Sparkling lights all over town,
children’s carols in the air,
by the Christmas tree,
a shower of stardust on your hair.
“I forgot the name for this kind of circuit... See, when you take away one bulb, all the rest don’t light up! Amazing... And then look, another kind of circuit, isn’t it, when they blink in waves like this ””
“I think it’s a series circuit, Dad, and there are also things like capacitances and inductances to consider. It’s complicated. I hated it back in Muggle Studies, but still, it’s interesting, how the Muggles’ way of creating light has evolved. Isn’t it?”
Arthur picked up the screwdriver he had dropped and turned to smile sheepishly at Percy. Arthur had been muttering to himself, alone in the sitting room, delegated with the task of decorating for Christmas.
“Your mother’s gone to visit Andromeda for a sec. Help me bring this battery back to the shed, will you? I ” I saw these lights for sale at the village. I had to try them out. But I guess your mother will prefer fairy lights as usual.”
“Let’s leave it on, Father. It’s nice. And, you know, perhaps Mr Black would have liked his old motorbike’s battery being put to good use even though the bike’s been destroyed.”
Arthur was taken aback for a moment, surprised at what came from Percy, who always used to be the most wary and impatient of his Muggle-tinkering. With an affectionate nod, Arthur shrugged inwardly. “Well, it’s a miracle the battery’s survived, you know. Ted ” Ted said they’re always the first to explode... Anyway, it was a simple matter to use a little magic to let it do what it’s supposed to do with these lights.”
“You’re quite good with Muggle stuff, Dad.”
Arthur had been hiding the battery behind the tree. He paused in his crouch just then, again surprised by the compliment, not because it wasn’t very true, but because it was the first one he’d ever received from his third son. When Arthur re-emerged from behind the pine, Percy’s face was still red.
Come to think of it, his face had often been in that shade these days. Arthur clapped him on the back. “Fairies are messy, anyway, right?”
“Right, Dad.” Percy looked relieved and queasy at the same time. “Um, I think I’ll go ahead and pluck the chickens.”
Before Arthur could say another word, Percy was gone. Arthur chuckled to himself. Percy used to hate plucking chickens. Next to de-gnoming, it had been the household punishment, until Bill turned seventeen, and his brothers knew to appeal to him, when he’d been home, to just point his wand at the chickens killed for dinner.
Arthur had kept quiet about it, because he was privately amused with his sons’ camaraderie. And then of course, Bill went to Egypt for treasures and Charlie likewise gallivanted off to Romania and dragons. Arthur had wondered whether the tradition would hold, but as if Molly knew their third son would never use his wand to alleviate his brothers’ punishments, she stuck with de-gnoming.
And anyway, by then, Ron’s and the twins’ antics had gotten too big for mere de-gnoming and chicken plucking…
From the kitchen, Arthur could hear Percy muttering incantation after incantation at the chickens piled by the sink. Arthur wondered if that would be all he’d hear from then on. No more explosions, shouts of laughter, or outbreaks of shrieks from Molly.
He winced at the direction of his thoughts. He looked around wildly for a moment, but there was nothing else to attend to. The tinsel glinted from the tip of the star on top of the tree to every corner of the sitting room; apple logs were stacked high beside the hearth and a couple were burning in the fire, giving the room a fresh, tangy scent, along with the pine, the holly wreaths on the walls and the mistletoe floating here and there with the red and green candles.
He looked toward the kitchen, but no, he should give Percy some time to settle his own nerves, and Arthur doubted he’d have much to do there anyway. Molly would have kittens if he meddled in her domain.
Therefore Arthur hastily shrugged on his coat. Outside, he welcomed the sigh of the frigid breeze and gave a sigh of his own. As he had learned to appreciate since late November, the cold froze his tears before they even made their way down.
But more tears came, and no amount of cold could freeze the fire of a father’s grief.
He wasn’t aware of it, but he stood there long enough for the gnomes to come out and scurry by his feet, trying to prod him into vivacity by throwing miniature snowballs at his boots. At any other time he would have thrown snow right back and sent the funny little buggers shrieking gleefully back to their holes. But now there was the pang of knowing there would be no one to cheer him on, laughing in the background, as the twins usually did, back in those long-ago Christmases when Ron and Ginny were still whinging about wanting to go to Hogwarts already and the Burrow was unencumbered with protections against, and worry about, Death Eaters...
The gnomes suddenly squealed in chorus as Arthur dropped on his rump on the snow, the strength suddenly gone from his legs. He nodded to himself. Yes, perhaps it would be good to get away for a while. The Burrow just didn’t feel like the Burrow just now. Instead, his house haunted him.
And he doubted very much that being in Romania would silence his guilt either ”
“Arthur?”
His hands jumped to his head, to scrub at his face and run through his hair. Molly opened the door just as he was getting to his feet.
She went to him, put her arms around his waist and then cupped his cheeks. As their eyes met, understanding flowed between. And she shook her head as though disagreeing with him, and she hugged him again. “Dear, what were you doing? Are you alright? It’s freezing out here. And you don’t even have anything on to cover your head!”
Arthur cleared his throat and turned away from the intensity of the connection of their eyes to wink at the gnomes. “I’m fine, Molly. Just chatting with your garden residents.”
Molly rolled her eyes and began to chivvy him back to the house. Arthur put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed.
“You’re still sure about going to Romania?”
She looked up at him and her eyes watered as she nodded fervently. She touched his cheek again. “We need it.”
Two hours later, Arthur couldn’t have agreed more.
He sat at the head of the table, carving the meats, watching, nodding, smiling as best as he could, to match the effort of everyone around him. All of them were being strong for each other. All of them tried to make more noise than usual to keep grief at bay. Hagrid was tossing back firewhiskey like it was water, getting rowdier and rowdier. Molly and Andromeda exchanged smiles and the serving spoon every now and then. Little Teddy was busy babbling between mouthfuls of anything he could reach from his place in Fleur’s lap. Only Ron and Hermione ate quietly, their eyes rising to each other often, mimicking Ginny and Harry’s actions. The rest of the Weasley boys, his boys, teased each other, sniggered at each other and jabbed each other, like old times.
But it just wasn’t like old times. It would never be the same again.
George suddenly rose with his goblet held aloft. “To Fred!”
Everyone fell silent. And then Molly burst into tears. Bill put an arm around her, leaving Arthur free to rise and toast his son’s memory. “To Fred,” he said softly, but firmly, belying the way his knees shook and how much his heart wanted to howl.
The very thing they had all been fighting seemed to cloak the whole table in an instant. Hermione and Ginny were both crying silently now. George looked at them askance, his own lips trembling. And then he looked at his father, and Arthur was struck anew of his son’s sorrow. But George only raised his goblet higher to him, and drank. Arthur took a deep, fortifying breath, clutching the stem of his goblet tightly because his hands shook. He took the tiniest sip he could manage without choking. He couldn’t break down. His wife and children needed him.
Little Teddy gurgled and even muttered something like, “Yum!” and plunged his tiny hands and forearms in the bread-and-butter pudding to his right, with enough force to send pieces flying to Bill’s and Ron’s faces, one very moist chunk even lodging itself up Ron’s long nose.
Someone snorted. There was a tiny cough. And then there was a moment’s silence before the dining room burst into laughter.
Arthur was awed about the way it happened in his house, the way one emotion seemed to roll onto another in an endless, harmonious loop, but he laughed as hard as all of them, and when tears came to his eyes, Ginny smilingly wiped them away with her fingertips and kissed him.
Arthur’s heart clenched. He felt like he didn’t deserve any of his children’s caresses.
Afterwards, when the eggnog was exhausted and gifts were exchanged, Charlie stood up with reluctance and just as hesitantly plucked a large ring of black beads from behind one of the decorations in the mantel.
“This is our portkey, Mum, Dad. It goes off in ten minutes,” he said sheepishly.
Molly jumped up, as though fearing she’d change her mind if she didn’t move quickly. In a flash, she shrunk their garment bags and pocketed them. Ginny ran to her mother and hugged her.
“We’ll take care of ourselves, Mum, you just... have your holiday, okay?”
Molly nodded. It was all she managed, really, as she hugged the children and Andromeda. As for Arthur, he was nearly just as motionless and speechless, only hugging back and kissing his daughters’ cheeks: Ginny’s, Fleur’s and Hermione’s. By now, he was really grateful he and Molly were going away. He was near to exploding.
And then they all stood back, beaming through tears. Charlie held out the bracelet; Arthur and Molly put a finger on it. With a whirl and swirl of colour and sounds, they left the Burrow behind.
Instead of the familiar all-leather and all-askew sitting room of Charlie’s small flat, they arrived in a dark side-street, which, to their amazement, led smack to the light and bustle of Muggle Bucharest.
Charlie chuckled at his parents’ stunned expressions. “Here, Dad, you just walk around for a bit, and then you just squeeze this little dragon when you feel you could do with a drink. It’ll take you to that pub just down from my flat, The Green Dragon, where I’ll be waiting for you.”
And with that, he disappeared in the crowded thoroughfare after kissing his mother’s cheek and pressing a spoon with a dragon handle to Arthur’s hand.
Snow began to fall.
“Well, I could walk off all I ate, I think. Are you game, Mollywobbles?”
Molly only chuckled softly and took his arm.
In an unspoken agreement, they went in the direction of the giant Christmas tree aglow in the centre of one park.
They looked around at the city decorations as they walked and crossed streets. Giant lanterns in all shapes and sizes twinkled and danced on every lamppost and every building. Bare trees didn’t look bare at all, bedecked as they were with garlands and wreaths of winter greens and more lights. Everywhere they looked, there were children’s faces drinking this all in like they did. Cars moved slowly; people far outnumbered them for the evening. Or perhaps the drivers and passengers also wanted to savour the Christmas air around them.
Arthur felt both pain and pride like he did in London. The same, if not more lavish, decorations had been up at the Ministry and in Diagon Alley. It was a time for celebration, a Yule untainted by uncertainty and fears. And he had been a part of making it so. But a portion of his heart, the portion that mourned the loss of his son, felt he would have rather not been a part at all.
As they stepped onto the park premises, strains of carols reached their ears.
“Oh, just listen, Arthur. Isn’t it lovely?” Molly squeezed his arm.
A medley of children’s singing was floating in the air.
“Adente fideles,
Laeti triumphantes!
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte, regem angelorum.
Venite, adoremus Dominum!”
“ ‘Come’, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
‘A new born King to see,’ pa rum pum pum pum
‘Our finest gifts we bring,’ pa rum pum pum pum
‘To lay before the King,’ pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum.”
They reached the Christmas tree at last. It towered to perhaps twenty feet above them, a magnificent pine hung with golden tinsel, beribboned wreaths and blue and red lights. Around it, clumps of children sang, for donations, and some, simply for the joy of Christmas and singing. Arthur found a bench nearby and brushed the snow from it before leading Molly to sit.
She snuggled against his side and soon began to weep quietly. It felt like another of their unspoken agreements, this. Freely giving vent to their grief now; they had done their best to hold it in check back home, for the sake of their children.
Arthur wept, too, without realising it, until Molly looked up at him and wiped away his tears with her wool-gloved hands.
“I’m sorry, Molly ””
“You can cry all you want, Arthur.”
“I ” I still can’t get over it ” You’d think, after six months ””
“Oh.” Molly cupped his cheeks again the same way she did earlier. “Oh, Arthur. I understand completely.”
Sighing, she snuggled back in his arm. Arthur could see the puffs of her deep breaths as she tried to calm herself. He held her tightly.
They had already talked ” and cried ” about it in those first dark hours after Voldemort was finally vanquished and Fred’s loss slowly and painfully sunk in. It was a primitive, male instinct: He had failed to keep his son safe. And it had been her biggest fear, that they lose one of their children.
It hurt even more for him, that he hadn’t protected her either from her fears coming true.
“Don’t blame yourself, do you hear me? None of it was your fault, Arthur,” she whispered suddenly, as though she heard his thoughts.
He sighed and held her even closer. “Give me time, Molly.”
She nodded against his chest. “A week.”
“What?”
“Until you see your children again. Arthur, I will not have you suffering like this. Remember that time when your sons flew that car to fetch Harry?”
Arthur winced. “Exactly. I was irresponsible ” negligent ””
“No, dear. What I mean is, it’s you they owe for growing up brave, confident and happy people. Our house may be small, but you gave them plenty of room to explore in the ways that count. Do you understand what I’m saying? I even wish I was like you ””
The last word was a squeak as Molly dissolved into not-so-quiet tears.
Arthur knew what was coming. He hastily tilted his wife’s chin so that her overflowing eyes looked into his own. “Molly, you were a wonderful mother to them. They owe you as much for being brave, confident and happy ””
“That last thing I did to Fred was ””
“Oh, shush, he didn’t mind that, you know that. We’ve talked about this. He knew you only wanted to hug Percy after a long time. Fred was never the jealous sort.”
“Oh, Arthur.”
After a few more sobs which she buried into his neck, she quieted and they sat there close, watching people coming and going, listening to the carols and brushing snow off each other’s hair.
Another unspoken agreement was formed then. They indeed needed time, that was all. And the wait would be bearable because they had each other’s love and assurance.