was not allowed to ask for anything. He was learning, slowly, that if someone -- like his father, or Mrs. Weasley -- offered him something, he could accept. But even that was oft times hard to remember, since Dudley had often played the trick on him of offering something -- food, a toy, a shirt that had no rips in it -- and then swiping the thing away when Harry said yes. He would then run to his parents and tell them that Harry was trying to steal his stuff.
Harry had learned his lessons very well, though from the beatings he still got, until his father came, no one would have known.
Ron could ask, though. Obviously. He jumped up and down, hands in the air as if he could catch one of his brothers if he leapt high enough. 'I wanna play! I'll be Chaser, okay? Okay, George? I can be Chaser, right?'
'I dunno, Ronniekins. Chaser?' one of the twins said and grinned, turning to the other. 'He'd make a better Bludger, wouldn't he?'
'Right you are,' said the other, who Harry was pretty sure was George, really. 'The way he knocks into things.'
'You want to be a Bludger?' They both asked Ron at the same time.
'No! That's
The argument went on a few more minutes, until Ginny shouted that
Maybe he had it all wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.
Regardless, they were all up on brooms a few minutes after that, with no one being a Bludger, not even Ginny. The pitch was no more than a field with a goal post at either end, but Harry found it strangely beautiful despite the lack of precision and straight rows of flowers. Or maybe because of that lack.
'It's all hid from the Muggles,' Fred said, as if that made sense to Harry.
'Dad's real careful about that,' added George, kicking off into the air again.
'They live over there, Muggles do,' Fred told him, pointing off in the distance where Harry could just see the tip of a church spire.
'And they don't even know we're here!'
They played for a good long time, everyone alternately playing Chaser or Beater, and only when they were all sweaty and the score was around a million points for each team -- as neither had a Keeper or Seeker -- did they end the game.
'Mum said to show Harry the pumpkins,' said Ron as they put up the brooms. The twins suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be, but when they tried to escape the yard, a call from their mother brought them back to Ron, Ginny, and Harry, and a reluctant trip to the pumpkin patch.
The garden was smaller by far than Hagrid's, but the pumpkins were large and very round, and were just turning orange. Ron walked through the rows, pointing out the ones he had planted himself, as Ginny did the same. Harry said they looked good.
'You ever planted anything?' Ron asked him.
He nodded. Every spring. Aunt Petunia liked annuals as well as perennials, and so every spring and summer, he was on his knees in the dirt, mulching, hoeing, weeding, watering, and all the rest. He knew how to plant things, and how to make sure they were properly taken care of after that. Many of his early beatings were earned while learning this skill.
'What?' Ron asked.
'Daffodils,' Harry replied. 'Roses, delphiniums, peonies, daisies, nemesia, geraniums, snapdragons--'
