7 - Molly Mahoney
"Mahoney Baloney!" says Professor Magorium. It must have been a delight for such a childish man to have an assistant from the normal world who inexplicably matched his youthful charm.
If you think about it, Molly Mahoney is neither child nor adult. She's a fantasy person, because she can fit in with Magorium's magical toy shop as if she was born there, and yet she comes from the outside world and has her own real-life problems. At the Toy Shop, she gets along with the kids wonderfully, and she goes along with calling the accountant "Mutant". It was never explained why she could blend in with that environment so well and understood all the rules, especially when she was an adult. That it all came naturally to her was pretty cool. It also makes me want to shed a small tear because it's something I've lost and wish that I had, but I'm terrible at this.
Yet, at the same time she had the qualities of a real person. She loved the magic toy shop, but she wanted to move on, like many people do. She wanted to become a pianist and write her own music. It was pretty great music, too. And because she was real, it was possible for there to be a slight romance between her and the unbeliever Mutant.
In some ways, she's definitely a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but it's not because of her quirks or her likes. She mainly fits the description because she shows an otherwise dull and boring man how to enjoy life, and I suppose it's easy to label her a pixie with that adorable haircut. Perhaps because of her personality she could fit the description, but I think that those are good qualities that go beyond quirks. She has spirit, and lots of it, and let's not forget her life-filled smile.
She dressed in such a way that's very childish and magical, showing that she embraces the world around her. There's room for pessimism and doubt, but it never really stood a chance. How could it when Magorium was such a great boss and she was his worthy successor? It was going to be a feel-good story from the start.
Perhaps my favorite thing about Mahoney is that she knows how to play. It gets me cheerfully nostalgic, because there was a time when I was eight when play time meant happiness. There was one friend in the whole wide world who would play with me, and coincidentally she looked like Mahoney. Those were the best days of my life.
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