Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do make money.

050. Years

Arthur felt himself age fifty years as his son retreated from the bedroom. Going over to the window, he saw Charlie sitting with Pansy on the edge of the dock with the others a good distance from them.

"I did the right thing didn't I?" he softly asked Molly as her footfalls came nearer. His father had always warned him that denying his own children the bonds would be hard especially if they truly needed the magic the bind provided. He just never figured it would be this hard – or it would be his youngest son asking; the one who had seen too much before he was an adult, the one he wanted to protect and shelter the most.

"As long as you believe you did the right thing, then its the right thing," she whispered wrapping her arms around him. "You know as well as I do that not everything is black and white."

"I know but I hate how I feel at the moment," he continued, watching Charlie wrap his arm around the sprite of a girl who meant so much to his youngest. "I feel like I am letting him down. The one who has never asked for anything but more than willing to sacrifice himself."

"Why? You refused Bill the bands too. What makes this any different?"

"Bill's reasons were easy to say no too, they were the same reasons my own father told me no when I asked. But Ron wasn't up here asking for him, or for the family, or for the simple fact of starting to use the familiar marriage bind as per tradition but Ron was asking for her; for a way to protect her from something that could and probably will tear the two of them apart."

Sighing, Arthur felt the tears start to slide down his face as he watched his youngest get sidetracked by the group of teenagers, "The way they look at each other, there is no doubt how they feel but to know she has an heir charm on her – knowing that it could prevent them from maintaining this happiness they have chosen for one another. It's suddenly not so black and white anymore, it's more...Look."

Arthur pulled Molly to the side just in time for the two of them to watch as Pansy ran into Ron's open arms. Turning his head to the side, he kissed his darling wife of over thirty years and whispered, "I have to do the wrong thing. I can't stand by and sacrifice his happiness."

Arthur went to the loose floor board underneath their marital bed and removed it. Pulling at the box that had Ron's name on it, he gripped it in his hand as he replaced the board. Standing up, he just stared at the box in his hand and muttered, "I guess we finally proved Cassandra Trewlaney wrong. There won't be another guardian anytime soon."

"You don't know that Arthur," Molly whispered. "No one is even certain that the absence of guardians and females in the Weasley family is due to that Malfoy casting an heir charm during the marriage bind. It's just given you two just another reason to hate each other. Have a little faith that Ginny is the future for the Weasley's."

"Five hundred years, Molly," Arthur whispered. "For an attempt to save our son's happiness, I'm going to cost the family another five hundred years without daughters; our world without guardians."