Theme Two: Storm
September 1, 1963

On Arthur's first night at school it stormed so magnificently that Headmaster Dippet canceled the boat ride across the lake. The ceiling of the Great Hall flashed brighter and brighter during the Sorting Ceremony and the feast.

Arthur barely noticed as he sat at the Gryffindor table with his sister, Cornelia, and his brothers, Bilius and Percival. Instead of abandoning him for their own friends, the three older Weasleys spent the evening with Arthur. They gave him a brief tour of the castle, showed him the way to Gryffindor Tower, and then started up a rowdy fame of exploding snap in the common room.

All too soon, Cornelia, who was head girl, was sending everyone to bed. Too awake and excited to sleep, Arthur put on his blue and white striped pajamas and fished a Muggle comic book out of his trunk. Looking for his lightflash, he searched through the pockets of his robes and of the trousers that he'd been wearing on the train, before he realized that he left it in the common room.

There was a candle on the bedside table. Arthur could have waited until morning to retrieve his lightflash, but there was something intriguing about the unwavering white light that shone from the Muggle contraption.

His bare feet slapped against the stone stairs. The lightflash was lying on the table nearest the notice board, where Arthur and his siblings had been sitting. Retrieving the device, he clicked it on and off, sending random bursts of light across the room as he padded back to the staircase. He was almost there when he spotted a flash of pink dressing gown. A girl was curled up in one of the armchairs, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head buried in her arms. Arthur instantly recognized the red waves that fell across her shoulders.

Molly Prewett was crying; Arthur was not sure how he'd missed the sound of her sniffles. His first instinct was to pretend he hadn't seen her, but a nagging voice in the back of his head told him that he'd been raised better than that. The voice sounded uncannily like his mother, so Arthur heeded it.

"Molly? Are you alright?" he asked softly, not wanting to startle her.

"Hmm?" she stirred, turning watery eyes towards him. "Oh, hello. I'm okay. It's just the storm."

"You don't have to be scared; you're safe in the castle." Arthur was trying to be comforting. Seemingly he failed.

"I'm not scared!" Molly hissed. She recognized her rudeness, for she blushed lightly and her face softened into an apologetic smile. "My little brothers are the ones who are afraid," she said after a time. "Whenever it storms, I let them sleep in my room. We pull the curtains around my bed and I tell them Beedle the Bard tales."

"Sounds like fun," Arthur said, and Molly nodded sadly. "You miss them, don't you?"

"Terribly," Molly said. "And I worry about them, with no one to take care of them."

"What about your parents?" Arthur asked. This girl puzzled him; even if he had younger siblings, he'd leave it up to his parents to care for them.

"Well, Mother died when I was little, and Dad has to work hard to put food on the table. I'm the closest thing the boys have to a mother. And I do the cooking, and the cleaning. Now Dad will have to do all that, and work, and mind the boys." Tears threatened to spill over her eyes again.

"When do you have fun?" Arthur asked. Molly blinked at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, don't you ever explore outside, or play exploding snap, or read comic books, or run in circles until you're dizzy, or collect plugs? You know, fun?"

Molly shrugged. "I just take care of things; it's what I had to do. Besides, the boys have enough fun for all of us."

That struck Arthur as a very boring outlook on life. "I have an idea," he said, as he began to once again shine his lightflash in random directions. "Your family will be okay until Christmas. You need a distraction. You also need fun lessons."

"And I suppose you think that you're the professor?" Molly said, rising. Arthur nodded.

"Your first assignment is to join me by the lake next Saturday for a rousing game of hide and seek."

Molly smiled at him, a real smile. "I'd like that," she said, and then she yawned. "Just now, I should go to bed. We have class in the morning, and crying is exhausting."

She made her way over to the stairs that led to the girls' dormitories. She stopped on the bottom step and looked back at Arthur. "You were right, you know? About your light-stick-flash thing. It is much more impressive at night. Cheerful even."

Arthur grinned at her retreating back, then went to his own bed. Instead of reading about superheroes, he dreamed up a list of things to teach Molly in her fun lessons.