[Fic] "Shame" -- Harry Potter

[edenfalling]

Um. *sheepish look* This is really for last week's word, but I couldn't think of anything to write at the time. So this isn't technically a 15-minute fic, in that I already had this idea and the first paragraph, but the word kicked me into finishing it, and I wrote it pretty quickly.

So we'll just not fuss over technicalities, right?

Good.

Anyway, this is Ron, remembering one evening from his childhood.

[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]

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Shame
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I think I was five when I realized -- that'd make Fred and George seven, Percy nine, and Bill and Charlie still at Hogwarts. Or maybe I was six and Bill was Head Boy. I'm not sure. It's hard to track time like that when you have five brothers. All I really know is that Ginny was no use yet, and was always off with that stupid Sarah Peasegood anyway, so I spent a lot of time alone.

I'd been out in the back garden, putting out bits of bread for the gnomes and then kicking them -- got a few over the fence, even -- and I came in to get another slice. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, talking, so I hung in the doorway and listened.

"What could I say, Molly?" asked Dad, leaning on the kitchen table. "Stubbins is getting so old he can't remember his glasses are on his face half the time, but Mercer can't fire him because he's the Minister's great-uncle -- and somebody has to catalogue the artifacts."

Mum laid her hands on the table. "I know, Arthur, but couldn't the woman see her way to giving you at least another few Sickles per day to make up for it?"

"Out of what budget?" asked Dad, running his hands through his hair. He sighed and sat down, taking hold of Mum's hands. "Even now, nobody really cares what happens to Muggles. They get bitten by an attacking teapot, and everyone says it's their own fault for not having the magic to charm it to sleep."

Mum tugged her hands free and buried her face in them. "I know, I know. And somebody has to do something, and if no one else will, you will. I know. But Arthur, there's only so much I can bring in with the tutoring -- Cedric Diggory will be off to Hogwarts soon enough and then only Sarah Peasegood will be left of the paying students.

"And the gnomes are getting at the potatoes again," she continued, talking into her hands, "and even in the best years there's not much to sell in town. Arthur, even if I save everything I can, I still have to buy thread to alter each boy's old clothes to fit the next one, and they eat more and more as they get bigger, and we'll have to get them wands and supplies eventually. Where I am supposed to get the money?"

Dad took a deep breath, like the ones he took before he had to punish us sometimes. "I'll talk to Mercer tomorrow," he said. "I'm sure she'll understand. It'll work out, Molly." He reached across the table and patted her shoulder. "It'll work out."

I left the kitchen then -- didn't really want any more bread, or want to kick any more gnomes. So we were poor. So that was why we were always wearing each other's clothes, and we didn't throw out our table with the wobbly legs, and we kept chickens in our yard that we actually ate now and then. That was why Cedric Diggory's house was bigger than ours, and they had real white lace curtain while ours were ugly brown and ragged at the ends. That was why Sarah Peasegood's family never ran low on Floo powder while we had to keep a careful eye on the jar by the fireplace.

I remember thinking they probably laughed at us, at the way Dad was always working and never got paid as much as Mum thought he ought to be, and the way Mum taught them figures out in the garden while she weeded the carrots. They didn't have to watch their mothers fall to pieces like I'd never thought Mum could. They didn't have to watch their fathers try to pretend everything would be all right.

Well, someday it would be all right. Bill and Charlie were really smart and good at magic, and they'd make lots of money when they left Hogwarts. And I decided I was going to be even better than they were. I'd do something, somehow, and then we'd all be rich.

Mum wouldn't have to work all day in the garden and clean the house and take in neighborhood children to teach. Dad could get lots of other people to help him keep nasty magic things away from Muggles.

And it really would all work out.

It would.

I'd make sure of it.

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Inspired by the 6/20/04 15minuteficlets word #60: father

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The incident recounted herein came from a much earlier 15-minute fic, my first, actually, called "Eden." (Which is the source of my username, actually, in case anyone's interested.) I'm still not completely sure it really needed elaboration, but it nagged at me for a while -- as Hermione's comparable incident has been doing, though it got itself written up much sooner as my in-complete-concept-revision piece "Fire" -- so I gave in and wrote the damned thing.

Comments

[redwolfoz.livejournal.com]

I like Ron's discovery of his family's reality and his determination to change it. Very sweet.

[edenfalling]

Thanks! :-)