This is my entry as Gryffindor Beater 2 for the QLFC LL Final Round (4). My chosen NextGen character was Molly and my prompts are:
1. (spell) Bat-Bogey Hex
3. (word) diary
4. (restriction) no using the word 'Weasley'
6. (quote) 'The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.' - Malorie Blackman, Noughts & Crosses
13. (dialogue) "Where did that come from?"
MOLLY
Molly wore an old Magpies jumper that had once belonged to her mother and paired it with some dark trousers and dragon-hide boots. She hardly looked back at her father before she ran right out of the flat at onto the snowy streets of Hogsmeade's High Street. With her head held high, she skipped toward the flat Jeremy Nott shared with his brother. Taking a deep breath, she banged the knocker loudly.
"Hey," Jeremy smiled when he opened the door. "Come inside."
"Is anyone home?" she asked, poking her head inside.
"No," Jeremy replied. "Teddy went out with your cousin. They shouldn't be home for a while."
"Good," she breathed a sigh of relief. "We need to talk."
She stormed past him into the kitchen and put on the kettle for tea while Jeremy looked on, completely baffled.
"You're making tea?" he asked.
"Yes," she said curtly. "I find it calming."
With the water well on its way to boiling, she hopped onto the kitchen counter and pulled her thick, dark hair into a tight bun at the top of her head. Ever since the fateful night of her seventeenth birthday, she had spent sleepless nights trying to figure out how to remedy the worst mistake of her life.
"I can't even believe I have to do this," she groaned. "How did you let this happen?"
"Hey," he reminded her, "you signed it as well."
"I know," she buried her head in her hands. "It's not your fault I made the worst decision of my life."
"Is it really the worst?" he teased, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter across from her. "You could have married that insufferable git, McLaggen."
She burst into laughter at the thought of herself in a white dress standing next to the burly prefect.
"That's true," she smiled. "You're not the worst accidental husband."
He smiled and for a second she saw him as more than her cousin's best mate. He was also becoming her friend and for the time being, her husband. Luckily, the hiss of the boiling water reminded her that divorce was on the horizon and they desperately needed to get it sorted. She let the tea seep and then hopped off the counter to grab a couple of teacups from the cupboard.
"So," Jeremy asked, "what's the plan here?"
"It's simple, really," she explained. "We just need to take the marriage certificate to the ministry and apply for a divorce."
"That seems way too easy," he replied with a note of scepticism.
"Well," she scoffed, "there is the issue of avoiding the half of my family members who work at the Ministry and then we need to wait until they grant the divorce. But first we need to find that bloody certificate. Tea?"
"Er...sure," he nodded.
Molly hiked up her sleeves and poured the tea but Jeremy's eyes landed on the black script engraved on the inside of her forearm.
"Where did that come from?" he asked.
"What? The tea?" she replied. "You watched me make it."
"No." He shook his head. "The writing."
"Another memory from my seventeenth birthday," she replied. Molly revealed the entire tattoo which read The higher you climb, the further you have to fall. Then she tapped the skin with her wand and it dissolved, leaving bare, untainted skin. "At least this one is a little easier to hide from my parents."
"I like it," he told her. "Not quite sure I understand it but it's nice."
"My dad used to say it," Molly explained. "I guess he learned his lesson and he always preached to us that we should stay humble."
Their eyes met again and for a second, Molly forgot that she was so determined to divorce this man, but then quickly remembered the task at hand and she skipped down toward his bedroom on the bottom floor.
"Hurry, we need to finish this before I go to dinner at The Burrow."
He followed her down to his bedroom which had been recently organized. She set down her tea on the chest of drawers and pulled open every drawer in search of the rolled up parchment that held the key to her entire future.
"Where is it?" she muttered after practically searching the entire room. "Do you think Teddy or Vic might have found it?"
"And kept it secret?" Jeremy asked. "He wouldn't do that. Teddy would lord it over both of us and make sly comments about it until we finally came clean. And Vic would probably take you aside and have one of those older cousin talks."
"And we can't do that!" she snapped. "No one can know."
"This again?" he rolled his eyes. "Why do you find me so embarrassing?"
"I don't," she said quickly. "It's not you. It's just that...with my family already in the news so often, I don't want to be the next Celestina Warbuck, married for less than a year."
"It's not the same," he assured her. "This was a mistake."
"So you admit," she raised an eyebrow, "it was a mistake."
"Of course," he teased. "I would have preferred to write my own vows, or at least remember them, and a honeymoon would have been nice."
"Stop it!" she smacked him with a pillow. "Please, just help me find this scroll."
"Fine," he agreed, "but I'm starved. If we don't find it in the next hour, I'm going to The Three Broomsticks."
"If we find it in the next half hour," she raised his bet, "I'll pay."
With the promise of a free meal lingering on the horizon, Jeremy found the inspiration he needed to dig through the entirety of his armoire until they finally found a rolled up piece of parchment in a shoebox next to the photograph of their drunken wedding night.
"This is it!" he said holding it up triumphantly.
"I'll hold onto it," she grabbed the parchment from him.
"Can I keep the picture?" he asked.
"What do you want that for?" she scoffed.
"I kind of like it," he told her. "Accidental wedding aside, it was a pretty fun night."
"Just don't let Teddy find it," she pleaded. "Or anyone!"
"It's safe," he tucked it into the drawer of his bedside table. "Besides, I think you owe me lunch."
"Forty-seven minutes," she informed him after glancing at the clock. "I'm afraid that breaches the terms of our agreement."
"Fine," he sighed. "It's on me."
"Yes!" she pumped her fist in the air.
"You only married me for my money," he teased as they made their way to The Three Broomsticks. She countered with a swift elbow to his ribs.
The sun was setting when Molly finally arrived at The Burrow for the weekly family dinner. After lunch with Jeremy, they had taken a detour through the shops and stopped to admire the latest Cleansweep model. She was looking at new Quidditch robes when she realised the day had gotten away from her. In a panic, they rushed back to the flat so she could Floo to her grandparents' home. She had briefly considered Apparating but quickly changed her mind feeling she wasn't comfortable doing so under so much pressure.
Thus, she stepped foot into The Burrow as her namesake was passing out slices of treacle tart. As soon as she saw Molly, her grandmother engulfed her in a bone-crushing hug and made sure to hand her a plate of leftovers loaded high with meat and potatoes. Molly graciously accepted and went to join her cousins who milled about the garden.
"Molly!" Dominique hugged her tightly. "Where have you been?"
"I had some things to take care of," she explained, intentionally omitting the details, "and I completely lost track of time."
"I'm just glad you made it," Dom replied. "Vic and Teddy aren't coming so I've been stuck watching the little ones while James tries to turn them against me."
"Typical," Molly laughed looking over to catch her cousin tying Hugo's shoelaces around the base of a rose bush.
Just past the rose bushes, she could see Scorpius with his arm around Roxanne. They had practically become inseparable since she returned home from school and Molly could hardly recall the last time she had seen her cousin without the Malfoy boy at her side.
"Come on," Dominique pulled her away, "let's go upstairs."
The girls skipped into the house making their way to Aunt Ginny's old bedroom which overlooked the orchard, giving them a panoramic view of the setting sun. Ever since they were children, it had been their favourite place in the house and they often hid there for hours digging through Ginny's old diaries and spell books.
Her aunt's diary was one of Molly's most prized possessions. It mostly contained notes from her classes which took place during the war, so they didn't help much. Education had changed quite a bit since her parents' generation attended Hogwarts, but Aunt Ginny had unknowingly gifted them a few choice spells, like the Bat-Bogey Hex which Dominique had employed on James after one of his more heinous pranks. Now, Molly only wished someone would have used that hex on the officiant who thought it was appropriate to marry a couple of drunken adolescents.
"How about we shuffle the fates?" Dom asked, pulling a tattered deck of cards from her coat pocket.
"I don't know," Molly was sceptical about letting her cousin pry into her life, given the circumstances.
"Please!" Dominique begged, hopping onto the bed. "I could use the practice."
"Sure," Molly shrugged, sitting across from her. It would probably arouse more suspicion if she turned down a reading. Her cousin was only a beginner at divination. Molly swallowed hard as she convinced herself that there was no way Dominique could discern that she had partaken in a little too much Firewhiskey on her birthday and married her cousins' best mate by mistake.
"Okay," Dominique smiled gleefully. She handed her cousin the deck. "Cut it twice and shuffle."
Molly did as told while the blonde studied her every move, looking for clues to influence the cards. When the deck was sufficiently reorganized, Dominique laid the cards down in three rows of three, flipping each card one at a time.
"The six of hearts," Dom said, turning over the first card. "It looks like you've received help from an unlikely source." She continued with the next card. "The jack of spades, there was a man in your life. Dark-haired and immature, but well meaning." The last card revealed the ace of hearts. "Someone you had a romance with, possibly?
"I...I don't know," Molly shook her head. "I haven't had any dark-haired boyfriends."
"It could be a friend or even someone in the family but you trusted him. Let's continue," she turned the next card, the jack of hearts. "There's a new man in your life. This one fair-haired and kind. A genuine friend." The card in the centre of the layout was the nine of clubs. "Interesting. You've found unexpected love with this man. Maybe a friend turned lover that you haven't told me about." Dominique flashed her a quick wink and Molly panicked, worrying that her secret may be revealed in the last card, three of diamonds. "This is odd. You're experiencing domestic problems, possibly of the legal variety."
It was true. Molly leaned closer to the cards. She never believed in divination before but so far it had all been true.
"Now the future," Dominique turned over the first card in the last row. "The joker. It seems you'll soon be taking a risk or starting a new chapter and the ace of diamonds signifies a ring. This could mean marriage is on the horizon for you."
"No," Molly blurted out.
"I know you're young," Dominique assured her. "This is the future. It could be two years or two decades away. Besides, I might not even be doing it correctly."
Molly breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously it wasn't correct, she was already married so it certainly couldn't be part of her future. She managed to breathe easy when she saw the final card, the five of spades.
"You'll be happy," Dominique told her. "There may be occasional interference but you will certainly find happiness.
"What's all of this supposed to mean?" Molly asked finally.
"I don't know," Dominique shrugged. "You'll have to interpret it yourself and sometimes people change their fate but so far it looks like you've been betrayed by someone you trusted. You're in a relationship now with someone good but there are problems and in the future you'll be happy, even with our big meddling family. I'm just wondering who this boyfriend is that you haven't told me about."
"I don't have a boyfriend," Molly said with wavering certainty. "The cards must be wrong."
"Could be," Dominique shrugged. "I'm not even sure I have a whole deck here."
For a second the older girl considered confiding in her cousin but she instantly changed her mind. She knew Dominique was awful at keeping secrets. Her entire family would know by the end of the week. So she kept quiet and steered the conversation away from those miserable cards, reminding her cousin that it was rude to be away from the party for so long.
Big thanks to my beta readers TwiBeams and whitetiger91! Please go check out their stories. They are very talented and entertaining!