When he got back to his room, the first thing Andy did was write to Hermione, agreeing to go to Diagon Alley in three days to buy enough textbooks for the next school year together.
Miss Know-It-All is still very good.
Throughout the whole year at Hogwarts, Andy couldn't find another young wizard that he could get along with so well.
In any way.
After sending the letter with his family's owl, Andy thought about it and decided to pay a visit to the Burrow.
Riding on Kyle's newly purchased flying broom, Andy identified the direction, flew over the ferret mountain, and landed down in front of the Burrow.
The Burrow was an extremely bizarre house, it was at least four stories high, built crookedly, and looked as if it was six or seven houses stacked on top of each other.
"Hi! Mrs. Weasley, good morning."
The front door of the Burrow was wide open, and Mrs. Weasley was the only one busy in the living room on the ground floor.
"Oh! Andy, dear, it's been some days since you've been here." Mrs Weasley looked very warm and gave Andy a suffocating hug.
"Where are Ron, Harry and the others?" Andy asked, struggling.
"Ron-"
Mrs. Weasley shouted upstairs, "Andy has come over, get your arse down here!"
Thump!
A sound of footsteps sounded and Ron revealed a head at the top of the stairs, smiling when he saw Andy, "Hi! Andy, you've had a hectic schedule these days."
"You know, I like to study!"
Andy spread his hands and said, "I also went to my grandfather's house as a guest some time ago."
Mrs Weasley interjected with a smile, "Ron, you should really learn from Andy, don't think you can do nothing when you're on holiday."
Ron had a bitter smile on his face.
Harry ran down the stairs and gave Andy a warm hug, "Andy, long time no see."
Andy patted Harry, "I thought you had gone missing recently, I haven't seen a reply from you in a while."
"I'm so sorry!"
Harry couldn't hold his anger at the mention of it, "All of your letters to me were intercepted by a house elf. It also cast a spell in my house and held a piece of cake over Mrs. Mason's head, and the Ministry of Magic assumed I did it."
"A house elf?"
Andy looked surprised, "Whose family is it from? It's unlikely that a house elf wouldn't have an owner."
Ron went straight for the kill, "Malfoy must have done it."
Andy thought about it for a moment, and in a rare instance, he agreed with Ron's guess, "I guess that's the case. There's no way a house elf would do something like this without his master's orders."
The one who could do such a thing was, ironically, Malfoy.
"It said its name was Dobby and that it had intercepted the letter just to stop me from going to Hogwarts."
Harry looked indignant, "But that's not going to happen, I belong there."
Andy frowned slightly, something didn't feel right.
Why had the house elf called Dobby appeared before Harry? And even if it had appeared, why would it give away its purpose?
This was not in keeping with the house elf's code of behaviour.
Ron invited, "Andy, wanna come play in my room?"
Andy: "..."
You're going to make people misunderstand when you say it in that tone.
Ron's room was located at the very top of the Burrow, just below the Ghoul Attic, and there was a sign on the door of the room that read 'Ron's Room'.
The walls of the room, and the slanted ceiling, were plastered with posters of Chudley Cannons, and even the bedsheets had the Chudley Cannons logo printed on them.
They were Ron's idols.
"It's a little small," Ron said a little sheepishly.
"Very distinctive." Andy didn't know what to say.
Harry, on the other hand, found everything here amazing, "I think it's awesome."
Harry even began to fantasize if he could just come and live in the Burrow for the summer next school year.
He could take care of his own living expenses.
"Ahem!"
Ron coughed lightly and asked somewhat coyly, "Andy, have you finished your summer homework?"
"Summer Homework?"
Andy was straight up confused, "I didn't write a word!"
Harry turned his head to look over.
He was halfway through his summer break homework, and how could Andy, a top student, not do his homework?
"I forgot it!"
Andy said bitterly, "After the holiday, I've been practising magic or reading some magic books. I forgot that we have this whole summer holiday homework thing."
Ron looked at Andy with a sympathetic face.
They had a lot of summer homework, and now that there were less than twenty days left before school started, it was likely that Andy would have to spend a lot of time catching up on his homework.
Harry wanted to say something.
He wanted to lend Andy his homework, but he was worried that a good student like Andy wouldn't be able to read the homework he had written.
"Ugh! Guess I'll have to borrow Hermione's homework to copy."
Andy sighed and said rather helplessly, "I'll have to write a letter to Hermione when I get back and see if I can get her to let me copy her homework. I'm too lazy to work on it."
Harry, Ron: "..."
What is this bitter, astringent, sour feeling all about?
Why don't we Gryffindors have a classmate like this?
"By the way, Andy, you said you've been practising magic?"
Harry noticed the blind spot, "Aren't young wizards not allowed to cast magic outside of school?"
Ron also looked at Andy with a curious expression.
Andy shrugged, "We have some connections at the Ministry of Magic."
With that, Andy pulled out his wand and without reciting an incantation, the two of them, Harry and Ron, flew up.
Putting the two down, Andy laughed, "On this holiday, I've been practising silent spell casting, and now I can cast most of the spells silently."
Harry looked envious.
Dobby had cast a spell at his house, and he had ended up getting a warning letter from the Ministry of Magic once. Andy had cast spells at random and nothing had happened.
Ron was relieved instead.
Luckily, his dad didn't have many connections at the Ministry of Magic, otherwise, he would have had to practice magic this summer as well.
After chatting with Harry and Ron for a while, it was nearing noon when Andy got up to say goodbye.
"Have lunch at my place before you go, we can still play Quidditch together this afternoon." Ron invited.
"Don't forget, I have a ton of summer homework."
Andy pretended to be helpless, "If Hermione won't help me with my homework, I won't have much time to spare next."
It wasn't that Andy was being pretentious, it was just that Andy really didn't have anything in common with them. The topics that Harry and Ron talked about were really hard for Andy to get interested in.
But when talking with others, Andy couldn't just keep quiet, could he?
This morning, Andy had a very torturous time.
But there was no way, connections had to be maintained.
Although people were independent individuals, they could not leave the group to survive alone.
In his previous life, Andy had gotten used to this kind of thing.
"Well, good luck," Harry said.
"You too."
Andy warned, "House elves are stubborn creatures, and if Dobby's goal is to stop you from returning to Hogwarts, it will never give up easily."
"Watch yourself!"
----
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