Knowing that he only had to make it through Saturday and Sunday with Dudley made Harry almost giddy until he remembered that he had to make it through Saturday and Sunday with Dudley. He tuned the radio to the BBC news station and listened to the stories while he worked his way through ironing the stacks of serviettes. While he was listening, he felt like he was escaping being Harry for a while and it was nice.

Also, listening to stories about children in Rwanda who were forced to become soldiers and kill people when they were younger than he was kind of helped put everything in perspective. Some of them had lost their legs or arms in the war (and… he imagined… their eyesight, though the story didn't say that specifically). It occurred to him that many of them must be orphans like him. All because some people thought that they were more human than others… it made him think of wixen and their pureblood nonsense. He was lost in thought when a wisp of smoke grazed his nose. He jerked the iron up and felt the serviette that he'd been ironing with his fingertips.

"Ow!" he shouted and stuck his burned fingertips in his mouth. He was pretty sure there were scorch marks and holes in the serviette, but he didn't want to investigate further.

"Oh, no!" he started panicking. He was tempted to throw the burnt serviette in the bin, but knew that Aunt Petunia would count the serviettes and he'd be hit with whatever was nearest. He turned off the radio because he couldn't think while they kept talking.

He twirled around for a little bit—dashing from side to side as he tried to figure out what he could do to fix the burnt serviette until he got dizzy and disoriented and almost fell down, then he focused on breathing until he was calm.

"Okay. It's a burnt serviette, not the end of the world," he told himself sternly. He really didn't want to show up at training with more bruises.

He put his hands on his hips as he calmed down and touched his pocket.

My staff!

He took out the collapsed staff and touched it to the serviette and said "Reparo serviette" hoping that it would work even though he didn't know the magic word for serviette. He felt it. It was cool again, not burning hot and he couldn't feel any holes or difference in the cloth from the other serviettes.

Maybe it worked!

He put the serviette in the middle of the stack and kept ironing, but didn't turn the radio back on, afraid that he'd drift away again.

Finally, at half past 9, he'd put away all the serviettes, the ironing board, and iron away and climbed upstairs to bed. The Dursleys weren't home yet and he was glad.

He put on his pajamas and climbed into bed, leaving the window open just in case Hedwig came back in the middle of the night.

It's not outside the realm of possibility.

[break]

Harry knew something was up by the way Aunt Petunia was pounding up the staircase early the next morning. She flung open his bedroom door and stomped over to his bed where she was flapping something in his face and demanding to know, "What is this, boy? Just what do you think this is?"

Harry cowered down into his sheets, trying to get his face out of the range of the cloth that she was slapping him with.

"I don't know," Harry ventured. "Could you tell me… please?"

"Just what do you think you're up to? You think this is a funny prank? Do you?" she shrieked, continuing to flail him with the cloth. "All I want is for everything to be perfect when Dudders comes home from school… but you just have to go and ruin everything… "

"I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia," Harry tried, hoping it would appease her.

"Oh, you're sorry, are you? Well, so am I. I'm sorry we ever agreed to allow you and your strangeness to enter our home. We thought we could stomp it out of you, but no. Even now, damaged as you are, you're still doing it!"

"What did I do, Aunt Petunia?" Harry asked again.

"My serviette! My beautiful serviette! Yesterday they were all perfect and white and today this one… " she seemed at a loss for words. "These were my grandmother's serviettes, pure Irish linen! Now this one… looks like clown barf!" Her anger was palpable.

"What?" said Harry disbelieving. When she hit him in the face with the serviette again, he grabbed at it, managing to yank it from his Aunt's hand and ran his fingers over it from seam to seam. It felt like the ones he ironed last night—nothing different about it.

"I ironed them, Aunt Petunia, just like you said."

Okay, I burned one and tried to fix it. I guess that didn't work. It's not burned though, no holes!

"I know you did ma… something vile," she finished, unable to utter the word.

He didn't deny it and felt heat rising in his neck and cheeks.

She snatched the serviette from his hand and stood very still over his bed. Harry had the sense that she had her hand raised as if to slap him and he cringed, bracing himself for the blow. But she suddenly turned and stormed out of the room, slamming his door as she left.

Harry sat in his bed for a little bit, trying to calm his racing heart. He didn't know if he should get up and go down right away and get breakfast started or wait a little until she cooled down.

He decided to go somewhere in between.

As he pulled on his clothes, feeling the seams to make sure they weren't inside out and tried to make his hair lie flat, he chanted to himself… Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday. . .

He picked up his glasses to put them on and paused while he traced the cracked lens with his fingertips.

I guess it is good I didn't try to repair this crack.

He put his collapsed staff in his pocket and started out of his room to head to the toilet, but in the hallway, he heard Dudley emerging from his room and decided to duck back into his room and wait. Last summer he would have made a mad dash to the loo to get in first and lock the door before Dudders who couldn't move nearly as quickly as Harry… but then he always had to move quickly when he was exiting, too, to dodge the waiting blows from his cousin and he didn't want to risk that today.

Once Dudley was safely in the loo, Harry went quietly down the stairs and used the downstairs toilet. Since he had unloaded all his items from his school trunk into his staff, he also had his toothbrush and paste.

This staff is so handy, especially with the extendable storage charm. Everyone should have one of these.

He laughed at himself for sounding like one of the infomercials Aunt Petunia watched.

He walked cautiously to the kitchen, listening for cues that Aunt Petunia had cooled down. It was awfully quiet.

That can't be good.

He was tempted to go back upstairs and wait a little longer but then he heard Dudley emerging from the toilet and decided to try his luck in the kitchen. At the door, he held his staff in his pocket with his thumb and middle finger to get a description of the room. He didn't think his aunt or uncle would very much appreciate the staff's description of them: "a thin, dour woman to your right washing dishes at the sink and a ruddy, obese man to your left reading the paper at a table." He stifled the laugh that threatened to escape his throat.

He went to the stove to start tackling the stack of eggs, sausages, and tomatoes that were undoubtedly on the docket—it would be a full English breakfast for sure with Dudders home from school now.

Aunt Petunia had laid everything out as she'd been doing since he'd awoken on Privet Drive earlier that month. He ran his fingers lightly over the waiting food and utensils, surprised that she'd taken care to do it this morning when she was so angry with him for ruining her serviette.

Maybe she did it before she made the discovery.

He was getting better at knowing when the sausages would be done—he couldn't time them using the clock (he'd never get away with casting the time charm in the company of Vernon and Petunia), but he'd sing a song in his head (R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts mostly) as a way to gauge the time and then poke at them with the tongs and smelled them until he was certain they were done. He hadn't had a negative review yet, which was as much praise as he was ever going to get.

He'd loaded up the plate with the sausages and had started with the eggs when Dudley finally made it downstairs. He tried to keep his posture as neutral as possible and didn't turn when Dudley came into the kitchen. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon fawned over Dudley as Harry expected and Harry managed to escape their notice for a while longer.

Harry was surprised when Dudley turned on a telly in the kitchen. He didn't know it was there.

Must be a welcome-home Dudley present so he can watch his favorite shows while eating.

Its sickening noise littered the kitchen.

He'd finished up the scrambled eggs and was starting with the tomatoes and mushrooms when Aunt Petunia came near him to retrieve the eggs and he flinched, expecting her to hit him. She just huffed loudly, obviously annoyed at his presence, but didn't touch him.

Weird.

The baked beans were bubbling softly on the back burner and Harry turned off the heat, then carefully scooped them into the bowl that Aunt Petunia had set by the can for them. He touched the tongs to the frying tomatoes and mushrooms and tried to flip them, but it was really hard to know if he'd done it or just turned them to mush. He'd made some progress with the slippery vegetables during the month, but apparently not enough because Aunt Petunia took over, sending him on his way with her hip.

He had no choice now, but to sit down at the table and try to eat. He gulped and then slipped his hand in his pocket to touch the staff for more seamless guidance to the table where his hand found the back of the chair and he pulled it out and sat down. He used the staff to get a sense of where the dishes were on the table and only reached for toast, eggs, and sausages as the rest would have required asking Uncle Vernon or Dudley to pass them to him.

"Watch what you're doing, boy!" Uncle Vernon yelled, using the tone that he reserved just for Harry.

Harry started, then recovering quickly, put the serving spoon back in the bowl of eggs and lightly touched the space between the bowl and his plate and discovered that some of the eggs had dropped off the spoon onto the tablecloth. He picked them up carefully and put them on his plate.

"Why's Harry wearing sunglasses inside?" Dudley asked through a mouth of food.

"Harumph," was all the response Dudley got from his father. Harry was surprised. It was a perfect segue into how Harry was now even more of a burden on the family, one of Uncle Vernon's favorite topics.

Dudley's attention was drawn back to his show and Harry was able to eat in relative peace.