Ginny's birthday
Aug. 11th, 2009 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alt_mollyRon's home from his camping trip and Bill has come over for dinner, so everyone (except Charlie) was here tonight for Ginny's birthday. Arthur promised faithfully to get home in time for dinner, and he actually managed it for once. I was so pleased. Luna and her father came over to join the celebration, too (Luna's going to sleep over tonight) and so it was quite crowded around our dining room table.
It is all but impossible to find baking powder again, so I couldn't make a cake, but I made a lovely strawberry and rhubarb crumble that was certainly festive enough (and with all the bottomless teenaged appetites around the table, it was polished off without a single crumb left).
Ginny was ever so excited and touchingly grateful for all of the presents she received. Luna managed to find a beautifully illustrated set of secondhand books by Edward Eager: Half-Magic, Knight's Castle, Magic or Not, as well as another one, The Last Unicorn, by someone I had never heard of before, named Peter Beagle. Percy gave her a new planner for Hogwarts, and Bill a lovely silvertopped ink bottle. Ron gave her a Cornish pixie that he and his friend Seamus had manage to capture and store in a tin that originally had held broom wax. You can imagine that I was not particularly pleased to see that! Cornish pixies can be extremely rude. (The twins, on the other hand, were perfectly delighted. If I had to hazard a guess, I imagine it shouldn't take more than a week before the two of them "liberate" it from its cage to see what it can do. With a little luck, the wretched thing may make a clean getaway.) Charlie sent a set of tooled leather laces for tying back her hair, made of dragonhide (charmed so that they cannot be lost, which is perfectly inspired; Ginny's forever losing her hair ties). The twins gave her a set of origami paper that's charmed to change colour and throw off sparks (I'm sure they were attracted to it because of the miniature fireworks). Ginny's become quite interested in origami since starting a pen friendship with Sally-Anne Perks (an owl that arrived from Sally-Anne this morning brought a folded origami bee, charmed to sing 'Happy Birthday.') This type of paper is a bit tricky to work with, because if you fold it incorrectly, the sparks start going off like mad until the paper goes up in a puff of smoke. The twins have assured her that the challenge will make her learn the figures that much more quickly. I just hope that it doesn't set the curtains or tablecloth on fire.
Arthur and I gave her clothes and a few more books, as well as the old cherry wood-backed hairbrush and mirror I inherited from my own grandmother. It's lovely to have a daughter of my own to whom I can pass down heirlooms like these.
The conversation around the table was certainly lively. Arthur brought the evening Prophet home, and that caused a stir when the boys read the article about the school's expedition to Cornwall and realised how Ron's role in the events in the caves had been edited out entirely. Well, I can imagine it was rather irresistible for the editors of the Prophet to play up the heroism of the Lord Protector's son's. It worked, judging from the way Ginny eagerly read and re-read the article and read bits out loud. Still, Ron's disappointment is entirely understandable.
But on the whole, it was a wonderful evening. I'm sure the girls will stay up well into the night, giggling under their blankets. Arthur has promised to make them popcorn if they are still awake after midnight. I think there is little doubt that they will be.
It is all but impossible to find baking powder again, so I couldn't make a cake, but I made a lovely strawberry and rhubarb crumble that was certainly festive enough (and with all the bottomless teenaged appetites around the table, it was polished off without a single crumb left).
Ginny was ever so excited and touchingly grateful for all of the presents she received. Luna managed to find a beautifully illustrated set of secondhand books by Edward Eager: Half-Magic, Knight's Castle, Magic or Not, as well as another one, The Last Unicorn, by someone I had never heard of before, named Peter Beagle. Percy gave her a new planner for Hogwarts, and Bill a lovely silvertopped ink bottle. Ron gave her a Cornish pixie that he and his friend Seamus had manage to capture and store in a tin that originally had held broom wax. You can imagine that I was not particularly pleased to see that! Cornish pixies can be extremely rude. (The twins, on the other hand, were perfectly delighted. If I had to hazard a guess, I imagine it shouldn't take more than a week before the two of them "liberate" it from its cage to see what it can do. With a little luck, the wretched thing may make a clean getaway.) Charlie sent a set of tooled leather laces for tying back her hair, made of dragonhide (charmed so that they cannot be lost, which is perfectly inspired; Ginny's forever losing her hair ties). The twins gave her a set of origami paper that's charmed to change colour and throw off sparks (I'm sure they were attracted to it because of the miniature fireworks). Ginny's become quite interested in origami since starting a pen friendship with Sally-Anne Perks (an owl that arrived from Sally-Anne this morning brought a folded origami bee, charmed to sing 'Happy Birthday.') This type of paper is a bit tricky to work with, because if you fold it incorrectly, the sparks start going off like mad until the paper goes up in a puff of smoke. The twins have assured her that the challenge will make her learn the figures that much more quickly. I just hope that it doesn't set the curtains or tablecloth on fire.
Arthur and I gave her clothes and a few more books, as well as the old cherry wood-backed hairbrush and mirror I inherited from my own grandmother. It's lovely to have a daughter of my own to whom I can pass down heirlooms like these.
The conversation around the table was certainly lively. Arthur brought the evening Prophet home, and that caused a stir when the boys read the article about the school's expedition to Cornwall and realised how Ron's role in the events in the caves had been edited out entirely. Well, I can imagine it was rather irresistible for the editors of the Prophet to play up the heroism of the Lord Protector's son's. It worked, judging from the way Ginny eagerly read and re-read the article and read bits out loud. Still, Ron's disappointment is entirely understandable.
But on the whole, it was a wonderful evening. I'm sure the girls will stay up well into the night, giggling under their blankets. Arthur has promised to make them popcorn if they are still awake after midnight. I think there is little doubt that they will be.