Choices and Consequences

Chapter 32

Albus Dumbledore stood in the anteroom outside Cornelius Fudge's office. It was unusual for the Minister to call him to London - normally they would discuss things in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, by Dumbledore's request, since it meant that he didn't need to leave the school where he felt his primary responsibility lay.

The fact that this also meant that he met the Minister on his own terms was an added advantage, especially since it forced Fudge to drop everything to seek him out and discouraged him from rely on Dumbledore's judgement for every little problem that occurred.

Now he longed heartily for the days when Fudge consulted him regularly and relied on the Headmaster's input, since it meant he could easily sway the man into his own way of thinking. Since the resurrection of Lord Voldemort, Fudge had ignored his advice and indeed had come to see him as a threat to his own job and to society in general.

This was why Dumbledore was both intrigued and a little concerned that he'd been called to London to meet with the Minister. Recent events suggested it unlikely that he was seeking advice, and the timing was curious, too -Christmas Eve was a day when the Minister would normally be taking it easy while all his minions scuttled around trying to get things done before their brief holiday.

A frown crossed Dumbledore's face as he recalled the instructions Percy Weasley had given him.

"I'm afraid the Minister is rather busy with another important matter. You'll wait here for him, Professor Dumbledore," he'd stated coldly as he opened the heavy wooden door to the waiting room, and let it clang shut behind the Headmaster as he left the room.

The noise of the door closing behind him sounded ominous - as though it were a prison door being locked and bolted to ensure he didn't escape.

He waited patiently in the comfortable seat that was provided for about twenty minutes before his vexation at the situation stirred him, and he paced the room briefly instead. Spying the connecting door to the Minister's office curiously, he briefly considered using magic to eavesdrop on the ostensibly important meeting the Minister was holding, but as he had pulled his magic around him, he sensed complicated warding charms on the door. While he could easily have dispelled the charms, it would be obvious to the Minister and his staff, and he changed his mind about it. He wished for one of the Weasley twins' Extendible Ear listening devices, instead.

Eventually, Percy returned to the room from the door leading to the corridor and offered him a drink, which Dumbledore declined. The Minister's Assistant briefly looked a little perturbed about this, but then shrugged, and was about to leave when Dumbledore stopped him.

"Why are you acting like this, Mister Weasley?" he asked placing a hand on the former Head Boy's arm.

Percy shrugged the hand off. "I am doing what I was taught to - respecting my superiors and helping them maintain their authority. I would have thought that you would understand. Wasn't that the whole point of appointing me Head Boy?"

"Don't you see what pain you bring to your family, Percy?" Dumbledore asked gently, ignoring Percy's question.

"You dare mention my family?" Percy spat. "After what you've done?" he continued, raising his voice.

"Come now, Percy," the Headmaster tried to placate him, but was interrupted by an even more vicious tirade.

"You've put my family on the wrong side of the law, and put them in danger, too!" Percy cried, his eyes screwing up in anger as he glared at his one-time idol.

Dumbledore was a bit fazed by Percy's attitude. He had thought that the young man had made his peace with his parents, at least, and had even been to The Burrow and delivered Christmas presents, in stark contrast to his actions the year before.

"I thought that it was Potter that was the culprit," Percy continued heatedly, "but it wasn't at all - it was always you!"

"Surely you don't believe that?" Dumbledore asked softly. "It's not true at all."

"Isn't it?" he shouted. "That's what it seems like! They all believed him and rejected me! You believed him, and look where it's got us! You've ruined my family, Dumbledore!"

Percy looked as though he was close to tears, and the rage that had built up inside him was ready to be let out at the Headmaster.

Unnoticed, the door to the Minister's office opened, and Cornelius Fudge stepped into the anteroom, interrupting the argument.

"Here, here! Calm down!" the Minister's voice broke into the fray. "Heavens above! What are you arguing about?"

He didn't wait for an answer, but steered Dumbledore into his office with an instruction to Percy to return promptly with a fresh pot of tea.

"Come in, come in, Dumbledore," Fudge exhorted as he guided his guest in.

Slightly distracted by his confrontation with Percy, the Headmaster's eyes briefly flickered around the Minister's sumptuous office, taking in his surroundings. It hadn't changed much since his last visit. The portraits of former Ministers were still located high up around the rafters of the room where Fudge had placed them so their voices couldn't be heard when they wanted to impart their advice to the incumbent.

The tall and windows still looked out across an idealised view of Diagon Alley where folk bustled busily from one shop to another and gave the impression of industrious prosperity.

Dumbledore could vaguely sense the charms that had been placed on the window, and had realised that Fudge only wanted to see his own version of what life on the street was really like, not the dirty, grimy reality that the Alley presented outside this corner of the Ministry building, mere yards away from the entrance to Knockturn Alley.

Dumbledore's attention was more firmly drawn to the other occupants of the room. Ensconced comfortably in one of the Minister's leather chairs, and with a supercilious smirk on his face as he watched Dumbledore's reaction to his presence, was Silas Birtles. Alongside him, sitting ramrod straight, was the intimidating presence of Gerald Moorhouse.

Birtles was a shot, squat man with beetle brows and a tendency to leer at just about everyone he met, no matter who they were. His hair was slicked back with snake oil and gleamed darkly reflecting the bright lights of the Minister's office.

Dumbledore knew him as one of Lucius Malfoy's business partners and he had temporarily held a seat on the Hogwarts Board of Governors, but had shown little interest in the school, simply acting as an extra vote for Malfoy Senior.

He had a rather unsavoury reputation and, if rumour was to be believed, his support at the recent Ministerial election had come directly from Voldemort and those who agreed with his pureblood agenda. As far as he knew, Birtles wasn't a Death Eater himself - Dumbledore suspected that the small, greasy-looking man was far too squeamish to involve himself in any hands-on activity - but he certainly had the support of many who were, and who were still at large, terrorising the nation.

Moorhouse, on the other hand, was something of an enigma. He'd worked his way through the Auror ranks and had the wiry slenderness associated with well-trained and hard-bitten combatants. His closely cropped hair was silvery, though he wasn't all that advanced an age, perhaps into his mid-forties.

He was one of those who'd consistently taken a neutral viewpoint in many of the wizarding world's political arguments, seemingly content to do his job to the best of his ability rather than getting distracted by the political games that those at the top of the Ministry played. To see him aligned with Birtles and with Fudge was rather worrying to Dumbledore, who had always assumed that, if push came to shove, Moorhouse would be one of those he could rely upon to ensure that Wizarding law-enforcement stayed as ethical as possible.

Neither man got up to shake Dumbledore's hand. Birtles gave him a sneer, and Moorhouse more or less ignored him when he nodded in his direction.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he greeted, as he sat down in the slightly firmer chair that faced the Minister across his desk.

Fudge walked around his desk and sat down, smiling widely at his guests.

"Well now, Dumbledore," he began. "I thought we'd have something of an informal chat."

As he settled down, Percy bustled back in with a tray of cups, carefully balancing them and placing the tray on the edge of the Minister's desk.

The tea was already poured into the cups, which struck Dumbledore as a little odd, and as Percy offered him milk or lemon in rather a surly tone of voice, and his choice of sweetener, he casually cast a wandless detection charm over his cup. He wasn't the least surprised to find it laced with a small dose of verisaterum, perhaps only a drop or two, but sufficient to make most people more likely to tell the truth.

This only exacerbated the unease he'd felt while waiting. It wasn't the truth serum itself that worried him - he'd deliberately developed a resistance to it over a number of years - it was the fact that the Minister felt the need to use it at all.

Taking a sip of the hot milky tea, he settled back into his seat, waiting as Percy scuttled out of the room again.

From the seats to his right Silas Birtles spoke.

"I'm sure you'll be interested to know, Dumbledore," he began, "that we've picked up a group of people for trespassing on private property. People that you apparently know quite well."

Dumbledore eyed Birtles over the top of his spectacles as he slowly placed his cup and sauce on the edge of the Minister's desk, and turned to face Fudge, temporarily ignoring Birtles's statement.

"I was under the impression, Cornelius, that this was to be a meeting between you and I," he noted. "Do we really require the presence of these two gentlemen?"

"Ah, like I said, Dumbledore, it's just an informal chat," Fudge temporised. "George and Silas here were involved in the arrest of the people in question.

"You'll recall that Silas accepted the post of Head of Magical Law Enforcement, and his Aurors brought this to his attention. George has been one of our top Hit-wizards for a number of years and was disturbed by some of the revelations."

George Moorhouse spoke up at this point.

"Well, yes," he said with something of a scowl. "We interrogated the suspects as to their motives in breaching the security of the properties concerned and were dissatisfied with their answers - they were vague, unhelpful, and couldn't really explain why they'd been found where they were - so we dosed them with verisaterum and tried again."

"I'm sorry," Dumbledore interrupted. "You say you used verisaterum on them? That's rather an extreme approach to take, wouldn't you say? Especially since such use is strictly controlled."

Fudge coloured slightly at the implication, but was bailed out by the slender Hit-wizard.

"Given their reluctance to provide us with an explanation for their actions, the alternative was to try them and, given the evidence, they would have been convicted," Moorhouse suggested.

"So you deprived them of the opportunity to be tried in front of the Wizengamot, then? You automatically assumed their guilt," Dumbledore said crossly.

"Dear me, Dumbledore," Fudge said, recovering his composure and flashing his guests a sly grin. "You'd think they had something incriminating to hide! I personally authorised the use of the potion so that we could get to the truth as expeditiously as possible."

"Which is a complete contrast to your attitude eighteen months ago, when you placed Harry Potter on trial in front of the Wizengamot for a simple question of under-age magic usage, and denied him his voice!"

Dumbledore was starting to get angry now. It was beginning to look as though this whole meeting was a set-up.

"Did you have a point, Dumbledore?" Fudge asked, with false sweetness in his voice.

"Anyway," Birtles continued, "under veritaserum, each of these criminals admitted that they had been ordered by you to infiltrate the property concerned to try and gather information about the activities of the owners."

"These people are not criminals," Dumbledore insisted.

"Aren't they?" asked Fudge. "You haven't even asked their names, so how would you know? Of course, given that they were acting under your instructions..."

"Who, then?" Dumbledore growled.

"Hestia Jones, Sturgis Podmore, Charlie Weasley, Elphias Doge," Birtles said.

"As I said before, they are not criminals."

"They were arrested and convicted of trespass. That makes them criminals," Birtles pointed out. "It's not Podmore's first offence, either. He was convicted on a similar charge a year or so ago in the Department of Mysteries."

"What exactly are you trying to pull here, Cornelius?"

Fudge ignored Dumbledore's question and let Birtles continue.

"As I was saying, not only did they admit that they were on the premises illegally, but they also said that they were members of an organisation called the 'Order of the Phoenix'. From what I could piece together from their explanations, this seems to be a vigilante group headed up by Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, dedicated to the defeat of He-who-must-not-be-named."

"Of course," Fudge noted, "we can't allow vigilante groups to thrive within the Wizarding world. When it comes down to it, there's no difference between a group set up to support You Know Who and one that fights him - both act outside the law.

"That's why we implemented this legislation in the first place - the Ministry is responsible for law enforcement in the magical world and it's important that witches and wizards recognise the Ministry as the only legitimate force for order. Allowing vigilante groups to run amok simply destabilises the elected government and perpetuates the image that the Ministry is incapable of managing law enforcement itself, and we really can have that now, can we?"

Fudge's pomposity was really starting to rile Dumbledore.

"If the Ministry were actually doing their job, then vigilante groups wouldn't be necessary," he ground out, still attempting to maintain a façade of composure.

"Oh, but we are," inserted Birtles. "We're protecting the populace from groups like your own - they have certain property rights, you know."

"And what about the Death Eaters? How are you protecting people from them?"

"There's no evidence that supporters of You Know Who have been attacking wizards or wizarding establishments," Fudge insisted.

"What!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "What about Muggles and Muggleborns living in the Muggle world? Do you not read the Daily Prophet?"

"What the Prophet chooses to print is its own concern," Fudge said, and Dumbledore could hardly believe his ears.

"In any event," Moorhouse added, receiving a glare from the Minister, "they aren't our priority - we only have sufficient resources to protect a proportion of the population." He seemed a little disturbed at his own words, but Dumbledore was aghast.

Before he could say anything, the Minister spoke again.

"They can't be considered a priority. Those who choose to live apart from wizards and wizarding culture have eschewed the protection we could feasibly provide. Their vulnerability is their own decision."

"What! Even the children?"

"There are plenty of pureblood families looking to adopt, Albus," Birtles suggested with an unsettling giggle.

"Anyhow, back to the reason that I asked you here, this Order of the Phoenix that you are apparently running," Fudge sneered.

"Are you expecting me to admit to running such an organisation?" Dumbledore asked.

Fudge exchanged a glance with Birtles and gave the Hogwarts Headmaster a shrewd look.

"I'm sure you are fully aware of the legislation that the Ministry introduced during the summer, to which I referred earlier," he reminded. "You remember the penalty for being convicted of being a member of such an organisation?"

"Indeed," Moorhouse noted with a frown creasing his already furrowed brow. "The death penalty was not instigated lightly - the Wizengamot were convinced of the necessity of making an example of murderers and other miscreants, whether their intentions were good or ill."

"You can't!" Dumbledore cried out. "You wouldn't!"

"What is the purpose of having such a law if its articles are not implemented?" Birtles asked with a smirk. "You were there when the discussion was held, I'm sure."

Fudge sat back and steepled his fingers against his chin.

"I might, however, given your particular eminence and the respect in which you are held, be able to propose a deal."

Birtles's eyes bulged at the Minister's proposal. Dumbledore wondered whether the man had thought that he was going to arrest and dispose of him this very day, and in less sinister circumstances he might have laughed at the Head of Magical Law Enforcement.

"But Minister!" he protested, starting forward in his seat as he spoke, as though to restrain Dumbledore physically. "Cornelius!"

"Hush now, Silas," Fudge said absently, still considering Dumbledore closely over his fingertips. "What do you say, eh, Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore sighed. He wasn't sure what Fudge wanted, nor what he would gain from this meeting. Clearly the Order members mentioned were in serious trouble and, by the letter of the law, they could be executed imminently. Fudge was offering him something, but he wasn't exactly sure what.

"What sort of deal did you have in mind, Cornelius?" he asked slowly.

Whatever Fudge had to offer, he could do so from the position of advantage. Both of them knew that Dumbledore didn't want his Order members executed, and it was pretty clear that Fudge's offer would be stacked in his favour.

Birtles tried to interrupt again, but his protests were stifled when Fudge waved a hand at him in dismissal.

"Thank you, Silas," he said. "I'm most grateful for your assistance this afternoon. Young Mister Weasley should be available in the outer office to see you safely back to your department. I'm sure you have plenty to be getting on with."

Birtles took this as the dismissal it was intended to be and stalked out of the room, giving Dumbledore a hate-filled glare as he pushed past him on his way to the door.

The Minister waited for the door to close softly behind him, then re-appraised the situation.

"I'm sure you think I'm incompetent, and full of bluster, but you know that I made it this far with enough political acumen to survive.

"This time, no matter what you might contrive to suggest, I am in control of the situation."

"Yes, Minister." Dumbledore inclined his head with the appropriate amount of respect.

"Now that we've cleared that up, here is my offer: You will disband your 'Order of the Phoenix' and not reform it. You will desist from gathering intelligence that involves illegal trespass either by yourself or at your instigation. You will leave law enforcement to the Ministry."

Dumbledore nodded in resignation. He had no choice.

"And in return?"

"In return, the four people that Silas mentioned will not be charged with belonging to a vigilante organisation."

Dumbledore waited for Fudge to continue, knowing that he hadn't finished.

Fudge smiled at Dumbledore's reaction. "No. Instead they will be charged with the relatively minor offence of trespass, which I believe carries a custodial sentence of up to six months," he looked at Moorhouse in question at this last and received a nod in return.

"I should think that a month would be suitable for three of them, and six months for Podmore given his existing record, but that would be for the presiding judge to decide," he continued, moderately satisfied with himself.

"And if I refuse?"

"Well, I expect they will be charged and convicted of vigilante action, since they admitted their offence. We have the names of a dozen or so other members of your little group as well, so it would be a fairly simple job to have them picked up and charged too."

"Two of these are Aurors, as well, Minister," Moorhouse added sadly. "I'll have to speak to their boss about it, and I'm sure he'll impose his own punishment, whether you accept the Minister's deal or not, Professor."

Dumbledore leaned back and closed his eyes, allowing thoughts to run through his mind to see if he could fathom any way out of this met, but to no avail.

"It doesn't look as though I have much of a choice," he said wearily as he looked back at the Minister.

"Of course you do, Albus," Fudge responded with a satisfied smile. "One of your options isn't very palatable though."

Organising everyone to meet up at The Burrow on such short notice turned out to be more of a palaver than Harry had imagined.

It took quite a while to get hold of Dumbledore, who had still been at the Ministry, negotiating with Fudge, when Arthur tried to get hold of him, and once the Headmaster had arrived, he organised further arrivals and departures. By the time he was satisfied that everyone who needed to be there had arrived, the Weasleys' living room was crowded with people.

At Harry's insistence, John Christopher had come along, and he brought Fabian Gaarder and Alastor Moody with him when he found out what the problem was. Harry was happy to see them all there, though he was less pleased at the number of people that Dumbledore had invited.

He didn't have any objection to Remus and Tonks attending, but having more or less the whole Order present seemed rather excessive.

Harry explained what had happened and what he had seen, haltingly and embarrassed at some points of his narrative, but he ploughed through it and watched some of the audience shake their heads sadly, as though in disbelief.

He started to wonder if they had begun to believe the Prophet's character assassination of him the previous year.

Once he'd completed his story, Dumbledore took a quick look around at the somewhat disbelieving faces of some of the Order members and immediately dismissed them back to whatever they had been previously been doing. Some of them gave him pointed looks as they left, as though he had dragged them out of their homes on a wild goose chase.

"Don't you think that was all a little melodramatic, Harry?" the Headmaster asked.

Harry blinked rapidly. What did Dumbledore mean? It was he who had requested the wide attendance and asked him to explain his illness and vision, and his sudden recuperation.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think that exposing the Order to your visions is such a good idea," he noted softly. "After all, they've only just heard that you have been ill for many days, suffering hallucinations, and you spring a vision from Voldemort's perspective on them."

"But you asked me to explain what I had seen!" Harry exclaimed.

Dumbledore frowned and pursed his lips. "I wasn't expecting something quite as dramatic as a denunciation of the Malfoys and a description of the Dark Lord's activities, Harry."

"Perhaps you should have found out what he had to say in private then," Mr Weasley put in, in Harry's defence, "rather than subjecting him to all these people."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore agreed, tempering his annoyance. "I'm sorry, Harry. You surprised me and I'm getting to the age where surprises are rarely welcome. I don't think that everybody was quite ready to hear what you were telling them."

Harry nodded. "What's being done about the Malfoys?" he asked.

"Being done?"

"Well yes. Wasn't Lucius Malfoy convicted of being a Death Eater and sentenced to Azkaban?"

"Well, yes he was, Harry, but with only your word that he has managed to escape - there's been no indication of any breakout from Azkaban at all - it's been difficult to persuade anyone to look into the case more closely.

"Some will think that you were more ill than you realised and that you mistook the Malfoys for other members of Tom's retinue," Dumbledore suggested.

"Others, less conducive to our point of view, are starting to push the Prophet's old line about attention-seeking," he noted. "The Minister himself is still firmly against you, Harry. He doesn't want to believe that anyone is more important than he in determining the Wizarding world's future, and some of his official appointments appear strange, if not outright influenced by those we know to be supporters of Voldemort."

Harry's mouth dropped open, and he struggled to understand what the Headmaster was saying.

He was still in a little bit of a daze as Dumbledore patted him on the shoulder and made his way to the Floo and back to whatever he had been doing before his Christmas Eve had been interrupted.

Harry turned back to John, Moody and Gaarder, who looked equally perplexed.

"What is he thinking?" John asked rhetorically, shaking his head. "He should trust your judgement on this, not be doubting you. I don't know what's gotten into him."

"He's been acting a little strange recently," Moody interjected. "He seems loath to trust anyone with information or to accept anyone's judgement but his own."

"I would have thought," John suggested, "that he would have been more concerned about Harry being poisoned in the supposed safety of Hogwarts, rather than questioning his integrity, or worrying about who the Minister has appointed as Department Heads - I can assure you that the potions I provided for you were perfectly safe."

"Perhaps I should have Snape test them?" Moody suggested with a little suspicion colouring his tone, no doubt remembering John's use of the Imperius curse on Harry earlier in the year and, true to his character, distrustful of just about everybody.

John shrugged. "Sure," he agreed. "If you still have the vials, please let Alastor have them, Harry, just to be on the safe side."

"I'm not saying you poisoned him, Christopher-" Moody started, but was interrupted by John waving his apology away.

"It's okay - best to be certain, right? I'm not a master potion-maker, so I could have made a mistake," he admitted. "Besides, Snape will also be able to tell if they were tampered with, I'd expect - all the batches came from one cauldron."

Moody grunted his acceptance of the point and turned back to Harry.

"When else could you have been poisoned, Potter?" he barked out. "C'mon! Think!" he urged Harry at his initial hesitation.

Harry racked his brain for suspicious circumstances, but couldn't think of any. He couldn't recall any time where he had eaten or drunk something that might have been tampered with - even at the table with the first years the food appeared on their plates directly from the kitchens courtesy of Hogwarts House-elves. Surely nothing could have been added to his food in the kitchens? The House-elves were supposed to be incorruptible.

He noted this to Moody, but was only met with a snort.

"What else have you been up to? I've seen you sneaking around the school after hours, don't forget."

Harry protested his innocence. The only sneaking around he'd been doing had been setting up pranks with Ginny. His sudden idea in Hogsmeade had been to out-prank anyone who used Zonko's stock by using products from the twins' catalogue, with the added bonus of the advertising he'd added to the prank early in the term.

It seemed to have worked a treat: the twins' products were widely touted around the school now as the best to use, and even those kids who had stocked up on Zonko's essentials had also placed orders (via owl mail) with Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes.

Fred and George had proclaimed him a genius when he'd mailed them with the idea, and they had supplied a huge quantity of the advertising firecrackers that he added to each prank he and Ginny set.

Thinking of the effects of those crackers reminded Harry of the incident in his Defence class with the caskets, and he outlined what had happened to his audience.

"I think I'll have a word with our erstwhile Ministerial candidate," Moody growled, immediately sensing a suspect to chase down.

"So, we must act then."

Gaarder's words were a statement of fact, rather than a question, and he looked enquiringly into the others' eyes seeking confirmation. They both nodded.

"Your information will not be ignored, Mister Potter," Gaarder continued. "We shall make sure that it is used properly, even if Headmaster Dumbledore is unwilling to risk acting on it."

Harry breathed a small sigh of relief.

"You say you used your Occlumency to get rid of Voldemort, even though you were ill?" John asked, clarifying Harry's earlier explanations.

"Good," he said emphatically at Harry's nod of agreement. "You've used what I taught you well. Make sure you continue practising over the next few days, and get yourself back in some sort of shape - a week ill in bed is never good for your system.

"I'll be back on New Year's Day and we can revise some of the stuff we've been through this year."

Gaarder agreed he'd want to talk about Harry's work before the school term started, too, and they agreed to arrange a suitable time.

As Harry walked to the kitchen with them, he could hear the Weasley family bustling about. He stuck his head through the door and could see Mrs Weasley organising hot drinks - cocoa seemed to be popular - and Ron helping himself to a huge slice of Christmas cake.

Remembering how hungry he was, he pulled out a chair next to Ginny as his three tutors bid the household farewell and a Merry Christmas, and helped himself to a smaller slice, savouring the moist fruity flavour as it crumbled gently in his mouth. Ginny slipped her hand into Harry's free one, and he shot her a shy smile of thanks for the comfort.

"Hot chocolate? Cocoa, Harry?" Mrs Weasley asked as she grabbed a mug out of a cupboard for him while the kettle lifted itself of the stove and poured boiling water into cups that were already arrayed on the worksurface.

"Coffee?" Harry suggested tentatively.

"Are you sure that's good for you so late in the evening, dear? You'll not be able to sleep, you know," she chided.

"I've done little but sleep the past week, it seems," he replied gently. "Thank you for all your efforts."

Mrs Weasley blushed heavily at Harry's thanks, and she muttered something about it being the least that she could do for him.

"After all, it's what a mother should be doing, looking after you when you fall ill."

"I'm not sure Aunt Petunia would have done the same," Harry responded glumly, knowing full well that if he had fallen ill at Privet Drive he would have been either ignored or shouted at for not doing his chores. "But thank you anyway."

"Well I hope you don't have to go back there again this summer," Mrs Weasley said firmly. "You're always as thin as a rake when I see you. I don't know how you managed last summer without someone to look after you."

She paused for a moment, then made a decision. "Whatever Professor Dumbledore says, you're welcome to stay here all summer, if you like."

Harry felt tears welling up in his eyes at the offer of a home where he wasn't expected to be a servant, where he'd be able to use magic once he turned seventeen, and where the occupants didn't think of him as an "unnatural freak"

"Thank you, Mrs Weasley," he said, his throat closing and making the words difficult to come by. "I really appreciate that."

Ginny squeezed his hand under the table.

"Though if you're here as a member of the family, you have your share of chores to do as well," Ron pointed out between mouthfuls of cake.

"Ron!" his Mother admonished. "Don't be so rude!"

"It's okay," Harry said, "I'll be happy to do my share of the chores - it's only fair."

Mrs Weasley harrumphed a little, but let the subject lie, smiling warmly at Harry as she placed his coffee in front of him.

Harry didn't like to tell her that, given past experience, there was a pretty good chance he'd have to face Voldemort yet again before the summer holidays, but this time he intended to be prepared for the confrontation.

Despite both the coffee and his recent long stint in bed, it wasn't long before Harry started to tire. Mrs Weasley had finished the laundry while he'd been talking to Moody, John and Gaarder, and had freshened up his room ready for him to sleep once again. Even though the natural excitement of Christmas Eve meant that everyone was still fairly active as midnight approached, they were all bustled off to bed.

Harry and Ginny managed to sneak a few moments out of everyone's sight to kiss, but their moment was gently broken up by Mr Weasley, who reminded them that Ron would be waking the whole house at the crack of dawn with his usual exuberance for Christmas morning, and that they should head to their separate beds.

The knowing look he gave Harry suggested that he was sure they'd prefer to be sharing a bed, but that it wasn't going to happen under his roof.

In his bedroom, Harry could smell the cleanness and freshness of the bed sheets. Mrs Weasley had apparently cleaned the room and freshened it up while he was downstairs, and he could just barely make out the mint-scented residue of the spells that she used to keep her linen aired and fresh.

The thought of being able to live on a more permanent basis with people who cared enough about him to be worried, to clean up after him and to comfort him when he was down was a little overwhelming. He hoped that Dumbledore would allow him to do so this year instead of going back to Privet Drive.

Despite his weariness, he didn't go straight to bed, but pulled a chair up in front of the window, reversed it and sat down astride it. He pulled the curtains back and looked out into the dimly lit courtyard below.

The snow was still falling gently and the footsteps he had seen when he last looked out had already been erased. A dim light continued to glow from below Harry and reflected off the snow, and he could hear Mr and Mrs Weasley talking below in the kitchen, though he couldn't tell what they were saying.

He smiled at the comforting sense of having people there to look after him, and the warmth with which the Weasleys treated him, and he turned to his bed and pulled the covers back. He settled himself down beneath them and drifted off into a more pleasant sleep than he had enjoyed for a long time.