Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Three
A Tap on the Glass

Harry kept feeding the Chocolate Frogs to his lingering nervousness, one after another until they were all gone. Between that and finishing up the entire bottle of Butterbeer, he gave himself a stomachache, but he felt more relaxed and sleepy despite it. Among the cards, he found two Albus Dumbledores -- he had already had one --- and one card he'd never seen before and that made him rub his eyes and stare. It bore a picture of a swaddled baby with a red lightning-shaped cut on his forehead: "Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived." Harry had been confronted with enough cameras and autograph requests to know how famous he was among wizards --- or how famous he had been before the Daily Prophet began their recent smear campaign --- but he had never known that a Chocolate Frog card had been made about him. He watched the image of his baby self yawn and stretch and suck his thumb, then picked up the Dumbledore cards. The Headmaster had wandered out of the picture on one of them, and winked at him from the other. "What's going on?" he asked the image, but it only gave him a quizzical look over its half-moon spectacles.

He just tossed all the cards and wrappers onto the floor for the night; he'd sort through them in the morning. For now he just wanted to sleep, and he kicked off his shoes, set aside his glasses, and stretched out in bed in his clothes.

That night he dreamt of a swirling blue light that led him into a sparkling place full of golden sand and sighing and ticking noises, as if he were emerging from the ocean onto a strangely mechanical beach. He found a portal, perhaps the mouth of a cave, and walked into it to find himself in a huge library. There were endless shelves upon shelves filling an enormous room, but instead of books, the shelves were full of glowing round bottles or crystal balls.

It was only as he walked along with the ends of the shelves sweeping rhythmically past him that his mind came into focus. He looked over and saw that every bottle had a parchment label, some of them very old: cracked, faded, and peeling. The bottles were in fact completely spherical, even on the bottom, and there were circular holes cut into the shelves for them to rest in. The sight of them gave him a chilling sense of deja vu. He turned his face forward again, and at first it seemed as if a disembodied violet tophat were floating through the air just ahead of him. It looked familiar as well, although he didn't think he had seen it here before, and as he looked at it, he noticed a fringe of hair visible beneath it; sticking up a little as if resting against invisible cloth... It was invisible cloth, he realised. A small man was wearing the tophat and an Invisibility Cloak with the hood down, walking ahead of Harry.

At last they came to a certain familiar row; "Here." Harry heard a high hiss of a voice from just below his eyes, as if he himself had spoken, but he knew that that couldn't have been him. The man in the top hat turned and walked down along the shelves. Harry knew where they were going to stop even before they did.

"That one," said the voice. The tophatted man's hand reached up toward a certain luminous bottle. Harry's viewpoint rose up higher to look closely at it. It too was familiar, but he somehow knew he was seeing it more closely than ever before, and he concentrated hard on it, on getting a good look at the label...

There was more written on it, but before Harry was shocked out of reading any further; then he suddenly noticed the reflection --- his reflection --- in the glass surface. But that can't be me!!! He saw a blood-red, slit-pupilled eye...

At just that moment, the man's hand touched the bottle. The ghastly reflection exploded in a tempest of red and purple sparks---

Harry wrenched himself up in bed, panting hard. He put his hands around in the dark and had to feel the glass of the window, the crackly candy wrappers on the floor, and the familiar shape of his glasses to ground himself in reality again. He didn't put the glasses on, but just let himself flop back onto his pillow. His forehead was prickling --- his scar had hurt before when Voldemort was angry. Was he angry now? The bottle had been labelled with Voldemort's name, and that had been his voice and his horrible eye reflected in the dream. Was it just a dream? Maybe he had seen what Voldemort was really doing right now --- or just as likely, he told himself, he had felt the scar start to itch in his sleep and his mind had woven Voldemort into some kind of fantastical scenario...

He couldn't shake the feeling that he had dreamt something very similar earlier in the summer, but most of his dreams had taken place at Hogwarts or the wizard village of Hogsmeade nearby it, or occasionally Diagon Alley in London, among all the Wizard shops.

Already, the dream of just now was fleeing from his memory, let alone one he might have had weeks ago. He was so tired that it was useless trying to puzzle it out. Harry just rubbed his forehead and rolled over, thinking to himself that he would tell Sirius if it kept up.

The next morning brought a bowl of scrambled eggs and bacon through the catflap, but by noon it was back to the cold tinned soup. In cleaning up from the previous night, Harry found Sirius's letter again. He had told Harry to stay at the Dursley house "for now," until Sirius could arrange something better, "ASAP." Maybe that means they're getting me out of here. At any rate, packing up the school things he had left laying about would give him something to do now that he was locked in his room again.

He had just begun picking up when he heard Uncle Vernon's car pull back into the garage, even though it was only mid-morning. Not long afterward there came loud scraping noises from his window, and he lifted the drapes aside to find Vernon's anger-flushed face. Presumably his uncle had called in sick to the office and gone out to a hardware store, because now he was indeed on a ladder with blocks and cement to brick over Harry's window. Uncle Vernon shot an angry glare through the glass, so Harry just let the curtains fall and tried to ignore him. However, the off-key humming was persistently unnerving, and Harry noted sorrowfully that he wouldn't be able to sneak out that window --- nor his friends be able to sneak him out through it --- ever again.

Trying to avoid the window, Harry picked up around the room and packed his trunk, leaving out only the book he was reading --- Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland, a Christmas gift from Hermione --- and what he needed to do his homework. Uncle Vernon finished work by dinnertime, and Harry was by then so bored that he'd spent an hour taking things out of the trunk and rearranging them more compactly, even though it all fit just snugly in the trunk no matter how haphazardly he piled it. Just after dinner, he decided to go to bed early, and he read his History of Magic textbook until he got sleepy; it wasn't long.

With the window blocked up, turning off the lights left his room almost totally black, and his sleep felt equally black, deep and dreamless. He woke once and saw that even the small light shining under his door was gone, so the Dursleys were all in bed. After that, he fell asleep again, and he had no idea how late it was when ticklings at his eyes and ears niggled him awake.

tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

He opened his eyes drowsily; all he could see was his own blanket-bundled feet in a pool of moonlight.

"Maybe we got the wrong room, or maybe he's not here," came a muffled female whisper.

"The Dursleys would only have done that to Harry's window and only if he were here." The second voice was mild and masculine; it sounded familiar.

Suddenly Harry remembered what Uncle Vernon would only have done to his window, and yet now he was staring at a fuzzy silver patch of moonlight. And that noise --- it was someone tapping on the glass! He felt around for his glasses.

tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.

"I think I can see him..." the man whispered.

"Well then just magic it open for goodnessakes!"

"I don't want to just barge in on him."

"Is this really the best time to be minding your manners, Professor?"

Harry put on his glasses and peeked out the window. Sure enough, all of Uncle Vernon's bricks and mortar were mysteriously --- magically? --- gone, but he saw only the stars and moon and streetlamps lighting up Privet Drive; he couldn't see whoever was talking. "Who's there?"

"Snuffles' old friend," came the soft reply.

Harry now knew who it was. "Professor Lupin!" He threw back the curtains and pulled the window open as wide as it would go. A moment later, a sliver of image was superimposed on the night sky as the folds of an Invisibility Cloak were drawn stealthily aside. From Harry's point of view, it was as if the night sky were a curtain being opened a little, and ducking side to side, he could see through the slit two people on a broomstick. One of them was the person whom he had recognised as "Snuffles' Old Friend" --- Remus Lupin, who had been best friends with Sirius and with Harry's father as far back as their school days. More recently he had been Harry's favorite teacher in all his years at Hogwarts, although he had been forced to resign after only one year when it had become known that he was a werewolf.

But for now, the full moon had passed a few days before, and Professor Lupin was perfectly human as he braced his hands on Harry's windowsill. "Now, hold it steady..." he said to the witch still on the broom; the admonition was barely out of Lupin's mouth when the broom jerked in her hands and only a quick grab onto the sill kept him from falling into Aunt Petunia's geraniums below. "Tonks!" he called under his breath.

"Sorry, sorry!"

As Harry grabbed hold of Lupin and tried to pull him into the room, "Tonks" dipped the broom lower; the Invisibility Cloak fell off and fluttered to the ground, revealing her as a young woman in dark blue jeans and a black t-shirt, with slicked-down hair in... grape purple? Harry thought surely that color must be a trick of the light as she took hold of Lupin's feet and lifted them up, finally sending him through the opening in a graceless forward flip that landed him sideways across Harry's bed on his back, with his feet on the floor opposite the window.

The young woman leaned in the window with an embarassed-but-friendly grin at Harry. "Order of the Phoenix, at your service," she said.

"Tonks, the cloak!" Lupin whispered.

"Oh!" She darted down after it.

"I'm getting too old for this..." he muttered to himself as he got up.

Harry knew that Professor Lupin wasn't actually old --- he had to be only in his mid-thirties --- but he had struggled all his life with his condition, as well as the associated stigma that kept him practically penniless. As a result he often appeared drawn and sickly, his face was careworn beyond his years, and there were already patches of grey in his brown hair. Harry hoped that the moonlight now was making him look paler and more silvered than he really was, but certainly he had lost weight since Harry had seen him last, and his shabby old robes had more patches on them than ever.

"Professor Lupin, is it really you?" Harry asked. "And who's...?"

"That is Tonks; you'll meet her soon. She may be a bit clumsy, but put me on a broomstick and I'm worse than she is, it's been so long... Do you need me to prove to you who I am?"

Even though he had said "is it really you?" Harry didn't truly feel himself in doubt. Still, it couldn't hurt to be sure... "What form does my Patronus take, and why?" he asked.

"A stag; it was your father's Animagus form," Lupin answered correctly. "That's why we used to call him 'Prongs'." He looked around the room. "I'm afraid I'll need more space than this... Do you have all your things packed?"

"Almost," Harry said. "You're getting me out of here!?"

"We're taking you to the Order's headquarters," he whispered. "That's all I can tell you for now."

That was enough for Harry. He picked up his last few books and quills and put them in his trunk, which Lupin then used his wand to levitate out of the room and down the stairs very quietly. Harry followed him as he floated the trunk into the living room, then took a parchment note from his pocket and left it on the dining room table before returning to Harry.

"Telling the Dursleys where I am?" Harry questioned, looking over at the note.

"Telling them that you're safe; we mustn't leave them to worry."

Professor Lupin was taking out something else; as Harry squinted at it in the dim moonlight, it looked to be a pocket-size pipe tobacco tin. "The original contents are long gone, don't worry," Lupin assured him. Harry was glad to hear it not only because smoking was a nasty habit, but also because the tin looked decades old, with several dents and a few touches of rust.

The hinged lid squeaked as Professor Lupin opened the tin and tipped out a single match into his hand. He gestured for Harry to give him room, then he crouched in the middle of the living room, struck the match, placed the tin on the floor, and dropped the tiny flame inside. As Lupin backed off from it, Harry was afraid for a moment that the carpet might catch, but then the tin emitted a rushing sound and inflated until it half-filled the room and nudged an armchair aside. It had transformed into a cabin --- a very tiny one, like maybe a hunter's shack, but nonetheless there was a little log cabin now standing in the Dursleys' living room.

Lupin opened its door and stepped aside for someone to come out. It was another of Harry's former professors, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody. However, he had never actually held a class; it had turned out at the end of the past school year that the teacher was a Death Eater who had imprisoned and impersonated the real Professor Moody. Having thought he had known the man for a year and then found out otherwise made it an especially strange feeling for Harry to now be meeting the genuine article, and it was already somewhat awkward to meet someone so crisscrossed with scars. Moody had been an Auror, a magical law enforcement agent, and years of that job had left him with a wooden leg, a chunk of his nose missing, and one wide, round, electric-blue false eye that swivelled around in all directions and could see through solid objects, among other abilities Harry didn't fully understand.

"It all went off right?" Moody asked Lupin.

"Two days slow," Lupin said. As a response it didn't make much sense; Harry imagined that it was a pre-arranged password.

Moody's magical "Mad Eye" turned on Harry. "How d'you know it's really him?"

Harry opened his mouth to respond, but he didn't know what he could say to prove himself. Lupin walked over to stand very close in front of him and looked him straight in the eyes. Two years ago, when he had been Harry's teacher, he would have had to bend over a little to do so, but now he only had to incline his head. "Don't be afraid, Harry," he said; he lifted a hand and lay his palm against Harry's cheek. His hand was cold, and Harry thought he could feel very fine hair on it --- a werewolf trait according to his textbooks.

"What are you---?"

"Don't worry. This will feel strange, but you know I wouldn't hurt you. Look at my eyes."

Harry did look into Professor Lupin's eyes; their color was a dull and generally unremarkable blue which the dim light made to look dark as iron. Lupin looked at him very seriously and kindly, but in a moment, Harry found himself no longer paying attention to his former teacher's gaze.

Just as if his mind were wandering, recollections began to flash before his mind's eye. Learning the Patronus Charm, practicing it against a boggart that Professor Lupin was keeping in his shabby old suitcase... The night he had found out the truth about Sirius: Harry and Ron and Hermione had cornered Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, thinking that he had been trying to kill Harry all school year, when Lupin had burst in. Harry and his friends hadn't understood what passed between them, and to Harry's horror, Lupin had lifted Sirius up from the floor and hugged him...

What's happening!? Professor?? Why was this all flashing through his head? Harry looked back at Lupin's eyes, his mind demanding to know...

And then he found himself not just seeing that hug but feeling it. Such desperate joy --- he had thought he was the only one left, and now that loneliness was lifted away. He felt a pang at squeezing just skin and bones in his arms, at finding Sirius so wasted by hardship, where he had once been so hale and handsome... But he was here, and he was alive, and he was innocent; that was all that mattered.

Why did that night go so wrong? My fault... His mind flashed forward to later that evening; by the time he recognised that sensation of the rising moon needling in his bones and remembered that he had forgotten his potion, it was too late to even scream. He felt a shackle on his wrist; his body seized up so that he couldn't move --- can't get away from them! Straining agony wracked his body as it began to reshape itself, and it sent his mind spinning out of shape. He knew that Harry and Ron and Hermione were there beside him, and for one moment, side-by-side, were the terrible twin certainties... The three children were right there in reach. The moment he could move, it would be one turn and he could get his teeth on them --- he would sink his teeth into them, was eager for the taste of their blood! But at the same time he clung desperately to the fast-fading knowledge that that must never happen, that he would rather he should be killed than to do that, but it was too late for him to stop it! Please, someone stop it! Someone help me! SIRIUS---!!!

Lupin lifted his hand from Harry's cheek with a gasp. They were back in the Dursleys' dark living room, and Harry realised that only an instant had passed.

"What happened!?" Moody hissed.

"Nothing. Nothing..." Lupin said, shaking his head. "This is definitely Harry."

"Right." Moody handed him a pocketwatch and a paper sack.

"Professor Moody?" Harry started.

"Save it, Harry. No time to dawdle."

"We'll be able to talk later," Professor Lupin added, then gestured to the door of the tiny cabin. "Please, come inside."

Lupin stayed behind exchanging some words with Moody as Harrry took the invitation and entered the little cabin. Being magical, he hadn't immediately assumed that it was as small inside as out, but he found that indeed it was. The wooden walls enclosed perhaps a seven-foot cube of space beneath the rough-hewn rafters and short pitched roof, and a single-person bed took up fully half the floor. There was just enough room left over for the door to open inward and for a little black potbellied stove that stood in an adjacent corner, with a single shelf projecting from the wall above it. A few books and papers lay on the shelf, together with a single teacup and saucer and a chipped cream and sugar set that didn't match the cup; the cream-pitcher was full of teabags. A dented old teakettle sat on the stove, which was cold on such a mild summer night as this. Harry sat down on the head of the bed. Its pillow and sheets were dingey-colored from years of use, and he could see a few mends and holes, but mostly they were hidden beneath a pile of threadbare quilts and well-worn crocheted throws. His heel knocked against something stowed under the bed, and when he lifted the edge of the covers, he found that it was a familiar old suitcase with the name "Professor R. J. Lupin" lettered on a corner of it in battered and peeling type.

He hastily dropped the blankets again as Lupin entered, floating Harry's trunk in before him, and shut the door. He sat down at the foot of the bed and settled the trunk down across the middle of it, then Harry heard Professor Moody rattle the doorknob. There came a whooshing sound as if a gust of wind were blowing by the little cabin from behind.

"He's collapsed it into the tin again," Lupin explained. "Alastor will carry us to the headquarters like this, but since we can't leave by the door until someone expands it again, and we don't want to take chances..." He handed Harry the paper sack; inside it was only a spoon. "That's a portkey," Lupin told him. "There are ways that we can hide our illicit spells from the Ministry, but better to avoid using it if we don't have to. However..." He opened the pocketwatch and set it out where they could both see it. "...If we aren't at the house by three o'clock, you and I are to use that to get back. And if anything goes terribly wrong --- say if the door opens and it isn't anyone from the Order --- then you are to use the portkey immediately. Don't wait for me, understand?"

So if there's trouble, I'm supposed to just leave you here?? Harry wondered hotly, but he didn't want to bother arguing with Professor Lupin and nodded. "Where are we?"

Lupin looked around with an embarassed little smile. "This is my house. Sirius has taken to calling it my 'Castle in the Sky.' I know it isn't much, but please make yourself comfortable. If you'd like to lie down again after we disturbed your sleep..."

"No, no," Harry said. He was so excited to be back among magical things and friends that sleep was the furthest thing from his mind now. Looking around the little cabin again, he thought it must be difficult for one's home to be such a tiny space, but at the same time it felt warm and inviting. Harry thought that even if the Dursleys took a holiday and he had their whole house to himself, he would prefer Lupin's little cabin. "I like it," he said with a grin, then turned to the professor. "So what's been happening? All summer no one's been telling me a thing --- surely no one can hear us in here."

Lupin resettled himself. "Voldemort hasn't been making any overt moves. The Ministry's attitude must be quite an unexpected advantage for him. They can't oppose him if they refuse to see him, and are even fighting his enemies for him... Of course you'll know they're trying to discredit anyone who speaks out about him, and for now all of us in the Order are risking arrest while we go against him directly. I'm certain he'll capitalise on that as much as he can before he makes himself known."

"Miss Figg said you were taking care of it... That means he is doing something, doesn't it?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss details," Lupin said. "Suffice to say we have been able to stop what he's tried so far."

"What about Sirius?" Harry asked. "How is he?"

"He's well, and safely ahead of the authorities. He's waiting for us at the headquarters, so you'll be seeing him very shortly."

Harry's heart gave a joyous leap.

"Being your godfather, I'd rather leave things for him to explain," Lupin said. "A lot of what we've been doing lately has been getting the headquarters in order. The Weasleys have been helping a great deal with that; you'll see Ron and Hermione when we get there also."

Harry smiled, nonetheless thinking to himself, Now I can make them tell me what's going on. "What about you?" he asked Professor Lupin. "You're not looking so well."

"Oh, I've been getting along," Lupin said, pleasantly but flatly. Harry's impression was that he didn't want to talk about it.

"Will you be back teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year?" he asked hopefully.

"No, I can't," Lupin answered. "After it got out about my condition and I resigned, the Ministry passed a law making it a crime for werewolves to work with young people."

"What!?"

"Yes, they decided that someone like me is too dangerous to have near children," he said sadly. "In all honesty, I see their point..."

Harry opened his mouth to protest --- Professor Lupin was not only his own favorite, but one of the best teachers he had seen for helping all the students learn, and certainly one of their kindest professors. He had seemed to love the job and truly care about Harry and all his classmates, even the ones from Slytherin house who had made fun of his patched old robes. And now he could be arrested for that, charged fines he could certainly not afford, or even thrown in Azkaban with the Dementors? If they were going to ban a teacher from the school, Harry thought, why couldn't it have been the venomous Potions Master, Professor Snape?

Even worse, Lupin was saying he saw why he should be treated this way?? Harry wanted to shout at him and tell him no, that was all wrong, but without even an hour having passed, he freshly remembered what he had seen and felt for a moment in the Dursleys' living room: that eager need to bite, knowing he mustn't, but knowing too that he couldn't stop himself wanting it and doing it. He must have seen into Professor Lupin's mind; that must be how it felt, and it gave Harry a chill also to have seen himself as the object of the compulsion. He still thought the Ministry's law was wrong, but...

"Professor... What happened back there?" he asked. "Back at the house, you know, when Professor Moody wanted to be sure it was really me...?"

"Oh, I'm sorry about that," he said. "I used a magical technique to look into your mind, looking for a memory of something you had done or seen while I was there, a memory I knew the real Harry would have. I didn't intend to pry, or..."

"But then something went wrong," Harry said.

Lupin looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't say 'went wrong' exactly... Harry, have you ever experienced anything like that before? Perhaps when you touched someone, or looked into their eyes?"

"Ah... No..." Of course Harry had, just the night before when he had been glaring eye-to-eye and seen how Dudley had always been afraid of him, but he didn't want to talk about that. Of course, most of the summer, he had been shut up in his room and hardly seen anyone's face, let alone looked them in the eyes or touched them.

"It is curious..." the professor mused. "I'll have to speak with Dumbledore before I could tell you more about that. I'm not an expert in such things, myself.

"Would you like some tea?" he asked. "I only have teabags, but what I have, you're welcome to."

Harry nodded.

"Chocolate?"

"Only a little."

Lupin heated the teakettle with a tap of his wand and took a chocolate bar from a pocket of his robes. There was only the one teacup in the little cabin, so when it had steeped, Lupin offered it to Harry without having any himself, and they both had bits of the chocolate as they waited.

Harry glanced down at the pocketwatch; it read one forty-one A.M. Seventy-nine minutes at most and then he would see his friends and see Sirius. His godfather he knew he would just hug, but after weeks of frustration, he wasn't sure whether to hug Ron and Hermione or shout at them.

Well, I still have... he checked the watch again, ...seventy-seven minutes to decide.

In fact it only took another half hour before Harry heard another gustlike sound, this time as if a wind were blowing by from front to back. Professor Lupin said they had made just about the expected time, but nonetheless when there came a knock on the door, he stood between it and Harry and readied his wand before calling "Come in!"

It was Professor Moody who opened the door, his grizzled gray hair drenched. "We're home and clear. Can set off Estelle if you want proof."

"That... won't be necessary," Lupin said. He took Harry's trunk and led the way out of the cabin.

Harry emerged to find that the Order's headquarters had to be a mansion. He and Lupin, Moody, and Tonks stood in a grand foyer with a high ceiling. Along the walls, attached columns wore wreaths of floating candlesticks that lit the huge space only dimly. These alternated with pedastals where strange sculptures and other items stood beneath dark twice-life-size portraits that looked down on him disdainfully and grumbled among themselves. He didn't think he had seen any of these particular people, but they all had black hair and finely-sculpted features that looked vaguely familiar. At the head of the room, two great zigzagging staircases angled outward up and down from the edges of a raised dais; on its back wall, larger and brighter candle-fixtures flanked a pair of stained silk curtains that looked as if they could cover a large doorway. The upward stairs led to a balconey on the next storey, then on to more floors above the ceiling, and the wall along them was lined with some sort of mounted trophy-heads; after squinting for a moment, Harry's stomach twisted as he realised they were the heads of numerous house-elf servants.

Moody was sopping from head to foot, and Tonks ran her hands over her soaked hair --- which Harry could now see was indeed grape purple --- to squeeze water out and shook the drops off her hands. A couple of them caught Harry in he face; he felt one hit his cheek and another left a spot on his glasses. "Was it raining?" Lupin asked.

"No. 'Old Al' here insisted on flying us through some clouds for cover," Tonks griped.

Harry could not have imagined anyone calling Professor Moody "Al."

"Little water won't hurt you. You're supposed to be an Auror, girl!" Moody growled.

"Lemme take your trunk, Harry," Tonks offered, taking its handle from him and wheeling it up toward the stairs.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention---Whaah!" As she pulled it up the last step onto the dais, her wet shoes slipped on the floor and she fell backward.

"Cover your ears---!" Lupin cried.

But Harry didn't understand the order and hesitated until Tonks' hair brushed against the silk curtains just as she caught herself. Suddenly the draperies blew open as if a sudden gale had erupted from behind them, and for a moment, Harry thought it was indeed a doorway, but then he realised it wasn't --- it was an eight-foot tall full-length portrait of a witch in a dark purple robe. Her plaited coffee-black hair had only touches of gray in it, but her skin was blotchy and slack, making her look badly aged and sickly. Her face contorted with rage, and she let out a shriek that filled the huge foyer to its soaring ceiling---

"SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK!!! STAIN ON MY NAME! DEATH OF YOUR FATHER! DEFILER OF MY NOBLE HOUSE!!"

Head throbbing, ears splitting, Harry belatedly clapped his hands to his ears to block the deafening screams. "WHAT IS THAT!?" Although he shouted at the top of his lungs, his own voice sounded tiny and distant.

"THAT'S ESTELLE!" Lupin answered. Harry could barely hear his shout despite feeling the breath of it on the back of his hand.

Harry thought he heard footsteps on the stairs, but it could have been his own head pounding as the portrait held forth...

"---HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF YOUR FATHER'S FATHERS, OUR BLOOD THE PUREST OF THE PURE, AND NOW YOU DARE TO BRING THIS HALF-BLOOD WORM-SPAWN HERE TO BE CALLED FAMILY!!"

"OH, SHUT UP!!" another voice bellowed, succeeding for one moment in shouting the painting down.

Harry felt a pair of arms take him and pull him along up the stairs --- past one landing, two, three... By the time those arms led him into a hallway, the painting's shrieks had at last begun to fade with distance, and he removed his hands and unscrewed his face just in time for a glimpse of dancing blue shapes on the hallway walls before they came to a solid blue door, and he was ushered through into a solid blue room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all painted in a single shade of vivid sky blue, but there was a gray stone fireplace crackling merrily, and two wooden dressing tables and a writing desk faced three simple but sturdy and warmly-blanketed beds.

Hermione Granger and Ron and Ginny Weasley sat on the edges of two of the beds, facing each other and talking, but they all whipped around at his entrance. He saw his snowy owl Hedwig perched on a bedpost, and she hooted happily, as Ron's tiny owl Pigwidgeon zipped across the room and spun circles around his head.

"Harry!" Hermione called brightly; she and Ginny waved at him with broad smiles.

Ron turned and grinned at him and rubbed an ear. "I hear you met Sirius's Mum."

to be continued in...
Chapter Four: Rare Chocolate Frog Cards