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Molly Weasley didn't look up from the gingerbread men she was icing, not at first, when the Floo belched unexpectedly to life. She was expecting Arthur back any minute, and there was never any telling when one of the children might stop in for an early Christmas treat�or if, these days, they would stop in at all. But when the rumble of the fire wasn't immediately followed with a bright hello, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up just a bit. She hadn't survived two wars on sheer blind luck.
"That you, Arthur dear?" she called, as she shifted her grip on her wand.
Someone cleared his throat and said softly, "'Lo, Mum."
Molly spun. Standing at the edge of the hearth, half-heartedly batting at a large smooch of soot on his knee, was the one person she had resigned herself to not seeing at all today�no matter how much she wanted to. "Oh, Ron!" she said. "Well, isn't this a surprise?"
He smiled shyly and brushed at the hair that flopped into his face without actually moving any of it. "Happy Christmas," he said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. And Molly supposed it did.
"Look at you," she said, and smiled at him. He was, as usual, too thin and too tired, but just seeing him�Hermione had insisted it would be too stressful for him to break his routines, eve for Christmas, and Harry had said something about a quiet holiday at home, and so Molly had accepted that Ron would be missing his first big holiday back among...well, back. She charmed the soot off his blue jeans�slowly, carefully, so as not to startle him�and pulled out a chair. "Well, don't stand around gawking, silly boy! I'll get you a cup of cocoa."
He smiled again. "Thanks, Mum."
She pushed and levitated the trays of her Christmas baking out of the way so she could prepare the cocoa. "Where's Harry today? Don't tell me that Kingsley is making him work!"
"Yeah," Ron said, fidgeting with a tea towel she'd left on the table. "Mandatory departmental something-or-other. Said he'd be back for tea, though. Where's Dad?"
"Oh, some fool up in Yorkshire bewitched a whole army of Wellington boots," Molly said. "Has them marching up and down the high street in three-four time."
Ron laughed at that, then blinked as if he'd surprised even himself. He still looked so lost sometimes, so awkward in his own skin�Molly just wanted to wrap him up in her arms and sing to him, as if that could still drive away nightmares. Even when she knew felt him seize up and retreat from her, the urge was still there, the mother's instinct to comfort. Or perhaps it wasn't just for mothers, because she'd seen it in Arthur's eyes, too, and the set of Bill's shoulders, and the lines around Hermione's mouth. And poor Harry...she didn't know how he could stand it, with the two of them cooped up in that awful little flat, even though the proof of how well they got along was sitting at her kitchen table, picking at the fuzz on his sleeves.
She brought Ron a cup of cocoa and one of the gingerbread men she hadn't yet iced. "Thanks," he said, and stuffed as much of the cookie in his mouth as he could get at once. At least that hadn't changed while he was gone. (Molly thought of it as gone because dwelling too hard on it made her eyes well and her hands shake.) "Mmm...really good," Ron said, and brushed at the trickle of crumbs that tumbled into his beard.
"I'll make you up a plate to take home, shall I?" Molly said. "Unless...I mean, I don't suppose you're staying?"
She knew she sounded hopeful. She couldn't help it. And she supposed Ron couldn't help the way his head ducked down and his shoulders came up. "Um," he said, "I don't think I should."
"That's fine," she said quickly, and hurried back to the kitchen counter. "I'll, um, I'll just make up a plate."
But Ron said, "I'm sorry," and she looked back at him, still hunched over his mug, not really looking at her. "I just...I haven't had Christmas in three years, you know? And I want to be here. But...I don't want to, y'know, mess things up."
Molly grabbed hold of the edge of the counter and blinked back a sudden burst of tears. "Ron, no," she said. "No, you�you don't mess anything up."
He shook his head. "I would," he said. "There'll be loads of people here and I'd get all nervous and then...then I'd mess everything up." He sipped a bit of his cocoa and peeked up at her through his fringe. "But I still wanted to be here. For a bit. If, um, if that's okay?"
"Of course it is!" she blurted. "Ron, this is your home."
"I know," he said, but there was something in his voice that said he didn't, and that made Molly more than ever want to weep.
She tried to hide it, though; she busied herself putting together a tray for the boys, though half her baking was still no more than pale lumps of dough. Her hands weren't steady enough for any more icing, so she seized one of the cans of colored sugar that had been hovering in mid-air and started shaking it out over a tray of cut-out biscuits waiting for the oven. Ron quietly finished his cocoa and then slid past her to rinse the mug in the sink, moving silent as a ghost. "Oh, don't, dear," she said, "I'll get it, you sit down."
"It's fine," he said. "I'm not a guest, am I?"
Of course not. Molly looked at the tray of cookies in front of her and realized she'd just made a dozen pink and yellow Christmas trees. "I'm so sorry," she blurted, and banished the lot with a flick of her wand.
"Don't," Ron said. "Mum, don't."
"I'm just trying."
"I know you are." He took a deep breath and hugged her loosely, awkwardly. It was the first time he'd hugged her in weeks. "I know, Mum, okay? I'm trying too."
She squeezed his hands and then stepped away; it wouldn't do to let him see her crying. She pulled out another batch of gingerbread men out of the oven and sent them spinning onto a cooling rack, then put in a sheet of maracoons. When she was certain she had control of her voice, she asked, just for a change of topic, "Do you remember helping me bake, when you were a little boy?"
"I remember getting into flour fights with the twins," Ron said wryly. "And you'd always say that snowmen belonged in the garden and chase us outside until you were done."
Molly smiled. "Well. You lot did help occasionally."
He stood next to her and watched the bottles of cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice rotate slowly over the top of her head. "You always did let us decorate the gingerbread men, though."
"Even when you got more icing on each other than them
She was rolling out more dough�she'd never found a charm that got the thickness just right�but the ends of the rolling pin kept bumping into bowls and pans. She paused to move them out of the way, but Ron jumped in first, grabbling up a double armful and balancing it precariously against his chest. "Here, I've got it...er...maybe..."
"Oh, just put them on the table for now, dear," Molly said, "I just got all in a rush and I suppose I made too many batches at once."
"Anything else I can do to help?" he asked as he deposited the clutter at the same place he'd been sitting.
"Oh, no, dear, you don't have to�"
"I want to."
Molly looked her son in the eye, searched his face. She had barely recognized him once, with the beard and the scars, but just then with his jaw set so and his face open and waiting he was the boy she remembered. Mostly. "Those gingerbread men aren't going to dress themselves," she said, a bit thickly, "and�and I haven't even started on the stollen yet."
Ron picked up a tube of icing and one of the gingerbread men from the cooling rack�actually hovering several inches above the cooling rack, at this point, because it was getting so terribly crowded. His hands were trembling a bit, the way they always seemed to be, but he slowly and deliberately put a border of white icing around the edge of the cookie. Then two dot eyes, then a lopsided line smile�and then one eyebrow, impishly arched. "Well?" he asked slowly as he showed her. "How's it look?"
Molly smiled at him. "It's perfect," she said, quite truthfully, and went back to cutting more men from the fresh-rolled dough.