In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 4: Nebula

Chapter 167: Don't Stop Me Now

LUCY:

The mood in the Gryffindor common room on Friday night was dismal.

Ginny retreated deep into herself, the way she did when she was stressed, and despite the best efforts of the twins to cheer her up, she retired early. Hermione was annoyed with everyone for being so nervous about the match when the start of O.W.L.s was less than four months away, and she poured herself into her work with renewed vigor with the hopes of motivating the rest of us to follow her lead, but when none of us were particularly responsive, she huffed and announced she was going to the library. Ron was the most anxious of everyone, staring off into the distance, listlessly tapping his quill against the table instead of actually writing, and even turning me down when I asked if he wanted to play wizard's chess to take his mind off of it; he soon followed in Ginny's footsteps and disappeared up the stairs to his dormitory. Harry had been out of it all day, like his mind was in a different place, and that night, he was reading a textbook while frequently sighing and rubbing his forehead. I was technically reading a textbook, too, but after a while, I realized I was wasting my time.

I rose to my feet and turned to Harry. "I'm going to go bake cookies. Do you want to come with me?"

Harry blinked out of his daze and looked up at me. "You're what?"

"Going to go bake cookies," I repeated. "In the kitchen. With the house elves, if they want to help. You heard Sirius, he did it all the time while he was here. Ideally, I won't further terrify the house elves, though, I hope I'm a better baker than Sirius apparently is."

"Your cookies are the best," he said. "I shouldn't go, I'd just make a mess of it like I did with Cho."

I swatted him with my textbook before shoving it into my schoolbag. "Shut up, you're coming with me. You look as stressed as I feel, and I happen to know from firsthand experience that baking cookies helps tremendously with stress. Come on."

With a couple more muttered protests, Harry stood up and followed me through the portrait hole. I led the way down to the kitchens, and Dobby was incredibly excited to see us. A couple of other house elves remembered how I had helped Winky, so they were welcoming too, but others were apprehensive because of the Gryffindor ties around our necks because of Hermione's knit hats. Just the same, though, I was able to convince the house elves to let us stay for an hour to make a couple batches of cookies — promising I'd make enough to share sweetened the deal.

Once Harry and I were set up in our corner of the kitchen, I pulled my Walkman out of my bag and placed a couple of charms around us so I could crank the volume without bothering anyone except Harry. I was far too shy to actually sing along to any of the songs, but I definitely tapped out rhythms against the counters and glanced at Harry out of the corner of my eye when I heard certain lyrics that I thought happened to relate to us.

He didn't say much as we moved around the kitchen, and he certainly didn't mention Cho or the match, but I could see that he felt better the longer we were down there, and I felt better with every passing minute, too. We left half of the cookies for the house elves at the end of our hour and brought the rest with us back up to the Gryffindor common room. Nearly everyone had already gone to bed by the time we returned, but the people who were still up were all too happy to help us destroy every last shred of evidence of our cookie-baking adventure.

Harry and I retreated to the table Ron and Hermione had abandoned and sat down across from each other with the bowl of remaining cookies in between us. I reached in for one of the sugar cookies and broke off a chunk.

"You know," I admitted in a soft voice as I popped the chunk into my mouth, "sometimes I wonder what Claire's favorite cookies are. I wish there was a way I could find out so I could send her a batch."