Potioneer potter

Ch11

"That 3rd floor room filled with Doxies-"

"I have a couple of things I need to pick up-"

"It might rain around 5 this afternoon, we'll need to be quick"

Harry sat at breakfast with the inhabitants of Grimmauld place: Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Molly Weasley, Kingsley shacklebolt, Ginny, Ron, Fred, George, Bill. He listened to them discuss their plans for the day, discuss the weather, compliment Molly on her fried eggs; all of them pretending that everything was okay. He didn't doubt that they were all under the impression that he was somehow fragile after what had happened and thought that the best way to deal with it was to act like normal, even though 'normal' seemed to be walking on eggshells around him and being overly caring. It pissed him off. He moved his eggs around the plate but didn't eat.

"Molly dear, I love what you've done with the kitchen, that colour on the shelves makes it look so much more homely in here." That was Remus' attempt at a casual conversation.

"How lovely of you to say so, although I'm actually useless at that sort of thing, I usually leave it to Arthur to—"

Everybody stilled, a few shot a worried glance towards Harry who was dangerously close to incinerating his peas. He stood abruptly, the sound of the chair on the stone floor making some people jump.

"Thank you for the breakfast, Mrs Weasley, it was amazing. I'll be upstairs if you need any help with the doxies later." Harry smiled warmly at her, before leaving the room.

He didn't understand why it was him that everybody was being so careful around. It was Mrs Weasley who nearly lost her husband, it was the Weasley children who nearly lost their father, those were the people who needed the support, not him.

"Harry, wait up!"

Harry was halfway up the first set of stairs and turned at Ron's shout. Too late he realised his mistake and winced as his left ear was deafened.

"FILTHY MUDBLOODS! DISGUSTING HALFBREEDS! A DISGRACE TO THE FAMILY NAME—"

It wasn't until the two of them had raced up the remaining two flights of stairs, had reached the room that they were to be sharing with Hermione, and had slammed the door that Harry could finally hear his own thoughts again. They both jumped onto Harry's bed and sat with their legs outstretched, next to each other.

"I don't know why someone doesn't just curse her off the bloody wall or something." Harry said as they listened to the muffled yells of Walburga Black.

"Mum says that they've already tried that, but it was made completely curse proof and permanently stuck to the wall so that she can 'advise whoever is Lord Black at the time', until the end of time."

"Oh lovely, talk about family love, ey!"

Harry started to pick at the fluff on his hoodie sleeve. "Sorry about your dad by the way. It's got to suck pretty bad."

"Yeh." Was the emotionless response that he received. They both looked forwards for a while. "I mean, I guess it could be worse though."

Harry hadn't heard anything more since his arrival at the wizarding hospital. "Have you heard from St Mungo's then? Is he going to be okay?"

"We don't know yet, he's still in the ICU. He has to be okay though. He will be."

"I'm sure he will be, mate, he's a stubborn old man, your dad. After all, you must have inherited it from somewhere."

Ron laughed at this and tried to subtly wipe away a stray tear, Harry pretended not to notice.

"Ron, if there's anything I can do, please just ask, even if it's just flying around a bit to take your mind off things or something, yeh? I want to help you get through this, just like you and Hermione help me."