Harry Potter One Shots

Starved

All rights belong to the author, mosylu

Harry came down to breakfast without Ron. "He's still asleep," he reported when Molly asked. "Are Fred and George up? We're supposed to play Quidditch with them today."

"They've been and gone," she said. "Rather like a plague of locusts. Give me just a moment, dear, and there'll be more eggs and sausages." She waved her spatula at the counter. "Meantime, there's toast."

"Oh, and marmalade! Brilliant." He took two slices and set about heaping great spoonfuls of marmalade on top, a ritual already familiar to Molly from the previous two mornings.

She shook her head, smiling at the back of his head. "Really, Harry, don't your aunt and uncle buy marmalade?"

"Yeah, they do," he said over his shoulder. "But Dudley likes it, so he usually gets it first."

She frowned. "Doesn't your aunt make the two of you share?"

"Ermm-" Harry screwed the top back on the jar, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. "She makes me share with him, but he doesn't have to share with me. If that makes sense."

It did. Molly wished it didn't. "That's not right."

He shrugged and swallowed the enormous bite he'd just taken. "Well. She's his mum, not mine. You know."

Molly stabbed her sausages, wishing they were Petunia Dursley's selfish heart. She would have liked to fetch the woman a slap that would make her ears ring.

Percy came into the kitchen. "Mother," he said, "have we got any spare parchment?"

"There's always some in the junk drawer, dear. But be careful; your brothers were doing something with it earlier."

He opened the drawer. It growled. He shut it quickly. "Ah-ah, maybe there's some in Dad's desk." He went into the sitting room.

Molly glared at the junk drawer. Those two! She wouldn't be at all surprised if someday, Arthur went to investigate some ludicrous Muggle artifact and found them at the bottom of it all. Which reminded her- "Percy! Be careful there, too, your dad brought home some-"

"YEOW!"

"Biting paper clips," she finished as Percy rushed into the kitchen with several bits of metal clamped onto his fingers. She pulled them off while he gritted his teeth against the pain. "Do you need parchment very badly, dear?" she asked, studying his reddening fingers and tightening her hand around the paper clips, which were now trying very hard to bite her palm. "I know there's some around, I just have to rummage for it-"

"I'm almost out," he said, shaking his hand vigorously to ease the sting.

"Well, I'll have a look."

"I'll be in my room," he said and left with a slice of toast.

So now she had to either brave the biting paper clips, figure out what the twins had done to the junk drawer, or try to remember where she'd seen that stack of parchment. Just another day at the Burrow.

Setting an Anti-Burn charm on the sausages, Molly left them and went into the sitting room. Moving quickly, she hurled the paper clips that had attacked Percy into the topmost drawer, and shut it with a snap. They clattered wildly in their wooden prison. She rolled her eyes and wished for the millionth time that Arthur wouldn't bring those ridiculous Muggle things home from work.

When she went back in the kitchen, the sausages and eggs were both done. She fetched Harry a plate. "There you go," she said, piling it high. "Dig in."