a/n: here there lovelies. I was scrolling through tumblr, half asleep since I was 'taking a nap' at the time I stumbled upon a page full of prompts. I took a screen cap of the one that interested me before actually falling asleep, and now I have discovered that when you screen cap from someone's profile it doesn't have the blog name at the top of each post to let you know who it was posted by… so I can't really give anyone credit… but anyway, this wasn't my original idea. I saw a prompt that said "Ron tries to use a computer." And I really wanted to write a quick one shot about it.
Ron was constantly intrigued by the things that Hermione brought home from work, and he was at least ninety-nine percent sure that when she told him and others that she worked in a restricted branch of the Muggle Liaison office she was in fact saying that she was an Unspeakable. So when she brought things into the house that she swore were normal everyday muggle appliances, but then promptly banned him from touching them his interest only grew.
"Hey Mione, what's this box on the bed?" he called through the bathroom door where he'd seen she'd gone after tossing her things down on the bed.
"It's called a tablet, but don't touch it," he heard her snap and he imagined that if the door weren't between them he'd see her brow raised up in a challenge. "I mean it Ronald. You can ask me all the questions you want when I get out of the shower, but don't mess with it on your own, you'll break it."
"At least tell me what it is won't you?" he pushed. "It looks like a really big cellophone."
"Cell phone Ron," she sighed, opening the door enough to peak out, but keeping her body hidden out of habit, despite the fact that all the kids were currently away at Hogwarts. "And it is similar. It's like combining a cell phone and a computer. My supervisor expects us to use them in place of the computers now. I'll be taking the laptop back tomorrow."
"Oh, alright," he said with a shrug before waggling his eyebrows at her. "Hey do you want company in the shower."
"Merlin's underpants Ron," she said with a roll of her eyes, though she did smile. "We've got dinner with you parents in thirty minutes, there's hardly time for that."
Not willing to admit that he could do things quickly in that department he just offered another shrug and walked out of the bedroom. It was as he passed into their slightly cluttered living room that it occurred to him that if she was really taking her laptop back to the office that he was going to lose his last opportunity to break the don't touch the computer rule that he'd been planning to break at some point. He knew that if he got caught he'd get some sort of comment about how he was just as bad as his father but he was fascinated by these muggle contraptions that she used. How did they work in their home with all the magic floating about anyway?
And really, how did they work in general. They were so small, but they had so much inside of them. Ron plucked up the silver computer from Hermione's desk with that old rush he used to get when they were breaking the rules at school as he pushed the lid up to reveal the screen underneath. It blinked awake presenting his with a blue screen with two little squares on it. One had a picture of Hermione in her work attire with her name beneath, and one with a picture of red flower that said guest.
He was sure that Hermione would put a password on her account so he tapped on guest rather than try to guess her password. When tapping it didn't immediately do anything, he wandered his way over to the couch to take a seat while he tried to remember what he'd seen Hermione doing to make things work on this computer. Then he remembered that she tapped the small square on the keyboard rather than the screen.
So he set his finger on that, and noticed that there was a little black arrow that moved about when he moved his finger. He directed it up to the red flower and tried clicking once more, and this time it did something. The screen changed to a blue background of a different shade with a bunch of little squares with names on them.
He looked through them and saw that several of them looked like little blue folders, but those looked like something that would be work related so he wasn't much interested in them. There was one with a compass on it that he thought looked promising, and though he had no idea what Safari was supposed to me he clicked on the picture. With one click it just put a box around the picture, but with another a white window flew open on the screen and he jumped a bit in excitement.
"Now we're in business," he murmured to himself.
It took a second to load, but then he saw that it wasn't just a white window, it had a colorful logo above a blank box. The logo said Google, and below the box it said Google Search and I'm feeling lucky. He clicked on the empty box first, and it made a blinking line appear. He remembered from peering over Hermione's shoulder once that that blinking line appear when she was writing.
He plucked out letters on the keyboard, typing out what is a google and then saw that a series of blue text questions popped up that sounded similar to what he'd just typed. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd just done, but he decided to click on some of the blue words, and then the window changed again. A lot of text appeared, which he supposed Hermione would be very interested in, but he was much more interested in the moving picture that appeared on the side. It looked like an advert from the Daily Prophet would, except that it was saying shoot the duck and win a table.
It seemed an easy enough concept, so I maneuvered the little black arrow over to the ad, and lined it up with the red circle on the screen and waited for a duck to appear, when the little green head popped up he clicked and suddenly the window was changing once more. Two new windows popped up. One was flashing different colors and saying he was a winner, and the other was a pale grey and it said that there was malware detected.
"What's maleware?" he asked himself as he clicked on the big red x in the corner to see if it would make it go away and he was delighted to see that it did.
When he was left with just the two remaining windows he happily turned his attention to the flashing window and saw that it said he'd been selected as the winner of a new iPad. He wasn't sure what an iPad was, but who didn't like getting free things? It said that all he had to do to get this thing was put in his email address or phone number. He didn't really know what an email address was, but they did have a phone at their house for Hermione to talk with her parents and he knew the number for that.
He clicked on the box near that and entered in their number, and then followed the logical path of clicking the button that said Submit below it. He was startled to discover that clicking that button caused three more windows to open. Two were flashing at him about winning other things, and one had a really inappropriate image of a woman on it. It certainly caught his attention, but he knew Hermione would be furious to know he'd been looking at something like that so he immediately clicked the x on the red x on that one. For some reason though, clicking it not only didn't close that window it opened several more with more of the dirty images.
He frantically began trying to close all of the windows, but they only seemed to multiply. Before he knew how it had happened the entire screen was obscured with the awful little windows that he hadn't asked for and he tossed the computer down on the coffee table in frustration. He knew he was about to get the bollocking of a lifetime, but there was no real way out of it that he could think of. So instead he decided to be proactive and go tell his wife what had happened before she discovered it on her own.
He discovered that she had already finished her shower and was applying lotion when he let himself into the bathroom in their bedroom with a chagrinned look on his face.
"What did you do?" she asked when she saw his reflection in the mirror. "You better not have touched that tablet after I explicitly told you not to Ronald."
"No, I didn't touch the tablet," he said as he scratched the back of his head. "But uh… well I figured it was my last opportunity to try and use the computer… and I don't really know how it happened, but there are naked women all over the screen now."
He prepared for to start yelling at him, but instead she cracked up laughing. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down at the little bench they'd put in there when their oldest daughter said it was obscene that her mother didn't have a vanity. She laughed so hard that there were tears in her eyes.
"Ron Weasley," she coughed out when she started to get her laughter under control. "Are you telling me you spent less than twenty minutes on my computer and managed to completely flood it with porn? Only you could manage that. What were you even doing?"
"I clicked on the thing called safari," he began to explain. "And then it took me to something called Google. I wasn't really sure what that was, but when I typed what is a google, it took me to some page that had an advert where you shoot a duck. I did that and it opened two more windows, and from there every time I clicked something more and more windows seemed to open until there were literally naked women all over the screen. What is that? Are muggles completely obsessed with naughty images? I mean should it really be that easy to find them? What if it had been one of the kids on that thing?"
"Well the children actually listen when I tell them not to touch things," she said with another laugh. "But that is a concern. There must have been some sort of virus in that ad that you clicked because it really shouldn't be that easy to find porn when you aren't looking for it. Oh darling, thank you for the laugh, I needed that. I can't wait to tell Reggie at the office about this when I turn the computer in."
Ron wasn't sure if he should be embarrassed or angry, but he decided that from now on he would listen when Hermione told him not to touch her work gadgets.