Mall Antics
By Fuzzy Pink Sock
Summer. To a normal human child, this means freedom from the monotony of school, tests, homework, peer pressure, and all that nasty stuff. Summer is, in essence, the key to the cage, the savior sent by the gods. In other words, summer totally rocks. However, sometimes summer can be a bit of a burden. Well, perhaps burden isn't the word for it. Maybe...overadventurous.
It was the summer just following Ron Weasley's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This, of course, renders the qualification "normal human child" useless in application to this boy. He was certainly anything but normal. That year at school had shown many events that would change the events of his world, the world of magic, forever. Maybe that was why he found himself here, in the muggle world. He needed a change from the...well...change that the wizarding world was going through.
Sighing, he leaned down further in his seat on the muggle bus that his companion had chosen. Hermione was the only of his friends that knew the muggle world well enough to venture out alone, let along take a muggle-stupid wizard out for the first time. However, her constant nagging chatter about how "the malls would be packed with tourists" and that is was "mad to even consider going out on a day like this" was beginning to drive the redheaded boy insane.
With a screeching lurch, the bus came to a halt, the door opening with an annoying squeak. The passengers filed out, some chatting about work or something called a "Water Park". This made Ron wonder. Was it a park that floated on water? He shook his head, making note to ask Hermione about it later.
Waiting at the the bottom of the steps of the bus, Ron looked around while Hermione made her way out of the big vehicle. Muggle buildings were everywhere, and one particularly busy building (something called a McDonald's) that seemed to serve food had a festering metal cage behind it with flies buzzing around the overflowing contents. Ron proceeded to gag in disgust.
"Ron," he heard a voice say behind him, followed by rapid snapping of fingers. Turning, he saw Hermione waiting for him. The bus had already zoomed off to some other part of the city.
"C'mon," she said impatienly, "The mall is over there," she pointed and continued, "I'd like to get there before the big crowds."
Tugging him by the arm, she pulled him along the sidewalk for about a half-mile, smiling amusedly while Ron watched cars go by, stereos blaring. Within moments, they arrived at the entrance to the grand building.
Ron's eyes traveled up, taking in all three floors of the massive complex. It was...easily one of the larger buildings he had seen in his life. Hogwarts and Gringotts were both larger, Hogwarts moreso than Gringotts. Hermione continued tugging him, cutting his observance short, and they entered the building. Ron's first major shock was with the mechanical doors that admitted the two to the interior of the building. The doors slid open with a mechanical whir, making Ron, who had expected to push them open, fall forward.
Rolling her eyes, Hermione helped Ron up, saying, "I forgot to warn you about the doors, didn't I?" Mumbling a bitter response, Ron dusted himself off and continued on inside, ignoring the stares that followed. They were within a large hallway, about as big as the Great Hall, with little cubbies. Behind the counters, people milled about, taking orders and serving food. It took Ron a moment to realize that there were close to twenty mini restaurants lining the walls of this portion of the building.
"Hermione," he said in wonder as they walked past a restaurant called "Little Sakura", "why are there so many bloody restaurants?"
"Hmm?" Hermione hummed as she looked up at him. "Oh!" she said, giggling. "This is called the Food Court. There's a bunch of different restaurants with different ethnicities," she explained as she would to a child.
Ron nodded, watching the chefs within the Little Sakura restaurant flip food every which way, always managing to catch it or land it perfectly on a plate. They rounded a corner soon after, and they passed many stores, most of them not so appealing. Hermione had to drag him away from the escalators ("Hermione! I wanna ride the esapator!") and she pulled him into a clothing store.
"'Mione," Ron said, "Why, of all places, are we in this place?" Indeed, the store was very odd. Blinding lights adorned the ceiling, illuminating the endless racks of very nice shirts and pants. A curtain on the wall opposite to them led way to a section simply titled "Lingerie".
"And," he continued upon noticing this section, "Can we go in there?" At Hermione's questioning glance, he pointed to the red satin curtains.
Moments later, Hermione explained the purpose of their venture into the clothing store while Ron nursed a red cheek. "We're here for the sole purpose of getting Harry to notice yo--I mean, to get Harry to notice me." She caught herself just barely, coming dangerously close to revealing her true intentions. She knew that Ron liked Harry, but Harry was much to obsessed with a different Weasley to pay attention to Ron.
"Ah. I see," Ron said dejectedly. He was under the impression that Hermione also liked Harry, and that was just what she wanted him to think. She had told him this, in fact, for the shear purpose of their mall trip.
"Yes. And we'll also find things for you to wear, obviously," she said, shoving a red shirt and black dress pants into his arms. "Go try those on," she ordered, pointing toward the changing rooms. Ron made his way over to the little cubbies, completely ignoring the signs with little pictures and arrows.
Stepping into one of the changing rooms, he closed the door, giving up with the stupid mechanical lock soon after. He had only just started to peel his shirt off when he heard a shriek behind him. He had barely turned around when he felt a bag connect painfully with his head. "Pervert!" Someone exclaimed as he was thrown against the wall outside the room, his shirt thrown out after him.
Hermione came running at this commotion and blushed when she saw Ron's predicament.
"Ron," she admonished as he pulled his shirt back on, "Did you even bother to look at the signs?" At his confused look, she pointed up. Only then did he notice the signs that pointed to the boys changing rooms. It took him another moment to register that he had just started changing in an unlocked female changing room.
Turning a bright pink, he gathered the discarded clothes and made his way into the boys changing rooms, but not before double checking to make sure it was the correct stall, and only after Hermione demonstrated how to use the button-activated lock.
A few minutes later, he stepped out and showed off the clothing for Hermione, who had already tried on her outfits. Nodding her approval, she motioned for him to change again (much to his dismay - he didn't want to deal with the lock again.) Five minutes later, he stepped out, clad in his normal clothes. Hermoine promptly took the clothes she had given him to try on and almost gave him a few more sets. However, at the desperate look in his eyes, she held back and bought the one shirt and one pair of pants that she'd selected before.
They exited the clothing store, Ron ecstatic at the idea of finally riding the "escapators" as he called them. He was practically dancing as the mechanical stairs made their way up to the second floor of the huge mall. The first store that Ron saw made his eyes go wide.
He'd heard all about muggle electronic toys, and this store was chock full of them. A large sign proclaimed "USED PLAYSTATION GAMES! NEW NINTENDO 64 GAMES FOR SALE - JUST RELEASED!" Giggling madly, he bolted away from Hermione and ran into the store, much to her protest. He stopped at the first demo station he saw, grabbing a controller. Above the screen (this musta been a telo-vision) was a sign that read "Crash Bandicoot."
Stifling a laugh at such a stupid name, the game started. Ron, of course, had no conceivable idea what he was doing, randomly punching buttons and fiddling with the directional pad. He even cheered in victory when the weird animal fell down a pit, thinking that the object of the strange game.
He felt a small tugging at his pant leg and looked down to see a kid, no more than six years old, looking up at him. "Hey mister," the kid said with an American accent, "Can I have a turn?" Ron smiled and stepped away. "Sure," he said to the little boy. With one last little tug on Ron's pants, probably in thanks, the boy grabbed the controller.
Sadly, that one last tug sent Ron's pants crumpling to his ankles. Looking down with wide eyes, he realized that he'd left two things in the changing stall in his rush to get out. The first was his belt. The second was his boxers. Leaning down quickly, he yanked his pants back up, but that didn't stop the comments.
"How disgusting!" "Oh my god, where are his undergarments?!" "Good god, have you ever seen anything so big?" His head whipped around at the last one, and the rather cute girl who'd said it winked at him as he blushed. Suddenly, he was out in the main stretch of the mall, a rather unhappy looking Hermione glaring at him.
"Quite a scene you caused in there, Mr. Weasley," she said with a very curt tone, "And now that we've shown the female gaming population of England your oversized...erm...ego, can we please get a move on?"
Ron nodded his agreement and allowed himself to be dragged off, embarrassment bubbling across his face.
They walked around for another hour or so, thankfully without much incident, until the time came for Hermione's parents to pick them up outside the food court. Ron insisted upon riding the escalator again down to the ground floor and Hermione decided to just go with his wishes, as it was late (almost 8:30) and she just wanted to get home (she still had almost 8 feet of essays to write!)
Ron, however, decided to up the fun with this ride. Straddling the moving banister, he started to slide down the black rubber. When he reached the bottom, instead of landing gracefully as he'd planned, he was flung off, slamming into the wall. The main fuse center of the mall, which was normally locked, had been left open for maintenence, and his shirt caught a few of the main fuses. As he fell, they were yanked out with a spark and the lights went out within the food court.
The lack of proper lighting outside led to the large hall of the food court being plunged into almost pitch darkness, causing shrieks of fright, and scattered claims of a "terrorist attack", whatever that was. Here and there, one could catch snippets of the phrase "Death Eaters", but that would seem gibberish to anyone that wasn't magical.
Rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, Ron scrambled to stand up, and started to make his way over to the escalator, hoping to find Hermione in the throng of scrambling people. He was lucky enough to run into her as she was making her way to the exit. Just before they reached the doors, the lights turned back on, revealing multiple people trying to carry out items that they obviously hadn't bought yet. Seeing security looking around for the cause of the commotion, Hermione ushered Ron out of the mall.
As they stepped out of Hermione's mum's car, just outside of her house, Mrs. Granger wrapped an arm around her daughter. "So," she said, "How was the mall?"
Hermione groaned. "Mum," she sighed out, "Remind me never to take a pureblood wizard to the mall. Ever."
Her mother laughed as she led the two inside.