Quidditch season spans all of winter, and Molly Prewett's Gryffindor team was cold indeed. In the field house after practice, they were warming their hands over the stove as she explained what had to be done to keep them from being pulverized by Slytherin in tomorrow's game.
"The weather diviners are calling for heavy sleet most of the day, so we're each going to need to find some goggles. No, not charmed Muggle ones," she said as Arthur raised his hand. "Proper quidditch anti-fog goggles, like the ones everyone on the Slytherin team will have. There are some dodgy old ones here we may be able to – "
Potter cleared his throat. "I have reason to believe we will receive an anonymous donation of brand new quidditch goggles by tomorrow morning."
Angelo huffed. "Anonymous? You mean from your old Dad, Potter? That's bloody brilliant of him. Why not crow about it? Give him some credit."
"Because," Sharlene said. "It would get people saying he bought little Potter's way onto the team."
"Something no one who's ever seen him play would believe," Molly added. "But people will say anything to unnerve each other on a game day."
Potter might have blushed. "Thanks, captain."
Molly gave a quick nod. "Please give your father our thanks, Potter. And everyone remember: quidditch is a mental as well as a physical and magical game. No matter what the Slytherins bait us with tomorrow," she said, her eyes traveling from Sharlene to Kingsley, and falling on Arthur, "we stay calm."
"So will he be back then?" Kingsley asked, his voice even lower than usual. "The ringleader himself, their captain, bloody Malfoy – is he well enough to play again?"
Sharlene shifted where she stood at the stove. She'd been suspended for a day after "accidentally" petrifying Malfoy and sending him to the Hospital Wing for two nights. It didn't turn out to be much of a punishment for her since she passed the time shadowing Alastor Moody's workday at the Aurors' office.
Molly nodded again. "Lucius Malfoy's name is back on the roster for tomorrow, yes."
Kingsley sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands.
Molly wanted to reassure everyone that Malfoy was still a harmless fop, but the words wouldn't come. Not after meeting his father and being so heartlessly abandoned by him. Stars only knew what he was capable of now he was enraged.
"Look, we're going to need everyone's best work to get through this," she said. "No player is expendable. But if anyone feels personally threatened during the match, ask me for a substitution at once. You can sit and get your head together before anyone gets hurt."
"More careful risk reduction, yeah captain?" Angelo said, not hiding his disapproval.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Molly said, her voice rising.
Kingsley threw himself between them with his typical good sense. "As long as it's just a game, we can afford risk reduction," he said. "It's fine. Thanks, Molly."
She dismissed them and they all filed out of the field house but Arthur. She turned around from locking up the chest of balls and was not at all surprised to find him waiting. She was surprised to find him frowning and rubbing at his right shoulder.
Molly clucked her tongue. "I knew you hyper-extended something on that last wild wallop at the bludger."
Arthur smirked and forced himself to stop kneading his deltoid. "It was either that or let you take the bludger in the skull."
With her palms on his shoulders she pushed him to sit on the bench in front of her. "Honestly, Arthur. I knew it was coming and I was already getting out of the way," she scolded. Her fingers dug into his sore muscle, strong and probing enough to make him wince and hiss.
"Sorry," she said, not easing her pressure at all. "The hospital matrons gave us captains some training in therapeutic sports spells. They're all done by hand, so bear with me for one – moment – more – "
There was a surge of heat, a loud snap, and Arthur cried out, a sound of surprise and intense relief.
She let go of his shoulder and tried to catch his shout, her hand over his mouth, hushing and laughing. "Quiet," she giggled. "If anyone's still around to hear that, they're going to think I'm taking advantage of you."
Arthur took her wrist and kept her hand pressed to his lips. His other arm encircled her waist and drew her close. When he was sitting on the bench and she was standing between his knees, they were comfortably almost face to face.
"Is it feeling any better, or did I break something completely?" she said, brushing her nose against his from above, not quite kissing him.
"Doesn't hurt a bit anymore," he said, his eyes already closed as she finally sealed her lips to his. There was something especially invigorating about post-quidditch snogs. Maybe it was the breaking of the tension built watching each other so closely, sensing each other's movements and heightened feelings, but never touching all through the game. Or maybe it was something more basic, like all the pheromones on each other's skin and clothes after physical exertion. Or maybe it was just thrilling to be so tired, but then to find a hidden cache of energy for each other at the end of it all, and to realize there was real power in their feelings, with a life of its own.
Whatever it was, Molly was standing on one leg, her other knee bent and resting on the bench beside Arthur as she leaned into him, his hand in the small of her back pushing her close. She cradled his head in her arms, her fingers in his hair as he kissed her. They'd been together for several weeks and already he was wondering how much longer he could stand having anything coming between them. He remember her skin from that afternoon in the car too well. He craved getting that close to her again - and closer - but was still too shy to say anything about it.
Her hands trailed out of his hair, down the sides of his neck, and out over his shoulders before moving across his chest. All the pushups Angelo insisted they do to stay in top beater form had done wonders for Arthur. Tall, strong, sweet, lovely Arthur whose mouth tasted like her own now, and who she never wanted out of her sight.
But as her hands moved back to his shoulders Arthur broke away to speak, as if he'd just remembered something important. "Therapeutic sports spells – you don't do them for anyone else, do you?"
She leaned back into their broken kiss. "I would if I had to. It's my responsibility to the team. That's why the school had me trained."
She found his mouth again and shook apart his resolve to keep talking as he kissed her in return. But then he remembered what he was saying. "Teach me the spells then. I'll do them so you won't have to. At least not on the big fit blokes."
There was a click as her mouth came off his neck. "Don't tell me you're jealous of me touching our teammates like I touched you just now."
Arthur blinked up at her face. "Of course I am. You're the best witch in school. I mean," Arthur gestured at the length of her, from head to foot. "Look at you. Athlete, leader, gifted healer, stunner. How could I not be jealous of – all sorts of things?"
She sighed loudly, tousling his hair. "That is very sweet of you to say. And also barmy."
Arthur jostled her in his arms. "Don't try to argue it with me after I've already been over half the country retrieving you from a failed attempt to carry you off."
She dropped her knee from the bench, standing back but letting his arms stay closed around her waist. "Oh, I see," she said. "This isn't so much about being jealous of our team as it is about the opposing team's captain."
Arthur huffed. "You mean the one who can't stop grabbing at you and begging you to leave me and run off with him? Yes, that's the one," he said, burying his face in her shoulder, breathing deeply of the scent of her throat. "But you're not going with him, or anyone else either. You're all mine now."
She stamped a noisy kiss on the top of his head. "Of course I'm not going anywhere. And even if I was dying to be with Malfoy, he's furious with me – completely over our involvement. He hasn't so much as looked at me in weeks."
Arthur raised his head. "See, now that's strange. If he was truly over it, he wouldn't care if he had to look at you or not."
She held his cheeks between her hands and kissed the end of his nose. "You have nothing to be jealous of."
A look of concentration wrinkled his forehead. "How about protective? At least let me be protective of you."
She sighed again. "Fine, I will allow protective, but only if things are – dire. Otherwise, just ignore Lucius and all of his ridiculous cronies. Please."
Arthur nodded. "Right."
"I mean it, Arthur," she said. "If there's any unnecessary roughness on the pitch tomorrow, I will bench you without a second thought."
He nodded again, trying to be businesslike even as Molly fell on his neck again. "Risk reduction. Yes. We've already accepted that."
Bilius Weasley came slowly to the door of his cottage, his cane in one hand, his wand in the other. With a one-way transparency spell, he could see who was outside. It was an unusual caller, a tall, very pale man in fussy, sumptuous clothing, fidgeting and glancing over his shoulder. He was probably not selling anything so Bilius opened the door.
"What."
"Mr. Weasley," the tall man said.
"Yes."
"Abraxas Malfoy," the man said, introducing himself with a slight bow. "I do hope you don't mind my intrusion, but I represent a gentleman, a collector, if you will, of Muggle artefacts."
Billius's eyes widened in spite of himself. "You do? What's he got on offer? Because I don't deal in junk."
Malfoy gave a thin laugh and stepped uninvited across the threshold. "No, he is not selling, but acquiring. And not just any Muggle artefacts, but," he ducked his head, like a co-conspirator, "charmed ones."
Bilius took a small stagger backward. "Charming them ain't illegal."
Abraxas laughed again, still light. "Of course it isn't. The statute clearly states that charming is lawful so long as no Muggles witness the charmed operation of said artefacts. We all know this. Now," Malfoy clapped his hands once, "let's have a look at this remarkable flying car of yours."
Bilius shook his head. "A car? Of mine?"
"Why yes," Abraxas said, grinning and beginning to rove around Bilius's front room, tapping a pyramid of dusty light bulbs with his fingernail. "We know you have it. Spotted it in the garden as we came up, as a matter of fact. Blue walls, made by the Frond Motor Company, or some such thing. And earlier this month this very car was spotted flying over the fields near my Wiltshire estate in broad daylight."
"Daylight?" Bilius raved. "You saw nothing like that. I've only ever taken it up in the dead of night."
Malfoy gave a low chuckle. "Oh, you weren't the driver, Mr. Weasley. No, we reckon it was your nephew."
Bilius paled. "No, my nephews are abroad. One in South Africa, one in Canada."
"And the other one?" Malfoy drawled. "Arthur, the one still in school?" He glanced at his wristwatch. "I believe he should be stepping out onto the quidditch pitch at this moment. Shame about the weather they've got for the match."
Bilius shook his head. "No one ever saw our Arthur driving any car. Now good day to you."
"On the contrary," Malfoy said, making no move to leave. "It was my own son who saw him."
Bilius tapped his cane hard against the floor. "And what's wrong with a wizard seeing magic at work? Or is this son of yours a squib? Or a full-on Muggle?"
It was Malfoy's limit. His smile collapsed as he strode forward. "You listen here, you decrepit old blood trai – "
"Abraxas," a voice called from the open doorway in a strong, clear tenor.
Bilius looked past Malfoy to the figure obscuring the grey light coming through the doorway into his front room. It was a tall man, his age impossible to guess. A shock of thin but waving dark hair fell over one of his eyes, and the eye Bilius could see flashed red as it scanned the room. The man held the door jambs with hands even paler than Malfoy's, their skin grey and smooth, like the underbelly of a newt.
"Riddle," the man said. "I am Riddle. I am in need of the services of a wizard of good birth who can charm Muggle artefacts. And upon hearing of your nephew's gifts and his – flexibility with the interpretation of statutes, I have chosen him."
At the sound of the voice, Bilius's mouth had gone dry, but he hacked out more defiance. "Oh, so you're out for trouble. One of those ones," he said.
"I am THE one," Riddle said, nodding and grave.
"Well, I didn't expect you'd be interested in all this," Bilius said, waving at the heaps of Muggle gadgets strewn throughout the room. He lifted a small, shining steel piece from a side table. "I can let you have these. They're for trimming toenails. Just a simple lever but still ingenious. Got to hand it to Muggles – "
"I did NOT come here hoarding trinkets," Riddle said, his words crackling with anger.
"What do you want to be charming Muggle devices for then?" Bilius said.
As Riddle contemplated his answer, the smoothness of his face twisted into a perversion of a smile. "I want them for chaos – for terror."
Bilius gulped past the lump in his throat and said, "None of that will be Arthur's cup of tea. No, he won't help you with any of that."
Abraxas lunged in front of Bilius. "The boy will help or he will face a hearing for violating the Statute of Secrecy. We will report him. As a parent, I have access to Hogwarts and I will go there at once and demand he be dealt with."
"Suit yourselves then," Bilius said, his voice rising to match Malfoy's. "Toddle off and tell Dumbledore all about it."
Abraxas was about the lash out again when Riddle closed his fingers over his arm. The threats died on his lips and Malfoy gave way as Riddle stepped up to Bilius.
"We regret having disturbed you, Mr. Weasley," Riddle said. "Your nephew is of age and I should have propositioned him directly, in person from the start. We will do so now. I bid you good day."
With that, Riddle took hold of Bilius's hand as if to shake it in parting. At first, there was nothing menacing in the gesture. But as Riddle held Bilius's hand, waves of sickening pain emanated up his arm, toward Bilius's chest and head. He gasped and fell forward, slumping on the back of the settee.
Riddle seemed to feel the pain of the hex too, shaking with it, but also feeding off the waves of distress as they rolled off the old man, relishing it.
As Bilius's knees buckled, "Arthur – don't…"
Riddle jerked his hand free, chortling as the old man crashed onto the rug.
Malfoy stood next to him, wiping at the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
"To the school now, master?" Abraxas said.
"No need," Riddle said, flipping his wisp of hair, batting the handkerchief away. "We've set such a perfect scene here already, it would be a shame to waste it. No. Summon the boy here, to our presence."
