Prompt #2: Cocoa
With the Leaky Cauldron as crowded as it ever got, Molly and Arthur considered themselves lucky to have secured this room, no matter how small and spider-infested it was, for the next three days. They sat warming their hands by the tiny fireplace and perusing the Daily Prophet, the page of their attention covered in phrases such as 'pleasant family home' and 'reduced price,' plus several monochromatic photographs depicting houses in various degrees of shabbiness. Molly sighed, seeing the cheapest price offering yet and realizing it was still out of their range.
"I don't know what we're going to do, Arthur," she murmured. Her fiancée looked up from a paragraph that had slipped out of his brain as soon as he read it to see her face wet with tear streaks.
"There, there." He pulled her shoulder closer to his, breathing her warm, flowery scent. "We'll make it work…"
The words did not fool Molly, who had grown up listening to her parents repeat the exact same reassurances over and over: they never helped the family's monetary desperation. It was always a hopeless situation that Molly hoped to escape someday. Now, it seemed, that would not be happening—she was still just as poor as she was ten years previously, and none of her wishes could help that.
While Molly's head bowed down and muffled sobs began to fill the silence, Arthur continued to read down the property listings. His eyes stopped on one that looked promising. "Molly…this one looks like it has potential…" His gentle tones soothed Molly's swirling thoughts. She lifted her head to see a fuzzy, unclear picture that Arthur had pushed over to her—it seemed to show a dead-grass-and-dirt property sprinkled with the occasional chicken, strutting from the sole building there-a run-down chicken coop.
"Well…it's cheap…" Molly said, trying to see optimism where there was none.
"Yes, Molly," Arthur replied, his voice coming stronger and stronger as he found the optimism that Molly failed to see. "We could make it work, I just know we could."
His strength made Molly's heart overflow with happiness—while she was groveling in self-pity, he had found the solution to their homelessness, and just in time for Christmas in a week. She planted a quick kiss on his forehead and reached into the only bag she owned, a patch-worked shoulder bag that was falling apart at the seams, pulling out two packets of Kwick-Cocoa Magic Mix.
Arthur smiled and said, "This definitely qualifies as a special occasion." The grin never left his face as Molly poured the mix into two battered, secondhand mugs and waved her wand over them with a flourish. Clinking mugs and laughing, they both took huge gulps, spluttering with even more laughter as the hot cocoa scalded their throats.
Chocolate, hope, and fiancées. It was the solution to any problem.
