Smoke and Mirrors: Chapter 21
Author's Note: You guys know the drill, I update at a really crappy rate, sorry bout that. Anyway, thanks everyone who has stayed with me this long, you all are the best. Here we go!
Ginny's POV
I love sleeping outdoors. It's always so refreshing, ya know? Don't get me wrong, I love the little ecosystems we humans have built for ourselves, but you can't beat the clean air, the stunning white noise created by the wind blowing through the leaves mixed with the various sounds of the wildlife, and most of all the sparkling night sky. Anyway, enough rambling about the outdoors. Besides, my new favorite thing about sleeping outside is waking up next to the most beautiful girl in the world. Her soft breathing is still audible despite the sound of nearby roosters and the rustling of the rest of the group. I suppose she got in a bit later than when we went to bed because she is still out cold. I give her a light kiss on her cheek before carefully getting up.
"Is she still asleep?" Harry says, getting up while scratching his head. He puts on his signature round glasses.
"Yep, still sound asleep," I say, looking over at her angelic face. "Did you send your letter out?"
"No, I couldn't get anything out on the page. It just sounded cheesy," he said, rolling up his sleeping bag. "Hermione tried to help me out, but I was just too tired to write anything."
"You saw Hermione last night?" I ask, helping him fit the stubborn thing back into its bag. "Yea, she was pretty tired when she came in. She didn't want to wake you up. You were out like a light."
"Well I'm glad she didn't. I think I needed a good night's rest." Ron and Katie begin to pack their things up as well.
"Hey Ginny, when did Lady Burgafawn say she would be coming today?" Ron says, looking at his watch. Funny, I don't remember him owning a watch. I mean, I guess I thought he would be more punctual with a watch.
"Well she didn't. All I know is that she was going to come sometime today." I kinda regret not clarifying when she would be coming. I mean, knowing a timetable of when to clean the house by would be really nice.
"Huh, well Katie and I were going to go to town. Mum said she had a list of things we had to get." Ron begins walking to the house holding Katie's hand. "Hey Harry, you wanna come with? We might need the extra pair of hands to carry it all back."
"Why do I get the feeling that Harry will end up holding it all while you and Katie make out?" I say with a laugh. He punches me lightly in the arm.
While the three of them head back to the Burrow, I clean up the rest of our little campsite before taking a seat next to Hermione. I didn't even realize that the sun is barely coming up. I gotta say, the sunrise at the Burrow is next to nothing. It has honestly ruined me. I mean, the sunrise at Hogwarts is great and all, but nothing compared to here. As I sit and watch that bright yellow ball rise up, the woman beside me turns over. I look over to see her perfect face illuminated in the morning sun, every feature defined without flaw. I brush a stray strand of curly brown hair out of her face, her skin soft beyond words. Her eyes open slowly and focus on me.
"Morning, sleepy head," I say softly, cupping her cheek in my hand. She smiles.
"Morning, Ginny." She gets up slowly and I see her gaze turn to her horizon. "The view here never fails to astound me."
I don't say anything as she leans up against me, her head resting on my shoulder. We sit there for a while, just silently watching the world around us. The rolling hills, the distant creek, and of course, the sun. I turn and kiss her forehead. She looks up, smiles, and puts her own hand on my face. She props herself a little bit and our lips connect. After too short a time, we break apart.
"Let's head inside?" I ask. She nods and gets up. She offers me her hand. "Why thank you, Miss Granger."
"You are most welcome, Miss Weasley," she says, pulling me up, but not releasing her hold on my hand.
"Hey, I forgot to ask, how is your father?" She begins to swing our hands as we walk along to the Burrow.
"He is doing okay, just his accident from Christmas left some unwanted gifts. I am just so mad that I can't use magic at home," she says, sounding more annoyed than frustrated. Perhaps Harry already got all her anger out last night. Harry is an excellent listener, even if he can be a little dense sometimes.
"Well, I'm glad that nothing is too serious, and I'm sorry to hear about it." We reach the front door and I grab the paper off the porch. "How is your mother doing with it all? I mean it must be hard on her with all this going on."
"I think she is doing okay. She doesn't really open up like that to me, but I'm sure she would tell me if it was getting to be too much," she says, collapsing onto one of the many tattered couches. She takes a deep breath and exhales. "What needs to be done before Miss Abby arrives?"
It's my turn to take a deep breath. I look around and to my surprise, most of the lower level is cleaned up, save for a couple places that could use a little dusting, but nothing major. "Well, everything here looks fine, but I think my parents said that she would be staying in my room, so naturally we will be sleeping down here."
"Yes, I was thinking that it would get a bit crowded in your room if all three of us were to sleep in there." she says, laughing a bit. She then grins, "Also, we couldn't cuddle or anything with third party in the room."
"Of course, we must think of our priorities, right?" I say jokingly. I pull her off the couch and lead her to the stairs. "Come on, we have to go clean my room, it must be ghastly. Plus, I think I have to go through all my old things as well. I keep bringing new stuff back and have no where to put it all."
"Ooh a chance to go through your stuff while cleaning your room?" she says laughing. "Pinch me, I must be dreaming."
I ignore her teasing and continue up to my room. Sandwiched between the kitchen and Fred and George's room, it is both a blessing and a curse. I absolutely love the smell of Mum's cooking and I can always tell what she has planned for breakfast just by smelling what permeates through the floorboards. Unfortunately, Fred and George's room can counter the smell of baking with their own concocted scent of dirty laundry and various stink bombs. Sometimes the combination of the two contrasting smells makes an even more horrible one, and that is when I take it upon myself to take a walk or find something else to do until the toxin has degraded enough. We enter my room to find my bed unmade and the dresser overflowing with my unfolded clothes. The closet in the corner has my miscellaneous trinkets piled in unorganized places. Under my bed lies a nice array of dust bunnies and single socks, and last of all, my houseplant that I swore would live till I get married is withered and dead on my window sill.
"Well, at least we won't run out of things to do," Hermione says, placing her chin on my shoulder. "Where do you want to start?"
"How about my closet?" I say, moving over to the small cluttered area. "If we free up some space in here, maybe we can hang up some of my clothes that don't fit in my drawers."
"Wow, maybe I am having an effect on you Ginny." Hermione seems impressed. She looks around my closet, examining how much space there is and how to most effectively store my things. "I mean, that sounds like something I would've said."
"Oh, shut up," I say playfully, "I know how to clean a room."
"Well, from how this place looks, you must've just learned how this past term." Hermione begins taking out various items that even I don't know their purpose for anymore.
"Point taken. I just find that cleaning a room just takes so much work to keep up," I say, taking out a spare trash bag I had lying under my bed. She starts to throw everything into it before I stop her. "Well let me inspect the stuff before we just abandon it to the bag."
"Okay what about this?" She holds up a makeshift bow and arrow I made when I was younger. "I mean, if you do archery that's great, but this thing is like ancient."
"Okay, that's fine to throw out. I tried to learn but I am no good at it," I admit, remembering the days when the boys would be practicing Quidditch and I had nothing to do until I started sneaking the brooms out at night.
"I mean, if magic doesn't work out, looks like you are going to be a regular Robin Hood," Hermione says, laughing a little as she tosses the little wooden object into the bag as well as the crooked and misshapen arrows.
"Well, does that mean that you would be my Maid Marian?" She laughs harder. God, I love her smile. "I must warn you, you won't be impressed with my skills with a bow."
"It's a good thing you have skills in other areas," she winks and smiles mischievously. I only roll my eyes. "Oh, come on I meant that as a compliment!"
"I know you did," I say, breaking my deadpan look. "And I would say we are on equal footing in that department."
"Oh, you flatter me," Hermione says, batting her eyes and fanning herself with some papers she found on one of my shelves. I bust out laughing, dropping the trash bag. She stops fanning herself and takes a look at what is on the papers. "Hey, what is this?"
I look at the page she is holding up and memories begin to flood back to me. The parchment she is holding has an abstract picture of two figures holding each other in a strong embrace, one with long red hair, and one with long brown hair. I trust you can guess who they are. "Oh, that's just a picture I drew some time ago. I totally forgot about it."
"Is this…" She trails off as her focus intensifies. She always had a hard time interpreting abstract stuff. She always did love the straightforward stuff. "Is this you and me?"
"Um, yea I can't remember why I started to draw it. I just remember doodling on the page, and eventually that came out," I say softly. I don't know why I feel embarrassed. I watch a warm smile slowly form on her face as she studies the page further. She doesn't even consider putting it in the bag, she simply places the piece of paper on my dresser and continues to work on the closet. "You don't wanna throw it out? I mean it's a pretty crappy piece of art, ya know."
She looks at me with those kind, beautiful eyes. She then looks back to the drawing. "I love it, and to me it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. We're keeping it, even if you don't want to."
"I hope you aren't gonna keep every cheesy thing that concerns us," I say, laughing and wiping the tear that has formed in the corner of my eye. Hermione laughs. "I mean it's gonna all add up."
"Yes, well we will cross that bridge when we come to it," she says, handing me another thing from the closet. "For now, I think I want to keep everything."
We continue to clean out my closet, throwing out stuff that I don't want anymore and putting the clothes I don't fit anymore into a box for storage. By the end of the cleaning, there is enough space for the jackets and overcoats that I tried to fit in my drawers, and then some extra room for anything else I might need to put in there. We cleaned out under my bed next, and God that needed a really good sweeping. We might've spent a little bit of time snogging down there, but we managed to clean the whole room by 14:00. I set down the broom and Hermione sits on the newly made bed. She takes a good long look around.
"I think we did pretty good. Do you think Miss Abby will find it okay?" Hermione says with a hint of nervousness. I sit on the bed next to her, putting an arm around her shoulder.
"Well, we can't really do anything else," I say, taking her hand in my own. "I mean, we can't use magic. What you see is all we can offer."
"What's your mum up to?" Hermione says out of the blue with a quizzical look on her face. Come to think of it, I don't know.
"Let's find out shall we?" I say getting up, not letting go of her hand. She gets up right behind me and follows me out the door. As we descend the steps, I yell out, "Mum are you there!"
A voice comes from the kitchen. "Yes dear, come on in, I need your opinion on something."
We enter the kitchen to see my mother flipping through our family recipe book, her eyes frantically darting from page to page, looking for something. The kitchen counters are filled with recently bought groceries still in their paper bags.
"So what's the opinion I must give?" I say cautiously as her page-flipping increases. She plops the book in front of Hermione and me.
"Dessert!" She turns away from the book and begins putting the groceries away. "I need you two to pick out which dessert to make and then prepare it so it will be finished by supper time. Now, what does Lady Burgafawn like to eat?"
"I'm not entirely sure," I say, slowly turning to Hermione. She just shrugs. "Is there anything that is just a good general dessert?"
"Well they are all good desserts!" Mum sounds offended. "These recipes have been in our family for generations!"
"Alright, alright, I didn't mean to offend the ancestors," I say sarcastically, Hermione just rolls her eyes. "Don't worry we will figure it out."
"Well while you two figure this out, I am going to clean the Burrow a bit more. Your dad and I's room is a bit messier than I would like to admit," she says absentmindedly as she leaves the kitchen and up the stairs. She snaps back to reality one last time before she is out of shouting distance (if there is such a thing to my mum), "We should have all the ingredients for pretty much everything in the cookbook. That doesn't mean you should make everything though."
"Well, let's get started shall we?" Hermione says before flipping to the dessert section of the old tattered book. We flip through the various recipes in the book. Some are classics like chocolate chip cookies, but others are really obscure. Some of them are even in a different language. Obviously, we skipped those ones. "What about this one? Seems simple enough. We just bake the cookies then add the icing on top. We can even make them spring-themed."
"Well, I can handle the baking part, but I am absolutely horrid at decorating, evidence being the drawing you found earlier. I have no artistic talent." Hermione laughs a little bit. She then sets the cookbook on a little pedestal so it is easier to read while we get the ingredients ready. "What's the first thing we need to do?"
"Well first, mix all the wet ingredients," she says as if I understand anything that she is saying. She sees my confusion and sighs. "That would be the eggs, the extracts, butter, and it looks like the sugar too, but that's not a wet ingredient."
"Okay, got it, how long do I need to be mixing this for?" I ask, whisking the mixture. Merlin, it smells good. "I mean it looks like it's mixed well enough to me."
"Well, it says until light and fluffy." She looks in the bowl. "And that looks fluffy to me so let's rolls with it."
"Right, thank God we aren't in Snape's potions class. He wouldn't have any of this uncertainty," I say remembering all the times that he made me redo something if my final solution was half a shade off the desired color. "What's next?"
"Now it's all the dry ingredients," She doesn't hesitate before passing all the ingredients over to me. It looks like flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. I begin mixing it together. Way easier to mix by the way. "Okay, now gradually stir it into the other mixture."
"Why gradually? I mean it's all gonna go in there eventually, so why can't I just pour it all in there?" I ask honestly while still pouring it in small intervals.
"Well, I can't answer that one, but if it's what the recipe says then that's what has to be done," she says simply. "Don't try to fix what isn't broken, I suppose."
"I guess, just sounds dumb to me," I say somewhat under my breath. When it's all mixed together, it created a pretty good consistency. Not nearly as hard as some other dough that my mum has used but not too soft either. "What do we do now?"
"Now we warm up the oven while the dough is chilled in the refrigerator," she says, turning on the oven as I put the bowl in the fridge. "Let's make the icing now."
"Wow, this is a lot more work than I thought it would be," I say while taking out the ingredients for the icing.
"Well, how much work did you think it was going to be exactly?" Hermione says, focused on setting out the amounts for the ingredients.
"Well, I thought we would just have the icing around the house. You know, like the frosting you can buy in the store," I say, getting another bowl out. She hands me the powdered sugar as well as the milk.
"Well, too bad, it turns out you will have to make these cookies with love," Hermione says teasingly before kissing me lightly on the cheek. "Now it's kind of vague on the amount of milk. Just add enough so it's easy to spread on a cookie."
"Thanks Hermione, as if I didn't have enough trouble in the kitchen, you add eyeballing to the list of things I need to do." She just shrugs with a smile.
"I guess you gotta improvise a little then." I stick my tongue out at her. She gasps and acts as if I just dishonored her whole family. She then adds the corn syrup and extract mixture she made herself to the sugar and milk. "Great, so now we just split the volume into as many parts as the amount of colors we want."
"That's all you, Granger," I say throwing my hands up while backing away. "You are totally in charge of the artsy side of things."
"Alright, alright. Can you check on the temperature? It should be around 205°C." I walk over to the oven. Perfect, 204°C and a half.
"Yup, it's good to go," I say taking out a baking sheet and the cookie cutters. "What shapes are we doing?"
"Flowers and bees," Hermione says firmly. "Spring stuff'"
"I love it when you take control like that," she laughs, breaking her commander-like persona. I roll out the dough and proceed to cut out the cookies. After a few moments to silence, Hermione looks over at the baking sheet.
"Um Ginny, how did you mess up the shapes?" I look down and see a couple deformed bees, flowers, and watering cans. "I mean you used cookie cutters, right?"
"Well, in my defense the dough is kind of sticky and it's hot in here." Hermione just shakes her head.
"Ginny, I love you, but if this relationship is just going to have deformed dough, I don't know if I can take it," she says, trying her hardest to put on her serious face. I just roll my eyes.
"Just tell me how long they have to be in the oven for," I say, trying not to smile. I love it when she jokes like that, but she can never know.
"The Almighty Book says five minutes," Hermione says with a hint of confusion in her voice. She lowers her voice to almost a whisper. "That's pretty short."
"DON'T QUESTION THE BOOK HERMIONE!" I yell at the top of my lungs. She jumps a little then punches me in the arm.
"I honestly don't know how you are decorating those with just icing," I say, admiring the pile of cookies in front of me. The deformed flowers are decorated so intricately, you can barely tell that the petals are different sizes. The bees are absolutely adorable. Words can't describe them except that they are fat, plump little pollinators.
"All it takes is a little patience, Gin," she says, sitting next to me. I lean into her and she lets out her little sigh she makes when she is extremely comfortable. "All good things require patience. Just look at us."
"Ain't that the truth, love," I say still entranced by the sugar cookies. I look at the clock. 4 o'clock. I thought for sure she would've arrived befo-
A faint knock on the front door. I look up at Hermione from my position and she looks down on me with the same look of anticipation. I bolt it to the front door with Hermione following behind. No way she could've beat me to my own front door. Not to disrespect her or anything, but I am a Quidditch player, so I gotta be faster than most. My hand turns the knob and opens the door so fast, I am greeted with the shocked face of Miss Abby.
"Welcome to the Burrow!" I say enthusiastically, I look behind me and see Hermione putting her hands out as if she was presenting the place. She is adorable.
"Why, thank you, Ginny," she says with a warm smile. She turns to Hermione. "How good to see you too, Hermione. I hope your trip home went well."
"It did. Everything is just fine at the Granger house," she says, but with her tone I am wondering who she is trying to convince more, herself or Miss Abby. "Here, let us grab your bags for you."
"Oh, if you insist. My apologies for packing so much. I wasn't sure how long you intended me to stay for." We grab her bags, and let's be honest, her "packing so much" is like half of what I brought back from Hogwarts. She walks in, hangs up her cloak and I close the door behind us.
A/N: Hey guys so this one is a little longer, not sure why but hey it's another chapter done. So I'm not sure if I gotta cite my sources, but I used this recipe from the internet recipe/kittencals-buttery-cut-out-sugar-cookies-w-icing-that-hardens-261889?scaleto=35.0&st=null&mode=metric, just trying to cover all my bases ya know? Anyway, thanks for readin, would really appreciate any feedback and lets honest here, I'm not sure when the next one is gonna come out, but I would like some suggestions on where I should take Abigail as a character. Thanks again (and thanks to my amazingly gorgeous and beautiful new beta who taught me the importance of apostrophes and run on sentences ) !