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[romanesca08.livejournal.com]

Title: If You’ve a Ready Mind
Author: romanesca08
Rating: PG-13
Featured Character or Pairing(s): Molly, Fabian, and Gideon Prewett
Summary: When twelve year old Molly Prewett declares that she is born to be a writer, she faces her first literary challenge - finding a good story to tell. Written for knic26 at weasley_fest.
Word Count: 3956
Disclaimer: I wish I owned HP, but sadly it is not true. Also, apologies in advance to natives of Gibraltar, victims of con men, nudists, tourists, and anyone else this story might possibly offend. It is not meant to offend.
Author's Note: Thanks to star54kar for organizing this wonderful fest!

Stories ought to excite and delight you. They should transport and absorb you. Sometimes, it just so happens that they please and amuse you. And if you’ve a ready mind, they might even surprise you.

Those were the collected nuggets of wisdom offered to Molly when the twelve year old declared to her family that she wanted to be a writer. Not that the Prewetts had any especial knowledge about what stories should, ought, and might be. A family that has the habit of producing only flying carpet traders for generations does not pick up much in the way of literary wisdom.

Yet the Prewetts had to make do with what they had, which in these days was not much. A once fabulous family fortune had all but disappeared with the steady decline in demand for their goods and the lower stock values that always accompany lower demand, and there was even talk in Britain of banning the flying carpet trade altogether. Being a practical sort of girl, Molly had decided to take matters into her own hands and go into some other line of work, and writing certainly seemed agreeable enough to her.

Once the pomp and ceremony accompanying her declaration had passed, she very quickly realized that she faced her very first challenge as a writer – finding a story worth telling. But she was stuck at her family’s trading outpost in Gibraltar for the summer with her brothers and Aunt Muriel, ostensibly to learn the family trade but really because her parents were too busy to look after them themselves. As she looked around that tiny strip of land, she saw nothing that excited the imagination or could possibly spark a good idea.

She thought of Morocco, the land across the strait, the source of the best flying carpets in the world, and most likely the home of all sorts of fascinating criminals. But Aunt Muriel would probably notice and be forced to come after her if Molly stowed away on a flying windship to gather source material, so that was surely quite impossible.

As she turned her attention back to her immediate surroundings, she noticed after closer observation that the wizarding community on Gibraltar was small and invariably boring, except for the two most (and only) illustrious personages of the land.

Mayor Humphrey Q. Coddlington XXXII was by far the most feared and respected resident of wizarding Gibraltar on account of his immense wealth and girth, as well as his luck in descending from the founder of the town. He had in fact never learned how to Apparate as that art had been invented in the last three centuries, went about town in a chaise and four, and took Gideon on every summer as an apprentice of sorts.

Arthur Wentworth had the fine distinction of being a notorious former sea pirate now reformed and the Mayor’s sole natural enemy. He never went about town at all and took Fabian on every summer as an apprentice of sorts. Molly wasn’t sure that Gideon learned anything except how to be pompous, or that Fabian learned anything except the fine art of swindling, but she was rather sure that Aunt Muriel was far too busy with accounts to care much.

Sensing that she might be on the trail of a good story, she went after the twins and peppered them with questions about their distinguished employers. But Gideon thought it the highest offense to speak of the Mayor behind his back, and Fabian thought she was after trade secrets and instantly clammed up.

After three or four more dead ends, Molly took to wishing that the Prewetts who had fought in the wizarding wars for truth, justice, and whichever other ideals were in vogue at the time had not died before coming back to tell their stories. Then she could at least tell their harrowing tales of heroism and noble sacrifice. But it was not to be and she was really quite miserable.

When Aunt Muriel finally noticed how miserable she was two weeks later, Molly was promptly banned from the house during the day so she could inflict her miserable sighs and frowns on the neighbors instead. With nothing else to do, she sat on the front steps and made faces at passerby, mentally willing them to perk up and do something, anything interesting. Completely absorbed in her task, she didn’t even notice the front door open behind her.

“What are you doing out here sis, trying to scare away Muggles?”

“No, Aunt Muriel kicked me out so I could be miserable without bothering her.” She turned around and thought she saw Gideon standing in the doorway, or Fabian wearing Gideon’s glasses.

“Aunt Muriel kicked me out because I’m quite miserable as well,” he observed. “Mind if I join you?”

Molly moved to make some room and asked, “Why are you miserable?”

Fabian or Gideon sighed. “Because Master Wentworth is and I can’t cheer him up. That old fiend Coddlington called him a scallywag and a no-good leech on society yesterday at the town forum.”

“Well, he did tell the truth,” Molly noted. So it was Fabian, but why was he wearing his twin’s glasses?

“That’s not the point!” he exclaimed. “Master Wentworth could say they invented the word hidebound to describe that wooly sheepskin bound on the fiend’s head and he’d be telling the truth too. He’s just too much of a gentleman to ever do such a thing.” Several passerby smiled and greeted Fabian, thinking he was his twin. Fabian smiled and waved back.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

He shook his fist furiously, scaring off a tourist or two. “I’m going to exact revenge on Coddlington, even if it’s the last thing I do this summer.”

Molly raised an eyebrow at this. “How are you going to do that?” she asked. “The man is old…and crafty.”

“How are you going to write your first story?” Fabian asked with a smile.

She grumbled and looked away.

“How about this,” Fabian said after a few minutes’ silence. “I’ll help you find an idea for a story, if you help me get revenge on Coddlington. With my brains and your…powers of observation, I’d say we could manage both, no problem.”

Molly shrugged and agreed. She didn’t have any better ideas at this point.

“First of all,” said Fabian, “you’re going about these war stories all wrong. You need to do something creative, something the rest of them don’t do. From what I can tell, those stories all focus on the heroes as they rush off blindly into adventure without knowing what the ‘morrow might bring. What about those they leave behind? What about the wives and children? How do they cope? The old stories always end with the heroes coming back to a grand feast and a welcome. Who prepares that feast? Who gathers the wood to cook the roast pheasants and how many splinters or burns does she get so that man can get a warm meal? That’s what I’d like to know.”

Molly didn’t really know what to say. “Oh, that’s all and well,” she muttered, “but I don’t have anyone around to tell me what it’s like and I haven’t experienced it myself so I don’t think I can write about it.”

“You need to write about something you’ve experienced, hmm? That makes things a lot more difficult.”

They mused quietly for a while, watching more tourists and such pass by, until the inevitable happened and Gideon came looking for his glasses.

Their brother merely regarded them quietly, though Molly thought she could see a vein bulging on his forehead. She wasn’t particularly worried – Gideon never made a scene or even raised his voice, no matter how much his twin tried to get a reaction out of him. “Fabian, may I have my glasses back please?” he asked, quietly and politely of course.

“Of course, brother dear,” said Fabian, with a nod and a wink. “I simply found my exile out here on the steps far more enjoyable with them. You may have them back now.”

Gideon looked at him suspiciously but he put on the glasses all the same, and immediately turned a pale shade of purple. “What did you do to my glasses?” he cried. “I can see through your clothes with these.”

Both Molly and Fabian burst out laughing. “It’s just a little charm that Master Wentworth taught me, and I don’t remember the countercharm. You’ll have to ask Aunt Muriel to take it off for you,” he managed to choke out between laughs. “Don’t blush so much Gideon, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Gideon gave him a furious stare before fleeing back inside.

“I think I feel a lot less miserable now sis,” said Fabian, and she just had to agree.

Although the next few weeks passed without much progress on either fronts, Molly did manage to gather a great deal of intelligence about the enemy. Coddlington was a widower with one son who lived somewhere in America. There was few that he could call friend but far more that he could call acquaintance in need of help. He had been elected mayor fifteen times in a row, running unopposed each time. He had few ambitions beyond owning every business in town, and probably had everything he could ever want.

But that was not exactly true, as Aunt Muriel told her one day when business was slow. There was one thing that he wanted desperately and no other person in town could care a whit for. When his ancestor first established the town many, many years ago, he had two keys to the town made in case one was lost someday, each an exact replica of the other. Coddlington only had the spare, since the original had disappeared some time ago.

Molly dutifully reported this to her brother, who sat around for some time and ruminated over his plight, which did seem a bit hopeless. All he had to do was find a four-inch long steel key that nobody else had managed to find in over two hundred years, in a town where there just weren’t that many places to look.

And so Molly and Fabian began to scour the town, looking in all the places the unimaginative townspeople wouldn’t think to look and all the places Coddlington wouldn’t deign to look. Molly personally thought the key must be at the bottom of the Atlantic, but she humored her brother and said nothing of it. But when two more weeks had passed and they had already been reprimanded for breaking and entering three times, she ventured to drop a few subtle hints that maybe, just maybe the key wasn’t anywhere in the town.

“Fabian,” she asked one day, “don’t you think that key is fish food by now?”

Fabian made a face and gave a few stray pebbles a vigorous kick. They scattered, a few dropping off over the pier into the bay. “I suppose you’re right,” he conceded grudgingly. “So we need a new plan.”

“So we forget about the key?”

“No, we make a new plan to get the key,” he declared confidently.

“How are you going to get a key that’s at the bottom of the ocean? You can’t even swim.”

“I’ll think of something sis,” he said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you worry.”

Molly remained rather skeptical, but she let the matter drop.

August soon arrived, bringing with it bad news for all. The Ministry had finally voted to add flying carpets to the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects as a Muggle artifact and banned their sales. They had been prepared for such a thing to happen, but that did not lessen the blow. Their parents wrote to them, asking them to come back home, where their father was planning on going into the dragon dung business instead. Aunt Muriel finally had enough spare time to realize that she wasn’t getting any younger and saw no reason why she should stay in Gibraltar any longer.

“Start packing up,” she told the children a week or so into August. “I’ve sold the house to a trader from Sweden and the three of you need to get all my furniture loaded onto the windship I’ve hired by next Monday. What are you waiting for? Get to work!”

“But what will you be doing while we move your furniture?” Fabian asked good-naturedly.

“What do you think I’ll be doing?” she snapped at him. “I have to settle all our accounts here and apologize to all the people whose houses you’ve broken into the past month.”

“Can we use magic?” asked Gideon.

Aunt Muriel smirked at them. “No magic at all, naturally. Don’t forget you’re underage still.” She turned to Fabian and held up a threatening finger. “And I don’t want any trouble with the townspeople before we leave, do you hear? We Prewetts have been good citizens of this place for two hundred years and we’re going to leave as good citizens.”

Fabian nodded obediently, but Molly could see that he was troubled. Beyond the obvious difficulties of helping the family transition into a new line of trade and his bleak future as a dragon dung trader, he had just four days left to exact revenge on the mayor before they left for good. While his twin started packing up, he slipped out through a side door and motioned for Molly to follow him.

“We’re in a right fix, Molly,” he said, leaning against the alley wall.

“What are we going to do?” she asked, worried now. Fabian never used her name unless he was very much upset.

“There’s not much we can do. I’ve gone through it a hundred times in my head and exhausted every trick and stratagem that Master Wentworth ever taught me. Most of them would work on one of the silly townsfolk or a meddlesome constable, but not Coddlington. The man’s seen it all.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. How could Fabian ever be out of ideas? How could he ever concede defeat? It was inconceivable that he was actually considering giving up. “But you must have some ideas,” she insisted. “I did not just waste an entire month helping you fail. Can’t you fake the key somehow?”

“How can I fake a key that only the mayor and his most trusted friends have seen?” He shook his head and started walking back inside. “Now, I think we should go help our brother pack up.”

Molly stared after him, frustrated and upset. What about her story?

The next two days passed seemingly without incident. Aunt Muriel left at dawn and was too tired to take notice of them when she came back at dusk. Molly was still upset and refused to talk to anyone. Fabian seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. Gideon was the only one who spoke at all, and he only did so to criticize the way the other two were putting the wrong items in the wrong positions and in the wrong crates.

But as the morning of the third day dawned, Molly noticed that Fabian had become suspiciously cheerful and accident-prone. He misplaced Gideon’s long catalog of items and tripped over crates and spilled them, ruining all of Gideon’s work. When the evening rolled around, Gideon finally cracked and banned both of them from working so he could pack and catalog in peace.

They were to leave from the harbor on the windship at noon the very next day, never to return. Molly was thus rather confused when she woke at nine to a seemingly empty house. But since all the furniture was gone, it was not very difficult to find Gideon in the parlor, slumped on top of a stack of finished crates with a smile on his face. Fabian and her aunt were nowhere in sight.

She stood there for a few minutes, deciding what to do. Waking Gideon up seemed to be a good first step. She shook his arm lightly. “Gideon, where are the others?” she asked as he looked around blearily. “And what happened to your glasses?”

“Ugh, Fabian must’ve taken them again for those childish tricks of his,” he sniffed.

“Why do you wear those glasses anyway? You don’t need them to see.”

Gideon stared at her as if she had asked a silly question. “How else are people supposed to tell us apart?”

“You know, I hardly ever agree with you, which is quite remarkable since we’re twins,” said Fabian, popping in through his favorite side door, “but in this case you are exactly right.” He handed the glasses back. “Don’t worry, you won’t be able to see through anyone’s clothes.”

Gideon sniffed again and put on his glasses with as much dignity as he could muster. “I’m off to load the last crates onto the windship, and I hope you two will manage to stay out of trouble, like Aunt Muriel said.”

Fabian waited for the front door to close before he pulled out a four-inch long steel key from his pocket. “Guess what I found?” he said with a wide grin.

“You found it!” Molly shrieked. “But where?”

“One of the places where even we didn’t think to look – the bottom of one of Aunt Muriel’s dresser drawers. Found it while packing up her robes. Seems like she had it all this time. Quite like her to hold on to it and not tell anyone, really.”

“So what are you going to do now?” she asked eagerly.

Fabian leaned towards her conspiratorially. “You’re still willing to help me, right?”

“Of course.”

He held out a quill and parchment. “Then this is what you need to do. Send a letter to the mayor and tell him and tell him that we have the key and he can’t have it for a knut less than five hundred galleons. If he wants to exchange, then he can meet you at – Street at eleven-forty. That’s close enough to the harbor for you to get there just in time for the ship. If he doesn’t agree to our terms, then we leave with the key. Simple.”

Her jaw dropped. “Five hundred galleons?”

“We mustn’t be greedy,” he observed.

Molly’s head was spinning with questions. “But what should I say? What if he tries to cheat me? What could I do?”

“Just tell him the truth. Your aunt had it, and you’re putting it up for sale. Besides, Coddlington values his dignity far too much to try to cheat a little girl.”

“But won’t Aunt Muriel be mad if we sell her key?”

“Not if we give her a cut of the proceeds. Now, ready to write the letter?”

There was something slightly unsettling about all this, but five hundred galleons iwas/i a great deal of money.

Mayor Coddlington was true to his word and arrived at precisely eleven-forty in his chaise and four. Molly had to try hard to mind her manners and not stare as the great man climbed out of his carriage, wearing a powdered wig and a royal blue velvet cloak in the middle of summer. “So you’re Molly Prewett?” he asked, smiling down at her with a sort of benevolent condescension.

Molly felt offended, and she couldn’t say why. “Yes, sir,” she replied coolly.

“And you have my key?” he asked, getting straight to business.

“Excuse me sir, but it’s still my key right now,” she pointed out.

The mayor laughed. “Not for long. So Muriel had it all along! So very like her.”

“Aunt Muriel does whatever she thinks is best.”

He smiled and held out a large sack of coins. “I suppose you’d like to count them?”

Molly peeped inside. It was filled almost to the brim with fat yellow coins. “I trust that there’s nothing amiss,” she replied primly as she handed over the key.

The mayor examined it closely, turning it over and over in his hand and trying its weight. Molly stole a few glances at her watch. Just a few more minutes and she’d be late for the ship. Why did Fabian feel the need to time the meeting so close to their departure?

Coddlington apparently found no fault with the key. He gave her a curt nod and climbed back into his carriage. Molly breathed a sigh of relief and hurried off to the ship.

Fabian was on deck waiting for her when she climbed onto the windship’s deck right before it sailed. “Wonderful job!” he exclaimed approvingly. “I knew you could do it. And just in time too. The plan went off without a hitch.”

Molly laughed and sat down, completely out of breath. Below them, the strait slowly faded from view as they sailed alongside some low-altitude clouds. She looked up and saw Fabian dance around with the bag of gold in his arms. “How much will we have to give Aunt Muriel?” she called out.

“I’d prefer if she never find out about our little adventure,” Fabian replied, sitting down next to her, “since it wasn’t actually her key.”

“What? But why did you tell me that it was?”

“Well, I needed you to be convincing enough so he wouldn’t suspect anything.”

“I knew there was something wrong!” she cried, poking him in the shoulder. “Tell me everything.”

“It was one of my more brilliant plans, to be sure. Remember how I told you four days ago that Coddlington never let anyone but his most trusted friends see the key? I got to thinking about that, and figured that there’s no point in having a twin with an impeccable record for honesty if you can’t abuse it somehow. That’s when my plans started forming.

“I knew Gideon well enough to know that he’s obsessive enough that he couldn’t sleep if everything wasn’t properly packed and cataloged. What better way to make sure he was out of the way? So I flipped over a few crates, waited until he was fast asleep, and borrowed his glasses for a morning trip to the mayor’s house.

“Remember that charm that I used on Gideon’s glasses? Well, it’s wonderfully adaptable. Change one syllable and you’ll be able to see through walls and solid oak drawers instead. Cast it on your hands and you can reach through said walls and drawers. Well, in my disguise as Gideon, I asked the mayor to give me one final tour of his grand house so I might treasure it forever. Then I waited until he wasn’t looking and pocketed his key.”

Molly burst into laughter. “So you sold him his own key?”

“Pure, sweet revenge. I think Master Wentworth would be proud.”

“Aren’t you worried that he might report you to the authorities?”

“Of course not,” he snorted. “He’d have to admit that Master Wentworth’s apprentice fooled him out of five hundred galleons. I think he values his dignity and standing in the town a bit more than that.” He stood up and started walking lightly over to his cabin, the bag of gold still in his arms.

“But wait!” Molly called after him. “What about my story?”

Fabian turned around and smiled. “Don’t you already have your story? You wanted to write about something that you experienced, didn’t you? Still, I think you should change the names and setting a bit, just to be safe. I wouldn’t want the Ministry breathing down my neck. It makes life that much more difficult.”

Molly sat frozen for a few moments, staring at the white shoreline and blue sea down below. She felt absolutely giddy, and it wasn’t from the altitude or her recent exertions. She had finally found her story.