A Past Reclaimed by nuw255
Chapter Notes: George brings Harry some materials to help him fix the Nimbus 2001, and Harry teaches him what a “video” is.
Harry was awakened the next morning by George Weasley bouncing on his bed.
“Wake uuuuup!” he sang in a poor imitation of an opera singer.
Harry groaned and covered his head with his pillow. George whispered something, and the pillow suddenly sprouted legs and began to move. Harry opened his eyes to find that, instead of a pillow, he was clutching an enormous spider.
“Aaaargh!” He threw the spider across his bedroom with all the force he could muster. It bounced off the wall, but quickly regained its footing and launched itself at him. Harry slashed at it with both hands while hissing, “Diffindo!” The spider’s legs were severed, and it fell to the floor.
Harry rounded on George. “What was that all about?” he demanded.
George just stared at him with a shocked expression on his face.
“Well?”
“Do you have your wand hidden up the sleeve of your pajamas or something?” George finally asked.
Harry swore under his breath as he felt the blood drain from his face. He had been caught doing wandless magic in front of someone again. After a moment, he managed to choke out, “Maybe.”
George grinned at him, looking relieved. “That was really convincing, Harry. For a minute there, I actually believed you’d done that without a wand.”
Harry laughed shakily and made a show of opening his trunk and pretending to put his wand away while George transfigured the legless spider back into a pillow.
“I brought our breakfast up here because I thought you might want to talk about repairing that broomstick while we eat,” George said after a moment, indicating the tray full of food on Harry’s desk.
“Did you find anything?” Harry asked eagerly as he took a bite of sausage.
“Course I did,” George replied. “Take a look at this!” He produced a book entitled Sport Broomstick Repair, along with a small bag of perfectly straight tail twigs. “It may take a little time, but we haven’t got much else to do, have we?”
“You got that right,” Harry muttered as he began flipping through the pages of the book. He frowned. “This looks really complicated. It’s too bad there’s no instruction video to go along with it.”
“Video?” George asked. “Is that what this thing is?” He pulled a videocassette from the small bag he had brought with him.
“Yeah,” Harry replied, taking it from him and examining the box. It had a Muggle-style (non-moving) photo of a broomstick similar to the one Harry wanted to repair, and bore the title Sport Broomstick Repair for the Muggle-born Witch or Wizard.
“The bloke at the Quidditch shop said he didn’t really know what it was, only that it’s pretty popular with Muggle-borns,” George said as Harry turned the video over in his hands. “Since you grew up with Muggles, I thought it might be helpful.”
“Thanks,” Harry breathed. An idea suddenly crossed his mind, and he looked up excitedly. “Dudley’s probably watching the telly right now,” he said. “What do you say we go take it over?”
“Couldn’t have had a better idea myself,” said George. He picked up the breakfast tray and followed Harry downstairs. Upon entering the living room to discover that Dudley was indeed watching television, he snapped, “Beat it, Dudders.”
Harry fought a snicker as his cousin glared indignantly at George. “This is my house,” he argued.
“Suit yourself,” said George as he sank into an armchair.
Ignoring Dudley’s protests, Harry strode forward and fed the cassette into the video recorder. Dudley stood up to stop him, but George waved his wand at a nearby mop, causing it to jump to life and chase Dudley behind the sofa.
“Mum!” Dudley shouted. “Mum, they’re using their- their things again!”
“As if she can do anything about it,” George muttered.
Aunt Petunia arrived in the living room just as the video was starting. She and Dudley stood gaping at the television screen as they watched real-live witches and wizards on broomsticks zooming around a large stadium as rock music blared in the background. Although Harry had never seen one before, he almost instantly realized that they were watching the highlights of a Quidditch match. A moment later, the rock music faded and an attractive blonde witch appeared in front of the camera.
“If you’re like me,” she began, “you probably didn’t have magical parents to teach you how to properly ride and care for your first broomstick.” She gave a false laugh and continued, “Why, I still remember the time my mother accidentally used my old Cleansweep 6 to sweep the kitchen floor. We had no idea how to repair the broken tail twigs, and my father actually tried to glue them back together.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” shrieked Aunt Petunia, finally finding her voice and drowning out the video.
“Learning how to repair a sport broomstick,” Harry replied with a straight face. “Care to join us?”
Aunt Petunia looked scandalized. “You take that unnaturalness somewhere else.”
“Shhh,” hissed George. “I can’t hear the video. Harry, I think we’re going to have to start over from the beginning.” Before Aunt Petunia could object again, George directed the mop to chase both her and Dudley from the room and stand guard in the doorway.
Amid fits of laughter, Harry rewound the repair video and they watched the entire thing while eating their breakfast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any more help than the moving illustrations in the book, but the torment it had inflicted on Aunt Petunia and Dudley made it more than worthwhile.
Over the course of the next several days, Harry barely saw Uncle Vernon, who had apparently decided that he was needed at the office until very late every night. He chuckled at the thought of the Weasley twins running his blustering uncle out of his own house without even really trying. His absence ruined a bit of their fun, of course, but they more than made up for it by tormenting Aunt Petunia and Dudley that much more.
While the twins were busy driving his relatives insane, Harry spent most of his time painstakingly repairing the Nimbus 2001 that had previously belonged to Peter Pettigrew. He took time out to write letters to Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Tyler, of course, and to help Fred and George with the occasional prank, but for the most part he remained focused on his project. In fact, he became so occupied with repairing the broomstick that before he knew it, his two weeks of imprisonment were almost over.
“And... done,” Harry announced as he charmed the final tail twig into place on the newly-repaired broom.
“Want to take it for a test drive?” Fred asked.
“I suppose I’d better,” Harry replied. “I mean, I can’t go giving away a broom I repaired myself without testing it out first, can I?”
Fred raised his eyebrows. “Giving it away? And who, pray tell, is the lucky recipient?”
“A friend of mine,” Harry hedged.
Fred drew his wand and smirked. “I guess I could always use magic to get the answer out of you.”
Harry responded by flipping open his school trunk and picking up two wands - his own in his right hand and Peter Pettigrew’s in his left. He leveled both wands at Fred and said, with a smirk of his own, “Care to try?”
Fred looked thoughtful for a moment before sighing dramatically and stowing his wand. “I’ve seen you duel with only one wand, Harry, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of any of your curses no matter how much magic you’ve forgotten.”
Harry dropped the wands back into his trunk and closed the lid. “Can we really test it out?” he asked eagerly. After two weeks of being cooped up indoors, a nice little flight sounded absolutely brilliant.
“There’s nobody here to stop us, is there? Plus, there’s no moon tonight, so there’s no way you’ll get spotted by Muggles.”
Grinning madly, Harry picked up the Nimbus and ran downstairs. As soon as he arrived in the back yard, he threw himself astride the handle and rocketed into the blackened sky. It was the most exhilarating feeling of freedom he had ever dreamed possible. He darted back and forth, twisting, rolling, and looping to his heart’s content. To his great satisfaction, the broom performed even better than it had before he had severed its tail twigs in the first place. It was perfect.
After about twenty minutes, Harry went into a steep dive, which he barely managed to pull out of before hitting the ground. He hopped off of the broom and dashed back upstairs, ecstatic that tonight would be his last night on Privet Drive.