Breakfast
Dear Hermione and Ron,
Everything is great here. The Black’s are nice and I’ve made friends with a couple of Jacob’s friends. They’re a bit younger than I am, but you’d never know it really. The ocean is pretty, and their town is basically a beach town so you can see the ocean from pretty much anywhere in La Push.
I might stay a bit longer than I planned, it’s peaceful here andI need itI like it.
Give everyone my love,
-Harry
Harry spent a few minutes trying to neatly write Hermione’s home address on the little envelope before buying a stamp at the local drugstore and dropping it off at the post office.
His duty to his friends finished, Harry stood outside the post office and looked around while he thought about what to do. He could go back to the little motel room he was renting, but he was bored and it was too nice of a day to spend cooped up in there. He could go pop by the Black’s house, but he doubted if Jacob would be awake and he didn’t want to bother Billy. Jacob said he had to work overnight last night, and it wasn’t even eight-thirty yet, so the Black’s house was out.
Harry’s stomach growled a little, making up his mind for him. Except… Harry hesitated as he walked down the sidewalks of the tiny town. He was pretty sure there was only one diner within walking distance and he didn’t much fancy going there alone.
Actually, that was a lie, Harry didn’t fancy going there at all.
Ever since he went with Jacob and Seth, the day he got to La Push, Harry had been incredibly uncomfortable with the girl who worked there.
Seth said it was his sister Leah and he and Jacob spent an entire hour the other night regaling Harry on how ‘awesome’ Leah was, but Harry personally thought she was a bit odd.
Sure, she was attractive. She was tall, lean, with smooth looking russet colored skin and the most interesting shade of brown eyes that Harry had ever seen. She had a little scar over the middle of one of her eyebrows, something unique that enhanced her looks instead of detracting from them. Her hair was just as dark and silky as Jacob’s, but she wore hers in a jagged bob that suited her high cheekbones quite well. She also had the nicest smile Harry had ever seen- perfectly straight white teeth that would have put Hermione’s parents out of work.
The problem was that those perfectly straight white teeth were usually clenched when Harry went to the diner with the others and Harry got the overwhelming impression that Leah Clearwater did not like him.
Something that Seth and Jacob found hysterical when Harry hesitantly mentioned it.
“Leah’s just shy,” Seth grinned. The three of them were on the beach again, waiting on Jacob’s other friends to show up so they could teach Harry ‘American football’. It had only been a couple days since Harry first met Seth’s older sister at the diner, but Harry only mentioned it because Jacob asked Seth in a bit of a pointed manner if Leah was coming or not.
“Oh yeah,” Jacob snorted and seemed to find something incredibly amusing. “Leah’s shy, Harry, but don’t worry,” he winked at Harry for some reason, “I’m sure you’ll see for yourself soon.”
“I’ll see for myself that Leah, the girl who glares at me all the time, is shy soon?” Harry repeated, confused by the looks Jacob and Seth kept sharing.
“Yep,” Jacob said vaguely. He wagged his eyebrows at Harry, only deepening his confusion. “All will be revealed in time, Little Cousin.”
And then Harry forgot about his confusion as he began arguing again that just because Jacob was ridiculously tall, didn’t mean Harry was little. And Harry was older than him to boot, so who was he to call him little?
But, Harry was hungry. And there weren’t a lot of options unless he went back to the little market store and bought something there. So Harry bravely made his way in the diner and mentally prayed that Seth or his mum would be the one behind the counter.
No such luck.
Harry avoided making eye contact with Leah as he quietly snagged a menu and moved to the booth, following the same routine as the other guys did when they came here.
Harry picked a booth in the corner, one where he could see the rest of the diner, but where he wasn’t a focal point at all. He kind of expected to be ignored as long as possible by Leah, like she usually did when Harry came in a group, so he was caught off guard when he’d barely opened the menu and she slid across from him and settled in the booth.
“Let me know if anyone comes in,” Leah said.
“Er…” Harry would have pointed out that the bell above the door would let her know, but he just nodded uncertainly instead. He watched Leah for a moment, curious why she was sitting with him, but then he just decided to ignore her intense staring and glance over the menu in front of him.
Except he was barely past the beverage portion of the breakfast menu when Leah cleared her throat and Harry looked back up at her.
“Nobody knows anything about you,” she said bluntly, if not a bit rudely.
Harry waited to see if there was more to that statement or not, and when it seemed like there wasn’t, he shrugged. “I’ve only been in town for a week,” he said, a touch defensively. He then smiled wryly, “I’m not that interesting.”
Not to this town of muggles anyway. The most interesting thing about him was his pale skin that got less pale every day he spent out on the beach.
It was the best part about this town.
“How old are you?” Leah asked him.
“Twenty,” Harry answered honestly. He lifted a brow at her, “How old are you?”
If she was going to interrogate him, then he’d do the same to her.
“Twenty-one,” she said.
Harry nodded, he figured they were about the same age. Leah looked older than twenty-one, like she carried a lot of figurative weight on her shoulders, but so did Harry.
Hence this spur of the moment trip to America to meet Sirius’ cousins.
No more speeches. No more trying to fit in with the auror department. No more watching his friends all get engaged and move forward confidently with their lives. No mopping up from the war. None of it.
So if Harry’s shoulders were a bit heavy when he arrived, he was slowly shedding the weight every day that he got to relax and act like a stupid guy on vacation.
Leah kept staring at Harry, causing his skin to itch a little with the intensity of her silent stare, so he gestured to the menu and tried to smile a little at her.
“What’s good here for breakfast?” he asked her evenly.
Leah finally quit scrutinizing Harry’s face to look dismissively at the menu. “It’s all good,” she said shortly. “Do you like biscuits and gravy?”
“Er… maybe?” Harry shrugged. “Is it good?”
Leah huffed and rolled her eyes, making Harry smile just a bit. “I just said it’s all good,” she said. “Biscuits and gravy and coffee,” she said decisively. “I’ll be back.”
Harry didn’t even get a chance to ask anything before she snatched his menu and marched off.
Leah Clearwater didn’t seem all that shy to him.
Harry had been idly doodling on a blank page in the notepad that Leah left on his table when she abruptly returned about fifteen minutes later.
She sat two plates down, two white mugs, a pot of coffee, and a little bowl full of packets of cream and sugar.
Harry was still trying to find out why she brought two of everything when she sat back down and it dawned on him that she was planning on eating breakfast with him.
“So… I thought you hated me?” Harry blurted. Leah never ate with them any of the other many times he’d been at the diner when she was working. She usually just stood behind the counter and kind of glared at him without ever meeting his eyes. Jacob and Seth, along with the other guys they hung out with, swore Leah wasn’t glaring ‘at Harry’, just glaring ‘as usual’.
“Hate is a strong word,” Leah said in the same curt tone she always uses with him. “How do you like your coffee?”
Harry blinked at her. “Er… plain?”
“Black,” she said with just a hint of a smile. Her eyes flicked up to his for a moment and Harry was once more struck by how interesting her eyes were. They were a deep brown with little golden flecks through the irises. She looked away, hiding her eyes as she poured two cups of coffee and slid one to Harry. “We don’t call it plain coffee, we call it black.”
Harry nodded and smiled tentatively. “Black then, thank you.”
Leah didn’t say anything, she just watched Harry take a sip of the (dear God that was disgusting) black coffee and then nodded to herself before picking at her food.
More of a desire to break the awkwardness between them than anything else, Harry complimented her on her cooking after taking a few bites.
“Do you do all the cooking for the diner?” he asked curiously. He never saw anyone else working there, besides an older woman that favored Leah in looks that Seth said was his mum and Seth himself on occasion.
“Mostly,” she said. She got a weird intense look in her eye then, “What do you do for work?”
Harry couldn’t explain it, but he got the distinct feeling that this was more of an actual interrogation than a friendly breakfast. He didn’t have anything to hide though, mostly, so he indulged her.
“I was a police officer,” he said, twisting it slightly. “I’m on… extended leave.”
“‘Extended leave’,” Leah repeated. “What’s that mean?”
Harry shrugged and took another bite to give himself a moment to formulate a half-truth.
What it meant was that as soon as Harry finished the training program, he realized that he hated being an auror and he was miserable in London and he felt an overwhelming urge to just leave. So he’d marched into Kingsley’s office, handed him his resignation papers, and set about telling his friends he was taking some time for himself. By the time Harry got to Tonks and Remus’ house, refusing to leave without seeing his godson and his parents, Kingsley had contacted Tonks and told her to tell Harry that he had the job anytime he wanted it back.
Not that Harry thought he would want it back.
Conveniently, Harry left the day before the third anniversary of the final battle of the war and couldn’t have his arm twisted into making another speech.
“It means I can have my job back when I go home if I want it,” Harry told her truthfully. “I just don’t think I will.”
“Wait! You’re going back? To London?” Leah asked, her eyes suddenly wide. “When?”
Harry was surprised by her sudden surprise. “I’m not sure,” he hedged. “I mean… I can’t stay in a motel forever,” he grinned in a self-deprecating way. “Plus my friends probably miss me…”
And Harry missed them. He liked being in La Push, but he missed Ron and Hermione fiercely.
“Stay with me,” Leah said abruptly. “I have an extra bedroom.”
What? Harry thought maybe he heard her wrong, but there wasn’t any extra noise in the diner to have interfered with the absolutely absurd words that came out of her mouth.
Harry nodded slowly, “No, thank you.”
Leah’s brows knitted together and she curled her upper lip into a slight sneer. “Why? Will your girlfriend be jealous if you have a female roommate?”
Harry grinned a little, Leah had a hell of a temper. “Probably not,” he said lightly. “She doesn’t quite exist, but I suppose if I had one she’d probably be jealous if I moved in with some fit stranger.”
In fact, if Harry and Ginny, his last and only girlfriend to date, were still together, she’d be jealous as hell that he was even having breakfast with Leah. He couldn’t imagine her apoplectic anger if he called her up and mentioned that he moved in with Leah.
Hopefully Oliver Wood, Ginny’s current boyfriend, had an easier time dealing with her moods.
“‘Fit’,” Leah repeated, looking at Harry suspiciously. “What does fit mean?”
Harry fought to keep down the blush that wanted to expose him. He cleared his throat and looked down at his now cold cup of coffee. “Er… like attractive?”
Leah was quiet for so long that Harry finally risked a glance up and saw that she too had a faint blush on her cheeks, something that was much harder to spot on her darker skin than it was his.
“So you’re single and don’t want to live in a motel,” she said, apparently summarizing their conversation so far and ignoring Harry’s accidental compliment. “Move in with me. It’s a decent apartment, it’s just a little two bedroom place above the tackle shop on Main Street. Rent’s cheap. I need a roommate, you need a place to stay.”
Harry didn’t really have any experience with obtaining roommates, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t the way to do it.
“I could be a serial killer,” he said, his brows raised high. “I could be a drug addict, or a… an absolute psychopath. I’m a complete stranger. Why would you want me to move in with you?”
Especially when he said that he would probably go back to London soon.
Leah leaned forward and her eyes were sparkling with something that looked like mischief. “What are the odds that we’re both serial killers?” she whispered.
Harry let out a startled laugh, mostly startled by what he was pretty sure had been a joke from someone who didn’t usually interact with him at all. Harry, personally, had killed his fair share of people- mainly death eaters and a dark wizard. Nobody called him a serial killer, but if you had a body count of over three and they all shared similar characteristics, well…
“So?” Leah asked, apparently waiting on Harry to answer her mad offer to be roommates. “What do you think?”
Harry really tried to be polite, but he couldn’t think of a way to not sound like an arse. “I think that I might not even be staying in town all that long, and that I don’t really know you quite well enough to move in with you.”
Leah scowled at him, and Harry resisted the urge to smile. Her scowl wasn’t really as scary as she probably thought it was, Harry thought it was a bit cute, but he wasn’t daft enough to say so.
“Fine,” she said. She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling and seemed to be bracing herself for something. “Can I have your number?” she asked.
Well, growled, really.
What was up with this girl?
“I don’t have a phone,” Harry told her with a shrug. He raised his hands in a show of innocence when Leah looked at him disbelievingly. “Honestly, I don’t,” he said. “I told you I was only planning on staying for a short while.”
Leah slapped her hand on the notepad, hesitating for a split second as she looked at the floral doodles Harry drew on the blank sheet of paper on top. She gently turned the page then aggressively ripped out the second sheet.
“This is my cell phone number,” she said after writing it down and sliding it to him. She gave him a really intense sort of look again. “Get a phone, borrow a phone, I don’t care. Just call me if you decide to leave town on a whim, got it?”
Harry glanced at the number she wrote and tried pushing his luck just a little. “Can I call you if I decide not to leave town?” He tried to give her a charming smile, but he suspected he looked stupid flirting with a woman who probably got hit on all day long by much more attractive blokes than he was.
Leah didn’t laugh though; in fact, she blinked and her eyes looked a little dazed for a moment. Then she shook her head and smirked at him. “I’m sure I’ll see you here for dinner before you get around to getting a phone,” she said.
Which sounded a bit like a challenge to Harry.
“We’ll see,” he said. He dug his wallet out and carefully put the paper with her number on it in one of the pockets before pulling out some American muggle cash. “What do I owe you?”
Leah gave him what seemed like the first friendly grin he’d seen from her. “A phone call,” she said simply.
By the time Harry apparated to Seattle and back with a new phone and got Jacob to help him get it set up, the first ‘text’ he sent was to Leah.
“Leah, huh?” Jacob grinned, peeking over Harry’s shoulder. “How’d you get Leah’s number?”
The other guys, Seth, Quil, and Embry, who had been playing a card game over by the fire they had going, all perked up in obvious interest.
Harry sighed and looked at Seth in exasperation. “She asked me to move in with her then gave me her number,” he said. “Isn’t that mad?”
For whatever reason, everyone seemed to find it hilarious and Seth had rolled on the sand laughing his head off about the whole breakfast fiasco.