Molly Weasley waited impatiently while her daughter got ready. She'd seen her daughter change dramatically in the last week in ways she certainly didn't approve. Ginny had gone from starry-eyed wonder just shy of outright devotion to just the idea of Harry Potter to distressed antipathy to the very real young man who had arrived before taking a detour through pining for what she had "lost" before "catching a case of the sullens" (as her own mother had called it) when it came out the real Harry had already found himself a girlfriend.
It was well beyond time for them to sit down and hammer this out once and for all. Though she loved the home she and Arthur had made at the Burrow in the last twenty five years with all her heart there remained one real downside to it - now that the children were older there was always someone lingering about to the point where outside the school year it was almost impossible to have a private conversation without being overheard. This need for privacy was what had Molly dragging her young daughter out of bed before the sun was fully above the horizon.
"Come along," she chided as her daughter emerged with her bathrobe wrapped around her sleeping clothes. Where once the girl had worn it because it made her comfortable, it seemed she wore it now out of some sense of mourning.
She led her downstairs to be further from the sleeping others and tried to come up with what to say. Only once had she ever seen such absolute foolishness in a girl before and there was no way that she was going to let her daughter go down a road that'd see her have to withdraw from Hogwarts before she'd taken her O.W.L.s because she had been found to be in the family way like that one had.
The girl had disappeared almost entirely after that, and the boy joined her soon afterwards. She saw them occasionally in Diagon Alley but never acknowledged ever knowing her. She wasn't going to let that happen to her daughter. Red hair was the closest any Weasley would ever come to being a Scarlet Woman. This was going to be taken care of one way or another.
...
It had taken Harry some time to figure out how to turn on a magical stove and even longer to find where Mrs. Weasley kept the food. In the end he had to resort to poking things with his wand. He didn't think it counted as magic though, or at least not something Mrs. Weasley would get mad at him for, considering he was doing this for her.
He was already well into cooking breakfast when he heard it, a soft pop! behind him and turned to see what it was.
"Mister Hairy Pots-sir?" a curious little elf with big brown eyes asked. It was carrying a large bundle of papers and Harry thought it was female.
"Er - Hello," Harry greeted the elf, cautiously wondering if this visit by an elf would be just as interesting as the last one was.
"Mister Lichy says yous be needing this," the little elf said, offering the bundle of papers to him.
'The rental agreement!' the Harry part of him cried and threatened to make him break out in a celebratory jig. He tried to keep his eager anticipation under wraps but couldn't help but to give a relieved smile.
"Thank you, um-"
"I be Mipsy, sir," the elf answered his unasked question.
"Well thank you very much, Mipsy," Harry smiled. "And thank Lichfield for me too, will you?"
Mipsy beamed and gave him a cute little curtsy, as if the repurposed striped pillowcase she was wearing were some sort of dress.
"Oh!" she cried, her big eyes bulging. "Mister Lichy say to give you this," she said as she reached down the neck hole into her makeshift dress and pulled out a scrap of parchment to hand to him.
"Bye, Mister Hairy Pots-sir!" she said with a wave before she disappeared with a pop!
'A little strange,' Harry thought to himself. 'But nobody beats Dobby .'
Harry looked at the scrap of parchment and a lead weight settled in his stomach. All it said was 'NOW!' He felt cold as he realized it could only mean one thing: Dumbledore was on the move and he'd be here soon .
Lichfield was certainly cutting it very thin. Harry could only hope he could talk his way into getting the Weasleys to sign before the headmaster got here and that Lichfield was as good at delaying people as he was at delaying deliveries.
The bacon started to sizzle on the stove as he heard someone on the stairs. Harry stashed the rental agreement into a nearby drawer full of odds and ends until the time was right.
"Ginny, I just don't know what's going on inside that head of yours," Mrs. Weasley said. "First you're ready to follow him into matrimony, then you say you don't care, and now you sulk around all day. Do you suddenly want him again or do you just not want anyone else to have him just in case you change your mind later?" There was a slight pause before she continued, "Do you smell bacon?"
"Good morning, Mrs. Weasley," he called from the kitchen. Short quick steps sounded on the stairs as Mrs. Weasley looked curiously into the room.
"Harry? What on earth are you doing?" she asked as if puzzled why any man would be in a kitchen, much less hers. "If you were hungry I could have made you something."
"Oh, no, Mrs. Weasley, this is for you," Harry said as he fixed her a plate. "You've made me feel so much at home this last week that I wanted to show my appreciation."
He set the set the simple meal of eggs, toast, and bacon down on the kitchen table along with a glass of milk before pulling the seat out for her. She looked at him with her mouth partially open, as if she had never seen such a mind-boggling thing in her life.
"Mrs. Weasley?" he said when she didn't move.
"Oh, um - Thank you," the kind woman said as she uncertainly took her seat. "You have to be the most curiously kind boy I've ever met. Hermione's lucky to have you."
He ran his hand through his hair embarrassed.
"Mmm!" Mrs. Weasley said in non-syllabic praise as she seemed to relish the rare moment of private pampering. "Harry, if I could I'd keep you."
This was his moment.
"Actually, Mrs. Weasley-," he began.
"Oh, please, Harry," she said as she dug in to the toast. "After a meal like this you can call me Molly."
"Er - right, er - Molly," Harry tried to continue, edging his way back to the drawer. "About what you said-"
With the worst of all possible timing a strange owl thought that particular moment was the perfect time to land on the windowsill and tap for entrance.
"Oh, that'll be your Hogwarts letters," Molly said as she left the table to open the window. "Boys! Ginny! Wake up and come get your letters!" she cried upstairs before carrying her plate to the kitchen to snack on as she began puttering around to make breakfast for the gang of Weasley children who'd soon groggily make their way downstairs.
'The perfect moment come and gone,' Harry thought as Ginny tried to slink into the dining room unnoticed. How was he supposed to bring it up in front of everyone now without seeming rude or ungrateful for what they'd already done? He began to feel the beginnings of a nervous flutter jumbling around in his stomach.
"Will you look at this?" the twin he thought was Fred said as the quartet of brothers entered. "Either we've gotten slower-"
.....
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