Title: "Paint it Black"
Author: monimala
Fandom: HP
Rating/Classification: NAC, angst, ficlet, second person, Molly Weasley
Disclaimer: I bow down to the Great Goddess Rowling.
Summary: A post-"Order of the Phoenix" ficlet. Spoilery. So don't read if you haven't read the book yet.
De-gnoming the garden is a way to keep your hands busy. And your heart. Hefting their weight, feeling them kick and struggle before they go sailing over the hedge. And it is just enough removed from the bustling, bursting-to-capacity, Burrow. Where even amidst the explosions from the Twin's room, Ron pulling Ginny's hair teasingly, and Bill sending constant owls to his new girlfriend, they can still hear you crying.
You'll not allow your children your heartaches.
Visions best left behind in a moldy house of pureblood horrors. Memories best left locked in a desk drawer like a boggart. Things only a mother should bear. Things only a woman has to.
"This is for Harry," you whisper with your first fling.
"This is for my Ginny. My Ron."
"Fred."
"George."
"Charlie."
"Bill."
"This is for *Percy.*" You choke back a sob as you remember returned presents, thrown words that will not creep back over the hedge under the cover of darkness.
"This is for Arthur." Your husband, your life. Whom you very nearly lost.
The last gnome is fierce. Deformed. Ugly. As all gnomes are. Not the exhausted shadow of handsome. Not mildly rebuking, bordering on uncivil, chased with bouts of unbearable melancholy, as you grab it by its heels. It's furious, shaking its fists and swearing at you rudely before you launch it into the sky...and it lands somewhere far with the resounding thump of the dead.
"Th-this is for Sirius."
Whom you never had the chance to find.
--end--
June 21, 2003.