Love at First Sight (Harry Potter)

Mayhem at the Ministry

|ALEXANDRIA WEASLEY'S P.O.V|

My father woke us after only a few hours of sleep. We had all checked over the rooms before stepping outside onto the cleared campsite, our rucksacks on our backs as we watched him wave his wand at the tents. Magically, they packed themselves up. We then left, as quickly as possible, passing Mr. Roberts at the door of his cottage.

Mr. Roberts had a strange, dazed look about him, and he waved us off with a vague "Merry Christmas".

"He'll be all right," said my father reassuringly, upon seeing the look that I had given him. We marched off onto the moor. "Sometimes, when a person's memory's modified, it makes him a bit disorientated for a while . . . and that was a big thing they had to make him forget."

We heard urgent voices as we approached the spot where the Portkeys lay and, when we reached it, we found a great number of witches and wizards gathered around Basil, the keeper of the Portkeys, all clamoring to get away from the campsite as quickly as possible. My father had a hurried discussion with Basil; we then joined the queue, and were soon able to take an old rubber tire back to Stoatshead Hill before the sun had really risen. We walked back through Ottery St. Catchpole and up the damp lane toward the Burrow in the dawn light, talking very little because we were all so exhausted, and thinking longingly of the breakfast we knew awaited us inside.

As we rounded the corner and the Burrow came into view, a cry echoed along the lane:

"Oh thank goodness, thank goodness!"
My mother, who had evidently been waiting for us in the front yard, came running toward us, still wearing her bedroom slippers, her face pale and strained, a rolled-up copy of the Daily Prophet clutched in her hand.

"Arthur — I've been so worried — so worried —"

She flung her arms around her husband's neck as we all stood by, watching them with our shoulders slumped and exhaustion clear on our features. The Daily Prophet fell out of her limp hand onto the ground with a silent thud.

Looking down, I saw the headline:

SCENES OF TERROR AT THE QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP, complete with a twinkling black-and-white photograph of the Dark Mark over the treetops.

"You're all right," my mother muttered distractedly, releasing him and staring around at us all with red eyes, "you're alive. . . . Oh boys . . ."

And to everybody's surprise, she seized Fred and George and pulled them both into such a tight hug that their heads banged together.

"Ouch! Mum — you're strangling us —"

"I shouted at you before you left!" she said, beginning to sob. Her body racked against their bony chests. "It's all I've been thinking about! What if You-Know-Who had got you, and the last thing I ever said to you was that you didn't get enough O.W.L.s? Oh Fred . . . George . . ."

"Come on, now, Molly, we're all perfectly okay," said my father soothingly, pulling her off of the twins. He placed his hand, which was still coated in a thin layer of dirt from our journey, on her lower back and began to lead her back across the lawn. He then bowed his chin over his shoulder, speaking in an undertone, . "Bill, pick up that paper, I want to see what it says. . . ."

Bill nodded, although our father hadn't seen it as his back was to us now. He was humming words of reassurance in our mother's ear, wiping at the streams of tears rolling down her cheeks. Bill sunk into a crouch, retrieved the paper from where it had fell between the blades of grass, and then silently waved for us to follow.

When we were all finally crammed into the tiny kitchen, and I had made our mother a cup of very strong tea, into which our father insisted on pouring a shot of Ogdens Old Firewhiskey, Bill handed him the newspaper. Our father scanned the front page while Percy looked over his shoulder.