star shopping ✰ d.m.

CHAPTER ONE

Many things had happened in the month since Arabella Weasley completed her fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

For starters, the Wizarding world had entered another war, the catalyst being the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in which Arabella herself at fought in along with her twin brother Ron and her younger sister Ginny and a few of their friends. Now, those who weren't on the side of the Death Eaters were taking every precaution they knew of to protect themselves and their family from Dark forces.

The Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, had been sacked and replaced with an Auror by the name of Rufus Scrimgeour. To fight against Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters, Scrimgeour had established a few new departments within the Ministry. One of these was the Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects; Arabella's father, Arthur, had been promoted to Head of this office. Because of this new job, the Weasley family was finally able to afford glasses for Arabella, something she had been needing for some time now. While she willingly wore them in the comfort of her own home, she was nervous to wear them at school, for it was not very common for a Hogwarts student to need glasses for some reason; perhaps wizards and witches just tended to have better eyesight than Muggles.

Harry Potter, a friend of the younger Weasley children who just so happened to be the Boy Who Lived, was due to come spend the rest of the summer holiday at the Burrow, meaning the Ministry had to put extra protection on the home in order to keep Harry and the other residents safe. For the most part, this was just protective spells and security questions to make sure no one was being impersonated by a Death Eater, but this also included all post sent to the Burrow getting heavily inspected before sent on. This was a necessary precaution that one no one argued against, but it did pose a bit of an issue for Arabella. She just so happened to be dating Draco Malfoy, the son of a known Death Eater who was currently spending time in Azkaban. Arabella feared this would make her and her family look suspicious to the Ministry, and so she and Draco had not written each other since the protections were put in place.

On a lighter note, Arabella's older identical twin brothers, Fred and George, had opened their own joke shop since they dropped out of Hogwarts called Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. Arabella and her siblings had been wanting to visit all holiday but weren't able to since Arthur would need to be there for protection and he was always busy with work.

Something else that wasn't quite as bad as a Wizarding war but not nearly as good as a new joke shop involved the oldest Weasley sibling, Bill. He had been dating Fleur Delacour, a French witch with Veela blood who the younger Weasley children were very familiar with, for about a year when the both of them visited the Burrow for dinner and announced that they were engaged. The Weasleys - more specifically, Molly, Ginny, and Arabella - had pretended to be very happy for the couple while inwardly screaming. The screaming got worse when Bill suggested that Fleur spend some time at the Burrow to get to know them all. Of course, they agreed - Ron a little too enthusiastically - but quickly found that Fleur was quite insufferable.

"All right, it's late, you lot," said Molly. "It's time you go up to bed."

"But we've got company!" Arabella protested, motioning to Tonks, who was sitting at the Weasleys' kitchen table with a cup of tea, looking quite miserable.

"Company who probably does not want to hear you all bickering for much longer. Now go."

"But Harry's coming! See, his trunks are already here!" Ron said, pointing at Harry's trunks that had just appeared in the sitting room.