Emotion prompt: Fascinated

Characters: Arthur Weasley, OC

Summary: Everything that muggles do never cease to fascinate Arthur.

Mr Jettyson was a very proud man that day. His position was at the moment not a very comfortable one, but still he was a very, very proud man. Perhaps the proudest in all Devon.

He was at the said moment perched on his roof, struggling to properly adjust a large wired antenna. Sweat beads trickled down his chin as he worked under the hot July sun, but all that was beside the point. The point was that Mr Jetttyson was fixing a television antenna. His television antenna. And that was a thing to be proud of indeed.

Televisions were a craze all over England. Ever since the contraption came out to the public some years ago, everyone had been wanting to buy one. The pictures moving on the screen and the delight of watching it with your family and friends was quite exquisite. And what was more, televisions had become a status symbol. You had one, you were a big man.

This last reason applied most to Mr Jettyson. Admittedly, more than half of England's population owned a television now, but there was only one other television owner in the little village of Ottery St Catchpole. The signals were rather poor here (so he had heard from Jim Luggler, the first television owner of the village, looked upon constantly with a jealous eye by Mr Henry Jettyson). But who cared? He owned a television. Everyone could see the antenna on the roof. And they would admire it, and he was so proud.

As he worked, something caught in his peripheral vision. A mass of something of a decidedly shocking ginger shade. Carefully moving so that he wouldn't slip his footing, he turned to look at it.

It was a boy around eight to nine years of age. He had a mop of slightly curly ginger hair, and his face was dotted with freckles. He was leaning on the picket fence that surrounded Mr Jettyson's house, and was staring up at the antenna with absolute fascination. Mr Jettyson blinked at him.

"What you staring at, boy?" he called out.

The boy flashed a sheepish grin at being caught staring, but otherwise looked quite unfazed.

"What is that you are fixing?" the boy asked.

"It's a television antenna," he replied. He had expected admiration and some amount of envy to show on the boy's face, but instead, what slipped in along with the interested look was some amount of confusion.

"What is a telavesion?" he asked.

Mr Jettyson stared. There couldn't possibly a single person in Britain, old or young, who had not heard of a television. And to call it a 'telavesion'...

"A television," he said, stressing on every syllable, "is a device where you can watch...the things that they show on it." He didn't really know how to explain it; after all, he had never given much thought to why he wanted a television and what exactly it was for. "Living under a rock, boy? Everyone knows what a television is."

If the boy was hurt by his words, he didn't show it. He still wore his sunlit smile and the look of interest never left his face.

"What what does this thing look like?" he asked.

Again, this question made Mr Jettyson stare in bewilderment, but he answered it, just to humour the boy. Anyway, this question was much easier, and so he set on describing the great box-like device with its numerous knobs with enthusiasm. When he had finished, the boy nodded thoughtfully.

"So it is like a giant picture box."

That was certainly not how Mr Jettyson would have described his dearest television, but he nodded anyway.

A bright, admiring smile appeared on the boy's lips. His eyes shone.

"You people are really amazing!" he said. Mr Jettyson blinked. What did he mean by 'you people'? But the boy rambled on before he could open his mouth to ask.

"You are always making one new thing after another. You have those cars and motorcycles that are zooming around everywhere," he pronounced 'motorcycles' very carefully, as if he needed to recall the name with a lot of concentration. "Then you got those fellytones," it took Mr Jettyson ten seconds to realise that the boy was referring to the telephone.

"It's telephone, boy!" he barked, astounded. But the boy was already off again, lost in his thoughts.

"And those wonderful screws and nuts and hammer that you use, and oh, those escapators —"

"Escalator!"

"— and now you got this tevelision!"

"IT IS CALLED A TELEVISION!"

But the boy didn't pay him the least attention, lost in his musings. "I wish I could get to use these things, and make them too! They are all so fascinating!"

He was about to go on, but suddenly, from down the street, came a call: "Arthur!"

The child stopped instantly and turned. So did Mr Jettyson, who was in the process of wondering if the boy had a mental problem, or was from another planet, or simply plain dense.

The lady had long dark hair, and carried an imperial air around her. She was walking down the lane towards the boy.

"Arthur!" she called again, her clear voice ringing through the street. "You have been running around the village again? I told you to feed the chickens!"

Arthur smiled sheepishly. "Yes, mum, I have fed the chickens and put them in the coop." He ran over to cross the small distance between them.

"But you should really see these things, mum! They have made this new picture box — the tevilesson! That thing that the man's fixing, it carries signals of some sort to a big box that's inside the house."

The lady just smiled, shaking her head, and ushered the boy on.

"I am sorry that my son disturbed you. He's rather curious, you know," she called to Mr Jettyson. He only nodded, stunned and uncomprehending.

The last thing that he heard the boy say, before he went out of hearing range, was: "I want to learn this stuff some day, mum. Muggles are geniuses!"

Mr Jettyson sat on the roof, clinging on to his antenna, wondering what on earth could 'muggle' mean.