Good Enough for Gryffindor

Good Enough for Gryffindor

It was nice to be alone with the children for a few days - not that he didn't miss Molly, of course, but Arthur rarely had the chance to spend time with them. Today, he had taken them out for a walk in the hills and a picnic. Then they had gone to the Muggle pub in the village and he had treated them to fish and chips.

It had been a pleasant day for them all, even with the twins stealing Percy's new wand and leaving the results of their spells along the path. They had been busy over more than a mile before Arthur found out about it. He had scolded them, of course, but it made him proud. There weren't many nine year olds capable of transforming toadstools into Muggle garden gnomes and back without a formal education.

Now they were all tucked in bed, even Bill and Charlie, who had, per Molly's instructions, been allowed to read half an hour longer. Arthur was back in the living room and he poured himself a drink. The heat of the day had given way to an increasing thunderstorm and the rain was splattering snugly against the window. Up in the attic, the ghoul half-heartedly threw things around. Nothing made Arthur more at peace with the world as a quiet evening like this, with one of those excellent Muggle detective novels he had been tracking down and taking curses off. Now that they weren't making Muggles think their neighbours had committed a crime and look obsessively for clues anymore, he found that they showed very well how the Muggle mind worked.

He was deeply immersed in his book when a noise from upstairs made him lift up his head. Was that a child crying? Was that Ron or Ginny, or maybe even one of the twins? With a sigh, he stood up and went to check, because it certainly wasn't the ghoul.

Once on the landing, he realised that the muffled sobs came from Ginny's room. He knocked on the door.

"Ginny? Are you all right?"

The sobbing stopped immediately, but Arthur was not fooled. He knew that Ginny would never let anyone see she was crying, unless the boys were pestering her and she wanted her mother to scold them. He noticed that a cold drought came from under the door. He opened it and peered inside his daughter's room.

Ginny lay rolled up in her bed, entirely covered by her blanket. The window and the shutters were wide open.

Arthur rushed to close them and sat down on the bed. He took the shaking, hiccupping girl in his arms. She burst out in tears.

"I'm...I'm never going to be good enough for Gryffindor," she wailed.

Arthur frowned. This was not what he expected.

"Why are you saying that, darling?"

"Because...cause...I'm still afraid of the thunder!"

She paused to catch her breath.

"I thought...I thought if I would open the window I would learn how not to be afraid of the thunder, but then it became louder and I got scared again! Now I'm never going to be in Gryffindor!"

"That's not true! Why are you saying that?"

"But that's what Fr... what Fred said. He wanted to do Dark Magic on me with Percy's wand, and then I ran away, and then he laughed at me and he said that they didn't take pansies and girls who were afraid of things in Gryffindor."

Arthur sighed. Was there any limit to the mischief of the twins?

"Look, you mustn't believe everything Fred tells you. He just wants to make you feel bad," he said. "Gryffindors are supposed to be brave, but that doesn't mean you can't be afraid of anything. You know, your Uncle Fabian? There was no braver person than him, but he wouldn't get near a spider. And your Uncle Gideon couldn't even look at a picture of a snake without getting pale."

"Were they the ones who died?" asked Ginny.

"Yes. They died very, very bravely to keep us safe."

"Oh."

Ginny mulled this over, staring at her feet. Arthur didn't break the silence. He wondered what she was thinking. Was she old enough to understand how important their sacrifice had been?

Then the thunder struck louder than ever and Ginny gripped her father tightly, so Arthur decided to tell her the adventures of another great Gryffindor, Albus Dumbledore. How he had fought dragons to take their blood to study it, how he had duelled with Dark Wizards... But he also told her how he had jumped up, one day, in front of the whole school, when he had, by mistake, eaten the beetles that someone had Transfigured into sweets. He told her how silly Dumbledore could be during his start of term speech and how all the teachers got embarrassed when he started to sing the school song. Finally Ginny, too much entertained by the antics of the old Headmaster of Hogwarts, forgot all about the thunder and, in the middle of a story of how Dumbledore had rescued one of his friends from a hoard of angry Quintapeds by making them tap-dance, she fell asleep in his arms.

As he made sure that his little girl was warm enough, Arthur wondered why she had felt she had to open the window during a thunderstorm to get into Gryffindor. He marvelled at the ideas his children came up with to understand the world around them. He was proud at their determination to be Sorted into Gryffindor, even though it meant waiting in anxiety for the children's first letter from Hogwarts. He just hoped that he was putting them on the right track and that they would become good witches and wizards.