'Silver threads join the soul to the body.'
The clock my mother gave me as a birthday present sits ticking, next to the clock Arthur made me when I was pregnant with Bill. It ticks annoyingly loud and I now wonder how I have never noticed it before. Unless I have noticed it, only with a house that usually has at least one other person than me in it I have just forgotten about it.
Perhaps what is really bothering me right now is not the clock ticking on the wall, but the silence that the clock is ticking into. My mother would always say that she hated the thought of us leaving her house after a Sunday lunch because she could not bear the silence afterwards. I know how she feels. My babies have left me; they are all out in the world having adventures. Dangerous adventures which I mostly do not condone in any shape or form. But, they are nonetheless necessary.
I look around the sitting room and my eyes fall onto a wall of photographs. Each frame contains a picture of any one of my precious babies, excluding the one in the centre, which contains a picture of Arthur and myself. They are all beautiful, with varying shades of red hair, and eye colours. Some have my own deep brown eyes, and others have Arthur's clear blue eyes. One or two have slightly curly hair, the others perfectly straight hair. Each one has a smattering of freckles across their faces. Except for two frames that contain pictures of children whom I did not birth but love as if they are mine own. One with messy, black hair and bright, green eyes. Another with curly, brown hair and hazel coloured eyes.
I absent-mindedly reach for my knitting basket and pull out the different colour yarns. Ten different colours, one for each of my ten loves; yellow for Arthur, blue for Bill, white for Charlie, red for Percy, dark green and yellow for Fred and George, maroon for Ron, purple for Ginny, green for Harry and cream for Hermione. I feel each one, how soft they are and how warm they feel and think of how warm each of my loves is. I miss them now.
Each is at work, or at school, and three of them are missing in action. This war has lost me three of my family already, as well as the one who won't accept we do not support the ministry. That totals four of my babies at the moment. I fear the count may go up before long. Ginny is desperate to find her brother and friends. She wants to join them on whatever mission they are undertaking. I will not let her go. Not my smallest baby. I need her. I need them all.
I think about the first time I cuddled each one of them. The first time Arthur hugged me in his arms, the first time I held each of my newborn babies tightly to me, the first time I held Harry in my arms and hoped he would be ok, and the first time Hermione came to me for comfort. Those memories are ingrained in me. The first few moments of my deep love for them, the first moments when they became a part of my soul, each one splintering me further but diminishing me no less. I merely have more people to love, protect and nurture now. And I know they need me as much as I need them.
I return the yarns to the knitting basket and pick up my silver thread and needle and concentrate on threading through the small eye. Once that is done I pick up the first jumper, Arthur's yellow one, and carefully I begin to sew a silver kiss into the hem of it. I do this with each jumper I have made. A silver kiss, one for each of my loves, the parts of my soul. A silver thread to join them to me.
Author's note: I do not own any of the characters, all of whom belong to JK Rowling, nor do I own all of the plot. I did, however, come up with the idea of the silver kisses and I also wrote the quote at the top.