Let's hear it for the kids
Things move rather quickly after that. The most natural thing for Arthur to do here would be to take charge of settling everything into a running, functioning, sustainable system himself, but he is not the king of Hogwarts. This is his children’s home, theirs to cherish and theirs to uphold. He puts Sal in touch with the elves, who immediately set to work installing him a frame in the chamber. Arthur has no doubt his little silvertongue will make good and sure Basil’s home is looked after properly, and Basil themself is cared for.
So he sets to work instead on sweeping up the lesser messes- i.e. Lockhart, who gets a potent memory charm to the face that leaves him in no shape to dispute whatever story Arthur cooks up (or indeed, to prance about with false qualifications). Ginny is sent straight to the hospital wing. The Weasleys are called to be informed at once while Arthur debriefs Dumbledore, Snape, and McGonagall. Dumbledore pushes him (in not so many words) to impart the day’s events to him alone, but that in and of itself is proof enough for Arthur that he’d have to be a fool to do so. He doesn’t trust Dumbledore.
Arthur leaves his children and their legacies to reclaim their home. He has his own to attend to.
It’s nighttime. The corridors are completely barren, as if abandoned many years ago rather than just today. The kids must still be shut away. With no one in his path, Arthur practically flies through the castle, taking sharp turns at a breakneck pace, doors opening for him automatically and stairs leaping to his aid. There’s no reason to be sure of this, but he is sure: it’s time he and his other half were made whole again.
Arthur slams the door to the infirmary open with the force of a gunshot, and the door squeals against the floor in an attempt to stop itself before it hits the wall.
There he is. Sat up in the place of that cold shell is Arthur’s Merlin, scarf and all. He’s hardly different from the girl he was when he was petrified, but Arthur can tell. Arthur probably should’ve been thinking of him as a she while he was out, but he’s definitely a he now. His hair glows a deep blue-silver in the moonlight, and his eyes are like the surface of a lake, pale fractals splashing through layer after layer after layer. Sparkling as they should be. There he is, the corners of his lips naturally tugged up as if by design, as if they’ve never entertained hopelessness and they will not start now. His hair is flat at the back where he’s been laid back against the sheets for weeks, the rest of his curls sticking up extra to make up for it. There he is, pale little fingers looping around each other in a knitting pattern with no wool or needles, the air his only audience, nose scrunching ever so slightly on every follow through.
There he is.
“Arthur, finally,” he says as he looks over, voice hoarse from disuse, and it’s the most beautiful thing Arthur’s heard in months. “My nose has been so fucking itchy . And you have the worst morning breath, I couldn’t do anything about it petrified, I just had to lie there getting breathed on this whole ti-”
“Meridan Emrys-” Arthur starts, trying to make up for the desperation in his march with the growl in his tone.
“I don’t think that’s right-”
“-You have a lot to answer for.”
Merlin, the insufferable twit, folds his husband knowingly into his scrawny arms. Arthur falls into him without another word where he meant to throw a tantrum, all the air leaving him in great gusts as his body reacts without his permission to the familiar contact. His limbs just go to jelly all at once, trickling over each other like a babbling brook and splashing over the boy in the bed, leaving Arthur without even the wherewithal to care that he curls up small under Merlin’s arms and snuggles in like a teddy bear. He’s been holding Merlin for weeks, it’s his turn.
They lie there together as their long-awaited wholeness seeps in. Arthur’s inhales seem to pull in more air than they did with Merlin gone. They sink right into his lungs, filling them up each time and emptying slowly with his sighs the way they should: first in relief, then in immeasurable contentment. Arthur doesn’t remember closing his eyes, but they’re closed. He just sits there and laps up the imprints Merlin’s leaving with his hands on Arthur’s back, letting them sink right through him down to the bone. Everything is at it should be again. Everyone can relax, it’s all fine now. Their own personal balance has been restored. The world is right once more.
Arthur lets them both have four minutes and thirty-eight seconds of real, honest peace before he snaps his fist back and hits Merlin solidly in the chest. He doesn’t move otherwise, doesn’t even open his eyes. It gets Arthur’s message across more succinctly than the lecture he can’t be arsed to give.
Merlin lets out a vindicating ‘ OOF’ and a bit of a wheeze, but he doesn’t so much as twitch from where they’re plastered together. He doesn’t say anything either. He definitely saw it coming, but that’s the thing- Merlin knows it’s pointless running, and he can see that being indignant about it would just cut into cuddle time. That would benefit no one. Best just take his lumps without comment.
“No hitting my patients, Penn!” Madame Pomfrey chides from where she’s administering mandrake essence to the other victims.
Merlin taps him on the arm, and Arthur shifts his head against Merlin’s chest to look up at him in a manner that is certainly not sickeningly infatuated or adoring or settled into any ancient forms of love beyond the known in the slightest.
“You wanna get out of here?” Merlin whispers against his cheek, looking right back at him with all that and more. Eyes don’t seem sufficient enough vessels for the things they exchange through looks, but there you are. Arthur sees it all anyway, hears it humming along the canyons of his brain. Remembers it slurred in the back of english speakeasies, over crackling comms and headsets through callsigns and codewords in languages that have blended together over the years, mumbled as they lay down to sleep on beds and floors and hammocks and rags and hard-packed dirt and probably everything in between- said always, always with love.
Arthur doesn’t think he’s said no once.
They manage to sneak by the crowds that are only just beginning to trickle out into the halls with the help of some lesser known passages. Merlin picks them out a proper secret spot, a sort of miniature ballroom on the fourth floor of the east wing that’s fallen out of use in the ages they’ve been away, and summons their suitcase.
“I don’t really want to stand out, should I just put m’robes back on?” Merlin asks.
Arthur snorts. Good luck with that. With the size of the gift basket pile by his bedside, they’ll be lucky if the students don’t throw him a fucking ball when they see he’s up and moving again. Like any of them tried to come and see him after Arthur scowled at them a couple of times. If they’d really been about it, that wouldn’t have stopped them visiting. Children will pounce on any self-assured charmer tat passes by, none of them have the faintest inkling what they’re chasing with Merl-
Merlin’s giving him that smug face again. Arthur huffs contrarily at the silent insinuation. He’s not jealous. He’s right. As always.
“It’s a pyjama night, no one’ll change for dinner,” Arthur replies, digging his arm into the trunk and throwing Merlin a stripy set. He grabs one for himself, too- might as well change, since he’s here. He doesn’t necessarily want the attention either, pointless as avoiding it is going to prove.
“Do you still have the shell?” Merlin asks offhandedly as he hops clumsily into his pants, nearly putting himself right back out of commission by braining himself on a sconce.
Arthur makes a noise that’s pretty much a grunt with a question mark after it.
“Shell, the shell, of the soul shard. The book.”
Arthur grunts again, but with a period. “‘S in safe six, the dimensional compartment. Think we can use it though. The main soul, whichever Riddle’s conscious is in, he might not know it’s been killed. Albus and Lucius are keen on having it, too, so we might be able to use it. Lucius Malfoy’s the one who-”
“-Gave her the book, I know.”
“How do you even know that? How do you even know it’s a book? Or about Lucius? You’ve been catatonic , you have no right to even know what fucking day it is,” Arthur accuses hotly. Merlin just gives him another of those infuriating smiles. They make his eyes twinkle, but they’re also the most annoying fucking things in the world. He looks like he thinks he knows everything, and the worst part is, he does . The little sneak.
Then, the fun part. As predicted, no one overlooks Em having risen from his cot. It takes a bit of surreptitious magic to part the crowd enough for him and Hermione to take a running leap at each other, slamming together hard enough to probably hurt, too happy to see each other to care. Which is a little funny, because they both have lines of people desperate to see them again, and they all have to wait while the two of them hug it out like they haven’t been sharing a room for the last week.
Harry has no such reservations, and quickly rams into the two of them like a small but deadly bullet, and they almost all go crashing to the floor before Arthur catches them. To his horror, Arthur almost audibly coos like some fussy old witch when Harry buries his beaming face into their sides with a smile to split the heavens and happy, desperate tears in his eyes. His little arms can’t wrap around them properly, and he’s ducked under both their arms like a pet trying to burrow into their human for snuggles. It’s adorable. That doesn’t mean Arthur’s going to coo about it. Instead he does Hermione a favour and magically swaps out the robes she’s been stuffed into since she was petrified for a new set of jammies. No one will notice in the excitement.
Draco stops dead when he enters, eyes blowing wide, and the obstacle course starts all over again. Ron rather impressively manages to get his long arms around most of the amalgamous blob of friends they’ve made, and Draco reaches back and hooks Arthur into it, and that’s that until Merlin breaks it up for fear Hermione may suffocate.
The official story is that Arthur, worried about Ginny, followed her to find her opening the chamber of secrets, clearly possessed. He ran to tell the teachers at once. Lockhart went in first thinking he could take it, what with all his qualifications and proven mettle, but fell down the pipe before even making it into the chamber proper and gave himself the mother of all concussions. Inspiring. So Arthur, afraid his friend was dying and the adults would be too late to save her, went down himself with the portrait of Salazar Slytherin. Salazar managed to talk his familiar down, who it turned out was just confused and lonely, led astray by the voice of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Riddle had almost fully returned in exchange for Ginny’s life when Salazar turned the Basilisk on him and his cursed diary, destroying the memory of the dark lord and scattering his presence instead.
Of course, the school at large isn’t told all of this, but it’s what Arthur tells the kids. They’re too smart not to be able to keep a secret, particularly in Ginny’s name. They’re all quite fond of Ginny. Even Draco finds the stories they tell of the little redhead amusing.
Exams are cancelled for those directly affected by the incident. This leaves Arthur no excuse to put off apologising- not that he would, it’s just more obvious that he isn’t sure how much time to give her to recover before he does. He never knows with kids who’ve been through a trauma, they’re all so different, so varied in their responses. Ginny hardly gets any space between her parents and brothers as it is, they’re all so beside themselves with worry and relief for her, and he doesn’t want to be another reason for her to be exhausted. But it’s not in his nature to leave things unaddressed.
Finally he gives in, deciding that if he is to be another bother, at least he can be one that’s behind her sooner than later.
Ginny’s been temporarily granted a recovery room in Gryffindor tower- a middle ground between the infirmary and her Hogwarts home for long-term patients. It’s attached to the common room rather than the dorms, and it doesn’t have the same wards against males that the female dorms do. It doesn’t have any wards at all . Arthur was horrified to find that the door didn’t even lock, and he fixed that up on the first night she stayed there. You’d think security and privacy would be a priority for a survivor in Ginny’s position, but apparently not. Unbelievable, this school.
Eight days after the showdown in the chamber, Arthur approaches with loud, deliberate steps she should be able to hear if she’s inside. He knocks gently four times.
“Coming!” sounds the sure little voice on the other side. Arthur steps back from the door and waits.
He does not hear the door unlock before it’s pulled abruptly open. Good. She’s comfortable enough just to keep it closed, trusting Gryffindor to respect it. Her voice doesn't sound weak or forced. Her breathing seems normal. Her hunch is no more prominent than usual, and her movements are unrestricted and relaxed, though standoffish as any teenager. The signs indicate that she is more alright than she has any right to be, and not even in a suspicious way. Arthur suspects Ginny’s foundations are made of something in the same realm as bedrock with a thick layer of elastic around it. Still, he resolves to keep an eye out for her. Something shook those foundations no more than a week ago, strong as they may be. He is now interrupting the rebuilding process.
Her brown eyes widen as she registers him standing there. Her messy bun is sagged absurdly against one side of her head like melted ice cream, the colour of the blazing sun. Her shirt once proudly featured the brand of the Kenmare Kestrels, but has since been crossed out and sloppily sharpied over in the name of the Tutshill Tornadoes, the Appleby Arrows, the Chudley Cannons, and finally the Holyhead Harpies. Evidently the Weasleys each have their own favourites, and this is a very old shirt.
“Arth-!” Ginny makes an aborted motion as if to pounce on him, but draws back staunchly, chest puffing with strength drawn in response to the misstep. Her immediate answer to shame is to fight it with courage, and it plays out right before his eyes. Ginny Weasley isn’t even thirteen, and Arthur knows she is going to be an incredible woman. She is already an incredible girl.
“Ginny,” he says solemnly. It’s strange hearing his ‘knock knock I’ve come to apologise for failing you’ tone in a voice that hasn’t dropped yet. He’s usually informing family members that their loved ones have died in action, so it’s typically a little deeper. “If you have a minute, I came to apologise.”
That startles her right out of her wounded staring. Her bun bounces with her taken-aback-ness.
“You- what?”
“I came to apologise,” he repeats steadfastly.
She blinks. Twice. “... You-? Wha- you didn’t… why would you…?”
Arthur resists the urge to look down and swallow guiltily. Shying away from his failures does not honour either of them. He opens his mouth and looks her in the eyes.
“You came to me when you needed my help. You shouldn’t have needed to, but you did, and I didn’t listen. I failed to notice that we were on different pages all year. When you attempted to make up for that yourself, I made you feel like you couldn’t confide in me. That is an inexcusable failure on my part, and I apologise for it. I want you to know that I will always have your back, but I’ve proven that that notion alone isn’t sufficient. I’m sorry, Ginny. That’s it,” he concludes with an acknowledging nod, stepping back to leave her with that.
He gets two steps before he’s being tackled by the little fireball, her mouth running way ahead of her.
“ You don’t have to apologise, you berk, you didn’t do anythin’, it was me who trusted a bloody book, honestly, Em pulled this on me yesterday and I’ll tell you the same, shut yer gob or lose it! Actin’ all respectful… one more yip outta you an’ I’ll jinx ya mute!”
It’s his turn to be startled, turning in her arms to return her hug. An incredible girl, indeed.
Arthur does end up using the diary. He sticks his least holey sock into it, gives it to Lucius Malfoy, watches him hand it to Dobby, waits til the great strutting pony’s out of sight, and summons it right back to safe six. He wonders how long it’ll take the man to realise his house elf’s not two subservient steps behind him anymore. Merlin reckons at least a day. Good thing Lucius has already consented to let his son stay over at the Emrys household for as long as he chooses this summer.
Speaking of, Harry’s papers have come in. He was never formally adopted by the Dursleys. Dumbledore was his official keeper, but as Dumbledore isn’t a blood relation and hasn’t been living with Harry, it was almost too easy to fix that.
They promised that boy he would never be afraid of his home again.
Arthur smirks as Merlin bats the final adoption papers in Arthur’s hands back down out of sight despite the massive delighted grin on his face.
And he never will.