Lettuce Off Speakine Words

Molly Weasley was not a happy woman at the moment. No, she felt rather the opposite as she held firmly to the doorframe of the twins bedroom. The two boys were looking up at her with what they hoped would be innocent smiles.

"What did I tell you before I left?" Her voice was accelerating to a screech every second.

"Um..." Fred squirmed under the heated glare she was throwing him.

"I believe I recall telling you not to make a mess- in fact I think I asked that you have your room clean by the time I got home!" she said, tapping her foot impatiently on the rotting wooden floor.

"Yeah, but mum..." George began, but shut his mouth abruptly when her eyes fell on him. There was fire behind those eyes. Yes, Molly Weasley was steamed.

"No explanation can rectify this," she said. "Not only did you make a mess, but where on earth did you get all of this?!" She waved her hand around the room, gesturing to the mounds of purple slime that were splattered across the floor and on the walls. Her eyes fell on a tipped cauldron.

"Did Bill tell you that you could use his cauldron?" Molly asked. The twins gave each other a sideways glance.

Molly's lips tightened, and she swept into the room, retrieving the cauldron and several oddly shaped bottles and swept just as quickly back to the door. She gripped the doorknob and looked back at them over her shoulder.

"You'll have enough time to clean this up because I'm not letting you out of this room for the rest of the night. Percy will bring you leftovers later on." They groaned at this, leftovers in their house came in small portions.

"This had better be all cleaned up by the time I wake up tomorrow (and you know what an early riser I am) or you'll be denoming every day of every summer until you leave home." She pointed her wand at a corner and muttered a few words. Two mops, a broom, a couple of rags, and a bucket of water appeared there. With that, she slammed the door and entered the hallway, setting the cauldron and bottles on the landing to be dealt with later.

Standing up and dusting herself off, she knocked on the door right in front of her and entered when she heard the usual "come in".

"Bill," she said pointedly.

The seventeen-year-old lay on his bed reading a magazine and waving his feet to the Wireless Radio. At his mother's voice he put the magazine down and looked at her.

"Yes, Mum?" he asked.

"I thought I told you to watch the younger children while I took Ginny and went to the library in town?" she asked. Ginny liked to look at the children's pop-up books there, so she usually left her to a child's table in the corner while she searched for whatever it was she needed.

"You did, Mum. I didn't hear a peep out of them, so I figured I could come up and read for a while," he said.

Apparently this was the wrong thing to say, as Molly's face was beginning to turn red. "You just left them? Did it ever occur to you that quietness is sometimes the most suspicious of behaviors? Especially in Fred and George's case! They took your cauldron I hope you know, and just about blew up their room." Bill could almost see steam rising from her ears and he winced.

"Sorry, Mum. I thought Charlie could take care of it if he saw anything fishy going on. He was down near that side of the house."

Percy walked by at that moment and stopped, a smug expression spread on his face. "Mum, that's a lie. Charlie took Ron out to teach him how to play Quidditch almost as soon as you were gone." Percy was looking even more smug when he finished. Bill shot him a dirty look and held his breath waiting for his punishment, but Molly was paying him no mind at the moment.

"WHAT?!" she screamed. "Charlie knows that I'm not letting Ron on a real broom yet!" She rounded on Bill. "You older boys are suppose to set an example! I'll deal with you later, Bill." She sounded menacing as she turned on her heel and marched to the kitchen where Charlie and Ron were playing exploding snap at the table.

"YOU! Oh! Charlie, I am so disappointed in you!" Charlie shrank in his chair and Ron's smile faded.

"I'm going to kill Percy!" muttered seven-year-old Ron.

"Don't be mad at him because he's the only one in this house who obeys my rules!" she shrieked. Both boys grimaced; it was not a good idea to make their mother angry.

Molly brought her fingers to her temples, closing her eyes and massaging the skin in small circles.

"I can't deal with you right now," she muttered. "Just...go to your rooms and I'll see to you in a few minutes." Eyes still closed; she pointed straight to the stairs. She heard the scrape of two chairs being moved followed by cautious footsteps.

She took one of the chairs and sat down, trying hard not to lose her temper and let her magic flare without meaning to. When that happened usually she would be left with a broken vase or window to deal with, and that made her all the more angry.

Noticing the kitchen window open, she moved to close it when she heard a soft hum from the back garden and spied her daughter's bright red hair. Ginny was sitting happily, her dress spread out on the grass and her legs tucked beneath her. She had made herself a crown of flowers and was now working on what Molly assumed to be a flower necklace. She sighed softly and narrowed her eyes at the stem she was working with, her tongue sticking slightly out of the side of her mouth. She smiled satisfactorily when the necklace was completed and placed it over her head.

Molly smiled faintly but her smile turned into a frown when she saw Ginny reach down into the earth and pick up a worm to examine it. She was about to run outside and tell her to drop the dirty thing when Ginny did something that surprised Molly. She placed the worm on the ground and began to sing. It was a little off tune, but lovely all the same.

"Mother, I love you; mother, I do," she sang. Molly gasped slightly, and leaned forward to hear more. "Angels have sent me to live here with you. When I am near you I love to hear you singing so softly that you love me too. Mother, I love you. I love you, I do." Molly smiled to herself. Ginny was now picking the petals off flowers as she continued her song. "Mother, I love you; mother, I do. I want to help you because I love you. I want to mind you; I want to find you happy and smiling because I love you. Mother, I love you. I love you, I do."

Molly looked down at her shoes, feeling guilty at how she had over reacted to most of her children today. They were, after all, children. She remembered becoming preoccupied with things she shouldn't have and disobeying her parents when she was younger, she certainly didn't have a record attention span back then. She resolved then to try and cut them all some slack once in a while.

She was about to head out the door when Ginny began to sing another song.

"Lettuce off speakine words to another... la la la la," she sang at the top of her lungs. Molly chuckled and walked outside.

"Ginny, where did you learn that song?" she asked.

Ginny beamed up at her mother. "A little girl in the library sat next to me at my table today. We're friends. Her name is Liza and she taught me some songs while you were looking at cook books."

"I'm glad you had a good time. Let us... oh, I get it now." Molly grinned.

"Mummy?" Ginny questioned.
"Let us oft speak kind words, you meant," she said, looking down at her daughter and realizing the irony of those words.

"Oh... Yeah, that's right!" Ginny grinned.

"Let's go inside and have a talk with your brothers, okay? I think they're kind of sad." She gathered Ginny in her arms and together they walked back into the house, Ginny as the unknown hero.