How Severus Spends His Summer Hols

DISCLAIMER: JKR owns everything that is in reference to the Harry Potter world if it is in one of my works of fiction. If it is not found in one of her creations, then it is mine unless otherwise stated. I am not making any profit from the writing of this story.


A/N~~I wanted to let people know if they were interested in any side bits about Hols, that there is a livejournal community where myself and unbroken_halo are putting up slices of life in Echo. There you will find not only Harry and Severus, but Damon and Grant and others from the story. You will find early bits of Damon and Grant's relationship, Harry and Severus while still at Hogwarts, just different bits. If anyone would like to see something from the Hols universe, please let me know and we'll see what we can do. Here is the addy for Stirs of Echo, please stop in. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=stirs_of_echo . To the one that asked for a definition of vanilla...it means regular or plain.


Harry quickly said goodbye to the Weasleys as he turned back from the sight of Lucius standing in the doorway. Oh he knew this was going to be a damn good story, now the only question was did he want to wake up Severus to hear it too. The aristocratic blond looked around, albeit a little sheepishly but with a smile on his face before he turned and shut the door behind him, hanging his jacket on the peg behind the door.

"Good morning Harry, how you doing?" Lucius asked as if nothing out of the ordinary were going on. The younger wizard only looked at him with one eyebrow raised as he wondered just exactly what he should ask and what he should leave alone. Lucius smiled as he noticed Harry was still sitting there with his tee-shirt pulled up a bit where he had been showing Ron and Hermione how he was starting to show in his pregnancy. "My my Harry, I hadn't realized that you were starting to show this much. I must say that it does become you."

Harry was struck speechless for a few moments as he just watched the older man, before he shyly pulled his tee shirt back down. "Thank you Lucius, may I get some breakfast for you?" He averted his eyes and unconsciously chewed on his lower lip as his fingers nervously played with the hem of his shirt. Lucius came further into the living room and sat down in Severus’ chair before leaning over to take off his boots.

"No thank you Harry, I've already had breakfast. Have you heard from Draco yet this morning?" Lucius asked as he stood up and stretched. He had noticed when he pulled up on the motorcycle that the car he had hired was not in the driveway, therefore his son was not home and most likely had not been home the night previous.

“No, he hasn’t called, but I have the number to the place where Jo Velden is staying, she is the one he left with last night,” Harry offered as he edged to the window and glanced out to see Sev’s bike parked under one of the big trees in the front yard unharmed. “Did you stay at Kat’s last night?” he asked as he turned back to where the blond was picking up his boots and making ready to go up to his room.

He turned back to Harry with a good natured smirk on his sharp features. “A gentleman does not tell tales that might impugn on a good woman’s virtue’s Harry.” And with that he climbed the stairs to leave the younger wizard stunned and standing alone in the living room wondering what had happened the night before. He stood for a moment longer and then shook his head before going into the kitchen and deciding he was going to learn to do something that morning.

He pulled out the cookbook Grant had left there for him and sat down at the kitchen table with it, staring at the cover while he tried to decide what would be the best thing for him to make for his husband. He knew Severus had a wicked sweet tooth, so maybe biscuits would be good. Opening the book to that particular section, he began to look through recipe after recipe wondering if they had the ingredients necessary to make any of them. Sugar biscuits seemed simple enough and he thought they had everything required, so he began to pull various items out of the cupboard and drawers. Putting himself into battle mode, he picked up the hand mixer and began to dump ingredients into a bowl in no particular order.

Draco Malfoy walked into the kitchen of the Snape house nearly an hour and a half later and found a disaster unlike any he had seen in many years. Harry was at the counter, mixing bowls strewn about, flour and globs of cookie dough were everywhere, and the smell of something burning was thick in the air. Harry looked up as he heard the door open, a look of sheepish surprise and frustration on his face. Draco nearly laughed out loud as he saw in the exasperated look of frustration on Harry's face, but stopped as he remembered how angry Pansy used to get when she had been pregnant with Evette.

"Harry are you alright?" Draco asked as he moved further into the kitchen and began to assess the damages. The smaller wizard angrily threw a dish towel across the room and glared at the blond before he stomped over and sat down at the kitchen table. "Harry... what exactly are you trying to make?" Draco asked as he peered into one of the mixing bowls.

"I was trying to make biscuits," Harry said with a pout as he tried not to laugh. "But I've never seen biscuits look quite like this before. I think I followed the recipe, but they are just so… so not right." He held up a misshapen, blackened lump of something that at one point in time might have been a biscuit. He tossed it to the table and started laughing as he looked around his kitchen. Oh Merlin it was a mess! And he still had no biscuits to show for it. He reached for his wand to clean the mess up, waving it lazily to banish the remains of ingredients that had given their lives in vain to his biscuit baking attempt.

"Don't you know how to cook Harry?" Draco asked as he stood there with his hands on his hips and surveyed the mess around him. He couldn't believe that the boy who lived couldn't to make simple biscuits, even he could do that. Harry just rolled his eyes and threw another dish towel at him. Draco caught it and sat down next to Harry at the table, pulling the cook book towards him and looking over the page it was opened to. “Is this what you were trying to make?”

“Trying is the operative word, failing is more like it,” Harry said as he sat back and drank the glass of milk he’d been replenishing all morning. “And to answer your question, no I don’t know how to cook. I can heat things up from a tin and make noodles with dried cheese sauce from a packet.” He shrugged at Draco’s horrified look. “Even when I was with…the other man…he didn’t have me cook. He’d bring things home and I’d serve it.”

“Let’s not talk about him Harry, yeah?” Draco said as he picked up one of the misshapen biscuits. “You and I are going to make proper biscuits today,” he said with a grin while pulling his wand from his pocket and banishing the attempts from the table. Harry looked at him skeptically and raised one brow as he sipped his milk.

“I suppose youknow how to cook?” he drawled as Draco stood and began to move about the kitchen with surprising efficiency, pulling down, organizing ingredients, utensils, and creating a workspace for them.

“I certainly do. I took classes in London actually, a couple of years ago,” Draco said as he conjured an apron from a dish towel and tied it over his clothes. He looked at Harry still sitting at the table. “Are you going to sit there and watch, or are you going to get up off your arse and learn something?” he snarked and conjured another apron for the pregnant wizard as he muttered something about the shame of not being about to even make biscuits for his little girl. That got Harry out of the chair and the apron around his waist.

“Okay, teach me Malfoy,” he said as he poked at the butter with his finger, only to have the blond smack his hand away. Harry rolled his eyes and made a sweeping gesture with his hands. “Go on then, show me.”

Draco shook his head at him and smirked. “You know it really isn’t any wonder you were so awful in Potions class. You cannot throw everything in willy nilly and expect it to come together as something recognizable, you know,” he said as he began to measure out ingredients and add them in the right order. “If you just actually read the directions Harry, then you will have something that turns out not only edible, but really good.” He handed the mixer to Harry and pushed the bowl in front of him.

“Well I never had the benefit of fancy lessons, you know,” Harry snorted as he flicked the switch and jabbed the beaters at the slurry of ingredients in the bowl. Draco folded his arms and looked at him. Harry glared back at him as he turned the mixer off. “What?”

“Fancy lessons?” Draco shook his head and began to dump the flour into the egg and sugar mixture. “Hardly fancy at all, try the basement of a church,” he replied as he reached over Harry’s hand and turned the mixer back on low. “Blend that in while I add more, go slow.” He dumped more flour in as Harry looked at him.

“Cooking lessons in a Muggle church?” he asked incredulously, he just couldn’t picture Draco in that setting. “Why would you go there and not like a school or something?” He kept the mixer going and waited as Draco worked out how to answer.

“It wasn’t really about learning how to cook Harry,” he began and then stopped as he looked out the window above the sink. “I needed a place to get back to me.” He looked at Harry when he said that, waiting to see if he was going to be judged. “After Pansy was killed, I really lost it for awhile.”

“So you ended up in Muggle London?” Harry asked as Draco took the bowl of dough, casting a cooling charm on it and then flouring the countertop lightly before he turned the dough out. “What do you need now?”

“Rolling pin, I don’t suppose you have one?” Draco asked as he bit his lower lip and looked around for something suitable. He picked up a drinking glass, quickly transfiguring it before he began to roll out the dough. “I was in London for some reason, I don’t even recall what it was now, but I passed by this church and looked in the casement window by chance and watched these people. They were smiling and laughing and I realized that I hadn’t laughed in months,” he picked up another drinking glass and used it to cut biscuits from the rolled out dough, placing them on the biscuit sheets Harry held for him. “I walked in and signed up. I went to lessons for well over a year and learned more than pasta and biscuits. I found some peace again and I could be a proper father to Evette.”

Harry listened and he could begin to see the peace the other man had found. He was far from the bully he’d known as a school boy. “While you are here, would you mind teaching me to make some other things?” he asked as he slid the biscuit sheets in the cooker and then set the timer. He did think that these biscuits looked a lot better than his attempts. Draco nodded as he set the kettle on the hob to boil for tea.

“Sure Harry, I don’t mind, after all Sev shouldn’t starve,” he smirked as he started to clean up their mess. It didn’t take long before all the biscuits were baked and cooling and the pair was sitting at the table having a cuppa and enjoying the fruits of their labour.