Fools

Gideon and Fabian Prewett were indeed Molly's brothers, but their history is not particularly significant in terms of the overall plot, except that their deaths do provide some explanation and excuse some of Mrs. Weasley's fears and her overprotective stance towards Harry. - J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

"I see them d-d-dead all the time!" Mrs. Weasley moaned... "All the t-t-time! I d-d-dream about it... I'm just s-s-so worried..."

"Molly, that's enough," said Lupin firmly. "This isn't like last time... we're much better off then we were last time, you weren't in the Order then, you don't understand..."

"No one ever lived after he decided ter kill 'em... an' he'd killed some o' the best witches and wizards of the age - the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts-" - Hagrid

"It's a shame, they were such handsome boys..."

Gideon had an alright face, little-boy round and freckle sprinkled, among them one perfect circle, browner than the rest on the curve of his cheek while Fabian had one just like it on the very tip of his identical, slightly upturned nose. An identifying mark his mother had noted with a sigh of relief before Fabian's blonde-red hair darkened to an auburn brown while Gideon's stayed the strawberry shade that looked dirty blonde in the light. He would claim it glistened like gold; it didn't really but it had a soft, fine quality and he was clever enough to cut it so it hung about his face, a leonine mane.

He grew into a narrower face, squared at the sides and lean in the jaw, with a dimple in his right cheek that showed when he grinned, which he always did, carrying a quirky sort of winning charm and relaxed demeanor that won him friends and dates his relatively good looks couldn't have assured. Fabian was warmer and friendlier and talked equally to everyone and a certain sort of girl liked him better, but most of them were head over heels for Gideon before they could even properly tell them apart.

When Gideon was six, a friend of his grandfather's attending his birthday party, creaky with age and relying on a walking stick, nudged Mr. Prewett. "He's got the look of an Auror, that boy of yours."

Molly Prewett overheard him, the delighted, shriveled old man with wisps of hair clinging to his wrinkled dome beside her tall strong father, and shuddered with apprehension. Her father laughed, beaming, but shook his head dismissively. "Well, his mother reckons he looks like trouble, but we'll see who turns out right."

They hadn't been boys in a long time, but Arthur Weasley weakly smiled and bowed his head in an almost nod.

Molly stood beside him as the wizards and witches awkwardly shuffled into a line, but it was Arthur they turned to as they approached, gaze skittering away from his wife. Her eyes were redder than her hair and she uttered soft sobs from minute to minute. She bounced the baby on her hip, a guard between her and the world, keeping her face buried in his fringe of sweet-smelling red hair

Ron's hair hadn't been dry in three days.

A strapping black man Weasley didn't know was next in line. "Sorry for your loss," he said somewhat brusquely, nodding in a sympathetic, friendly way. "They were great boys. Good men."

"Yes," Arthur said slowly, wearily, maintaining his continual head bob. "Good men."

Fergus Fawcett came nearer to dying than any one player in the forty years of Hogwarts Quidditch history when Gideon intentionally hit him in the nose with a Bludger.

Fabian had set his broom on fire earlier in the game but it had been doused quickly enough, with penalties properly assessed, but Gideon's hit was a fair one.

It sent the bone splintering up in such a direction into his Ravenclaw brain that it was only a quick action from seventh year Ravenclaw Chaser Vance that saved his life when in an angry attempt to Stun Gideon she had hit Fawcett by mistake, effectively freezing him by which time Pomfrey was on the field and Hooch had him.

In the end he only had a concussion and Gideon was lauded as a hero.

It was a brutal, bloody hit that had the crowd roaring and was talked about for weeks as a real conversation piece.

Fawcett felt embarrassed, as if he was proved somehow not tough enough.

Some nights Gideon still felt ill when he thought about it.

"It's- we'll get them," the black man, Shackle-something in the Auror department, said, voice cracking slightly, and Arthur realized how young the big man was. He hadn't even thought Gideon and Fabian had particularly liked any Aurors. "We'll get the bastards who did it."

Yes, and I'll show up at work in Molly's nightshirt, Arthur thought bitterly to himself. "You'll get Him eventually," he agreed and Shackle-the-Auror nodded and passed by.

Hestia would ask teasingly, when they were together, if Fabian had stopped any bad guys that night.

Sometimes he'd tell her a tidbit or something but usually he'd just lean over and kiss her forehead. "Well," he said defensively. "I've always got tomorrow."

Arthur didn't know Hestia Jones that well, she'd been several years behind him and he vaguely remembered seeing her about with the Fawcett boy who'd married a cousin of his recently.

The circles under her eyes were very dark but her robes very crisp, head high, so he was very startled when she flung her arms around him and kissed him on each cheek, muttering her regrets before fluttering off very quickly, shoulders heaving.

He had never seen her without a smile before, he realized later, and he didn't think he ever saw her without one again.

She was a prefect and she'd caught them with handfuls of Dungbombs at night.

They'd left with stinging welts oozing pus but with the Dungbombs and without detention or punishment of any kind.

They appreciated the excellence of the jinx almost as much as keeping the Dungbombs. It wasn't as if they had a lot of pocket money to spend on much of anything really, and if they'd been confiscated without ever being used the twins would have been devastated.

Her stern warning left a slight smiling lift to the left corner of her mouth, leaving a dent that was almost a dimple below her cheek on that side.

Gideon declared that night he'd marry her and ended up wrestling with Fabian, who was deathly afraid that Gideon would.

Gideon forgot her the next morning when he went to the nurse for the bruise from Fabian cheerfully bashing him into a statue of Grady the Grim and decided that Poppy Pomfrey had to be part siren.

Fabian remembered every time she smiled at him in the halls, and every time she didn't notice he was there, even when he was seeing someone else.

One young man shook his hand in a death grip. "I'm James," he said fiercely, blinking behind his glasses. "I- was on their Quidditch team, in school."

"Yes, hullo," managed Arthur.

James hesitated, wanting to say something more.

James Potter thought Gideon Prewett was terrific up to the point when he realized the reason Lily Evans, age fourteen, had decided to begin attending practices of a sport she had heretofore shown an utter lack of interest in.

After that, Gideon temporarily surpassed Snape on James' personal death list.

Sirius was only too happy to help.

It was somewhat embarrassing for the two of them to share a table at Puddifoot's, darkly glowering at the table shared by Evans and Prewett. They looked awfully cozy, too.

When Gideon leaned in to kiss her, James, scandalized, upended a pitcher of butterbeer on his head with a jerk of his wand.

Furiously Prewett dove for his prized Chaser, wand out to curse him, only to realize he was about to damage his prized Chaser.

The Beater he had reluctantly and against his better judgment allowed onto the team just this year seized this opportunity to brain him.

Evans, furious, drew her own wand.

For their interference with her date, Potter and Black spent the better part of a week incapable of sitting down without immense pain.

Gideon spent a night in the hospital wing and almost three months dating Lily Evans, before he realized that between the fury of Marlene, Sirius' resentment, and Potter's depression, he was going to lose the match.

Lily was pretty, and she'd get even prettier, but he was not about to lose to Wilkes.

She did not take it well, but got over it, though it took her years to forgive her dormmate McKinnon, his next girlfriend, who she'd never liked that much anyhow.

Fabian thought the whole affair was hysterical.

"They flew well," he blurted out desperately. "And Gid dated my wife once- before she was my wife, obviously, I'd have k-" He caught his breath, noticing the strange looks, and stopped. "I- we, like- liked them a whole lot, is all. My w- Lily, my wife, she wanted to be here, but she's near on nine months along- and..."

"Thank you for coming," said Arthur kindly, despite his weariness.

The boy, the Potter kid he thought, blinked again. "Yes, well, the pair of 'em, they could have flown for England. When they put their mind on something... Gid and Fab were nigh on unstoppable. I- sorry for your loss, Mrs.- Molly-"

She muffled a sob and forced a teary smile.

He shuffled off with a bob of his head, looking very young and lanky.

It was a haze of faces and words to Molly but the sentiment was the same. Good chaps, so sorry, right good heroing.

"My brave strong heroes," Sirius Black snapped sarcastically. He was stiff and furious. His wand hand stayed ready at his side. At just twelve he was as tall as the twins.

Fabian arched a brow.

"What a snip you are," Gideon returned calmly, twiddling his own wand with practiced grace and tucking it behind his ear. "Grat-it-tude, Black, the concept may be a bit advanced for you-"

He interrupted sullenly. "Didn't ask for your help."

"-ickle firstie that you are-," Fabian continued.

"-we'll forgive your lack of manners this time."

"Next time we'll let the Slytherins pummel you to blithereens, mm, Gideon?"

"Right-o, Fab. Send flowers to the funeral."

"How'd you feel 'bout roses?"

"Personally I like daisies. Black?"

He stared back at them, eyes dark.

"Right," continued Gideon eventually. "Right then. Well, make a habit of avoiding the sort of scum that apparently wants you helping to push them darling daisies up-"

"-Except at family reunions-"

"Naturally-"

Black's wand rose and the reaction was simultaneous.

"Expelliarmus!"

He fell back onto the stones of the hall and slid back several feet.

Sirius found himself looking up at the twins, Gideon holding out a hand to help him up and Fabian offering him his wand back.

"We're gonna be friends now?" he sneered, scrambling to his feet and snatching his wand back. His other hand absently rubbed his sore back.

"You are a Gryffindor," Gideon affirmed.

"Godric knows why," his twin added.

"Godric probably does know why..."

"Mmm, good point."

Sirius glared, muttered something that sounded like "'m not," and turned on his heel and stalked away, wiping blood from his nose.

"Never said thank you!" Fabian shouted after him.

"Your brothers saved my life," a blue-eyed witch told Molly urgently, lifting her hand as if they were friends. As if she knew this stranger her brothers had saved some day or night, as if her own life meant something more than the dozen others they saved. They liked saving things, Kneazlettes and Cruppies and Muggles and girls. There were advantages to saving girls.

"I'm glad," she lied in a drained reply, although she wasn't.

Saving others meant nothing in the end when no one had saved them. No one to the rescue and nothing but each other at the end.

She still didn't believe it. The cold clammy hands and blank bland faces were not Gideon and Fabian.

Her brothers were whip-quick, smart, strong, good-looking friendly charming boys. Her boys.

Brave too.

She loved them for it, but the whispering voice lurking behind her grief muttered wishes they hadn't been so brave.

The sight of Hogwarts Castle rising up above the misted lake, a thin moon like a nail clipping seemingly hanging from the battlements, sent a chill through Fabian that had nothing to do with the water on his seat soaking into his pants. Gideon's eyes were aglitter, color indistinguishable from his own, positively quivering with excitement.

For the first time since he realized the Puffskein he'd thrown off the roof was going to die when it hit the ground, Fabian felt dread.

It was granted he'd be a Gryffindor, he told himself, knowing it to be true. He had the guts and all of that stuff and nonsense he'd been told they needed, if he'd been told once he'd been told twelve dozen he was much too impetuous. Hurling himself off the roof to correct his miscalculation that Puffskeins can fly had managed to ultimately make amends, after all. He didn't doubt himself.

No. He was brave.

He glanced at his brother, who whistled slowly as he drank in the full size of the castle.

Fabian squared his shoulders. As brave as Gideon at least.

Molly had always hoped her sons would take after her brothers, but better behaved. Her brothers were wonderful, once they stopped tormenting Arthur. Toned down the "Art"s and "Arties" and "Arnold"'s and "Attaboys" and the "Your Majesty" this and that and following them suspiciously down the halls. She loved them slightly more when she didn't have to worry about first year brothers busting into broom closets after her.

With every new voice the word hero bounced around in her ears, over and over until she despised it, hoped her boys would not be heroes, not be reckless, be quiet, restrained, perfect, intelligent children.

Anything but brave.

She didn't want them to die heroes. She wanted her sons, her brothers, alive, happy. She wanted nieces and nephews with red hair and freckles on their cheeks and slightly upturned noses and big round baby cheeks with a dimple in the right when they smiled.

Molly let out a sob, clutching Ron close, and Arthur looked over with a depth of understanding in his eyes, for he'd lost brothers too, though not to heroism, but to equally foolish.

She whispered in her baby's perfect little ear and hoped life would not put dangers in his paths, no suffering or need to be brave, and that when it did, despite a mother's prayer, that it would not be him. Not his brothers. That they would live long, happy fattening lives, not young fast deaths with tears and empty consoling words like "handsome" and "hero" in their wake.

Not to be heroes.

Not to be foolish.

Not to die.

When it was over, when the sister and her husband and the small stumbling redheaded boys- the oldest looked like a slimmer redder miniature Gideon- had left, the last to go in their painstakingly clean black robes, a dark young man went and stood on the hill and talked to the stones.

"I don't go to funerals," he said, sticking his hands in his robe pockets.

It was almost an apology but he was not the sort of young man who apologized.

"It didn't mean anything that I didn't go to yours. Not even my friends..."

He paused, for he had precious few friends and none of them were dead.

Yet.

He fidgeted slightly from side to side. "Well, we did have some unfinished business. You and me. Mostly Gideon I suppose. Not that I liked you a great deal either," he addressed Fabian. "Owed you both a couple of blows, probably. A thank you or two."

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Podmore thinks I'm the reason you're both dead. Some of the others too I reckon. They're buggered if they think I- and never even noticing that Lup-"

He blew air out of the corner of his lips in frustration. "I'm no snitch, anyhow. Never even caught one. Not that it matters what you think. Thought."

He shrugged his shoulders as if that settled it, fiddled with his wand, and turned to go.

He stopped.

"If it'd been anyone it'd have been her," he muttered. His eyes were fixated on the moisture-ridden grass, not the fresh dirt.

"Thought that after all you deserved to know," he said hurriedly, a harsh discordant note back in his tone.

He walked quickly away and never looked back.