Prewett
If there was anyone, anyone, who would consistently be sympathetic to him, it would be Molly Weasley.
Of course, Minerva had been his confidant ever since she’d become a teacher and joined the Light, but she’d had a nasty habit of picking apart his more elaborate ideas, as well as (far more controversial, in his opinion) critiquing his fashion taste, which was, under any circumstance, an offense he could not forgive.
“How have you been, Albus?” Molly asked with a smile. Just as he was giving his answer, she set down a heavy basket full of goods onto his desk. When he looked at it curiously, the woman only turned bashful. “Brought gifts, of course. I hope you don’t mind—The boys all went with Muriel for the day, so Ginny had me all to herself for once.” Her eyes gleamed with eagerness as she took in a little gasp. “Arthur says she’s so much like me. Wants to be just like her mum, he says, and it's just so strange. She wants to bake with me and wants to lay beside me while I knit and it's…” Molly sighed, taken in absolute wonder. “I've never had a girl before.”
“Ah,” Albus hummed. “I’m sure she'll be a joy this coming year, when she's with you, but beware holding on too tightly. Hogwarts is only a few years away. She'll already be smothered by her brothers when she joins."
"Hogwarts! Ron is just so excited for Hogwarts,” she laughed. “He doesn't say much about it, but I can see it. He asks Bill a thousand questions whenever he stops by.”
“Er…” Albus, out of cautiousness for his own health and safety, chose not to tell the Weasley matriarch about his encounter with her unusually defiant son—and the resulting hostility he was met with every time he even glanced in the boy’s direction. “That's just… wonderful to hear, dear girl.”
It was lucky, he thought, that Molly was so excited that she completely missed his less-than-enthused tone.
“I can’t believe it's a few more months until the letters come,” she gushed. “Everyone always says they grow up so fast, but I'd never thought it would be like this—almost an empty house I have during the school year—and when Ron leaves for Hogwarts, well, they'll all be away.”
“You’ll have Ginny for a little longer, at least,” he promised her. “She’ll be safe at Hogwarts but, until then, you will have that time.”
Molly turned wistful.
“Not long enough, I’d say.”
He understood.
Indeed, a year would go by quickly, faster than anyone could realize. Over his name as Headmaster, Albus had learned that no year truly gave any surprises—even such a year that would have the Boy-Who-Lived walking amongst the regular youth. He hoped the children wouldn't be too excitable.
Albus thought about how, when the youngest Weasley child would leave the Burrow, she would at last be free to help with renewing the charms—her specialty.
“How is the Order?”
“Well,” he answered. It was mostly the truth. “Everyone is well, I believe. Not much to do, but I believe that's the preferable path to life—it’s a curse to live in interesting times. Nymphadora came to my office before she left school, kept asking questions about the organization.”
“Andromeda’s daughter? I know her!” Molly paled at once. “You didn't tell her to join, did you? She's so young!”
“No, of course not,” Albus reassured and he watched the healthy pink return to her cheeks.
He, in fact, told her to join—but only when she was a little older, of more experience. More capable of defending the Light if needed.
“Tell them my well wishes…”
She trailed off, unfinished. A disquiet resided clearly inside of her mind. Her lips pursed together tightly and her pudgy face went tight in the way it always did when she was worrying over something.
Then, she spoke.
“And… Charles’ parents?” She asked wearily. “How are they?”
Albus Dumbledore refrained from saying the first statement that came to mind: Completely and utterly ungovernable. But what else was there to say?
“They’re…” he let out a heavy sigh, bringing his face into his hands. Some of his wisdom began to dwindle as he thought, rather uneasily, about his previous experiences with James and Lily Potter. Lily, the woman he’d mentored since she was a brilliant girl of only eleven years, had been incorrigible when it came to her son and, for the first time, she would not listen to a word he said. James was equally troubling, for he didn’t approve of any training sessions Albus tried to implement and he was, quite often, in agreement with everything his wife did. Even when he wasn’t, he adored her so much he would go along with it anyway. Neither parent liked their son going to places they couldn't see and he feared what hysterics would come when Hogwarts did. “I don’t know, Molly. They’re just weird.”
Through the cracks of his bony fingers, he could see Molly curl her lip. See her pinched displeasure as clear as day.
“Now, Albus,” Molly tsked. Despite the fact that he was one of the most important men in the last century, she still scolded him like she would… well, anyone. There were no bounds on who Molly Weasley could mother. “You must not call them weird. They’re perfectly nice people.”
“Did Lily not throw a vase at you at the last Order meeting?”
Molly didn’t budge on her stance.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, “and she has done so multiple times, with various objects over the course of time I’d known her. But her son is friends with my son and, frankly, I love the boy like I would my own.”
Albus lowered his hands. His heartbeat came in guilty thumps and, while his quick mind ran over the lines of the prophecy, reciting it from a faultless memory, he remembered the death of Ariana in the aftermath of if—how nobody truly mourned her as they should (their parents dead or away; Aberforth’s seething anger; he himself being now stuck on a different mission, accepting his fault, and his duty, before her coffin could even be lowered into the ground), how she should have never met her demise in the first place. This child was destined for it, destroyed the Dark Lord once and will destroy him again. Gentleness did not often come to Albus Dumbledore but, right now, it fell upon him with the suddenness and the strength of a lightning strike.
“You care for all the children you meet, Molly,” he told her. “I’m sure young Charles appreciates your company, but you are best to leave him to his own parents, at least until he reaches the age of Hogwarts admission. Let them raise him, for his sake and your own. He's a boy with trials—with danger—ahead of him. He is not like even your most thrill-seeking children. You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep worrying.”
She looked up at him. Her soft, round face did nothing to hide the coldness in her brown eyes.
“I cannot listen to you, Albus,” she said, speaking in a deceptively soft voice. She pursed her lips tightly together. “I cannot and I will not.”
It seemed like more and more people were saying that everyday. Such a shame it was that, for once, he genuinely wanted to help someone and she simply would not hear his warning. He wished to lead her away from tragedy and she only faced him with the Prewett stare he remembered from her mother before her—her brothers were much more friendly, mischievous, born loyal soldiers. The Prewetts, indeed, all sorted Gryffindor.
“Fabian and Gideon died for your cause—a cause I believe in more than anything—and they died for the end of Voldemort that you promised,” her voice broke just a little bit, “and here is the boy that has ended that evil man. It is my responsibility, my duty, to have him as family. I must.”
It's not common that something unsettled him as much as now. He became suddenly, awfully emotional for a reason he grappled with, tied down, and tamed into something he could understand. And he understood it. All he could hear was, your cause. It played again and again in his head, ringing and spinning. Aberforth would have laughed if he'd seen him today, rendered so distraught by a single phrase.
No, Albus thought, breathless, the wind knocked out of him by this revelation. No. I will not have this.
And he meant: I will not take this guilt, I will not have this set upon me again.
“Molly,” he said, slowly. He reached over to pat her hand and felt relieved when she did not snatch it away like he'd presumed she might. “You mustn’t blame yourself for it. They gave their lives to fight for what was—is still—right. It was a choice. An honorful, brave choice.”
He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince. He rarely talked of such things to know.
She did not answer.
She breathed, her chest heaving, and she did not look like the mother who’d been a member in the Order since it began, raised her children through war and taught them how to refrain from fear and scare away bigotry.
“Molly…”
“He is so much like my brothers, Albus,” she sounded so very small—sounded exactly like first year Molly Prewett, in trouble for blasting boils onto cruel Azalea Greengrass’ nose in Transfiguration class. He could remember each of his students, usually distantly, but sometimes—only sometimes—did it become so potent their memory it left him unreliable, removing any sense of greatness that defeating a Dark Lord could bring. “So much like them. He and Ron—oh, they're great friends—they have dreams together. Never one without the other. A bond. And…and…”
“Molly?” He called her name. “Are you all right?”
“I cannot remember which one he reminds me of anymore,” she admitted, bowing her head. “It's awful, is it not?”
“Memories are fickle things.”
Albus was not thinking of Ariana like he should be and he knew, knew deep in his heart, that there was something terribly wrong with him that he did not have his dear sister in his mind. It was Gellert. In a way, it was always Gellert.
He said, “You don't remember what you should, but that does not make it matter any less.”
Molly nodded stiffly once.
“Charles is very sweet at times,” she said quietly, grabbing at the handle of her purse. He had to strain his ears to hear her. “And James says he doesn't like to be away from them—that he gets scared whenever he's away from home—and of course, I won't question his judgment, I know he means best because that's his only son, but… Charles wants to stay at the Burrow. He likes to explore, and go out, and play in the woods. He's cooped up with Lily all hours of the day inside—and she rarely lets in visitors—and I understand she's his mother, but I think, I really do think, he needs to be spending time in other places sometimes.”
She grew louder and more insistent as she spoke, impassioned, coming out trying and pleading. Albus knew this was not a good thing, not what the cause needed at all.
“Most parents are protective, as I think you would know,” he said, straightening his back, levelling her with a stern stare. “Even more so when their son has survived and defeated the Dark Lord himself—”
“I don't want to meddle, of course,” Molly interrupted, unusually uncooperative, “but… well… they're members of the Order, they respect you. You've known them for longer than I have. Don't you think you could talk to them?”
Albus sighed in exasperation. “And what about, Molly?”
She paused before answering, possibly because she knew how he would react, possibly because she was about to burst into tears.
“It’s just that—Ron would love to see him more.”
He saw the look on her face, could hear her desperation. This was just dreadful.
“...run along, now,” he said before he could see her cry. “I believe it's time for this meeting to end. I would think your family needs you at home at such an hour.”
She made a little noise at that, got up, told him to enjoy the cakes she'd made, and then hurried out the door. There was more she wanted to say, he knew, but he also knew that he would not—could not—hear any of it.
And then Albus Dumbledore was left alone, as alone as you could truly be in Hogwarts, anyway. It was never quite quiet. The portraits of former Headmasters talked amongst themselves and, whilst he leaned back and marveled at the fact that he was alive even still, he listened to their chatter. Years and years and years’ worth of people who held his title before him.