Prompt 28 - Tossed Salad
@wolfstarmicrofic March 28, word count 526
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They were hiding in a secret room that James had dragged them into. It had a small window, which they all crowded around, peering down to the grounds below.
The man who emerged from the dirty van was truly enormous. His shaggy black beard was almost as impressive as Albus’s. He looked as though he could snap Albus like a twig, but the frail old man walked over to him and embraced him.
“That’s odd,” James muttered. “It looks like Albus knows him, but I don’t recognise him at all,”
“To be fair, it’s been a while since you last came up here,” Remus said quietly.
“Yeah, but I know most of the people around here, and no one new has moved in for about ten years,”
Albus looked up at their window, and they all ducked.
“He is going to be the death of us!” Regulus hissed.
“Oh, hush, love. He’d protect us with his life,” James patted Regulus on the head reassuringly. Sirius had been sure that James was about to lose said hand, but Regulus just sighed and nodded. He didn’t know what scared him more: the looming threat of his parents or that Regulus was being almost sweet.
He decided to test a theory and reached out to pat Regulus on the head, just as James had, and was rewarded with a set of crescent-shaped tooth imprints.
“Ouch! You little fucker!” Sirius cried out.
“Why the fuck are you touching me?!”
“You bit me!”
“Because you touched me!”
“Boys?!” Effie called up the stairs. “Boys, it’s safe to come out!”
Sirius jumped to his feet, patted Regulus once on the head, and sprinted for the door. He reached the bottom of the stairs first and almost collided with the tall stranger.
“This is Hagrid,” Monty explained once they’d all made it down the stairs, Regulus tucked securely under James’s arm and away from Sirius. “Hagrid brings Albus supplies, food, clothes and the like. We hadn’t officially met, which is why we told you to hide.”
“Best to be on the safe side,” Effie added, and Sirius wholeheartedly agreed.
“He’s going to stay for lunch, if that’s all right with you?”
“I bought me famous tossed salad,” Hagrid declared, holding up a spaghetti-stained tub with something that didn’t look like any salad Sirius had ever seen in it.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr Hagrid,” James said, holding out his hand for Hagrid to shake.
“Call me Hagrid, everybody does,” Hagrid told him before engulfing his arm with his massive hand. Regulus used James’s distraction to take his revenge and slid silently to Sirius’s side, bending down and biting his other hand.
“OUCH!!! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK REGULUS!!!!” Sirius howled.
“Sirius, language,” Effie chastised and marched them all into the dining room, where Albus was already laying out the lunch things. They took their seats: Remus and James putting themselves between the two brothers.
The salad was, in Sirius’s opinion, inedible. It contained mayonnaise, onion, olives, a small amount of iceberg lettuce, grapes, walnuts, sausage meat, radishes and gummy worms. Hagrid took most of it home with him, as even Remus didn’t fancy it.
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