House: Ravenclaw
Year: 7
Category: Standard
Prompt: [Speech] "What is this thing and what am I supposed to do with it?"
Word Count: 1,072
Molly Prewett was as fiery as they came. She was born, her older brothers said, breathing fire, with coal for eyes and ash instead of spit-up.
If her eyes had been coal as an infant, they had ignited in adolescence, for Molly was now seventeen with a smile as bright as her hair, and a bold temper to match. If she had been an adorable, though temperamental, baby, she was now, as so many Hogwarts boys said, positively smoking.
She was popular, a pureblood with a powerful name behind her. It wasn't uncommon to receive a verbal beating from her after making an unkind remark. She was unfortunately sympathetic to those Muggleborns and blood traitors walking Hogwarts' halls, but she herself kept neatly to one side, a respectable girl with personality enough to keep the more traditionally -aligned suitors away, acceptable grades, and a penchant for fighting injustice.
That was, until she met Arthur.
Arthur Weasley was, well, a Weasley. There was no other way to put it. His schoolwork was always just a smidge off, and rumor was he had never once achieved an Outstanding. He was known for enthusiastically participating in the Malfoy-Weasley family feud, taking every opportunity to rile up the Malfoy heir, Lucius. For his part, Lucius gladly reciprocated, usually in the form of sneering remarks, or mysteriously-vanishing essays the night before they were due.
The worst part about Arthur, though, was the part that had students sticking out their feet to trip him in the corridors and sending jinxed chocolates to his dorm He had a fascination with Muggles. He raved about them to anyone who would listen, talking endlessly of the latest Muggle contraption he had acquired. The seventh-year Gryffindor boys' dorm had started to look like a scrapyard with the sheer volume of the Muggle items he kept there. They were under everybody's beds, even creeping out onto the stairs like an infectious disease. And it was spreading fast. Sometimes he left his Muggle things in the common room, and innocent first-years carried the curiosities to their own dorms, or delivered them to older siblings for identification.
It was because of all this that the Hogwarts population, teachers and ghosts included, were shocked into disbelief when the Slytherin girl Andromeda Black told her sister Narcissa, who told her betrothed Lucius, who announced it to the whole school – that beautiful Molly Prewett had been seen on a date with the blood-traitor Arthur Weasley.
They met, according to Andromeda, in Hogsmeade. They went to Madame Puddifoot's Tea Shoppe, where they sat and talked for an hour and twenty-six minutes (Andromeda had timed it) before leaving, stopping once or twice in shops for a quick look. Molly bought Arthur four new quills, and had each one engraved with his name in case he lost them, for his old ones had gone missing some time earlier and he had been making do by borrowing other boys' utensils. Andromeda suspected, although the Malfoy heir himself left this particular part out of his story, that the missing quills had been Lucius' fault.
But Andromeda, ever prepared, didn't just record what they did, and the time it took them. She had a sound recording of it all! She played it for the girls in her dorm one Saturday night, when none of them could sleep for fear of the exam on Monday for which none had studied. She also had her own personal Pensieve, which she had inherited from a distant relative some years ago, Flooed in from a country estate. Andromeda synced up the superior sound from her recording with the visuals from her memory with the help of a tech-savvy Ravenclaw, who had been deluded into thinking the girls needed it for an outside class. With all their gear in place, the girls sat down to watch the show.
It started just like any other scene. There was snow falling serenely from the sky, glistening on the ground. Students ambled in and out of snow-capped buildings, with lights glowing merrily out into the winter air, some with groups of friends and some going solo. The odd couple would meander past the memory figure of Andromeda as she browsed sweets at Honeydukes.
All of a sudden the memory's version of Andromeda jolted, as if her name had been called by a long-lost best friend. She was still holding a wrapped blood pop, but her eyes were fixed on the street outside, and more specifically on the two figures walking down it, hand-in-hand.
She set down the blood pop and left Honeydukes as quickly as possible, slipping into a group of girls going in the same general direction of the two people she was following. They didn't pay much attention to her – nor she to them, for she was focused solely on Molly Prewett and Arthur Weasley.
She was certain they weren't friends. Friends didn't hold hands like that, didn't walk so close together like that, didn't talk so quietly, leaning in so close like that, not at seventeen! It must be something more. Something… romantic.
She was more and more certain of this when the two passed The Three Broomsticks, a popular place for friends to meet up. The group of girls she had joined stopped to go into the inn, so she detached from them and continued on her own. Instead, the pair of redheads went into Madame Puddifoot's Tea Shop, with its stuffy pink interior and slow music. There, they sat at a booth on the side. Andromeda cast a quick charm on the bracelet she was wearing, and positioned herself at a nearby table, her hand reached out, quite casually, toward the newly occupied booth.
The conversation between Molly and Arthur went quite smoothly, even by Andromeda's carefully honed standards, until Arthur brought a little metal thing out of his pocket.
Molly frowned at it. "What is this thing and what am I supposed to do with it?"
"A pocket compass," Arthur explained. "You told me you were having trouble with the direction charm we were learning, and I thought I'd get you this. Muggles use it."
Molly smiled fondly at him. "Of course Muggles use it," she said. "Oh, thank you, it's beautiful!"
The girls watching from the future all laughed at this point, and Andromeda brought them out of the memory. "That's pretty much it," she said."Then they left. I'm fairly sure they're an item now."