The Troubled Wizard (A Harry Potter Fan Fiction)

Chapter 18

"Wow, something smells delicious!" the rest of the kids were now awake and had filed into the dining room. Harry and Mrs. Weasley were setting the last of the food on the table as everyone was taking their seats.

"Thank you, Mrs. Weasley, this all looks wonderful." Hermione complimented.

"Well, I had some great help," she leaned over and ruffled Harry's hair.

He blushed, "I just fried the bacon and made eggs, it was nothing very hard..."

"You helped mum make breakfast?" George said with surprise.

"Mum doesn't let us anywhere near the kitchen!" Fred said in outrage.

Ginny giggled, "Well, given that the last time she let you help her cook, you set the curtains on fire, I think she has a good reason." They all laughed as the twins rolled their eyes.

"Bloody hell!" Ron took a bite of the bacon. "This is really good! Where'd you learn how to cook like this?"

He shrugged, "A lot of trial and error mostly. My aunt and uncle wanted me to make their meals for them, but they didn't want to take the time to teach me how to cook. At school, I would check out cookbooks from the library. Those helped a lot."

"That's very impressive that you were able to figure it out just from reading it in a book, and not having a real teacher," Hermione said with pride.

"Yeah, I had to learn a lot of things like that." He continued. "I had to take care of the garden, so I had to look up how to take care of certain plants. I also had to change the oil of my uncle's car several times. Once I had looked up how to do it, it made it a lot easier. The first time around I spilled oil all over the driveway and he was very angry."

He was trying to make light of the situation, but no one could seem to find it in themselves to smile. They knew that 'very angry' didn't just mean a light scolding.

"Well, you don't have to worry about that anymore." Mrs. Weasley assured him. "You're not going to have to do chores like that anymore.

Harry glanced over at Ron, "Don't you guys do chores?"

He nodded, "Yeah we all have little odd jobs that we do around the house each day. My jobs are usually laundry and weeding the garden. Ginny takes care of breakfast dishes and laundry. Fred does lunch dishes and dusting. The George takes dinner dishes and sweeping/mopping. Since there are so many of us, it never takes more than an hour to get everything done."

Harry turned back to Mrs. Weasley. "I want to do something to help."

"Harry, you're our guest." Mr. Weasley tried to explain. "You don't need to worry about stuff like that."

"I want to help." He repeated again sternly. "If I'm going to be staying here, I want to do something to pitch in. I... I need to be doing something..." he started to sound desperate. "I... I've never had downtime like this before. I need something to keep me busy..."

Molly looked to her husband then back to Harry with a sad smile. "Ok. I can come up with a few things for you to do around the house. But if it ever gets to be too much for you, I want you to tell me immediately. Ok?" he nodded quickly. "Alright, well, I did enjoy having your company making breakfast this morning. How would you like to help me with the cooking from now on?"

He smiled up at her, "That sounds good. Can you think of anything else?"

Mr. Weasley tapped his chin, "Well, normally I'm the one who always feeds Errol and cleans his cage, but if you'd like you can take him along with Hedwig."

"That sounds great!" he grinned, "Anything else?"

"Why don't you start with that." Mrs. Weasley smiled at him. "We can always add something later on, but right now you're still recovering."

"Ok." They all finished up breakfast and went off to do their respective tasks. Harry was happy to finally feel like he was contributing again. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all...

(A/N - Hey guys, sorry it's so short. Hope you like it so far!)