Thank you so much for reading! My last story was not turning out to be a success, but hopefully, I will finish it sometime after I finish this one, because I like this one better!
Well, much love everyone!
Hpfann15
Chapter Three: Birthday Surprise
"Abby, come on, walk to Granny! That a girl! Oh Arthur, get your cama-mabob thing over here and take a picha-mawhatzit!" shouted Molly Weasley from the living room of the Burrow.
The entire room was crowded, not only with the family, but many members of the Order, and neighbors who had fallen in love with the little girl. Abby had lived with her father's family for an entire year. Through that year, she had grown rapidly, quickly passing up her older cousin James, Harry and Ginny's bright-eyed little boy, quite chubby for his age.
Her eyes were distinctly her mother's, able to read a person completely, without a word. But her hair, her hair was that of her father's, red as a flame, perfectly and wildly windswept, even in the least windy of conditions. Freckles dotted her face, finding their way from the top of her small forehead to the bottom of her chin. Luckily for their daughter, Abby did not recieve her father's half of the gene pool when it came to her nose, which, like her mother's, started slender, and ended at a cute, button-like point.
Her laugh, though, was her own. It was the kind of laugh that could warm the coldest of hearts. The one thing that Molly had missed the most during the war was laughter in her household. Abby was the answer to all of her prayers. She was instantly loved by even the most cruel and gruesome members of the Order, including, surprisingly, Snape, who was one of her favorites, as well as her godfather.
She found joy in things no one else could, like the way her mother's beloved cat swished the dust bunnies with his tail, or how the garden gnomes thought her little toes were grubs in the garden mud. She giggled before bed, and when the sun peeked into her room in the morning, and her laughter could be heard from the kitchen at all times of the day after a large pile of food would find it's way into her hair.
But the one thing she did not laugh at, the one thing that no one could laugh at, was the picture entitled 'Ronald Billius Weasley', found on Molly's special clock. Since the day they had brought Abigale home, his face had been pointing at 'hopelessly lost'.
It seemed his daughter knew that he had left her behind. She wouldn't cry when she would fall, or when the fence out back by the garden would give her a splinter, but tears would always find her eyes when the small, round picture of her father could be seen.
But today, she was to distracted to see that the small picture of her long lost father had moved to 'traveling'. Today was her first birthday, and everyone had come out to see her.
"Look at how big you've gotten since the last time I saw you!" boomed Charlie as he walked into the crowded gathering space. He picked up little Abby and raised her above his head, making swooshing noises as she flew through the air, "And what pretty little freckles you have my dear! Here, have a birthday present from good ol' Uncle Char!" From his rucksack, he produced a small stuffed dragon, which looked quite like the one Harry had remembered battling in his fourth year.
"Hey, is that a Hungarian Horntail by any chance? Teaching her to love my enemies at an early age, I see!" Harry said from across the room, "Gin, give her our gift, I know she'll love this!"
"All right, all right, let's try to have some kind of organized chaos, just pass me the gifts so that I can catalog them all," shouted Molly, trying to create order in the house.
By the end of the night, Abby had recieved a very wide variety of gifts; a spy-sweeper from Mad-Eye, an engraved snitch from Harry and Ginny, a transforming dress collection from McGonnagol, a morphing mask from Fred and George's new children's collection, a 'Youngster's First Potion Lab' from Snape, a talking voodoo doll from Sirius, a mysterious egg from Hagrid (which Molly took the liberty of throwing out), twenty three different kinds of muggle candies from Dumbledore, Bill and Fleur sent a children's make up kit and a puppy, Lupin, Tonks and Teddy added a sun medallion necklace to the pile, along with many other gifts from the wide variety of other guests.
After a long day of opening gifts and eating cake, little Abby was close to falling asleep in her grandfather's lap.
"Arthur, I think it's time for bed," said Molly, "I'll clear up the house, and make sure everyone apparates home safely, you get Abigale up to bed."
Snape suddenly walked up and held out his hands for the little girl, "I realize that you may not find me the most suitable godparent for Abby, and I also realize that we have not had the best relationship throughout the years, but I would greatly appreciate if you would allow me to bring her up to bed and tuck her in. Please?"
Arthur's jaw dropped, and his first instinct was to say no, but as he looked down at the child in his hands, her hands were out stretched to the man standing across from him, and he knew he wouldn't be able to say no now, "Alright, but don't rile her up, she just started to get off that sugar high."
As Severus and Abby headed up the stairs, her small voice could be heard, "Daddy? Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"
Everyone left in the room looked up the stairwell. Abby's tiny hands were outstretched towards the front door. A bewildered Snape looked around in confusion, believing the child was calling him her 'Daddy'. But as the family turned to look at what she was so frantically calling for, every mouth in the room dropped. Standing in the once empty doorway was a tall, scraggly man. His bright, windswept red hair hung loosely in his face. He clearly hadn't shaven recently, and his clothing was dirty and torn in places. Freckles littered his face and what was visible of his arms, and his blue eyes were red, from crying or drinking, no one could tell.
"I'm back..." he said, a slight waver in his voice.
"Daddy!" squealed Abigale, breaking free from Snape, and making her way, slowly but surely down the stairs. When she made it to the bottom, she started a full gallop towards her father, giggling the entire way. He bent down to her height, in order for her to wrap her chubby arms around his neck, and he swung her up into his own, once muscular arms. Tears flooded down his face as he held her tightly to his body.
"How could I have let so much of your life slip by without me?" he cried, looking her over from head to toe, "Your already so big, and look at your pretty hair." His voice lost it's rough quality as he talked to his daughter, instead, becoming almost a soft coo.
"Watchin' da clock, Daddy. Abby watchin' da clock fer you," she said, a sparkle in her eyes.
Realization setting in, Molly stared at her son. The anger that she had felt since the day he had left rushing back in full force.
"Where have you been, missing out on your daughter's life for selfish reasons! I cannot believe... I never would have expected this of you! I thought we taught you to take responsibility! Not you Ron! Maybe Fred and George, but not you!"
"Oy, we're right here you know!" shouted George.
"I can't even look at you right now, waltzing in here, uninvited of course. I suppose you were expecting us all to throw another party in your honor, hmm? Well we aren't. She's waited for you since the day that she could lift her head, looking up at that clock every day with tears in her eyes!" her fury seemed only to increase with every word, until finally she snapped, snatching up an old 'Daily Prophet' and flinging herself at him, swinging with blind rage, "Ronald-you-moron! Leaving-your-daughter-alone! YOU-MORON!!"
Rushing to their brother's aid, Fred, George, and Bill, along with Harry, all helped in prying Mrs. Weasley off of Ron.
"This doesn't mean we like you," exclaimed Fred over his shoulder.
"Yeah," chimed in George, "We just didn't want Mum taking it out on the 'Prophet', you see."
Harry only looked back in what seemed like shock, "After one year...? I know what I said was stupid, but I didn't think you would act on it. Yes, I overdid it, I thought it might be too hard to look at a reminder of Hermione every day, and not feel sad. But we've lived here since you left, and she isn't a painful burden... More of a joyful reminder."
"Hermione would hate you right now, Ron. She probably hates me as well... But... Leaving her. I- I can hardly leave in the morning to go to work, and she isn't even my daughter," it seemed as though Harry would join in with the rest of the family in crying as well, but he held strong, "I think that I hate you right now, and I think you should leave," he said, with every head behind him nodding in agreeance.
"Don't I even get a chance to defend myself? I know that walking out was a terrible thing, but I was going to come home that day, I just needed to set things up for taking care of Hermione. I didn't even get to her funeral though, because I was caught by Death Eaters," everyone looked in disbelief at him, Death Eaters, how much more rediculous was his story going to get?
"I was going down Diagon Alley, and of course, they don't have a funeral coordinator on the pleasant side of Diagon, so I had to travel down Knockturn Alley. I got to about the corner where Borgin's is, when a large group of Death Eaters gathered around me. They told me they knew about my daughter and that if I were to escape, they would find you and kill you, all of you. I wanted so badly to come back, but I didn't want to lose the only bit of happiness left in my life."
"They started asking me questions about the Malfoy's disappearance, who had they taken refuge with, what secrets they had told, they suspected them of treason against the Dark Lord. Of course, I haven't been a large part of the Order since Hermione had gotten pregnant and begged me to stop, so I knew nothing of their whereabouts. I told them nothing of our plans and our safe house still lives up to it's name, safe."
"After about three months of interrogations, they finally let me go, somewhere in the middle east. But the muggles there are in some kind of war, so escaping was almost impossible for a couple of months. Finally I was able to find some Arab wizards who were kind enough to apparate me safely to the only place in Europe that they could think of, Hogwarts. I wanted to get back before her birthday, but I couldn't find anyone who knew how to get close enough to home to be here any sooner. I wish I had had my wand..."
"But I did stop and pick up a little something for my Abby. A couple little somethings actually!"
Abby, who had been sitting in Ron's lap on the sofa suddenly perked up.
"Yay!" she screeched, as her father handed her two more presents to add to her pile.
As Abby opened her packages, Ron looked towards his family, "Who picked this git as her godfather, by the way?"
Fred and George burst into laughter as Snape's face curled into a snarl, "Harry did! She was quite smitten with him, actually, from the first day he walked into the place."
"Yeah, but Hermione and I had always planned on Harry and Ginny being his godparents...They were our best friends. Still mine, Harry." He was trying so hard to hold back tears for the second time that night, and he was failing miserably.
"We are, Mum and Dad made us her godparents first, but Sev, well, they're so attatched, we couldn't not make him a godparent as well," said Ginny.
"Thanky Daddy!" said Abby, as she looked over her new astronomy book and broomstick.
"It's what your Mum wanted you to have, a good education, but I always told her," he said, tears now raining down his cheeks, " 'She can be a little of both,' that's what the broomstick is for... I wanted you to play Quidditch, just like me and your uncles."
"Well, I think it's time for bed," said Molly, picking Abigale up and heading towards the stairs, "I'll talk to you some more in the morning Ronald."
"Yes, and I believe I should be leaving as well," added Snape, "Pleasant dreams, my dear."
Abby made sure to scream down the stairs, "Night, Sevvy!"
As people began to file out, soon only Harry and Ron were left standing in the room.
"You look terrible, mate," said Harry, with a laugh, "You really let yourself go, didn't you..."
"Yes, well, if you consider the way you look to be any better. Umm, hey Harry?"
"Yeah Ron?"
"Do you miss her as much as I do?"
"I couldn't miss her more. Things feel so dumbed down without her here."
The two shared a laugh, knowing that somewhere out there, Hermione was watching them, knowing that things were going to get better, in time.
"I love you Harry..."
"I love you too Ron..."
And they each pulled each other into a hug, hoping and praying, they wouldn't ever need it again.
A/N: I would love to hear from you all about what you think of this so far. I know, why the heck were your first two chapters like, half a page and this one is waaaaaaay longer? I cried to much thinking about Hermione dying, that I had to stop writing so much, but this one seemed a little happier.
BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT!!
This is a part of the song And So It Goes... By Billy Joel
It really reminded me of this story plot.
And So It Goes, Billy Joel
In every heart, there is a room.
A sanctuary, safe and strong,
To heal the wounds from lovers past,
until a new one comes along...
And so it goes, and so it goes.
And your the only one who knows.
Love you all!
Hpfann15