"Now we'll all go upstairs very quietly, and when mum calls us for breakfast George will come downstairs with Violet and it will be cute and wholesome. Then Ron will come down with Harry and no one will have to know anything." Fred says. We all turn around to face the house. Ron goes a green colour.
A short, plump, kind-faced woman with fiery red hair is standing in front of the house. Hands-on her hips.
"Ah." Fred sighs.
"Oh dear," George says casually.
The woman, Mrs Weasley comes marching across the front lawn and stops right in front of the five of us. She is wearing a rather pretty floral apron with her wand sticking out of her pocket.
"Morning Mum. Lovely weather today isn't it?" George says cheerily. Fred laughs quietly and shakes his head a bit.
Mrs Weasley is not amused. "Do you know how worried I've been." She whispers, glaring at each of her boys in turn. Ron, George, and Fred are all significantly taller than their mother but they still flinch slightly at her anger.
"Sorry, Mum but see we had to..." Fred starts.
That is not the thing Mrs Weasley wanted to hear. "Beds empty! No note!... car gone!... Could have crashed... out of my MIND with worry... did you care?... never, as long as I've lived... you just WAIT till your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy..."
"Perfect Percy." Fred grumbles.
Again. Not the thing Mrs Weasley wanted to hear. "YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" She shouts, jamming her index finger into Fred's chest. "You could have died you could have been seen! You could have lost your father his job!" Mrs Weasley doesn't stop there. She shouts at her boys till her voice goes hoarse. Then she turns to Harry. "Oh, Harry dear I'm happy to see you again. Run along inside and grab some breakfast." She says very softly and motherly like. Then she turns to me, "You must be Violet. The boys have told me much about you. Please hop on in and grab some food. These three will follow shortly." I grab the handle of my trunk ready to heave it inside. "Oh no, darling. Fred and George can handle the trunks. Can't you boys." She says the last part very aggressively like if they were to say no she would run them over with the car.
"Course we can Mum."
Inside the house, Harry and I awkwardly look at each other. We haven't really had a one on one conversation ever. What were we supposed to say to each other 'oi mate I'm sorry my little cousins sent our house elf after you which ended up with you getting a letter from the ministry and being locked in your bedroom.' Thankfully Mrs Weasley came into the kitchen.
"Harry, Violet dears please sit down, make yourself comfortable." She gestures to the table in the middle of the kitchen. Well, more like three tables lined up so the whole Weasley clan could fit comfortably. Mrs Weasley goes about making breakfast very messily. "Violet darling. Fred and George have told me so much about you. Well more George than Fred but anyways. Your mother and father are locked up in Azkaban right dear." Harry, who didn't know that information glances at me. "What a stupid question. I'm dreadfully sorry please don't answer, you don't have to."
"Oh, it's okay Mrs Weasley. I was only two when it happened. My aunt and uncle raised me along with their son."
Mrs Weasley turns away from the stovetop and looks at me carefully. "I am so sorry, that must have been dreadful. Never mind all that though. You're here now, stay as long as you like. I know that George is quite glad that you're here. Honestly so am I. Now someone other than George can use the owl to send post. Couse, it's not your fault that George fancies you so much. I think it's quite adorable really." The three boys come down the stairs after bringing mine and Harry's things into the proper rooms. George stands behind me and kisses the top of my head before he sits down beside me.
With a flick of her wrist, Mrs Weasley sends plates and cups to each of the placemats on the table, she glares at the boys once in a while, shovelling food onto all of the plates.
"Arthur and I were going to come to get you ourselves you know Harry. If you didn't respond to Ron by Friday. Violet we knew was being taken care of so we weren't worried as much. But you darling. Living with those muggles. Ron told us horror stories." She puts three eggs onto the plat in front of Harry and does the same to me. "But honestly, flying an illegal car halfway across the country (she adds sausages to all of our plates) anyone could have seen you"
Fred takes a bite of his sausage. "It was cloudy Mum!" He says, spitting everywhere.
"You keep your mouth shut when you're eating!" Mrs Weasley says hitting Fred in the back of the head with her wand.
"They were starving him, mum! Had bars on his windows! And Violet didn't answer any of my owls!" George tries to explain.
"And you! Stealing your girlfriend out of her house in the middle of the night! I mean seriously!" Mrs Weasley starts to butter Harry's toast for him.
George looks at me and winks, "Worth it though." He whispers making butterflies grow in my stomach. Not too long after Percy comes staggering down the stairs and plops in a chair on the other side of the table. Mrs Weasley busies herself with putting food on his plate
"Finally out of your room there Percy-poo?" Fred jokes. Percy just yawns and starts to eat his breakfast silently.
Out of the corner of my eye I see another figure coming down the stairs, looking over I see a little girl standing at the entrance to the kitchen in a long nightdress. She looks around the room, see's Harry, squeals and runs back upstairs.
"Ginny," Ron mumbled. "She's been talking about you all summer." He says to Harry.
"Yeah." Fred chimes in "She's going to want your autograph." Fred smiles but when he sees the look on his mothers face he turns his attention back to his breakfast.
Once all of our plates are clear, Percy goes back upstairs, we can all hear his door slam behind him.
Fred yawns loudly and stretches "Blimey, I'm tired. I think I'll go to bed and..."
Mrs Weasley turns around sharply. "You will not! It's your own fault that you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me, they're getting completely out of hand again."
Fred groans, "Oh mum..."
Molly turns her attention to George and Ron. "And you two." She softens and looks at Harry and I. "You dears can go upstairs and to bed. Neither of you asked to be rescued." She says sweetly.
Harry offers to help de-gnoming the garden but Mrs Weasley goes on about how he needs his rest. Then she pulls out a rather large book written by Gilderoy Lockhart. "Oh isn't he marvellous... he knows his household pests alright. It's a wonderful book."
"My aunt has all of his books. She loves them." I say, Mrs Weasley smiles.
"But does your aunt fancy him? Because mum does." Fred says.
Mrs Weasley scoffs. "Don't be ridiculous Fred." Her cheeks turn pink. "If you lot think that you know better than Lockhart you can go and get on with it then. Woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it."
Fred, Ron, and Harry all get out of their seats and slowly make their way outside. George pecks my cheek and ruffles my hair before he gets up and follows them.
I stand from my chair and pick up all the dirty plates and things from the table and bring them over to Mrs Weasley.
"Oh thank you dear but you really don't have to do any of that. I had the boys put your things in Ginny's room and they set up an extra bed so if you want you can just hop right up there and take a nap." Mrs Weasley says.
"If it's alright with you Mrs Weasley, I'd much rather get to know you. But if you have things to do I'll leave you alone." Mrs Weasley turns to face me, her eyes happy. She flicks her wand and the dishes start to wash themselves.
She leads me into the living room and we start talking, getting to know each other. I tell her the story of my mother and father in more detail as before. She listens to every word, on occasion she squeezes my hands or wipes a stray tear from her eye. "I could never even imagine!" is one of the main phrases she says the entire time.
Then it's her turn. She explains how she met her husband Arthur, they fell in love, had all these children and are doing their best to raise them right. "Fred and George are the most work you see. As young children they absolutely hated each other, having to share a room and all." She gets up, goes over to the bookshelf and pulls out a picture book titled 'F&G' she comes back to the couch and puts the book in my lap.
"George was very quiet as a boy, very polite. But he was very talented with magic. Even as a little one he was mastering simple spells. Fred, on the other hand, was loud, reckless and kind of rude if you ask me. Both of them were funny in their own way though. Fred was harsher with his jokes, and they tended to be very obvious jokes, but whenever George cracked a joke, you had to think for a moment till you got it."
I open the book to the first page, there's a picture of two very red and wrinkly babies moving about in a shared cot. "We had to find a way to tell them apart so I started knitting them sweaters with their initials on it. Then I started to make sweaters for all my children."
I smile at the memory of last years Christmas. "I've been meaning to thank you for my sweater last year. No one has ever made me clothes before. I was going to send a letter but Christmas was so eventful."
Mrs Weasley looks like she might cry. "Oh never mind that. I'm just happy you liked it!" She flips the page in the book, this one is plastered with pictures of the twins running around the house in their matching sweaters.
"They were about four when they started to get along with each other. I remember vividly. I was watching Fred trying to get the cookie pot off from a high shelf and he couldn't do it without bringing a chair over and making a loud noise. I was about to go and scold him when George popped his little head around the corner. Without saying anything he rushed over beside his brother. Closed his eyes very tightly and I watched as the cookie pot levitated up off the shelf and came down into his hands. I was just so happy they did something together that I didn't even bother scolding them. Which in hindsight I probably should have because look at them now." Mrs Weasley shakes her head and smiles at the bool
I flip through a few more pages, Mrs Weasley telling me the story attached to each one. "I wish I had a book like this, to remember all the things I did when I was little," I say fondly.
"Your aunt and uncle never kept photos of you?" Mrs Weasley says looking away from the book and up to my face.
I shake my head and flip to the next page. "No never, Draco and I had a portrait painted together every year with our names at the bottom but that's about it. And well we do have the family tree. It's a huge tapestry in one of the rooms. Every one of the Black family houses have one is what I was told. Whenever a new family member is born, the tapestry adds them to the tree, connected to their parents, who are connected to their parents so on and so forth. If you do something that the family doesn't approve of, well its mostly muggle-born related things, then you get burned out of the tree and your children aren't documented any longer. It's what happened to my aunt Andromeda when she married a man who was muggle-born."
I look from the book and watch as Mrs Weasleys face contorts from, anger, sadness, disgust, and finally sympathy. "I'm so happy that the twins found you, you know that? If you ever, and I mean ever, need a place to stay in the future, you will always be welcome here. No matter what happens with you and George. And please. Call me Molly."