The Adventures of Roonil Wazlib part 1

The Cliffs

After 3 hours of fruitless searching, Ron knew that he was well & truly lost.

He had expected Harry & Hermione to be standing there waiting for him, arms open wide, smiles even wider. He didn't think they'd be ... gone. He knew they had been there recently; he could still smell a hint of Hermione's perfume in the air, as if they'd just left the beach. Plus the sand showed a shoeprint that looked a lot like the bottom of Harry's trainers.

Quickly Ron cast as many of Hermione's protective spells as he could remember. Digging in his knapsack, which had been thoroughly stocked before he left Shell Cottage, he took out a brand new, smaller tent that had been given to him by Charlie's partner Burns. It was even better than Perkins' tent that Hermione & Harry still had. This one was brand new and didn't smell of cats. It didn't have a proper stove, but it did have a brand new microwave that could cook just about anything. Burns, with Arthur's help, had fixed it so that it ran on magic instead of electricity. Arthur hadn't just been collecting electrical plugs, he'd been experimenting, and figured out how to make them respond to magic. In addition, Ron had brought enough food to feed the whole Chudley Cannons Quidditch team for a year. Most of it had been magically shrunk, making it much easier to carry large amounts. Ron's mouth began to water when he thought of the rasher of bacon & loaf of homemade bread in one of the tiny bags. Ron had hoped his mum would have made these ingredients into sandwiches, but according to Charlie she wanted them to do as much for themselves as they could.

"As if she had any idea how much we were doing for ourselves," grumbled Ron as he remembered the exchange with Charlie. Of course he couldn't tell either of them much about what they were doing, but it still meant more work for Ron. He set to work putting up the new tent. Not much was required past the wave of his wand & the uttering of a spell that Burns may have created himself; Ron had surely never heard of it. Whatever its origins, it worked - in a matter of a minute or so, the tent contained the equivalent of a small flat when fully assembled. Ron walked in, looked around in wonder, then set to making bacon sandwiches.

An hour later Ron finally admitted defeat. Cooking had never been a talent of his - who needed to learn to cook? His mother was more than up to the task of feeding her whole brood; considering the family's limited resources, she had to be good at magicking food into large meals. Of course at Hogwarts the house elves prepared delicious food on a daily basis. Who needed to cook? Well, Ron did at this moment. His first lesson was to not cook bacon in the microwave. He was very careful to check it every minute or so. It was raw, cook another minute. Still raw, another minute. Still raw, yet another minute. Still raw going into the microwave...burnt coming out. How can something go from raw to cooked so quickly? Mum never seemed to have that problem...even though, Ron realized, she probably didn't know a microwave oven from a hole in the ground.

Ron tried transforming the bacon from raw to cooked, but it only really worked on the ends. Even those didn't taste very good. He tried conjuring a cooker, he got one to appear, but had no idea how to make it work, so he dejectedly vanished it. He even tried using magical flame underneath the pan, but it proved too difficult for Ron to keep the frying pan hovering while maintaining flame underneath. Also, the only flame Ron could make was the 'bluebell' fire Hermione learned in first year, it wasn't very hot (not nearly hot enough for proper cooking). In the end Ron ate about half of the bread with butter & jam. Normally Ron loved bread & jam. It was no bacon sandwich, though. Ron sadly threw the wasted, half-cooked, and burnt bacon out of the tent.

Later that evening, Ron was lounging on a comfy sofa in the tent (it really was remarkable), and he again heard his name coming out of his pocket. This time he was prepared. He took out the deluminator, and released the ball of light that had been stored there since he'd left the previous evening. After the deluminator re-claimed the light, Ron disapparated to wherever the light would take him next.

An hour after Ron left, booted feet walked across the black sand underneath the cliffs where Ron had previously been. The man in the boots saw something on the sand, bent over, and picked it up. It was an uncooked piece of bacon. The man smiled, and disapparated with the bacon in his metal hand.