“Arthur, what’s wrong?”, Molly looked at him with deep concern. “You barely said a word since you returned, and you’ve obviously been crying. What happened there?”
He looked at his wife, trying to find adequate words.
“Lyra is as old as Ron. If she were my daughter, she would be one of our youngest children. I always wondered if she and Harry are old and experienced enough to be the heads of the Auror office. After today, I think I can only see her as my senior, someone like Dumbledore or even greater. The question I have is no longer how someone so young can hold such an important office. It’s how a soul so vast can fit in a body so young, frail and pretty. She used a spell on me, you know.” He sighed deeply.
“What kind of a spell?” Molly was instantly alarmed.
“She opened her heart and shared her childhood memories with me. Seeing our children in rags, not being able to afford books and wands, signs of poverty, her crying in frustration after seeing it. The feeling of injustice that pureblood children suffer those humiliations needlessly. Her anger at me for allowing it, for not taking those lucrative promotions and treating my job as an extension of my obsession with all things muggle. It’s nothing I would have thought. It’s not hate, or contempt. She honestly believed pureblood wizards are a precious treasure and should be kings and queens in the world, and she thought her wealth was normal, it was because they are what they are as a family, and then she saw us and it was shocking, it hurt her soul so much to see purebloods living in poverty and it was such an injustice she would cry herself to sleep at nights thinking about it. And I saw her for what she is when she opened herself up to me. She is so vast, so pure, so innocent and so incredibly powerful that I just wept like a child for making such a person cry. It felt like making a perfect God cry.”
Molly just stood their with mouth open and couldn’t find words.
“She also shared some things about you, you know”, he tried for a smile. “She resents you for not allowing the kids to grow up, to be adults, for enabling Ron in his infantile behaviour so that you would have children to care for longer, giving yourself a purpose. Not wanting Bill to marry, thinking no woman could be good enough for him, no woman could replace mommy, and offending Fleur, whom she loves very much and thinks she’s a wonderful, good hearted lady with a bright mind. She showed me her perspective and I saw why Charlie, Bill and Percy, and even Fred and George, ran away from our suffocating atmosphere that attempts to suck their lives away and keep them children forever, and never allow any important issue to be touched because we become defensive and start accusing people of all sorts of things just to keep things as they are. She showed me everything she sees, and everything she feels, and the reasons why she feels it, and her mind is so pure, clean and powerful, it was like somebody expanded my soul a hundred times and I could suddenly grasp all of it. It’s absolutely amazing. I don’t know how a human being can even be that pure and vast. OK, I probably could imagine it if it were Dumbledore, but not a tiny girl who could be my daughter. And the worst thing is, the conclusions she makes are nothing like I would have expected. It’s mostly her own pain, frustration that she can’t make it better, that she can just observe and we don’t even allow her to tell us what she sees. I am in absolute awe of her, Molly”, his eyes glistened with tears and one dropped down his cheek. “And I’m not the only one. Viktor Krum was there and he watched it with his mouth open like you right now, and I could see it in his eyes how amazing he thinks she is. I would have dismissed it as nonsense, thinking that no human being can deserve such worship as the three of them shower her with, but now I think they are right. I used to wonder if she’s good enough for Harry; now I wonder if anyone is good enough for her.”
Molly’s eyes filled with tears. “Was I really trying to keep them from growing up because I wanted to be a mom forever and didn’t know what to do when they grow up and leave?”, she sniffed. “I felt some of that when Ginny threatened to leave and we threw Ron out for being a ghoul.”
“Lyra sees it that way, and honestly, seeing it in her heart it all makes sense and it looks as if I was shown the objective truth of it all after living in my own head with my own justifications for decades. It feels like waking up from a dream and understanding that I’m not the good guy that I thought I was”, he let out a broken sigh. “It all had a quality of God showing me the truth as it is”.
Molly just embraced him and they cried together.