Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Four
Rare Chocolate Frog Cards

"Wha?"

"Yes," said a voice behind him.

Harry turned to the person who had led him upstairs and found himself looking at his godfather's deep gray eyes and roughly-shorn raven hair. Sirius Black's face was prematurely hollowed and lined, but those finely-sculpted features and more than a hint of willfulness still showed defiantly through.

"That was my Dear Old Mummy," Sirius said. "She passed away while I was in prison, but she left her portrait behind to make certain I'd know what she thought of me if I ever came back."

"You're joking!"

Sirius shook his head, but at least Harry thought there had been more sarcasm than bitterness in his voice.

"This is Sirius's house," Hermione explained. "He's letting the Order use it for a headquarters."

So Sirius had a house; maybe that meant Harry could move in with his godfather instead of his horrible aunt and uncle! "Wow!" he said. "I didn't know your family was..." He trailed off, having intended to say "rich," but then he remembered how dark and disdainful all the portraits downstairs had looked, the mounted house-elf heads, how the painting of Sirius's mother had gone off on a racist tirade about pure wizard blood... She had objected to Harry as "Half-blood" because one of his parents had come from a Muggle family, even though Harry was told his mother had gone on to become a very skilled witch nonetheless --- rather like Hermione, who was the brightest student in Harry's class although both her parents were dentists.

If the people in those paintings had all had blonde hair instead of black, Harry would have guessed he had wandered into the Malfoys' house. Harry's arch rival at school, Draco Malfoy, was the son of that cruel, arrogant, and very rich family, not to mention the fact that Draco's father, Lucius, was a Death Eater, and the Death Eaters were the most violent pure-blood fanatics of all.

"My family was something, all right," Sirius said. "I'm afraid it might be a bit much to catch you with when you're in your pyjamas."

Harry looked down at himself; he had forgotten that he was still in his pyjamas from when Professor Lupin had gotten him out of bed. Ron and Ginny giggled at him having to check, and he shot them a glare.

"I promise I'll explain about it tomorrow and answer any questions as much as I can, about whatever," Sirius told him. "But for tonight, I thought it better to let you kids 'rest'."

"Right," Harry agreed. Judging by Sirius's wry smile, he clearly expected the students to stay awake all night catching up now that they were reunited, not go to sleep, and his promise of explanations in the morning was enough for Harry until then. He took Harry in his arms for a moment, and Harry returned his godfather a brief squeeze --- he still felt somewhat bony, but not like the chilling near-skeleton in Lupin's memory...

"Have a good night," Sirius said, then slipped out.

Harry hated to see him hurry off as he watched the blue door clack shut, but the next moment he felt a soft breath of air and Hedwig alighted gently on his shoulder, then rubbed him affectionately with her soft feathers.

"Something must have happened," Ginny said as soon as Sirius was out of earshot. "Seems like they're all huddling in the kitchen."

"Yeah... Hey, Harry, wanna see if we can listen in?" Ron whispered loudly. Hermione shook her head a little at the mischievous suggestion, but all three of them were grinning at him.

Harry's hand stopped on Hedwig's wing in mid-stroke; he didn't smile back. After weeks of keeping him in the dark, they thought they could just dump him into the middle of things, that he'd go along with every little plan as if they'd been letting him in --- as if they'd been acting like his friends --- all along?? Their conspiratorial smiles infuriated him, and Hedwig glided off to a bedpost as his shoulders tensed. "No, I don't want to listen in! How am I supposed to know what they're even talking about!?"

"Harry, what are you---?" Hermione started.

"What am I on about!? I don't suppose you'd know!" he shot back. "None of you have spent your holiday up to now locked in a bedroom and not allowed to poke your nose out except to use the toilet!! You've all been here where you can hear about it from your folks --- from the Order --- not getting your news from the worthless Daily Prophet and opening all your friends' letters to get nothing but fluff!"

"Harry, mate, we told you as much as---" Ron argued.

"As much as you could!? 'Hermione's a sore loser at Quidditch' is the best you could do!?!" Harry shouted at him.

"I'm what!?" Hermione started, staring wide-eyed at Harry for a second before turning to Ron. "You said that??"

"Wha? No, I---"

"Wrote it in a letter," Harry finished flatly. He was savagely pleased to see Ron's freckled face turn bright red under Hermione's angry look.

"Well, we sent you all those Chocolate Frog Cards," Ginny remarked.

"Like Chocolate Frog Cards are supposed to help!! I was the one who saw Voldemort come back! I was the one who looked him in the face, who got tortured and---!!!"

But Ginny surprisingly locked eyes with him and didn't flinch. "The ultra-rare Chocolate Frog Cards...??" she interrupted, in a loud conspiratorial growl.

"Like I'm supposed to care about Chocolate Frog Cards at a time like this!!!"

Somehow that stunned them all into silence. Ginny pinched her eyes shut as Hermione and Ron blinked at him. "You didn't eat the Chocolate Frogs we sent you...?" Hermione queried.

"OF COURSE NOT!! I threw them in the bin!!"

"Why'd you do that!?" Ron cried.

Harry sputtered for a moment --- why had he done that? He'd just been angry, but if he said that, they wouldn't take him seriously; they wouldn't understand... "Well why shouldn't I!?"

Hermione shook her head into her hand, rustling her bushy brown curls. Ginny's face had continued to screw up tighter and flush redder. Her arms were now ramrod-straight and braced on her knees, which fidgetted under her skirt. Ron looked over at her. "Ginny kid, don't explode."

But the moment he had said it she did explode --- at Harry. She leapt to her feet; "YOU STUPID, STUPID BOY!!!" Then she dashed past him, threw herself face-down on the unoccupied bed, and slammed the pillow over her head. Her vivid red braids stuck out from under it as she gave a muffled roar of frustration.

"What is she...?"

"Well, there was a lot Mum wouldn't let us tell you," Ron said. "She was screening our letters, so we couldn't just write about it..."

"Remember when I wrote you about Protean Charms in our new book, how you can use them to change the look of something without touching it or even seeing it?" Hermione asked. "Well, I taught myself to do it some, thinking I could change a letter once it was already checked and sealed."

"Mum always posted them straight away, so we didn't get the chance."

"It can work at a distance, but I haven't managed that just yet..."

"Anyway," Ron continued, "when it came your birthday, we bought a load of Chocolate Frogs so she could use that on the cards and write to you for real."

Harry blinked at them in disbelief. "Are you serious?"

Ginny gave another exasperated cry from under the pillow and pounded the mattress with her fist; Harry took that to mean "yes."

"As if we'd have been stonewalling you because we wanted to!" Hermione huffed. "Really, Harry, you ought to know better than that by now."

"Well excuse me!" he snipped, but nonetheless he relented and sat down on the bed next to Ron, who offered some owl treats from his pocket as Hedwig flitted over to the bedpost at Harry's side.

"So, you want us to fill you in now, or you wanna try listening in on their meeting first?" Ron asked.

"Just fill me in," Harry said, taking the treats and passing them to Hedwig distractedly. He'd been waiting too long.

Ginny looked out from under the pillow, and as they settled in to talk, she came back over to sit beside Hermione. However, she still looked a little flushed and gave Harry angry looks.

"Well, nobody's heard much out of You-Know-Who," Hermione said.

"Professor Lupin told me that much. He said Voldemort---" the other three flinched at the name "---was staying low, but that they were having to stop him from something."

"That's about as much as they'll tell us," Ron said. "My best guess is that they've been guarding something he's after, but that's just a guess, going by how they talk about it without saying anything straight out, you know."

"We've actually only been here at the house for a couple of days," Hermione explained. "Mostly they kept us at the Burrow, and we just knew that Mrs. Weasley and Bill and Charlie were going off to help with something."

"Bill and Charlie?" Harry asked. Last he had known, Ron's two eldest brothers had had jobs abroad, breaking curses for Gringotts in the pyramids and tending dragons in Romania, respectively.

"Yeah, they both came back after what happened, thought about staying to work for the Order, but Charlie went back to Romania, thought he'd do more good abroad. Bill's back to stay, though --- well, back in England; he rented a flat and moved out, but we see him a lot. Got the goblins to transfer him to the main office."

"He's training new curse-breakers. 'Ground school,' he calls it," Ginny added. "---Oh, and guess who else has got a job at Gringotts!"

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Fleur Delacour!" the girls said in chorus. The Triwizard Tournament the previous year --- which Harry and Cedric had just won when Voldemort used a portkey to abduct and attack them --- had brought students from other magic schools on the continent, including Beauxbatons in France. Fleur Delacour had been Beauxbatons' champion in the tournament, and Harry knew that she was the granddaughter of a veela, a magical creature that took the form of a preternaturally beautiful and beguiling woman.

"Can you believe they hired her as an accounts representative?" Hermione said. "It doesn't seem fair."

"So you want them to hire werewolves, but not people with a little veela in them?" Ron questioned.

"I don't mean that, but it's not fair if they're using her--- that thing she does to take advantage of people."

The thought of wizards succumbing to Fleur's siren charm and pouring all their money into the goblins' latest scheme in attempts to impress her amused Harry too much for him to follow Hermione onto her latest political tangent.

"Although I do hear she needs to 'improve her English' for the job," Ginny remarked with a grin. "That's what Bill says she keeps coming to see him about, anyway..." She batted her eyelashes theatrically.

Harry laughed. Ron's ears went pink; he had spent some time last term under Fleur's spell himself.

"And then there's Fred and George and their jokeshop scheme!" Ginny continued.

"Oh, yeah, ton-tongue toffees, canary cremes, headless hats, the whole bit!" Ron said. "Mum's been trying to keep them on a tight leash, but you can guess how well that works on Fred and George. And she keeps going on sweeps of the house and and binning the stuff but it just keeps turning up --- new kinds, too. What I can't figure out is where they're working on it."

"---Or where they're getting the money!" Hermione added.

"---But they must have something going that Mum doesn't know about."

"Mrs. Weasley's been worrying herself sick that they've gotten into something criminal," Hermione said. "Frankly I'm starting to wonder..."

By the looks on their faces, Ron and Ginny were a little worried in that way themselves; Harry thought keeping a secret now would do more harm than good... "Well, you don't need to worry about where they're getting the money."

"Huh?" Ron stared. "After you yelled at us! Are you holding something out, Harry?"

"I didn't want it to get back to your Mum," Harry admitted; he was none too eager for a share of the disapproval Mrs. Weasley aimed at her twin sons. "But you remember I got all that gold for winning the Triwizard Tournament? Well, I didn't need it --- didn't really want it after all of that --- and I knew they needed money to start their business, so..."

"You gave them your prize money?" Ginny questioned, forgetting her earlier fit of temper. When Harry nodded, she beamed at him so that he thought the look on her face might be worth the thousand galleons on its own.

Ron, on the other hand, twisted up his mouth. "Must be nice," he remarked sourly. The Weasleys had so little money that Ron and his siblings always had to make do with shabby used school robes and supplies, much less having enough to spare to give such large sums away.

"Well, that's probably better," Hermione said. "If it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't put it past them to go a little outside the lines..."

"Right now we're all 'a little outside the lines,'" Ginny reminded her, then grimaced. "Except Percy."

Harry looked at her questioningly. Percy was Ron and Ginny's third-oldest brother --- in between Bill and Charlie and the twins --- and when Harry had known him as a Prefect at Hogwarts, he had always been priggish, overly concerned with perfection according to the letter of the rules and, in Harry's opinion, arrogant and self-satisfied about his skill at measuring up to that standard. This past year, after he had graduated and gotten a job at the Ministry, he had been more concerned with pleasing his employers than with sticking by his family and friends. Unfortunately for him, he'd been too busy currying favor and enjoying the authority left to him by his absent boss, Mr. Crouch, to notice when Crouch was controlled and ultimately murdered by his insane Death Eater son escaped from Azkaban.

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"He got a promotion," Ginny said.

"Wha??"

"Yeah, Fudge said that whole business with Crouch obviously hadn't been Percy's fault and promoted him into his own office, Junior Advisor or something."

"The week after school ended," Hermione said, "the Daily Prophet finally had to run a story about what Dumbledore told us at the end of term feast, but they made it sound like---"

"I know how they made it sound," Harry said.

"Well, that afternoon Mr. Weasley came home, and he said Fudge was going through the whole Ministry, told everyone Dumbledore had gone around the bend, and if they couldn't just accept it and forget about him, then to clean out their desks. A few people left, and ever since then Fudge has been taking any little excuse he can to fire anyone he thinks is more loyal to Dumbledore than to him."

"They've been making Dad miserable," Ron said, "burying him in work, just doing any little thing to trip him up, try to get an excuse, but he's dug in his heels and isn't giving them one. ---Although there have been a lot of nights he didn't get home until late, so much Mum stopped even trying to hold dinner for him. A few times I think he didn't sleep at all, just stayed at the office and worked through the whole night to stay on top of it all so they wouldn't have anything to natter about. It is starting to tell on him..."

"But that's probably what Fudge wants Percy for," Ginny said, "to try to get something on Dad or get a rise out of him so they can get rid of him..."

"And Percy was so proud of getting the job, like it was a real compliment," Hermione said. "You kind of have to feel sorry for him..."

"No, you don't," Ron sniffed.

"Not after he was so ugly to Mum and Dad anyway," Ginny concurred.

Harry cocked his head.

"Well, Dad tried to tell him," Ginny said. "Tried to tell him Dumbledore was right, and tried to tell him that Fudge was just playing him like a fiddle, and, well..."

"Percy lost it," Ron finished for her. "I always thought Mum could shout, but I've never seen a row like Dad and Percy had, and Percy just got really... Well, he told Dad he was stupid to stay with Dumbledore and get in for all this trouble, and to... well... to stick with you, thought it was because Mum and Dad felt sorry for you... He said Dad was... that he didn't have any sense and was just being a sucker..."

"'A soft head to match that soft heart,' he said..." Ginny added bitterly.

"But anyway, he said Dad could never tell or didn't have the brains to care which way the wind was blowing, and that that was why we were... Well, why Dad didn't make more money..."

"He didn't!" Harry blurted.

"That and plenty else!" Ron insisted. "But the main thing was, he said Dad could throw his career away over this if he wanted, but that he'd be hexed if he'd get dragged down, too, and he took his stuff and stormed out, just moved out of the house that night and swore he was never coming back. I guess he got a flat or something; we haven't seen him since..."

"Well, Dad must see him at work," Ginny said. "I don't know what they do when they run into each other; just try to ignore each other maybe... Mum and Dad play like they're holding up, but Mum still tears up sometimes, says it isn't for any reason, but everybody knows what it is..."

"And Dad fumbles whatever he's holding anytime someone mentions Percy, or talks about Fudge's little Inquisition and reminds him about it...

"The prat sent me and Ginny letters awhile after about how he still loved us and what his advice was not to have all of this reflect on us..." Ron continued, his face twisting disgustedly at the memory. "...So, how's your holiday been so far?" he asked with bitter humor.

"Uh..." Despite all the anger he had come in with, Harry found that his first impulse was to say "Not too bad." Being locked in his room, not even having to deal with the Dursleys face-to-face, didn't seem so terrible compared with Mr. Weasley's problems.

"The last few days they've let us come over here to the headquarters, though," Ginny said. "Isn't it incredible? We haven't gotten much chance to explore it yet; Mum says it's too dangerous..."

"But you wouldn't believe some of the stuff that's laying around here!" Ron said, brightening up. "When Bill was helping Sirius and Lupin go through the place they found some Nimbus Fourteen Hundreds laying about and Sirius just let us have them, said he'd trade for some of our old brooms. I mean, they're not Two Thousand and Ones, but better than what we had --- the Cannons' Keeper still rides a Fourteen Hundred, you know."

Harry thought that explained quite a bit, but didn't think it wise to argue about Ron's favorite Quidditch team.

"Sirius has a house-elf, too, did you know that? I couldn't believe it!" Hermione said, then gave a shudder. "And all those heads on the wall downstairs!"

"Kreacher's his name, the house-elf here," Ron added. "Little monster of a thing; we've been trying to steer clear of him..."

"Oh, I'm sure he's not really so bad," Hermione argued.

"He locked Professor Lupin in the closet!"

"I barely got to see the house coming in," Harry broke in to admit, hoping to head off the brewing argument over house-elf rights --- not a pleasant subject to set Hermione off about.

Ginny showed him a mischievous smile worthy of Fred and George's sister. "Well, we'll fix that before too long." It was a side of her Harry hadn't seen before, but she wore it remarkably well.

"The Order meets downstairs in the kitchen," Ron explained. "We're still trying to figure out what they're up to. They keep Imperturbing the door, but..." He looked around shiftily. "There is another way in there if you want to try listening."

"Sure," Harry agreed.

"I don't know if we should..." Hermione said.

"Well it isn't like we're trying to wreck anything, we just want to know what's going on," Ginny argued. "I don't get what's the harm in that, why they're keeping us out..."

Finally Hermione relented enough to stay behind in the room while Ron and Harry went out into the hall, with Ginny hanging back to keep watch. Harry again saw those dancing blue shapes he had gotten a glimpse of on the way in, and he puzzled at them; the hallway walls were covered in childlike pictures put there with blue paint on a broad brush: lollipop trees, stars, a great blue dog...

"I don't know what's up with that," Ron said. "Hermione thinks they're sigils of some kind..." He led Harry to the end of the hall where there was a sliding hatch in the wall with a bell mounted beside it --- a dumbwaiter. Ron carefully slid it open just a crack. "Sound carries great through these things, and a lot of times they don't think of them."

He took a ball of string and a couple of objects from his pocket, but as he unwound it, Harry realised that it was all a single apparatus. One end of the string terminated in a little orange pompon, the other in a rubbery shape that looked like a toy rabbit's disembodied ear. "Extendable Ear; present from Fred and George," Ron explained. He stealthily slipped the rubber rabbit ear through the crack and fed out the string, lowering it down the dumbwaiter shaft, then finally listened for a moment to the little pom. He gave a thumbs-up sign and offered the end of the string.

Harry took the orange puff and held it against his ear. Immediately he could hear familiar voices from the kitchen.

"---Don't want to hear any of that," came Professor Moody's gravelly voice. "Me and Lupin can't do it by ourselves, and this just shows how careful we need to be about it! A few sleepless nights are more important than that?? 'Constant Vigilance' doesn't mean 'as long as it's convenient'!!"

"I've had to take a few nights at the office and I've found I can manage it," Arthur Weasley said. "Maybe once every week or two...?"

"It'll have to be more often than that if nobody else volunteers."

"I'd be more than willing," came Sirius's voice.

"Sirius, no!" cried Ron's mother, Molly Weasley. "If they caught you---"

"As if it's safe for any of you! Look what happened to Diggle!"

"Who's Digg---" Harry started, but Ron shushed him.

"I'm willing to take the same risks as anyone," Sirius said.

"No, no, it'd be too much of a mess if you got caught, too many questions," Moody pronounced.

Harry's stomach lurched for other reasons at the thought of Sirius 'getting caught.'

"What I'm thinking of is what do we do about Dedalus?" a woman's voice asked. Harry didn't recognise her.

"We're short of hands and the Ministry's eyes are all on him," Moody said. "I don't think we can afford to do anything."

"We can't just leave him!" Sirius snapped. "I'm certainly not going to sit by while they drag him off to Azkaban."

"Only six months..." someone said.

"Do you know what someone looks like after six months in that place?" Sirius questioned. "Knowing Dedalus... We'd be lucky if there was anything left of him after six months."

"I agree with Sirius," came Lupin's voice, "but I think it would be better to bide our time for now. Kingsley said he was incoherent when they found him---"

"---I just hope he isn't babbling anything they can put together," Moody said.

"---And that he was taken to St. Mungo's. I should think that they won't move him to Azkaban until he's well, and in the meantime, that's the best place for him. If what happened to him was what I think, then goodness knows I wouldn't know how to take proper care of him... I doubt any of us could..."

The kitchen fell silent for a moment, and Harry lifted the pom away from his ear. He realised that Ron was looking at him expectantly, but he didn't want to talk about what he had heard. He was fumbling for an excuse when Ginny hissed down the hallway. "Incoming!"

Ron snatched the Extendable Ear and pulled it up too quickly; the ear end audibly knocked against the inside of the dumbwaiter shaft. With no time to worry about it, he wound the string around his hand and stuffed it back into his pocket as the three of them hurried back into the Blue Room and threw themselves to seats on the beds. A few moments later, Harry heard the rattling of his trunk's casters knocking their way up the stairs and wheeling into the hall, then Tonks opened the bedroom door and peeked in. "Still awake in here?"

"Yeah, had to lot to catch up on," Ron said. Harry was still too distracted by what he had listened in on to reply.

"Ooh, Tonks!" Ginny called as Tonks wheeled Harry's trunk in. "Show Harry! Do Snape's nose!"

"Huh?" Harry looked around and watched Tonks as she came up between the two rows of them.

"All right. I may be a little off my game this late, but I'll try it..." She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate hard, and then, as if her face were being somehow inversely molded from inside, her little gumdrop nose was subsumed by a large, hooked beak that pushed out from the middle of her face, looking indeed just like the nose of Harry's most hated teacher. Ron and Ginny laughed at the sight, even Hermione couldn't suppress a smile, and Harry laughed, too.

"How do you do that?" Harry asked. If it was a spell, he wanted to learn it!

"Been doing it since I was a kid," Tonks said; her voice now had a somewhat more nasal quality.

"Tonks is a Metamorphmagus," Hermione said. "They're quite rare, but they can change their appearance at will, especially facial features. Nobody knows how they do it or why certain people can, it's apparently just something a wizard or witch is born with now and then."

"I am one and I don't really understand how to do it, it's just like I always knew," Tonks concurred. She turned to the mirror over one of the dressers. "Was a big help on the Disguise and Concealment test in Auror training. I barely had to study at all for that. Of course the way I am with Stealth and Co-ordination, I needed all the help I could get," she admitted. As she spoke, her nose reshaped itself again into a high, delicate wedge, and her grape-purple hair, still straggly from getting wet, faded to soft periwinkle blue and fluffed up in a chin-length tapered shag.

"Professor Moody said you were an Auror," Harry recalled, and looked at her, impressed.

"Yeah. I don't get the idea Old Al thinks much of me as one, but I'm still a newbie..."

"What's it like?" Harry asked with interest.

She scratched her now-fluffy blue hair. "I'm not the one to ask about the job, but the training's a royal pain. They're strict like you wouldn't believe. Honestly, I don't know how I made it in --- everytime I see old Gretel Wurtz who gave me my last exam, I still expect her to tell me there was a mistake and take my job away!" she laughed. "Well, I ought to let you get some sleep or keep catching up; I just nipped out of the meeting when I realised I'd forgot your trunk. See you 'round, Harry!" she said as she left. The four of them saw her off with a chorus of "Bye!"

"She's really fun; you'll like her," Ginny said.

So far Harry had no reason to doubt that, but with Tonks gone the distraction had passed, and his smile fell as he again thought of what he had heard through the dumbwaiter shaft.

"So what were they talking about down there?" Ron asked, driving the point home.

"Oh, nothing very interesting," Harry said. "Professor Moody was on one of his tears..." He moved his trunk into place by one of the beds and opened it, trying to avoid further questioning. Sleepiness had begun to settle in on him again, and going to bed would get him off the hook, but it would also leave him alone with his thoughts, which wasn't an appealing proposition...

"Oh, Moody's like that," Ron said, mercifully. "I wondered at first if maybe the fake had overplayed him, but I think if anything he was too easygoing."

"Well, after what Professor Moody went through last year, anyone would be jumpy," Hermione pointed out.

Harry rifled through his books and set out some clothes to put on later, and underneath Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland, he came across the new Chocolate Frog Cards from Miss Figg. He picked up the "Harry Potter" card again and looked at it; as sleepy as he was, everything seemed surreal and dreamlike in a room where that existed.

"What've you got there?" Ron asked, flattening himself on the bed to look over his shoulder.

"They made a Chocolate Frog Card of me."

"Wow, you got one of your cards?? Do you know how rare those are!?"

"Can I see it?" Ginny asked, coming to sit on the bed beside her brother.

"Well, I don't know..." Harry said, holding the card to his chest to hide the image. As he'd been looking at it, his baby self had been sucking his thumb again and drooling.

Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione ended up staying awake; they had to fight back sleepiness, but it also made them increasingly silly and Harry at last started having fun. He did show his friends the Chocolate Frog Card of himself, and he and Ron laughed together at the depiction, while Ginny and Hermione squealed at how cute the baby Harry looked.

They were only starting to contemplate sleep the following morning when Mrs. Weasley came to fetch them for breakfast, and she clucked her tongue at them down the stairs. On the way across the second floor balconey, she knocked on the doors there and called for Sirius and Lupin; Lupin said he'd be along presently, and Sirius came out and joined them. They all tiptoed softly and carefully on the last landing at the head of the entry hall where the curtains concealed Sirius's mother's portrait, then at the bottom of the stairs they entered the kitchen. It looked unlike the rest of the house; the walls and floor were gray stone, and the cabinets and fixtures stout rustic wood. Mrs. Weasley had the table piled with eggs, bacon, toast, butter, fruit, and a pitcher of creamy whole milk.

Fred and George were already there dishing up plates. "'Morning!"

"Welcome back from Muggledom, Harry! Have a good time?"

"My best holiday there yet," Harry said sarcastically.

"Sit down, sit down," Mrs. Weasley said, urging him to a seat on one of the benches and piling food onto his plate. "You're looking peaky; can't have you show up for school like that. Eat."

After weeks of nothing but cold tinned soup for every meal --- including breakfast --- Harry was only too happy to comply.

Mrs. Weasley turned to the twins. "Pockets."

On the obviously well-trained cue, Fred and George sighed and rolled their eyes and turned out their pockets to show them empty.

"Hands."

They held out their hands: nothing. Mrs. Weasley was satisfied at that, but the moment she turned her back, Harry saw George take a wrapped pastille from his knuckles. By sleight of hand he had hidden it from his mother's checks, and now he passed it to Fred, who took the seat right next to Harry and surreptitiously tucked it into Harry's pocket. Sirius showed him a conspiratorial smile, apparently having noticed.

"Surely you kids could have let Harry get some sleep," Mrs. Weasley chided, taking several bags out of the teapot and setting it on the table. "I want you all in bed after breakfast, but goodness knows when you'll get back to normal..."

"Why worry about that?" Sirius asked. "With Remus on night duty, he's been keeping nocturnal hours. If the kids and I did the same, then we wouldn't leave him knocking about this house by himself at night."

"That'd be great!" George exulted.

"Can we, Mum??" Fred asked.

"Certainly not!"

"Well, why not?" Harry protested, unthinkingly talking around a mouthful of fried potatoes. He liked the idea of spending his nights awake with Sirius and Professor Lupin.

"It's... It's not healthful. You kids need sun," Mrs. Weasley insisted.

"Good luck with that in this place," Sirius said. "At least Harry should have the choice."

"Yeah, Hermione, too, you're not her Mum," Ron said; apparently the fatigue had made him a bit tactless.

"Her parents left her in my care, and for any child I'm responsible for, it's 'early to bed and early to rise,'" his mother said pointedly. "And with Harry's parents gone, I..."

Sirius cleared his throat loudly.

"...Well, I can see where in Harry's case... It's up to you, Harry, if you want to."

"So he's old enough to decide and we're not?" Fred protested before Harry could open his mouth.

"If he decides to stay up with Sirius and Professor Lupin, surely we can go along?" Hermione said. "We've been waiting weeks to see him."

"I'm sorry, dear," Mrs. Weasley said. "But it's up to you, Harry."

Some choice, he thought. When she had forbidden Ron and Hermione from it, she had really made Harry's decision for him --- and he agreed with Fred. They were all a bit old for this, but what could he do? "I guess I'll try and get back to normal hours..."

"Well, it was a thought, anyway," Sirius said.

The door opened and Lupin came in. "Good morning, every---"

"MAESTRO!"

Harry heard the twins shout beside him, but as he turned toward them there was a double POOF! sound, and by the time he would have been looking at them they had vanished. With another P-POOF! they reappeared flanking Professor Lupin.

"Can we get you anything?" George asked as they saw him officiously to a seat.

"Tea, Messir?" Fred suggested. "Earl Grey perhaps?"

"No, no, I shouldn't; I'll be going to bed after breakfast..."

"Chamomile, then?"

"Yes, please..." Professor Lupin looked embarassed at the attention, but also a bit bemused.

"They found out who made the map," Sirius explained. By that he meant "The Marauder's Map," a magical map of Hogwarts that revealed people moving through the hallways, secret passages, etc., which Fred and George had called "the secret of their success" when they handed it down to Harry his third year. It turned out Sirius and Lupin had made it during their own Hogwarts days, together with Harry's father, James Potter, and their then-friend Peter Pettigrew. The four had signed it with their old school nicknames: Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs.

Harry, however, was too embarassed to admit that the previous year he had handed it over to the fake Professor Moody, and now he had no idea where it was.

"I can't believe you, Harry!" George protested. "How could you hold out on us like that!? To think we had Moony right there in the school for a whole year, and Padfoot and Prongs being related to you for Merlin's sake...!"

"Well, I didn't know until the night before Professor Lupin left," Harry told him.

"And you didn't even give us the chance to say goodbye!" Fred dabbed his face with a napkin and gave a theatrical sniffle.

Meanwhile George turned to his mother. "So, chamomile tea...?"

But she glared sternly at him. "How many times have I told you two?? Just because you've got your license doesn't mean you have to Apparate every five feet! And there's no call for you to be pestering poor Remus, either!"

"Oh, come on, Molly, it's good for him," Sirius argued.

"Don't encourage them."

Sirius blinked as if taken aback; Harry thought Mrs. Weasley must not have realised that he wasn't kidding, and even if Sirius hadn't been sincere, Harry sincerely agreed with what he said. Professor Lupin was always too hard on himself and could stand to have the twins gush over him.

"He doesn't mind!" Fred said. "---Do you, Maestro?"

"No, not at all," Lupin said without turning from his toast.

"See?"

"You still don't need to Apparate across a room!" Molly persisted, nonetheless turning around to make the tea. "...Don't need to use magic to set the table, especially not with the carving knife..."

Harry looked across to his friends; Ron and Ginny laughed into their hands at the memory.

"Well, we've got to practice!" George said.

"Where's the harm in it?" Sirius asked. "They just turned 17 and got their licenses, first time they can Apparate or use Magic outside of school --- every kid goes through that phase. You should have seen me and James when we were their age."

"Bill wasn't like this! Charlie wasn't!" Mrs. Weasley argued.

"I'll bet they were, just not when you were looking," Sirius muttered.

"Percy never--- Oh!" She froze in mid-sentence, then abruptly whipped around and started fiddling vaguely with some dishes in the sink.

"Good thing we're not taking after him," George said.

"'Prefects Who Gained Power' Percy..." Fred continued.

"Hogwarts Head---"

"Frederick George Weasley!" their mother cried.

"Ah, I'm George Frederick."

"Save it," Ginny said, peeling an orange.

"Well, I am, honest."

"Save it anyway."

Harry blinked at them. "George Frederick and Frederick George...?" he echoed in disbelief.

Ron nodded gravely. "Mum and Dad really brought it on themselves, you know," he whispered.

to be continued in...
Chapter Five: The Ancient and Most Noble House