𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐓| 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐨 𝐌𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐨𝐲

𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑|𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐀𝐑 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄

  Next chapter at 125 votes & 225 comments!
  — TWs for murder/killing and character distress.

  THE DOORS FLEW OPEN with such force that brass hinges buckled and one side of the cabinet drooped, as if suddenly deflated by the motion.

  "Please dear..." The woman began wringing her hands, stepping forwards but making no move to stop Seven, almost as if begging her in as few words as she could to understand, "Take what you want from us — take anything, nothing we have is worth much... But please — don't tell them you saw him..."

  Seven cautiously moved closer, so that the light fell into the opening of the cabinet, uncertain of what exactly to expect. She frowned into the darkness, struggling to try make out the strange shape curled somewhere near the back of the hidden compartment.

  — And then she saw him. As he shifted his position slightly her eyes locked onto this new humanoid silhouette. He gave a low groan; as if pained, and Bill came forwards to remove the body from the vanishing cabinet.

  As he came into the light Seven finally recognised the familiar face before her.
The boy from the poster; the boy she'd been searching for since before the first Sin fell dead at her feet. And finally, here he was held limply before her.

— But something was wrong with the man. His eyes were unfocused, and his legs would not support his weight, instead Bill practically dragged his brother over to an empty arm chair and set him sat upright upon it.

Ronald Weasley may have been alive, but only in the most cardinal and raw sense of the word.
— His chest rose and fell with the intake and expulsion of breath, his fingers flexed and pawed at the arm of the gnarled chair, and occasionally, his lips tremored with the thought of words, though none ever found him; and that was about it. He was alive, but far from living.

"What happened to him?" Seven tried her best not to gawp at this sentient corpse as Ron's eyes darted lazily about the room, never truly able to steady on any one thing.

"Crawlers hit him with a killing curse a few weeks back." Bill explained, staring down at his brother with an emotion Seven couldn't quite decipher. If anything it seemed closest to resentment. "It didn't hit him directly which is how we guess he survived, but the curse hit a steel lamp-post first and then rebounded... He's been like this since."

Seven breathed a curse, taking a deep inhale. Every ounce of newly-found hope at the discovery of Ronald Weasley fast leaving her. He was yet another dead end.

  "Please — ," The mother pleaded, stepping closer to grasp Seven's hands within her own, "He's not getting better and we have no money and nowhere else to go — no one else to turn to." Tears brimmed in her honeysuckle eyes. "If you have anything — anything at all that could help him, or even just to ease his suffering a little... He's all we have left."

  "Mum." Bill cut their contact as he engulfed his far smaller mother in his arms. "It's okay." He soothed. "Everything will be okay."

  His mother broke; shattering in front of Seven, who watched helplessly as this woman came undone before her eyes. Every once of grief that she'd kept pent up inside came pouring out of her; tears unguarded and heart-drunk.

  Seven didn't have to search her purse to know that she had nothing. There was no magic in this world that could save her son now, Seven knew it, his brother knew it, and deep down, his mother knew it too. In fact, she knew the harsh reality more than any of them, which is why she clung so desperately to the impossible hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be salvation yet.