Molly smoothed her apron across her front, wiping her hands.
"Arthur dear, that's wonderful."
"Yes, well after that dreadful business with Otto, Ludo Bagman did owe us something or other."
"And how many tickets did you get?"
Arthur tilted his head. "Hmm, ten? He said he thought I had a large family, and thought it best to aim high."
Molly did the maths in a moment. "We can bring some one else then," she said slowly, and then with passion, "Harry, it has to be Harry."
Arthur sat at the table. "You're quite right dear. We'll tell Ron in the morning to write to Harry."
Molly busied herself making Arthur a cup of tea and they talked for a while. He was almost giddy at the news, and she herself was pretty exicited. They went to bed shortly after.
Next morning, Ron looked exactly like his father had the night before as he grinned at the news.
Percy muttered something about why only Ron got to bring friends, and Fred shot back that Percy would have no one to bring anyway. It was like any standard breakfast at the Burrow.
Everything was fine until the day after, when Ron let slip that he'd invited both Harry and Hermione, his face full of food, unaware of what he'd done.
Molly lowered her fork.
"Hermione? But she doesn't even like Quidditch dear?"
"Well yeah," Ron said, chewing, "But I didn't want her to be left out, and besides," and he grew slowly redder, "I thought she might enjoy, err, the international aspect, and um, relations..." and he trailed off, mumbling.
They didn't have an eleventh ticket for Hermione to take. Molly looked at Arthur, panicked, but he was eating happily, unaware that anything was amiss.
An ugly feeling clutched at Molly, but she suppressed it. The truth of it was that no one had expected her to want to go, that they thought there was a spare ticket, and sure why didn't Ronald invite two friends, it wasn't like his mother would like to go.
She said nothing, though cleaned more viciously than usual that night.