Chapter Text
Homecoming
Tuesday, late in the afternoon
There was a cottage not far from Woking. Despite the nearness of the town, the house stood alone on a narrow but deep allotment, concealed mainly by vines, hedges, and wild grasses—almost as if by design. Near the cottage was a garden of vegetables, wild and cultivated flowers, and a small colony of bees that freely roamed the flowering foliage daily.
Inside, a grey-eyed witch watched an old friend at work in her kitchen, observing him openly, searching both for changes and reminders of the boy he had been when they last spent time together. Over the years, he had changed, clearly, but it was the invisible changes she longed to explore. As he leaned over the stove in her cottage, quickly stirring something in a sauté, she could not help but comment.
“I never knew you liked to cook, Harry.” She watched him flip onions, celery, and peppers in the pan with a quick flick of his wrist.
“I didn’t, honestly,” he said with a slight smile. “My aunt and uncle used to make me cook the breakfast every morning, before I got my Hogwarts letter. It was a chore, nothing more.”
Apparently satisfied with the progress in the pan, he turned and faced her, his vision still turned back, back before they had ever met.
“When I got to Hogwarts, it was all house elf feasts and Hogsmeade sweets, or else Molly Weasley’s solid home cooking at the Burrow. I managed a little rough fare when we were on the run, the odd fry-up in the Forrest of Dean when we could risk it. I never considered it a skill until I got to America.”
She shook her head. “America. No wonder even the press lost track of you.”
“I’m sorry, again, about losing touch for so long. At first, it was defensive, then it was a habit, then, well, I just grew used to life there without… everyone.”
He returned to the stove, shrugging his shoulders as he added another shake of intensely fragrant spices to the pan. “I wasn’t hiding, exactly, but I needed a break to sort out things I could never do hanging around here. There was—I don’t know how to say it.”
Luna sighed, her voice heavy with understanding. “Memories. They’re too thick on the ground in most places.”
Harry nodded as he lifted a cutting board and tipped sliced, smoked sausage into the pan. With a hiss, the sausage began to render its fat and smoky essence to the vegetables. Very quickly, an acrid, smoke-tinged steam wafted up as the sausage cooked. Harry neatly dodged the steam while flipping the pan dextrously, combining the ingredients and lowering the flame. He added a splash of stock and appeared satisfied.
“After just a few days on the East Coast, I realised that even in America’s magical community, I was too well known to disappear completely. So I took off across the country, travelling as a Muggle and avoiding any overt use of magic. By the time I found myself in New Orleans, I was just Harry—just myself—for the first time since I was eleven years old.”
“Was it peaceful?” She imagined herself, many years ago, before her eleventh birthday, even, before her mother’s death or her father’s illness. To be her original, unformed self again, unfinished but also unburdened. Free.
He thought for a moment. “You see, that’s why I hoped you, of all of them, would understand. Everyone else asks how hard it was living without magic or how weird it was to be anonymous. But to answer you directly, yes. It was amazingly peaceful. It was peace I had never known in my whole life, just going to work, having a beer with my mates from the neighbourhood, and reading books for my own pleasure and interest. I played some rugby, and I learned how to fish. It was incredibly peaceful.”
He added a tin of small red beans and a finely diced tomato they had picked from her garden that morning to the pan. He set a lid loosely covering the pan and reduced the heat even more to a low simmer. He turned to her and gestured to the small table with two chairs. He raised an eyebrow.
“We have another twenty minutes or so for that to simmer. Would you like a drink?”
Luna laughed, suddenly bursting forth, her younger days’ light, free laugh, not the wry, dry thing of more recent vintage. Harry’s heart lifted to hear it.
“Harry! I’m supposed to be your host, and you’re showing all the courtesy!” She moved to the table and was somewhat surprised to find that he held her chair for her, more a gentleman than an old school friend. Changes, again.
“And yes, I think I would like a drink.”
“Gillywater, with an onion?” His eyes twinkled.
She laughed again, the joy coming more freely with repeated use. “And here I was thinking everything had changed. Yes, please.”
She could see his smile as he poured her drink into a tall glass and the dexterity of his chef’s knife as he quickly trimmed and filigreed a green onion garnish, transforming her drink into a sophisticated cocktail with a moment’s effort. He opened a bottle of American lager and sat across from her.
“Not everything has changed, for better or worse.” Harry tipped his beer bottle towards her, and she clinked her gillywater against it with a musical note. “You, for example, look as beautiful as ever.”
His eyes widened slightly as if he’d said too much and caught himself too late. Her smile disarmed him, though, and he relaxed again almost immediately.
“And you still are the only man who has ever told me that in a way that makes me believe him,” she replied, “even if I am not so sure I believe it myself. Thank you, though, for the sentiment if not the truth.”
He leaned forward and placed a hand briefly over hers on the small kitchen table.
“You should believe it. You were a beautiful girl, and you’re a beautiful woman. Most importantly to me, you’re a beautiful friend. It really is good to see you again, ami.”
Rather than shake off the compliment, she nodded her acceptance. “I appreciate you sharing that with me.”
He sat back again. “So, where was I? Oh, yes, New Orleans. There’s tons of magic in the Quarter, but Muggle employment for an undocumented, unskilled dropout? That meant kitchen work, lots of it, at wages, whatever level it is below insulting. But it turns out I did have a job skill after all.”
“Really? You’ve caught my curiosity—explain?”
“Just a moment. You’re confident you’re okay with spicy food, yes?
“Well, I love a good vindaloo, spicy. I’ve not had much else.”
“Spicy vindaloo? You’ll be okay then. Cooking, it turns out,” he continued conspiratorially, “is just Potions, but without the magic. Yes! Follow the instructions carefully: stir, chop, dice, what have you; precisely follow the steps. Fine cooking is where your intuition and personal style come in, creating variations in the process. Say what you will about the man, but Severus Snape had me drilled on precision, and old Slughorn had encouraged my creative side, visualising the relationships and meanings of things to create greatness. So, in less than three years, I was running the kitchen at a Muggle hotel, two meals a day, six days a week.”
He stood and critically examined the contents of his sauté pan before stirring and adding a generous pinch of black pepper. Luna watched, fascinated, as he worked. His hair was short-trimmed at the back and sides, but the mop of rich black hair on top remained as wild as ever. He was still small in stature, wiry rather than stout, but his forearms now bore a few tattoos, and his biceps showed when he stirred, flipped, and chopped. He remained lean and compactly muscled just like in his Quidditch days, but now with a less pale complexion and a small tuft of black, wiry chest hair at his V-necked collar. He still wore glasses, but the iconic round frames were gone, replaced with more fashionable and flattering squarish black horn-rimmed ones.
“You look good, too,” she said, surprised at her boldness. “You’ve grown up, but it’s still you.”
He chuckled at her phrasing. Dear Luna.
He returned to the table and settled back into his seat. He regarded her silently for a long moment, his intense green eyes appraising her without reluctance but still respectfully.
“I had other offers,” he said abruptly. “Of places to stay, I mean. Ron and Hermione, Molly and Arthur. Neville. Even Susan and Ginny. Oh, and my cousin, bless his heart.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “We haven’t forgotten you, you know. I don’t mean the Boy Who Lived; I mean you. Harry.”
“I’m not sure about others, but I believe you personally. I’m saying that when I decided to come back, I didn’t want to see just anyone. I was hoping to see you, and I’ll admit I was both happy and sad to learn you lived here alone.”
“Why sad?”
“Because you’re an amazing woman, Luna. I’ve thought so for a long time, and as I went through my days in America, working at the hotel, having a beer, going fishing, living that life. Well, as everyone else grew somewhat fuzzier in my mind’s eye over the years, you grew clearer. I was sad that you didn’t seem to have found anyone, but also happy.”
“You wanted to spend time with me,” she said thoughtfully.
“I wanted to see a lot of people, sure,” he admitted, “but you’re the only one I’m cooking for. I was happy to be able to do this for you. I’ve imagined doing it for a while now.”
He stood and took two deep plates, each with a perfect, cricket-ball-sized portion of steamed rice. Over each, he spooned the savoury red beans, andouille sausage, and thick Cajun-spiced sauce. He tossed a few sliced green onions atop each plate with casual precision and brought the plates to the table.
“Red beans and rice, Melba’s Old School style. Bon appétit, cher.”
He watched, trying not to let on his hope for approval, as he teased a slice of sausage and a mouthful of rice from the plate. She tasted it, her pink tongue reaching out for the fork even as it delivered the food to her.
She closed her eyes, and he watched the sensations impact her face. The aroma hit first: earthy, peppery, and slightly acidic. The textures sang in each bite: the firm rice, the softened trinity of bell pepper, onion, and celery, and finally, the complicated mix of char and ground meats and delicate skin bundling each bite of sausage into a taught explosion of seasoned juices. The perfectly thickened sauce brightened ever so slightly—and against all tradition—with a fine dice of the sweet, sun-ripened heirloom tomato fresh from her garden, bound the whole dish, connecting without overpowering the flavours of each component. And, permeating it all, the blend of salt, smoked paprika, garlic, oregano, onion, and cayenne that together spell out Cajun, with enough heat to sneak up at the end of each bite, but not so much as to make finishing the dish a chore.
She swallowed, and her grey eyes opened, meeting his emerald ones as he resisted the urge to bombard her with questions. Real chefs know the comments will come, and they come well after the bite.
“You lied to me, Harry Potter.”
His brow furrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned down, but before he could reply, she continued.
“You said there was no magic in this. I beg to differ, sir. I beg to differ.”
He sighed and broke into a grin. “Merlin, you scared me for a moment there. I’m so glad you like it.”
“So, these Cajuns of yours, they eat like this often?”
“On the daily, as they like to say, yes.”
“I see,” she said, chasing another bite with a long pull of cool gillywater.
“I’d be happy to cook something else for you. Prawn po’ boy. Crab cake. An étouffée or a filé gumbo?”
“In time,” she said. “But tell me, what do these Cajuns do for breakfast? Say, on a lazy Saturday morning after a good lie-in?”
“Easy. Beignets—little fried pastries, so light, heavily dusted with sugar, and perhaps drizzled with a touch of chocolate or wildflower honey.”
“Wildflower honey, you say,” she said without irony. “As you may recall from the garden this morning, I just so happen to have a supply of wildflower honey.”
“That’s a remarkable coincidence,” he admitted with a straight face, standing and moving to her side. She took his hand and stood. Despite his compact build, he was still just enough taller that she found herself eyeing his lips rather than his eyes.
“So, if you stayed the weekend, instead of heading back into London tonight…” Her voice trailed off on a hopeful note.
“Then I could make you a lazy breakfast after a good lie-in on Saturday.”
His lips parted, and he leaned towards her slowly, allowing her every chance to back away or turn her cheek.
She pulled back slightly, and he stopped immediately, hesitating, uncertain.
“I should warn you,” she said softly, “I don’t have a guest room.”
He smiled then, warm and joyful, a dimple appearing on his right cheek for the first time in ages.
“Is that a problem?”
In place of a reply, she kissed him. It was gentle and full of promise and was returned with great enthusiasm.