Beaten and Blown By the Wind

Chapter Six: Molly Weasley's Welcome

Harry was awoken by someone shaking his tired shoulders earlier than he would have like to have been awoken. He was about to tell Aunt Petunia that he wasn't going to wake up today when his bed jolted and he was thrown to the floor. Waking up with a start, Harry realized that he was on the floor of the knight bus having fled Privet Drive the night before. He grumbled incoherently to himself as he found his glasses in his pocket and placed them over his foggy eyes. He looked up to find his godmother trying to smooth her hair unsuccessfully, it bushing out like Hermione's on her worst day. He watched her from the floor, a million questions flashing though his mind at once, as she gave up on her hair and gathered up her red cloak. She then noticed Harry watching her and smiled at him.

"So you've finally decided to wake up," she smirked. "Come on, up with you, we're just about to my father's home."

Harry gathered himself and stood, flattening his own hair as best he could, following Aislynn down the stairs towards the door of the bus. The two chatted with Stan and Ernie a bit, gaining the attention of the other passengers who had flagged down the bus through the night. Harry looked out the window to a very very early morning as far as he could tell. The sky was still pink from the rising sun and there was mist rising from the green Welsh fields. Harry saw a huge house in the distance and wondered at Aislynn's lack of money.

"Is that your father's house?" Harry asked. She only nodded. "Will he be expecting us?"

"I certainly hope not. He's long since passed, and I'd quite rather he did not come to visit me as a spirit. You saw him in that one dream. He hated everyone and everything but my mother and she died when I was a little girl. This was his house, but it's mine now. He left everything to me and my little sister because he was able to tolerate us the most out of the seven of us. The last time I was here, your mother was trying to talk me into making it a nice summer home for the lot of us."

"Is your sister here, then?" Harry asked, unable to hide his curiosity at her strange expression.

"No, no one is here...not anymore," Aislynn frowned.

"What about your other siblings? Why couldn't your dad tolerate them?" Harry asked after they bid Stan and Ernie farewell and started toward the house.

"Death eaters," Aislynn didn't even look at Harry as she confided that to him, muttering a password as she tapped a huge lock on the gates by the street. The gates started to open and Aislynn held her hand out, gesturing Harry through before following behind him, pointing at the gates with her wand to make them close. "Don't worry; they're not a threat anymore. Three of my brothers were killed by aurors resisting arrest, my older sister wasted away in Azkaban and is now a gibbering fool who doesn't even know her own name, and my twin brother was killed by my father - heated argument," she told Harry, noticing his incredulous expression. "My brother threatened my father first, he was able to claim self defense, but no one cared much to persecute my father as long as it meant getting out of his presence. They knew that he wasn't going to search people out and no one else in the world wanted to be close enough to him for him to harm, so they let it go. Plus, this was in the heat of the war against Voldemort and my brother had been quite the heinous death eater."

"Oh," Harry was appalled at how easily she gave up this information. "So it's just you and your younger sister now?"

"No, it's just me now."

"I'm sorry. Do you mind if I ask -"

"What happened?" Harry nodded. "No, I suppose you're one of the few people who could fully understand what it was like for me," Aislynn said, mostly to herself as she wiped at her eyes a little before straightening and answering. "She was killed in an attack a few months before your parents' death. She was targeted in an attack on me. It was believed something like the death of my sister would upset me enough to make me an easier target in an attack on Sirius," she looked at Harry's confused face. "I know it sounds really stretched, but there were certain people who had fallen from Voldemort's highest graces and were willing to do anything to regain his highest favor. Voldemort assumed strategic attacks on James' closest friends were the easiest way to bring him out to defend them. Without James, there was just Lily, whom he saw as just a mudblood, excuse my terminology, between him and you. Plus there were people who also had reasons to want to take Sirius out - not everyone hated his mother."

"Do you mean?" Harry's eyes grew wide as saucers as he stopped and looked up at Aislynn, remembering the old Black house elf Kreacher hiding pictures of a certain escaped death eater in his cabinet.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," she said, her eyes clouding over and voice growing colder than Harry had ever heard Snape's. "She failed a few times too many trying at Sirius and then me, so she targeted someone close to us instead."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up painful memories, Lynn, if there's anything I can do," Harry motioned helplessly, inwardly slapping himself for bringing it up.

"No, it's good that you know. See, Harry, we all have rivals in this world. One person who is practically an equal, our counterbalance. Everything and everyone needs a counterbalance and an opposite. There's no good without evil, light without dark, black without white. It's an important thing to be aware of, Harry. It helps keep things in perspective; helps keep you from screaming at the sky for everything that goes wrong. Knowing that the bad times are inevitable if you want to know the difference when the good times roll around again keeps you from going crazy with grief until they do," she sighed. "It's just been a long while since the good times. I'm thinking maybe that Bellatrix has something to do with that too...kinda like the you and Voldemort thing, but as long as both of us are living, neither of us can be happy. That is how it will all end," she said, looking into the distance very seriously. "It'll come down to her and me and only one of us will make it out. Neither of us can bear to let the other escape yet again. But this time, she's given me strength. I'm not stuck in the vengeful melancholy I was after my sister's death - now I'm just ticked off. Fifteen years I waited for us to be together again and she took him away from me laughing. I'm not going to forget that."

"Is that opinion or vision?" Harry asked, a little creeped out at her cryptic tone, but none the less feeling a strong sense of trust for this woman after hearing her plans for revenge on Sirius' death.

"Opinion for now. Who knows? I may see something, I may not. I don't see everything, nor do I want to," she smiled at Harry again, putting her thoughts of those Bellatrix Lestrange stole from her out of sight and out of mind. "Seeing and knowing absolutely everything would drive anyone insane. True, I have a few telekinetic gifts that most seers don't, but I've learned to control them enough that I sometimes forget they're there."

"So what are we going to do at your father's house? Just lie low and wait for the Order of the Phoenix to arrive?"

"Well, unless I'm mistaken, my father's put wards enough on this house that no one - especially not Voldemort - could get through unless they knew the secret password, which I'm certainly privy to. So really we can do whatever we want. You could stand on the other side of the gate from Voldemort and all he'd be able to do is stare at you angrily. We don't have to call the Order here until we want the Order here."

"So your father was on the Dumbledore side of things?"

"No, he was on his own side of things. He hated Dumbledore, but he hated Voldemort too. That meant he hated all six of his kids because we sided with one or the other, but then again he hated all of us anyway because we existed like the rest of humanity. He wanted no part in any war or any sides or good or evil, and Dumbledore was more than happy to honor that," Aislynn laughed. "One of the only people in the world that Dumbledore never liked at all at one point or another, my father was."

"So why did he set up wards against Voldemort?"

"I'm not exactly sure. No one really is. All we know is that Voldemort came here one night to try and talk my father into joining his side. My father was one of the greatest wizards of his time, you know. Maybe the greatest aside from Dumbledore and Voldemort, so Voldemort obviously thought it'd be an advantage to have him pitted against Dumbledore...plus my father was afraid of no one. But what happened, no one knows. All we know is that my dad got pissed off, hexed the hell out of Voldemort, got him off the property somehow, and set up wards at all his houses that Voldemort couldn't get through. That's when his will changed from no one getting anything to me and my younger sister getting everything. He was a spiteful man and that was his revenge at my other five sibling's choice of Voldemort."

Harry laughed at her story, amazed that someone could be so spiteful and hateful to be disliked by Dumbledore and powerful enough to kick Voldemort out of his home. They were walking up the front steps when the front doors burst open. Harry stopped dead and his eyes darted to Aislynn for instruction before he did anything and he noticed her standing there tensed, wand drawn, ready for a fight in a blink of an eye. Then he saw her lower her wand, but tense up further and looked towards the doorway to see what was intimidating her. There, in the center of the double doorway with both doors wide open, stood the glowering figure of Molly Weasley, ready to attack. Harry paled, ready for the loudest verbal attack he'd ever receive as Aislynn decided to try and test the waters.

"Molly?" she asked tentatively. Harry's color returned to his face, but his body tensed for impact as the plump woman hurried down the remaining stairs to the both of them. She caught them both in one armed hugs, fussing over them like a cat with two hurt kittens.

"Thank goodness you're alright! Could you imagine how horrible it's been for us? First we see the knight bus and expect some kind of strange visitor attacking, then we hear about the Mark in Surrey, and then we rush to find you Lynn and you're gone - we thought you headed out to face them yourself! Then when we got there, neither of you were to be found! We thought they'd taken you! Then we heard the laughter outside and I just knew you were alright!" the woman rambled on breathlessly as other members of the Order of the Phoenix then started massing on the steps to the old McGarret summer home.

"We're alright, really, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said as he and Aislynn escaped from her grasp.

"How did you escape the death eaters, Harry?" Ginny asked, coming up from behind her mother.

"Well, if it wasn't for Aislynn, I don't think I would have. I didn't even hear them coming, she did," Harry looked around at the confused faces until he noticed his godmother looking at him with her eyes wide with horror mouthing 'no' and slightly shaking her head.

"Yes, Potter? What did you mean Aislynn was the one that heard them?" Snape asked, coming from the shadows like the oversized bat Quirrel had compared him to years ago. Aislynn looked as if she were about to have a heart attack.

"Well, um...it isn't really important," Harry started, but then everyone all at once started telling him how important it was over each other. Harry just held up a hand and gave Aislynn a look that clearly said 'sorry' before continuing. "Well, we were talking and she heard a noise that I hadn't noticed, looked around, and then told me to look around and I saw them in my neighbor's yard heading towards my house. Then I saw this green light, looked up, and there was the Dark Mark over my house. Lynn started screaming at me to not just stand there, to send Hedwig out and run for it, telling me how I could get away, so I just ran. Then I summoned the knight bus and a few minutes after I got on, they were summoned from Grimmauld Place and Lynn got on, talked to Stan and Ernie and asked them to bring us here. It's pretty uneventful after that."

"That's quite a story, Mr. Potter. Unfortunately, you failed to mention how you and Lynn were speaking without being in the same place. What's that in your hand?" Snape questioned and summoned the mirror, complete with note from Sirius still stuck on the back explaining it. Harry gulped, Aislynn paled, and Remus walked up to Snape to look at the mirror over his shoulder.

"I didn't know he still had these...I just assumed that James had taken them after we graduated, they were his, after all," Remus smiled and looked at Aislynn. "But that would explain how you spoke with him without our knowledge. Is it still at Grimmauld Place?"

"No," she said, pulling the other from her robes. "I wasn't going to leave it there to be discovered by one of you or stolen by that miserable elf."

"I knew you were talking to him!" Snape hissed venomously. "You lied to all of us! Right to our faces about it! I knew you were lying! You may have fooled him," Snape referred to Moody, "but I knew it all along!"

"And good thing you did, too! Otherwise I wouldn't have known Harry was in trouble until too late!" Aislynn screamed right into Snape's livid face. Harry would have been worried for her well being, but was far too amused by someone actually yelling back at him without fear. Snape, however, had gone very pale and no longer looked like he wanted to fight, but rather go hide somewhere. "Don't you give me that look! I know you were there! I know it was you! You were the one who put the Mark up in the sky! Bella would have been hanging back waiting for me to arrive and not just any flunky death eater knows how to make the Dark Mark! Oh don't you start that Bella could have! I know her and she has scores to settle with me, she would have waited! You were there! You called to me! Right when you put the Mark up you called to me! I thought I heard someone outside, but it was you! You called me inside my head! It was your voice!"

"What did you want me to do? Head into the house silently and take him back to that thing? Then I'd have to hold you down as you went and tried to take on the Dark Lord one on one! I can't just refuse orders like that and he didn't give me time before we were sent out to tell the Order! What was I supposed to do but get your attention and hope that I was right about you talking to Potter!" Snape shouted back at her, losing his cool entirely. Harry made a mental note to never ever mention anything anywhere near Snape about death eaters at any point in his life if he wanted to live, it was obviously a touchy subject. "Though I'm rather glad I thought wrong and assumed you were just going to go and fetch him! I assumed you'd be there when we got there! If I knew all you were planning was a couple magic mirrors, I might've done something stupid, blown my cover, and gotten myself blown up in the process! What's wrong with you? You knew he was in danger and a mirror's all you did to protect him?" Harry was thrown for a loop by Snape's concern for him before he realized Snape must be aware of the prophesy as well. You can't wish death upon your last hope.

"I was trying to avoid being caught by you! If your big nose hadn't been smack dab in the middle of my business, I would have gone and gotten him! But I knew that you'd go right to Dumbledore and the rest of the Order if you had any suspicion that I had hidden Harry away anywhere from Surrey! Besides," she added, calming a bit, "I wasn't quite sure how or when he'd be in danger. I figured I'd have a few more days to figure it out. I didn't lie when I said I had nothing worth reporting, I had nothing I was able to interpret. And I didn't lie when I said I wouldn't contact him for my own personal reasons! I contacted him for the sake of his safety!"

"Um, I hate to interrupt, but how did you all get here?" Harry cut in, suddenly wary of the thought of death eaters failing a mission at kidnapping him and the seemingly impenetrable forces of Mr. McGarret's wards not holding off the Weasleys. He looked to see if anyone else looked worried and noticed Aislynn looking very interested in her shoes.

"Yeah, well, about that no one else knowing the password thing? I, um, may have told a certain few individuals, or maybe she did, or, well, you see..." she was looking very sheepish at having forgotten she told anyone the password.

"Who?" Harry asked.

"Remus," she squeaked, hiding from his scrutiny. The werewolf nodded assent as Harry looked at him.

"I've been here a few times. This is the only house I knew the password to, but I remembered the floo system worked illegally only through the McGarret houses. We had all split up, knowing Aislynn would take you to one of them or another, most likely one of the two the knight bus could take you to, and waited. After it took too long for the house outside of London or Grimmauld Place, we moved to the next houses, though we figured on this one. Dumbledore should be here shortly," Remus assured them.

"Well, now that everyone's safe and happy again, I say we go inside and try to find some breakfast," Tonks suggested.

"Not so fast! You were going to take him and hide him away? Just like that without telling the Order, without telling us?" Molly Weasley started her inevitable rant on Aislynn, who cowered a little from the woman. "What were you thinking? You should have brought it up with all of us! We could have hidden him away in the Burrow until you knew exactly what was going to happen!"

"But then the Burrow would have been attacked, Mrs. Weasley. It's probably best that it wasn't, I think," Harry piped in. "I already feel guilty knowing that if Voldemort wanted to really hurt me, he'd go after all of you, but knowing that being there would have made that really happen, I'm glad for the first time in my life I was at Privet Drive instead of the Burrow."

"I haven't gotten to you yet, young man!" Mrs. Weasley surprised everyone by yelling at Harry. "You may have thought it fun to go and have secret contacts and then pretending there was nothing unusual happening when you owled us, but it's not as funny as you think for the rest of us who worry about you! Don't look at me like you're innocent - Ron told me you asked him about Lynn in your letter to him! How dare you not inform us immediately? What if she wasn't who she said she was? She could have led him right to you!"

"I know, that crossed my mind too, but I knew she wasn't going to after the dreams..." Harry started before he noticed Aislynn waving her arms wildly and mouthing 'no!' panicked behind Mrs. Weasley, who just grew angrier and turned on both of them.

"You were sending him dreams? Aislynn Orianna, I'm ashamed in you! You know that's how things happened last year! What were you thinking? And you! Harry James Potter! How dare you not tell us you're getting strange dreams again? Did you learn nothing from last year? Here I am worried sick about you and you're going about practically begging him to come take you!"

"Perhaps we should move this spectacle indoors?" Snape suggested, the gleam back in his eyes from watching two Gryffindors getting screamed at in front of him, even if he didn't loathe one of them. Unfortunately for his own sake, Snape was not altogether innocent of the night's panic and was also entirely new to the finer points of Molly Weasley's ranting that included ranting at every possible guilty party that made their presence known.

"And you! You had the moment to go and try and whisper in her mind as you led those robed maniacs to Harry's door, but you couldn't bother letting her know with enough time for her to alert us? You're supposed to be helping us! What kind of irresponsible behavior is that? You could have gotten all three of you killed and then where would we be? No spy, no seer, and no Harry! What in the world were you thinking? How dare you not tell us you knew she was with him! You sat there and watched us all worry! Have you any idea what kind of mental anguish you've put me through this morning?" Ron, Harry, and Ginny were trying their best to hide their laughter at watching their potions professor cower like a child before the shorter, yet infuriated Mrs. Weasley while everyone else present tried to seem invisible in case Molly decided to move on to someone else. Just then, they were saved by Dumbledore walking up the front walk with Minerva McGonagall at his side.

"Ah, Aislynn, Harry, you've arrived. I apologize to both of you for failing to listen to Aislynn's warnings, but I did not believe them to be immediately important, how wrong I was. Luckily Aislynn did just as I assumed she would and decided to contact you anyway, eh, Harry?" Dumbledore chuckled, obviously in good spirits that neither of them was harmed.

"Apology accepted, sir. Professor McGonagall, would you care for some tea? I could certainly use a cup while Tonks gets to that breakfast she was talking about," Aislynn said, gesturing everyone inside the dusty, unused house. She led them to the kitchen deep within the dirty, abandoned bowels of the house, which had miraculously been found and cleaned as best possible through Molly Weasley's worry.

"Ah, Molly, I'm so grateful you kept wait in this house. The kitchen is positively sparkling!"

"Indeed, now as for that cup of tea?" McGonagall asked, looking as if she had spent one night too many worrying at this point in her life.

Everyone sat down as Molly Weasley busied herself with breakfast and Aislynn conjured up some tea. Aislynn excused herself after pouring tea for everyone and disapperated from the kitchen for a few minutes before apparating back in multiple pops with the rest of the Weasleys, aside from Percy, at her sides. Several minutes later, Hagrid waltzed into the kitchen, grabbing Harry in the fiercest hug he's ever experienced, telling him to watch out for himself more carefully, having had to come to the kitchen the long way from the gates after Aislynn let him in with Hermione who looked like she had spent the night sleepless and crying because they could not apperate.

Harry, after warding off Hagrid's crushing hug and Hermione's tearful one, remained one of the quietest at the breakfast, thinking to Aislynn's wisdom she had passed onto him earlier about life and its counterbalances. Harry looked around the table seeing so many people who cared about him, even if they refused to admit it, and had all sacrificed something that night for him. Hagrid and Tonks, no doubt having sacrificed worry and small personal injury due to clumsiness in addition to their sleep that night chatted as if nothing had ever been wrong, arguing about something or another, but both were in good spirits. Dumbledore, Mr. Weasley, and Charlie Weasley were all talking about Charlie's vacation from Romania and how things were with the dark arts there, looking for all reason for concern. Harry realized they must have all been frantic that night, knowing the prophesy, well, maybe not Charlie, but the fact remained. Bill and Ginny had teamed up against the twins teasing each other, knowing from experience that the twins worked together and to win against them, allies were crucial. Harry only had to look at their faces to know they had been searching England for him all night, Ginny probably blaming herself for not mentioning his letter earlier. (By then Ron had mentioned that she had read it as well and helped him figure things out about Aislynn for him in a letter Harry had mysteriously not received. But that mystery was half cleared in Harry's mind at the memory of the screeching owl Aislynn had sent with word of the attack.) He could hear Mrs. Weasley and Professor McGonagall worrying to each other further up the table and suddenly felt guilty knowing that Mrs. Weasley worried over him as if he were her own child and McGonagall looked as if she still hadn't gotten over her injuries from the night Umbridge had tried to capture Hagrid and really wasn't up to too many nights without sleep.

Harry barely heard Ron and Hermione's arguments over something or another from either side of him as he looked down to the far end of the table and the last three people in the room. He watched his godmother talking to both Remus Lupin and Severus Snape at the same time, sitting between the two, and keeping what looked like a friendly conversation going, Snape included, Harry figured he'd have to get used to the idea of thinking the word friendly and his potions master's name in the same sentence one of these days and remembered a dream in which Lynn said something similar to Sirius. Harry liked the idea of having some similarities to his beloved godfather at his age and couldn't help but think how happy Sirius would be if he were sitting with them right now, perhaps even trying to stay friendly in that conversation with Lupin and Snape, Aislynn keeping the peace between the enemies. Looking around at his friends beside him, Harry was warmed by the gratefulness that each and every one of them was beside him. Yes, even Snape. Having heard that Snape was ordered to bring Harry to Voldemort, but had sacrificed his own life in failing one of Voldemort's missions to save Harry, he couldn't help but feel a lot less than hate for the man he had previously despised. Perhaps he has his reasons for being so hateful. Some people react to hardship differently than others. Harry wondered at the ability of his godmother to keep smiling as though life were good for her as he thought about what hardship had done to Snape. He wondered if she had ever told Snape what she had told Harry about counterbalances, but maybe that wouldn't help solve the man's bitterness anyway.

"Harry, are you listening? You haven't been listening, have you?" Hermione admonished, bringing Harry out of his thoughts.

"Oh lay off him, he's had a rough night. Probably just tired, right, Harry?" Ron countered and Harry smiled at them, realizing he had just found another one of Lynn's balances - Ron's laziness to Hermione's meticulous studying, even Ron's laid back attitude to Hermione's tendency to worry. Placed on either side of him, Harry was unable to escape the thought of them were there not only to balance each other, but to keep his life balanced as best it could be for the boy who lived.

"I'm alright," Harry assured them. "But I wasn't listening, sorry."

"Are you sure you're alright, Harry? It has been quite a night," Hermione worried.

"Yes, I'm positive. I'm just..." Harry paused to consider how he felt.

"Just...?" Ron prompted. Harry then caught a glimpse of the unbelievable - Remus and Lynn laughing, and Severus Snape joining in.

"I'm just happy," Harry concluded, looking from one friend to the next with one of the truest smiles he's ever had. Hey, if Snape could be happy, so could he.