AN: Again, Camp Hogwarts challenge. This is Pottery, write the Next Gen characters making their parents something. The word count is 1,506.
"Molly? Molly?" Lucy came bouncing down the hallway of the flat in London where the two girls lived with their parents.
Molly looked up from the stacks of paper she was scribbling away at with her fine nib pen that Aunt Hermione had given her for Christmas. "What is it, Lu?"
"I was wondering if you were up for a game of Gobstones," Lucy said primly, folding her hands behind her back, her flaming bob bouncing with excitement that naturally seemed to radiate from the hyperactive twelve-year-old.
"Maybe another time, Lu," Molly said, and she leaned down and began working on another sheet of the fine paper she was copying in elegant, readable script from a messy scrawl spread over pages of a thick, slightly battered notebook.
"What are you doing?" Lucy asked, as she tapped her fingers restlessly on Molly's desk.
"Writing a story," Molly said. "For Dad."
Funny, how it started. Molly had always been able to read, for as long as she could remember. She didn't know a time where she couldn't understand the black squiggles on the page, and what they meant.
She always had an imagination, too. "Look, Daddy, there's a rainbow! Maybe it can take me to fairyland," she'd say excitedly after it rained. Her mother always disapproved of such fantasies ("Just a bunch of poisonous fairytales," her mother would rant vehemently,) but her father always held her up to the window and nurtured them.
"And maybe there'll be a little fairy Prince Charming waiting for you," her father would murmur in her ear.
"Percy!" Her mother would swat him when he said anything about a Prince Charming or a knight in shining armor. "I will not have my daughter growing up as some damsel in distress, with misogynistic fantasies!"
Her father would then sigh and put Molly down, who would go and make drawings of her little fairies and scribble out poor imitations of the scribbles to write about her little fairies. In her mind, they were just as good as the fairy stories, muggle and magical alike, that she adored so much.
Her father insisted she go to a muggle school. "She's curious, and they can teach her a little more than we ever could about literature! You know how much she loves to read!"
"Yes, but just look at what they're reading in kindergarten," her mother had snarled. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. How cute. Cinderella. How inspiring. Rapunzel. My definite favorite out of the bunch."
"They're just fairytales!" Her father protested.
"Just fairytales?" Her mother snapped. "They're misogyny, and works of sexism and so-called chivalry that males think are oh-so good, but have held women back for centuries."
"That's not what they're trying to pull," her father said gently, taking her mother's hands into his own. "Besides, she's independent, and she can re-write the stories."
Molly remembered that later, when she wrote and drew her fantasies out. She could change the story for herself.
"Really? A Barbie doll?" Her mother cried when Molly had said her one wish for Christmas that year that she was in kindergarten. "I remember how my cousin who liked dolls were into those. They're unnatural, Molly, and I don't want you to have one of those demonic things!"
Molly's upper lip trembled. "I-I-I just wanted one... To act out my fairy stories. About a princess and a prince-"
"Oh, your fairy stories," her mother snarled. "Let me tell you, Molly Guinevere Weasley! I will not allow you to keep poisoning your mind with those fairytales, or your father for that matter! Just wait until he gets home!"
Her father came home that evening. Molly cried in her room at all the trouble she'd caused, and her parents yelling. She'd just wanted to make up stories with those dolls. What was so bad about that?
"You go talk to her!" Her mother snapped at her father.
"Fine, fine, I'm going." Her father came into her room, with a gentle smile on his face. "Hey, my little Molly-Gwen. Your mother says you're really upset."
"I just wanted to make a story," Molly had sobbed. She had gathered the page of the scribbles that were her attempt at a storybook. "This one."
Her father took the pages, and cleared his voice to read them aloud. "Once upon a time, there was a prince and a princess.
"The princess and prince were best friends who came from kingdoms who were friends. They played together and practiced for being king and queen together. When they were older, they had fallen in love, but they didn't tell each other that they were.
"One day, the princess was taken by a scary dragon. The prince was heartbroken, but he set out to slay the dragon. He rode for many days and nights but was very tired when he finally found the dragon.
"He distracted the dragon, and told the princess to run because he loved her. He was too tired to be a match for the dragon, and the dragon was about to eat him up! But before he could, the princess slayed the dragon with a sword she found in his horde.
"The Prince asked why the princess hadn't run and saved herself, and she told him that it was because she loved him. The two kissed, and they rode off on two white horses into the sunset and lived happily ever after."
Her father looked up at her. "You wrote that?" He asked, genuinely amazed.
Molly nodded.
"I'll have to show this to your mother. You could be an amazing writer one day, you know that?" He said. He smiled, and went to go talk to Audrey.
Her father would encourage her to keep writing. Even when she'd rather be romancing some boy, he told her to practice her writing every single day. And she did. He'd enroll her in writing courses, and give her self-help books. He'd give her his genuine criticisms when she asked for it, and would be there for her when she needed a muse uplift, or had writer's block.
Her father had encouraged her to write. Molly now wanted to write something for him. So she'd taken that simple little tale she'd wrote in her childhood, and began writing a complex, young-adult version.
Unlike her other novel in the publishing works as of now, this was completely for her father. Percy Weasley had struck ill from aubrey influenza, and needed many excruciating, expensive treatments in order to get better.
Molly had made a deal that all of her proceeds from this would go towards his treatments, and the treatments of many others suffering from this new disease that was spreading everywhere in the wizarding world.
She had only one last thing to do. To my darling daddy, who always believed in me. I hope you get better! She smiled, satisfied, and took the makeshift cover she'd made for this special copy she'd made specifically for him.
"Molly?" Her mother, who looked so much older and much more tired, came over. "It's time to see your father in St. Mungo's. Hurry along now, we don't want to be late!"
Molly placed her book in her purse, and slipped on ballet flats, and stepped out into muggle London, Lucy and her mother by her side.
"How are my girls?" Her father called from his hospital bed. Lucy embraced him as best she could.
"Wonderful, Daddy," Lucy said.
"Glad to hear it, Lucy the Valiant Badger," he said cheerfully, despite how tiered, older, and green-tinged her looked. "And how is my snaky little Molly-Gwen?"
Molly smiled in spite of herself at the old nickname. "I wrote something for you," she said.
"Let's see it," her father said with a smile, like he always had when Molly had offered him something of hers to read and review.
Molly handed over the precious copy. "It'll sure make the hospital less boring." He looked and saw the dedication. "No, thank you, precious daughter. You've been better than a father could ask for." A Healer then came over, and the girls had to leave.
Nervousness tingled at Molly's stomach over the next few weeks. Would he like the story? Would he think it selfish to give him that type of gift? Would he approve? Would he think it to be too dark and mature for the work of an eighteen-year-old budding novelist?
Finally, there came a notice from the hospital. "Percival Ignatius Weasley, we are sorry to say, only has approximately an hour left. Please come to St. Mungo's."
Molly, Audrey, and Lucy got dressed and Apparated straight there.
His last words to Molly were, "You'll be an amazing author one day."