Work Text:
The Burrow was quiet. Molly loved these quiet moments in the morning, before anyone else woke. She added a few logs to the hearth, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It had snowed overnight, as she’d predicted it would, and she smiled as she thought of the fuss Arthur made over getting a tree last night. He acquiesced in the end (he always did), and strung the tree with fairy lights and candles. She opened a box of homemade ornaments, pulling them out one by one.
She looked up when she heard Fred wheel carefully into the room.
“Fred, dear, let me help you,” she said, getting up to wheel him closer to the tree.
“I’m not Fred! Honestly woman, and you call yourself our mother.”
Molly smiled and played along. “Oh, I’m sorry, George.”
“I’m only joking. I am Fred.”
“Yes you are. Would you help me put the ornaments up before your father wakes up?”
They put up the silver bells, and laughed as they pulled out each enchanted ornament each child had made for the tree: a self portrait from Bill, dragons chasing a seeker from Charlie, Percy’s stack of books, a Chudley Canon from Ron, a toad from Ginny.
She carefully unwrapped a set of ornaments that mirrored each other’s every movement. “Oh look, Fred. Here’s the one you two made.”
“Not again, Molly.”
Arthur’s quiet, gentle voice cut through the memory of Fred, and when she saw him standing in the empty space where Fred had been, she allowed her husband to take her in his arms and soothe her desperate sobs.
Molly loved these quiet moments in the morning, before anyone else woke.
Before she remembered why The Burrow was quiet.