Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Chapter Nine
Blue Footprints

A few moments later Hermione led Prof. Lupin down to the kitchen, and he readily scolded himself for falling asleep while in charge of the children. Sirius was strangely mum, but Mrs. Weasley accepted the apology, still blushing and fumbling. After that, she recovered quickly from her shock and kept up a friendly if taut face while she made lunch.

Tonks stayed for the meal, and for Harry's retelling of the entire hearing. Opinions were divided as to whether he should have swallowed his objections and sat in the chained chair, but Dumbledore's appearance brought near-unanimous applause. Tonks and the Weasleys cheered, but Sirius offered only a flat "That was good of him."

"What do you mean?" Ron protested.

"Is something wrong?" Hermione asked him.

"I said it was good of him," Sirius maintained with a shrug, but when Harry looked over at him, Sirius avoided his eyes. Harry was unsettlingly reminded of how Dumbledore had also failed to meet his eyes or even speak to him, but he pushed it aside.

For now, he thought it better just to get on with the story, and further reactions remained upbeat. His friends all laughed at Fudge being shown up in front of the press. It turned out that the adults present had also studied Defense under Miss Figg --- alternating stints by her and Professor Moody --- although Professor Lupin said he didn't know what the pink witch had been thinking of with her "consorting with werewolves" question. Mrs. Weasley identified the old no-nonsense witch in red as Griselda Marchbanks, who had headed the Ministry's Academic Examination Bureau since before Mrs. Weasley had been born, so Harry could expect to see her next spring when he took his OWLs. While Harry was thankful for Griselda's role at the hearing, he couldn't say he was looking forward to that.

When Lupin had gone to bed and Tonks was headed back to the Ministry, Harry's friends naturally pressed him for all the details about his visit to Auror Headquarters. Ginny thought he should have tried pulling the sword out of the mound in the practice yard. Harry chose not to mention Kingsley's wall of photographs, but he was reminded of the box Kingsley had given him, and handed it over to Sirius.

"Ah, yes, that will be the booty," Sirius said, and opened the box to reveal it full of gold. "Very useful having my 'Sherlock' in the Order; he has the perfect excuse to get into my vault." From there he and Mrs. Weasley broke off into a gentle argument as he pressed her to take the money for school shopping and she tried to resist.

"Speaking of booty..." Harry said. He unzipped the borrowed gym bag and dumped the contents out onto the table, reserving his pyjamas and slippers and also the Aviana Florence book. "This is all stuff they were giving away when Tonks showed me around the Ministry. If you see anything you want, help yourself." Ginny, Fred and George immediately leaned over the pile of bonuses and Hermione began sifting out the books and quills. Ron, sitting next to Harry, just propped his chin on his hand.

"Ooh, these are cute," Ginny said, picking up a pair of the felt wings. She stuck them on the sides of her head, and Harry laughed as they turned her hair metallic gold.

"They're Snitch wings," he explained.

"Well, they work for this, too," she argued and toyed coyly with one of her braids.

Fred and George grinned. "That is a nice trick."

"And they just give these away for free, you say...?"

"Hmmm..."

"Do you want any of the quills?" Hermione asked.

"No. If you want them all, that's fine."

She gathered them all up in a pile, then started leafing interestedly through "Vacationing Amid Muggles." Nevermind that her parents were Muggles...

Ron still hadn't made a move and just sat with a frown. Harry picked up a rolled poster from the scattered remnants and opened it out to show him the moving Quidditch scene on it. "I picked this up thinking of you; see, it's got the Cannons on it."

"Oh, I've got enough posters..." he said, waving the gift away without even turning to look at it.

Is he still angry about the Prefect thing? Harry wondered. As he let the poster roll up again and made to put it back on the pile, he happened to brush elbows with Ron and knew in a flash that yes, Ron was angry about not getting the Prefect badge --- My one chance to own something that isn't rubbish.

Of course! Mr. and Mrs. Weasley seldom had money to buy their children nice things. Ron's owl, Pigwidgeon, for example, wasn't a proper post-owl but an overly-exciteable creature Sirius had found somewhere to deliver a letter while he was on the run. Ron had also reviled his dress-robe last year, a second-hand travesty of unfashionable ruffles; Harry had told Fred and George to buy him a new one out of the joke shop money he'd given them, although now he supposed that one robe wouldn't really fix things.

But Harry's first year, when Percy had been named Prefect, his parents had gone to extra care and expense as a reward and gotten him his own handsome owl. Ron wasn't angry about being snubbed as a Prefect --- Harry didn't even think he wanted the job --- but he was sore at missing out on such a gesture from his parents. Harry had already drawn back his arm; he wasn't seeing into his friend's mind anymore, but he could well imagine how such a mood would make all the Ministry's giveaways look like only more rubbish, a reminder of the sort of thing he had to make do with.

Harry wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. More importantly, Ron didn't seem to have noticed him eavesdropping, and Harry certainly didn't want to confess to it.

He turned away to look at Sirius, who thankfully met his eyes this time with a smile. The wooden box from Kingsley was out of sight.

---

Sirius had evidently gotten Mrs. Weasley to take his money, but her temper resurfaced when Ginny and the twins began spearheading plans for Harry's "Got Off Scot-Free" celebration the next day --- she insisted on going school shopping then. At first Harry liked the idea of going to Diagon Alley, where he could get some money from his Gringotts vault and they could celebrate over hot butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron, but when Sirius broached the idea of accompanying them as a dog, Molly was vehement that he should stay hidden at the house. Harry realised that if they all went school shopping, Sirius would be left alone here --- which, it now occurred to him, his godfather would be much of the time once term began at school. So he told Mrs. Weasley that he would rather stay behind, if she could please pick up his things and he could pay it back, although Sirius broke in to insist that Molly just use his money.

Once Harry had defected, it seemed all his friends wanted to stay behind and celebrate at Sirius's house rather than buying books, although Ron seemed more disgusted at the thought of shopping than excited about a party. In the end, Mrs. Weasley agreed that Ron and Hermione could stay with Harry, since he was their best friend, but she wouldn't budge on taking Ginny and the twins.

Ginny just pouted, but Fred and George stubbornly protested for the rest of the day, even arguing with her between bites of dinner.

"Don't you think we're a little old to push around in a pram like that!?"

"Mum, we're of age for Merlin's sake! We're old enough to decide whether to go on a ruddy shopping trip!"

"You may be of age, but you still live in my house," Molly insisted.

"'My roof, my rules,'" Fred grumbled.

"That's right."

Harry looked over at the twins. They met his gaze for a second and then, in perfect unison, rolled their eyes slyly to one side. He knew better than to ask.

On the pretext of resting up for the trip, Molly bustled Hermione and her children back to the Burrow right after the meal, Fred and George still arguing with her all the way. As the house fell silent, Harry found that the ordeal that morning had left him exhausted, and Sirius and Lupin saw him off to bed early, too.

However, even as he lay there achey with weariness, Harry couldn't fall asleep. Too much had happened that day, and the closer he got to sleeping, the more alarmingly it all churned through his mind, until he finally had to pull himself forcibly from nightmarish visions in the full darkness, of Dumbledore refusing to let Harry get face-to-face with him to take his Prefect badge, of Cornelius Fudge shouting orders from a stone box above the strange black door, of his friends being sucked through that door as if it were a black hole, led by Sirius, who went with his back to Harry and a violet tophat on...

Harry swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up. He sat there for some time, but felt so tired that he knew he would lay down again if he didn't get up, and then it would just be more of the same. That was the last thing he wanted, so he pulled himself to his feet, found his glasses, and crept out into the hallway.

The painted figures dancing on the walls made the darkness less frightening, as if they were leading him along. He quietly opened the blue-starred door of the master bedroom and peeked inside, but it was empty; Sirius hadn't gone to bed yet. Harry continued to the staircase and climbed down. On the floors below, however, there weren't any paintings on the walls, and the Black House looked shadowy and imposing when fully lit, to say nothing of now, at night with all the lights out. He passed the dark drawing room and leaned as hard as he dared against the stairway railing to avoid the house-elf heads and Mrs. Black's curtains looming in the dark.

Only when he arrived at the bottom of the stairs and saw light shining under the kitchen door did he realise he'd been intending to go down there all along, but when he reached out, an invisible force held him back, as if the handle and his hand were mismatched magnets to strong to touch against each other. He tried a few more times to touch the door or listen, but couldn't. Ron had mentioned the Order using Imperturbable charms to protect their meetings; probably they were having one in there now --- and were leaving Harry all alone in the house to do it, he thought sourly as he sat down on the stair. He thought of going up to the drawing room and trying to listen at the dumbwaiter shaft, but thought surely that wouldn't work a third time; besides, he was too tired to climb up and face the drawing room in the dark, and the last time he'd listened in on one of these meetings, he had come out of it not at all sure he wanted to know what he'd learned...

So he just sat on the step and soon leaned against the wall and began to nod off. He vaguely felt Mrs. Black up the stairs behind him, but even through his eyelids he was aware of that line of light at the bottom of the door, and it chased away all the dark distractions. It was an awkward way to fall asleep, so he couldn't go down too deeply, but dozing there was strangely peaceful.

Some time later, the sound of the doorhandle woke him.

"Oh, Harry!"

Harry blinked up into a sudden flood of light and voices; even as a silhouette in the doorway, Dumbledore was unmistakable. He turned back toward the kitchen before Harry could even open his mouth, and as Sirius jumped up from the table and hurried toward him, Dumbledore caught his shoulder. "Sirius," he started in a low voice, "I really must insist --- "

But Sirius bristled and swatted Dumbledore's hand away. Harry thought he might be dreaming again, watching his godfather lock eyes with the Headmaster. "Now just a moment! Who do you think---!?"

"Please, please, it's all right..." Prof. Lupin edged around the two of them, came out of the kitchen and bent down to Harry's level. "Couldn't sleep, I take it. Are you thirsty? Do you need anything?"

Harry drowsily shook his head.

"Is it all right if I take you back upstairs?"

"...yeah..."

"Sleep tight," Sirius said as Lupin helped him up and ushered him back up the stairs.

The movement helped Harry wake up a little and find his voice. "What were you talking about?" he asked over his shoulder, once they were safely out of earshot of the kitchen.

Lupin paused for a moment. "About your hearing mostly."

So they were in there talking about me behind my back... "Did Dumbledore say anything about why he didn't stay?" It was much too late at night for tact.

"No, I'm afraid not..."

Lupin led him into the Blue Room again. Harry let himself fall to a seat on the edge of the bed, still thinking about the hearing, Miss Figg describing that night in the alley... "I don't know why I couldn't do it..." he said sadly.

"Hm?"

"The Patronus charm, that night with the Dementors. After you taught me... I tried, I just couldn't. I did it once, so why...?"

"When you saved Sirius and Hermione, that was the only time you had cast the charm against real Dementors, wasn't it?" Lupin asked gently.

"Yeah, I think so..."

"And that was a truly remarkable situation, as I understand it." He walked over beside Harry's bed, leaving the door ajar so that he and the room were visible as white highlights in the dark. "Harry, the fact that you have ever cast the Patronus charm is very impressive."

"But if I couldn't when it was important...!"

"When it was important, everyone survived and came through it all right. That's what matters. You're an amazingly talented student, Harry," the professor said, "but you must be realistic with yourself. It's a rare adult wizard who can cast a fully-formed Patronus at all, much less do it while under attack by Dementors. I admit, it's something I've never managed."

Harry blinked at him in the dark. "You've never...? But Hermione said that on the train, you---"

"Not a fully-formed Patronus; only enough, thankfully."

"Which is better than I did..." Harry lamented.

"You're here now. Obviously what you did was enough."

"But I wanted to--- I tried to help my cousin..." Harry couldn't even bring himself to say that he had 'wanted to protect Dudley.' "...And it didn't do any good. I might as well have just run for it."

"No, Harry," Lupin said, almost before the words were out of Harry's mouth. "You should never run from Dementors. It's no use; it only exhausts you and gives your fear control of you. If you have somewhere to run to for its own sake, you can leave them behind, but if you only run away from them, they will always catch you."

Harry absorbed the lesson, but didn't know what to say. "Oh."

"So you see, even if it seemed a hopeless thing that you did, it was the right thing. Remember that and have a good night's sleep, won't you?" Lupin suggested. He hesitantly patted Harry's shoulder, then straightened up to leave.

But Harry wasn't ready to let him go yet. "I really can handle being told about things, you know," he announced suddenly.

Lupin paused in mid-turn. "I know you can," he said. "But sometimes there are reasons."

"What reasons?"

"That's beside the point," the professor said with a slight wave of his hand, which made it flicker like a moth in the doorway-light. "What I mean to say is that I know Sirius is right. You're old enough to want to know things and to find them out on your own. It's what we would have done... But sometimes it isn't that we don't have faith in you, or that we want to keep you in the dark. Sometimes there are good reasons why we want you to trust us and not go prying."

"Right..." But if they didn't trust him to decide for himself about those reasons, it seemed just as bad; it seemed right back where he'd started. And he frankly doubted what Lupin was saying in Mrs. Weasley's case. He was a little ashamed of how much he'd enjoyed watching her face turn red when she found out her children had heard her whole fight with Sirius, the thing Lupin had just referred to. "---Hey, you were asleep when Sirius said that," Harry realised.

"Oh, well, I suppose I was."

Harry stared at him until he explained.

"As I'm sure you've gathered, Sirius and Molly often don't see eye-to-eye, and while there's nothing wrong with that as such, I'd begun to notice myself being used as a hedge in between them. It was unfair of me, I admit, but... I wanted to seem less available for that function in the future."

In other words, Harry thought, Lupin had wanted to show Mrs. Weasley it wasn't such a good idea to hand the kids off to him so she could shout at Sirius not to tell them anything. He smiled, but for only a moment. Thinking of Sirius not seeing eye-to-eye with someone...

Lupin had started away again, and Harry brought him up short. "What is it with Sirius and Dumbledore?"

He froze with his hand on the doorknob. "Oh! Well..." he said, too quickly for it to be nothing, "I shouldn't think that's for me to talk about..."

Harry flopped back onto the pillow. "I know, I know. There are reasons. I have no right to ask..." he grumped. He stretched out and kicked his feet under the blankets, expecting that Lupin would leave him to go back to sleep like that.

Instead, the room was silent for a full minute before the professor spoke. "No, Harry," he sighed. "You have every right to ask... About something that affected you..."

Harry pulled himself up to a seat again, suddenly wide awake as Lupin came over and sat down on the foot of his bed. His white-lit profile looked at the floor. "I don't know if anyone told you about when Sirius was sent to Azkaban, that there was no trial..."

"Yeah, Sirius told me that Mr. Crouch just put him away..."

"Foremostly it was Crouch's idea, but... Even at the height of his power, he couldn't make such a decision alone. To deny someone a hearing, the Wizengamot had to vote unanimously."

Harry caught his breath; already he remembered Dumbledore entering the chamber that morning, "Though I am but a former member of the council." "Dumbledore was---!"

"Was on the Wizengamot at that time, yes."

Harry's mind reeled; but then, he had already known that Dumbledore testified against Sirius. Harry's parents had protected their hiding place with the Fidelius Charm, so they could only have been betrayed by their Secret Keeper, the one person who knew and could tell where they were. Dumbledore had told the council that that was Sirius. Like everyone else, he had thought that it was Sirius; he hadn't been told about the last-minute switch, that the real Secret Keeper-turned-traitor was Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail. But how could Dumbledore make such a horrible mistake, when he always seemed to know everything!?

"Why??" Harry asked. "How could he not have known---!? Why didn't Sirius tell him back then, what really happened?? Why didn't he tell somebody!?"

Lupin let his head fall back to face the ceiling. "He didn't tell anyone... because no one asked."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. It was worse than only being denied a trial. No one ever so much as went to Sirius in prison to ask him why he did it, or if he could explain himself," Lupin said sadly, facing Harry at last. "Not the Ministry, not Dumbledore... Not even me."

As he finished speaking, a shadow fell across his face from the doorway. "Yes, I can just see that now:" --- Sirius's voice made them both jump --- "'I'm here to see Sirius Black; I'm his friend the werewolf.' They'd have found you a cell on the opposite side of the place."

"Even so, I could have spoken to Albus or done something..."

"Well, after I---" Sirius started but cut off. "Remus Lupin, I will not get into an apologising contest with you. I don't blame you, and just in case it is your fault I forgive you; now if I hear you moping about it again, so help me I'll turn you into a bassett hound so you can at least look the part properly!"

Lupin jolted up very straight and stared at him speechlessly.

"Alastor's working out night duty schedules down there," Sirius said.

"Oh. Well, sleep well, Harry," Lupin said as he rose and left.

Sirius watched after him through the lighted portal for a moment, casting a shadow across the entire room, before he closed the door behind his friend and came over to Harry's bed in the dark.

"Sirius...?"

"Don't worry about it, Harry," Sirius said. "That was all a long time ago; it doesn't do any good worrying about it now." He chuckled, a disembodied sound in the blackness. "I've given Molly enough gray hairs, I suppose I deserved a taste of my own medicine... Just go to sleep. It's all right."

Harry wasn't so sure, but before he could think of where to begin saying anything, he heard a pop and felt the familiar weight of Sirius as a dog jumping up onto the bed and curling around his feet.

When Harry lay back down, he couldn't even try to sort through it all in his mind with Sirius there, as if afraid that somehow the thoughts would leak out and his godfather would overhear them and find him out. Most nights Harry would have been annoyed by the lack of privacy, but now it was a blessing as he was finally able to settle down to sleep.

---

The next morning the sun shone brightly through the window when Harry woke to the sound of the dumbwaiter bell. Sirius flopped down onto the floor and Harry let him out of the room before getting dressed. When he came out, "Snuffles" was sitting dutifully by the door, waiting to accompany him down to the kitchen with shaggy black tail wagging.

Lupin was there heating the teakettle on the stove, and Ron and Hermione were already at the table, where a plate sat piled full of piping-hot cinnamon rolls dripping with melted frosting. Another plate with a single roll had been laid out for Harry, as well as a glass of milk. Ron was already munching, but Hermione had waited for him.

"Morning, everybody," Harry said as he took a seat. Sirius sat down on the floor near his chair, apparently preferring to stay as a dog.

"Morning," Ron mumbled.

Hermione dispensed with greetings. "You're not going to believe it!" she said, pulling her schoolbag up into her lap. She produced a torn-out section of newspaper from it. "Listen to this!"

"She had to smuggle that past Mum, by the way," Ron put in before she began reading.

"'Dumbledore, Marchbanks Release Potter From Inquiry.

"'Yesterday morning Harry Potter was summoned to a preliminary hearing at the Ministry of Magic'---"

"'Preliminary'??" Harry echoed incredulously.

"---'To answer charges that he had cast a spectacular spell in front of a Muggle witness, the spell being detected by the Ministry earlier this summer. Potter showed contempt for the hearing from the beginning, arriving in a disheveled state and refusing even to sit down in one of the Ministry's chairs that was not to his liking.'"

Harry was washing his first bite of cinnamon roll down with milk and nearly choked on it.

"'He freely admitted to casting the spell in question and to the presence of the Muggle witness, offering as a defense an impossible tale of Dementor attack. Despite this seemingly unbalanced presentation, Potter had powerful allies. Albus Dumbledore appeared unsummoned and proceeded to derail the hearing with claims of proving Potter's story. Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, presiding, found himself having to prevent Dumbledore from summoning a house-elf as a witness. The one witness whom Dumbledore did summon (whose name this reporter maintains as confidential)'---"

"Whose name they won't admit to, they mean!" Harry said.

Hermione continued. "The one witness 'was a known werewolf sympathiser, but also a personal acquaintance of several judges and thus able to manipulate their votes. Even Wizengamot Elder Griselda Marchbanks departed from her usual professional demeanor and relaxed procedures to indulge Potter and allow Dumbledore's theatrics.

"'When the vote was called, the nine judges split five-to-four, with Marchbanks casting the deciding vote. She was heard by reporters dismissing the charges as a mere technicality, despite a possible violation of the Magical Secrecy Omnibus Act'---"

"That's not what it was like at all!" Harry lamented angrily.

"We know," Ron assured him.

"---'And even regarded it as "unfortunate" that Dumbledore was unable to use a house-elf's testimony,'" Hermione read. "'Doubts have been expressed in some circles about Marchbanks' judgement in other matters as well; see today's op/ed page for views on her support of radical Goblin groups.'"

"I know something about Griselda's Goblin views," Lupin offered. "She's rather outspoken about the laws banning them from skilled crafts and trades. I would agree with her that those are unfair."

"So would I," Hermione said, slapping the piece of newsprint down on the table before she finally took a cinnamon roll and started unravelling it.

Harry picked up the paper with sugar-sticky fingers, but looked up at the sound of the oven door. Prof. Lupin took another pan of rolls out and began spreading frosting on them, and Harry noticed that his patched old trousers were dusted white with flour. "You made these?"

"Yes, since I knew you were taking the day to celebrate."

"I didn't know you could cook," Harry said.

"Oh, only a little."

Sirius barked, Harry thought in protest of Lupin's modesty. Harry set one of the rolls on the floor for him and smiled to watch him push it all around with his nose trying to get bites of it.

"They're very good, Professor," Hermione said.

"You don't have to call me 'Professor,' you know. I'm not your teacher anymore," Lupin said, a little sadly.

"As far as I'm concerned, you'll always be our teacher," Hermione maintained. That coaxed a smile out of him.

Harry smiled too in private agreement, then glanced over the torn-out newspaper article. He just skimmed the first few paragraphs, which Hermione had read, but it went on to quote Fudge as saying that for an orphan like Harry, who'd been whisked suddenly into a world where he was famous for rescuing Wizardkind from "the one who must not be named," it was only natural for him to crave attention, and even to manufacture danger and rescue scenarios to keep it coming, poor love-starved child that he was. Harry grimaced; he was quite happy to do without Fudge's attention. But Fudge had told the reporters that he was more mystified and disturbed about Dumbledore's possible motive in fostering these scares, and his refusal to comment about such things regarding Griselda Marchbanks only served to cast more aspersions on her. He further made certain to assure readers that unsanctioned Dementor attacks were unheard of and that the Azkaban guards were not aggressive; Not aggressive my foot! Harry certainly hoped that the time third year when a Dementor had tried to Kiss him had been "unsanctioned," but cynically thought that that didn't seem so certain anymore.

Worse yet, they'd wrapped up the article by asking for comments from Amos Diggory --- Cedric's father. Immediately after Cedric's death, Amos had only thanked Harry gravely for bringing back the body, but now he was in the paper saying he wasn't sure. No doubt he'd been assaulted with the reporters' insinuations; Harry could practically read them between the lines: "Isn't it strange that these things keep happening to Harry Potter in ways no one else can prove?" "As the only witness to whatever killed your son, wouldn't he have every reason to want to make himself look like a hero, regardless of what really happened?" "If you're not sure he saw these rogue Dementors, how can you be sure he saw You-Know-Who?" Really, Harry knew he should be thankful that Mr. Diggory wasn't turning on him completely to accuse him of killing Cedric, but when they quoted him as saying "I don't know what to think about Harry Potter anymore; I need to know the truth about what happened to my son," it was more than enough to make Harry feel sick, and he pushed his cinnamon roll aside.

"The part about Mr. Diggory?" Hermione asked.

Harry nodded. He crumpled the newspaper and, with Mrs. Weasley gone, just threw it on the floor.

"They've been doing that to him all summer," Ron said, grimacing with disgust and adding some colorful names for the Daily Prophet writers now that his mother wasn't there to hear him. "Why they can't just leave the poor guy alone..."

"They're doing it to get at me," Harry grumbled.

"I wouldn't say that," Prof. Lupin broke in to argue softly. "They're doing it for fear of him, afraid of having to realise that he's back. People will do ugly things for anger or hatred, but I think nothing is as ugly as what they'll do out of fear. Sadly you and Amos happen to be in the path of it this time."

Sirius rested his furry head on Harry's lap and looked up at him so that a narrow rim of white cupped his irises --- they were now a rich canine brown rather than the striking cold gray of his human eyes. "What is it this morning?" Harry asked. "Are you just having fun being a dog?"

Sirius nodded, and Harry managed a smile and scratched him behind the ear.

Professor Lupin picked up the wad of newspaper from the floor and tossed it onto the coals in the oven to burn. "It's time I was turning in and leaving you to your party," he said. "Snuffles" turned from Harry's lap and trotted over to him. "Yes, I know you'll take good care of them," Lupin said, giving Sirius's head and shoulders a brisk, friendly rub before departing up the stairs. "Have a good time."

His departure brought a long pause. Harry toyed with his cinnamon roll a bit, but didn't regain the apetite for more than one or two more bites of it.

"So..." Ron said, "what do you want to do?"

Without Ginny and the twins, it wasn't so easy to think how to have a day of festive fun at the Black House, at least not under adult supervision, although Snuffles did seem like the next best thing to having the place to themselves. A day with no housework was a relief, but the morning passed in rather lackluster diversions. They took food and water up to the attic for Buckbeak and stroked his feathers; they sorted through Harry's Chocolate Frog cards and browsed the same Muggle Machines magazine again. Harry and Ron got out the miniature gobstones set from the Ministry and tried playing with it, but it was so small that they had trouble moving the pieces accurately and the game ended by being abandoned after the stones had thoroughly spat on them both --- "No wonder they were giving these away," Harry admitted. Meanwhile Snuffles dozed lightly by the fireplace and Hermione attached a fan-folded scrap of parchment to a magical string from her wand for Crookshanks to chase it all over the Blue Room. A few times Harry caught himself becoming so bored that he was tempted to start sorting through boxes again.

After a lunch of leftover-meat sandwiches, Sirius perked up his ears and led the way back upstairs wagging his tail. He nosed open the door of an unused bedroom which was painted with blue figures like the hall, albeit somewhat more soberly. When Harry followed him into the room, he padded over to a corner where two leftover cans of blue paint were stacked up, took the handle of one in his mouth, and carried it into the hallway. Harry brought the other can out after him as Ron pried the lid off the first, whereupon Sirius stepped on the rim and tipped it over, spilling paint all over his own front feet, but apparently that had been the idea. He went bounding down the hall, wagging his tail and leaving splattery blue pawprints.

"Well, he did say we should do that sometime," Harry recalled. He pulled off his shoes and socks and tossed them in the door of the Blue Room before walking experimentally through the blue puddle and tracking paint out the other side. The thick liquid was slick under his feet and felt gloppy between his toes, but also pleasantly cool at first. In any case he had to grin at what he was doing.

Ron took off his shoes and started tracking paint, too, which finally seemed to lighten his mood. Hermione excused herself to change clothes. When she got back in an old tee shirt and summer sandals, she caught Ron trying to put an unhappy Crookshanks' feet down in the paint and shouted at him to stop it. In her vehemence, she slapped him on the back of the head, letting Crookshanks spring from his hands and dart off.

"I wasn't going to hurt him!" Ron protested.

"He could've licked the paint off his paws and gotten sick or something! Besides, just because he's not a human doesn't make it okay to bully him! You wouldn't think of picking me up and dropping me in that paint if I didn't want you to, so---"

"I don't know, maybe I would," Ron said, and took a step toward her.

"Oh, don't you dare!"

As Hermione ran a few steps down the hall, both of them were smiling, but before Ron could chase her, Sirius trotted in between them. He just stopped and looked back and forth at the two of them like a friendly, curious dog, but Harry knew that he'd stepped in to make sure things didn't get out of hand.

"What was the spell you used that once," Harry asked him, "to let me climb up the wall?"

Sirius finally turned human again; his front paws translated into paint-covered fingers. "Oh, yes, 'Arachnomanus' --- the Spider Feet charm. You don't know that one?"

"I think it was in last year's book, but we never covered it in class," Hermione said.

"Oh, if James and I had kept ourselves to what we'd covered in class, we'd never have had any fun," he told her. Since the students weren't allowed to use magic outside school, Sirius cast the charm on them all, including himself, and told them about how it was done. "...Although the trouble with this one is that if you lose contact with what you're walking on, you'll come unstuck, so you can't move around too quickly..."

Harry dipped his hands in the paint and climbed up the wall, at first on all fours as he'd done in the drawing room, but then he experimentally straightened up. His footing remained firm and it took no extra effort to keep from falling over toward the floor, but he still felt a vague sense of downward gravity, a thrilling roller-coaster-like sensation in his belly, and it was pleasantly bizarre to look up at Ron and be seeing him sideways.

"Now, come on," Ron had taken Hermione by the wrists. He gently pulled her hands down and she laughed as he dipped them in the paint.

"It just feels so odd to be doing something like this," she said.

"Well, it's Sirius's house, and he seems to think it's all right."

"It's not as if you can make the place look worse," Sirius confirmed.

That reminded Harry in a roundabout way... "That's one thing that's interesting about this house," he said, tiptoeing around the blue dog painted on the wall. "It kind of goes to show you that money isn't everything."

"Oh?" Ron turned to him.

"Well, look at all the stuff in here. If someone was going to buy it, it'd cost a fortune, but really it's all just worthless trash."

"I'll say it is," Sirius agreed.

"It's not half as nice as what you and your folks have," Harry told Ron.

His friend showed a smile, but a sour one. "I'll trade you."

"You wouldn't want all this cursed dark magic stuff, would you??" Hermione questioned.

"'Course not! I wouldn't keep it, just sell it all and buy myself a real owl."

"Oh, hush, Pigwidgeon might hear you!"

"Right now everything here is too traceable for that --- but once my name is cleared, come talk to me," Sirius joked. He turned back into a dog and trotted through the paint, then up a wall and onto the ceiling.

It seemed a waste to use the charm and then just track paint on the floor, and the walls were already well decorated, so the others followed Sirius and they all mostly climbed around on the ceiling. Childlike playfulness took hold as they tried leaving different kinds of blue footprints --- sometimes taking short steps, sometimes long ones, sometimes shuffling their feet in a herringbone pattern or hopping on all fours to leave pairs of handprints and footprints side-by-side. Hermione ventured onto the wall and drew looping lines of sandal-prints around the older pictures with fussy heel-to-toe steps before going back to the floor to open the last can of paint. She started pouring it in a long line down the hallway, but dropped the rest and gave a scream to match Sirius's howl of alarm when Harry forgot not to lose contact with the ceiling, began running across it, and nearly fell. Ron was able to catch him by the knees and pull him back "down" until he could touch the wall and get his footing again.

Just as he was saying "I'm okay now, I'm all right," they heard footsteps running up the stairway, and a moment later Mrs. Weasley burst in. At the sight of the blue paint tracked and splattered everywhere and Ron, Harry, and Sirius-as-a-dog looking down at her from the ceiling, she turned a frightening shade of white before succumbing to an angry flush of red. "SIRIUS LUCIEN BLACK!!" She shrieked the name so loudly as to rival the downstairs portrait.

Pop! "What did I do now?"

Mrs. Weasley marched right up to Sirius; they stood face to face, with the complication that he was standing upside down on the ceiling with his longish hair falling "upward" toward the floor. He just crossed his arms and stood straight in front of the oncoming onslaught, even as Harry found himself compelled to slink shamefacedly back down to the floor and Ron did the same. Harry saw Ginny just peek in through the stairway portal, and when her eldest brother, Bill Weasley in his ponytail and leather jacket, came in behind his mother, even he seemed to hang back timidly from her.

"'What did you do?'!? You ought to know very well! I trust you to look after the children for ONE DAY, and you...!!"

"And I what?" he questioned.

"Playing with Reversed Gravity --- they could be killed!!"

"Spider Feet, actually. Otherwise my hair wouldn't---"

"That spell is still not a toy!! How am I supposed to leave my children with you---!? How am I supposed to leave HARRY with you when you're nothing an overgrown child yourself!?"

"So I remember what it's like to be that age!" Sirius insisted, finally raising his voice and leaning into her aggressively. "The fact that you apparently can't hasn't been helping Fred and George any!"

Mrs. Weasley started back from him and again turned white for an instant. "Y- you--- YOU LEAVE MY CHILDREN OUT OF THIS!!" she screamed.

"WELL THEN YOU LEAVE MINE OUT OF IT!" Sirius roared back.

"HARRY'S NOT YOUR CHILD!!"

"YES HE IS!!!"

The shock had worn off enough for an infectious spark of anger to strike in Harry's mind. He opened his mouth to shout at them both that he wasn't a child, that he wasn't any love-starved orphan waif who needed coddling from either of them---

But Mrs. Weasley was faster. "You've never had a child!!" she shouted at Sirius. "You don't know what it MEANS to have a child!!!"

"Yes I do, Molly!" Sirius's voice had lowered in volume, but that was more than made up for in the grim set of his face and the crushing certainty of his tone. "I do know what it's like, when the best for them is the first thing, no matter what! When they're far away, no matter where they are, I know what it's like to feel them always right there, to feel them in your blood! I knew what that was like for twelve years and they could never take it away from me! So don't you tell me I don't know what it means!"

Harry's objections were drowned in his godfather's words, which flooded over his face with such bracing heat that he could hardly breathe. As he dashed into the Blue Room, he only heard a cacophony of sounds --- a door opening, probably Lupin looking out to see what was happening, Mrs. Weasley's broken wail, and footsteps that must be her and some of her children running for the stairway --- before he slammed the door behind him and threw himself on his bed. It was all too heavy to push aside, and too intense to even think about, so he just lay there curled tightly around it, even as Mrs. Black's portrait downstairs began screaming at Sirius all over again.

He didn't even know when the noise stopped. He had no sense of anything, but only knew that some time had passed and everything had gone quiet before someone hesitantly opened and closed the door.

"Harry? Are you okay?"

It was Ginny; he was almost surprised to find that he could get up and turn around to answer her. "Yeah..."

"Sorry about all that."

He saw no need for an apology from her and waved it away distractedly.

"Bill and Ronnie are trying to get Mum calmed down, and Hermione and Professor Lupin took off after Sirius; he's kicking himself somewhere."

"Good," Harry said, but he was immediately sick at himself for it. He only wished Sirius hadn't said--- No, that wasn't true, but he somehow wished he hadn't heard it; not like that...

"Well, it wasn't his fault," Ginny argued. "I mean, I wish he hadn't gone after Mum the way he did, but she did just tear into him without warning him what was wrong..."

Harry gave a sniff. "I'll tell you what's wrong," he grumbled. "What's wrong is Poor Little Harry's a fragile baby who'll break if you let him know anything or do anything..."

"No, no, it wasn't anything like that. Not this time anyway," Ginny said. She offered Harry a folded piece of parchment which turned out to be a hand-written note.

BBB-

In town shopping against our

will. Mum pulled the old

My Roof

My Rules

bit, so we ditched her

at F&B and are crashing with

Lee for the rest of holiday.

Need you to find her and

tell her - Sorry!!!

Love to all, incl. Mum -but

tell her to lighten up!

F+G

"'Big Brother Bill' got that at work and he had to come find us," Ginny explained. "Mum was already at her wits' end hunting for them. Actually ran into Bill just outside Gringotts; she was ready to leave me with him and go check Knockturn Alley..."

Harry stared at the note in disbelief. "I'm really sorry..."

"It's all right," she said. "It's not like anything bad happened to them. This might be better for everybody, and if they'd tried telling her first, it just would've been worse..."

He nodded numbly. "Maybe..."

Harry handed the note back. He just sat there, Ginny still standing beside him, in a long awkward silence. Finally she bent over and gave him a hug that pressed one of her braids against his cheek. "I'm glad your hearing went okay," she said, then left and shut the door behind her, leaving Harry with the Blue Room to himself.

Several minutes after Ginny's footsteps had faded away, Harry heard a voice in the hall. He slowly crossed to the door and opened it a crack to look; Kreacher was attacking the paint on the floor with scouring charms, muttering angrily to himself.

"...Filthy blood-traitor Young Master... Mudblood and mongrel worms defile My Lady's house..."

Not being Kreacher's master, there wasn't anything Harry could do about him, so he just shut the door again and tried to ignore the sound.

to be continued in...
Chapter Ten: The Hogwarts X-Press