Marauders - Always - Part One

Be Careful Charlie

Of the Weasley children, it was obviously Bill who was taking the loss of their uncles Gideon and Fabian the very hardest. In the week since their uncles had stopped coming 'round, Auntie Dorcas had been over every day talking to their Mum and the pair of them had great weeping sessions in the kitchen late into the night, punctuated by the sound of the crying babies - Hannah Prewett's tears filling the gaps between baby George and baby Fred, who never seemed to stop at it.

Bill tried giving them toys and rattles, handing back their bubbas when they threw them from their prams, and even tried at singing some of the songs he could remember them singing to Charlie and Percy, but the twins just wouldn't stop at it. Charlie took to covering his ears and nervously spouting off dragon facts in a loud tone trying to drown it out, and Percy fake cried big yawning sounds trying to get more attention on himself than on the babies. This left very little patience or attention for Bill.

"Please, please Bill, mummy needs you to be a good boy for me, please," Molly begged, her hands shaking on the edge of crying for the third time as she tried to make dinner. "Please take one of your brothers and keep him entertained. Please. Just one." She'd been hoping he'd take Percy, but he took Charlie and dragged the smaller boy upstairs to their room, the one they shared on the third floor.

Charlie sat on his bed muttering dragon facts he was reading out of his book, which lay before him on the bed nearest the window, which overlooked the duckpond and the back yard far below, just past the short outcropping of the roof of the floor below.

Bill was trying to ignore his brother, laying on his back and staring at the ceiling, thinking about how unfair it was that he'd lost his uncles and got stuck having to help take care of his siblings. He wondered if Mum was ever going to stop crying, if things would be normal again because they certainly hadn't this week. Everyone had been either crying or yelling all the time, and even Uncle Bilius couldn't make a joke. He hadn't sung Henery The Eighth even once since the scary man from the Ministry with one leg and half a face had come to tell Mum the news of what happened to uncles Gideon and Fabian.

There was a nudge at Bill's side then and he looked to see Charlie, holding his book, which he'd nudged Bill with.

"What?" Bill asked crossly.

"You wanna read my dragon book?" Charlie asked.

"Not even a little bit," Bill said grumpily.

"But it helps, when you're sad, to read it because it's very nice and there are pictures of all the dragons. See this one here is the Ukranian Cornsilk and the majority of them are female because the males are blue and in ancient times there wasn't any way to make blue dye except by the Cornsilk's scales and the muggles paid top price when they saw blue dyes. The closest before that was purple and the Cornsilk scales make a soft cornflower bl--"

"Shut up, Charlie! I don't care about your stupid dragons, alright? You're so annoying. All you ever do is talk about dragons, all the time, it's like you're stupid and you don't know there's anything else happening except dragon stuff all the time! I hate dragons, okay? I honestly hate them! Are you even aware that Uncle Gideon and Uncle Fabian are dead? Do you know what that means? That they're dead? It means they're never ever coming back. It means they're never gonma tuck us in and tell us jokes and it means Uncle Giddy isn't ever gonna teach us quidditch and Uncle Fabian isn't ever gonna teach you how to swim. It means they aren't breathing and their hearts are stopped and their bodies are locked up in those ugly boxes and they're buried and they're gonna rot away and be nothin'. They won't even exist anymore!"

Charlie stared wide-eyed at his brother and Bill glowered right back at him, daring him to say something - anything - so that Bill would have a reason to go on shouting because it felt so good to shout. He reckoned he understood why everyone was shouting around the house and why the babies cried so loudly and why Mum had screamed when that scary man from the Ministry had said he was so sorry for her losses.