The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

A Niffler in a Crystal Shop

Frank Longbottom held Alice Prewitt's hand in his and prayed that it didn't feel sweaty. Honestly, even if it did, she probably wouldn't have thought much of it. The temperature was hot and the airport was crowded and she was too excited to be overly detail-oriented. Ali had never been on an aeroplane before and she'd been rather looking forward to it. She found the airport delightful, dragging her little wheeled suitcase along, her sunglasses wider than her face and her short pixie-cut hair freshly shorn.

"Oh isn't it so exciting?" Ali asked. "Why would muggles ever complain about this? It's such fun. So much more fun than disapparating! You miss out on the entire journey that way!"

"Yeah, I s'pose," Frank answered, though he was far more enamored by the spaghetti-strap dress that Alice had on than the plane. He hadn't enjoyed the aeroplane much - it had seemed cramped and stuffy to him and he was taller than Ali and so while she'd found the seat to be perfectly spacious, he'd found his knees knocking the seat in front him.

But Rio was colorful and exciting, and the twin mountains looming over the bay - one featuring the outstretched arms of Christ the Redeemer - seemed to frame the city like bookends to a crescent-moon-shaped coast. There were tall swaying palm trees and the surf smelled of salt and food. Frank kept looking around for where the cooking smells were coming from, wanting to take note for his later dining experiences, but Ali was too excited to think about her belly and she was pointing out flowers and statues, colorful buildings, flags, shop windows, and anything else that caught her eye.

"Blimey," Frank would say later, "I don't think she stopped pointing and shouting the entire way from the airport..."

He nervously leaned across to hold onto the back of her dress as she leaned out the window like a dog, her arms on the door frame, laughing and clutching her palm onto a wide brimmed sunhat she was wearing.

The hotel was ornate and over the top in the way that suddenly-popular vacation spots tend to be, and Frank couldn't help but think that the place might just be a teensy bit overrated but in the best way possible. The staff were trying too hard and that translated into never having to ask for help but always having somebody right there to do whatever needed doing. This started from the moment their taxi crawled up to the front door and no less than three bus boys leaped forward, expecting a lot of luggage from their British visitors but finding only one wheeled carry-on bag and a rucksack.

"Perhaps we should have brought more bags," Frank said quietly when the busboys looked confused at the lack of their luggage. "We are here a week after all."

"They're lucky I dragged that thing about as it was - I could've got everything in there in my pockets just as easily," Ali laughed, and she pulled Frank along by his hand, dragging him hurriedly across the pavement, where a gigantic water fountain spit streams of water into the sky nearly two stories into the air. Colored lights made the water glow purple and blue and pink in tandem and music played loudly from somewhere that had a traditional South American beat to it that made Ali's hips want to sway about. "This is so gorgeous!" she cied out, staring up, her arm still bent to hold her hat on her head. "Isn't it gorgeous, Frank, honey?!"

"It's something else!" Frank nodded, laughing at her enthusiasm.

Their room was a suite, and she squealed and ran about looking over the ocean from the balcony and rushing to find a huge bubbly tub in the bathroom and back to taste some cut fruit that had been left to welcome them. "Papaya!" she cried, "Oh gosh it's so good. Frank, look at this."

"I don't reckon I noticed anything for myself all week," he would say later. "She did all the noticing for me. I swear, it was like trying to calm a niffler in a crystal shop."

If Lily and James's vacation in France had been like the magic of classic black and white photography, then Frank and Alice's had been like when Dorothy Gale stepped out of the sepia toned world of Kansas and into the technicolor glory of Munchkinland... minus the Munchkins.

There was bold music and flavors that made their tastebuds go zing-zing and there were huge birds with colorful feathers and adventures into tropical rain forests and dances that made Frank sweat and pant, even as Ali seemed to never run out of energy. He didn't have any idea how she knew the moves - maybe they came naturally to her, he wouldn't put it past her to simply KNOW something like the merengue without having anyone show her how to do it - that seemed like such an Alice thing to know - but she led him across the floor on every dance. He was too fascinated by the skirt that had about a hundred and fifty colors and layers to ask any questions.

Alice got the tan she'd been dreaming of, laying and baking herself in the sun, while Frank wore a bottle and a half of sun screen, stayed under an umbrella and still burned like a lobster. She thought it was cute, luckily, and put aloe vera on his back in gobs while they talked every night for hours and hours or sat in their bubbling jacuzzi and snogged 'til they both felt their lips needed a break before they chaffed.

Ali wasn't expecting it when Frank took her to see a huge waterfall on the border between Brazil and Argentina, where the clouds came and created rainbows in the mist that bloomed from the base of the mountain cliffs they stood on, looking down over the trees that stretched far off in the distance. She wasn't expecting it when suddenly her parents and Frank's mum were there, along with Lily and James, all come by disapparation, and she wasn't expecting it when Frank knelt down before her, holding up a gorgeous gold band flecked with diamonds that looked like leaves and bloom of a rose, and asked her to marry him.

"You've already asked me, you goose!" she said. That didn't stop her from excitedly letting him put the ring on her finger, squealing excitedly at it's beauty.

"I don't mean will you marry me someday," Frank said. "I mean - will you marry me today?"

"Right now?" she squeaked.

"Right here," he nodded.

Ali had burst into hysterical shrieks of excitement and wrapped her self about him, her legs twisting around his waist, her arms around his neck, the world seeming to burst into flame. And what a glorious surprise it was when they were wed, right there on the cliffside of the falls, by a short little wizard in all black and save for the priest's white collar.

"It was perfect," Alice would tell anyone and everyone that would be cornered for but a second to hear the story, "I didn't really want to do all that arduous planning and waiting and all that silly pomp and circumstance and -- don't get me wrong, weddings are lovely, but I didn't want that, you know? I just wanted Frank and a beautiful memory and goodness, could it get more beautiful than dancing on the cliff over a rainbow made of mists?"

"Imagine if you'd only worn a pistachio green dress and a magenta suit with a pegasus to fly you off at the end, though, that would've been more beautiful," Sirius said with a smirk, when they were telling him and Remus about it later.

"Oh shut up, Sirius!" Alice said, punching his arm.

"Ow! Merlin's left tit woman - that ring - you could kill a man with that ring!"