Disclaimer - I do not claim to own any part of the Harry Potter world.
Harry smelled something good. They had arrived at the Burrow for Christmas vacation the previous evening. Mrs. Weasley had pushed hard for protective wards to be put around the Burrow this year for the holidays. Grimmauld Place had been fine last year when Sirius was alive. However, knowing that the holidays could stir up feelings long since buried, she had campaigned for the holidays at home and won.
Arriving in shifts via authorized portkeys, Harry and Ron had stumbled into the Burrow kitchen sometime past midnight. Mrs. Weasley hugged them both, set them up with steaming cups of hot cocoa and sent them straight upstairs to bed.
Harry had been dreading the holidays. He had almost asked to remain at Hogwarts, not sure he was going to be able face all the Weasley family togetherness. It might just be his undoing. Six months had passed since his life had been turned upside down again and he still wasn't right yet. Harry had built a shell around himself to ward off the unpleasant questions about his state of health and state of mind. He had no idea how he had survived the month at the Dursleys the past summer. Lupin and Tonks had arrived at Number Four Privet Drive right before his birthday to whisk him to Grimmauld Place. The memories there had taunted him, sending him deeper inside himself.
Slowly, Ron and Hermione drew him out of his cocoon, forcing him to engage in conversations, challenging him to games of wizard chess, drawing him into debates about who the new DADA professor might be. When he returned to school, Harry considered himself functioning if not feeling. Quidditch practice on top of Occlumency lessons with Dumbledore and NEWT level classes kept him busy.
He had made it to the holidays and had every intention of getting through them on auto-pilot as well, which is why he was glad to have been able to avoid the questions he didn’t want to answer by going straight to bed. He rolled over in the bed in Ron's room, closing his eyes tight, wishing his mind back to sleep. But his stomach wasn't wanting to sleep through the aroma wafting up the stairs. Groaning, Harry looked over at Ron's bed but it was empty. Giving up, Harry pushed the blankets aside and followed his nose.
++++
"Hello, Harry."
Harry jumped. Ginny stood by the kitchen sink holding a bulky looking cloth bag in her arms. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you!" she said, concerned at the pale look of fright on Harry's face.
"No..uh…that's okay. Hi, Ginny," Harry replied, stepping uncertainly into the kitchen.
"Have a good trip?" she asked, moving back to the table.
"Uh, yeah, it was fine."
Harry realized the bag was actually an apron Ginny had tied around her waist. Harry watched as she emptied the contents of her apron bottom onto the table, the onions rolling over once before finding their balance.
"Would you like some tea? Toast?"
"Yeah, that would be nice." Harry moved to the table and sat down. He was a little embarrassed having Ginny wait on him, but he realized while he had eaten many times in the kitchen, he had no idea where anything was kept.
"You missed breakfast. Everyone else ate earlier and Mum thought you should sleep. Dad's at the Ministry. Mum, Ron and Hermione are outside, seeing if there is anything left in the garden that hasn't been frozen by snow. So, for your breakfast company, you're stuck with me," Ginny apologized smiling brightly at him.
Ginny took the tea kettle from the stove and poured Harry a mug. She then put several pieces of bread on a metal grate sitting above the flame of the stovetop. Using the metal lever on the side, she flipped them once, letting them brown before spearing them with a fork and piling them on a plate. Returning to the table, Ginny handed Harry the toast and returned to her vegetables. Harry watched her pick up a knife, select an onion and begin slicing it on the cutting board she had placed there.
Harry sat and watched Ginny work. She didn't ask him any questions and he was glad. It was nice to simply sit in someone's company who just let him be. It was Harry who broke the silence.
"Why don't you cook like your mum?"
"Like Mum?" Ginny asked, puzzled. "Oh, you mean with magic? You of all people should know the answer to that one!" Ginny teased him, grinning. "I don't think underage use of magic to chop onions, no matter how much they make you cry, would constitute mortal peril!" Ginny thought she saw the corner of Harry's mouth turn up just a touch, but wasn't sure. "Besides, I find it rather satisfying to do it without magic. Maybe it's odd, but I've found I get in less trouble if I take the meat cleaver to a piece of actual meat rather than one of my brothers." There, she saw it. He had grinned, fleeting as it was, she'd caught it.
Harry hadn't noticed the pot on the stove. He realized, as he watched Ginny throw the handful of onions into it, that the beginnings of some sort of stew must have been the smell that woke him.
"I didn't know you cooked," Harry said.
"Sometimes. I'm trying to help out, now that Mum is so involved with the Order. Besides, when I volunteered to assist the Order, this is how I was informed I could best help," Ginny said sarcastically. "It's not exactly what I had in mind, but it's a start, I guess."
Harry nodded.
"Here," Ginny handed him another cutting board and a potato. "Work out some frustration and cut that up."
Harry grinned at her and started chopping.
During the holidays, Harry found himself wandering toward the kitchen more and more in hopes of finding Ginny in there. If she didn't have anything for him to help out with, she'd set him up with a cup of tea and just let him be. In spite of himself, Harry began to feel less numb in her presence and the pain Sirius' death had brought on him was not as harsh.
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Harry was getting pummeled. He had no idea how he had let himself get talked into a snowball fight with Ron. To make matters worse, Bill and Charlie had shown up and decided to join in, forming a united Weasley front. Harry was outmanned and outgunned and not too pleased about it.
Scrambling up against the garden wall, Harry cautiously peered over, only to get bombarded with snowballs coming from behind the broom shed.
“Yo, Potter!” Bill taunted. “You call yourself a Quidditch player? You couldn’t dodge a bludger if it was standing still!”
Ron had dug out an old broomstick and was using it to lob snowballs across the top of the shed.
“Hey, Harry! Catch this one! It’s got wings!” Ron called as he sent another one skyward.
“Bet I can make this one bounce!” Charlie yelled, as the snowball he flung splattered on the top of the wall, sending flakes all over Harry. “Oh, sorry, Harry. Guess they don’t bounce so well after all!”
Harry fell back against the cold stones, his breath coming in billowing frosty gasps, snow melting into icy trickles down his neck. He heard the yell before he saw the flash of blue wool and flying red hair that hurled into him, knocking the wind out of him.
“Sorry about that Potter!” Ginny breathed heavily, straightening up. “Hit an icy patch there. Looks like you could use some help,” she observed cheekily.
“Yeah, you could say that,” came the sarcastic reply.
“I think I may have something that will help turn the tide,” Ginny grinned, taking off her mittens and digging her hands into her jeans pockets. Harry counted a dozen round colored balls, about the size of marbles lying in Ginny’s palm.
“What are those?” Harry asked intrigued
“Inky Ice Pellets,” Ginny answered. “Fred and George sent them to me to test as long as I promised not to use them on themselves. You put them inside snowballs. They explode on contact, covering whatever or whomever they hit in color that won’t wash off for at least a week. Or they think a week. That’s the part they really want tested,” she finished with a giggle.
Harry looked up at Ginny’s smiling face. Flakes of snow clung to her hair, her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold and laughter danced in her eyes. Harry was mesmerized.
“Harry?” Ginny waved a mitten in front of Harry’s face.
Harry shook his head. “Yeah?”
“What color do you think would match Ron’s new maroon jumper best?” she innocently asked, holding up two pellets. “Blast ‘o Blue or Permanent Pink Pansy?”
Harry started packing snow.
Twenty minutes later, Mrs. Weasley walked into the kitchen to find the five of them sitting around the table, hugging mugs of hot cocoa in an effort to warm up and dry off. Bill, Charlie and Ron sat on the far side of the table looking as if they had come off on the wrong end of a fight with a neon colored impressionist painting. Judging by Ginny’s smug and color-free smirk, she had a pretty good idea who was behind Ron’s pink hair that even Tonks would have envied. The right side of Charlie’s face was a lovely daffodil yellow while the left side was a contrasting grassy green. Bill was simply blue, very, very blue.
Taking a second look, Molly Weasley turned around and left the kitchen without saying a word. Seeing Harry grin into his mug of hot cocoa like that was worth the price of keeping her mouth shut.
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Harry looked at the box Mrs. Weasley had placed on his bed. Over the months, she had continued the cleaning of Grimmauld Place helping to make it a truly functioning headquarters for the Order. Last summer she had gently asked Harry if he wanted her to sort through Sirius’ personal belongings while she was at it. Too numb to care, he had simply nodded. Twelve years in Azkaban followed by a life in hiding hadn’t left much for her to sort through and now the results of her efforts sat inside the box in front of him.
Harry had surprised himself when he approached Mrs. Weasley that morning. He had wanted to thank her for doing something he had been unable to even think about. But, as he stood in front of her in the empty kitchen, no words came out. He felt his eyes begin to burn with tears. Embarrassed, he had turned to leave, but Mrs. Weasley caught his arm and enveloped him in a hug only a mother could give.
His eyes red and his nose stuffy, Harry now sat on Ron’s bed, facing the box afraid to look inside. Opening it might mean it was over. Sirius was really gone. He would have to let go. How would he define himself without the pain he carried around in his heart? Of course, he knew the answer to that. Maybe it was time to start truly focusing on the prophecy and what it meant for him and his future.
He heard it then, a bright, clear bubbling laugh from outside. He leaned over to look out the frosty window. The snow covered ground below was dotted with splotches of rainbow color. Fred and George must have apparated moments before because there they were being given a tour of the battlegrounds along with, judging by Ron’s flailing arms and visual theatrics, a play-by-play description. Ginny stood off to the side, hands on hips, shaking her head, saying something the twins were laughing at. Harry couldn’t see his expression, but it must have made Ron mad because his face now matched the color of his hair.
The picture of Ginny, laughing in the snow during their snowball fight, her cheeks kissed with cold, her eyes brimming with fun flashed in his memory. Did he want that? Deciding there was only one way to find out, Harry breathed deep and lifted the lid off the box.
++++
Dinner the night before they were scheduled to return to Hogwarts was a noisy, rambunctious affair. The kitchen table was surrounded by Order members and most of the Weasley clan. Harry knew Ginny had been in the kitchen helping her mum for several hours that afternoon make a feast the house elves in the Hogwarts kitchens would have been proud of. She had then insisted on serving everyone.
Tonight's dinner was a celebration, as talk around the table centered on school related topics and the twins' latest test products. Harry was just reaching for a second helping of roast beef when he heard -
"Yow!" Fred yelped and covered his face with his hands.
"Aargh!” George exclaimed, grabbing his arms.
Big blotchy blisters and boils were appearing all over Fred and George's skin.
"Fred! George! Cut it out this instant!" Mrs. Weasley admonished them.
"But Mum! We didn't do it!" the twins cried, as purple hair began to sprout out of their ears.
"Well, who else would have?" she shouted back at them.
“We don’t know, but ““ It took a minute before Fred and George looked at each other and said in unison, "GINNY!"
Everyone turned to Ginny. Ginny scooped up a bite of mashed potatoes from her plate and put them in her mouth. Blinking roundly at the stunned faces, she shrugged her shoulders innocently.
"Ginny!" Mrs. Weasley scolded. "Do you know anything about this?"
"No, Mum, I'm a Prefect," she managed with a straight face. "I'm above such childish pranks." Ginny, pretending she was wearing her school robes, breathed on her chest where her badge would be and polished it with her sleeve. Realization dawning, the twins began laughing, nodding their approval.
Still confused, Harry thought back to the last summer and began to grin. Fred and George had stopped by the morning booklists had arrived. Harry found them in the sitting room. They were playing keep-away with Ginny's new Prefect badge, taunting her about their last hope, their kindred spirit had become a complete failure. Ginny had tried valiantly to grab it, but since she was several inches shorter than the twins, had to settle for an evil glare. Sure that it would burn if it could, Harry could remember thinking he never wanted to be on the receiving end of such a stare.
“Don’t touch us, Mum!” yelped Fred as Mrs. Weasley came from behind to get a better look at his skin.
“Yeah, Mum,” agreed George, wincing because it hurt to laugh, “I’m sure these will go down soon. At least the ones from any of our stuff don’t last long,” he said hopefully.
Harry leaned over to Ginny who was sitting next to him, calmly continuing to eat in the midst of the chaos she had created. "I thought you said you didn't use magic when you cooked," he whispered.
"I never said I didn't use magical ingredients," she whispered back.
Harry grinned. Dumbledore had chosen his Prefects well.
++++
Lucius Malfoy sat in front of his fire flipping through the manuscript. Upon returning home from Knockturn alley, he had put the bound volume on the sideboard in the sitting room and forgotten it. But with Draco having returned to Hogwarts earlier that day and Narcissa out for the evening, he had been looking for something to occupy his time. The flickering light of the fire illuminated the pages filled with neat, tidy script describing practices of ancient peoples, rituals of dark magic and death, myths and legends. Bartholomew Borgin had painstakingly reproduced diagrams of spell movements and recipes for potions that had fascinated him in the pages, some claiming cures for everything from poisonous dragon bites to baldness.
Concluding this had simply been a foolish wizard's notebook, Lucious threw the manuscript into the fireplace. As the heat from the flames blackened and curled the edges of the parchment, he looked at the page the manuscript had fallen open to. What he read sent shivers through him. Grabbing the fire tongues, Lucius salvaged the remaining pages before they turned to ash. Dropping it on the rug, he smothered the glowing edges of the parchment with the bottom of his boot. He leaned down and re-read the title on the page. He stood up, rubbed his eyes and then leaned over to read it again. Straightening up, he smiled. Interesting, he thought. Yes, interesting enough for the Dark Lord. He would be pleased.
A/N: I've been calling this my Opus around home. It's my first attempt at something longer than a one shot so your input and suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Next Chapter - Harry and Ginny spend some time star gazing...
Thanks for reading!