Chapter 040

Mrs. Crawft huffed a bit as Harry changed the subject, but decided not to call him out on it and instead went back to scrambling eggs. "Breakfast is almost ready so I don't really need any help here, but if you could set the table, that would be nice."

"Very well."

Harry knew where all the plates and utensils were, and he quickly and efficiently gathered the plates, forks, knives, and cups, and began arranging them on the table with four people in mind.

"Harry," Anastasia called to him. He looked over to see that she hadn't turned from her self-appointed task as she spoke. "I'm going to start putting breakfast on the table. When you finish setting the table, could you please go and wake up Lisa?"

"Sure," Harry replied, and after he finished his task made his way into the living where Lisa was still sleeping heavily on the couch. He noticed with some amusement that the girl's mouth was wide open and she had a small trickle of drool escaping the left corner of her mouth.

Harry knelt down next to the girl and began to gently shake her. "Lisa, it's time to get up." Despite his attempts it took a while before his friend actually began to stir. Lisa had always been a heavy sleeper. Her mother had once joked that the world could come to an end and she would probably sleep through it.

"Mmmmggggg..." Lisa let out a long, drawn out groan as her eyes began to open blearily. She was forced to shut them almost as soon as she opened them due to the light hitting her face. "Could someone turn that light off?" she asked, her voice coarse from disuse and sleepiness.

"Unfortunately the light you're talking about just so happens to be the sun," Harry informed the girl. "Which, by the way, is impossible to turn off."

Lisa just groaned some more, turned onto her side, and tried to go back to sleep. Harry frowned as he realized that his friend was going to be stubborn this morning, and decided that more drastic measures were needed to wake her. Reaching out, he grabbed her side and gave it a light pinch.

This action earned a loud squeal from Lisa, who shot into a sitting position and jerked away from Harry. She rubbed the spot where Harry pinched her, glaring at the boy in question, who could only watch her in amusement.

"Breakfast is almost ready," he told her without preamble. "Your mum asked me to wake you up."

"Did you have to pinch me?" Lisa asked with a grumble.

"I probably could have found another way to wake you," Harry admitted with a shrug. "But this was the most expedient method." Lisa tossed him a glare. Harry matched her glare with a smile so bright it had to be fake. After a moment his friend grumbled about good for nothing best friends, causing him to chuckle.

"Did you wake my daughter up yet, Harry?" Anastasia asked as she stuck her head out of the kitchen door. "I thought I heard her squealing."

"I was not squealing!" Lisa said with a huff as her cheeks took on a slight red tint.

"Yes, she's awake now," Harry told the mother of his best friend. Standing up, he offered his hand to Lisa who, after several seconds of glaring at it, took the proffered hand and allowed him to pull her up.

They walked into the dining room to see that Mrs. Crawft had already put all of the food on the table. Both of them moved to what was essentially their assigned seats, Harry near the head of the table on the left side and Lisa right next to him.

"No need to stand on ceremony, you two," Mrs. Crawft said as she moved around the counter that separated the dining room from the kitchen, a pitcher of orange juice in hand. She filled their glasses with the freshly made beverage and beamed at them. "Dig in."

Not needing to be told twice, Lisa was quick to grab the large spoon stuck in the bowl of eggs and serve herself up. Harry shook his head at his friends enthusiasm, and decided to help her out a bit by setting several pieces of bacon and a serving of hash browns on her plate. When finished, he served himself with a much larger serving of food that had Lisa shaking her head at him in turn.

"I don't know how you can eat so much," she mumbled as she gave his plate the evil eye. "Especially when you're so tiny."

"I'm taller than you are," Harry grumbled. It was true that he was technically thin. While his body was layered with muscles that really had no right existing on one so young, they would never be very big. He just wasn't built that way.

"Besides, with all the exercise I do, as well as my martial arts and football, I burn a lot of energy. I need more food than you to keep my body going." There was another reason for his need to eat more, he believed. But it was something of an untested theory, and definitely not something he could tell Lisa or her parents, even if he did manage to find ample evidence to support it.

"Right, right." Lisa rolled her eyes as she took a fork full of eggs and put it on her mouth, chewing carefully before swallowing. "And just what do you think I do when I go to my dance classes? Sit there like a lemon and watch everybody else dance?"

"You're smaller than me," Harry argued, "much smaller than me. And I didn't say you were lazy. Plus, I'm a male. Generally speaking, the male body requires more sustenance than the female body. The theory is that..."

"I don't need to hear your technobabble," Lisa interrupted him, causing Harry to shrug indifferently.

"Then you shouldn't have said anything." Lisa grunted, but didn't reply as she turned fully to the task of eating. This kind of banter was nothing new. More often then not he and Lisa would trade barbs back and forth when they weren't engrossed in something both of them enjoyed. However, it rarely happened when they were eating sans dinner.

Harry knew why she was doing it, of course, and couldn't begrudge her for it. He felt much the same way she did. And so when she grew silent, he started up on another subject, forcing her to speak some more while they ate.

Sitting farther away at the other end of the table, Mrs. Crawft watched them with a sad smile.

The banter between the pair was interrupted when the door to the dining room opened and Mr. Crawft walked in.

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