice broke as she pleaded with Harry.

Harry moved next to Molly and hugged the sobbing woman to him. As he hugged her, she wrapped her arms around his waist and held him as well.

"Molly ... Mum ... I know you would never ask me to do this for Ginny ... no one is asking me to do this ... it is just something I have to do."

"Y-y-you called me Mum"

"Yeah, I did, because you are my Mum now, you have been for years, ever since you welcomed me into your home ... and your heart."

"We can't lose you, Harry, you are too important to us."

"I don't want to die, Molly, but I know you are going to lose me if I don't do this, and I am very afraid that we are going to lose Ginny also."

"I know ... I did the revealing charm on her last night ... she looks almost as bad as you do ... Harry, it just isn't fair.

"Life is seldom fair, Molly, I learned that lesson long ago. We can just do our best with what we have. Please, Mum, let me do this ... let me try to help her ... let me try to bring her back. Please ... I just can't face life without her any more ... it's too painful ... too empty."

After these words, tears began to flow from Harry's eyes, and he wept while holding a still sobbing Molly in his embrace.

After many minutes, their tears stopped flowing, and they were able to sit on their own again. Not wanting to lose the closeness of their mutual embrace, they settled on holding hands as they sat in silence, taking a step back from the emotions that were consuming them a few minutes ago.

"I don't like this ... not one little bit ... but I don't want to lose my daughter and one of my sons ... so ... you have my permission to try this bond with Ginny."

November 8, 2001, 10:30pm The Burrow

Harry sat at the dining room table of the Burrow. Also seated at the table with him were the Weasleys, minus Ginny who was, once again asleep upstairs, Hermione, Albus Dumbledore, Remus Lupin, and Neville Longbottom. A pot of tea and several cups littered the table along with a bottle of Firewhiskey and several glasses. Several sheets of parchment were strewn across the table. "Now remember ... Fred, George and Ron will stand at the points of the northward pointing triangle ... invoking the bond from Ginny to me.

"Bill, Charlie and Percy will stand at the points of the southward pointing triangle ... invoking the bond from me to Ginny.

"The rest of you ... Hermione, Remus, Albus, Molly, Arthur, and Neville ... you will stand at the intersections of the two triangles and will provide reinforcement for the whole two-way bond, and also for a full atonement to take place."

As Harry had presented his plan, Hermione's had gone into her ''research mode' and her body stilled and her face became impassive. The only signs of awareness were her eyes that devoured every piece of parchment passed her way, and also every expression that flitted across the faces of those gathered at the table, and her ears that one observing would have sworn were swiveling to better hear every word uttered at the table. When he finished, she was the first one to ask a question.

"Why them, Harry? Why put Ginny's brothers at the points of the triangle?"

Harry smirked across the table at her. Only she would ask about something as seemingly trivial as this. "Ginny's brothers are the closest to her both by blood and magically. The seven of them share the same parentage and they are each a blend of their parents. Their magical talents also reflect this blending. Molly and Arthur are only half as close biologically and magically speaking."

As Harry stopped speaking, he saw Hermione start to ask another question and held up his hand to forestall her. "I've placed Bill, Charlie, and Percy on the southward triangle because their relationship with me is the most distant, while their relationship with Ginny is in some ways stronger than that of Fred, George, and Ron. This is important because the bond that is formed from me to Ginny is the most important one for her ... it is the one that reveals my emotional state to her.

"I've placed Fred, George, and Ron on the other triangle since their relationship with me is closer than the others, while their relationship with Ginny is almost equally as close as Bill's, Charlie's, and Percy's. This is important because the bond formed by this triangle is the most important to me ... it is the one that reveals her emotional state to me."

Unable to contain himself any longer, Ron burst out with the question that had been weighing on his mind ever since he heard the of the plan. "What if the worst case happens, mate?"

Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and tried to make his voice confident and soothing as he replied. "Ron, the worst case for both Ginny and myself is if the bond casting does not work and nothing changes. In that case, I don't think I will be having another birthday party at the Burrow. And I honestly don't think that Ginny will make it too much longer after that."

"I think what Ron meant is, what if she drives you insane?" Hermione held on to her husband's hand like it was her lifeline to reality.

Harry sighed softly before looking at each of them in turn, his eyes serious and his face set in determination. "In that event, I ask you to have mercy on me and end it ... end my life."

Muttered protestations filled the air as the others present reacted to this bald statement.

"Look, we've been over this ground already. I have already spoken with Madam Bones and gotten blanket immunity statements from her for all participants, including Ginny, so that no legal action will be taken against anyone participating in this.

"All you have to do is sign these documents and I'll give them to her. She will hold them against their being needed, and if things work out in the best possible way then she will destroy all of them. If Ginny ... kills me ... then Madam Bones will invoke her blanket immunity so that no legal harm will come to her. If one of you kills me out of mercy ... she will invoke the blanket immunity for that person as well."

Tears started running down Hermione's face as she heard her best friend talk so calmly about dying. "But what about Ginny? What is she going to feel if she kills you?"

Harry sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "What is she feeling now every time she is reminded of me by anything, Hermione? I'll tell you what she feels ... rage ... pain ... anger ... betrayal ... brokenness ... heartbreak ... the list goes on."

Refilling his glass with Ogden's Finest, Harry took a large swallow and continued. "In the event she does it herself ... well ... she will know ... beyond any doubt ... that I can never possibly harm her again ... which will stop her violent outbursts. I hope."

Taking a second large gulp of fire whiskey, Harry suppressed the shudder produced by the potent spirit and forced his voice to be level and calm. "In the event that one of you has to do it ... and Ginny is healed ... I have written a letter to give her that explains what I did and why. It also tells her that I will always love her no matter what ... and that I will kick her cute arse if she does not get on with the rest of her life."

Fred chuckled as he reached for his own glass of spirits. "If you put that in a letter, Harry, you'd better be dead before she reads it or she will kill you herself."

"Thanks, Gred, I figured something like that would get her attention."

Sensing he was getting to the end of their arguments, Harry pressed on. "I've written letters covering the different scenarios that I can think of, and will give them to you before we start tomorrow night."

"Where is this going to happen?" Asked Remus, speaking for the first time that night.

"At the Lion's Den. I have a portkey that will activate at 7:00pm and take her and those with her to the room I have prepared for this. The wards will be set to allow entry by this one portkey and to those that are traveling with that portkey. I would like Ron, Hermione, Albus, Remus, and Neville to be with me at my home before she arrives so that they can put the restraints on me."

"Why tomorrow night?"

"Several reasons ... first, it is the middle of the lunar cycle so that Remus will be at his best ... second, it is a Friday evening so that she will have all weekend if need be ... third, it must be done soon before she accidentally hurts someone ... you know how lucky we have been thus far ... that episode at Halloween was scary!"

Heads nodded around the room as everyone recalled how Ginny had tried so desperately to curse the young trick-or-treater, and how those of her family present had fought to prevent her from doing so. Harry looked at them all soberly before finishing.

"The portkey will deliver you to the room where the ritual will be performed, and after the ritual everyone will leave save Ginny and myself. I'm sorry, but there cannot be any witnesses to whatever happens between the two of us. The door you will use to exit will seal behind you and will only reopen once atonement is reached, however it is reached."

Author's Notes:

Many thanks for all of the kind reviewers: Josh Maxwell, rebekah1, friendofdobby, SanityEscapesMe, and Eris, Queen of the Shadows.

To respond to a few reviews:

Rebekah1: The problem is that Ginny believes Harry to be guilty ... that is what is causing her problems. You will see later on why they couldn't just show Malfoy to Ginny.

Eris: I'm sorry for making you cry, but happy that I was able to touch you on that level.