A/N:Alright, so I'm enormously enamored with the idea of bewitched machines, and so the Ford Anglia is everything to me. And, upon further read through, it has the amusing coincidence of only coming to Ron when he's in trouble. It comes to Ron's rescue in the Forbidden Forest in book two, and doesn't make any further appearance. And, by further coincidence, it's never Ron in the forest after that. It's Harry, or Harry and Hermione, but never Ron. The go to the forest multiple times! Gwamp, the whole dementor thing in book three, Harry goes there to die, and no Anglia. But also no Ron.
This is, of course, a coincidence, and the only reason it doesn't appear is that it's a plot device for book two, but people have made theories off of less. So here I am, writing a story from the point of view of the Weasley's unwitting protector, a flying blue car.
I took some liberties with this. For example, I have no idea how long they had owned the Ford Anglia. I'm assuming it wasn't very long given some comment Molly made about it being spacious, but because I want to include every Weasley in this, I'm making it appear right before Charlie graduates Hogwarts.
Sami: I've moved on from writing about anime to writing about cars. I'm also finally using my ffnet account for something after five whole years.
Arthur Weasley had been too overjoyed at the prospect of tinkering with a Muggle car to begin to wonder of its consequences at first. He'd made the loophole in the law himself, hoping for a way to mess with more machinery, and it gave him the opportunity of a lifetime.
Molly, however, was much less delighted at the development. Arthur had claimed that he would child proof it, but he'd also claimed he would charm the potions supply cabinet (Fred and George had gotten into it, age five, and began to toss one of the more gooey substances at unsuspecting victims), and he claimed he would secure the brooms from children who weren't Hogwarts age (there was the incident where Ron had first learned to ride a broom, or rather he was first propelled into the air by a broom.) She had said multiple times that she had every right to be wary of a flying car in their shed, and given the twins' temperaments, she was probably right.
Arthur knew, deep down, he couldn't prevent any of his children from making use of the car. He could tell from the gleams of even Bill's eyes that the Ford Anglia would be sought after by all of them, at one point or another, no matter how many locks he put on the door. For better or for worse, his children could be a force of nature, unstoppable at best and destructive at worst.
So, instead of seeking to simply stop the children, he sought to slow them down a bit, then make sure the car could prevent as much injury as possible. Damage control was the best policy he could employ.
At first it was simply a couple of cushioning charms to the walls, then it was some breaking charms, and the list of applied protections kept growing. By the end of it, Arthur Weasley couldn't name all the spells he put on it, but it seemed to work well enough so he added some more protection to the shed, and left it at that for the day.
Later, when Molly came to check on it, she could only huff in disapproval over the locking systems and add her own protective charms. Arthur tried to explain what he'd done without admitting it was useless to prevent the kids from using the car, and Molly would listen between diatribes and additional spellwork.
It took an hour to go over the thing, and Molly only quit when the car continuously honked at her until she remembered that she'd left the dinner on and should probably get back to it, lest the Burrow burn from that.
Arthur isn't quite sure why the car had started honking, nor why it stopped when Molly realized the dinner was on; he was just grateful that it had passed inspection, if just barely.
The first time Arthur Weasley drove the Ford Anglia in public, he parked it in the middle of a roundabout, and the car had to find its way home as inconspicuously as possible. He got considerably better each time, with some helpful guidance of the car refusing to go into neutral in improper positions, and by the time he was seeing off Charlie, Bill, and Percy to Hogwarts he thought he had gotten this parking thing down.
It was parked on the side of the road this time, which the Ford Anglia noted as a marked improvement over parked in the middle of a roundabout. It was approximately fifteen centimeters from the curb, wheels turned toward it. It was shifted into neutral, the parking brake is on. It was also square in the middle of a fire lane.
Despite this small hiccup, the car found this rather satisfactory. When a traffic cop wrote a lopsided and begrudging ticket, the Ford Anglia waited for the cop to leave, quickly consumed the paper a swift wish of the windshield wipers, and changed its license plate number. Only after seven times does the car think this may be becoming a problem, and when it was sure no one was looking (they were), hurdled three feet forward to the safety of a respectable parking place.
Nevertheless, much to the traffic cop's bewilderment, he wrote seven tickets that day, all for a blue Ford Anglia, parked in the same fire lane, with different license plates, all of which are registered to different people with funny names (what sort of name was 'Lucius Malfoy,' anyway?). He was glad when, at the end of his shift, the owners of the most recent Ford Anglia had finally moved the thing forward, and no new Ford Anglia had come to replace it.
When Arthur Weasley found the remains of the tickets later, lodged in the oil filter of the car's engine, he just wrote it up to some bizarre Muggle mechanical novelty.
It was three weeks before Charlie started Hogwarts for his last year, and it was reaching three in the morning. He just couldn't seem to fall asleep, which was rather unfortunate since this would probably be his last week seeing Bill for some time. Bill was staying for just a few weeks in the summer before moving to a new job, and Charlie was trying for an internship with dragons in Romania.
Or, he was trying to decide about the internship in Romania. He had gotten a letter confirming that they wanted him there, provided he scored well on his NEWTS; he just didn't know what to make of it.
Deciding that it was useless to sit in bed any longer, Charlie headed to the kitchen, making sure to step over the creaky steps on his way downstairs. He had wanted to grab something to snack on in his anxiety, but his bee line toward the pantry was impeded by a rather guilty looking Bill.
"Bill," Charlie said, the name a question and an accusation all at once, "What are you doing up so late?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Bill responded, his guilty look being replaced with a curious, concerned one. It was the same look Bill had given Charlie when he'd caught his younger brother sniffling in an armchair from homesickness the first he'd gotten to Hogwarts. It made Charlie feel both comforted and young, all at once.
Charlie nodded, "But I asked first." It was a childish finger pointing accusation, but it was three in the morning and he was too emotionally spent elsewhere to care about sounding young.
Running a hand through his hair (Molly had tried to cut it, but it had evidently grown back in the night), Bill said, "I was thinking about, ah, taking the Anglia for a spin. You can come too, if you want to."
That had not been what Charlie was anticipating.
"Listen- I've worked with a lot of enchanted objects at work, but I swear that thing has actual brains. When Dad picked me up in it, it refused to move into neutral until I'd remembered to grab my luggage. Almost as if it cared. It's really a fascinating piece of machinery."
"So you think going for a joyride will be an academic experience," Charlie said after a pause.
Bill ignored the accusation, "Yup, want to come with?"
And that's how, at three thirty in the morning, Charlie found himself in the passenger seat of his father's Ford Anglia, slowly ascending into the night sky above. Bill would occasionally comment on the mechanics of the charms Arthur had put on the car, but Charlie would be too lost in thought to respond. Eventually, the comments slowed, then ceased.
Bill held the wheel with one hand at twelve and his other on the stick shift, leaning back casually into seat as if he'd done this before. Wistfully, Charlie thought that maybe Bill had. Before Charlie could easily claim that he knew most things about Bill, but as their lives met their crossroads they began to know less and less of each other.
The ride was quiet, Bill smoothly sailing above the clouds in the Ford Anglia and Charlie thinking that maybe, they were closer than this when they were younger. It didn't make his decision any easier; he didn't want to think of feeling like this with his other siblings, but a part of him knew it was inevitable anyway.
They passed through another layer of cloud cover, now far enough above the mist below to see the stars. Finally, Charlie said, "I was thinking of taking an internship in Romania."
"Yeah?" Bill said, knowing Charlie well enough that he needed to be prodded for the details.
Charlie looked out his window; the stars stood bright above them, and if he had payed any attention in Astronomy he could have named them. "They have a good dragon sanctuary there, that's already been asking about me," Charlie explained, "Mum won't be happy that it's so far away, but I'd actually be able to work with dragons."
Snorting but smiling at Charlie, Bill opened his mouth to respond, but the car interrupted him. Dragons were, decidedly, relatively, if not extremely, harmful, and the car wouldn't stand for this. Bill hadn't moved his hand on the wheel or the shift, but the car began a harrowing descent back into the cloud cover, and Bill threw both hands on the wheel.
"BILL, MERLIN, WHAT ARE YOU-" Charlie yelled, as the car continued to plummet.
Bill interrupted him, twisting the steering wheel in every direction possible, and some that really shouldn't be, "-IT'S NOT ME, IT'S THE CAR, IT'S THE CAR, I TOLD YOU THE THING WAS MAD."
That's all Bill could get out, as the windows had opened, and misty condensation filled in. They couldn't see anything, only feel the sensation of falling to the Earth, but, luckily, not the sensation of crashing. Before they landed, the car had decided it scared them enough, and slowed to a halt, hovering over the ground. Then, it plopped to the ground, settling in the grass below.
Neither Charlie and Bill released their grips on the car. Wind stirred around them, blowing over the field they'd landed it. The car shifted into neutral.
"Maybe I was wrong," Bill said, "About this car looking out for us."
Charlie laughed; his knuckles were still white from gripping the dash. Silence fell again, and Charlie coughed, "So, about- about what you think about Romania."
"It'll be good for you," Bill repeated the smile from before, "You've always wanted to work with dragons, despite Dumbledore never really agreeing on having them on Hogwarts property."
"Yeah," Charlie said, "Yeah, I've always wanted it."
As they returned home, Bill's driving position had shifted. Instead of the cool and casual position of before, Bill held the wheel with his fists, as if it could get away from him at any moment. Charlie looked at his brother's stature, now much more hesitant and wary, smiled, and looked away. Maybe Bill hasn't learned how to drive, he thought, feeling more at ease than he had since he found out about Romania.
In the years the car would come to save more than one Weasley in more than one way. It saved Molly from burning down the Burrow and Arthur from parking tickets and it had tried to stop Charlie from working with dragons, it really did, but Percy was the only one the car managed to save conventionally. The Weasley lot was packed into the comfortable bench of a seat in the back, all their belongings finally secured and collected in their trunks. It took less time than last year, so it was a good start, at the very least.
As such, Arthur Weasley figured it would be a reasonable venture this time. All things considered, the family was less rowdy than normal. While the twins were trying to snatch a scampering Scabbers from Percy, and Percy was responding with blustering fluster the twins had learned to gleefully anticipate, this was rather tame for them. The rest of the group settled better, with Charlie fidgeting nervously with his Head Boy's Badge, Ron gloomy in the back since he didn't want to wait another year, and Ginny even gloomier because she didn't want to wait another two.
Unfortunately, as it often were, Arthur was mistaken.
"Mum, tell Fred and George to leave Scabbers alone," Percy said from the back, holding the rat as far away from the twins as possible. This was a difficult task, seeing as the twins had sat, tactically, with Percy between them. Molly repeated his words to Fred and George, who took them no heed and continued to cajole Percy into giving them the rat.
"We only want to give him a treat," Fred said, holding out something sure to be vile. Scabbers made a squeak of protest, as if he knew what was coming. Percy shot Fred a disapproving look, trying to look as superior as possible with the glare, and George utilized the moment to snatch Scabbers away.
"MUM," Percy yelled, and Arthur veered the car to the side. Scabbers squeaked again from George's grasp, who had an increasingly hard time keeping hold of the rat. As Arthur tried to get control of the vehicle, Scabbers got away, scurrying across the feet of the back seat and to the front. The rat cowered by the pedals, startling Arthur who proceeded to slam on the breaks, and on Scabbers' tail.
Everyone lurched forward along with the car, and in the cacophony couldn't even hear Scabbers' yowling. Charlie's Head Boy Badge dropped to the floor, Ginny let out a screech, Ron let out a louder one, and Molly yelled a preemptive "FRED AND GEORGE WEASLEY." Then, as bad as things were looking, they got worse, as an airbag in the center console expanded, walloping Percy in the face.
It wasn't sure how the airbag got there, as it wasn't there by conventional Muggle design, but it functioned like a normal Muggle airbag all the same. With a fwoop of noise, it hit Percy hard, powder showering out around the impact.
The car stilled to a halt, the only noise the slow fwee of air deflating from the airbag. Dust and powder from the bag had settled, and tears pricked at the corner of Percy's eyes. Fred and George, nearly impacted by the thing themselves, regarded the bag with a mix of terror and delight.
As Molly shifted between yelling at the twins and consoling Percy, the car lurched forward, then back again. It was almost a shudder, as if only now resigning to the terrible fact of its duty.
The Ford Anglia sat, unmoving, in the shed behind the Weasley Burrow, surrounded by a gaggle of what was sure to be trouble makers. It was the dead of night, after all, and being surrounded by three Weasley boys, talking in hushed whispers and wearing pajamas, was never a good sign.
"Oh come on, you can't back out now," said Fred to an unconvinced Ron, who was the furthest away from the Anglia, "I'm sure it can't be that different from flying on a broom. You steer it in the direction you want to go, it goes, easy. Well, not if we let you drive, we saw how you dealt with your first broom and it wasn't exactly graceful."
Fred neglected to add that the first time Ron was on a broom, it was one nearly twice his size, and only acquired as Fred and George had distracted the rest of the family by stuffing a helpless gnome in the Burrow's plumbing. As the poor gnome cursed through its misery of becoming the unfortunate clog in the toilet system, Charlie had quickly learned to apply his Seeker skills to new areas and saved Ron from an equally unfortunate, and all together ungraceful, fate.
Ron made a face, and George provided an encouraging pat on the back, "Trust us on this one, and we'll get Harry here in no time."
Ron did not seem convinced; in fact, he seemed even less convinced than before George had said anything. He had trusted Fred and George before, and it had landed him with various deformities and misfortunes along the way. This wasn't even including the time the two of them tried to convince him to make an Unbreakable Vow. Once, just after the twins came home from Hogwarts, Ron had agreed to eat something they'd concocted landed himself with webbed toes and fluffy down feathers extending from his elbows to his wrists. The next year, he'd agreed to the same thing, and he had a tongue the length of a frog's, with dexterity to match. At least that one was useful, as he could snatch food off the duo's plates, though it was not particularly flattering.
That being said, his wariness toward whatever the twins were plotting was outweighed by his worry for Harry. He looked between the two identical grins in front of him and said, "Do you even know how to turn it on?"
Their grins grew, and Ron wasn't sure if he felt excited or regretful.
"Oh sure, we watched Dad turn it on when he picked us up from King's Cross," Fred said, looking pleased that he'd cataloged that bit of information.
George had already turned to the car, and was poking around at the car's lock with some lockpicks, "He did have an actual key, but it'd be a shame if Mum saw it was gone, so we've decided to go the old fashioned way. Can't be using magic and all."
The door unlocked, and Fred and George scrambled inside, Ron following and filing away in the back seat. Despite the two of them getting into the car, the Ford Anglia still did not show any indicating of providing motion any time soon. If this worried the two, it did not show on their faces, or in the tone of their voices.
"Always wanted to go in a joyride in this thing, ever since Bill told me about it," Fred said, bouncing his fingers on the wheel as George worked on the ignition.
"It's a rescue mission, not a joyride," George corrected, nudging Fred and giving a wayward glance at Ron's souring expression.
And, despite not having the right notches hooked for the ignition key, and despite not being in present danger, the car whirred to life. The headlights blinked, the engine rumbled, and George's seat moved backward, shoving him away from the ignition.
"There we go," said George, as if he knew what he had accomplished, and Fred gripped the wheel, holding it with locked fists at three and nine. The car lurched itself out of neutral, jolting forward and out the shed door.
The car had managed to convince itself that rescue mission may have meant something to do with rescue mission for a Weasley. It turned out it wasn't a rescue mission for a Weasley, it was for some Harry Potter. Furthermore, the twins knew how to make the car invisible, sure, and could pilot it well enough to reach their destination, but not without mishaps along the way.
They nearly clipped the bumper on some passing trees just past the Burrow. No less than three birds had accidentally been knocked by Fred's steering. No less than five birds had been purposefully targeted by Fred's steering. Ron had nearly fallen out the open window after he'd figured out how to open it, and all that was before they'd even reached Harry Potter' residence.
The car had to compensate for their discretions, either by rolling up the window or honking at the approaching fowl, but there was only so much a car could do. By the time the Ford Anglia was done with the trip, it had quite enough of that Potter fellow, and maybe just a bit of a grudge.
The grudge had carried out throughout the poor boy's second year; it would work for Ron, but if Harry was there with it, it would work but just barely. The cooling system wouldn't turn on, the invisibility wouldn't function, the ejection wouldn't be pleasant. It would become the bare necessities of survival, as long as Harry Potter was there. The car spent a good time in the Forbidden Forest sulking, as much as a car could sulk. It prowled on known paths, and only came when Ron's situation seemed extremely dire, and even after facing the perils of spiders it still ejected them unceremoniously to the ground.
It may have been a slightly misplaced grudge, all things considered; it wasn't Harry who was driving the car into birds for the hell of it, but Fred. Still, its loyalties lay with the Weasleys, and when Fred and George escaped from Hogwarts on their old pair of broomsticks, the car watchfully hovered above the forest, its blue hood barely shimmering under gleaming moss.
George was pretty sure he saw the powder blue hanging above the forest, and made a forgotten note to mention it to Fred later, who was much too preoccupied on their grand expulsion from school to care about the old watchdog of a car.
Mars hung bright and red over the Forbidden Forest, but the Ford Anglia made no motions to respond to the increasing chaos of the world around it. It sulked its paths and trails, occasionally running over or through a nest of spiders or a gathering of mooncalves. It garnered quite an infamous reputation among the creatures of the forest, but never making any motion toward the school.
Unless a Weasley came to the Forbidden Forest, the car would not come to them. It took five years for a Weasley to head off into ruckus again, and the car responded accordingly.
Ginny had anticipated more of a punishment for trying to steal the Sword of Gryffindor than simply wandering the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid, Luna, and Neville, but she in no way was going to protest. She could count her blessings on one hand at this point, and she wasn't going to waste them, even if they came from Snape. While she could hold a grudge as well as her brothers, she could also be pragmatic about it.
Still, as Hagrid told them to wait there as he checked on something ahead, something sure to be too dangerous for anyone but Hagrid to be fond of, Ginny couldn't help but feel antsy. It wasn't an unusual feeling, and it was even a more comfortable feeling than Hogwarts at the moment, but it still wasn't welcome.
"Something's off," Ginny said, staring at the foillage ahead of them. Neville followed her gaze, and Luna stared in the opposite direction. Something scuttled beneath them on the forest, but the movement was small and consistent enough to go unnoticed.
Neville nodded in the darkness, looking briefly at Ginny and freezing. "Ginny," he said, pointing his wand above Ginny's head, a spell on the tip of his tongue. Ginny tensed and gazed upward; two bright pincers stared down at her, as well as eight, gleaming black eyes.
Just then, the car had approached behind them, where Luna was staring, frightening spiders away as it did. Its engines revved, and before Ginny could turn around to face the Weasley family car, its lights blared on, enlightening the spiders above them.
Then, just as quickly as the car appeared, the spiders scattered from the lights of the Anglia. Luna was the only one to constantly look at the source of the light, and not bounce between the car and what the light silhouetted.
The spiders continued to scuttle and scurry around them, and the lights of the Ford Anglia turned off. The only noise, for a while, was the hum of the engine and the movement of spider legs on the forest floor.
"That bloody car," Ginny broke the quiet, her voice breathy, stuck between laughing in relief and yelling a curse. She gripped her wand in a clenched fist, prepared for a moment that hadn't come.
Neville laughed nervously for her, "You're talking about the car and not the spiders?"
With the spiders skittering out of sight, the two of them moved on, Ginny muttering further about how when they found Hagrid she'd give him a word about the spiders. Yet Luna remained still, not following the craned her head at the blue car, wide eyes staring, unblinking, at its mossy, muddy exterior.
"Thank you," she said sincerely, in a way only Luna could, "That was very kind." The car tottered for a moment and gave an embarrassed honk before shifting in reverse and whirring away.
"Are you sure about this, Rose, if we get caught my Mum's going to send us a howler," Albus protested, "I can hear it now, she'd probably say something like 'I'd expect this from James, or even Lily, but never you, Al.'"
"Oh come on, I'm sure she'd gotten into worse when she was at Hogwarts," Rose said. She continued to pull her cousin forward, bright red hair breezing behind her like a mane. The ground was cold under her feet, and the sky dark above her.
Albus looked back to the castle that was growing increasingly far, "She was in the middle of a war, we're just looking for spiders. Or just trouble in general."
"You don't learn how to do a Bat-Bogey Hex for a war," Rose said, continuing to walk, "She'd probably been in plenty of unheroic trouble in her time." Albus couldn't counter that, and his pace increased behind her.
"Besides," Rose said, "The Forbidden Forest can't be that bad, really. I can't imagine there being anything more dangerous than what we've studied in Defense."
Something scurried off in the distance, and there was a low growl in the night. Rose hadn't heard, or pretended she hadn't, and continued into the forest. Albus gave one last regretful look to the castle, then followed.
Somewhere deep in the forest, an engine began to whir. Old, tattered wheels revved against the ground they'd settled on, uprooting the undergrowth that had pinned them to the ground. Duty called, it had seemed, and after all these years. Headlights turned on, illuminating an old path in front of the Ford Anglia, and it lurched back to life, engine rumbling through the night.