Chapter 1: Come Fall

A shadow crawled on the horizon, edging its way through the trees and grasses of Ottery St. Catchpole. It was more of an animal than a force of nature.

Molly Weasley stood in the kitchen, returning to the daily ritual of spelling the dishes and silverware clean. She was an efficient witch, but for some odd reason, today her scourgify couldn't quite clean the dishes. There were bits of grime still clinging to them, which no magic could seem to nudge. It wasn't too noticeable and could have been overlooked, but touching her hand against the plates grated like sand.

"This is ridiculous," Molly huffed.

Her mind quickly turned to the boys, the usual culprits: Bill and Charlie. They must have been up to their pranks as usual; it could never have been Percy. Despite how young Percy was, the boy was too serious to cause mischief.

She would not wake them now just to demand what hex they had used. Molly was better than that; her magic would win.

Molly could only hope that the twins would not grow up to be like Bill and Charlie. But her hope was just that - only hope. Deep down, she knew that the twins would live up to her side of the family. Fabian and Gideon might be dead, but the terror of twins might have been a curse upon her family.

Molly stopped flipping through incantations. She was not above physically cleaning the dishes, but before she could continue, something in the skyline caught her eye.

It should not be dark quite yet, but a grayish smog bled through the sky around the Burrow. A storm was coming. Part of her had always been scared by storms, despite that she had magic to protect any real damage. There was something primordial about the twisting of clouds and strikes of lightning, almost god-like in their terror for her.

Her eyes watched transfixed, pausing from her domestic duties. The annoyance of her spells' failure didn't seem to bother her anymore; she was calm.

A sense of calm before the storm.

She no longer could remember that night, but the darkness it brought lingered in her. Suspicion grew and multiplied, soon to be joined by the birth of her next child.

Molly gave him an unassuming name. Nothing that hinted of him being anything beyond the sixth child of a poor family. Nothing that hinted of the feelings seeded inside of her.

Ronald Bilius Weasley was dejected from her, more like a cancerous tumor than the birth of the child.

"He doesn't cry," Molly said watching Ron in the haphazard cradle Arthur had found for their son.

The cradle had been found in a Muggle garbage dump, fixed and shoddily polished with her own spellwork. If she looked away, and only caught the barest shape of the contraption, it could have looked nice. Instead, the spelled paint looked plastered, like a forced sense of happiness. Even the smell about it...just seemed off.

Arthur had been truly happy for their son. Molly supposed she had once been too.

"Maybe he'll turn out like Percy," Arthur whispered into her neck, holding Molly in his arms.

"Percy at least wanted me by him. His eyes said it."

She couldn't stop herself. Ron, who should have been their sixth miracle in her loving yet poor marriage, could only be treated with suspicion. Molly only hazily remembered his birth; even his conception was just a vague date surrounded by gray haze.

"He loves you." He cooed against her neck again, but it didn't summon any feelings of love for her brood.

Ron's birth could only be thought of in mechanical terms. He was a creature ripped from her, a monster forced into the light from its cavern. All of the Light in both her and Arthur's family didn't shine on the child. That made her sound horrible, but she didn't know who to blame.

"Don't you sense...something different about him?" She tread carefully, not wanting to offend her husband. Arthur must see reason; he couldn't be that oblivious.

"All of our sons have been different. Each a beautiful shade of their mother."

Arthur was too sweet towards her; too saccharine. She loved the man's loyalty dearly, but she feared Ron. She feared the child before them, as if it was ticking its time in that cradle, plotting their downfall.

The child's eyes seemed to own her; it never pled to be fed. It demanded. It breathed down at her.

"I worry about Ron." Molly sighed.

"All mothers worry. You wouldn't be a great one if you didn't."

Molly would not resign herself in the long run. Maternal intuition practically bled through her, creating a palpable fear she had never quite experienced. The war seemed distant to her, but Ron was in her very home. Even the light in the house seemed to distort itself around the child.

"I suppose..."

They didn't' really know Ron. Even as the years staggered on, and through endless summers of mock-Quidditch games and pranks, Ron remained an enigma. He was a portrait not yet painted; an abstract more than human creature.

Not even Ginny, who was the closest to Ron's age, grew close to him. His siblings didn't quite know what to do with him. They could ignore him, the few choice words he would speak, always could make them cringe.

Ron was a creature of silence; a solitary boy that didn't laugh, nor did he smile or really show any emotion. He wasn't a problem child, for he rivaled Percy in his obedience of rules, but something always just seemed...off about him.

"Mother," Ron spoke in the kitchen, almost making Molly jump with fright.

A weaker woman would have spilled the stew she had making. A stronger woman would have never had that child.

"What is it, Ron?" Molly forced herself to not yell. Her tone was always kind, forged by years of masking her emotions to the child.

Ron had made her into a liar; she had never yelled nor punished the boy. Never had she spied upon him, trying to break the root of his odd nature. Molly had become the perfect Slytherin.

She was ever the kind mother, but her nerves were ever closer to snap.

"I don't want stew."

Molly stopped her wand-arm, the spell pausing with it. She couldn't fight her child. Ron still had the same air of dominance that he did as a baby; it forced her into submission. Ron's voice spoke of gray, violent skies beating down upon her.

"The rest of the family will eat it then, Ron. What would you like?"

She looked over to her son, instantly regretting that brief moment of compassion. Ron locked eyes with her.

"I'm not hungry."

Nothing more was said. Ron stared, but left quickly back to his room. She couldn't question him; she couldn't discipline him. She couldn't...love him.

She could only survive him.

Never before had a Hogwarts letter been such a godsend to the Weasley family. They were always strapped for money, but Molly willingly would spend whatever it took for Ron's first year at Hogwarts.

The beast could be sated, trapped away in that Scottish castle and away from the Burrow. She doubted he would return for the holidays; she would even urge him not to. Molly could summon the strength for that.

At long last, Molly would have a break from what she had birthed. For the rest of the school year, her family would be free of Ron's presence. Ron was a dark maroon bleeding into the strawberry red of her family; he tainted them. They couldn't act normally when he was around.

Even though he didn't harm them, nor did he even say anything cruel. It was that air, that calm attitude masking an inner storm, that always had them on edge.

Molly had come to the realization that there was nothing wrong with her nor Arthur. Their blood was pure and their beliefs were purer. Ron was the cost of the happiness Arthur had gave her. He was a plague, swarming the lives of decent folk like her family.

Her family...Ron was simply not of her.

"I hope you two have a good year," Molly smiled at the twins. They were natural tricksters, but she still loved.

They stopped eating, smiling back at their mother. Percy was upstairs, obsessively packing and repacking. Ginny was asleep, not caring for a school year she wasn't apart of.

Ron...Ron wasn't hungry.

He never wanted her love; he barely wanted even the sustenance a mother could provide. Molly's eyes paled, looking away at the window.

The twins knew what thought crouched behind her eyes.

"Ron might break tradition...he could be sorted into a different house." Fred looked to his mother.

"You'll have to show him the way around Hogwarts. Us Weasleys stick together."

Her words were beautifully fake, too melancholic to have real value.

"Now finish up before Ginny wakes up."

Ron's siblings were the first to hate him.

Their mother never chided him, giving the youngest brother whatever he asked. For years, they had simply found him weird. Bafflement had grown into hatred; suspicion molted into jealousy.

Even Percy eyed Ron weirdly, as if he was looking at a rotting, bloody moth instead of his brother. The twins were more blunt, eventually stopping to prank the rest of the family and instead of focusing on Ron.

Ron didn't respond to being hexed, not even the barest facial twitch.

It was the same, glazed face the youngest brother had opened his Hogwarts letter with.

He acted better than them. It was in his eyes to the confident stomps of his walk. Ron's presence spoke of entitlement; he reminded them of their poverty simply by existing.

Only Ginny didn't respond to Ron. The intuition of a child knew very well to avoid Ron.

But the twins couldn't.

And no one in the family stopped them.

Hogwarts would only given them more freedom for revenge.

Arthur had once loved Ron.

"He's gone." He whispered to his wife, both cuddled in bed. A slight fire beamed in his words.

"We've survived him," Molly turned from her side to eye her husband. They had aged now, past what was natural. Ron had weathered them.

They lay there silent for a few moments, before Arthur finally spoke. "But he'll be back in the summer."

"And every summer." Another, kinder Molly would have cried for her son. She was too hardened for that. "I would have hated myself...if my past could have seen the love for our son. We can barely whisper a word about him..."

"But Molly...there was nothing else that could have been done."

"Our children deserve a childhood...not that."

Even though they felt new life in their son's absence, Ron's presence seemed to hang in the shadows. It lurked.

"What could we do?" Arthur spoke.

The question went unanswered even in sleep. No answer was envisioned in her dreams. She couldn't fathom a life without Ron dominating them. His absence only hinted at a future return.

Molly would have to summon the last pangs of her strength and defend her children...her true children. Ron was a monster boiled from her and not the innocent child Arthur had once hoped for.

That night, Molly tossed in her sleep. Arthur's question haunted her, beating like a death drum. In her dreams, she could only see the blank, possessive stare of her youngest son.

Even in sleep, he claimed her.

AN: I'm debating on how to tell this story, solely through the perspective of others about Ron or the traditional, third person-omniscient that reveals Ron's thoughts. Regardless, I want to lampshade the Ron the Death Eater trope. No one is truly evil (or even reliable).