"Excellent! Always great having more friends," Fred said with a wink. "Glad to hear you're doing alright. Now, we'd better get downstairs and help Mum with dinner, before I go blind from all this orange." He looked around the room disparagingly, and Harry laughed; Ron's room was a bit bright, with all its Chudley Cannons regalia. Harry much preferred the Harpies' colours of green and gold.
When they returned to the kitchen, Mrs Weasley was directing the kids around with the air of a military general. "Oh, good," she said when she spotted the three of them. "Harry, would you mind helping Ron with the cutlery? Fred, George, the salad is ready to go— oh NOT AGAIN!" She had reached for her wand on the table, only it had turned into a giant rubber mouse with a loud squeak. "BOYS!"
Fred and George shared an alarmed look, grabbed the salad bowl, and sprinted out into the garden. Mrs Weasley huffed, grabbing her real wand and flicking it towards the potatoes, which peeled themselves so violently they bounced off the ceiling. "Honestly, don't know where we went wrong with those two," she muttered to herself. "They'll be brought up in front of the Misuse of Magic Office before they're twenty."
Harry grabbed a handful of forks and slowly backed out of the kitchen, not wanting to get involved in that. Clearly the twins had been… busy this summer.
Outside,
the
two
tables
they
were supposed to be setting were doing battle in mid air thanks to Bill and Charlie, crashing into each other violently overhead. Harry saw Crookshanks dart across the grass, in hot pursuit of a chubby little gnome. Ginny, Ron and the twins were cheering on the table battle, while Hermione looked torn between amusement and anxiety.
"Watch out, Harry!" Bill exclaimed as his table caught Charlie's with a huge bang and sent one of the legs flying. Harry ducked, coming up laughing. It was almost like being back with Sirius.
There was a clatter overhead, and suddenly Percy's head was sticking out of an upstairs window, looking quite cross. "Will you keep it down?" he called. "Some of us have work to be doing!" "Sorry, Perce!" Charlie said, grinning. "Didn't mean to disrupt the cauldron bottoms!"
Percy scowled at him, slamming the window shut again. The two eldest Weasleys chuckled, but obligingly brought the tables down to settle where they were supposed to, reattaching the leg with a quick spell. Bill waved his wand, conjuring clean white tablecloths. Harry started setting cutlery out, and soon enough the table was set for eleven, and Mrs Weasley was directing several steaming dishes out with her wand.
Harry ended up seated between Hermione and Charlie, who quickly got Harry involved in a lively conversation about quidditch. "You should've seen the letter Ollie sent me when you joined the team," the redhead said, smirking. "I thought he was going to cry with joy. That year between me leaving and you starting was… not a good time for them." He popped a potato in his mouth. "I think you're the only reason he started speaking to me again at all, actually. When I graduated without leaving a good replacement behind, he swore I was dead to him."
Harry could absolutely see Oliver Wood doing such a thing.
"Y'know he's playing reserve for Puddlemere now?" Charlie continued, and Harry raised an eyebrow.
"He told me he was trying out, I didn't realise he got the spot. That's brilliant!" He made a mental note to send a letter to congratulate him. "Might have to start supporting Puddlemere, now."
Charlie snickered. "I dunno, at least let him make the main team first. Can't have it going to his head too quickly," he said with a wink.
They tuned into the conversation opposite them, where Mrs Weasley seemed to be fixated on Bill's earring. "And your hair's getting silly again," she continued, fussing over the ponytail with a frown. "If you'd just let me give it a trim."
"I like it," Harry blurted. Immediately, he went bright red. "I mean, I think it looks cool."
"Yeah, it's nice. You're so old-fashioned, Mum," Ginny piped up from Bill's other side. Bill looked across at Harry and winked. Harry almost dropped his fork in his lap.
Down at the other end of the table, Ron and the twins were discussing the upcoming quidditch match. Ron started to regale Harry with a blow-by-blow of the previous cup matches, but Harry assured him he'd been listening on his Wireless to keep up with the scores. Ron looked a little put-out, but carried on arguing Bulgaria's chances with George, even when Charlie chimed in to point out how talented Ireland's chasers were. Hermione leaned in towards Harry, ducking her head. "Have you heard from, y'know?" she asked pointedly. It took him a minute to realise she was talking abut Sirius. He stifled a smirk; if only she knew.
"Yeah. He's good, he's found somewhere safe to hide out." Somewhere amazing, somewhere Harry already missed desperately.
Not that it wasn't nice, being back at the Burrow, surrounded by his friends again and excited for the quidditch match. The chaos was very different to mealtimes at Seren Du, where it was mostly quiet conversation unless Sirius was in a particularly mischievous mood and then all of them were having to watch out for any number of bizarre spells on their food or cutlery. Dinner faded into dessert, which faded into sitting in the garden having companionable conversation until the sun began to set, at which time Mrs Weasley stood up and began to stack dishes. "Oh, look at the time! You had all best go to bed, you've got an early start tomorrow! Harry, dear, I'm headed to Diagon Alley tomorrow to get everyone's school things, if you want to leave your list out tonight. There might not be time after the cup; the match went on for five days last time!"
Harry faltered, rushing to think of a quick excuse. "Oh, I already got my school things, Mrs Weasley," he said. "The Dursleys had a meeting in London a couple of weeks ago and they dropped me off. I didn't know you'd be coming to get me, and I didn't want to run out of time." That sounded reasonable enough. She didn't know the Dursleys well enough to know that they never, in a million years, would have willingly given Harry a ride to London to buy magic supplies. Ron and Hermione shot him odd looks, but luckily didn't say anything.
"Oh," Mrs Weasley deflated for a second, then continued clearing the table. "Not to worry, then. That's one less thing to worry about. I'll have to send your vault key back to Professor Dumbledore." That was muttered to herself as an afterthought, but Harry stiffened, his hands clenching under the table. Dumbledore still had his vault key? And was just sending it out however he pleased? Harry should have known. He made a mental note to include a word about that in the letter he planned to write to Gorrak and Farlig about his scar, wondering if there was any way to stop people accessing his vaults without permission. Merlin only knew what the headmaster was doing with free access to Harry's family vaults.
Between the eleven of them they made short work of taking all the dishes back into the kitchen, and Harry was soon curled up on the cot bed in Ron's room, closing his eyes and trying not to feel strange about no longer being in his own bedroom. It was funny how quickly he'd gotten used to it. For once, he had somewhere that felt more like home than Hogwarts.
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