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Chapter Text

The first time Ginny Weasley sings, her brother stops her.
George's face is white as chalk, as if all the blood has just been- spirited away. His voice is low, grim misery lacing it with seriousness for once. She laughs, pokes in the ribs until the ruddy hue returns to his face-
-she isn't worried, isn't shattering a bit at the sight of his bloodless, joyless face-

She picks up the songbook Mum found for her and walks away.

He refuses to hear her voice drifting up from behind the orchard,sweet as the lark that twines beside it.

And if sometimes he can't quite block it out, if he hears a harp joining the girl and the lark-
Well. They're all mad now.
One more for the set, he supposes. The madness he made.
and what he doesn't say is that the madness made him.

*

The first time Charlie sees a dragon, he screams.
The Romanian keepers look at him, already marking him an English schoolboy who doesn't know what he's in for. It's in their gaze, in the whispers- except not whispers, not really, because they are dragon keepers and they do not lower themselves to anyone.
They are wrong. Because-
-the great beasts emerged and he laughed, wild and fey.
Who can harm me, wingless worm?
But then
it breathed.
And suddenly everything was gone.

He learns. It takes time.
But when he runs at a dragon with a yell ready in his throat and pride powering his steps, he pretends he doesn't see the hound that follows.
They say madness is hereditary. Charlie Weasley knows that better than most.

*

The first time Bill sees his scars, in Fleur's little silver backed mirror she's not supposed to show him, he doesn't.
Or rather- he doesn't see the scars given to him by Greyback.
He sees-
-one hand. A disability.
But only if you make it one.

William Weasley is strong.
He never stopped to consider what might happen if he isn't strong enough.
But then Mad-Eye is dead, and so is the king.
And nothing seems to matter anymore.
Except-
Revenge.

William Weasley knows what he wants, and he takes it.
It doesn't stop the voices in his head.

*

The first time Percy knows he is dark, he sits on his bed and cries.
That mortal woman does not come. She does not sit at the edge of his bed and look up at him with sparks in her eyes.
Shh. Shh. You are not marred-
Only poor.

When Percy sits in the worn green chair, desk in front of him bearing a shiny new plaque.
Fudge's twittering voice fades, and he allows himself a moment to breathe out.
He sits in his castle, and merely-
Thinks.
Because suddenly in his perfectly crafted mind there's a little niggling doubt, and seed of fear what has he done?
The next day, his father gets into the lift with him. They don't say a single word.

Percival Weasley loves his family.
So he sits on his bed, and cries.
pretending not to see the dark haired hunter beside him as she comforts him.
She's not there, anyway. Not real.

In a logical mind, there is no room for madness.
Percival Weasley knows this.
He doesn't.

*

The first time Ron plays chess, he's lost.
Lost, he thinks in what? He makes the mistake of asking this question.
His mother ruffles his hair distractedly with a that's nice, dear- what she says to every one of them except Ginny, her favourite-
-he is his father's favourite, the mirror, and as he narrows his eyes he hears laughter laced with flame.

When Harry sits across from him, frowning at the chessboard, he asks him something.
"Do you ever feel like the world is ending?"
Harry looks up, confused. No one ever has the time for Ron's questions, or perhaps they find truths too terrible to be told.
Ron sighs, and kills his king.

The secret to power is truth, twisted.
The secret to chess is lies.

Ronald Weasley is very good at lying. But once-
-he told the truth, and they were afraid.

*

The first time George has to live in a world without Fred, he's angry. Angry at the world, at Harry, at Tom.
At himself.
He wants to die.

And once, perhaps, he did.

Chapter Text

Inside Ginny’s head are endless songs she doesn’t remember learning, notes on staves she can’t recall writing. Laments with names she’s never known, glory and laughter trapped in a language that sings inside her, calling, calling, alien and familiar, new and old.

Harry doesn’t understand. She tries to explain it to him once, curled up on the sofa watching some Muggle show he and Hermione keep referencing. He watches the man on screen open a fob watch and remember and says, half-laughing, that maybe she’s too into this.

Perhaps Ginny is mad. She doesn’t know. What she does know is this:

When they go down to the seaside for a family holiday, she hears something else besides the wind and the waves. It's not music. It's not the crashing of the surf against the shore, or Fred’s laughter.

It's screaming.

Traitor, the waves scream, kinslayer, murderer, you are not welcome!

In the roars of the waves Ginny hears cries and gurgles, sees flashes of red, hears wailing and tears and endless grief.

She doesn’t swim that day. Instead she sits on a bench at the top of a white cliff and sings.

At first, she doesn’t realise she’s doing it. But then the waves screaming is quieter, almost calmer, and for a moment she sees a flash of light, deep down in the blue waters, as her voice soars in the language she knows and yet doesn’t.

On the way back in Dad’s old Ford she sits in the corner with her notebook, scribbling down the words that quieted the sea at the top of a cliff, and others, songs that will blaze or weep, notes to make rain fall.

Years later, running through the corridors of Hogwarts with Neville in front of her and Amycus Carrow at her back, she sings speed into her steps, voice rising above the symphony of hatred that sounds behind her. Ginny Weasley turns on her heel and raises her voice in lament, makes notes like tears fall on the Carrow that tries to hurt her, forces him to weep. Then she grabs Neville’s arm and they bolt into the Room of Requirement.

Her notebook she wrote in on that trip to the beach is tucked at the bottom of her bag. She brings it out, dips her quill in ink, and writes.

Ginny's robes are her armour, her spells her sword, song her shield. And if, some days, she feels a hand on her arm-

-a flash of red hair-

-and a mourning, long and endless- well.

Ginevra Weasley has armour and none, bloody swords and pain-soaked wands. She will not die alone again.

Chapter Text

The first time Bill gets out of trouble with a teacher is in his first year. It's homework- he turned it in late, and standing in front of McGonagall’s desk he’s so, so scared. She looks at him over the rims of h er glasses and demands an explanation. He starts to stutter, but then words he doesn’t remember knowing are falling out of h is mouth, and his voice seems smoother, consoling and smoothing over, making excuses and quietly persuading his professor that it doesn’t matter, that he shouldn’t be punished.  

Professor McGonagall blinks twice. Then she lets him go.  

Later, he doesn’t know how he does it. The silver-tongued swiftness is hiding in the ba ck of his mind and with it lie hours of diplomacy he never conducted, negotiations he never took part in. Bill thinks of it as a weapon, as he grows up, standing in a darkened kitchen with veterans and scars- he feels at home . These meetings are familiar, this quiet kind of desperation that pervades the air. The thrum of vivid energy to counteract the stifled despair.   

In Gringotts, the goblins, to begin with, do not trust him. He accepts that, and a voice in the back of his head murmurs help them, show them, you may need them later. Bill slides into ancient tomb s and makes jokes and learns Gobbledygook- the swearwords first, then kindnesses. One day he looks in a mirror and sees different eyes look back at him, grey stars shining out of a pale face framed with fire.  

Bill stops looking in mirrors.  

When Greyback tears his claws down his face a strange, old, part of Bill wants to laugh, wants to challenge him, thinks wildly is that the best you can do? Waking up, he finds himself in a new world. Mum seems to be perpetually on the verge of tears, but Fleur has a fierce gleaming joy on her face as she dabs the ointment on his scars. Bill thinks, in an absentminded sort of way, that perhaps everyone expects him to be more shocked than he is now. But he can’t help it. The scars that rip across his face are normal, part of him. He doesn’t ever say that he felt more lost without them.  

It's the little things. Sometimes, standing at the kitchen table making battle plans, he forgets that i t’s Voldemort they’re fighting, forgets that his grandfather died of old age and not in the doorway of his father’s stronghold. He looks for a figure with long dark hair braided with gold instinctively before Bill realises he’s not there. Twins with star-bright eyes run in and out of the edges of his vision when he’s very tired, and the fire in the kitchen seems to re ach for him.  

Setting his teeth , he avoids the swords that he was so unaccountably good at in Egypt. What matters is his siblings.  

He will not let them die again.