The haunted looks around the Burrow over the next couple days did nothing to abate the pressing on my mind that didn't fully recede after Harry had calmed me down and coaxed me downstairs where I hadn't left George's side all night. George had been conscious by that point, even playing it up a little so that Mrs. Weasley wouldn't press for him to leave the couch and settle into his childhood bed for the evening. Instead, Mrs. Weasley allowed for Fred and I to sit by his side, whispering between the three of us after our fear had finally subsided. I hated that the twins had ended up more worried about me, both knowing I had panicked after watching George fall several feet out of the air on the back of a dead man's broom. No one had even tried to check my identity when I made it back to the Burrow because of course my breakdown proved my identity as The Girl Who Almost Went Mad. George ended up cracking jokes at his own expense, something that horrified everyone except for me and Fred. And when everyone else ended up going to bed, not necessarily sleeping in lieu of losing Mad-Eye, the three of us allowed it to feel like it almost had when I would sneak up to the boy's dormitory at school. Fred never let go of my hand and George hardly took his eyes off of me, a mix of worry and awe in his expression. It was a strange feat that only George and maybe Fred seemed capable of achieving.

Of course my father hovered even closer than ever before but divided his attention between me and Harry since we were both deemed merit for concern. Everyone knew by now that Dumbledore had left a specific job for Harry and only Ron and Hermione knew about it. I had wanted to ask every time Harry and I were put together, but even my father stopped asking after Harry explained himself and Remus pressed him to agree that this was bigger than any parental concern could warrant. It was something I knew my father was actively struggling with, the one who had always been way more concerned with our well-being than whatever else the world expected out of us.

I also knew that if Harry was going to tell me, I would have known much earlier before now. Fred gave me knowing looks whenever he stopped by after work. I hated that I had another week of sick leave as prescribed from Healer Poke, but no one except me was eager for me to return to work after the events over the past few days. I was scheduled to go back the day following the wedding, and I knew that despite the circumstances Mrs. Weasley was more than accepting of this timeline.

The only good thing to having several people hovering around was that they never got the opportunity to find me alone to try and have another conversation where they would tell me how worried they were and I would not have any words to comfort them. My mind was fractured but I was carrying on. It was all I could do right now, and the only things I could focus on were other people. I could focus on making sure George took his medicine to heal even though his ear had been cursed off of his body. I could focus on Harry and giving him every opportunity to ask for help even though I knew it would only be Ron and Hermione he was bringing along in a couple days. I could focus on Fred and how his smile never failed to ground me or bring a smile to my lips in return.

Mrs. Weasley also made sure to bring my focus to the wedding preparations and Ginny always managed to snag me as a partner into all the unwilling tasks her mother shoved at her. Ginny had also dragged me into her bed the night I broke down, allowing me to cry softly as she stroked my hair until I drifted off. She truly was a sister to me by now, someone who was just as fiercely protective of me as I was of her. I knew by now that her and Harry had been seeing each other, but I also knew Harry had called it quits in his heroic attempt to spare her any further misery while she returned to school and he went on his covert mission. I knew Ginny wasn't buying it and I only wished Harry would stop pushing everyone away when we were all so willing to help.

But Ron was the one who took it upon himself to come forward and ask for help in Harry's stead.

"Erm—Marnie?" he was a lot more confident but still couldn't stop the stutter from his speech whenever he spoke to his brother's girlfriend.

He had long ago stopped pining after her, knowing Fred was somehow the best one for her. He was impossibly—softer around her. And in turn, he always got her to light up when it was obvious she was feeling down. Harry fretted about Marnie's well-being constantly, and Ron had recognised over the past year that it was Fred who always made the most affect on Marnie to pull her back from wherever dark pits her mind had taken her. Second was George, who managed to pull near as many smiles to her face and was just as careful with her without really ever changing how the both of them had treated her over their entire friendship. It had been an easier realisation to handle once he had gone out with Lavender and realised more or less what affection truly felt like and that his long term crush for Marnie had mostly been respect and an easy amicability for his best mate's sister. And now there was—

Ron stopped himself from any further realisation and got on with what he had come here to discuss with her.

"Fred tells me you're really good with Transfiguration," Ron says somewhat cryptically, piquing my interest to willingly follow him upstairs under the guise of going to go help with cleaning the twins' room.

Like I would ever do that—some secrets are meant to be kept even from best mates.

I made the trek all the way to the attic and was surprised to see that Fred was already up there.

"Oh, good. I figured you would do a better job than I can," Fred offered, still not explaining what on Earth they were trying to do.

And I didn't wholly believe Fred because his charm work was well-crafted after all of his accomplishments with George for the shop. But I accepted the compliment and task with a nod and let them explain the situation. It seemed that the Burrow's ghoul was going to be used as a decoy for Ron and that it was supposed to look like a sickly replica of the youngest Weasley son who was on his sickbed with Spattergroit. It was a good ploy to keep anyone from looking too closely to verify Ron's identity because Spattergroit was extremely contagious and only a fool without a Healing degree would really look too closely. It would keep the Weasley's safe from Ministry retribution whenever they came looking for Ron, thinking him a truant and trying to ascertain where he was with Harry.

Without Harry asking, I already knew his unspoken plan. I was to keep my father safe. There was no faking Harry's absence because he was dead if he went to school and he was hunted if he didn't. I knew Mrs. Weasley thought Hogwarts the safest place, especially with Professor McGonagall and other staff there to protect the students. But it would be the best place to come for Harry when Voldemort decided and I wasn't as naïve to believe Harry should be trying to further his education at such a time.

Whenever Fred came to the realisation that there were no such protections afforded to me being Harry Potter's family, that would be the day I could no longer go into work and I would have the fulltime job of keeping my father hidden. I knew my days at the Ministry would be limited, which was why I was restless not to being able to go in right now. The wedding would be nice but cleaning out the gardens and preparing blankets for guests and decorations for the ceremony felt like needless busy work and I knew that feeling so useless was only weighing down on the pulls of my mind instead of actually helping me heal.

After the ghoul looked suitably like a sick boy, Fred lamented that he needed to go find George and clean out their room since guests needed to use it. He even went so far as to say that his mother would take his ear for not performing his task. I would have scowled at him if I didn't laugh at how inappropriate his humour always was. Ron looked at little stricken but also didn't say anything since he was probably even more used to their humour than I was. Ron mumbled something about needing to clean his own room so I made my way downstairs before Mrs. Weasley spotted me without a task and sent me outside to the garden to start hand-stitching the napkins with monogrammed lettering. It was such a ludicrous request but of course I could not deny Mrs. Weasley anything.

Surprising was when Harry sattled up in the vacant seat beside me and silently picked up a blank napkin that were stacked in a basket between us.

"Mrs. Weasley is actually letting you sit with me?" I asked, looking up to see Harry looking very uneasy for being asked to do such a task.

He picked up one of the blank napkins regardless, still looking disconcerted that my task was to embroider Bill and Fleur's initials into each of them.

"She trusts you more I guess," Harry shrugged, albeit nervously.

It hadn't gone unnoticed by us that while I was hardly ever left alone, that Harry was expertly led away from either me or Hermione or Ron whenever Mrs. Weasley had the chance. I was sure Mrs. Weasley wasn't convinced that I wasn't in on the conspiracy, further verified when she had asked me several times now what Dumbledore had asked Harry to do. I felt it had something to do with assuming why Dumbledore had called me to his office the night he ended up being murdered, but I had already shared those elusive details.

Since it was the day before the wedding and I had just helped Ron with his alibi, I felt even more acutely just how little time I had left with Harry. I didn't know how long he would take, probably not something easy or quick, and whenever he returned things would be so different.

"I hate it that you're always protecting me," the words were a truth I had told him many times before, but it felt more true now than any other time I had told him.

"I know," his voice wasn't as steeled as it had been ever since we rescued him from his aunt's house.

He had been on the defensive, not allowing my father to be as doting on him as usual and sidestepping most questions from the other concerned adults. It was a dance I had been perfecting ever since last summer and Harry was taking a page out of my book, making Dumbledore's words echo in my head like the warning it had obviously been.

"And Hermione and Ron are different?" I couldn't help the bite in my words, even if I did have faith in the both of them to keep Harry and each other safe.

I knew Fred was probably just as worried about his own brother, but he hid it better and accepted it more easily than I could. This was bigger than our own individual needs and unfortunately that meant letting our younger siblings go off on some impossible quest.

"If I could do it alone I would… but I guess I'm selfish that I need them and don't actually want to go it alone. Plus, Dumbledore entrusted them as well in his own way."

I set down my most recently embroidered napkin which had a skewed loop on the end of the F. I set it in the finished pile anyway. Looking up at Harry, I hated that I had already decided to concede.

"I don't like this. So don't think I'm giving you any sort of blessing."

Harry smiled at my stubbornness, taking my words as the complete opposite of what I was saying.

"I love you, too, Marnie. And that's exactly why I can't bring you with me. So… keep him safe, won't you?"

I knew this was the same request Ron had asked me just a few hours earlier. If I was honest, I didn't think Harry was going to physically ask this of me. But of course he was worried about the man who had been raising him despite everything for the last seven years. We were his family and Harry was just as worried as we were of what was coming.

"Only if you come back safe," it was a contingency that couldn't exactly be promised, but we did anyways.

We each nodded in agreement before Harry picked up a napkin looking wary again and I taught him the proper enchantment to embroider it. It was probably the most tense of birthdays for Harry, a detail I had had to pry out of my drowning mind this morning. I knew my father was giving Harry a watch, as was tradition for wizarding families to give their sons when turning of age. It had been Penn's, my father's brother, and I knew he would be teary eyed giving it to him.

I knew Fred and George were giving him their more useful shop items, ones that could be used for being stealthy like the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder. I hadn't had any time to really go shopping, the last month's events and work and the Order business swallowing up all of my time. But I had managed to find something at work, reminding me of how Cedric had given me presents from his father's work in the past. The absence of Aster's silent presence aching at the thought.

I had tracked down some gillyweed from one of my on sight visits to a swamp last month that I had kept healthy in a jar. I also had some phoenix tears in a small phial from when I had gone to the sanctuary for some observational studies that Mr. Diggory required. I felt so relaxed in my job, especially amongst the animals and plants that I was required to study and care for.

But my mind drifted to something that surprisingly I didn't think Harry had ever been told before now.

"You know, we actually used to go visit your parents' graves on your birthday," I confided, picking up the next napkin to start embroidering again.

"You mean you've actually been to Godric's Hollow?" Harry swallowed sounding both apprehensive and melancholy.

"Yea, it was a tradition my father started the year after everything happened. We went up until the summer before you started at Hogwarts. But I guess having you here instead to celebrate became more important. I'm sorry we haven't brought you though, it seems almost selfish on our part," I frowned remembering the time in my third year when we found the Mirror of Erised. Harry had seen his parents smiling at him like a family portrait but we had never taken him to actually see where his parents rested.

Harry was contemplative for several minutes and I was pressed to think that Harry was thinking of something more than just getting the chance to see his parents' resting place or the town where he had been meant to grow up.

But we were prevented from furthering our discussion when Mr. Weasley asked Harry to help set up the tent with all of the other men whereas I was called back into the house to help prepare Harry's birthday dinner.

My father was in there as well, alight with an energy that he hadn't had for several weeks now. I realised that in spite of everything, he excited to celebrate Harry's coming of age.

And just as I thought, he did get teary-eyed when Harry opened the velvet box to discover the watch being bestowed to him. And despite Harry's usual reserve, he stood up and hugged my father tightly in gratitude. Harry thanked everyone for the gifts after we had all finished a lovely dinner served outside in the warm July weather.

That was the last moment of ease afforded to any of us, which didn't even continue to sleeping since my nightmares still hadn't subsided, watching George almost falling to his death over and over again, and the fact that Mrs. Weasley was stirring us awake at such an ungodly hour. Fleur was already prancing around the overcrowded bedroom with the four of us girls in it but thankfully I was not part of the official wedding party like Ginny was. Her look of desperation could not be ignored, however, so I ended up staying and helping to tie back her hair just as Fleur so minutely instructed. But I figured if it had been Fleur being the one to do it then Ginny would have hacked her off at the wrists by now.

Once I had accomplished the complex knotting of Ginny's hair, I allowed her to change places with me before she got to work on whatever it was she wanted to do. I was a little worried, Ginny being the only girl out of seven and I could never remember a time seeing her with her hair pulled back in anything other than a ponytail, not that I was any different.

But Ginny fished out a golden ribbon from somewhere and interlaced it into my hair. When it was finished, even Hermione looked impressed, all the girls commenting that it matched my eyes perfectly. I left however before Fleur could decide that I needed to change or for Ginny to say whatever provocative thing I could read off her expression about me and her brother.

I managed to change in the washroom after washing my face and applying a sparing amount of make-up because I was never good at that sort of thing and I felt that the ribbon was enough to not try to take away from the look.

When I finally made it downstairs, it was to the uncomfortable circumstance of not only witnessing Harry kissing Ginny, but that George was trying to be a silent observer as well.

"Mornin'" he greeted provokingly to them, watching as Harry took a large step backwards away from George's younger sister.

As much as I wanted to thwart George for being a menace, I avoided that landmine of a situation and would ream him out later for sticking a toothbrush into the side of his head like his new injury was some sort of change purse. Knowing George, he would take to putting things in there and would lose a knut or sickle in the side of his head if he wasn't careful.

"Hare," even though he said it so softly, I still snapped my head back towards the staircase even though I had been heading towards the front door without trying to draw attention from the dining room/ kitchen area.

I smiled, watching as Fred stared and took in my appearance. The golden hair tie not only matching my eyes but also the rose pink dress that Mrs. Weasley had picked out for me. It had a higher neck line and capped sleeves with decorative beading all along the neckline and bodice. It splayed out at the cinched waist slightly and ended at my knees, with lace embroidering the hems. It was truly beautiful and the look on Fred's face solidified any doubts I might have had.

"You look—" Fred cut himself off, not finding whatever words were stuck at the end of his tongue.

But I never found out what he was going to say before Mrs. Weasley suddenly appeared to where we were standing, announcing frantically that the Minister for Magic was here.

I bolted to the front window, accompanied by Fred to watch as Mr. Weasley greeted him in the garden and then invited him inside. I wanted to stay since I already deduced he must here in regard to Harry like he had last time, this time without Percy in tow. That prat was missing his brother's own wedding. But Mrs. Weasley carted Fred and I outside to the garden where I was put to work setting the tables. I knew my father was waiting in the kitchen inside, not trusting Harry to truly be left alone with the leader of magical Britain.

I was glad when Harry at least told me what had happened, that after keeping Dumbledore's will a secret for a month that it was finally being carried out. I was oddly relieved not to have been a recipient of anything from Dumbledore, still feeling disconcerted from the last time I had spoken to him and that those parting words were enough.

Again, there was no time to fret over the Minister's arrival and then departure because it was being announced that Fleur was ready and that all the guests had arrived. I had spent most of the morning in the garden and once I realised there was nothing more to setup, Fred was grabbing me by the arm to escort me to my seat in between my father and Harry.

"You look absolutely stunning, love," Fred's warm whisper into my ear as he walked me down the aisle was enough to make me choke on my own breathing.

The setting was so romantic and it was not lost on me, allowing Fred to walk me down a wedding aisle, both of us in our finery. Maybe one day…

Fred kept his grip until I was seated. He beamed at me and then slipped back up to escort the next wedding guest. It was amazing what Mrs. Weasley had managed to put together for her eldest son and it finally allowed me to exhale some of the tension I had felt since going to bed the previous night.

"You look lovely, darling," my father's words were affectionate and had me leaning into him, allowing him to take me into a one-handed hug that I hadn't allowed in quite some time.

Once upon a time I had been a very affectionate daughter, someone who never minded giving out my physical shows of love and adoration. But now, it felt draining to be the source of everyone's reassurances. My heart had been ripped out, deceived and tortured too much to be that strong a pillar anymore. But it didn't mean I didn't love my family just as much or have the same fight to protect them as always.

Sitting together with Harry and my father, we allowed ourselves a small moment of family contentment before we all stood up to watch Fleur being led down the aisle.

The next hour was the ceremony followed by a scrumptious meal that I had no idea just how Mrs. Weasley had pulled it off. It was a feast worthy of being compared to Hogwarts and I ate as much as I could, stopping just short of being full since I still wanted to be swept off my feet by Fred.

And I definitely wasn't disappointed in my wish. As soon as Bill and Fleur shared their first dance as a married couple, Fred was by my side, easing back my chair and then escorting me onto the dancefloor. It didn't matter if it was a slow beat or quick, Fred never let go unless prompted to by some very few people he was willing to oblige. I shared a father-daughter dance with my dad, I pulled Harry into a rather reluctant embrace since I could feel the immediacy of his departure, and then I let George get in one dance similar to the one we shared at the Yule Ball. But this one wasn't foreboding, it was easy and consisted mostly of me rolling my eyes at all of his self-indulgent 'holey' jokes.

After that Fred wrapped me into his embrace and didn't let go.

"I love you, so so much Hare," Fred murmured into the top of my head and I breathed in his familiar scent as my head laid into his chest.

I would never get sick of this and didn't want to let go until the evening was over, and maybe even then I wouldn't. But that decision was taken from me at the appearance of Kingsley Shacklebolt's Patronus.

"The Ministry has fallen. Rufus Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming."

My tight gripped deathly over Fred's shoulders and for the moment it took to hear the entire warning, Fred pressed me deeply into his chest. But as soon as the Patronus faded away, we were pulled apart. Before I completely detached myself I gripped Fred's cheeks in my hands and quickly touched my forehead to his.

"I love you," I whispered, wanting to say everything else but not having any time.

Fred desperately kissed me and I hated to break it too soon but the Death Eaters arrived instantly and it was my job to get my dad out of here. I quickly crossed the dance floor. My gaze landing momentarily on Harry's and we only nodded without stopping; a promise we would see each other soon because to contemplate that not happening was too much. When I lifted my eyes from Harry I found my dad trying to get through the crowd towards Harry but I painfully stepped in front of him and apparated before he could fight against me. In an instant we were standing just outside the wards of the cottage and my father walked inside in frustration. I put up more wards and then came inside when I felt there was nothing else I could do even though I still felt helpless.

I took care in fortifying the wards, taking a moment to steel myself before I followed my father into the cottage. When I finally did, I found him pacing in the sitting room, looking absolutely livid and defeated. It was almost unsettling since I couldn't recall my father ever looking this upset even though I couldn't blame him.

"Dammit!" I flinched out of surprise at his sudden exclamation and waited for him to speak again before moving over towards him. I waited just inside the door with it closed behind me.

"Last year—" my father choked on his words but he swallowed and continued talking in almost a whimper now. "Dumbledore told me to wait last year for them to go save you. I waited two months before Severus finally saved you. What kind of person tells a father he has to wait for his daughter to be saved… for the right moment. And now Harry—dammit he's as good as my son—and Dumbledore is dead but he's still taking him away from me. And there isn't a damn thing I can do but hole up here and wait for them to come, just like they tried to with your mother!"

I sank into the sofa, my hair hanging out of the intricate braids that Ginny had accomplished this morning. I took the rest of the ribbon out and clenched it in my hands. I let my father continue pacing and then accepted the tea that he eventually went and made. My mind threatened to swallow me up whole. Harry was on the run, the twins would be at the shop or be forced into hiding, Bill and Fleur's wedding was ruined. Any one of those things were easy to become my undoing but instead I sipped my tea and fought against its crippling weight. Tomorrow I would return to work and I would fight in the way I knew how. Because anything else, I would feel as useless as my mind was telling me I was.