In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 246: I'll Love You Long After You're Gone

LUCY:

I did manage to sleep, and with the help of George Weasley's lovely limitless supply of coffee brewed exactly how I enjoyed it, I made it through Monday without any sleep-deprivation-related incidents. Henry stopped by that evening to make sure I was alright, and he was all too eager to join the twins and me for a rousing Mario Kart tournament that stretched on late into the night. When Henry finally left shortly before midnight, I stretched myself out on the sofa across the laps of Fred and George, my legs in Fred's lap and my head in George's.

"Well, it's been fun, good night, boys," I said, draping my arm over my face dramatically and pretending to snore.

George patted the top of my head. "Such a shame she fell asleep before she remembered that there's a whole plate of untouched cookies — "

"Good morning, boys," I said as I jumped off of the sofa and hurried into the kitchen, returning to the den a second later with the plate. I dropped back down onto the sofa between the boys and set the plate on my lap before grabbing one cookie in each hand. "I forgot about these. Henry showed up and suddenly I was Toad and nothing else in the world mattered."

"Mario Kart does tend to have that effect," Fred replied, laughing. "It's only a matter of time before we come up with a product like it."

My jaw dropped. "Boys. A Daydream Charm. A Mario Kart Daydream Charm."

"You're bloody brilliant," George declared. With a flick of his wand, a massive sheet of parchment appeared in front of us, and three quills shot across the room into our laps. With a second flick of his wand, the quill that had landed on his lap scribbled MARIO KART DAYDREAM CHARM across the top of the floating parchment. He held out a hand. "Cookie me, please. I need to think."

I pressed one cookie into his waiting hand and one into Fred's before sticking one between my teeth and squinting hard at the parchment, head spinning.

"There are so many potential directions here," Fred mumbled through a mouthful of snickerdoodle.

I nodded, taking a hasty bite of the cookie and swallowing it before speaking. "We have to do all of the tracks, of course, but which one should we do first?"

"And what should we do about the characters? Should the people using the Daydream Charm be one of the characters, or should they be themselves? And what about the actual Karts? And how will we actually make these Daydream Charms in the first place? It's just a video game, we can't produce a proper memory for it the same way we did for the others since we can't actually go inside the game," George pointed out.

"And who should win?" Fred wondered aloud. "I don't know how we could actually engineer this in a way that it's actually interactive. Unless — Merlin's beard, hear me out, do you think we could sell a group of Daydream Charms? Together? Designed for multiple people, so they can race against each other?"

"Freddie, that would be incredible," I said. "I have no idea how we would even begin to actually create something like that, but — "

"We will," he interrupted, sounding absolutely certain. "Even if it takes the rest of the summer. Even if it takes the rest of our lives. We will, we must."

George pushed himself to his feet, grinning widely. "In that case, I'm going to go start coffee. You two start brainstorming."

When Tuesday found us, the three of us were sprawled on the floor, each armed with a half-eaten snickerdoodle and a self-replenishing mug of coffee, George's with mint, Fred's with cinnamon, and mine with a Chocolate Frog and half-and-half. We'd decided to start by creating a Mario Raceway Daydream Charm where the user was driving a Muggle car, just to make it as easy as possible for ourselves. We weren't sure how exactly we were going to make the Mario Raceway part of the Daydream Charm happen, but thanks to the flat's location in London, we knew we'd be able to access a Muggle car easily enough.