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This wasn't Harry's first time seeing a house-elf.

In fact, since Erina entered Hogwarts, almost everyone in the school knew about the existence of house-elves. The students knew exactly where their three meals a day came from, and who was helping to clean the rooms and wash the clothes.

Sometimes Harry even felt that he was like a house-elf in the Dursleys' house.

Cleaning windows, washing cars, trimming lawns, tidying flower beds, pruning and watering roses, repainting garden benches... And after this summer, he was also responsible for preparing three meals a day, and helping to clean the kitchen and living room.

Fortunately, this kind of life would only last for one more month at most.

And on the other hand, as Harry began to take care of some of the kitchen affairs, the Dursleys' attitude towards him had improved a little. At least the sarcasm and ridicule weren't as much as before. If it weren't for accidentally slapping a slice of bacon on Uncle Vernon's face just now, if he had begged a few times, he might have been able to get an extra chance for Hedwig to stretch her wings.

Temporarily putting aside the emotions from the dining room, Harry frowned, looking at the two little elves wrestling together.

The house-elf that appeared in front of Harry this time was slightly different from what he remembered.

Unlike the energetic house-elves in Hogwarts Castle, wearing napkins with the Hogwarts crest (in fact, Erina had asked them to change the napkins to small clothes at the end of the semester), the two house-elves rolling out of his closet looked like beggars.

The house-elf that was at a disadvantage looked very old. Except for a dirty rag around its waist, its whole body was almost naked. The wrinkled skin made it look several times larger than it actually was.

Although its head was bald like all house-elves, a large pile of white hair grew out of its bat-like ears. Its eyes were bloodshot, watery, and gray, and its fleshy nose was large, almost like a pig's nose.

At this time, Kreacher was desperately waving his skinny arms, trying to grab back the letter that had fallen into the hands of the younger elf.

The younger house-elf was wearing an old pillowcase, but there were a few holes opened in the arms and legs. Apart from that, Harry noticed that the elf's fingers and ears were covered with scars, as if it had been severely abused. It was because of these scars that it couldn't easily subdue Kreacher.

"Oh--hello," Harry said subconsciously, a little bewildered.

"Harry Potter!" the younger house-elf squealed. "Dobby has been wanting to meet you, sir... It is a great honor... Dobby has heard of your greatness, sir..."

At the same time, the old elf also raised his head, muttering something as he looked at Harry.

"Is it true? Of course, Kreacher saw the scar, it must be true, the boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher doesn't know how he did it--oh, yes, the master's letter! Although the master is a nasty lowlife, Kreacher will never allow the despicable people of other families to steal the master's letter to Harry Potter!"

Then, taking advantage of Dobby's distraction, Kreacher suddenly lunged over again, trying to grab the envelope back.

However, compared to the young and agile Dobby, the elderly Kreacher was obviously much slower. Before Kreacher's fingers could touch the envelope, Dobby had nimbly jumped aside, squealing in rebuttal.

"Dobby is not stealing, Dobby is just temporarily holding it to protect Harry Potter's safety--"

"Wait, besides this letter... Did you intercept all my friends' letters too?"

Harry gradually understood the gist of the conversation between the two elves, frowned, and looked at Dobby angrily.

Last year it was Uncle Vernon, and this year it was a house-elf from who knows where. It seemed that every time it got close to this time, he had a hard time getting the letters sent to him.

"Harry Potter, don't be angry with Dobby--Dobby is doing it all for..."

Dobby jumped around the room, dodging Kreacher's attacks, and anxiously blinked his eyes in defense.

However, as Harry began to cooperate with Kreacher to block its path in the room, Dobby had to start making noises in the room, using various ornaments or sundries to create space for himself to move.

"Where are my letters?! Where did you throw my friends' letters!"

"Not thrown away, the letters are still with Dobby, sir."

Dobby said quickly, casually waving the trash can to knock away the attacking Kreacher, jumped to the top of the closet, and pulled out a thick stack of letters from the pillowcase he was wearing. Harry recognized Draco's slightly ornate vintage font at a glance, Ron's flamboyant handwriting, Hermione's methodical and neat font, and Erina's unique delicate and lovely writing...

"Harry Potter, don't be angry, Dobby is doing it for your own good, because there may be danger at Hogwarts this year...

Dobby anxiously blinked his eyes and looked down at Harry.

"Dobby originally thought... If Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten him... Harry Potter might not want to go back to school, sir... Harry Potter must promise Dobby not to return to Hogwarts, and I will return the letters to you."

Harry didn't feel like listening, and reached out to grab the letters, but Dobby jumped and dodged.

"No," Harry said angrily, "Give me my friends' letters!"

With his and Kreacher's joint siege, they finally confined Dobby to a very narrow space. Seeing that Harry was about to catch this agile elf and take back the letters it had intercepted,

Just then, footsteps suddenly sounded in the hallway outside the door.

Uncle Vernon's heavy body stepped over the wooden floor, making a creaking sound, accompanied by the man's roar.

"What are you doing?! Boy, are you trying to tear down my house?!"

*Pa.*

*Pa.*

A look of panic appeared on the faces of the two house-elves, and they simultaneously Apparated, along with the stack of letters that were only a few centimeters away from Harry's fingertips, and disappeared in front of Harry in an instant.

In the empty room, only Harry was left, and the bedroom that had been turned upside down.

Then, the doorknob turned open.

"Ah--very good--very good--"

Uncle Vernon's fierce, chubby face appeared in front of Harry. He looked around at Harry's bedroom, which looked as if it had just been wantonly ravaged by several strong men, brought his face close to Harry, terrifyingly close, and slowly said, grinding his teeth.

"Learned to vent your anger, right? If I didn't come up, were you planning to smash the windows of my house? Or were you planning to burn the bed? Or put a few more deep scratches on the wall? Huh? Boy, speak!"

"These, these are..."

Harry looked around at the mess in the bedroom, looked at Vernon Dursley's gloomy face, and explained weakly.

"Uncle Vernon, I know this sounds absurd, but two house-elves were fighting here just now... One of them intercepted my friends' letters to me, and the other was trying to get the letters back for me..."

"House--elves? Why don't you say it was fairies fighting?"

Vernon Dursley grinned, revealing his somewhat yellow teeth, and said coldly with a fake smile.

Harry swallowed and explained in a low voice.

"Fairies and elves are different, although there are indeed fairies, but they are mostly in Gringotts Wizarding Bank..."

"Enough! I don't have the time or the interest to listen to your nonsense here!"

Mr. Dursley roared, spitting on Harry's face, and directly interrupted Harry's words.

"Listen to me, boy!"

Uncle Vernon pointed his thick finger in front of Harry's nose and said fiercely.

"Tonight I may make the biggest deal of my life. If you can help your Aunt Petunia prepare dinner and help me successfully get this order, I won't care about your damn owl. It can fly however it wants at night, as long as it's not seen by the surrounding neighbors, or doesn't let your disreputable friends come to the door."

After a slight pause, Vernon Dursley raised his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes.

"Of course, if you dare to play any tricks with the dinner, I swear I will make you regret being born into this world--and if I find you smashing things here again, then you can move back to the small cupboard downstairs."

Harry naturally knew what Uncle Vernon was talking about regarding the dinner.

He had been talking about it almost every time he opened his mouth for the past two weeks.

A wealthy builder and his wife were coming to dinner, and Uncle Vernon hoped that the man would order a large number of drilling machines from his company. If they were lucky, the family would have money to buy a villa in Majorca.

Compared to Aunt Petunia's barely passable British housewife cooking skills, Harry's cooking skills were much better.

After a year of Potions class at Hogwarts, Snape's guidance on knife skills and portions, and Erina's occasional cooking tips, Harry, who already had a certain talent in home economics skills, improved very quickly.

In some simple cooking aspects, he could almost reach the normal standards of house-elves at Hogwarts in the past.

Although there weren't many expensive ingredients to choose from, Erina's philosophy was to make the most delicious and rich dishes with the most common ingredients. In this respect, Eastern cuisine could leave Western food several streets behind.

"Understood, understood, don't worry, Uncle Vernon, I will cook well tonight."

Looking at Uncle Vernon's fierce expression, Harry nodded and said extremely seriously.

"But... about Hedwig, you must keep your word!"

Regarding tonight's dishes, Harry had already finalized them with the Dursley family a week ago.

Because it was a family dinner, it wasn't prepared too complicatedly. There were two types of pies as the main course:

The first one was the traditional British fish pie that Harry often ate at Hogwarts. It only needed to cover the fried fish, cheese, cream, onion, and diced carrots with mashed potatoes, and put it in the oven to bake.

Compared to the Stargazy pie, this was obviously much simpler.

The second one was the steak and kidney pie, which was common in Scotland. Onions, steak, and beef kidneys were mixed in the pie, and it was especially satisfying to chew on while drinking beer, which was especially suitable for starting a business conversation.

For hot pot dishes, Harry was preparing Lancashire hotpot.

This was a casserole dish that the Gryffindor wizards often secretly made by the fireplace in the common room.

The main thing about this dish was that you needed to slice all kinds of vegetables, lamb, and beef beforehand. Add salt, pepper, and flour to the meat slices, marinate them for a while in advance, then remove the excess flour, throw them into the pot and stir-fry with onions, carrots, broth, thyme, and rosemary, and finally cover them with slices of potatoes and butter. Put it in the oven and it's ready to serve.

Since there was no oven in the common room, the Gryffindor wizards usually transformed the cauldron into a large cauldron, suspended it directly in the fireplace, and used flame charms to evenly heat it from all directions to achieve a similar effect to an oven.

In addition, there were jam pudding, mango chicken (made by mixing bananas, apricots, mayonnaise, and chicken), cream frosting violet cake (this was Aunt Petunia's specialty), stewed bean soup... these common dishes.

In short, this dinner was the most important thing for the Dursley family this summer.

In order to ensure that everything went smoothly, Vernon Dursley even overcame some of his fear of magic and didn't care at all that the cooking skills Harry showed might be from the teaching content of the wizarding school - anyway, wizards were also humans, and they also had to eat. If the wizard's food could help him get the order, he could even tolerate Harry using a wand to touch things in the kitchen.

"It's best this way, it's good for all of us."

Uncle Vernon stared at Harry intently for a while, as if trying to tell if he was lying, and then slowly continued, raising his voice to make sure his son and wife downstairs could hear.

"Okay, then I think it's best for all of us to go over the arrangements for the evening again at noon..."

……

Meanwhile, on the other side.

Number 12, Grimmauld Place, the ancestral home of the Black family.

"What did you say? The Malfoy family's house-elf stole the letters I gave to Harry?!"

Sirius Black, who was fiddling with his beloved flying motorcycle in the hall, suddenly stood up, frowned heavily, and looked at the old house-elf standing in front of him.

Kreacher nodded, his cloudy eyes flashing with annoyance, and said in an affirmative tone.

"That's right, I've seen that guy named Dobby at Malfoy Manor before. He's the Malfoy family's house-elf. Not just your letters, master, I saw that he had a lot of other people's letters to Harry Potter in his hands."

"Malfoy? Hmph, Lucius is getting too bold."

Sirius Black snorted coldly, casually straightened the giant flying motorcycle that Hagrid had returned to him, a trace of coldness flashed in his eyes, as well as a hint of eager excitement.

Although Dumbledore didn't allow him to go to the Dursleys' house to pick up Harry, nor did he allow him to actively go and chat with those former Death Eaters one by one, if this kind of thing happened, then as Harry's legal godfather, he had to take care of it.

"Just right, I'm worried about not having the chance to visit Lily's sister's family and have a good chat about Harry..."