Molded Joy

1- Heat Of The Moment

Blinking open tired, sleep-swollen eyes, Molly made a low humming noise as she gazed up at the fuzzy, twisty image of a person. They reached down and touched her face; it was so nice and cold - like the water of the brook near her home on her skin in the hottest days of summer. Clumsily, she brought her hand over to clamp down on the fingers on her face.

She felt the person attached to the hand jolt. "Molly?" they asked.

Molly squinted at the person above her. She could vaguely make out a frame of brown hair around a squarish face. "Noel?" she inquired.

The hand on her face relaxed some and even began to pet her cheek. "That's right, Molly," the person said in a tinny, faraway voice. "Now, keep talking to me, alright? Mabel and Catherine went to get a professor."

A feeling of panic overwhelmed Molly. A professor? That was the last thing she wanted! If one came in, they'd know. They'd know what she'd done and they'd tell her Mum and Dad and then Arthur would find out and–

"No!" she sobbed, struggling to sit up through her fever daze. "Nooo!"

Noel pushed down on Molly's shoulder. "Don't get up, please, Molly," she begged. "You're all bloody."

"'Course I am," she sniffed as she lay back down. "That's how you lose a baby."

The girl's eyes went wide and shocked. "Oh, you didn't!" Noel bemoaned.

"Wasn't ready to be a proper Mum. Don't even know what I'd have named it," Molly muttered as she curled up around her middle as her body was wracked with a sudden, engulfing pain.

Molly just barely saw her other dormmates come in with Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey before she passed out into the comforting arms of oblivion.

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The next time Molly woke up, there was no hovering person, no familiar, smells or materials. Everything was white and the room was sharp with the scents of the medicinal and everything from the pillow casing she has her head laid out on, to the socks on her feet are scratchy and uncomfortable. What made it all the worse, though, was the quiet sound of someone whimpering. Turning her head, Molly saw that it was her mother sniffling into her handkerchief in a chair beside her.

"Mum?" she croaked.

Big, doe-like eyes caught her gaze and mist over with a new wave of tears.

Reaching over, Molly weakly gripped the fabric of her mother's skirt and asked, "What happened?"

Her mother, a woman who's best known for her laughter and smiles, did not give either and instead began to sob loudly and painfully. Terrified by her mother's odd behaviour, the teenager asked again, "What happened, Mum?"

Shaking her head, Molly's mother buried her face in her handkerchief and, with her fears now spiked to a level akin to a rodent about to be caught by a cat, Molly started to breath frantically. "Mum?" she begged as the woman gave another wheezy wail. "Mum? Mum! What happened! Mum, what's wrong? What's wrong!"

A couple aides ran into the room at the sound of Molly screaming. When they saw she was sitting up, heaving hard as she shouted herself silly. The duo came to her side and took her arms in constrictor-like grips.

"Calm down, Miss," a fairly burly fellow, ordered in a low grumble.

Still yelling as she fought against the hands of the aides, Molly attempted to get her mother to give her an answer one last time by screaming, "Mum! Mummy, what happened to me?"