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Harry PotterIn "Switched"
By: Steve's Place
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Chapter 4
First Breakfast & Manual Labor. Oh; What A Bummer!
The Alarm was still ringing while Albus/Harry was rubbing his head, yet again. Fortunately for Albus/Harry he recognized the old fashioned style, wind up alarm clock with the two bell housings on the top to either side of a spring loaded, upright pendulum, protruding up from the clock housing. This was bouncing back and forth between the bell housings so fast that it appeared only as a blur while making a racket loud enough to wake the neighbors four houses up the street and doing absolutely nothing to decrease his throbbing headache.
He picked the thing up, looked it over quickly and remembered a push/pull pin on the back that should shut that, pain in the ears, off. "Ahh, that's better." He said in a wisper.
He found what he thought was meant to pass as the boy's clothing, a pair of brown corduroy pants that seemed to be meant to be worn by a baby whale with short, fat legs. A button up shirt that when he buttoned up the top button, two of his neck could fit, and loosely at that. With great disgust Albus/Harry pulled these bits of clothing on, slipped into a pair of oversized slippers with paper stuffed in the toe to take up the extra space and crawled out of his little prison cupboard under the stares.
The Dursley's would get up in a half an hour as Albus/Harry was to have their breakfast ready.
"Oh, great Merlin, how am I going to get through this?" Albus/Harry mumbled out while biting his lower lip and attempting to stroke below his chin where his beard used to be, only to find empty air.
He ventured over to the stove, turned on the two front gas burnners and placed a skillet on each. He tried to follow the memories of what to do next but had no actual experience with any of this. He was quite sure he was in big trouble when the skillets started to smoke. Pulling them both off the burners at this point and managed to burn both his hands dropping the skillets on the floor.
He reached over and turned down the burners, opened the cooler unit, a refrigerator he thought it might be called. He then found eggs, bacon, ham, bread & butter. Following the memories he placed a layer of butter in the skillets and watched as it bubbled from the heat. He then broke 8 eggs into the one pan and several strips of bacon and ham into the other skillet.
His memories told him how to toast the bread and so placed 4 slices in the 4 slice toaster and pressed the handle down to sink the bread into the toaster then plugged in the kettle to boil water for the morning tea.
Still following the memories as much as possible he place a tea bag in each of 4 cups and flipped over the ham, bacon and eggs. All in all he thought it was going quite well for his first time at this... until... the toaster started to smoke as blackened slices of toast caught on fire. Albus/Harry panicked at this point.
"Fire, fire!" he wispered and poured the contents of the now boiling kettle onto the toaster which smoked and crackled with sparks as the lights went out as a result of the fuses blowing the circuit.
"Oh my!" He said out loud this time, as he looked over to the skillets and they too began to smoke. He turned off the burners and sat on a chair at the kitchen table placing his little Harry head in both hands as the Dursley's rumbled down the stares yelling out.
"What have you done now, BOY?" Bellowed Vernon as he stomped into the kitchen followed by Petunia and the DUD.
"I don't know! I don't feel well! I'm sorry!" Albus/Harry stammered out in a bit of a yell.
"Sorry doesn't cut it BOY. Get this place cleaned up while we go out for breakfast this morning. Here is a list of your chores for today. They had all better be done when I get home tonight or you will spend a week in the cupboard. Do you understand me, BOY?" Bellowed Vernon once again.
"Yes Uncle Vernon. Albus/Harry somberly answered.
As they drove up the street he salvaged what he could from this first morning breakfast attempt and actually managed to eat three times more than he usually might get. He sure as hell did not like his own cooking but eat it anyway. There was no telling when he might get anything else to eat. He was truly missing his Lemon drops by now.
He looked over the list of chores Vernon had left for him.
Vacuum the house.
Sweep the floors.
Wash the Kitchen floor.
Clean the bathrooms.
Wash the windows.
Weed the garden.
Cut the grass.
"Oh Harry, Harry, I'm so sorry for what I have done to you!" Albus/Harry exclaimed as he started to concentrate on making a Lumos ball once again, but still to no effect. He was determined to get the boys wand-less Magic up to speed as soon as possible and set himself to practice at every opportunity to increase the boy's Magical core. He reasoned it could take a few weeks if not months to at least get the boy's Magic up to where he could cast the wand-less unforgivable Imperio on these Dursley's or at least be able to use Magic to cook and do the chores. In the mean time he would just have to, as they say, muttle through this, the Muggle way.
Oh, how utterly helpless Albus/Harry felt at this point.
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A week passed.
Little had changed around the Dursley's. He was getting the hang of the cooking breakfast thing, but it took all of four days before any of them would eat anything he had managed to cook. The Dursley's were incensed at the unexplained change in Harry.
The chores were very tiring for Albus/Harry as he was just not used to doing manual labor over the last 135 or so years, despite the fact that Harry's body was actually used to this physical exercise.
Meanwhile back at the Magic School, hidden deep in the heart of Scotland. Moony and Padfoot were catching up on the past while Padfoot was undergoing treatment from Madam Pomfrey and Severus Snape for his nine years of Azkaban induced deterioration.
Harry/Albus had made a few short visits to the medical wing to check up on the reunited duo but did not get into anything of his truth. He was waiting for Sirius's health to be at least good enough to tell them both of the mishap that had apparently happened to both Albus and Harry. He also hadn't quite figured out how he was going to convince either of them that he was Harry inhabiting the ancient body of this senile old Wizard and that Albus was actually experiencing Harry's Muggle, Dursley life.
However, he came to the conclusion that a Pensieve might just be the ticket as he could put some of his, Harry memories in the Pensieve and maybe even take some Veritaserum to prove his case.
This time period of a week also afforded him the time to assimilate more of Albus memories, experience and decript the power that this old Devil had in the Magic world and what to do with it, while he was stuck here.
TBC