The Troubled Wizard (A Harry Potter Fan Fiction)

Chapter 20

"Harry dear, are you finished slicing the tomatoes?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley." He walked over to the other side of the kitchen and handed her a plate full of tomato slices.

"Wow these look beautiful!" she praised, "You really are a very good cook."

He blushed, "It's nothing special really..."

Mr. Weasley patted him on the shoulder. "Don't sell yourself short. You've got a talent."

He gave him a shrug, "I'm just doing what I've always done."

Mrs. Weasley carefully laid the tomato slices onto the sandwiches she had been working on, then levitated all of them onto the stove. "Ok. Let's let those cook for a while. How have your injuries been feeling Harry? Madam Pompfrey still wants you to take your nutritional potion every day, but we can stop the others as long as you aren't in any pain."

Harry shook his head, "No I feel great!" He twisted his wrist a couple times and bent his leg to demonstrate. "It's been nice having magic again to heal everything. Usually, I just have to deal with it until school starts and I can nick a couple healing potions from Professor Snape's supply. I'm just ready to get these bandages off."

Molly and Arthur smiled at him sadly, "I can't believe you've had to go through all these injuries over the years and had to let them all heal the muggle way..." Arthur muttered.

At this point, Mrs. Weasley started crying. "Oh Harry, I'm so sorry we didn't do something sooner. If we had just barged in their right when your uncle shut us out, this wouldn't have happened. Or if we had just noticed last year... or the year before... you've always been so thin and short... I should have..." at this point, her words became unrecognizable as she continued to sob.

"It's ok Mrs. Weasley." Harry went over to her and gave her a hug, "I'm just glad you pitied me enough to let me stay here for a while. I know that the last thing you need is another kid to take care of."

Arthur looked down at him sadly, "Harry, we didn't take you in simply because we pity you. We did it because we love you like one of our own children."

"Really?" now he was confused. "I... thought you were just saying that... I don't... I didn't..." he continued to stumble over his words.

"It's ok, take your time." Arthur encouraged.

"I didn't think there was anyone that loved me..." he finally said looking down. He was afraid that if he looked back up at them, they would start laughing and tell him that this had all been some elaborate prank.

Molly immediately tightened her grip on him, "Oh sweety, of course, there are people that love you. We both love you, and I know all of our kids do too. Hermione has been so worried about you this summer. We even received a few letters from some boys named Nevil, Seamus, and Dean. All of them were concerned about you too when they hadn't heard from you. Not to mention, Sirius and Remus have been sending letters non-stop since Dumbledore told them what was going on. All of these people love and adore you."

"Huh..." Harry seemed to be taking in all of this new information. "I thought you could just love people who were your family, or someone who loved romantically. I didn't know you could love your friends and other people too..."

"Oh, course you can..." she gave him a sad smile. She could just kill those Dursleys for messing up the poor boy's self-worth like this.

"So, wait," Harry looked up at them in surprise. "You took me in because you actually liked me? Not because you thought you had to?"

"Of course, we like you." Arthur smiled at him. "In fact, we've been asking Dumbledore for the last couple of years to let you come stay with us. We were all under the impression that you liked staying with your family though, so we never brought it up."

"You wanted to take me in even before you found out about Uncle Vernon?" his eyes lit up in surprise. All of this new information was just too much to take in all at once.

Mrs. Weasley nodded at him. "Yes, Ron and the twins especially wanted you to come and stay with us for at least a little while every summer. We just didn't want to take you away from your family. Now I wish we had."

"It's ok." Harry hugged her back. "I know now that you just wanted what was best for me."

Arthur joined them in the hug as he forced himself not to dwell on the fact that it took until this moment, for harry to realize that all they wanted in life was to help him. He knew though that one day Harry would finally be able to see how much he really meant to all of them. They would make sure of that... 

(A/N - Hey guys. Thanks for reading. :) Happy new year!)