Dumbledore and Harry's Adventures

Grangers and Pain

Pain!

That was the first thought that when through Harry's mind as he woke the next morning. His head felt as if he had an evening of heavy drinking, woke with a massive hangover, that hangover then went out on a bender and then woke with a hangover of its own, and the nesting doll of hangovers then decided to try chewing on Harry's eyeballs as a possible cure.

In short, he did not feel overly well.

Harry slowly rose from the guest bed in Albus's apartment, hoping desperately that Albus would have some sort of cure for his ice pick in the brain style headache. He stumbled into the main area and saw the older man sitting at the dining table reading an upside-down newspaper. On the table was a pitcher of lemonade and a bowl of some sugary looking yellow balls, along with a small pile of mail.

"Good morning, Harry! I have fresh lemonade and lemon drops, made with real lemons. The lemonade is nice and pulpy. Feel free to have as much as you want" spoke an irritatingly chipper Albus.

Harry glared at the old man for daring to be in a good mood. He looked at the lemon drops and lemonade in disgust.

"Do you have anything to treat a headache?" he croaked out.

Albus lowered the newspaper and took in Harry's pale and miserable appearance before shrugging. "I can offer you lemon drops and lemonade. If you want anything else, feel free to check the kitchen. If you want a potion, I fear you will have to make it yourself."

Harry groaned miserably, and then made his way to the kitchen. He grabbed a large glass and filled it with water. He gulped down half the glass, refilled it, and then made his way back to the table to stew in his pool of agony.

For the next half hour, no sound could be heard except for the occasional turn of a page and sip of water. Harry simply sat, his eyes resting on the pitcher of lemonade. He found that his headache lessened slightly as he focused on the ice cubes' subtle movements as they floated on the top of the yellow liquid.

Eventually, his headache began to ebb into a simple mind-numbing ache, as opposed to the violently painful feeling of having his brain being smashed into the inside walls of his skull by beaters' bats. The pain in his eyes had finally disappeared completely.

With the decrease in pain, he was finally able to think about something other than his agony. Looking down, he saw a small pile of letters in front of Albus. In front of himself, there were four letters. He supposed Albus must have pushed them over during his half hour of silent misery.

"What's this?"

Albus lowered his newspaper to see what Harry was indicating.

"Ah, that would be your mail. Based on the handwriting, I would guess that they are from Miss Granger, George Weasley, Arthur Weasley, and Minerva. I apologize for the delay in their delivery, but I only got around to checking my post box just this morning."

"Post box?"

"Yes, I have it set up so that I can still receive mail while traveling. As we see the world, I will make sure that our mail gets forwarded correctly. Well, assuming people know to send letters to my post box when attempting to write to you. You could, of course, setup your own box if you desire. You would still need to let them know that it exists."

"Don't owls just... deliver directly to a person?"

"Oh, heavens no. If that were the case, then you would have been receiving fan-mail for years as a child. I suspect I would have received some sort of complaints from Petunia if she was constantly handling a huge volume of mail for you, so it's fair to say your address was not well known. And one needs to have an address when sending an owl... normally at least."