A/N: Had to write this before Pink (which is almost done). Not so light-hearted—sorry! Thanks again to the lovely Pinky Green, who established the challenge, and cuz she's awesome!

Disclaimer: NOTHING.

Orange

Darkness

Pomegranate-Flavored Sweets

Sun

The day the news came, I wasn't feeling well as it was. I had, after all, given birth to another boy very recently. The little one was hard to take care of, but Arthur was there—always there.

Bill was—seven or eight, I think, at the time. Percy was still a baby, and you can fill in the blanks yourself.

We were eating dinner, and there were bags under Arthur's eyes. He was working double-time at the Ministry because of You-Know-Who's rising power, and if he took over—well, that couldn't happen.

Billie was explaining to Charlie something Arthur had recently told him about Hogwarts, and I smiled to see Charlie's eyes light up at the mention of Quidditch and other such things.

The smile was wiped clean off my face not three seconds later.

An owl tapped at our window, and quite insistently, too. I stood up and opened the window, took the letter, handed the owl some treat or another, and scanned it's contents.

Arthur must have seen my face crumple and realized the inevitable.

When I came to, Arthur was standing over me with a wet washcloth and Percy was wailing. I was on the couch, I noticed. "The letter, Arthur—" I said, my voice choked with tears, but I couldn't go on.

"I know," he said grimly. He waved a piece of paper in his hand. "I read it. I—oh, Molly…"

I sat up and called for Billie, Charlie, and Percy.

"My poor, poor boys…I love you three…if anything ever happened to you…"

As I began to sob and clutch at my sons, Arthur sat down next to me. Charlie didn't know what was going on, and Bill was hugging me and whispering that he was sorry, when my husband took them.

"Bill, Charlie, I need you to listen to me. This is grown-up stuff, but I'm going to tell you two, alright?"

He looked at me, and I nodded through my racking sobs as I hugged Percy tightly. They needed to know—especially Bill.

"Remember Uncle Gid and Uncle Fabe?" he asked gently. My eyes filled with fresh tears when I recalled how my brothers had cooed over Billie when he was still so young.

"Yep," said Bill with a grin—they'd been over a lot during his earlier years, and he'd come to regard them as male fairy- godmothers of some sort. Charlie just nodded, staring, preoccupied, at me.

"Well, there's a bad man, named…" he winced and shook his head. "He doesn't have a name, okay?"

"How can he not have a name?" asked Bill.

"Shh," Charlie said, turning to look at his father's face.

"I—he—they—" Arthur took a deep breath. "Gideon and Fabian were on a mission to get rid of the bad man. They were battling some of the bad man's friends, who want him to take over the world. That's bad, because the Bad Man will be mean to all of the Muggles."

"No!" said Billie, who'd recently met a little Muggle girl.

"Gid and Fabe were trying to stop that. Well, they were fighting, and…and…well, one of the bad man's friends shot a bad curse at Gid and Fabe, and they…they went away."

"To where?" Charlie pressed.

"Will we see 'em soon?" asked Billie nervously. I think he already kind of guessed.

"No, no. You c-can't see th-them again, b-boys. Uncle G-Gideon and U-Uncle F-Fabian are gone forever. They w-went o-on." Arthur's voice was shaking. So were his shoulders. He was almost crying.

"They're dead?" whispered Bill, looking horrified.

"What? What does that mean?"

"They aren't coming back ever ever ever!" Bill explained. "Never, Mummy?" he turned to me as if I could say that they would come back—that it was all up to me.

I shook my head and cried harder. "N-No, B-Bill. Th-They're n-never c-coming b-back."

And that thought broke me up. I couldn't believe it—didn't want to believe it. But I had just told the truth to my seven-year-old son. And that meant they were not "coming back ever ever ever!" as Bill put it so passionately.

"They're dead…" Charlie repeated, trying the words on for size. And then he began to cry—sob. I grabbed him and hugged him. "I miss them!" he sobbed into my shirt. "I want them back now!"

"I'm sorry, Charlie—they can't come back."

Bill sat there, looking at the floor with a troubled expression. "But Daddy," he asked finally, "who'll take me an' Charlie out for ice cream? Who'll go and visit Grandmum with us? Who'll have the funny stories to tell?" And he looked so confused that it broke my heart still further.

"I—I don't know, Bill." Arthur put his head in his hands, and now I knew he was crying.

"Daddy," asked Bill presently, "is this my fault?"

Arthur looked up so fast, I barely even saw the change. "No," he said forcefully, harshly. "No, no, no! Do not ever think that, or say that, Bill! I—you—no. Please, Bill—it was no one's fault. It was the bad man. All him, okay? He and his friends did it all, Bill—not you. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," said Bill quietly.

So this was darkness.

Three days later, I was lying in bed late, as I was apt to do after the news. I was crying into my pillow, remember Gideon's eyes when he first met Arthur—protective, unsure. Remembering Fabian's first joke directed at Arthur—remembering the first time they held Bill, remembering the day they came to see me after Charlie was born, remembering me telling them of Hogwarts—remembering everything.

How could they be gone?

I heard someone come in, but I ignored him. I didn't want to cheer up Charlie or explain to Bill or talk to Arthur or play with Percy. So I continued to cry, facedown, until I'd fallen back to sleep.

My brothers—my brothers!

How many times had I said 'I love you'?

What was the last thing I'd said to them?

When was our last fight?

How did we hug last?

Who was Fabian's secret girlfriend of the month?

But I didn't know these answers—I couldn't remember them, or I'd never been told, in the case of the girlfriend.

I finally sat up, my face tear-streaked and blotchy, my hair a tangled mess. I looked on the table next to me. Lying there was a few of my favorite kind of candy—a Muggle hard-candy with a pomegranate flavor. Despite this, though, it was bright orange—the color of Gid and Fabe's hair. I grabbed one and popped it into my mouth, picturing that hair…

When I went downstairs, I saw a whole path of the candies leading finally to outside. I put on a warmer cloak over my current, thin nightgown and hurried out, still sucking.

"Surprise!" shouted Bill, and then Arthur popped up from behind a snowman with Percy, and so did Bill and Charlie.

I looked around at the three snowmen. Arthur's was rather short and sloppily made. It had those candies sticking out of it, all the way down the sides of its head. A girl—with red hair! On her shirt, carved in was a sloppy 'M'. It was one of the knit sweaters my mother made our family every year, and now I made for my own family. M—Molly. I almost began to cry again—I think I knew what the other two would be.

I turned to the one next to me. It also had the red hair, but also a little bit of a beard—Gideon. He was smiling affectionately at me, and it did rather resemble him. I could picture Bill, the tongue poking out of the side of his mouth, carefully carving it all from snow with a stick. Gid also had a 'G' on his sweater, and his hand was over his heart—the common pose when he was telling a joke. Arthur had obviously done that with magic.

And the last one, Charlie's, was more a lump of snow with pointy orange candies sticking up from his head, just like Fabe's hair. I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat when I saw the 'F' carved with a young, boyish hand.

And on the place where I was standing, carved partly by magic (the very end) and partly by my sons, was written in all capital letters, "WE LOVE YOU MUM! GIDEON AND FABIAN DID TOO. THEY WILL ALWAYS BE IN OUR HEARTS AND OUR MEMORIES. RIP, UNCLE GID AND UNCLE FABE!"

I smiled, tears in my eyes, and held out my arms. My four favorite boys rushed towards me, hugging me tightly, crying, laughing, smiling.

And just then, the sun came out.

A/N: WHOA! Way angstier than I thought. But I kind of liked the unusual change. Back to happy-go-luck for the next chapter!

Please review!