Written for the Houses Competition
House: Gryffindor
Class: Astronomy
Category: Drabble
Prompt: [Platonic Pairing Type] Uncle/Niece
Word count: 580
Willow Weasley was, according to her mother, a strange child. She was obsessed with magic and all its ins and outs. Flick your wand this way and you levitated something, flick it another way and something exploded. It was fascinating to Willow, how the slightest change could make such a difference. At first, her parents had been delighted to show her the wonders of magic, but they had slowly grown tired of casting the same spell again and again for Willow to observe. With her new little brother in the picture, her parents' time had been split and Willow went to her uncles when she wanted to learn more.
Willow loved spending time with her uncles—most especially as they agreed to call her Willow instead of William as her parents still insisted on doing. They had travelled the world when they were younger and had all the coolest knickknacks on their shelves for her to poke at and play with.
"Now this," Uncle Fabian was saying, showing Willow an ancient book of fairytales, "is a very special book. It has its own innate magic that can make the tales inside come to life—but at a great cost. This book has no way of generating its own power, so it must take from others. The reader is safe, and even empowered by the book, but the listeners? The listeners have their lifeforce stolen. Be careful now."
He handed the book to Willow and she looked it over curiously, flipping through some of the pages. It seemed like a normal book of fairytales, but she didn't doubt her uncle's words one bit—not after the time he'd shown her a little golden apple with strict instructions not to touch and she'd ignored him, only to black out while she was holding it and apparently try to place a curse on her house (never mind that she had been five at the time and incapable of that degree of magic).
"Is it cursed?" she asked her uncle, examining the end pages now.
Her uncle shrugged. "We don't know," he said disappointingly. "If it is, it's not a curse we know. There's nothing else like it."
"That we know of," her other uncle interrupted. Uncle Gideon was poking his head in through the kitchen and grinned. "Remember Willow, just because you haven't come across it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now come on you two, put that book away and come have some lunch."
Uncle Fabian chuckled and took the book back when Willow offered it to him. "There's always more to learn," he said, seeing Willow's sad face at having to put away the interesting object. "But one of the most important things to learn is that learning is not all-important. Eating's pretty important too; after all, if you don't eat, how will you have the energy to learn?"
Willow still pouted a little as the book was put away but perked up when she saw that Uncle Gideon had prepared pancakes for lunch. Forgetting all about mysterious artefacts and magical tales, Willow threw herself into a chair and started piling toppings onto the pancake already waiting for her.
Her uncles were right, as they often were. Just because she hadn't seen something didn't mean it didn't exist (she hadn't seen these pancakes before, after all), and sometimes there were things much more important than learning—such as pancakes piled high with fresh strawberries, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and a bit of powdered sugar.