Disclaimer: As should be blindingly obvious, I'm not JKR, I do not own either Harry Potter or the characters and world depicted therin. This story was written for fun, not out of a desire for profit.
Author's Notes: This was written as a fiction challenge on my livejournal, the prompt was Arthur and Molly at Hogwarts.
He hadn't meant to keep her out so late. Truly, he hadn't. But the moonlight on her hair and the gleam of her eyes had distracted him. He'd lost all track of time when they'd stopped in their walk alongside the lake and started talking, really talking about more than the latest homework assignment or gossip about the latest insane pranks of the other Gryffindor students.
It was definitely not his fault that she was so beautiful. Her beauty was a fact of life, like the sun coming up or that the caretaker at Hogwarts would hate the students. No, and no one could blame him for the fact that she'd sat there and actually listened to him as he enthused about what he'd learned about the fascinating Muggle world that lay outside of the confines of the Magical society they'd been raised in. And once she'd listened to him, it was only fair that he sat there and listened to her talk about her dreams. He'd like to find one person who could honestly have a problem with him for just sitting there and talking with her. Even her notoriously overprotective brothers couldn't object to him listening to her.
And then with all that, with her beauty and her actions and the moonlight, and just the fact that Molly Prewett was Molly Prewett and not any other, lesser girl, how could he have resisted the temptation to kiss her? And she'd kissed him back too!
So it was definitely not his fault that they were sneaking through the hallways on the way back to the Gryffindor Common Room an hour and a half after curfew. Not his fault at all.
Maybe, if he said that often enough, Gideon and Fabian would believe him?
As they drew up to the portrait of the Fat Lady, and listened to her give her lecture on coming in late for the fifth time that month, Arthur Weasley knew that that excuse wasn't going to cut it with Molly's overprotective big brothers. But he knew, he wasn't going to cut his time with the girl he loved short for anything, no matter what they would say about it.
And hey, who could blame him?