The Marauders: Year Four

The Burrow

The Burrow

Molly Weasley came down the stairs, waving her wand as she went, collecting alphabet blocks from between the bannisters, sending them into an open trunk behind the living room couch, where Arthur was asleep, snoring, with little Charlie sitting on his lap, flipping happily through the dragon pop-up book, clapping as a large purple dragon's tail curled about above the book. Charlie reached out his chubby, one-and-a-half year-old fingers, trying to catch it. He was leaning so far over that he nearly was about to topple... Molly rushed forward in a panic, "Arthur!" she exclaimed, and her husband sputtered, woke up just enough to see the precariously placed baby on his lap, and grabbed onto the back of Charlie's striped shirt, firmly keeping him in place.

Arthur pulled Charlie back against him, sitting up, knotting his fingers over the front of him. "Appears the wrong one of us fell asleep," he chuckled.

"You know that book doesn't put him to sleep," Molly scolded.

"But he loves it such a lot," Arthur said, smiling and bending down, placing a kiss on the wispy ginger hair that covered Charlie's big round head.

"But not for bedtime!" Molly said. She waved her wand and more of the toys that were strewn about the room collected themselves in the trunk behind the couch. Toy broomsticks and wooden trains that puffed real smoke, wooden owls and stuffed fantastic beasts... She bend low and scooped up the dragon book - raising a cry out of Charlie, who grabbed for the teal, scale-textured cover. Molly quickly replaced it with a stuffed Chinese Firebolt, and Charlie squeezed the toy dragon to his chest, hugging it tightly so that the dragon's head flopped against his sticky baby cheek.

Arthur smiled.

Molly put the book back on a squat little shelf, kneeling to look over the titles, and finally she selected one and sat herself down on the couch beside Arthur and Charlie, sitting so that her neck fit in the crook of Arthur's shoulder and baby Charlie sat on the surface created where their laps met, his back against each of them, his cheek pressing against his mummy's shoulder as she opened the book and Arthur looked over Charlie's shoulder at the pages, just as interested in the story as the baby was.

"Once upon a time," read Molly, "There was a boy who loved dragons. It was in a time when dragons filled the skies, like birds, and there were all sorts of dragons - big dragons... and little dragons... Most people in the village that the boy lived in thought he dragons a terrible thing. They hated dragons! But the boy thought them all brilliant... At night, he would look out his window and watch them fly past the moon... and the boy would dream of one day riding a dragon and becoming it's friend..."

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and Molly looked up.

Arthur shook back the sleeve of his jumper from his wrist to see his watch. "Who could it possibly be at this hour?" he asked, and he lifted Charlie up from his lap, depositing him carefully onto Molly's, and got up, pushing his way out of the deep couch cushions.

A couple errant garden gnomes, who had snuck in to hear the bedtime story, rushed to hide behind a basket of knitting as Arthur walked by.

Molly clutched Charlie to her, his baby hands reaching for the book, trying to turn the page to keep Molly reading, but she was staring at Arthur's back as he peeked through the peephole in the door. "Who is it, Arthur?" she asked.

He looked confused, "It's... it's some young boys..." he said and his brow knit together... then he recognized James, who looked such a lot like Charlus that Arthur's breath caught up in his throat, "It's the Potter boy!" He wrenched the door open and looked out at the three boys on the step.