SANDWICHES BEFORE CAKE
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle. This story is not compatible with HBP, as it is the sequel to a story written before that came out, but it draws on HBP canon where possible.
The picnic, as Manda later told Hermione, wasn't a complete disaster. Molly brought cauldron cakes and pumpkin pasties, so Manda thanked her politely and quietly put aside her gingerbread pigs for the morrow. The children frolicked in the cool breeze of the nearby park, keeping the women too busy running after them to talk, till Amy-Rose got too whiny about her broken arm confining her to the bumble bee easy rider, and the car spring rider. Then they sat down to eat – "Sandwiches before cake," Manda and Molly said in unison, then caught each other's eye and smiled in recognition – before another half hour of climbing, swinging and sliding or, for Amy-Rose, sitting on the bee.
It was after they took them home and settled down for a well-earned rest that the day started to deteriorate. The girls pulled out books and blocks and dress-up dolls as the women watched, talking of housekeeping and Hogwarts and the weather – everything but what was really on their minds.
"No, she settled in very quickly," Manda said, "but that's hardly surprising. She had Cammie with her and Callie to tell her what it was like beforehand, and she knew she could go to Severus if she had any problems too big for students to deal with."
"She knew she could go to Severus?" echoed Molly. "Most first years are terrified of him."
"Most first years haven't grown up treating him as a surrogate uncle. He's been the second most important man in her life since she had her first magic accident at five and a half and turned the whole house pink. Inside and out. With blobby purple flowers all over the walls, just like the ones she was always drawing."
Molly sipped her tea and smiled sympathetically.
"That must have been a shock. What did the Mug – er, the neighbours say?"
"Oh, the Reversal Squad was very prompt and Obliviated them all before they could say anything. But then the big twins' magic broke out too and they flooded their bedroom with jelly. And we didn't want the Reversal Squad coming back because it was evening and we didn't want anyone who might recognise –"
She stopped abruptly, her glance slipping away from Molly's. Manda stared at Abigail, who was snipping holes into an odd sock – at least she hoped it was an odd sock – to make a doll costume for a dress-up ball she'd dreamed up.
"Anyway," she continued, "we called Hermione, and Severus came out immediately and sorted it all out for us. Sent away the Reversal Squad, de-jellied the room, talked to the kids and helped us plan how to cope with the next time, because Ad – because none of us had a wand."
"You don't have to be afraid to say his name in front of me, you know."
Manda didn't bother pretending to misunderstand her.
"I don't want to fight you. If that means talking about my kids instead of yours, that's what I'll do."
Aggie had given up arguing over the scissors and was winding ribbon around another doll clothed only in a tissue. Manda smiled faintly. She'd always encouraged the girls to make their own fun. Half an hour on the computer - except if there was a homework project - and one hour of TV a day was plenty, as far as she was concerned.
"I don't want to fight you either – don't want to fight either of you," Molly corrected herself, her eyes filling. "I just want my son back. That's all I ever wanted, from the moment he walked out of my door."
The little twins were building another of their complicated towns in one corner of the room as Alfrida laid a train track around and through it. Thea was lying on her tummy with a book under her nose and the big twins were colouring a book of tessellated patterns at the table, next to Alison, whose head was bent over a Transfiguration essay.
"He wanted you back too. You, most of all," Manda said.
"Then why did he send me away every time I tried to visit him? Why did he send back my presents?"
Amy-Rose was kneeling on the other sofa, a puddle of pencils beside her, staring out the window, and drumming her heels. She hated sitting still. Manda bit her lip.
"Because going back meant turning his back on what he believed. And he couldn't do that, even for you."
He built his whole life around pleasing you, until he just couldn't any more.
Molly was looking at the lone child by the window too, but it wasn't her grandchild she saw.
"But he only believed it because it meant turning his back on us." Her mouth trembled. "Because he hated being poor and not having new clothes and books instead of hand-me-downs."
Her daughter-in-law said nothing. Only her lips tightened and little wrinkles of tension appeared around her eyes.
You never understood him.
Perhaps life was always like that. Perhaps there was one child in every large family that didn't quite fit, one that parents and siblings didn't seem to understand. As they watched, Amy-Rose shifted and huddled her arm against her as if it ached. Manda got to her feet, relieved to have an excuse to change the subject.
"I'll just settle Amy-Rose down. She's looking a bit peaky."
"I could fix that arm in a trice," Molly said. "It does seem a pity to let her suffer."
"No magic in a Muggle home," Manda said reflexively. "It raises too many questions. Enough people have seen her in plaster that they'd wonder why she got it off in two days instead of six weeks."
"You'd leave her in pain for six weeks?" Molly demanded.
Manda's lips tightened further.
"A few days only, then it's more the inconvenience of not being able to move it while it's healing. Sometimes you just have to face the consequences of your actions. Maybe she'll learn something from the experience."
"If you lived in our world –"
"I'd be as helpless as a fish in a circus," she retorted. "And about as silly. I'll never belong in your world."
"Percy doesn't belong in yours."
Manda gritted and ungritted her teeth, clenched and unclenched her fists.
"Excuse me, I'll just see to Amy-Rose," she said carefully. "Perhaps we can discuss this later." Better yet, never.
A dose of acetaminophen, a chapter of her favourite story and a half hour of her mother's time all to herself brightened the little girl's face on their return. She ran over to her younger sisters and asked, "Can I smash your city down?"
Aislyn looked up, scowling, and Arielle moved to stand in front of it, arms akimbo.
"We still need it. Build your own."
Amy-Rose's lower lip stuck out.
"Can't."
From the table, Amalie looked up, sighed gustily and put down her green marker pen.
"I'll build you one," she said.
Manda ruffled her hair as she went past and Molly smiled, looking up from replaiting Thea's hair. It had been loosened in a scuffle with Aggie, who'd accidentally kicked her book away while walking past and who was still picking up the doll shoes she'd scattered over the room. Molly had ended the fight with the ease of long practice.
"I'm going to start dinner now," the younger woman said. "Maybe you'd rather stay with the kids?"
But that was too much to hope for. Molly followed her into the kitchen and resumed the attack as she bent down to rummage for onions.
"You love your children," she said.
"Of course I do." Manda stood up, cradling five large brown onions. She dumped them on a granite countertop and opened the drawer for a knife.
"I love my children too. Can you imagine what it's like to lose one?"
Manda stopped as if she'd been slapped and turned her head away.
"I'm going to lose them all," she said at last. "One by one, they'll be swallowed up by that great, gaping maw of a school Severus teaches in and, for seven years, they'll come back here as visitors, till they grow up and disappear into a world that actively excludes me; Muggle-Repelling charms and Muggle Secrecy Acts and anti-Muggle gateways to keep me out. I can't watch Alison get onto the train for school. I can't even buy her books without her. And I can't prevent it. It's what they are; it's what they're meant to be."
She laid the onions on the cutting board and began to peel the first one.
"It's different. You'll still see them," Molly pointed out. "They probably won't even live in a purely wizard neighbourhood; there aren't many left now. You can still be a part of their lives."
"Not properly. It's like being stuck in one of the books I grew up reading, like being the crippled child staring through a window at a world I've lost. But without the happy ending. I'm crippled in your world, I always will be. I can't be part of it, even if it wanted me, which it doesn't. You can't hug your children through a pane of glass."
"Then you see why Percy needs to come home where he belongs. Where he can hold the window open for you."
Manda sniffed and rubbed her eyes with her sleeve. Dratted onions.
"He is home."
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After Ginny's unforgiving attitude the last time they'd met, Hermione was surprised to see Ginny at her front door that afternoon.
"Don't think I've forgiven you yet," Ginny said, with lifted chin. "It's just I need someone to talk to and I'd rather you than my sisters-in-law."
"Thanks," Hermione said, letting her in. "I'm glad I'm still your best friend."
"Don't count on it. I haven't yelled at you near enough for keeping quiet about it for so long – for keeping quiet about it at all. If I didn't think you'd retaliate, I'd probably hex you, but I don't like your attack-canaries."
Hermione smirked.
"Good, I don't like Bat-bogeys either. Cuppa?"
"May as well. And a Muffliato, because it's bad enough having Callie listen in, but she's been plotting with Frank for months, apparently."
"Hoist with our own petard." Hermione shrugged as she cast the privacy spell. "We can hardly complain about our kids being snoops, considering how much snooping we did at their age."
"Oi, speak for yourself. What snooping did I ever do in third year? We didn't go to Order headquarters till the summer after."
Hermione raised an eyebrow as she set the kettle boiling.
"And you weren't snooping after your older brothers before that?"
"We-ell." Ginny grinned, opening the fridge and taking out the milk. "Bother you, you know me too well." Her eyes looked inwards. "He's not how I thought he'd be somehow."
"Isn't he?"
"No." She slumped in a chair at the kitchen table, inhaling the steam from her cup with half-closed eyes. "More – raw, more exposed, I suppose. He'd been biting his tongue for a long time before he finally went off at Dad that day, hadn't he?"
"Years, I think."
"He always was a secretive git. He wouldn't have told any of us about Penny, if I hadn't walked in on them kissing that time in my first year. Although I guess that's understandable, considering how Fred and George twitted him with it after I blabbed it out. But think how miserable he must have been after she was Petrified! And who did he talk to about it? Not anyone in our family! I don't know if he ever talked to anyone at all!"
"Good job it was only three weeks before they revived us," Hermione said. Good job we were using a mirror to look round corners, she thought with an inward shiver. She could still see those huge, glowing, lamp-like yellow eyes in her dreams sometimes.
"Mmhm. Three weeks doesn't sound like so much, but I bet he felt it lasted forever. And then it ended with me disappearing into the Chamber. And he'd always been such a mother-hen over me all my life." She chewed on her lip and turned her cup round and round on its plate. "Do you think that's when he started going wrong?"
Hermione took a sip and pondered.
"He still doesn't think he went wrong," she said. "But I think that may have been when he started doubting. Severus would know. I've never asked. Ron got injured in first year, but that was just the once and besides, Dumbledore wasn't even at Hogwarts that night."
"Dumbledore wasn't at Hogwarts when I went into the Chamber."
"But he was there when Penelope and I got Petrified," Hermione pointed out. "And it was his decision to keep the school open that left us in danger. Plus I suppose it began to seem like a pattern."
"He didn't seem any different the following year. I always just assumed he was happy, you know, being Head Boy and all. He was always so smug about it." Ginny put down her cup, folding her lips and blinking twice. "Now I'm looking back and wondering if he was ever happy at all in our house. Whether it was all just pretending."
"Oh, I think he liked being Prefect and Head Boy, sure enough. There wasn't any pretending about that. And he was pretty good at it too, for all none of you ever thought so." Hermione took another sip. "Conscientious and careful – he still is, actually. And he seemed happy with Penelope all right, whenever I saw them together. But the rest of it, I don't know."
"I feel so stupid."
"Why should you? You were five years younger and he was practically a grownup. You know what a huge difference that makes at that age."
Ginny nodded, but her mouth still drooped.
"We were all stupid. Him, most of all. Couldn't he talk to Mum, if not to us? Why didn't he ever talk to Mum?"
"I don't know," Hermione answered. "How much did any of you talk to her?"
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The children petitioned for their grandmother to stay to dinner and Manda didn't have the heart to refuse them, they'd been so good all day. Besides, it might be better to get all the fireworks out of the way as quickly as possible; short, sharp and painful, but soon over. Maybe then, they could move on.
She almost repented when Adam came home and turned pale at the sight of his mother bent over his daughters' hands, checking they'd scrubbed their nails. She cocked an eyebrow at him – 'Do you want me to keep her busy?' – but he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders and shook his head, 'I'll manage.'
"Daddy, daddy, look! Gramma's here!" Alfrida cried, reaching him first. He picked her up and gave her a twirl, then did the same for Arielle, Aislyn, Aggie and Abigail. Amy-Rose hung back a little, scowling.
"Come here, poppet," he said and hoisted her up on one hip so she could rest her head on his shoulder and her arm against his chest. "No twirlies for you till that arm's better, but you can still have your cuddle. Hello, Mum, have you had a good day?" He kissed her and Manda on the cheek and tousled the heads of all the other girls in turn with his free hand.
Molly gave him a misty smile.
"It's been lovely. Your children are adorable – and almost as well-behaved as you always were."
A shadow crossed his face. He hoped it was not for the same reason; he wanted them to grow up secure in their parents' approval, even at risk of misbehaviour of Twin-like proportions. He didn't say so though. Concealment of his real feelings from his mother's not-so-eagle eye was too ingrained.
Dinner went smoothly and Molly stayed afterwards to help put the children to bed. By the time they'd finished, mother and son were more in accord than they'd been for decades. Then Manda left them alone to talk while she scrapbooked and that's when things started coming unstuck.
"I shouldn't have said that yesterday," Molly conceded. "You really are a good dad. Arthur would have been proud of you."
Adam could only stare at her, a heavy ache in his chest and a prickling in his eyes. He'd never expected to hear that. He wasn't sure he deserved it.
Startled by his silence, Molly looked closer.
"Percy? Are you – crying?"
He shook his head, swiping savagely at his eyes.
"I'm all right," he muttered. What I would have given to hear those words twenty years ago?
"You don't look all right."
"I'm fine, Mum."
She glanced sideways at him, pursing her lips, then she shrugged off her doubts.
"Why shouldn't you be? You haven't been thinking us dead for twenty years."
He stood up hastily and took a turn around the room, trying to still the hurt bubbling up like lava, but the words would come, despite him.
"Do you think I haven't suffered?"
Molly gave him a sceptical sideways glance.
"But you knew we were alive; we thought you were dead. Do you understand what it's like to lose a child? Not just for a quarrel but forever?"
His mouth quivered.
"I thought it would be easier for you if you thought I was dead," he explained. "You could turn the page and go on with your life and you'd never have to think about me again."
His mother shook her head at his folly.
"Oh, Percy! As if I could ever stop thinking about you, just because you're not within my reach. You'll understand when your children start growing up and away from you –"
"I think I understand now," he said thickly. "I don't stop thinking of Alison when she's at Hogwarts."
Molly snorted.
"Of course you don't, but it's not the same. You know you'll see Alison again at the end of the school year or during holidays and you can owl her in between times. But I thought you were lost to me forever."
He prowled around the room again, straightening little china dogs on the mantelpiece and carved wooden fish in the open cabinet.
"Mum –"
"You took my child, Percy!" she burst out. "You made my Boggart real."
"Oh, mum. I never meant – I thought it was better this way," he pleaded.
"Better for who?"
"Everybody."
She didn't answer. He lifted his head to see why.
"Mum? Don't – Don't cry, Mum, please don't, I can't bear it." He stumbled forward and fell on his knees in front of her chair to pull her into his arms, her head on his shoulder and his on hers.
"Oh, Mum."
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"Ron? Are you here to see me or Severus?"
"Both of you, I suppose, really. But mostly you. Look, can I come in?"
Hermione had been frozen on the spot, staring at him, but now she stepped back from the door, with an embarrassed but hopeful laugh.
"Of course, you can. Shall I get him?"
Ron's head reared back.
"Er, no thanks. We couldn't possibly ever be friends. He hates me and I don't much like him either. But I've been thinking." His voice paused as he followed her into her study. Once inside, he looked around, blinking at the bookshelves and bibelots.
"Thinking?" she echoed. "Thinking about what?"
"This. You, me, us, Percy."
"Percy?" she probed dubiously.
"Yeah, him too. It set me thinking. I've been a prat, haven't I? Trying to tell you what to do and how to live. Just like he used to. If I wouldn't take it from him, why should I have expected you to take it from me?"
"Oh," she said uselessly. "So you're here to –"
"To say sorry. Seventeen years late. And to ask if you'll forgive me and we can be friends again. Because – because I've missed you."
She flew into his arms and hugged him tightly.
"Oh, Ron! Of course I forgive you," she said, when she got her voice back. "I'm just – I'm just surprised – shocked. In a good way though," she added hastily. "Whatever brought this on?"
"I told Harry about Percy."
Hermione stared at him in consternation. Ron had never been good at keeping quiet; whatever he thought, he had to open his mouth and say.
"What did you tell him about Percy – er, Adam?"
Ron spread his hands and just looked at her.
"Everything."
She winced.
"What did he say?"
"Said I was the world's second-biggest prat. Wouldn't say who was first."
Hermione grimaced. As if he needed to!
A/N Canon doesn't tell us how often Hermione saw Percy and Penny together. The mention of their happiness is extrapolated from their cheerful bet over the Ravenclaw-Quidditch match in PoA.