1999 had started off on a sour note, but over time things began to look up. Arthur was enrolled into a rehab program upon release from the hospital and began slowly but surely becoming sober. Molly was put onto antidepressant pills and also began showing progress. The Percy hunt was put on hold for a while, and it never regained the original fervor it had held back in fall.
George reopened the joke shop in February, taking on Lee Jordan as his business partner. The shop was somewhat subdued now, but Hogwarts students were happy to have it back. George and Lee were anticipating a bump in sales that summer during the back-to-school shopping season, and George was even taking another look at buying Zonko's and opening a Hogsmeade location.
In June the girls graduated from Hogwarts and the family turned out to celebrate. It was the first major celebration they'd had as a family since the war ended—Christmas had been awful, birthdays had been ignored, and no one wanted to talk about the anniversary of the battle. It had involved Arthur relapsing and going back to the bottle, Molly sobbing over the kitchen sink, and Ron picking a fight with George. The less said about that day, the better.
Shortly before graduating Hermione had been offered a job at the ministry of magic. Ginny had also found employment, having signed with the Holyhead Harpies upon graduating. Her first match was in August, not too long after her birthday, and the whole family came.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"Lovely day, isn't it?" Arthur leaned back in his seat and smiled. Ginny had been able to get them tickets in some very good seats, though she'd warned that she wouldn't be able to get that quantity of free tickets for every match.
"Your girlfriend's about to be more famous than you, mate." George playfully jabbed at Harry.
"I have no problem with that." Harry said as he adjusted Teddy's little Harpies onesie. "I would like to live a quiet life, you know me. Ooh, watch the bludger!" Ginny, of course, couldn't hear him, but she dodged.
"A quiet life, which is why we're in auror training." Ron muttered, adjusting his omniculars. "Do you see the Tornadoes' keeper, Harry? That's not the way I would do it—oh look at that! See, Ginny scored on him!"
"Incredible!" Charlie said. "We might have a quidditch star in the family after all. I call dibs for her on my team next time we play as a family."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "You weren't saying that a year ago. You kept saying girls couldn't play quidditch as well as you."
"I'm allowed to change my views, aren't I?"
"Calm down, you two." Arthur said. "None of us knew how good Ginny was until recently. Come to think of it, we really should have allowed her to play with the boys, huh, Molly?"
Molly shrugged. "I still think it's dangerous. It's worked out for her, yes, but how many times did the boys get hurt playing quidditch? Think of poor Harry—the broken arm, fell off the broom once, that cracked skull—"
"Yeah, but he's Harry." Ron said. "That stuff doesn't happen to normal people. Err, sorry mate."
"Look!" Harry pointed to the field. "The Wronski feint! I don't think Fields has really seen the snitch!" They watched as the Harpies' seeker plummeted toward the ground, the Tornadoes' keeper following at full speed. At the last second Fields pulled out of her dive and shot skyward. The Tornadoes' seeker, her reflexes too slow, crashed into the ground. Fields looped towards the left side of the field and snatched the snitch out of the air, ending the match.
"They've done it!" Ron bellowed. "Excellent seeker work by Fields! Harpies win!"
Their tickets included special field access after the game, so they all went down to say hello to Ginny. Arthur was buoyed along by a torrent of people, a torrent of congratulations and well-wishes. Charlie and George were loudly dissecting every movement of the match, while Ron thumped Ginny on the back and congratulated her loudly and Bill and Fleur took out a camera and tried, with no luck, to get some nice family photos. Their voices blurred together in a pleasant cacophony. Ginny smiled broadly and something to Ron. Harry waved off a Prophet reporter with an annoyed look on his face. Molly turned to Charlie and said something else.
Arthur blinked, noticing that the crowds were beginning to thin out and that Harry was now kneeling on the ground. Had he dropped something? Harry was taking a small box out of his pocket. Too late, too slow, Arthur realized what it meant.
The Weasleys surged forward again towards Ginny, this time the congratulations louder and more gleeful. Arthur wrapped Ginny in a tight hug, then pulled back so that she could show him the ring. As Ginny turned away to talk to her mother, Arthur felt a wave of sadness rushing up around him. Ginny was his youngest child, his baby. Part of him had believed that she would always be that, would always be a child with grass-stained knees and long hair, would always have sticky hands and a crooked grin and bright plastic clips in her hair. He wasn't sure he was ready for her to be a married woman. She was only eighteen! He definitely wasn't ready to give her away at her wedding.
A wedding. It would be the first one since Bill and Fleur's, the first one since the war. Slowly, the weight of what that meant settled over Arthur. The first wedding since . . . if he allowed himself to put that thought into words, he might start crying right here. This would be a wedding marked by empty holes, too many to count, but the biggest ones were within the Weasley family. One likely could not have been prevented. And the other could have been.
Arthur swayed on his feet. The world seemed to blur around him, and he could barely even make out the voices of his family. A long time ago, he'd promised himself that Ginny's wedding would be perfect. He'd held her when she was a newborn and whispered in her ear that she was special, that out of all seven children she was the only one he'd get to walk down the aisle someday, and that that day would be perfect. Now it would all be ruined, and it was all his fault.
Arthur knew he wasn't supposed to be drinking. He'd been sober since Christmas, aside from the one relapse in May. But he couldn't do it. He couldn't stand here in broad daylight, stone cold sober, knowing that he'd ruined his daughter's wedding before it even happened. He couldn't take it. As soon as he could, he slipped away from the crowd and disapparated to the Hog's Head.
He knew he couldn't hide out here drinking forever, that sooner or later one of his family members would find him and drag him back home. He ought to go back home himself and save the humiliation of being dragged out by one of his kids. But he couldn't go home. He couldn't go home and face Ginny, knowing he'd ruined the most important event of her life. So he stayed and kept drinking.
After his third drink the door opened and someone else entered. He looked up and saw Bill approaching, looking resigned.
"Come on." Bill said. "Get your things. Let's go."
"How'd you know I was here?"
"You always come here. Also, that medication you're on tipped off your healer that you were drinking, just like in May. She floo-called the house and then we went out looking for you. Come on, let's go home."
"I can't."
Bill rolled his eyes. "Yes you can. Let's go! Ginny would like to spend time with the family, not lose sleep worrying that you're going to get yourself killed."
"I . . . Ginny doesn't need me around. I've already ruined everything."
"You need to shut up about your regrets!" Bill snapped. "We've been through this song and dance many times before. Your regrets, I've ruined everything, blah blah blah. You've got to stop letting your regrets mess up the future. Now, seriously, come on!"
"Stop, stop, stop. Let me collect myself." Arthur took another sip of his drink.
"Now!"
"Shh! Any louder and people are going to start staring!"
"As they should!" Bill snapped.
"That's enough!" Arthur said. "Don't talk to me that way! I—I've gone and ruined Ginny's wedding. There's giant holes in the family, and she can't married with things like this . . ."
"Ginny's wedding hasn't happened yet." Bill said. "You haven't ruined it. Not yet, anyway. The stuff with the war isn't anyone's fault. But if you keep breaking your sobriety, you probably will ruin it."
"I'm not going to break my sobriety again." Arthur said. "It's not going to happen again."
"How do I know it won't?"
"I . . . I don't have an answer for you. But I know I'll get sober this time. It'll be just like the last time I broke my sobriety, in May. I'll get sober again and keeping working on it. You don't have to be so snippy with me. I did five months sober from Christmas to May, then three more months from May to now. I'm trying my best. But seeing that ring on her finger, knowing I'd caused the problems, knowing I'm the reason two of her brothers are missing . . . well, it just about broke me. I couldn't handle it. But I'll get sober again, just like last time."
Bill had ordered a pint of his own while his father had been speaking. Now he sat down at the next barstool. "I'm sorry. I guess have been a little snappy today. It's just that things are different now."
"Different how?" Arthur asked. "I'll get sober again like I did last time. I know Ginny's getting married and that's crazy, but I'll work on my problem. Why should it be any different?" Bill shook his head, fidgeting with the glass. He now looked like he might throw up, which was odd considering he was the sober one here. "Bill, are you ok? You're fidgeting with that cup like something terrible's about to happen."
"Ginny getting married isn't the only thing going on." He took a long swig of his beer, then kept talking. "I'm going to tell you something Fleur and I haven't told anyone else yet, and I need you to listen. Fleur's pregnant. We only just found out last week. And what that means for you is that you need to get a handle on yourself and come to terms with your past regrets, otherwise you'll have a whole bunch of new ones."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning . . . meaning that Fleur and I discussed it, and if you're still having problems with alcohol then we'll limit the amount of time you spend with our kid. That's what I mean—you either come to terms with your regrets over what happened with Percy, or you can deal with a whole bunch of new regrets about missing out on a relationship with your grandchild."
"I . . ." Arthur trailed off, clutching his glass. "I've made so many mistakes. Either way, do you really want me around the kids?"
Bill rolled his eyes. "You need to stop beating yourself up about what you said. You were angry and said something you regretted. You don't actually feel that way. If you can come to terms with that and move forward, then do that. For my child's sake."
Arthur gritted his teeth. "Ok. Ok." He drained the last of his glass and set to down. "That's my last drop. I mean it this time, no more." There was too much in the future now for him to ruin with his drinking problem. "I'm fine, I promise. Let's go home." He got up and stumbled to the door, then disapparated, ready to face his fears.
Inside the Burrow, Harry and Ginny were talking about wedding plans while Molly listened. Fleur was also there, along with Hermione, and both were chipping in with unsolicited advice. Bill made eye contact with Fleur and smiled ruefully at her; she winked back. He turned to his father and muttered, "Not a word. We haven't told anyone else yet."
"The back garden would do very nicely." Molly was saying. "If we're planning to wait until next spring or summer, it would be absolutely lovely that time of year."
"I can vouch for that." Fleur said. "It was 'eavenly for our wedding."
"And we can cook all the food at home, like we did for Bill and Fleur." Molly continued.
"I'm going to veto that." Ginny said. "You had us all making endless vol-au-vents for Bill and Fleur's wedding. I still see those things in my nightmares. No, we'll hire a catering company. Harry can afford it, right, Harry?"
Harry nodded. "No offense, Mrs. Weasley, but I don't fancy helping cook an army's worth of food before my wedding."
Molly looked up and saw Arthur. "Oh, you're back. Do you want to help plan the wedding?"
"What's the rush?" Arthur asked. "It's not a shotgun wedding, is it? Our girl's only eighteen!"
Ginny rolled her eyes. "There is no rush. Mum is manufacturing a rush because she's crazy about weddings. We're probably not getting married until next summer at the very least. Harry and I just figured that we know we love each other, so why wait?"
"Arthur, wipe that look off your face!" Molly said. "We were both barely eighteen when we got married!"
"But she's my little girl." Arthur said. "It's different."
"Oh, my dad said the same thing when we got married." Molly said. "And we turned out fine, didn't we? Anyway, that's a no on cooking everything ourselves?"
"Yes." Harry said firmly.
"Right, then." Molly picked up a long list that Arthur hadn't noticed before and scanned it. "Ok, wedding party. Have we decided anything yet?"
"Well, Hermione and Luna for sure as bridesmaids." Ginny said. "Also Fleur—she made me be one of her bridesmaids and I am simply returning the favor. As for Harry's side . . . well, all my brothers. So that's . . . well, numbers are hard . . ." she trailed off, looking anguished. Arthur gulped. He couldn't stand to see her like this.
"That's enough." Molly stood up. She clearly hated the anguished look on Ginny's face too and wanted to do something about it. "You know what, that's quite enough."
"That's quite enough of what, Harry and I's wedding?" Ginny asked indignantly.
"That's quite enough of all this Percy talk." Molly stood up opened the front of the clock, the one with all their faces on its hands. She looked over at Arthur, and he knew what was happening. Her heart was hardening. Molly's poor soft heart had been bruised and broken, and a heart can only exist in that state for so long before it develops a hard shell to protect itself.
"You're taking his hand off the clock?" Ginny gasped.
"We are." Arthur said. He stepped forward and helped Molly open the front the clock, taking a moment to look down into her eyes. An understanding passed between them. They both knew this was something they had to do, a hard shell they had to place over their hearts, in order to protect themselves.
"We've all driven ourselves crazy searching for him." Molly said. "I'm on muggle antidepressants now, your father has severely compromised his health because of alcohol, we've all suffered! We've got a wedding to plan and Percy made it clear over a year ago that he didn't want contact. Well, it is high time we respected that!" She carefully removed his hand from the clock.
"Mum, you're giving up on him?" George asked.
"In a sense, yes." She tucked the hand in the drawer and went to the mantel. "I am old. I am tired. I only have so much energy, and I choose to spend it on people who appreciate it. If he doesn't want contact, we need to respect that." She took down the frame with Percy's Hogwarts graduation photo and gazed at it fondly, then put it back. "He's always welcome here, if he ever wants to come back. But I'm not going to spend my golden years going on a wild goose chase. Now, I have a wedding to plan." She took the vial of potion, the one that showed whether Percy was alive or dead, and slid it behind the picture frame. Then she adjusted the other frames, crowding Percy toward the back of the mantel, and sat down firmly on the couch as though no further discussion on the matter was necessary.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
By May of 2000, a new picture of a blonde, blue-eyed baby girl had been placed on the mantel. By the end of that summer, a picture from Harry and Ginny's wedding had been added, the right side of its frame partially covering Percy's picture to make room. More followed through the years: weddings, baby pictures, christmases, birthdays, quidditch pictures. Percy's photograph was never removed, but it was crowded to the back of the mantel and hidden from view, as if the Burrow were an oyster covering its wounds with pearl.
