The Data Drop · No. 050 · a sheets.works story
The Weasley
The Weasley
Clock.
A clock with a hand for each child. And one, at the top, for every way they could be lost.
A clock with a hand for each child. And one, at the top, for every way they could be lost.
On the wall of the Weasley kitchen there is a clock that doesn't tell the time. It has nine golden hands, one for each child, one for Arthur, one for Molly, and around its face, the places a person can be.
"Instead of numbers, there were words: 'home', 'school', 'work', 'travelling', 'lost', 'hospital', 'prison', and, at the top, where the number twelve would have been, 'mortal peril'."Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Ch 9
This is what happened to those hands over seven years.
told through the clock, moment by moment.
The ninth has not moved since.
for Fred.What's canon: The clock exists (Chamber of Secrets, Ch 3, and Order of the Phoenix, Ch 9). It has nine hands. The eight positions are listed verbatim. Every event we track (Ginny in the Chamber, Arthur's bite, Percy's departure and return, the Seven Potters, Fred's death) is in the books. All dialogue is Rowling's, word for word.
What's ours: The continuous seven-year scroll through the clock is storytelling, not strict canon. Rowling never walks us through the clock moment by moment. Individual hand positions at specific dates are our best-reading of canon events — in particular, after Voldemort's return, Molly says in OotP Ch 9 that the hands have been "stuck on mortal peril." We've taken that as a ceiling, not a floor.
Call it: canon-grounded, dramatized.
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