Harry was hunched over his desk when his door slowly opened. Trying to put everything into one letter was quite a job to do, and he couldn't help feeling he was still forgetting a couple of things. All the big stuff was in there though, so he didn't think Hermione could complain too much. At least now she'd know as much as he could remember to tell her.
He saw slow movement of a red blur at the edge of his vision and knew it could only be one thing. Harry ignored it for a while to concentrate on reviewing the letter. Was there another bit about Hogwarts he was forgetting about? Harry mentally shrugged it aside. If he was forgetting about it then it must not be very important.
Someone cleared their throat from near the door.
"Hey, Ron," he said as he folded up the letter.
"Er - Hey, Harry," Ron answered as Hedwig made her way down from her perch on top of the wardrobe.
"Did you need something?" Harry asked while concentrating on fastening the letter for its trip.
"Do you really not care?" his friend asked nebulously.
Hedwig flew out the window before he turned to Ron.
"Do I not care about what, Ron?" he asked, trying to get the echo of 'Some friend you are, Harry,' out of his head.
"Money," his sort-of-friend said. "All the money Dumbledore stole from you. Do you really not care?"
"It was my parents' money," Harry explained. "I never knew it was there, but that doesn't mean I want it stolen either. It's the only thing I have left of them."
"So your concern is about your parents and not the money?" the red head asked.
"Yes, Ron. It's the only thing I have to remember them by, the only thing to show anyone ever cared about me, but I'd trade it all away in a second if I could get them back, wouldn't you?"
"What?" Ron said stupidly.
"If you had all the money you could ever want," Harry asked. "Enough to buy anything you could ever want and still have more than you could ever spend in a lifetime, but what you didn't have was your family - wouldn't you be willing to trade it all away to get them back?"
"That's - Woah, that's a lot of money, Harry," Ron said with a grin. "With that you could do anything."
"Anything but get your family back," Harry corrected. "No Fred, no George, no mum and dad, no Bill or Charlie, not even Percy and Ginny. If the only chance you had to see any them again was to give it all back, wouldn't you do it?"
Ron seemed to flounder.
"All of it?" Ron asked incredulously, sitting down on Harry's bed. "That's a lot of money. We're talking about a mountain of gold the size of Hogwarts here. We could buy Quidditch teams for a tiny bit of that."
"Isn't your family worth more?" Harry asked, wondering if his friend would ever get it. "Besides, I'm not there."
"You're not?" he asked.
"Nope, you're all by yourself," Harry said. "But you can get your family back if you give up the money."
"Well, I could see giving up a bit - maybe, maybe half," Ron said.
"Sorry," Harry said. "If you are going to get them back then you're going to have to give up the whole thing. It's just the way it works."
"That's just greedy!" Ron said, not even catching the irony. "I wouldn't be any better off than I am right now."
"You have a family who loves you, right now," Harry replied. "I'd give all the money I have to have what you have right now. What's the point of having money if you don't have anyone to share it with?"
Harry watched as Ron's eyes darted about unfocused. He had seen this happen a time or two before, on the rare occasions he was actually doing well in a game of chess against him, and Harry thought he knew what was happening. Ron was probably imagining flying on a top of the line broom, swooping around his mountain of gold and through tiny twisting tunnels inside it, or sitting down to a feast fit for a hundred people and having it all to himself, or perhaps even lounging around a mansion full of really expensive things, with a wonderful view of his mountain of gold - but everywhere he went, no matter what he bought, he'd still be alone. Suddenly all of those things, and all that gold, didn't seem quite so valuable any more.
"I never thought of it before," Ron said, running a hand through his hair. "So - you're really living here now?"
"Well, yeah," Harry shrugged. "Your sister needed to go to school and I needed a place to live. It seemed like a good deal."
"And you don't even care how much it costs?" Ron asked.
"You guys have been nice to me," Harry said with a shrug. "That's all I care about."
"I've been an idiot," Ron said sourly.
Ron was still looking at him oddly after breakfast the next morning, though it could've been the fact he had stacks of books lying around him and was still digging through the Weasleys bookshelves which had him looking like that… or the fact he'd begged off Quidditch until after lunch so he could continue digging, Harry wasn't really sure.
What he couldn't believe though was he'd been walking back and forth in front of a goldmine all week and had never even noticed. The shelves were stacked three rows deep! Sure, the first row was full of books telling you how to charm your own cheese and things like that, and the second row was all about child-rearing, home-building, and old catalogs of muggle appliances, but the row behind actually had real books.
There were books on plants, and books on caring for animals, books on healing minor scrapes and curing minor ills without the need for a Healer - which Harry supposed was what they called a wizarding doctor. There were the standard kind of textbooks you'd find at Hogwarts, and then there were some topics he'd ever even seen before. There was one called Simply Enchanting which was full of strange symbols, charts full of numbers, and strange shapes that seemed made of nothing but odd angles.
What Harry hadn't expected to find was a handwritten book. A handwritten leather-bound journal if he wanted to strive for Hermione-like preciseness. It was pretty much a mish-mash of just about everything: household plants and their uses, cooking recipes with potions ingredients in it - which presumably did something for whoever ate it, pages of those odd symbols and angular designs, even plans for a house that looked nothing like the Burrow.
Harry was wondering how something like this could've made its way into the Weasley home when on the very next page he saw it: the design of a clock. It wasn't just any clock though, it was the Weasley clock - it really couldn't have been anything else. Around the sides were some of the same phrases, though some, like 'Time to Feed the Baby,' were obviously different. The curious part though was that each one had a string of those strange symbols with it. The real clock didn't have those - or did it?
Harry was just getting up to check when he heard Mr. and Mrs. 'It's still strange to call her Molly' Weasley coming down the stairs.
.....
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