Escape
There in that classroom, squeezed into her stitched-up robe, Molly realized a new sensation: she is at that stage in the relationship where she can put up with Arthur's quirks six days a week. She thinks, looking at the boy's red hair, that this is quite an accomplishment.
"Where are we?" she asks him, as she pushes her vision to the corner most illuminated by the light from the wand he holds.
"In a big red X!" he says amused, showing her again the drawing he is so proud of. If she really bears it six days out of seven, then those are the wrong twenty-four hours. She pulls her lips into a straight line and it's a pretty crystal clear message, because he adds, "I took you to see our anniversary present."
"In the middle of the night, in a disused classroom? Pretty suspicious, Arthur." The boy blushes on the nose and scratches the collar of his pajamas: giving it to him in broad daylight with all the students around would have been much worse. He merely shrugs and the light from his wand shatters on the classroom ceiling, obscuring Molly's face.
"Did you-you bring what I told you to get?" he asks her again then, extending a small black box on the desk, along with the parchment he so carefully wrote for her that very morning.
"The stokers? It will be good for you that I don't get burned, Arthur!" She warns him, but smiles as she somewhat awkwardly tries to light one. She fails, and the boy puts down his wand and goes to her side. "There, like that." He helps her, taking her hands between his own and finishing by joining the fingers of the one free of the match together.
"Now what?"
"Now go close to it, so it opens."
Molly lets a more experienced arm guide her, until a loud clack echoes through the walls and the little box reveals its contents. "Oh, Arthur dear, don't tell me it's again..."
"This time it's different, can't you see it's..."
Molly crosses her arms over her chest, but in spite of herself she smiles. "I can see it's different." Her tone is gentle as she touches the box with the index finger of her hand and even caresses it. She likes it that way, after all. She likes that Arthur is as predictable as he is sweet. "Thank you." She manages to say, printing a deep kiss on his beardless cheek.
"So you like it?"
Molly does not have time to answer him, for the heavy footsteps of someone down the hall inform her of the arrival of a new guest. They soon realize, from the croaky voice that reaches them, that it is Apollyon Pringle. "Molly, we have to escape, come on." He intimates to her, hiding the box in a cabinet drawer beside him. She forgets about the map, crumpled on the desk: for years, that one will end up hidden in the janitors' office until the Weasley twins arrive.
"Tomorrow we'll come back for the gift, now let's go." An honest lie, in the end. They never found time to return and then they never found the classroom and the gift sat waiting for another twenty-seven years.