Creation

-- Carl Sandburg, Smoke & Steel

She does not know why she thinks of Arthur Weasley so much now.

He is merely a seventh year that she bumps into occasionally; Gryffindors and Ravenclaws are not in the habit of associating much. But he is colorful and smiles at her and the blue eyes behind his glasses sparkle.

Is it always or and never and?

Could she not have them both and laugh and be damned and stay joyous and yet feel so needed by two young men, both so different?

Lucius might know, but he is busy now, busy with something that he will not explain to her. So she does her homework, ignoring that there are no friends to sit with her and joke with her as there used to be.

She wants Lucius to stop whatever fool's errand he is running.

She wants to hold Arthur in her arms and crawl into those blue, blue eyes.

Yet somehow, drifting just before sleep, she wants to be a little girl again; she wants to be Molly Nelson, all freckles and pigtails.

But when she wakes she cannot remember all this, and is left with the residues of innocence on her cheeks.

He is going to have to choose one or the other, soon.

Either he is going to have to give up Molly, whose skin is still milky white and soft to the touch, and her eyes still sad, but her smile bright, or his Master.

He knows that Molly carries his child, now, and that she will weep when he turns her down.

But his Master's mark burns on his arm ferociously.

And he, the Lucius Malfoy who vowed ferociously to love the red-headed girl and to never let her go, doesn't think he's strong enough to do anything but turn away.

She doesn't really notice when he gives her the glass of wine.

She sips it slowly, enjoying the burning feeling in her throat and the sweet, sweet aftertaste. He puts his arm around her, kissing her sweetly burning mouth, playing with her hair. All of this is so gentle that she would question, but the wine makes her drowsy and she can only look, smiling, up at him, enjoying his ministrations.

He strokes her stomach now, an odd caress, but, upon kissing his cheek with her wine-sweetened lips, she tastes a tear. What could make him, her white avenging angel, cry so? He has always seemed so strong within her, holding her; it was always she who cried out.

And so she begins to cry, sobbing, not knowing why. And then her lips form a song, and she sings through her tears and then his mouth is on hers, gentle as if for the first time and they sing together while making barely a sound.

She thinks, though her mind is a wine-sweetened muddle (how many pretty glasses is she knocking to the floor as he undoes her buttons on the bed?) that this must be the end.

It is not until she wakes up the next morning with so much blood on her robes that she realizes that not all endings are happy.

Arthur Weasley finds her collapsed in the Common Room, the blood staining her white skin, and a head muddled from sweet wine the night before. He carries her to the Hospital Wing, unaware of Lucius Malfoy watching him, somehow pleased at what remains.

Molly Nelson stirs slightly in his arms, wondering if, how, when she will go on with life. But if this man carries her in his arms, maybe she will open her eyes and see what sad song she has woken up to.