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“We might have to make you an official Weasley” - Charlie Weasley, Hogwarts Mystery
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1. The first time Molly Weasley sees you, she knows something isn’t right. You’re an eleven year old girl, alone in a train station, struggling to get your luggage onto a cart and looking lost. (In eight years, she’ll have the same thought about another solitary lost child.)
But then you spot the Khanna girl and wave. The Khanna family helps get you sorted, so Molly puts you from her mind.
2. During Bill’s fourth year, he fails to make it home with his old jumper. Usually when he outgrows them, Molly will recycle the wool to make a new garment for one of the littler children, so she asks him what happened.
“I gave it to a girl at school.” Bill shrugs.
Molly sighs. Wool is expensive, and she puts a lot of time into those jumpers. Too much for her boys to be giving them away to a girlfriend.
“(Y/N)’s a good friend of Bill’s.” Charlie speaks up before Molly can work herself into a lecture. “Her brother is missing.”
“She’s like a little sister, Mum.” Bill nods.
That’s when Molly remembers the articles in The Prophet about your brother, the mad, missing (Y/L/N) boy. Her heart goes out to you. If one of Bill’s worn out old sweaters gave you some comfort, then she supposes that’s alright.
3. Molly next sees you in a picture in Charlie’s tent at the dragon reserve. It’s his first Christmas at his new job, and she and Arthur brought Ginny to make sure he was settling in, (and if the job was safe).
“That’s (Y/N). Remember her?” Charlie says. “She’s a good friend to me and Bill. She’s working in Greece as an apprentice curse-breaker.”
Molly looks at the photo, and remembers the lost-looking, coltish girl from the train station. You seem to have grown into yourself, even if you look like you could stand to have a meal or two. Under the Aegean sky, you look impossibly tan with sun bleached hair and a shell necklace at your throat.
You’re smiling and waving in the photo, the Parthenon in the background. But there is a moment when the moving image thinks no one is looking that it seems troubled. Molly wonders why. Then Ginny calls that she’s going to have a closer look at the Ironbellies, and Molly forgets about you in her rush to stop her youngest from giving into the Weasley instinct for trouble.
4. When Charlie comes home from the Quiddich World Cup, he keeps glancing out the window distractedly. Molly is about to ask when Bill pulls her aside to explain. “We were supposed to meet up with old friends from Hogwarts after the World Cup. I think Charlie’s hoping they’ll send a bird to let us know they’re alright.
Molly nods in understanding, but wonders at Bill’s odd word choice.
Until an albatross shows up at the door with a letter that afternoon.
Really? An albatross?
5. “Would you mind if I invite an old friend over for dinner?” Bill asks when he and Fleur bring the baby by.
Molly gives him a funny look at that. Sunday diner is usually reserved for family.
“I ran into (Y/N) in muggle London today,” he explains. “I think her mum took a bad turn. She said she has no idea where her brother and his wife are. Off on some mad adventure, or some such. So she’s dealing with things alone.” He shrugs. “I thought she could use the support.”
Molly looks at Fleur to gauge her reaction. But her daughter-in-law seems unconcerned.
Molly remembers how lost you have always seemed, and agrees. You could stand to have … At least a good meal. She’s not sure what else she could offer you.
6. You seem cheerful at dinner, bringing Arthur muggle candy (“Look Molly! They’re printed with tiny W’s!”) and joking with George and Angelina. Apparently you were a prefect in their time at school, and the twins gave you no end of trouble. “Payback for all the headaches I gave my own prefect, I’m sure,” you say.
At one point, Molly moves your haversack from where you left it by the kitchen door to the cat-shaped hook. That’s when she notices the sleeve of one of her knitted jumpers peeking from under the flap.
Surely you haven’t kept Bill’s old jumper all these years? She glances in concern at her oldest.
It’s not in her nature to pry, (OK, maybe it is. But it’s her prerogative to protect her sons from potential brazen harlots who might or might not be trying to tempt them away from their wives. Even if said potential brazen hussey is no competition at all for said wife who is part veela!), but Molly has to know, and so pulls the jumper from the bag.
She’s both relieved and confused to find a C on the chest. What are you doing with one of Charlie’s old jumpers?
She replaces the garment before anyone can see that she’s been snooping.
When she returns to the living room, George is giving you a hard time because you have an albatross instead of an owl.
7. Her “ah-ha moment” comes four Sunday dinners later, when her eternal bachelor, dragon-mad son comes home to visit. (He promised Molly that he would be there at least once a month. Molly promised him that if he wasn’t, she was sending Bill and Ron to drag him back by the ear.)
This time she watches Charlie a little closer. Her patience is rewarded when his shirt shifts a little. He’s wearing a shell necklace that Molly remembers you wearing in a photo under the Aegean sun.
As Charlie is leaving that night, he stops to give Molly a hug. She pulls his ear and says “I expect you to bring (Y/N) round in the future.”
Her second son looks at her in shock.
“Did you think I couldn’t figure it out? Which side of the family do you think you get your devious streak from?”
Charlie turns a violent shade of red while Bill, George and Percy laugh at him.
That Christmas, you get your own jumper.
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A/N: The muggle candy is of course M&M’s.
A/N 2: MC was also at Dumbledore’s funeral, Bill’s wedding and the Battle Of Hogwarts. But Molly had too many other things on her mind those days to take note of her.