The Heart of Night

Heart of the Night

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Find Out

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-1 Fortnights

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"Harry! Harry, wake up!"

Harry blinked and slowly opened his eyes. He stared right into the glowing green eyes of Nymphadora Tonks.

"Tonks?" he yawned. "What on earth are you doing here?" He was in his bedroom at Dursley’s. Tonks couldn’t be there. Therefore, he was dreaming.

"Harry, you must get out of here. Right now." Tonks’s hair was shining in every shade of green as well. She looked, for once, very worried.

"Why?" Harry asked suspiciously. "I’m safe here. Dumbledore has said so."

"You’re not." Tonks gave him a sad glance. "Dumbledore himself said I should get you to Hogwarts. Take everything you’ll need there, because you’re not coming back."

Harry felt astonished. This couldn’t be an imposer. With the Polyjuice Potion somebody could look like Tonks, but they wouldn’t be Metamorphmagi. This woman surely was, considering that her hair had now turned screaming pink.

"I know this is hard to believe," Tonks said, when she noticed Harry’s astonishment. "But, Harry... Something has happened that showed us you aren’t safe anymore."

"What?" Harry asked, alarmed. "What has happened?"

"Remus," Tonks said quietly. "He... He’s disappeared, Harry. From the Headquarters. You know we had all possible wards around there, even more than at this house, but it didn’t help. He went sleeping at night, and when we checked on him in the morning, he wasn’t there."

Harry gasped. "He - he couldn’t have only gone somewhere, could he?" he asked with very small voice. He had already lost Sirius. Lupin was the only adult around he could call a real friend - he was like another godfather. He couldn’t possibly lose the werewolf.

"That’s what we thought at first," Tonks said, shaking her head. "But then Mundungus remembered he had said that he wouldn’t leave the house for a few days."

"Oh." Harry felt horrible. Hadn’t he lost enough already?

Then another thought hit his head. Dumbledore had been the Secret Keeper of the Headquarters. Because the Headmaster would never give it away to anyone, there was only one possibility.

"There’s - there’s a traitor amongst you?" he asked breathlessly.

Tonks nodded quietly. "And everyone who’s aware of the Headquarters is also aware of you," she said. "We have to be very careful from now on, Harry. And we have to get you safe for the first thing we do."

Harry swallowed. A traitor had caused his parents’ death. Another could cause so much more.

And there was still a new chance - the chance that Lupin was the traitor.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t be! He had been his parents’ friend, right? And Sirius’s friend. He could never betray them!

So had they thought about Pettigrew.

"Where are your belongings?" Tonks asked, shaking him awake from his thoughts. "We need to leave, Harry. I have a Portkey to take us both to Hogwarts."

"They’re all here," Harry said slowly. "They didn’t dare to lock my stuff away after what you guys said to them at the King’s Cross."

"Good." Tonks nodded approvingly, glancing through the room. "I’ll go and inform your relatives, then. Change yourself and gather all the stuff you want to retain - as I said, you won’t come back here. Ever."

Harry felt like he could jump in the air and applause at that thought. He was too worried about Lupin to do that, however. He quickly got up from his bed and started to do what Tonks had told him to do.

Just when Harry had all his stuff in his trunk, Hedwig’s cage on top of it, and proper clothes on him, Tonks came back with a satisfied grin on her face.

"Oh, that was fun," Tonks laughed. "The man looked like he would choke on his own tongue when he saw me. And that old horse started screaming about ‘revenge’ and ‘we’re dead’ and other stupid stuff. You should have seen their faces when I told them the situation!"

"I’m surprised they didn’t start celebrating at the same moment," Harry said dryly, raising his eyebrow. "You’d think they’re too delighted to think responsibly when they hear they’ll get rid of me forever."

"Well..." She grinned rather sheepishly. "In fact I told them I had come because a werewolf we know has gone crazy and disappeared, and we’re worried that he might attack here and wanted you safe before it happens."

"Tonks!" Harry exclaimed, feeling oddly satisfied himself. "You wouldn’t!"

"Yes, I would," the woman replied with a wicked grin. "They’ve treated you horribly, Harry. They deserve anything that’s coming to them."

"That’s something I don’t disagree about, but still..." Harry shook his head and laughed. "You’re unbelievable!"

"And that’s something I take as a compliment." Tonks took Hedwig’s cage in her hand, then shrank all the other stuff with a quick spell and pocketed it. "Shall we?" she asked then, offering Harry the cage.

"Of course," Harry said, grasping his owl’s cage and with his other hand Tonk’s hand. He was still too stunned to even wonder how she could have had a Portkey.

The witch took the Portkey - a big, rusty key, trust Tonks to do something like that - and after a few seconds Harry felt the familiar jerk behind his navel, and then everything around him went merely a blur.