[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]
Harry and Hermione stared at the Grimmauld Place dinner table in shock and not a little concern for their arteries. Two huge platters of Buffalo Wings flanked a tray piled high with thick roast beef sandwiches on kümmelweck rolls. A gravy boat full of au jus for the beef sandwiches sat to the right of the platters, next to a bowl of horseradish. To the left of the platters was a tray containing a pyramid of at least two dozen doughnuts, each one twice the size of the next largest doughnut Harry had ever seen.
Sirius sighed happily. "Isn't it magnificent?"
"It's...something," Remus said. "I'm not entirely sure what."
Hermione screwed up her nose adorably and cocked her head to one side. "It looks...almost like some sort of weird summoning ritual. Like, if we ate all of that food while chanting 'Beer, Bullets, and Burgers' over and over, eventually we'd summon some sort of hideously overweight ancient American of great and terrible power."
"You mean like Dennis Hastert?" Remus asked.
"Who?" Harry asked as Hermione nearly fell over laughing.
Sirius shrugged. "Shall we dig in?"
"We're going to need some help here," Harry said. "Would you mind if we invited Sue and Nev?"
"Not at all," Sirius said.
Hermione managed to pull herself back to an upright position using Harry as a support. "Great. While you do that, I'm going to run back home for something. I'll be right back."
About ten minutes later, just after Harry finished inviting Sue and Nev over, Hermione stumbled back through the floo. Harry caught her arm to steady her and she rewarded him with a quick kiss on the cheek.
"What was that for?" he asked.
"Being there to catch me," she answered.
Before Harry could ask her why she'd gone home, Nev and then Sue popped out of the floo.
"You mentioned something about an American feast straight out of our fever dreams?" Nev asked.
Sue shook her head. "I don't understand men sometimes. Harry said that and Nev's ears perked up immediately. My first thought was, 'Oh, Morgana, I'm going to be regretting this for the next week.'"
"Don't worry." Hermione pulled a small red box out of her purse. "I went home and grabbed a full box of Rennie's antacids."
"Antacids?" Sue asked.
"Muggle aid for dyspepsia," Hermione said. "It works by neutralising the stomach acid, so unlike the potion, it actually fixes the problem. It's one of the few things I think muggle medicines do better than the magical equivalent, at least that I've found so far."
Sue hugged her. "Bless you, Hermione. It's so nice not being outnumbered by idiot boys anymore. Back at Hogwarts these two would ignore my warnings during feasts and stuff themselves silly with Ron, then all three would lie around afterward in the Common Room and moan about their stomachs."
"I'm glad to be here," Hermione said. "Wait, though, I thought the Common Rooms were limited to members of individual houses."
"That was only a tradition, not a rule," Nev said.
"So of course we broke it as soon as we could get away with it," Harry added.
"Which was Fifth Year," Sue said. "Cormac and one of his friends tried to bully me out during the first week, but between all of the time I spent helping Harry with his combat training the previous year and my aunt letting me train with Auror Tonks that summer...well, let's just say those boys spent the rest of the year being very polite to me and every other girl in that house."
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Hermione Granger and the Theft of Magic
Fanfiction(AU) Hermione's biggest worries in life are her dissertation and her rent, at least until she drunkenly takes a stick from a green-eyed stranger and breaks what she thought were the laws of physics. Now she's facing a high-stakes, impossible test, b...
