The Party
Hazel,
I’m glad you are enjoying muggle life. You should share it with james and Sirius so they’re not as clueless. Luckily Lily’s gift is working great.
See you soon,
Remus
*****
Dear Hazel,
Sorry to leave James in our hands, but France barely has any quidditch loving thirteen year olds. I swear I saw a real veela, my dad started bragging about working in the ministry and basically being the minister. My mum wasn’t too happy about that. You lot should come with us next time!
See you in a few weeks,
Peter Pettigrew
*****
Dear Hazel,
It’s a little comical, but Sev started hanging around me the minute you left. I’ve tried to distance myself by hanging around Mary and Marlene more, but at least once a day he comes over and sometimes I let him in. He’s still my friend I just.. I’m not sure how long this relationship will last. I really miss you here, at least then Sev would give me the summer off.
Love you,
Lily
****
Dear Heppy,
Brag all you want because I am a VERY single and not married man! Sissy made an unbreakable vow and now she’s marrying Lucius! Mum wasn’t pleased one bit, but she’d rather have Sissy alive than marry me. Reggie has been a royal prat all summer, but there’s no way mum would allow me at your place just to get away from him.
Counting down the days until Hogwarts,
Sirius O. Black (or sob)
****
I was glad about Sirius, it made me feel less guilty about not marrying him. I do not want to marry Sirius, nor would I ever. He was a good friend most of the time, but no. Absolutely no. I will NEVER marry him. EVER! But at least this way, he didn’t have to marry Narcissa, and I didn’t have to feel bad about saying no.
“Did you hear?!” James ran to my room, “Sirius doesn’t have to marry that snake!”
“If Narcissa was the only option for Sirius, who do you think they’ll actually make him marry?” I wondered. I didn’t know many full purebloods that weren’t considered blood traitors by the Blacks.
“Who cares, we’ll have loads of time to figure that out when it comes.” James shrugged. “Tie this?” He was wearing his dress robes for tonight's party. Every so often, my fathers work friends host a party for all of them to relax and gossip and more. The whole family gets to go and dress up and it’s basically a low scale ball. The only problem is my parents are a little older than other kids' parents so James and I were the only kids. I didn’t mind my parents being older, but these parties were normally incredibly boring. I wore a blue flowy dress with short sleeves and my father fixed mine and James’s hair with his sleekeazy potion. My mum put a small amount of makeup on me, I felt so pretty. I don’t normally dress up which is what makes the times I do so special.
“I hope this doesn’t go as long as last time.” James sighed, he did not like getting fancy.
“At least dads not apparating home. Remember how tipsy he got and ended up in Holland instead of home!” I laughed. We’re taking the floo network this time so hopefully we all make it home right away.
The party was at Mr. Bragnams mansion this year, he had about six fireplaces all set up with the floo network. We only had one fireplace. My parents left first then I followed then James came. I was a little surprised James actually followed. The first thing I noticed was a baby crying which was weird. Who had children? My eyes tried to follow the sound to see a small child curled up in a red headed womens’ arms. He looked close to one year old, on the floor was a three old getting shushed by his father. All four of them had orange hair. I’ve never seen them before.
“Who’s that dad?” James voiced my thoughts.
“That's Arthur and Molly weasley. Those must be their children. Arthur is new in the muggle division.” My dad explained. Molly looked somewhat familiar, she may have gone to one of our christmas parties, I wasn’t sure.
“There’s a muggle division?” James asked.
“Must be a muggle born trying to explain muggles to wizards.” I shrugged, “Lily tried to teach me muggle stuff, but it's all so confusing. Is that his job?”
“No no,” My father laughed, “Arthur isn’t a muggle born, he finds muggle items and tries to invent them in the wizard world.” He explained. That didn’t make sense, shouldn’t muggle borns handle muggle items. James looked just as confused as I was.
It didn’t take long for my dad to be pulled away by work people, so my mum took us to a table to wait for the food to come. I started to wonder what everyone would wear if we were muggles. The girls' dresses probably wouldn’t change that much, but the men and boys wouldn’t wear robes. They would wear these things called suits which are like our uniforms with long pants, button down shirts, and jackets.
My mum entertained us for a while, she would tell us stories about her time at Hogwarts or let us ask questions about anyone in the room and she would answer it. We started asking if there was any drama or fights between people and she told us the truth! It was so fun learning how messy adults' lives were. Unfortunately she was pulled away too by someone I knew vaguely. So it was up to James and I to entertain ourselves while sitting at the table.
“Would you rather not make the quidditch team or become deadly ill.” I asked.
“Deadly ill.” James said without a beat.
“Hm… join slytherin or eat a snake.”
“Eat a snake.”
“Snog a toad or cry in class.”
“Cry in class… godrick I’m so bored!” James whined.
“Bored!?” Mad-eye Moody appeared out of nowhere at our table. James’ eyes widened as he realized his mistake. Moody hated complainers, most of the time he used it to remind us that his life was worse. “When I was two years out of training, I was sent on a four week mission in the icy tundra of Sweden trying to catch ten dark wizards who ran. It was me and two other men. We ran out of food hours in and only had the light from our wands. We had only two witnesses say they saw a group running off in the storm and they were muggles, you never know with muggles and what they can actually see. It was either wait out the storm and sit for days on end with no more food, or trudge through and maybe die. Of course we chose the second option!” I looked at James as if to say are you kidding me?! He shrugged to say how was I supposed to know?! “After days of being unable to see three feet in front of us, the storm started to clear, our clothes were torn and our faces were burned from the wind. We spent ten hours awake searching every cave and home searching for the criminals!” Moody just kept going. James looked like he was about to smash his face onto the table.
“You were so brave!” I cheered the old man on. “I’d hate to miss the rest of it, but I have to use the restroom. James, do you remember where it is?” James practically jumped out of his seat.
“Yep! So sorry moody, I know we could never be as good of an auror as you with our tiny bladders!” James took my hand and basically started running. I had no idea where he was going and I don’t think he did either. All I was focusing on was that we wore our matching bracelets on different wrists so as we held hands the bracelets were next to each other. It made me smile.
And then we ran into a little kid.
The one year old Weasley hit the ground and started crying immediately. James and I panicked.
“No no no shhh.. Shhh it’s ok!” I tried to console him.
“Hey don’t cry! We’re all ok, we can play or dance or something. And if anyone asks, you ran into us..”
“James!” I hit him on the arm, to our surprise, the child began to laugh. I never had a younger sibling and I was only a few minutes behind James so neither of us really knew how to handle a little kid. Was laughing at injuries something kids do? I hit James again and the kid laughed some more.
“Weird kid.” James shrugged and gently hit me and the kid laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.
“Holy humor, his is off or something.” I bumped James on the side and he tripped to the side. The kid laughed and laughed. He stood up and walked to James just to tap his knee and laugh some more. James and I started laughing too.
“Charlie!” Mrs. Weasley came running, James and I started with excuses.
“We were just sitting here trying to find the bathroom and..” I started.
“No one was running at all, we were just standing here..” James said at the same time.
“He took his first steps! Arthur is going to be so jealous he missed it! How did you do it?” She smiled at the two of us.
“Uh..” I said intelligently.
“We were..”
“He was..”
“And then he started walking.” James and I nodded. Mrs. Weasley smiled and chuckled under her breath.
“You two are Fleamonts kids right?” She asked and we nodded. “Your fathers been so nice to us, it’s only right he would have such nice kids.” I mean.. we were only hitting ourselves to make her kid laugh so we didn’t get in trouble for knocking him down but sure, we were super nice.
“Ma’am you kids got a weird sense of humor.” James said, I couldn’t believe how big of an idiot he was. But Mrs. Weasley just laughed at the thought. Maybe they all had weird humor.
“Please dear, call me Molly.” She smiled.
“Well Molly, we’re awfully glad you’re here. This party is always so boring without any kids.” I said.
“Oh thank you. We’re hoping to expand our small family more with a girl soon.”
“Well good luck!” James smiled. Idiot.
“Welcome to the group and I’m sure we’ll see you again for another party.” I took James and started walking back to our table.
“Molly seemed nice.” James said.
“Yeah, and she’s a good mother. She looked so happy when Charlie began walking.”
“You think she’ll come to our Christmas party?”
“Probably, mum is running out of other mums with small children.” I shrugged.
“True. The Weasleys seem fun.” James decided and I agreed.