the marriage stone (Discontinued)

Chapter 24 History Lessons

Anna Granger stood nervously beside her husband Michael. Each of them had a small overnight bag slung over their shoulder, and both were staring with some trepidation at the old shoe on the center of their table. It was a 'port key' Hermione had explained in her letter. The shoe had been delivered just that morning by a large brown owl who had been happy to accept a slice of their morning bacon as payment for the delivery.

"So we just touch it?" Michael asked warily.

"That's what Hermione said in her letter," Anna nodded. They had been invited to some place called the Burrow for Christmas. Now it was December 23rd and they were schedule to make the trip at precisely one minute after 12 noon. It was just noon now. They were both eager to see their daughter, and glad that finally they would be given time enough to truly get to know the family they suspected their daughter would one day belong to if her rather long-winded descriptions of Ronald Weasley were anything to go by. Her letters were always informative, detailed with her academic standings and whatever pieces of Wizarding news she felt were important that they know. And she spoke of Harry quite frequently and her constant worry and concern for the poor boy. But her descriptions of Harry had always been of a sisterly sort - Ron on the other hand was always referred to in clever asides. And a mother could read between the lines - she knew her daughter's heart and had long suspected that the red-headed boy had stolen it.

"Well, let's give it a try, I suppose," Michael sighed. With trepidation, they both reached out and touched the shoe. A second later, Anna felt a wrenching sensation in her stomach and before she could shout in surprise she found herself being pulled away from their home in London. The world seemed to blur around them and a moment later refocused. They were no longer where they had been.

Anna had only a moment of disorientation to notice that they now stood in a somewhat old-fashioned looking living room with the most enormous fireplace she had ever seen before she heard a shout of "Mom!" and found her daughter flinging her arms around her in greeting.

The next ten minutes were a blur to Anna as she was introduced to a very large number of redheads, along with Ron and Harry. She had of course met Arthur and Molly several times before when she'd gone shopping with Hermione in Diagon Alley, but it was different being a guest in a person's home.

As for the house itself - logic dictated that it should not be standing. The architecture did not look at all sound - particularly the stairs that didn't seem to follow any rhyme or reason beyond the simple fact that they went 'up'. The room they were staying in, covered surprisingly in posters with moving pictures in them, seemed to be larger on the inside that it was on the outside. And the window, which faced the front of the house and should have looked out upon the road, appeared to have a very fine view of the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.

Once they'd settled in the room and unpacked for the two nights they were staying, Anna was led by her daughter and young Ginny Weasley down into the kitchen where Molly fixed her a nice cup of tea while she finished getting lunch made for the mob of people in her house. Anna watched in silent amazement as the woman conducted the various food items and kitchen utensils with a wave of her wand.

The kitchen was far from familiar to Anna - she only recognized a few of the items in it. Her own kitchen back home was equipped with every modern convenience known to man - even a few she had yet to find a true use for. But Molly Weasley's kitchen appeared to be at least two hundred years out of date - that was definitely a butter churn she saw sitting in the corner of the room. Of course when the butter churn pumped itself with little prompting from Molly, Anna supposed the results were better than the processed cubes she bought in the store. There also didn't seem to be anything that resembled a refrigerator in the room - rather Molly simply opened up a random cupboard and pulled various food items from them. One minute a cupboard was filled with chilled milk, the next Molly was pulling a steaming hot pie out of it. All in all it was very disturbing - like something out of dream.