Harry Potter and the Hermetic Arts

Chapter 7: Romy, Shopping & Organization

It took another half an hour to wrap up the game and put everything back into place and clean up the back room; Shaun had departed shortly after the game had ended. Ethan, Karen and Martin followed shortly after the cleaning was completed, leaving Harry with Romy and Sarah until Sarah excused herself and left; Romy, however, offered to walk Harry home, not wanting him to brave the streets alone. However, Harry was still wary of what had happened the previous day and asked to use the store phone; when he called home, the phone rang without answer, confirming his suspicions that his aunt and uncle had not returned home, and when she learned of this, Romy insisted he use her sofa at the very least.

Before they left Bourne's Comics and Games, Harry made a few purchases, acquiring his own copies of Ars Magica: The Art of Magic and Shadowrun: Where Man Meets Magic and Machine, two books he had read often and had become the basis from which he had begun studying magic on his own but never had a chance to read closely, for the first time. He also purchased several decks of playing cards along with a stack of tabletop games: Battleship, Cluedo, Life, Monopoly, Pictionary, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit and Yahtzee; if he was going to boarding school, he wanted to make sure he would have enough things to keep him entertained when he wasn't studying magic. It all went into one of the smaller pockets of his haversack, and he made a mental note to buy some furniture to better organize the things he kept in there.

~ooOoo~

The cab ride to Romy's dorm room was pleasant, filled with small talk, giving Harry the chance to get to know his benefactor for the night better, learning more about the post-graduate student attending Eastmere College's chemistry program. For a university, Eastmere College was not particularly prestigious, but it was a university nonetheless, and more importantly, it was within Romy's means, even if it meant she had to work on Monday and Tuesday at a lab in London while classes were in session to pay her tuition in full and not be in crippling debt; during the summer, she worked all five business days of the week, saving for the rest of the year.

The placard outside Romy's room read "Rosemary Davies", and for the first time, Harry realized he did not know the full names of several of his adult friends. As Romy had told him while showing him around, the three women she shared the flat with were away at the moment, likely drinking at a pub, but the disarray of the flat told the boy they would likely not be gone for long.

"Are you hungry, 'Squeak?" Romy-but-full-name-Rosemary asked, as she checked the refrigerator. When the boy nodded, she said, "What kind of takeaway would you like?"

"I could cook something," Harry suggested, adding, when he saw Rosemary frown, "It'll be less expensive and more healthy."

"I don't know, 'Squeak. The fridge is a little empty."

"Let me see," said the boy, squeezing by his friend to have a look. "Give me thirty minutes, and I'll make supper."

Romy frowned but did not protest; her financial situation was not unclear to her, and if Harry could cook something on his own volition using what was in the refrigerator and pantry, she would not decline the inexpensive meal.

~ooOoo~

It took Harry only twenty-four minutes to finish preparing the meal. With some old coriander one of Romy's flatmates had bought and forgotten, two tomatoes that had started to wrinkle, an onion that was starting to sprout in the pantry, a bag of jalapeno peppers he had found at the very back of the fridge and had to carefully dissect to remove the fuzzy mold growing on them, and the juice from half a lemon that had become a little dried out after sitting uncovered in the refrigerator, Harry had created a simple salsa; he had then trimmed the edible parts from a several pieces of raw meat spoiling away in the refrigerator and chopped it finely before mixing it with stale bread he had broken into crumbs by hand, cracking an egg into the bowl of bread and minced meat that he then worked by hand until he had formed balls that he fried in a skillet. Watching Harry in the kitchen, Rosemary was amazed by the skill he displayed; although she knew he had been made to cook for his aunt, uncle and cousin, she had no idea he was so proficient at it, particularly his ability to use a knife to prepare food.

Looking down at the plate in front of her, Romy hesitantly stabbed her fork into a meatball and put it into her mouth, biting into it gingerly. Though a little dry, it was flavorful, beef, chicken and pork with salt and pepper; when she added a helping of the salsa to her bite, the freshness of the vegetables suffused the minced meat, giving an interesting mixture of textures to the mouth.

"It's good," she said, unable to help herself.

Harry shrugged without looking up from his plate. "It's food."

They finished the meal in a comfortable silence while Romy silently wondered at Harry's ability to turn a seemingly barren stock of food into a filling meal, envious of his skills as a cook. Too often, she found herself having takeaway in the evening, and she resolved to learn to cook and to cook something besides instant noodles more often.

"Go take shower, I'll clean up," said Romy, as Harry started to gather the dishes; the boy cocked his head to the side, giving her a questioning look before shrugging and departing down the hall.

~ooOoo~

Rosemary Davies awoke with a start. Groaning softly, she rolled over and checked the clock on the table by her bed.

7:30 AM.

Sitting up, she got out of bed, and for the first time, she heard the muffled sound of conversation and wondered who was chatting away; normally, her flatmates kept to themselves, greeting one another only when they passed by in the hall.

Dressing quickly and running a brush through her hopelessly tousled hair, she opened her room door and was immediately struck by the scent of coffee. Wandering into the kitchen, she saw it was much cleaner than when she had left the previous night, and Harry was serving her flatmate a breakfast of back bacon, eggs, sausage, mushroom and tomatoes at the table while steaming cups of coffee sat at the table by their hands.

"Good morning," Harry said as soon as he saw Romy. "Coffee?"

"Thanks," Romy said, as she took a seat at the table. Peering at the food on her flatmates' plates, she asked, "Where'd did the food come from?"

"Went to Tesco," said the boy, putting a cup of steaming coffee onto the table in front of Romy. "Fry-up?"

As Romy nodded, spooning sugar into her cup, and her flatmate nudged her under the table with a foot. "Why did you never tell me Harry was this adorable?" she asked.

"I don't know, Davina," Romy said, pouring cream into her coffee before taking a sip. "Never came to mind, I guess."

"Well, I need to go," said Davina, as Harry set a plate of food before Romy. "Work and all. We should do this more often."

With that, she was on her way, leaving Romy alone with Harry and a heaping plate of food.

"You didn't have to do this," Romy said, taking a bite of the food.

Meanwhile, Harry had taken Davina's discarded plate and began to wash it in the sink. "There are a lot of things I didn't have to do, but I want to, so I did."

~ooOoo~

By the time Romy left for work, Harry had finished the washing up and also restored the living room, where he had spent the previous night, to some semblance of order. They left the flat together, and though Romy worried about what he would do for the day, Harry reassured her repeatedly he would be fine on his own.

Finally on his own, Harry checked the list he had made for himself, having disembarked from the London-bound train with Romy before going his own way, though she had made him promise he would be at Bourne's Comics and Games that evening for the session of Shadowrun that night. With that, though, he was free, and he knew he would need to make the most of his time.

His first stop was John Lewis & Partners. He needed what was in the department store: affordably priced clothing with which to build a presentable wardrobe, electronics he would need to make his life easier while away from home, and all kinds of other sundry supplies to help him prepare for everything else. Though he had already purchased a few items while he had been at Tesco so he was no longer wearing the hand-me-downs he had previously received from his cousin when they no longer fitted him, he still wanted a more diverse selection available to him, and had decided to first check prices at the store with the slogan "Never Knowingly Undersold" to make the most of his money.

Ikea was next. While John Lewis & Partners stocked bookcases, Harry had found them a bit expensive, and he would need many cheap ones to fit all the books he had already bought and planned on buying later. A few trips in and out of Ikea with a shopping trolley, and Harry had a dozen bookshelves for his needs, as well as a cabinet, a wardrobe and a number of shelves.

The rest of the morning was bookstores, buying a book here, a handful there. He had made certain assumptions about what he would learn at Hogwarts based on the books he had been made to buy as part of his shopping in Diagon Alley, and Harry found the likely lack of instruction in subjects regularly taught in schools for students his age disturbing; thus he had made the purchase of literature, mathematics, sciences and social studies textbooks a priority. After that was reference books, a full set of encyclopedias and a sizable stack of science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as a few books on every subject he could think of.

~ooOoo~

The Footman was a small inn situated only two blocks away from Bourne's Comics and Games, owned by an elderly couple who had be proprietors for several decades. Though they had been reluctant at first to rent Harry a room for the rest of the month, he had persuaded them to see things his way after he painted a picture of the abuse and neglect he had suffered at the hands of his aunt, uncle and cousin, along with the nothing the authorities had done when said mistreatment had been reported to them; the scars on his body from the beatings administered by his cousin sealed the deal, and after he paid the deposit for lodgings—a bit less than seven hundred fifty pounds—he was shown to a homely room.

Alone at last, Harry opened up his haversack and set it on the floor besides the bed before he allowed himself to fall in, landing in the pile of blankets he had piled at the bottom and rolling off quickly and to his feet. He had a lot to get done, and not a lot of time before he had to be at the comics and games shop for that evening's game of Shadowrun.

Taking the parts out of the boxes was not difficult; it was the assembly that proved the hard part, and the instructions were less help than he had hoped for. Nonetheless, Harry persisted, and though it took him the better part of ten minutes to figure out the instructions and put together the first of the bookcases, he flew through the rest of the dozen in the hour and a little more that followed, leaving him with a neat row of bookshelves lining one of the walls of his haversack.

Organizing his books, however, was not nearly as easy a task; not only did he have the hundreds of tomes from Flourish and Blotts to sort through, there were also the numerous volumes he had purchased earlier in the day during his tour of the bookstores of London. Luckily, he had learned about the Dewey Decimal Classification in school and had been able to purchase a book with more details about the system, so he set about using it to label and organize all the books he had purchased that day, all while also listing the details for each publication inside a thick, hardback notebook he had purchased specifically for the purpose.

The collection he had purchased from Flourish and Blotts, however, turned out to be a problem. Melvil Dewey apparently did not know about magic, and thus magic was not accounted for by the filing system he had invented, leaving Harry to find a way to catalogue the books; wanting to stay true to the system he was already using, but with all the positive numbers already in use, Harry ultimately decided to use negative numbers for his collection of books from the magical society while also leaving himself space for in case if other paranormal phenomena proved itself to be real and to have nonfiction books published about them.

Only after he had finished filing all his books did Harry check the time with the wristwatch he had purchased earlier in the day. Noting he only had a mere hour before he had to be at Bourne's Comics and Games, he decided to take a shower first and made notes on what he still needed to do to be truly organized: put away his new clothing purchases in the wardrobe and cabinet he had yet to assemble, neatly put away his electronics and sundry purchases on shelves, and design and produce a kind of elevator to make entering, exiting and transferring goods to and from the haversack easier.

But first, a shower, and then Shadowrun with his friends. And on his way back, he retrieved the owl he had left at 4 Privet Drive, because he had no real desire to let the bird starve when he was likely going to find a use for it in the future.

Author's Notes: Harry has life skills. And he will use them for the benefit of himself and his friends.

A shorter chapter, a bit of slice of life, but think of it as a calm before a storm.

Once again, my thanks to Shinshikaizer for the original pitch, and goalie12345 for proof-reading.