Family Ties
Chapter 3
"NO!" cried the three in unison.
"Dad! No please. Don't leave me!" cried Arty.
"Harry, take Arty to the corner and move aside. Let me try to revive him!" Hermione placed her over Ron's body after coming back to her senses. She tried the spell to jump-start the heart like the muggle equipment called defibrillator. She tried at least three times to no avail. Ron wasn't revived from her attempts. Harry stood holding Arty in his arms. Arty sobbed and Harry's composure was lost. He let his tears fall. He was partly in shock when Hermione went to him and all three held on to each other for comfort.
The rest of the Weasleys went into the room after they heard the screaming. Molly was distraught. She'd lost her husband and one son to the war, now she'd just lost another. She went to Ron and held him as she cried for her lost. Bill and Charlie held on to their mother's shoulder as they also cried. The twins and Ginny were at the foot of the bed crying. Ginny was crying more than the rest and kept screaming, "It should have been me!"
After 30 minutes in the room, they all said their goodbyes. Arty was the last one while Harry and Hermione stood aside to let him say good-bye to his father.
"What am I going to do without you, dad?" he asked as if expecting him to answer back. The rest was a blur for him. He felt numbed as Harry led him out with Hermione left behind to take care of Ron's body. She asked her superiors to be part of the team to ready him for burial.
At Grimmauld place, Harry and Arty just sat on the couch next to each other. Harry kept his arm around Arty as they stared at Ron's portrait on the wall. They were silent both knowing that they needed time to think about the events of the past hour. They both had to grieve in their own way.
After a while Arty fell asleep and Harry carried him up to bed. He wanted to make dinner so that Arty would have something to eat when he woke up, but he just felt like sitting and crying his eyes out. That's how Hermione found him when she arrived from St. Mungo's. He hadn't heard her come into the parlor, but he felt her as soon as she placed her hand on his shoulder.
She collapsed on the couch next to him and they continued their cry fest for a while longer.
"I'm going to miss him!" Hermione finally broke the silence.
"Me too, Hermione," Harry choked in between the hiccups. "How is he?"
"I helped get him ready for the burial. He looked almost normal. I kept expecting him to jump up and tell me it was all a joke. But he didn't."
"I need to know what happened? Do you know?"
"Not really. Everything happened so fast. All I know is that he saved Ginny from harm."
Little did they know that Arty had awakened and was listening to them quietly near the bottom of the stairs. He had been awakened suddenly by his dream. He'd gone down to ask Harry if his dad was all right and heard them talking about getting someone ready for a burial. After Hermione's last words, Arty came running in hysterically screaming.
"It's all her fault, my dad is dead! ISN'T IT? She killed him!"
"Arty, please calm down," Hermione admonished him gently.
"NO! I WON'T. MY DAD IS DEAD AND IT'S ALL AUNT GINNY'S FAULT!"
"Arty, please. It wasn't Ginny's fault," Hermione tried to reason.
"IT IS!" He screamed and ran back upstairs to Ron's room.
"Maybe I should go up there and talk to him," Harry offered. He was new at parenting and didn't quite know what to say or how to talk to an 11 year old, especially one who was in the process of grieving.
"No, let him let out some steam first. He won't be able to listen when he's angry and hurting. We should contact Ginny and ask her what happened." Hermione was back to her practical self, although inside she was still broken.
"Sure, let's try contacting the burrow." Harry tapped at the Weasley family portrait, which included him and Hermione. "Hello, Molly? Ginny? Anyone there?"
"Harry?" Ginny answered.
"Good, just the person we wanted to talk to. Do you want to come over and tell us what happened?" asked Harry.
"I don't know, Harry. My mum needs me right now," she lied. She didn't want to live through it again and she knew that telling the story would definitely be living through the worst memory in her life so far.
"Please, Ginny. Right now, Arty needs some explanation and I don't know what to tell him because I don't know what happened," Harry pleaded.
"All right, then. Give me a moment and I'll apparate over." She had to re-live the day anyway for her nephews sake.
After a few minutes, Ginny appeared in the apparating section of the parlor that Harry, Ron and Hermione had set up specifically for their families and themselves. They'd revolutionized a lot of the protection spell in order to protect their families. They'd even place protecting charms around the Granger's home and their office as well as their being by wearing an amulet that the three had enchanted together. But the protection can only work well enough to prevent them from dying with the avada kedavra curse but not from being seriously injured and near death, which is what happened to Ron.
They'd never tested it against the curse because they were unforgivable, so this was the first time it had been used since its inception. They knew that they had to place a stronger magical spell in order to waylay the worst part of the curse that attacks the heart and make it stop. In Ron's case it had weakened him tremendously, but what they couldn't understand was if the amulet did not work because of the spells or because of the injuries that Ron had already sustained. The difficult part of the particular experiment was that they couldn't test it again.
Ginny appeared looking as haggard as both Harry and Hermione. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy from all the crying. Inside was a different story. She felt worse. She felt the guilt over her brother's death. He was the closest to her because they were closest in age. He'd taken care of her at school and after. He'd even been the first to show support for her decision in marrying Malfoy. Of course he'd been angry at first for her actually marrying his, Harry and Hermione's hated person of all time, but he was the first to give in and had championed her relationship after a while. Even Harry and Hermione weren't easy to budge, but because Ron did, they did too.
She looked at them and she knew that they were hurting just as much as she was, but they didn't feel the guilt that she was going through. "I guess, I should start from the beginning?"
"That would be great," answered Harry who was becoming a little impatient.
"I don't know if Ron has told you about the information we'd been gathering for over two months now. I was working with him on the mission to uncover the identity for the leader for the English sector of the brotherhood. We were getting close, maybe too close. We were on our way back to meet an informant when we were ambushed. There were at least 10 people waiting for us near Knockturn Alley. We were doing well and there were only five left standing against the two of us, but Ron was hit a couple times with the crustacius curse and physically as well, I was hit only once and only sustained minor scrapes and bruises. They were all wearing facemasks so we couldn't make out their identity. Out of nowhere, Ron bursts out with a hex I've never heard before and knocked two of them down. The other two ran away, but one of them shouted the avada kedavra curse at me and Ron jumped in front to save me. He was on top of me, so the person apparated before he could check if we were actually dead or not."
"Were there any distinctive features you could think of from your attackers?" asked Harry who immediately hated himself for acting so impatient. He had forgotten that Ginny too was a victim in all this and he realized why Ginny felt it was her fault.
"I know they were all men. I didn't hear them talk so I wouldn't be able to recognize the voice, besides they could have used a spell to disguise their voices. Ron told me something before he fell unconscious, though. He said the word, `TRAITOR'. What do you think he means?"
"I think he may mean the brotherhood has a mole in our organization. Now the hard part would be to figure out whether the traitor is in the order or in the Auror organization." Hermione and Ginny let out a gasp. They'd never thought about one of their friends as being the traitor. All of the people in the Order were their friends. Most of the aurors were their friends too. Ginny had to work with them.
"Harry, what are we going to do?" Hermione asked.
"I have an idea. I will call a meeting for all Order members and invite the heads of the other sectors. But first we have to say goodbye to our brother properly. Thank you Ginny."
"For what? It was my fault Ron was killed."
"You can't say that, Ginny. You know if the situation were reversed, you would have done the same for him," Harry tried to ease her conscience.
"I guess you're right," Ginny sighed. "I'd better get back to the burrow. Mum might need me." She felt a bit better talking about what happened and what Harry told her.
After Ginny left, Harry went upstairs to try and talk with Arty. He wasn't going to tell him everything that Ginny recounted for them, but at least he could tell him that his father had not died in vain. He knocked on the door, but didn't hear an answer. He opened it a crack.
"Arty, may I come in?"
"I guess. It's your house after all." Harry sighed. He had to find a way to break through to him somehow.
"All right there?" He was just sitting on the bed staring straight at nothing or just the orange wall in front of him thanks to the Chuddley Cannon posters and such.
"What do you think?"
"Want to talk?"
"About, what?"
"Anything. Anything you'd like to talk about."
"I don't really want to talk about anything."
"All right. Mind if I talk then?" Arty shrugged his indifference. "May I sit down?"
"If you want."
"Can I tell you a story about someone?"
"Sure, if you want."
"Well, there was a little boy, about one year old. Both of his parents were killed by a horrible man, a truly evil man. He didn't have any family except for his mother's sister and her family. So he was brought there to be raised by them. The only problem was his family didn't like magical people; his aunt had disliked his mother and thought her strange. She knew that the little baby would be like his parents, a wizard. But she and her husband vowed never to tell the little boy what he really was." Each sentence was pulling Arty more and more into the story. He was intrigued by the situation. It was similar to his.
"Will they give me to my relatives?" he asked out of the blue. It seemed he'd probably been pondering it while he sat on the bed.
"Well, your situation is a bit different. Hermione and I have promised to take you and raise you." Arty looked a bit relieved and puzzled.
"The little boy, didn't he have godparents?"
"Well, you see. His godfather was wrongly accused of a crime and was imprisoned in Azkaban. He never knew about his godfather until he was 13. And even then he couldn't live with him because he was a fugitive."
"What's a fugitive?"
"Someone who is hiding from authorities."
"Well, if he didn't really do the crime, why couldn't he prove it?"
"Because the crime had happened in a public place where there were a lot of witnesses and then the person he knew who actually did the crime was thought to be dead. So it was hard for him to prove his innocence."
"Do you think grandma or any of my uncles will try to take me away from you and Aunt Hermione?"
"Well, I think your father left specific instructions in his will for you to live with Hermione and I?"
"Couldn't they do something to force you to give me to them?"
"They could try to contest the will, but usually they won't have any say if it was your father's wish. We'll have to wait until that's done."
"Okay. So, what happened to the little boy?"
"He lived with his relatives without complaints because he had no choice. He'd wear hand me down clothes from his cousin who was his age but bigger. He lived in a cupboard under the stairs. He was yelled at by his aunt and uncle and was sometimes heat up by his cousin and his cousin's friends. He had to cook, clean and do laundry for the most part. He was almost like their slave. Until he turned eleven then his world became a bit better."
"Really? What happened when he turned eleven?"
"Well, he received his Hogwarts letter. He met his first best friend in the whole world and then later his other one. He felt at home at Hogwarts and he felt he'd found the two most wonderful people and their families to fill the void left by his parents."
A knock came to the door interrupting the story. "Come in," Arty answered a little more cheery than before.
"Well, this is a sight. A bit of male bonding?" Hermione looked from one to the other with a slight smirk at Harry.
"Uncle Harry was telling me a story. It sounds wicked!"
"Well, do you mind if Uncle Harry finish his story later. It's time for supper and you haven't eaten much all day."
"Do I have to?" he whined.
"Yeah, come on squirt before I get hexed with a very painful ailment." He looked at Hermione knowingly. He remembered when he got Hermione mad and was hexed with boils all over his body for a few hours until he apologized for whatever he did. Although, he suspected it was only that time of the month. "I'll finish the story some other time."
"Promise?"
"Of course." Arty knew Harry had never failed to keep his promises so he knew to trust his word. Just then their stomachs started rumbling and looked at each other and laughed. It had been the first time that day they had been able to laugh.
A/N: Well, is Arty ANGSTY enough for you? He still needs to let some emotion out, but you have to wait. Thanks for the reviews and for all those who know somebody who read this and didn't like it because Ron dies, will you remind that person that this is part of a challenge and it was one of the requirements. Please see Chapter 1 for the list of requirements if you've forgotten.