Disclaimer: Emily is mine. Summervale is mine. Mr. H. Potter and anything else you recognize is sadly, not mine – it's all J.K's.

A/N: Thanks for reviewing – here's another chapter for you to enjoy! (Hopefully!)

Chapter 3: A Taste of Pineapple

            Harry yawned widely as he thumped down the narrow stairs of his new accommodation. He'd had a fairly good night's sleep, thanks to all the physical work he'd done the day before. Such a deep sleep had taken him that he hadn't dreamt a single thing all night.

            Emily was already up, sitting at the small table with an almost empty bowl of cereal, seemingly absorbed in a rather lengthy looking book in front of her. Harry didn't want to disturb her – she appeared to be wholly engrossed in her 'Anna Karenina', but Emily looked up at him as he came down the last step and smiled, pushing back a lock of hair that had fallen in front of her face.

            "Hey," she grinned at him. "Sleep well?"

            "Oh, yeah," Harry replied, stretching out the kinks in his body to cover for his embarrassment at still being in the old t-shirt and pants that he'd obviously slept in. He hadn't expected Emily to be awake yet, let alone downstairs in an old but clean tank top and rather small shorts. "I think it was all the cleaning we did."

            "Umhm," Emily agreed, finishing her cereal. "It knocked me out, too." 

            Just as she got up and headed for the fridge, Harry sat down opposite her at the table glancing at the names of the cereals she'd laid out. "Do – do we have any eggs?" he asked her.

            "Um…" Emily's voice was slightly muffled as she rummaged through in search of some elusive food item. "Oh, yeah." She turned around, handing him a carton of eggs.

            "Here you go. Now, come on, let's get some fruit out here…"

            Harry got up and went over to the stove, trying to remember where he'd packed away the pots and pans.

            "Third cupboard to your left, bottom shelf." Emily said from deep within the fridge.

            "Oh, thanks." Harry told her, opening the aforementioned cupboard and reaching for a small pan. "Wait – how did you know… I never said…"

            Emily turned around and grinned at him, an orange in hand. "Yeah, you did. Don't worry, I do it all the time."

            Harry looked blankly at her; did she think that he could read her mind?

            "You mumble under your breath a lot – especially if you're trying to remember something or solve a problem."

            "I do not -" Harry stopped abruptly as he realized that Emily was most probably right. And she'd have had plenty of time to hear me talking to myself all day yesterday. He groaned inwardly – Yep, that's me. Potter the Nutter. Potter the Pothead. Poor Potty Potter. Potter the Po-

            "Ugh!" Emily said, jarring Harry out of his rather negative thoughts.

            "What?" Harry asked, pausing in the act of breaking the egg over the pan. Emily was looking rather disgusted about something, but much to Harry's surprise, it wasn't towards him – she was alternating her look of disgust between a ripe looking orange in one hand and a shiny red apple in the other.

            "Honestly, it's summer; what happened to all the interesting fruit? I hope we get to make up our own shopping list next time."

            She turned back to the fridge, resuming her search for 'interesting fruit'. Harry started to feel a bit better about the whole situation. Well, at least she's not perfect, he thought. She's definitely picky. He continued to look strangely at her for a few seconds, and was just about to turn back as she cried "Aha!" and pulled out a carton of strawberries, followed by peaches, nectarines, and even a rather prickly looking pineapple.

            "Mmm, pineapple." Emily closed her eyes for a moment, clearly enjoying the scent of the fruit.

            "Pineapple?" Harry said, staring incredulously at the girl in front of him. Emily was starting to make him feel a tad uncomfortable – she looked far too caught up for his liking. All thoughts of the unbroken egg had fled his mind as he stared at her.

            "That's a little too interesting for me, thank you. I mean, who names a fruit pineapple – and why would you want to eat something that looks like that?!"

            Emily looked up from the fruit in her hands, eyes wide in mock indignation. "What, you don't like pineapple?? It's so sweet and juicy and mmmm yummy!"

            Harry snorted. "There's no way that anything that looks like that tastes good."

            Emily's jaw dropped so low that Harry absently wondered if she'd somehow managed to spontaneously dislocate it. "Are you saying that you've actually never ever even tried pineapple??!"

            "Nope!" Harry said cheerfully. "And I don't mean to."

            Emily's mouth opened and closed a few more times before she finally sighed, shrugging her shoulders.

            "Well, it's my favourite, so more for me, I guess."

            "Sure," Harry said, not really caring, and proceeded to continue making his breakfast.

            He had just sat down with a steaming plate full of food and was wishing for a glass of pumpkin juice when he heard a disgusted "Ew!" come from the fridge. As he looked up, he saw the very thing he'd been wishing for – a jug full of pumpkin juice. However, it was currently held by a rather sickly looking Emily, and therefore seemed to Harry to be in immediate danger of being poured down the drain.

            "You want to know what's disgusting?" she asked him, nose scrunched up. "This, Harry, this is nasty!!" With each word she shook the jug, causing a bit of juice to spill out. Harry very quickly got up and relieved her of it, pouring himself a glass in the process. "Pumpkin Juice!" she continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Harry was merrily drinking away as she spoke, a rather amused expression on his face. "Ewwww!! Pumpkin is disgusting enough to begin with, but pumpkin juice!! Oh, no."

            Emily stopped as she caught sight of Harry's half grin. "Don't tell me you actually like this concoction."

            Harry opened his eyes very wide as he mimicked her earlier response to his dislike. "What, you don't like pumpkin juice? It's so sweet and juicy and mmmm yummy!"

            Emily narrowed her eyes dangerously at him and merely picked up the jug again, turning slowly but deliberately towards the sink. Harry quite hastily apologized and swiftly took the jug from her once more, smiling sheepishly. "Actually," he told her. "Pumpkin juice is a staple at the school I go to."

            The girl sitting across from him, however, was still looking rather dubiously at the jug, so Harry pulled it close to him and poured himself another glass. "Ah," he said, glancing surreptitiously at Emily to see what her reaction would be. "Now that's good."

            For a few seconds, no reaction came as they sat in the now comfortable silence. After a while, though, Emily raised her head to address Harry.

            "Harry," she tentatively said, glancing rather shyly at him.

            "Yeah?" he answered, feeling slightly wary of her look.

            "Look, I tell you what – I'll try some of your …oh so good …" Harry could hear the sarcasm dripping off her words. "…Pumpkin juice, and you try some of my incredibly sweet and delicious pineapple."

            Harry eyed her and the prickly pineapple cautiously. "I dunno," he told her. "It doesn't look too edible to me."

            "Well that's 'cause it hasn't been cut, now!" Emily replied, fishing out a rather scary looking knife from one of the drawers – the one to the left of the sink, Harry noted – and proceeded to cut it.

            Soon Harry found himself with a piece of pineapple in front of him as Emily raised a glass of pumpkin juice to her lips. The actually rather juicy looking piece didn't seem too unpalatable, and so Harry brought it to his mouth. What's the worst that can happen? he asked himself. All it can do is taste bad…

            "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE ALLERGIC TO PINEAPPLE!!!" Emily yelled, desperately fighting back tears.

            "WELL IT'S NOT LIKE I WOULD KNOW EITHER, IS IT?!?!" Harry bellowed right back at her, eyes blazing. "I'VE NEVER HAD IT BEFORE, AND IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU, I STILL WOULD HAVE NEVER HAD IT!!"

            This was too much for Emily, who promptly burst into tears, all the fight gone out of her as she choked out that she was sorry and ran upstairs, her sobs echoing throughout the house until Harry heard her door slam shut. He paced angrily around the room, trying to calm down as he replayed the events in his mind. He'd eaten the pineapple – which actually wasn't bad at all – but then his throat started to feel all funny and tight. Soon he was gasping for air and Emily was staring at him in horror as his face swelled and his eyes puffed up. By the time she'd run upstairs and come back down with allergy medicine, Harry hadn't even been able to see out of his eyes anymore. Emily had almost had to pour the spoonful of medicine down his throat as Harry gasped for air that he just couldn't get. Then she'd made him wash out his mouth, to get rid of any pineapple that was left, all the while remaining calm and composed in drastic comparison to Harry's wild panic. He sat down and cradled his still swollen face in his hands and shook his head, frustrated. Now that he could actually breathe he knew that he wasn't really angry with her, especially as it was her quick thinking that stopped him from choking to death.

            Bloody hell – now I'll have to go up and apologize – I hope she doesn't hate me too much. Harry trudged slowly up the stairs, his heart heavy as he drew closer to her door. He raised his hand to knock, then lowered it. I could always owl Dumbledore and tell him that I'll go to Grimmauld Place after all. He thought, beginning to turn away. She probably doesn't want to see me, anyway.

            He had just stepped away from her door when it opened, Emily poking her tearstained face out into the hall. "Harry?" she asked. "Look, I'm really sorry, Harry, I'm…well…I'm glad you're okay now."

            On second thoughts, Dumbledore never offered for me to go to Grimmauld Place at all – he'd probably just ship me off back here. Oh well, better get this over with. Harry turned back to Emily, his face red as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. "No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you. And, um, thanks…for the uh, medicine and all."

            Emily tucked a now very frizzy curl behind her ears and attempted to smooth her hair back, wiping away her tears. "It's okay – it was my fault in the first place. I – uh- wouldn't touch some of the other 'interesting fruit' if I were you, then; I had a friend who was allergic to more than one of them, so don't eat anything you haven't tried, I guess."

            "Right," Harry nodded, agreeing with her. "You know," he gave her a small smile. " It actually didn't taste that bad."

            "Oh?" Emily quirked an eyebrow at him. "You mean, before it started choking you to death?"

            "Yeah," Harry said, thinking that they'd better get off that subject or there'd be tears again. "Look, let's just forget the whole thing, alright? We could go back and forth for ages about whose fault it was and all of that. So, um, what did you want to do today?"

            Emily looked ready to say that it was her fault again when Harry quickly changed the subject on her. "Oh! Well, uh, we should really finish the cleaning – but I don't know about you, but I'm really sore. So I was thinking, um, maybe we could finish it tomorrow and well, uh, just take it easy today."

            Harry thought that Emily was quite right and readily agreed with her. "Yeah," he said. "I have lots of stuff I need to do for school anyways – I can always get started on that."

            "And I need to call in to work and arrange my schedule…" Emily mused.

            Harry started – he hadn't realized that they'd be allowed to leave the house at all. "I thought we had to stay inside." He told Emily, confused. "Isn't that the whole point of us being here?"

            Emily shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know about you," she said. "But Mr. Dumbledore said that there'd be some kind of key – I think he said – that would take me to work and back. I can't go anywhere else, though. My parents died a couple of years ago, and while they left me some money, I still need to work to pay for any sort of university education."

            Harry stared at Emily – he'd had absolutely no idea that she, like him, was an orphan. It made sense, though; why else would she be sent away completely on her own? Come to think of it, it probably looked strange to her that he was there as well. "Oh," he told her, for lack of anything else to say. "I'm sorry."

            Emily looked at him strangely. "Uh, thanks, I guess. I still have a lot of family who I'm really close to, though, especially my big brother. I usually live with him and his wife, actually."

            Harry felt an irrational surge of jealously rise up inside of him. For a second he'd thought that she was someone like him, with no parents, no real home – but no, she had a home, a life, she had known her parents, spent time with them…Shaking his head clear, he forced a cheerful expression onto his face and looked at Emily.

            "Well, what do you do then? At work, I mean."

            "Oh, I teach dance classes. Ballet, actually, to a bunch of really cute three and four year olds."

            Harry shuddered inwardly at the thought of a class full of screaming children. "I guess that's a pretty good job, then?"

            Emily smiled widely. "Oh, you have no idea how cute they are – and whenever they see me, they all rush and give me a hug – I love kids."

            Harry grimaced slightly and tried to turn it into a smile before Emily caught it but he was too late.

            "Don't like kids?" she asked, grinning. "I have to admit, there are some really bratty ones out there – just one of them for a few minutes could turn one off kids completely."

            "Well I've only met the brats, then." Harry said, still dubious about children in general. The only young children he'd ever been around were the ones who teased him incessantly at school when he was younger and the annoying children of Uncle Vernon's important visitors who came for dinner.

            "Shame," Emily shrugged her shoulders and closed her bedroom door behind her. "Well, I think I'll call work, then."

            Harry nodded and let her pass him, watching her as she bounced down the stairs two at a time. "Strange," he muttered. "One second she's bawling her eyes out, next she's bouncing. Who bounces, anyway?" He listened for a few more seconds as she bustled around the kitchen and heard her begin to speak to someone in a very animated voice before turning around and heading back into his room. Plopping down on his bed he opened his transfiguration texts and began to read. Within a couple of hours he was more than halfway through the essay Professor McGonagall had set for them to do, and was just about to go and take a break when he heard thunderous footsteps quickly followed by a knock on the door.

            "Yep, come in."

            Emily opened the door, breathing heavily as if she'd just been running up and down the stairs. Her eyes, however, were shining with excitement and she'd crossed the room and grabbed Harry's arm before he even realized what was going on.

            "You'll never guess what we have!!" she said, practically jumping up and down. Harry was sorely tempted to ask if they somehow had a quidditch pitch in the cellar, but knew that was impossible. Emily pulled him down the stairs and raced down the hall towards a door that they had previously supposed was a closet under the stairs.

            "I totally missed this door yesterday – thought it was a closet – and we've never been outside, so we wouldn't have seen this, but look!"

            Emily threw it open to reveal a small hallway that was illuminated with a dancing bluish light. She quickly scampered through, making small delighted giggles the whole time. Harry had to bend his neck to go through, but when he did, a smile found its way onto his face unbidden as he stood in the large, glass walled room. There, attached to the back of the modest house, was a medium sized swimming pool that was slowly filling.

            Harry turned to Emily, confused. "How did we miss this?" he asked her. "Did you just find it? I mean, you've got it filling up already."

            "I found the key in the kitchen while I was on the phone," Emily said, walking with Harry around the pool. "It was all locked up – so, like the attic, nobody really touched it. It was all covered up, so it was fairly easy to clean and I wanted to run the water out anyway. Now that the gunk is out of the pipes, I thought – well, might as well fill it up! This'll be great! It's deep enough to dive in and everything!"

            Emily pointed towards the diving board at the far end of the pool and Harry looked down into the water, noting that it looked rather deep. He began to blush as Emily chatted on, clearly thoroughly excited about the all the possibilities now that they had their own pool. He had taken some swimming lessons with his elementary school, but he'd never been that good – which was another source of joy for Dudley and his gang – and he hadn't swum since with the exception of the TriWizard Tournament. And I wasn't really swimming – I had gillyweed to help me.

            "…and of course, there's seats in the shallow end for relaxing…"

            Harry inwardly sighed, feeling relieved. Shallow ends were just fine with him. Emily talked on some more, most of which Harry tuned out, looking for himself. He was beginning to realize that Emily would talk for ages if she got excited about something, but didn't really mind if he wasn't paying full attention. Now that he thought about it, Emily was suiting him just fine – she did her own thing, was fairly intelligent, nice enough – and wasn't overly girly. Well, not all the time. He grimaced as he remembered the lavender steamed bathroom.

            "Hey, Emily," he said as they walked back into the house. "Why don't we clean up the living room and whatever else we can now? That way we can just relax and swim tomorrow."

            Emily turned back to him, grinning. "You know, you aren't so bad, kid."

            "Kid?" Harry asked, incredulous. "We're the same age!"

            "Nope!" Emily said, reaching out an arm to ruffle Harry's already messy hair in mock imitation of parental figure. "I'm seventeen already. You're not sixteen yet. So, I'm over a year older than you, kiddo."

            Harry glared at her, futilely trying to fix his hair. "I dated a girl who was a year older than me, so what?" he said, conveniently glossing over the fact that he and Cho had only had half a date to begin with.

            "Uh, Harry," Emily said, looking uncertain and backing away from him. "Look, we only just met yesterday – why don't we take things a little slower – I don't know about you, but I like to get to know someone first before we get into any kind of…relationship."

            Harry stared wide-eyed at Emily, a blush beginning to form on his cheeks as he realized the implications of what he'd said. Emily, however, seemed to take pity on him and broke out into wild laughter, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

            "Sorry, sorry," she wheezed out a few minutes later. "Oh, you're too much." – and promptly dissolved into another set of giggles.

            Right. thought Harry. So she's nice, intelligent, but with random spurts of utter insanity.

            "Harry," Emily said, seeing the blush still on Harry's face and the confused look in his eyes. "Harry, I was joking. I know we're practically the same age – I was just kidding around!"

            She shook her head and left him standing in the hallway as she went in search of the cleaning supplies from the day before. Harry felt rather foolish, as it was now blatantly obvious to him that she'd just been teasing him all along. Emily soon reappeared in the hallway, brandishing brooms, old rags, furniture polish, and the lot.

            "Well?" she asked, disappearing into the living room, an amused look still in her eyes. Harry followed her in, still feeling a bit stupid. Maybe I just need to lighten up a bit. Yeah, that's it.

            Emily grinned at him as he entered the room where she was already on her knees clearing away the glass. Harry smiled back. "You sure you want to do that?" he asked her, his face serious. "I mean, old people like you shouldn't put so much stress on their knees."

            Emily's mouth hung open for a second before she chuckled. "And you young uns' should remember that your elders know best!" she sharply retorted, grinning away.

            Harry got down beside her, quickly getting to work. I suppose I'm rather insane myself. He thought. The Prophet has always said I need to be locked up in St. Mungo's – I might as well have some fun being insane while I'm at it, then.

A/N: You like? You no like? Review!!(Although I sincerely hope it's the former.) Any ideas for what they should go through next? I don't know if this is going to be a romance yet – I'm just seeing how the characters develop and relate to each other. Although any input might just sway me in one direction or the other (hint hint nudge nudge).

-Laren