Molly was still having trouble wrapping her head around what had happened at Gringotts when she caught up to her daughters, waiting outside Madam Malkin’s.
Then of course, she only had two problems then. They were glaring annoyedly at the door. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Ariel looked up. “Some noble dude said we weren’t rich enough to wait inside the store, and chased us out with his wand.”
“That ‘noble dude’ was, I’m pretty sure, Mr. Goyle.”
Mrs. Weasley thought for a second, and shrugged. “Who is he to say you’re not rich enough? You could probably buy his entire family with an afterthought.” Their new Vault had been stuffed full with a veritable tidal wave of gold- and the goblin had even informed her that it was about time someone claimed the vault to spend the money that continued to flow into it, from royalties on Hogwarts itself, among other things. He said the vault had been expanded nearly a dozen times- making it the largest Vault at Gringotts, by a rather significant margin. “And if he tries pushing you out, show him how girls hit.”
“Really?” Ariel asked.
“Carefully, I expect?” Ginny asked. “I’m pretty sure we could accidentally kill someone if we weren’t.”
Molly nodded. “Yes, carefully. We don’t want to actually hurt someone.” She then frowned to herself- had she just told her daughters to hurt someone? Whyever would she do that? Perhaps she was in too much shock. She’d have to see if she could sneak off to Fortescue’s while Ariel was picking her robes; the family vault laid untouched, but Ariel and Ginny had each poured a double handful of galleons from their vault into the bag she’d brought. She almost routinely accepted small change assistance from Bill and Charlie, so she couldn’t exactly complain about their larger contribution.
Ariel, meanwhile, wasn’t interested in letting her contemplate her deeds in peace, but seemed to be of the same opinion. “Good,” she nodded, before she pulled the door open and led her sister and mother into the shop.
Molly almost immediately recognized Mr. Ghirahim Goyle. It wasn’t exactly hard, after all- the man still wore the nametags from his school days, and she was fairly sure- from personal experience- that it was because Lucius hadn’t been around to tell him to stop wearing the things after graduation.
Ghirahim looked in her direction. Specifically, in her daughters’ directions. “What- I thought I told you to wait outside!”
“And I told you, this is a public store,” Madam Makin reminded him calmly, while working on his son’s Hogwarts robes.
He ignored her completely, drawing his wand. “You’re not worthy of my presence!” he told the girls. “Now go!”
“I’mma go with no,” Ariel smiled sweetly at him.
Molly noticed Mad-Eye Moody straighten up to peer over a nearby shelf at them, then head for the fireplace with the distinctive clunk of his wooden leg.
Molly put her hand in her pocket, with her wand. She was just as sure as Moody that the man was going to start something, and could only hope she would be fast enough to protect her daughters.
He went off faster than she expected- and not with the spell she expected. “Crucio!” There was a flash of light, then his son collapsed in agony; she wasn’t fast enough to protect her daughters.
Ginny blinked. “Huh, that’s new.”
Ariel grinned. “Punishing your own son for nothing at all?” she asked.
Molly noticed the faint green tinge coming from the fireplace, moments before Moody spoke.
“Backup.”
He tried again. “Crucio!”
This time, Molly had her wand out- and concentrated on following the spell with her eyes, rather than blocking it.
Ariel didn’t even try to dodge it. The spell bolt bounced right off her forehead and rebounded back at its attacker, who let out a brief shriek of agony before he cancelled the spell.
“I’ll get you for that,” Ghirahim snarled, then took aim. Then his eyes tracked up, to Molly- and his aim shifted as well.
Ginny glanced up at her, then fumbled for something. Molly selected and cast her shield spell with a silent incantation, and braced herself to dodge the spell anyways. Fortunately, she had practiced it well enough with the Order of the Phoenix that, for as much as her reflexes weren’t enough to protect her children- something she was determined to work on, whether spells bounced off of them or not- she knew they would be enough to protect her.
Then, he started his incantation. “Cruc-!”
He cut off when, mid-incantation, a galleon- thrown by Ginny- had struck him in the belly with the crack of a very loud whip. He folded around the coin, which had struck him flat-side first, and started to fall.
He didn’t have the chance to finish. Ariel’s coin bounced off his forehead next, not thrown nearly as quickly; it struck edge first, though, and proceeded to hit the ceiling before it fell back to the floor.
“Stupefy!”
Then there were the four separate bolts of red light from the direction of the fireplace, that all hit the center of his chest simultaneously. She looked- there was Moody, and three more aurors. As she watched, the fire roared green again, and Amelia Bones stepped out of it herself. “So what’s going on in here?” she asked, irritated.
“Mr. Goyle,” Moody answered her immediately. “Used the Cruciatus Curse twice, attempted a third time.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Of course he did. What happened to him?”
“The girls threw coins, then we hit him with stunners,” Moody mused.
Madam Malkin’s assistant looked up from where she was checking Mr. Goyle’s pulse. “Well, he survived… for how long, though, remains to be seen.” She gestured at the blood spot forming on his robes, right where Ginny’s coin had struck him. The coin had fallen away.
Amelia stepped around the rack, then facepalmed. “Oh, merlin. Take him away.” She paused, briefly. “To St. Mungo’s, first, then to the Ministry, pending trial. And somebody tell his wife she needs to take over her son’s shopping trip.”
“Nice shot,” Ginny finally told Ariel.
Ariel scowled. “I missed. You had a nice shot, though.”
Ginny flinched. “I missed too.”
“Oh, merlin,” Molly groaned.
“What were you aiming for?” Amelia asked.
Ariel shrugged. “His spell bounced off of us, but he was aiming at Mom for the third one- and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have bounced off of her.” She then scowled. “It still hit harder than I intended, though. Probably a good thing I didn’t hit his mouth.”
Ginny giggled nervously. “Y-Yeah. I didn’t even know a coin could make that noise. I’d say it’s a good thing I didn’t hit his groin.” She looked at where the aurors were levitating the unconscious Goyle in preparation for apparition. “I… I didn’t kill him, did I?”
Moody let out a snort, not joining the party apparating Goyle away. “Not if he then survived four stunners for more than a second,” he informed her. “Even if he dies on the way to St. Mungo’s, it won’t have been you that killed him.”
“Oh, good. I was worried about that.”
“Perhaps you two should practice your throws,” Amelia sighed. Then she glanced at Goyle, just in time for him to vanish with the thunder of disapparation. “Er, with ping-pong balls, specifically, so you don’t do any accidental damage.”
“Practice their throws?” Molly asked.
Amelia shrugged. “Well, say one wants to toss a bottle of ink to the other. You wouldn’t want it to sail over her head, out of her reach, and smash open on someone else’s head, would you?”
“... True.”
“Scary,” Ginny muttered.
“No, we’re scary,” Ariel corrected.
Ginny looked at her. “So is the idea of hurting people by accident.”
“Yes, yes it is,” Ariel sobered instantly.
At that moment, Mrs. Goyle appeared in the suddenly green fireplace, and stepped out of it. “Has my husband been starting fights again?” she asked immediately.
Amelia looked at her. “Wait, you are Mrs. Goyle?”
She nodded. “It was an arranged marriage, I didn’t have a choice. He’s also kept me- rather forcibly, I might add- out of my son’s life.”
She sighed. “Oh boy. Do you think you can handle his Hogwarts shopping, or…?”
She shrugged. “He let me out of the house once a month or so,” she answered. “A day of shopping shouldn’t be too hard.” She jiggled the rather sizable bag of gold she’d brought, grinning mischievously. “I’ve gotta do a bit of shopping myself, after all.”
“Oh boy.”
“Alright, that’s you done,” Madam Malkin informed the Goyles, wrapping up the boy’s new robes. “Should be able to get on with the shopping, eh?” She smiled up at them.
Mrs. Goyle seemed all too eager to pay for the robes and depart the shop. Everyone else waited quietly while she did- save only for Moody, who went back to the shelf he had been browsing before.
Madam Malkin waited for the door to land closed behind a very confused Goyle Jr. and a thoroughly overexcited Mrs. Goyle before she broke the silence. “I’m still amazed there was no collateral damage,” she commented.
“Yeah,” Ariel mused. “He even managed to wait until you were done sizing his son’s robes before he tortured him.”
“You know he was trying to torture your sister, right?”
She shrugged. “Yes. And when he tortured himself, he was trying to do it to me.”
“... Er, you are sisters, right?”
They spoke together. “Yep!” They put their arms around each other’s shoulders, in a side-on hug. “Twin sisters!”
“... Huh. I could’ve sworn… Whatever.”
“We had only one daughter,” Molly informed her. “Until a week and a half or so ago, when Ginny’s twin, Ariel, appeared out of nowhere. She didn’t have any clothes- but fortunately, she’s the same size as Ginny… and unfortunately, the two of them don’t have much clothes, so here we are.”
“With enough money to be throwing it around as a weapon, I guess,” Madam Malkin shrugged.
Molly winced. “... We also just found out Ariel is rich.”
“Inheritance from a distant ancestor?” Amelia guessed.
She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
Madam Malkin looked between the two girls, then looked up at Molly. “How do you tell which is which?”
Molly smiled. “Ariel’s eyes are blue,” she answered simply. “She also has a separate personality.”
“Yeah, we’re not like Fred and George,” Ariel giggled. “We don’t finish each other’s sentences.”
“And that’s quite the bond between the two,” Amelia observed. Then she smiled. “Makes sense, considering the magical relationship between the two.”
“Oh?” Molly asked, while Ariel split off from Ginny for Madam Malkin to fit her for her new robes.
She nodded. “Magically speaking, Ariel is Ginny’s daughter.”
Ginny’s head snapped around to look at her. “She’s my what!?”