Dobby blinked groggily as he knelt with his head in the oven. It was all about to end; it was going to be over soon. Then, then he would rest.
Master Lucius had been giving Dobby so much work for the last several days; Dobby had never felt so alive! And tired. Alive and tired. Dobby had been going without sleep to make sure it would all be done by today.
Dobby didn't think there'd be much cleaning to do for the next week or more once this was done but they were always thinking up something for Dobby to do. The boy had been bragging to everyone all summer about how his father would buy his way onto his house team so maybe he would use him as a bludger again when his friends came to play. Dobby didn't hope so.
Dobby heard footfalls behind him and started to panic, scrubbing the last of the stubborn burnt food residue from the oven grill and vanishing it with a snap.
"Are you done yet?" the man behind him sneered, making Dobby feel just as worthless as the bit of burnt food he had just destroyed.
"Yes, Master Lucius," Dobby said staying partially hidden in the oven. "Dobby be finished now, sir."
"Good," Master Lucius said, seeming for once to be pleased.
Dobby suddenly felt an enormous pain and was flung forward, crashing into back of the oven, jostling the entire thing and snapping the door shut. In the darkness Dobby's hands made their way to his behind. Master Lucius had hit him with his cane again. Why wouldn't he just leave Dobby alone?
From the other side of the oven door Dobby heard his master speak.
"Go to the basement and vanish your things, then come with me, we're leaving."
Dobby must vanish his things? But where will Dobby sleep? When will Dobby sleep? His master didn't care. Even though Dobby had been given more work than ever before, this was the worst time in Dobby's life.
...
Harry's stomach tied itself in knots as he looked around the room again. He was in trouble, big trouble, and couldn't see any way out of it. It was Wednesday morning, they were about to leave for Diagon Alley, it was the first time he'd be seeing Hermione since last term, and he didn't have a thing to wear!
He tried to tell himself he was mad to be stressing out like this; after all, they'd never said it was a date. That had been before though - back when they were just two friends sending letters to each other, before Harry had asked her to go Hogsmeade with him. It was a year from now, sure, but what did it make this? And what did it make her? Was she his girlfriend?
Having a girlfriend was a big thing though - huge, even; nothing that big had really changed between him and Hermione though. The only thing that big right now was the butterflies in his stomach, they were the size of rabbits and were bouncing around like they'd too much sugar. Maybe he should've gone down to eat breakfast but the thought of the coming trip through the floo still made him reconsider.
It was too bad all his hand-me-downs from Dudley had already been binned. Mrs. Weasley probably could have shrunken them into something halfway presentable in no time. The night before last Mr. Weasley had taken him out to the shed to check on a strange smell coming from the washing machine. As it turned out, the smell was his clothes.
The bulging remnants of his former life had been washed but left to sit there for over a week and they had started to get all moldy. After a very close call with a magical fungus when Bill was two, the Weasleys didn't take any chances when it came to mold so out the clothes went. Harry hadn't thought anything of it at the time - he'd been using bits of his Hogwarts uniform instead and should've still had another clean shirt and suitable trousers. The problem was he couldn't find them.
Harry supposed he could try and see if something Ron had would fit him, but Ron was a bit taller than him. Odds were also good all of Ron's school things were still wadded up in his trunk, so they'd be wrinkly too. The ill-fitting issue was true for the twins as well, and they were older, so even if they had something worth wearing it'd still be too big for him.
That brought up yet another problem, a glaring hole in Mrs. Weasley's homemaking knowledge: she had never gotten around to learning how to lengthen or shorten anything. She lamented the fact just yesterday when he had asked her about his clothes while she had been transferring things from the old journal he'd found into a new one she'd been keeping.
His plan had been to get her to do what Madam Malkin had done for him before but while she could enlarge or shrink the whole thing all day long, apparently changing just one part of it was entirely different. All the books she had already assumed you knew how to do it but it had never caused her much of a bother though since having six boys in a row had always meant there was a steady stream of hand-me-downs to be passed on from one brother to another whenever they grew out of something.
And as bad as it sounded, even in his own head, Harry didn't want to wear any of their hand-me-downs today. He wanted to look nice. His backup plan had been to repeat what he had done when he had gone to Gringotts: run off to Madam Malkin's and have her fix him up real quick. That way he wouldn't miss Hermione and could stop back by sometime later on for some actual new clothes. That certainly seemed better than standing around on that stool for who knows how long and leaving Hermione to wonder if she'd been stood up.
What he needed now was a miracle. What he got was a knock on the door and a whack on the back of his head when he ran into the underside of his bed.
"Hey Harry," Ron said as he entered, having finally roused himself from an extra-long breakfast. "Mum says we're about to leave."
"Alright," he said as he pressed a hand to the back of his head to check for lasting damage. Thankfully, there didn't appear to be any.
"She says to hurry up and get changed," Ron continued. "Mum wants to make sure you're 'presentable' before we leave." Above him he heard a soft thump. "Clothes are on the bed."
Harry sat crouched in silence as the door closed again and Ron walked away. Surely it couldn't be. Taking care to mind his head, he backed out to see what Mrs. Weasley had sent up to him. There on his bed was a freshly washed, pressed, and folded shirt, slacks, and robe. She'd even included a clean pair of socks and underthings.
With a bit of mad laughter Harry thought that if Molly had been there right then he would've kissed her, and wouldn't have minded in the least if the twins called him Dad for the whole next week.
.....
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