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The clock on the mantle showed half-past two in the morning, but still she did not sleep. How was she supposed to sleep with her house empty, one of her children never to return?
The dark circles under Molly Weasley’s eyes suggested that this had not been the first sleepless night, but the latest in a long line of them. Her house was too quiet, too calm, too chillingly empty, and she didn’t know how to function within this new space.
Before, even when all the children had been at Hogwarts or in their own spaces, working for their living, the house had seemed more alive. There were owls to receive, holiday visits to be arranged, and care packages to send to the school, among other household duties. She had also, of course, served her part in the Order of the Phoenix, which had kept her busier than she wanted to be.
Now, however, with all of her children out of school, most of them married, and Fred gone forever, she found that her daily work was almost always complete by midday and that the empty hours she spent at the house while Arthur did his work at the Ministry stretched before her like a hallway lined with locked doors. The Order of the Phoenix had been disbanded for all intents and purposes, with their primary goal of eradicating Voldemort and capturing his followers having been achieved years before.
She heard the familiar creak of the stairs behind her and turned from her place at the kitchen table to find Arthur, tousled and sleepy in his pajamas, peering at her with concern. “Molly,” he said, “come to bed.”
“I can’t sleep,” she said, her voice fretful even through the exhaustion that she could barely feel. “It’s too quiet, there’s just…there’s too many hours in the day without the children. And I can’t stop thinking that Fred…” She trailed off. Even four years later, the death of Fred Weasley still tore a hole through her heart, leaving a place that would never quite be whole again.
Arthur padded down the rest of the stairs in his slippered feet, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her shoulders, kissing the top of her head tenderly. “The children still need you, Molly,” he whispered. “Grown or not, they still need their mother, and the grandchildren we have and those yet to come need their Gran.”
“I know, but–“
“But nothing,” Arthur said more firmly, some of the sleepiness leaving his voice. “I know the house seems quiet right now, but just imagine what it will feel like at Christmas, with all the children and their families around us. You won’t have enough hours in the day, then, and it’s only two months off.”
“It just never seems complete without Fred,” Molly breathed. “George isn’t the same, and the others all have their own lives to conduct, lives apart from us and away from us.”
“The children should be living lives apart from us now,” Arthur said, even as he grimaced against the pain as he, too, thought of their lost child. “You gave them all such strength. They are the adults they are because of you. And Fred–well, life will never be the same without Fred. But do you think he’d be happy to know you’re sitting up half the night, missing what is gone, instead of enjoying the life you have?”
Molly sighed. She knew her husband was right, of course, and that she was being ridiculous. Had she not once longed for the days when she would be less busy? Had she not once thought of the things she could do with her time when the job of raising her children was complete? “I’ll come to bed,” she said softly, without voicing her thoughts aloud. Arthur needed his sleep for tomorrow’s workday, and he would not sleep well if she stayed down here. They had repeated this routine for more nights than she could count, now, and she knew that with his light snores next to her, she might finally find some sleep tonight.
***
Molly awoke with her husband the next morning, though it meant she had only had about three hours of questionable sleep. She enjoyed feeling useful in the morning, making his breakfast for him and helping him get ready for his day, and she cherished the quiet moments they usually had as they watched the sunrise from their kitchen window. The togetherness had always been important to her, but now it was even more so.
When Arthur went to work, Molly busied herself with the household chores, staving off the inevitable dull and empty afternoon she would spend when her work was done. She did up the dishes from the breakfast, spending time scrubbing the frying pan by hand instead of using magic simply because it would take longer. She cleaned up the living area of the house, dusting and sweeping, again without magic. When she was done with that, she sat at the table to write letters to her children, who were living all over the country at this point.
Those goals achieved, she ate a solitary lunch of leftover potato soup and sat once again at her kitchen table, wondering what to do with herself. She supposed she could pay a visit to one of her children, but she would find most of them at work during the day, except for Fleur, who was at home with their firstborn, small Victoire.
As her fingers tapped on the wood of the table and she thought about all the things she had once done, Molly felt useless. Upon marrying Arthur, she had chosen not to pursue a profession in favor of taking care of their home and children, but she almost regretted that now. She would have loved to have a job to fall back on now that her family was raised and the Order was finished.
Stop being silly, she ordered herself firmly. There is plenty to do–she could work on knitting the Christmas sweaters, which had become so numerous upon the expansion of her family that they took a long time to complete, even with magic. The truth was, though, that she did not want to work on the Christmas sweaters, which were well in progress, anyway. She wanted to do something where she would feel needed again, even important.
The hours passed into evening, and Arthur returned from his work at the Ministry to a dinner that seemed absurdly small compared to the amounts she used to cook for her family and all their friends. Still, they both enjoyed the steak-and-kidney pie she had made.
After dinner, she broached the subject with Arthur for the first time. It hadn’t been that she had exactly been keeping her thoughts from him, not exactly, just that she didn’t think her own troubles worth mentioning when Arthur was so busy at work.
“Arthur,” she began, “I need something to do with my life now. There’s just not enough, with the children off everywhere and the Order finished. I need a purpose, I need–“
“I know,” Arthur interrupted her. “Mollywobbles, do you think I haven’t noticed? I know you sit here, day after day, with no one for company but the garden gnomes. I know the children and their families are all busy with their jobs, and I know you’re feeling a lack with the business of the Order concluded. The question is, how badly do you want things to change?”
“So badly,” she whispered, admitting it to him at last. It had always seemed to her she should be nothing but grateful for the life she had, and that complaining would be wrong. But things had reached a point at which she knew she needed change before she went mad.
“I talked to someone today,” Arthur said. “You remember Bea Wallish from the Department of Magical Families?”
Molly remembered her. A plump, motherly kind of witch not so different from herself, Bea had dedicated her life to advancing the causes of children. She was somewhat famous within the Ministry for her dedication to making sure the children of the magical world were well raised, well educated, and treated like the treasures she believed they were.
Molly nodded. “I do,” she said.
“Well, as it turns out, there are quite a lot of orphans left by the war, both of Death Eaters and other fighters. Many have been taken in by their own families, but others aren’t so lucky, especially the children of the Death Eaters. Their families are dead or imprisoned, and there is a certain reluctance among the remaining magical community to house them.”
Molly thought of those children, and her heart went out to them. After all, who their parents had been was no responsibility of theirs, yet from what Arthur was saying, they were being shunned by members of the Wizarding world who might have otherwise opened their homes to them. “Are you suggesting we adopt a Death Eater’s child?” she asked doubtfully.
“Not exactly,” Arthur said, “though if you wanted another child to raise, I would not stand in your way. What I am suggesting, however, is that all of these children need someone to care for them, to champion them, and to send them off to school when it’s time with an excellent education and background. Someone committed to the cause of good.”
“I’m not sure I understand you,” Molly told him, a little frustrated by his beating around the bush with exactly what he wanted her to do about these children.
“Bea Wallish has set up a house for these abandoned children, really a small orphanage, with sixteen children, all under school age. She was telling me today that they need a matron, someone to oversee their upbringing. I didn’t suggest it to her since I hadn’t mentioned it to you, but what do you say, Molly?”
Molly’s eyes took on a gleam he hadn’t seen in them for quite some time, really since Ginevra had left home to marry Harry Potter, and he knew the matter was already decided. Molly Weasley would become the matron of the abandoned children’s home, and those sixteen young souls would be raised in a way that would make anyone in the Wizarding community proud.
***
The youngest child at the house was a mere two years old, the child of two of Voldemort’s followers who had not been captured until well after the war. The child, a young girl named Vera, clung to Molly’s skirts as she scolded two other children, a boy and a girl each nine years of age, for teasing her.
“Now, really, Oliver,” she said in exasperation. “You ought to have more sense, and more kindness. You know Vera can’t play Gobstones, so why tease her with them? Why make her cry? You ought to be properly ashamed of yourself.”
To his credit, Oliver looked down while she chastised him, seeming contrite. This softened Molly somewhat, though she still continued to look stern.
The behavior challenges of the children at the home were not much different from those she had encountered while raising her own children, but by the same token, they were more numerous and at times more extreme.
Before she continued her scolding, Molly took a few moments to remember the upbringing these children had before she came to them. Their young years had been spent with parents who were followers of Voldemort, pure-blooded families who held their blood status above any other consideration. The children’s perceptions had to have been warped by this. Since the war, they had been passed around like they had been discarded, never with a consistent voice to speak reason to them.
“There will be no pudding for you for three days, Oliver. Nor for you, Evelyn,” she concluded, hardening her heart against the little miscreants. After all, it was now her duty to teach them right from wrong, almost as if they had never had those lessons before. “I’ll tell cook you’re not to have any, and if we catch you taking it from the other children, you will be very sorry indeed. Am I understood?”
Both children looked upset by the upcoming deprivation, but they answered her properly. “Yes, Matron,” they said in unison. At least she had taught them that much in her time so far at the home.
Molly nodded and dismissed them to the garden with the other children. Among the oldest of the children, Oliver and Evelyn had less than two years before they left to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Their powers already in evidence, it was especially important to teach them the lessons of childhood before it was too late.
“What shall we do now, Vera?” She addressed the toddler still clinging to her skirts. “Shall we go find your teddy?”
Silently, Vera nodded at her, and Molly carried her to the nursery, where she was rewarded with the new teddy she had received only days before. Donations from the Wizarding community had come in droves once the school had been established; privately, Molly thought many of them were meant to assuage the guilt of people who knew the children had deserved better than what they had received.
Leaving Vera in the care of the nursery maid, Molly retreated to her small office, really only a cupboard, on the first floor of the house.
The job, which Molly had only come into a week prior, was a never-ending parade of duties and chores, even aside from the constant attention required by the children in her care. Bea had seen that she was supplied with plenty of help; there was a cook, a nursery maid, and scullery maid during the day, and three witches took over duties when it was night so Molly could retreat to her own home. The day-to-day running of the place, however, Bea had left in Molly’s care—Bea had never meant to run the home herself, but to see that it was established and in good hands. She had been very satisfied with Molly’s work for the past week and looked forward to improvements in the home and the children’s upbringing as she continued her work there.
Molly sorted through some of the paperwork on her desk, mostly scrolls of parchment detailing the children’s pasts, parentage, and challenges that had been identified by their caregivers since the war had ended. She had read all of them already; she had actually taken him home with her the first night to become acquainted with her charges.
“Ahem, Matron?” the scullery maid said tentatively. “It’s only that someone’s come to the door, says they’re taking one of the children.”
Molly looked up sharply. None of the children had families she knew of, and no adoptions had been requested. No one should expect to take any of her children away, especially without the proper investigation. “Did they say who they were?” she asked, her voice crisp.
“No, ma’am, just that they’ve come to take Vera.”
Molly stood abruptly, her previous task forgotten. “Thank you, Liv,” she said. “See them to my office, please.”
Only moments passed while Liv went to escort the mysterious person to Molly’s office. As the man entered, she surveyed him up and down with a critical eye. She had no idea who he was, but he was well-dressed in clean, creased robes of black, and appeared clean and well-groomed.
“Molly Weasley,” she introduced herself. “And you are?” She didn’t bother to hide her distrust; according to her records, Vera had no family who was neither deceased nor imprisoned.
“Thomas Nott,” the man said smoothly, extending his hand. Molly shook it, noting that his fingers were particularly long and bony. He looked to be about her age, with gray in his pointed brown beard and moustache.
“Please sit,” Molly said crisply, returning to her own seat across the desk. She indicated one of the two rather scuffed wooden chairs that sat opposite her.
The man, Thomas Nott, sat down promptly, seeming entirely sure of himself.
“What is your business, Mr. Nott?” she asked when no explanation was forthcoming. “I understand you’re here to enquire about—“
“Vera Stockton, yes,” he said. “She’s my great-niece, once removed on her mother’s side.” His voice was oily and unctuous, and something about him made her distrust him intensely, though she knew she had to do her duty and find out what his interest in her charge was.
“I don’t have any record of Vera having surviving family,” she said, her tone brokering no nonsense. “Where do you come from, Mr. Nott? I don’t recall anyone by the name of Thomas in the Nott family.”
“I live a quiet life in the country,” he said smoothly, smoothing his beard with one hand as he looked at her. “I haven’t involved myself in politics or the general doings of the outside world.”
Molly wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t believe this man. What did he want with a young girl like Vera, anyway? She decided to ask him outright. “Mr. Nott, I fail to see what attraction raising a toddler would be to someone who prefers a quiet life. What is your interest in Vera?”
“Why, simply to see that she has a fruitful childhood,” he said. He added, almost as an afterthought, “Of course, the actions of her parents were beyond excuse.” He seemed to think this was what Molly would want to hear, but she heard the ring of untruth in his words.
“Do you have the appropriate paperwork proving your connection to Vera?” she asked, stalling for time.
“Of course,” Nott said without hesitation. “I have the family tree ready for your examination.” He reached his hand toward his front breast pocket, and Molly reacted without hesitation, leveling her wand at him.
Her instinct proved correct; Nott had not been reaching for the paperwork, but rather to draw his own wand.
“This should not be a complicated matter,” he said coldly as they stood with their wands pointing towards one another. “The girl needs a home, and I am offering her one.”
“I distrust your motives, Mr. Nott,” Molly said simply, matching his coldness, “especially as you have drawn your wand. Whether your intention was to attack me or bamboozle me, neither will get you the end you want. I suggest, if you truly want to adopt Vera, that you go through the proper channels at the Ministry rather than disrupting our lives in this home.”
“This home,” Nott said, speaking through tight lips and saying the word as though it were the filthiest profanity, “is nothing but a den to raise children without the proper Wizarding pride. Vera will become nothing but a soft, Muggle-loving—“
“This interview is over, Mr. Nott,” she said with finality, keeping her wand level, pointed at his chest.
Nott suddenly relaxed back into his earlier state of forced calm. He lowered his wand. “Of course, Mrs. Weasley,” he said smoothly. “I shall see to Vera’s adoption through channels at the Ministry. Rest assured, you will give her over to me sooner rather than later.”
“I will do my duty, nothing more or less,” Molly told him, her eyes flashing. She did not lower her wand. “I’ll call Liv to see you to the door.”
“Don’t bother yourself,” he replied. “I’ll see myself out.” He turned, seemingly unconcerned with the wand at his back. Molly followed him to the doorway of the office and through the house to the front door. She did not trust that the man would not simply barge into the nursery and take Vera from the watchful eyes of the nursery maid, if he even knew what the child looked like.
Nott did not attempt to vary from his course through the house, but walked through the front door as if leaving had always been his intent. She magically locked the door behind him, going through the house and ensuring that all the windows and doors were similarly protected.
Once she was certain the man had Disapparated, she went straight back to her desk and quickly composed two letters, one for Bea Wallish, and the other for Arthur. She had to warn them about this man, who she suspected had been one of Voldemort’s supports, even if he had not involved himself in the ultimate battle of the war. She didn’t know what his actual intentions were with the child upstairs, but she was certain they differed from what he had said.
***
“Thomas Nott is not a Death Eater,” Arthur told her when they both reached home that evening and she was preparing the dinner. “He escaped the Ministry’s grasp by not involving himself in their activities, though there is no doubt that he is a blood purist and a Muggle hater. We can’t arrest him, but Bea Wallish has said that any attempts by him to adopt Vera will be blocked with prejudice. He would not provide a stable home for the girl, in any case.”
“You should have seen him, Arthur,” Molly told him, ladling stew onto two plates. “He was bound and determined to have Vera, so much so that he pulled his wand on me.”
Arthur frowned. She had said as much in her letter, and he did not like the idea of anyone pulling a wand on his wife. Those days were supposed to be over.
“I’ll have the Aurors do a more thorough check tomorrow,” Arthur finally said. “In the meantime, we’ll provide protection for the house. We should have done in the first place, given who these children are.”
Molly nodded, agreeing with him.
“Other than that, how was your day?” Arthur asked, pouring some elf-made wine into two goblets. “Are you glad you took up this position?”
While they ate, she filled him in on the happenings at the house, with all the duties and care she had to ensure that all sixteen children were brought up well. Arthur could tell that, although she didn’t say it directly, she was thrilled she had made the change.
They spent the evening companionably listening to music on the Wizarding Wireless while he read the Prophet and she knitted Weasley sweaters.
When it came time for bed, she went up with him, and by ten o’clock, she was sleeping as soundly as a baby.