The Park

There was shouting outside Harry's door.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, JUST POPPED AWAY FOR A SECOND, MUNDUNGUS?" This was the voice of a man Harry didn't think he'd met.

"Well, it was hardly any time at all--" Mundungus, as Harry assumed the speaker to be, sounded both conciliatory and terrified. "I had no idea anything had--"

"Shh, Sirius!" Harry sat bolt upright. "Harry's sleeping just in there." That sounded like Mr. Lupin--but Ginny had called him Professor Lupin, hadn't she?

"Mundungus, you'd better come with me. We've got to sort out exactly when you--" began a deep, authoritative voice.

"Completely failed in his duty to all--" Sirius interjected.

"Sirius!"

"Practically abetted--"

"It was hardly any time at all, Sirius!" whined Mundungus. "I'm not getting paid for this, you know--"

"Merlin as my witness, Mundungus," threatened Sirius. Harry's heart thumped. Merlin. Unless this was some cool slang he hadn't heard of, he was almost certain he'd never heard anyone invoke Merlin in a threat before.

"Please, Sirius."

"Mundungus, come with me," instructed the bass voice again. "Now, what day was this?"

And that seemed to be it. Harry couldn't piece together exactly why Sirius had been so angry, but the Mundungus person seemed to have done something very wrong. Harry got the impression that Mr. Lupin would have been quite happy for Sirius to roar his lungs out at Mundungus all day, had Harry not been sleeping in the next room.

But they hadn't wanted to wake Harry up. Harry's toes felt pleasantly warm under the covers.

Harry swung his legs out of bed, tucked the sheets back in some semblance of neatness, and poked around the room until it wasn't entirely obvious that Sirius had woken him up, at which point he wandered down the hall to the kitchen and knocked on the door.

Mr. Lupin opened it. "Harry," he said, and smiled.

Everyone else was dressed. "Have I slept in?" said Harry nervously.

"You were up so late last night, we thought we'd let you," said Mr. Lupin. "Would you like some tea?"

"Yes, please," said Harry, taking a seat at the table and trying not to stare at all the other people in the room. There was a red-haired man who Harry assumed must be a relation of Mrs. Weasley's; a young woman with pixie-like pink hair (although, Harry thought, the way things were going, she might actually be a pixie); a black-haired young woman with pale skin and rosy cheeks, like Snow White; and a tall, dark-haired man in a dressing gown brooding over an empty cup of tea. Harry's mouth went dry; he felt certain this was Sirius, because he looked almost haunted--surely a mark of having been so ill.

As soon as he had taken them all in, though, the two women and the red-haired man got up and made their excuses to leave ("Oh, I forgot to say, nice haircut," the pixie told the dark-haired man as she left. "Much less, you know, urrgh--" she grimaced and bugged her eyes out, apparently imitating a ghastly ill person). Harry wondered again whether all of them actually lived in Sirius' house. It certainly seemed as though anyone was welcome to stop in whenever they felt like it--exactly the opposite of Aunt Petunia's house.

A late-morning beam of sunshine was stretching across the table, lighting on the ends of Sirius' hair and some abandoned breakfast dishes. Thinking of Ginny's lumos, Harry smiled.

"Did you sleep well?" asked Mr. Lupin, depositing Harry's tea in front of him.

"Yes. Thanks," said Harry, making a vow to himself that he wouldn't allow Mr. Lupin to get any more beverages for him. Weirdly enough, Mr. Lupin had also managed to make Harry's tea exactly the way Harry liked it. Perhaps that was magic, too.

"By the way, Harry," said Mr. Lupin, taking his own seat at the table, "this is your godfather, Sirius."

"Hello, Harry," said Sirius, managing a smile.

"Hi," said Harry. "Um . . . are you feeling better?"

"A little," said Sirius. "How are you, Harry?"

"I'm great, really," said Harry honestly. "I mean--I really like your house."

Mr. Lupin laughed. "Isn't it--?" Harry asked quickly.

"No, it's my house, or rather, it was my parents' house," explained Sirius. "It's just that I've been shut up in it so long, I get tired of it."

Harry nodded. He could tell that Sirius was trying to be cheerful for him, and--it wasn't that he wanted Sirius to be ill, but nobody had ever done that for him before, and felt a surge of gratitude toward this man who hardly knew him but would try to be cheerful just to make Harry comfortable.

"Harry, there are some things you should know," said Mr. Lupin in a formal but reasonable tone (much like a teacher, Harry thought).

"I'm a wizard," said Sirius simply, watching for Harry's response.

Mr. Lupin appeared to choke for a second, but nodded to Harry in confirmation.

Harry couldn't stop himself from beaming. "Really?"

"You believe me?" said Sirius, surprised. Turning to Lupin, he quipped, "Well, that was easy." For the first time, Harry saw a real smile widen over his godfather's face.

Mr. Lupin, however, was staring at Harry. "You believe that Sirius is . . . a real wizard?"

"I dunno," said Harry, abashed. "Yesterday, I wouldn't have believed I had another guardian who was going to take me away from the Dursleys, so . . . I guess today I'll believe anything." He swallowed. "You can do magic, then?"

"Oh, yes," said Sirius wickedly. "What would you like to see?"

"Um . . ." said Harry, feeling he was starting life with his new guardian on the wrong foot by lying. "Anything but the lumos one, I saw that one yesterday." He blushed.

Mr. Lupin's mouth dropped open, and Sirius leaned back in his chair and laughed until Harry thought the chair would fall over. "He's definitely James' son, Remus," he said at last, once he had got his breath back. "So, who did you see doing it?"

"I don't want the person to get in trouble," said Harry, swallowing.

"Oh, so it was on purpose!"

"I bet you ten Galleons it was a Weasley, Sirius," said Mr. Lupin with unusual levity.

"I won't take that bet, Remus, because I was about to say the same thing. Go on, Harry. I promise the person won't get in trouble," he said seriously.

"It was Ginny," said Harry, unable to suppress a smile.

Sirius laughed again. "Well, she's made my job easier."

"So you know about wizards and witches?" Lupin asked Harry, getting back to the point.

"Sort of," said Harry, recalling their discussion. "Ginny said she was a witch at a school for witches, and I sort of . . . extrapolated the rest."

Lupin shook his head in astonishment.

"Well, Harry," said Sirius, "since we're being honest with one another, I also have a confession to make. I wasn't supposed to come downstairs last night, but . . . actually, I did."

"Oh, no, Sirius," said Lupin, but it was too late. Sirius had stood up from the table and, with a pop, transformed into the huge black dog Harry had met last night.

Harry choked in astonishment, spilling his tea. "Do you . . . feel better as a dog?"

"Yeah, I do," said Sirius, changing back. "Dogs are just happy most of the time, really. Anyway, no harm was done." He looked at Lupin.

"All right," said Lupin. "I won't tell Albus or Molly or anyone else. Although I wish you'd learn a little moderation, Sirius."

As Sirius didn't say anything to this, Harry busied himself searching for a rag with which to mop up his tea.

"Oh, the tea?" realised Lupin, and drew out a long wand from his pocket. Harry watched avidly as the tea vanished from the table.

"I'll get another cup," he said hurriedly, reaching for the teapot before Lupin did it for him again. "Sirius? Um, Remus?"

"No, thanks, Harry," said Sirius. Lupin declined with a tilt of the head

As Harry poured his tea, he began, "I've also been wondering something else."

"Yes?" said Sirius.

"I've been wondering whether--well, you and--Remus--are both wizards, and I wondered--about my parents."

"Lily and James," said Lupin, almost as if the words were a spell.

"Yes, they were magic," said Sirius intensely.

Harry managed not to spill this cup of tea, and instead looked at it for a few seconds. "And . . . me?" he asked it. "I'm . . . not."

"Well . . ." began Lupin.

"Of course you are," said Sirius, giving Lupin what was almost a dirty look. "Definitely. You are a wizard, Harry. We just have to find your magic under what they did to you."

"Your aunt and uncle, obviously, aren't magical," added Lupin.

"How do we . . . do that? Find if I have magic?" Harry was trying to drink his tea normally, as if he hadn't just been told he might be able to do magic. It was scalding his tongue every time, and he didn't even care. He was just glad Sirius had responded so well to all his questions. It was as though all those years of don't ask questions about his parents' death had resulted in a vast reservoir of unused mental question marks, which were now spilling out. "It's just . . . I've never done any before." But he had talked to that snake back on Dudley's birthday, hadn't he?

Had he? He'd been so young at the time, and the memory was faint.

And . . . he remembered some sort of horrible row over something ridiculous like his hair growing back too quickly, although it had been a long time ago, and . . . hadn't he once been punished for jumping on a roof? But that wasn't magic, it was jumping. And of course the Dursleys would have punished him because his hair had grown too fast. They'd have punished him because it was raining or because the electricity had gone out.

Surely, if he was magic, he would have known. How could you not know? It was impossible. And, not counting when he was a little kid--and maybe he'd imagined all the stuff that had happened back then--he'd been as boring as could be.

"You do have magic," said Lupin, as if to make up for his hesitation on the point before.

"First thing, though, you need a wand," Sirius realized. "It's no good using other people's."

Harry nodded, clenching his fists under the table. He didn't, he really didn't want to disappoint them when they found out he wasn't magical after all. Could a magical person be a guardian for a non-magical person?

"I'll contact Albus right away," said Lupin, getting up. "I suppose I should explain: Harry, in the wizarding world, we use owls to carry our letters," he told Harry. "I'll go send Albus an owl about getting you a wand."

"The wizarding world?" repeated Harry, after Lupin had left.

"Oh, Harry," said Sirius in realization. "We didn't explain it, did we? Witches and wizards don't just exist and have their own school and so on. We have our own world. Not a planet," he added, seeing Harry's face, "but another Britain above and behind and within the normal Britain. And the same for everywhere else in the world. We have our own shops; we have our own World Cup; we have our own Ministry. There's normal London, and then there's wizard London, for example. Muggles--that's what we call non-magic people--can't see it. They can't see any wizard stuff. It's all enchanted that way."

Harry wasn't entirely sure he understood all this, but he did understand one part. "So I've never seen this. . . wizard stuff, since I'm not a wizard?"

"You are a wizard," Sirius insisted.

Harry felt heartened by Sirius' faith in him, even if it was misplaced.

Sirius sighed. "I should get dressed, shouldn't I? Sometimes it's hard to see the point, when you can't go outside."

Harry realized that he, too, was still wearing his pajamas, and it was almost lunchtime. "Um . . . Sirius?" he said, just as his godfather was about to leave the room.

"Yes, Harry?" Sirius looked concerned.

"So . . . my mum and dad went to wizard school? And you did?"

"Yeah, we did," said Sirius, after a moment.

Since Sirius hadn't actually tried to change the subject, Harry decided to be brave and press on. "Was it different schools, or . . . all the same school? Is that how you met? I mean, I remember Mr. Dumbledore saying you were an old pupil of his, so I wondered . . ."

"It was all the same school," said Sirius, with a bittersweet smile. "There aren't that many wizards in any population, so Britain has only one wizarding school. We all went there. Hogwarts, it's called."

"Hogwarts," repeated Harry, both surprised at the name and struck by the image of his parents and this man at school together.

"You know, I've got some old photo albums upstairs," said Sirius gently. "Lots of pictures of your mum and dad. We could have a look at them. I could tell you who all the people are."

Harry shot up from his chair. "Can we?" he said. Then, realizing he sounded a little too eager, he began fussing with clearing away his teacup.

"Don't worry about that," said Sirius, waving his hand. "Come on, follow me."

Once they were upstairs, Harry perched on Sirius' bed while his godfather dug out albums from a box in his wardrobe. Sirius' room certainly was sparse, considering he'd presumably been forced to stay in it by his illness for the last fourteen years.

At last, Harry's godfather, with a few thick leather-bound albums under his arm, indicated that Harry should shuffle back on the bed so that his back was against the wall. Sirius sat next to him and did the same, and then rested the spine of the first album on the stripe of bedspread between them.

"This is me in first year," began Sirius, pointing to the first photo.

Harry was so distracted by the other figure in the photo, he barely noticed that the entire picture was moving. "Is that Remus?" he said, pointing to the young dirty blond boy next to Sirius. Both of them were hardly recognizable. These boys weren't just younger; they glowed with . . . Harry wanted to call it happiness, but it was more than that. It was nearly carefree; it was naïve. With a shock, Harry recognized something that he himself had lost a long time ago. It was the belief that, essentially, the world was good; that things would turn out all right; that they were young and invulnerable and capable of anything.

Although, Harry corrected himself, Remus' eyes had a hint--just a hint--of the deep shadows now carved underneath them.

"Yeah, we were friends almost right away," said Sirius, his finger touching his past self's face. Noticing Harry's face, he explained, "So was your dad, of course. He was the one taking the picture." He flipped to the next page, where Sirius was standing with someone who looked--almost exactly like Harry! They were both covered in some sort of sludgy substance and offering thumbs up to the camera.

"That's him," breathed Harry. His father winked at him, evidently proud of whatever he'd done to get the sludge all over him. "Who's that next to you?"

"That's another boy in our year," said Sirius casually. "Peter."

They went on through the album. Harry saw his father and, later, Sirius in what Sirius said were uniforms for the school sports team. Harry heard all about the four houses, and the tower in which the boys had lived. He saw the school lake, just as Ginny had described it, ruffled with wind and exhibiting what seemed to be a tentacle waving hello. He saw the castle from a distance. The small boy, Peter, appeared in quite a few of the photos, but Sirius explained that they hadn't remained in touch long out of Hogwarts. There were lots of large group photos, too, and odd shots of waving strangers.

But, often, in naming these strangers, Sirius would say something like, "They got married not long after your parents. The Longbottoms." And there would be a palpable sense of loss in the words, the feeling that the Longbottoms were now permanently restricted to the past tense.

Or, "That's my brother, Regulus."

"Does he live here, too?"

"No, he's dead now."

Harry didn't know how to ask, "Hey, Sirius, why are so many of your old friends not around any more?" But maybe it was like that for people who used magic. Perhaps it took a toll on you . . .

If it did, Harry decided, it would still be worth it, if only he could do it. If . . .

They were almost done with the last album when Remus leaned around Sirius' bedroom door and said, "Oh, there you are." He didn't mention that they were both still in their pajamas. "Sirius, Albus wants to talk to you about getting Harry's wand."

Sighing, as though this was a most painful drudgery, Sirius got up. "I'll be back soon," he told Harry.

"Okay," said Harry, looking over the last pictures. His father seemed to be presenting his mother with a tiny, golden ball with fluttering wings. She was laughing and reaching toward it.

***

"But we promise we won't tell Harry anything, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione for the tenth time. "Really we won't."

"They can't just let Harry go around not knowing who he is," protested Ron beside her, rather undermining Hermione's promise.

"We're his friends, Mum," said Fred with disturbing seriousness.

"Harry'll go mad, stuck in that place," added Ginny.

"He hasn't even got Hedwig!" George joked, feeding the white owl the end of his breakfast sausage.

Mrs. Weasley took a deep breath. Then all the dishes which were washing themselves in the sink fell down with a crash, and she spun around. Ron and the twins pre-emptively began to cower, but were confronted with something quite unlike the usual tirade. "Don't you understand?" she snapped. "Albus thought Harry was safe, thought You-Know-Who was just gathering his forces, and Harry was attacked! He could have been killed! Harry can't possibly go anywhere until we find out what happened that night."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Weasley," said Hermione at once. "I just meant it might be all right if we visited him there. We miss him," she added. "And we're worried about him."

"We all are," said Mrs. Weasley, returning to magically scrubbing burnt bits off the bottom of a roasting pan. "But Albus doesn't think Harry should be overwhelmed. He says Harry's very mentally fragile right now. He says the memory charm used on Harry was very powerful and complex, and Harry needs to recover before he's exposed to any more mental strain at all."

Hermione perked up. "You mean it wasn't a normal obliviate?"

Mrs. Weasley sighed. "I really shouldn't be telling you this, but no. Albus isn't certain exactly what spell was used, but from what he learned from Harry while he was unconscious, it was a very advanced charm--the kind of thing your normal Death Eater just wouldn't have heard of."

"So it must have been You-Know-Who himself . . ." breathed Ron. Pigwidgeon zipped around Hedwig a few times in his excitement; ignoring him, Hedwig remained dignifiedly still.

"Or maybe one of the Death Eaters specializes in Memory Charms," said George.

"I've got it!" shouted Fred, standing up suddenly.

"What?" said Mrs. Weasley quickly.

"It was Lockhart," the twins said simultaneously. They collapsed over one another in laughter.

"No, but seriously, we could look up all the Death Eaters and see if any of them has particular expertise with Memory Charms," said Hermione, getting that inspired look that predicted hours and hours of research.

"We could look at all the Death Eater activity on record," said Ginny slowly, "and see if anything involved really advanced Memory Charms, then look up to see which Death Eater did it."

"Or if any suspected Death Eater had ever been an Obliviator," said Fred.

"We'll get Kingsley to get us the Ministry lists of past employees for that," said George.

"And if we knew who did it," said Ron, "we could find them and make them reverse it."

Mrs. Weasley flicked the drinking glasses back into their cupboard thoughtfully. "All right," she said at last. "You're not to contact Harry or tell him anything he doesn't know. And if you learn anything, you are to tell me or another member of the Order at once, am I completely clear?"

"Yes, Mum," they chorused, glancing at one another.

"You are NOT to enter into ANY sort of danger," Mrs. Weasley reiterated, leaning over the table and glowering.

"All right, Mum," said Ron.

"You're really going to let us do it?" said George, earning a kick from Ginny under the table.

Suddenly, Mrs. Weasley looked very tired. "The Wizarding World is depending on Harry, whether he knows it or not," she said. "And the Order's just stretched to its limits now, and it looks as though Voldemort is returning to power more quickly than . . ." She turned to Hermione, Ron, and Ginny. "I'll talk to Albus about getting you access to the Hogwarts library for your research over the summer, and there's hardly a safer place than Hogwarts," she said. "And you'll stay here," she told the twins. "It'll be Kingsley or Tonks doing the dangerous part, getting you the Ministry information." Her eyes flashed. "And since I know you'll be getting into mischief, at least I'll be better off knowing what mischief you're getting into."

"Thanks, Mum," said Ron quietly.

As they were walking up the stairs, Ron asked Hermione, "You don't think the owls will be able to deliver to Harry yet, do you?"

"Ron!" said Hermione, scandalized. "Your mum just explained why we can't tell Harry about his memories yet!"

"I just thought Harry should have Hedwig back," scowled Ron.

"Oh," said Hermione. "I'm not completely certain, then."

"You don't know?" said Ron, lifting an eyebrow.

Hermione pursed her lips. "Post owls are very complicated magical creatures, and they're clever. Very clever. They didn't deliver to Harry because he'd just been put under a serious Memory Charm: he had no idea the wizarding world existed, let alone post owls, and they're never supposed to reveal the existence of magic to those who aren't aware of it. That's got to be one of their primary rules, considering they fly all over the world, over Muggle territory. Anyway, if they had tried, Harry might've just closed the window to keep them out and then called Animal Control." She sighed. "There's more than one reason I got my Hogwarts letter via the Royal Mail."

"So, I guess they'll deliver to Harry again when they reckon he'll understand what they are," concluded Ron.

"But we don't know whether Sirius' broken the news to Harry yet," said Hermione. "He was supposed to this morning, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," said Ron glumly. "Bit stupid trying to pretend magic doesn't exist in a giant magic house filled with talking portraits and curtains that try to kill you and Hippogriffs in the attic."

Hermione being Hermione, she wanted to dive into the research straight away, and so she and Ron collected every book in the house that might be relevant (including the family's bedraggled seventh year Charms texts and Mr. Weasley's Ministry-issued Obliviation guide) and began to pore over them immediately--at least, Hermione did. Ron spent the time on his stomach on the floor, alternately flipping through whatever Hermione wasn't looking at and heading back to the kitchen to get cups of tea and bicker with the twins.

At eleven o'clock a.m., Hedwig hurtled into the living room, made what seemed almost to be a bow to Ron and Hermione in mid-air, then shot out of the window with unusual excitement.

They looked at one another, eyes bright. "There's your answer," said Hermione, both smiling and blinking away tears. "He knows about magic again."

"We'll do this bloody research and get Harry back properly," Ron told her. "Completely. Horrible as it's going to be," he added with a groan.