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moonflower-rose · 4 months

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In-keeping with .. well.. my whole life really, I’d like to know about the food one please! Food fair 2022? 😘💕

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiii!

Shamefully, I signed up at the eleventh hour for this fest, wrote 3K, got distracted by the fact that I was throwing a massive 40th birthday party and totally missed the fest - like totally missed it, not just the deadline, I literally didn't open my emails for like two months and then it was like 'ohhhhh...fuck.'

This was the prompt I claimed:

Prompt #34 Claimed for Fic Only Food Theme: British foods/snacks Travel Theme: Import shop in a Commonwealth country Scenario: In 2002, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Golden Jubilee. Down on his luck, Draco finds a job in a Muggle pop-up import shop set up for the Queen’s visit (your choice of one of the Commonwealth countries she visited that year: Jamaica, Australia, New Zealand, or Canada). Harry is either visiting or living in the same country and goes looking for his favourite British treats. Optional Additions: Homesick Harry. Draco makes shit up about the British Royal Family when he talks to customers. Enough Union Jack-themed stuff to bury a palace Era: EWE | Ignores Epilogue Maximum Rating: Left up to creator

And below the snip is a little preview of the beast itself.

Kylie Minogue had a lot to answer for.

If Harry was being fair he would probably have admitted it was his own responsibility to thoroughly research a place he was planning a holiday to, and possibly not the responsibility of Kylie Minogue, international pop star, to educate him on the subject.

And Harry, in this theoretical version of reality where he was being fair and reasonable, had to admit he’d done absolutely no research on Australia beyond what he’d seen on episodes of Neighbours or Home and Away over the years at the Dursleys (from his vantage point between the fins of an air vent in the door of his cupboard or sometimes leaning over the bannister at the top of the stairs to strain for a look at the television). Or the occasional packet of Muggle photographs that Hermione enthusiastically shared when they’d come in the post from her parents, with bright pictures of beaches in places like Perth, Western Australia (rather different from the bleak greyness of Perth, Scotland). And that would be stretching the definition of ‘research’ to unrecognisable lengths.

On the other hand (and it was very important to consider all sides of an issue, Hermione’d always said so), Harry’d never had a reason to look up Australia at the library during school, and he hadn’t set foot in one since then either (in fact, he’d made a strenuous effort not to study at all if he could help it). Not knowing things about Australia was not uncommon, and it certainly wasn’t irresponsible (in a general, day-to-day sense); not like not knowing the Muggle road rules would be irresponsible, or not knowing the name of the current Minister for Magic. There was no expectation that the average Englishman should have any baseline knowledge about Australia. Harry had a normal amount of Australia-based information. And that amount was none.

Of course, going to a library was not his only option. Hermione’d set him up with the internet eventually, and helped him buy a computer, but he hadn’t got the hang of using either yet beyond playing Solitaire, and reading all the chain emails that Ron kept sending him about Nigerian princes who needed help getting access to their inheritance, or the ones that claimed if you didn’t send this message along to ten new people your penis would shrink to the size of an acorn and you’d have bad luck for the rest of your life. Harry’d had enough bad luck, and certainly wasn’t willing to risk his penis, so he always forwarded. You couldn’t be too careful.

But cumulatively, that left Harry with hardly any time to do research, and thus a rather short list of things he knew about Australia before he impulsively booked himself on what he’d described to Ginny as a ‘maybe a week, maybe forever’ holiday.

What Harry knew about Australia up to and including the moment he cleared Customs and Border Control had been as follows:

1 - Christmas was in the summer there, and a lunch of beer and seafood followed by an afternoon lazing around on the beach sounded kind of exciting after twenty-one years of snow and roast dinners, and more recently, mulled wine.

2 - The weather was always sunny and perfect, even in the middle of winter.

3 - The spiders were big and the snakes enormous.

4 - Nobody had heard of The Boy Who Lived, there.

There was nothing wrong with a bit of snow and a roast dinner (England could keep the mulled wine), and frankly, as appealing as prawns by the ocean sounded it would mean giving up Christmas at the Burrow and knitted Weasley jumpers, and there was nothing Harry could think of that would be worth missing that. Ron had been relieved to hear it, and was far more receptive once they’d got that cleared up.

“I’d come with you, you know,” Ron had said. He’d then stuffed most of a ham and cheese croissant into his mouth in one go and anything else he’d intended to say was muffled by pork and dairy.

“I know you would,” Harry’d said. “I just want to try doing something by myself for a change that’s not inherently dangerous.”

Ron understood, a bit, being one of many brothers.

Escaping the gloom of London in winter generally, and the never-ending microscope of the Daily Prophet specifically, was becoming less of a ‘nice to have’ and more of an essential for life. Both were wearing on Harry’s spirit, more and more as each year passed. His temper had never been thinner and he flinched every time there was a flash of light, which was especially problematic in the lead up to Christmas because there were quite a number of flashing lights around that time of year. So that was how Harry found himself on one particularly cold afternoon in late January, casually slipping on a Glamour and popping into the wizarding travel agency on Quizzic Alley to book himself an international Portkey to Melbourne, Australia, departing two weeks from the day and with an open-ended return date.

“Oh, Harry!” Hermione had gripped his hand tightly enough to hurt a little bit. “I’m very pleased for you. I’m a bit nervous about you going by yourself—I’d come with you, if you wanted me to.”

“Of course you would.” He’d squeezed back as best as he was able, but he’d started to lose feeling in his knuckles. “I’ll be alright—I’ll be great.”

While not in possession of much of a plan and even less practical knowledge, Harry hadn’t picked Melbourne completely at random either. Australia was actually perfect for what he was looking for, which was to do something a bit different and to do it completely anonymously, but not to bite off more than he could chew all in one go.

A couple of years ago, pretty much right after Hogwarts, Dean and Seamus had gone to America. The Gryffindor’s all expected that it would be for a good long while (years at the very least) but they were both back within six months, and Dean had told Harry once over beers at the Leaky that he couldn’t explain why exactly, but he’d struggled to shake off a feeling of not-rightness the whole time they were there. The money looked strange, the bread was weird, none of his shows were on the telly, and he found he missed the sound of an English accent so much that it ached inside. Hermione said it was something called ‘culture shock’, and Dean had said he’d never considered that it would happen to him, and certainly not in America.

That story was front of mind as Harry’d leaned over a pile of brochures at the travel agent’s and pushed aside Contiki tours by enchanted bus, carriage, boat or carpet, as well as locations which were both tempting and exotic. He didn’t want a cookie cutter tour - that was about the only thing he did know, that he didn’t want that. He could go to Brazil and see the beaches and the football and the amazing architecture. Or he could go to Cambodia and see the temples and jungles and elephants. He could go to Iceland and see…ice, probably. There were a million amazing things he could do in the world, but Harry had to remember a couple of fairly key factors:

1 - He had, rather recently, been through a pretty traumatic life event and his inner reservoir of resilience was at an all time low.

2 - Although he’d been on a number of pretty crazy adventures, he’d never really been out of the United Kingdom, and in fact had rarely ventured beyond either Surrey or Hogsmead.

3 - Per the previous two points, he’d spent quite a lot of his life in a cupboard.

4 - This time, he’d be really and truly on his own.

What it boiled down to was that Harry didn’t want to push himself too hard too fast, and ruin what would hopefully be a life changing experience. Life changing in a good way, for once.

Everything, including being on the run and sleeping in a tent in a forest while plotting to kill an evil wizard, was a lot easier when you had your friends with you. Honestly, Harry wasn’t entirely sure he would have got anywhere near killing Voldemort without Hermione and Ron. He’d never really had the luxury of easing himself into anything before, and if Dean and Seamus had struggled to cope with America together, Harry wasn’t confident that he’d be any better hanging off the side of a mountain somewhere, or sweating his way through a market in Morocco.

In Australia he could be a stranger in a strange land, except it wouldn’t be too strange since everyone spoke English (of a sort—Australians seemed to do rather odd things to their vowels) and used similar money, and there would be food that he recognised, and television he was used to. It was a massive step out of his comfort zone while still being not that different from his life in England. He’d watched the soaps so often over the years (or rather, listened to them from his cupboard or behind the locked door of his bedroom) that it felt like he’d practically lived there already, and suburban Melbourne seemed like it really wasn’t all that dissimilar to life in Little Whinging if Neighbours was any indication. Cul-de-sacs and nosy neighbours, and supermarkets and telly, and nosy old ladies named Madge. Just like Surrey, but warmer and with bigger spiders.

The food would be familiar, which was good, but Hermione kept saying Australia was a very multicultural place so he’d have plenty of opportunity to try all the things he’d wondered about, like sushi and dumplings, and pad thai, and scallops. You could get those things in London too, but Harry didn’t fancy the front page spread of him spitting a mussel out into a napkin that he would have got at home. Vegemite. Prawns. Those little brown bottles of bitter. It gave him a flutter of excitement in his chest.

Hermione’d said he should get the Lonely Planet guide, so Harry had, but never bothered to read it. What was the point? It wasn’t like he was headed to Vietnam, or Uruguay, or Bangladesh (was Bangladesh a country or a city?). Melbourne was basically a smaller version of London, but with more sunshine and a lazier speech pattern. It was going to be great.

Kylie Minogue really should have warned him.

#rosie answers #my asks #my fic #wip drafts thingo #wip snip #that snip got a bit hefty soz

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