The Little Ones

The Little Ones

The days are long, and weary now.

He spends his days sitting at a desk, reviewing reports on cases of Muggle-baiting and illegal enchantments. His days seem endless, filled with copious paperwork, and the occasional raid with the Aurors. All he has for company is an old man with one foot in the grave, and a plethora of random Muggle items, for a jar full of ballpoint pens to an electronic, handheld game console, with which he occasionally sneaks to an unused corner and plays for half an hour or so. The highlight of his day is when his Molly Apparates in, with a kiss, some lunch, and maybe letters from his children.

His nights are filled with waiting. That's what war is, really - mostly sitting about, waiting for your opposition to make a mistake. He catches up on paperwork, maybe plays with his confiscated handheld electronic game console a little more. But mostly he waits, watching the seconds tick by on an old, battered clock he put on the wall.

Sometimes, he wants to quit. Sometimes, he wants to leave. He's pureblooded; if he gives up now, he and his family will be left alone. But he never seriously entertains the thought. It's just that the waiting seems to drain his energy, his passion. Every second that slips by takes a piece of his joy. He is waiting for a silent enemy, one that he cannot feel and touch. Arthur doesn't fight the war on the field of battle; he fights it from his seat in the Ministry of Magic.

But everyone fights for a reason. For justice, for freedom, for moral righteousness and a new beginning. It's all very grand, this war of Light and Darkness. Much too grand for a man who shrieks with joy every time he beats his last record in Tetris.

The nights are bleak, and cold. The halls of the Ministry are shadowed, empty of the every day hustle and bustle of life. It's very lonely in his little office, filled with electronic bleeps and paperwork.

Every soldier wonders, at least once, at the seeming futility of war. They wonder why they even bother - isn't there a better way? Maybe they could compromise? They miss their warm beds, and full bellies, and the laughter of their friends ringing in their ears. Arthur is as much a soldier as Shacklebolt and Tonks.

But when uncertainty sets in - when fear grows and courage wavers - Arthur dips into his desk and pulls out a light blue notepad. He opens it, and he remembers why he took an oath to fight.

Flip. Page one.

North America, date unknown.

There was a girl across the pond, small for an eight year old. There's a sketch of her face, rough in its messy, ink smeared lines. Nothing more than a simple girl. It was the first story about Muggles that Arthur ever found, when he was eight, and it was what sparked his interest in them.

Her next door neighbour had molested her. It had sickened him, when he found out what molestation meant. How could a grown man, tall and hale, do such awful things to a little girl? He had read up on statistics of abuse like that. But that's not why the little girl was in his notepad.

She had gone to the Muggle police, and had the man arrested. Arthur had been confused; he knew many cases of sexual abuse had gone unreported, and he knew that it was the parents who pressed the charges if it was. Not the child. He wondered why she had done it.

He had continued reading the report.

The girl hadn't done it for herself. Even at eight, she knew that she would heal. She did it, she told wondering police, so that the bad man couldn't hurt anyone else. It was an act of selflessness, unmotivated by personal gain. She knew what had happened to her - she didn't want to see anyone else get hurt.

She taught Arthur strength.

Flip. Page Two.

Serbia, 1915.

The Serbs were being ruled by invading forces from Bulgaria and Austria. Their culture was slowly, but surely, being crushed by the outsiders, their native tongue being obliterated and their customs destroyed. Men, women, children - all were being slaughtered, both physically and symbolically, by the rising tide of fascism. They were victimised by the war; there was no chance for a normal childhood.

But they were determined not to be victims. The children of Serbia decided to survivors, instead.

With more cleverness and guile than many adults would consider children to be capable of, they sabotaged the imposed new system of foreign education, silently obliterating the new standard of reading and writing and schooling that their oppressors forced on them. With the intensity of a thousand suns, they fought back in any way they could. They held on to their traditions – and they did it without being prompted by their elders. They kept their culture, their way of life, firmly in hand as they stealthily pressed on, preserving their homeland in any way they could.

Some of them went further, and followed their fathers into battle. In the scribbles of Arthur’s notebook, written with love, there are tales of boys being captured and imprisoned alongside their fathers. Some were never heard from again.

And when he reads these tales, Arthur thinks of his children. He thinks Ron and Ginny, and Harry and Hermione (who are his children, in his heart), and he remembers the small Serbian youths who were willing to put everything on the line to preserve a way of life.

They taught Arthur that there’s more than one way to fight.

Flip. Page Three.

Romania, 1917.

She is one of the few who has a name. Maria Zaharia was only nine years old in 1917, when her body was discovered amoung the remains of her fellow Romanians. She had run to the field of battle to aid the soldiers in their fight against Germany during the first Great Muggle War.

Arthur still wonders what inspired her to go. A child, free and wild, who would run to a scene of carnage and death, to help grown men. She ran to help them, and paid with her blood. She is buried with them now, little Maria Zaharia.

Arthur still marvels at the Maria's of the world. When so many would cling to the childhood ideology of fun and sunshine, Maria ran to where the edge of the world lay, where darkness and light battled to the death.

But Arthur realises that children are steadfast, and firm. Their ideology is not one of bliss – it’s one of doing what’s right. When it comes to the line, children are untainted by the taint of ‘real life’ – they do what they have to do, because they have to do it. There’s no grey area.

Arthur looks at her, and thanks Merlin that there are people – old and young – still unaffected by the mechanisms of the world of adults. People still fight for the right reason. When he first came upon her story, he had been struck dumb for hours. The idea of running into battle was unheard of to him – he had only been nine years old, and had found a Muggle history book of the first Great Muggle War in his family’s attic. He read it again and again, and wondered at the bravery of a small Muggle girl who, with no magic, still stood her ground. He still wonders at her.

Maria Zaharia taught Arthur courage.

Flip. Page four.

North Korea, 1950’s.

A short, underfed Korean girl ran in the darkness. Her bare feet were torn and bleeding, cut by the remains of the corn field. The long, dark brown skirt of her hanbok billowed behind her. Strapped her to back was a small infant, bundled against the freezing winters of the country. Holding her hand was another boy, a little older and taller than she was, but just as malnourished. In his other hand was the arm of a young boy, skinny with hair that stuck up wildly. The girl held a bundle of sticky rice cakes and some ears of corn that she had stolen from a nearby station. They ran as silently as they could, the girl trying to keep steady so as to not wake the baby.

Freedom lay ahead. A darker future loomed from behind.

Arthur taps the page, looking at the rough sketch he drew so many years ago. He had first heard of this story in Advanced Muggle Studies, his sixth year. Intrigued, he had made his way to a Muggle library and found more books on the subject.

Korea had been repeatedly ‘conquered’ by its neighbours China and Japan. After the second Great Muggle War, they had been liberated, only to become divided as America took over the southern half and the USSR took over the north. Another war was on the horizon, and the Koreans had just gotten over the Japanese Occupation.

There was a military patrolled border between the countries. So the girl and her best friend packed a bag of food, and they ran. They ran for the border, and they ran for freedom. Along the way, they found the infant in an abandoned house, and the little boy was lost, his mother having been taken away by the Soviet police. They took them in and shared what meagre food they had between them.

And they continued to run.

Arthur often wonders what possessed them to take the other children with them. The infant and the boy could have simply been taken to a nearby shelter, or even a neighbour’s house. They would have been cared for; there were precautions being taken so that few people would starve. But instead the girl bundled the mewling infant on her back, and the older boy held the younger boy as they braved freezing rivers and journeys through tiger infested forests. They had a very slim chance of making it to the border and crossing it safely. There was a chance that they would be executed for it.

But they still ran.

Arthur didn’t understand why when he was younger. They would have been fed, and sheltered. They would have been protected by the soldiers. Why would they run? Surely it wasn’t that bad.

But now he thinks he has a better idea. These children had spent their entire lives under someone else’s thumb. And a cage is a cage, no matter how gilded the bars. There was freedom in the south – freedom, and a chance to live a good life, if they worked hard enough. These thoughts, mused Arthur, must have carried them through the pain of punctured feet, and freezing nights with empty bellies, and hours of running from soldiers and fellow countrymen. A chance at a good life was the best kind to take.

They taught Arthur determination.

Flip. Page Five.

Israel, 1970’s on.

Bombings were common place. Some days were filled with the screaming of the innocent as they burned alive. Children were used to destroy streets, buses, buildings.

But some of the children didn’t want to fight like that.

When a school bus was bombed, a flood of children raced to the wreckage. Coughing from soot and smoke, and getting burned from the flames, the children entered the debris and pulled their fellow students out. Covered in blood – both of the victims, and their own – they ran in and out, cradling the bodies of those in the bus and rushed them out, carrying them to ambulances, or if necessary, all the way to the nearest hospital. When buildings were bombed, they climbed into the perilous ruins and shifted the rubble, freeing their trapped friends.

And sometimes, trapped enemies.

Arthur has always been taught that good guys are good guys, and bad guys are bad guys. You help the good guys, and you hurt the bad guys. It’s a simple enough rule, and even simpler for a child, who has no idea that a grey area exists in the world. It must be even simpler for those who have lived in war for generations, he mused.

Yet it is the young ones who raced to the scene. They pulled their friends free; they pulled their enemies free. They rushed those of the same blood that they had been feuding with forever to medical care. They held their hand of those sworn to kill them, and heard their last words, and perhaps even performed the last rites. They comforted them as they died.

And what kind of man would comfort his enemies? Theirs is an ancient war, stretching for eons through countries. Arthur wonders if he could have the heart to hold the hand of a dying Death Eater, to take his final words to his or her loved ones. Would he have the strength? He hopes, in his heart of hearts, that he would. If these blood-sworn enemies could, he thinks that maybe he’s a good enough person to.

They taught Arthur compassion.

The night has hours left, before the sun begins to embrace the sky. Arthur leans back into his seat, sipping coffee and staring at his ragged notepad. The notepad has carried him through the years. He read it for comfort when things got bleak. He held it in his hand when he told his family that he was going into Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, instead of a higher paying job. He kept it in his robe when his fellow employees derided him and looked down their noses at him, not understanding why he is so taken with Muggles.

It is his secret comfort. In its slightly yellowed pages holds Arthur’s hope. In his eyes, he sees that children – children without the benefit of a wand, or special items – have stormed the world since the beginning of time, taking bad circumstances in hand and turning it over. They have given freely what many others have not; they have shown patience and courage where grown men and women would tremble to walk.

Arthur doesn’t know why everyone else fights. He doesn’t know why Moody does, or Dumbledore, or Shacklebolt or McGonagall. He only knows why he sits in his office, night after night, watching the seconds tick by.

He fights for those who gave so much, and paid dearly. He fights for those who changed the world in the smallest ways, with laughter and strength and joy. He fights for those who fought for him before.

Arthur Weasley fights for the little heroes.

The Little Ones.

Fin.