The Summer of the Phoenix

Chapter 23

Sirius turned around slowly. Hermione was still sitting on the bed with Crookshanks in her arms, staring at the dusty trunk that looked so very much like her own. Stencilled on the side of it, clearly visible from her place, was the name of his brother.

"My brother," Sirius said curtly, and turned his back on her again.

"You have a brother?" The left catch opened with an ugly sound of metal scraping on metal. "Where is he, then? What does he do?"

Sirius was not sure he wanted to talk about this. "Not much," he said over his shoulder. "He's been dead for fifteen years."

Hermione gasped. "I'm very sorry," she said after a pause.

"Well, I'm not, so never mind." The second catch gave way with a similar screech. Sirius waited for another gasp, but when it didn't come, he turned back to the girls. They were both staring at him with wide eyes.

Hermione shook her head as if she had misheard something. "How - how do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Sirius said, and shrugged. "I'm not sorry, so you needn't be, either."

"But - but he was your brother!" Hermione sounded shocked.

Sirius wished she'd stop. "Look, maybe he was my brother," he said harshly, "but most of all he was a big idiot who had it coming to him. You don't get to choose who you're related to, so you don't have to bawl your eyes out over what they do with their own lives, do you?"

"Stop it!" Ginny Weasley suddenly hissed at him. She was standing by the door, her fists clenched at her sides, very white in the face. When Sirius got up, frowning at her, she took a step back as if she feared an attack, but looked up at him defiantly. Her eyes were bright with tears, and the corners of her mouth were twitching.

"She's right," Hermione said quietly from the bed. "Don't say things like that, Sirius."

He had been about to reply 'but it's true', when Ron Weasley poked his red head around the door. "Who's shouting?" he asked, and came into the room. "I'm bored. Why am I the only one who gets a bedroom to himself?"

"That's what I was going to ask you," Sirius replied, glad to change the subject. "So where's Percy?" He turned back to Hermione, remembering that she still owed him an explanation for her silent warning downstairs. "And why didn't you want me to ask?"

The young Weasleys and Hermione exchanged some very eloquent looks. Ron frowned at Ginny's near tears, Ginny sniffed and looked away, Hermione shook her head, Ron shrugged, she raised her eyebrows, and he said, "He isn't coming."

"I noticed that. Why not?"

Hermione sighed. "Close the door, Ron," she said.

Ginny sat down on the bed next to Hermione, stroking Crookshanks's ginger fur. "You explain," she said to Hermione in a small voice.

"No, let Ron explain."

Ron leant against the inside of the door and put his hands in his pockets. "It's kinda complicated," he said.

That much was obvious. Sirius went back to the window, sat down on his brother's old trunk, put his elbows on his knees and folded his hands. "Go on," he said. Crookshanks leapt down from the bed and came to rub his head against Sirius's knee.

"Percy has moved out," said Ron.

"And that's all?" Sirius asked, guessing that it wasn't. "Surely you're allowed to do that when you're almost twenty, and earning your own money?"

"It's not all," Hermione explained quietly. "It was - it was rather abrupt. He more ran away from home, really."

"After a terrible row with Dad," Ron added.

"He said he didn't want to belong to the family any more," Ginny said thickly.

"And then he just packed a bag and went," Hermione concluded.

Sirius looked down at his hands and sighed. It sounded so familiar. He could see it clearly in his mind's eye, an angry young man finally shouting the suppressed fury and frustration of years into the faces of those that he could no longer think of as his father and mother, and then thundering down the stairs, slamming the door shut behind him with the full force of his rage, and feeling free, truly free, for the first time in his life. He guessed he knew exactly how Percy must have felt, and yet, hearing it from the point of view of those staying behind made Sirius quite unsure who was in the right, and who wasn't.

"Well, if he really didn't feel at home there any more, I suppose it's better for him the way it is now," he said slowly. "It's quite normal really, at some point you want to live your own life ..."

"It's not that," Ron said. "You should have heard him, it was awful. He shouted things at Dad... things about how Dad was standing in the way of his Ministry career, about how he was endangering Percy's future."

Sirius frowned. "How's that?" he asked. "What's your dad got against Percy's Ministry career?" He couldn't imagine Arthur Weasley being anything but proud of his son. He was surely doing his best to support Percy in his job?

"Percy's been under a lot of strain recently," Hermione explained. "There was an enquiry about the death of Barty Crouch senior, and Percy was questioned and everything, it really didn't look good for him. And then, on Monday, Percy came home from work and said that the enquiry was finished and that he had been promoted."

"He'd what?"

"He'd been promoted," Hermione repeated. "To be the Minister's junior under-something. Some quite prestigious position in Fudge's own office."

"And Dad wasn't happy about that at all," Ginny continued. "Said that Percy had better think well about it, and that he'd maybe better stay in the department where he was and keep his head down for a while until things had settled down. Percy deflated like a punctured balloon."

Nobody laughed.

"And then he said all those things about how Mr Weasley being at the Ministry was more of a hindrance than a help for him," Hermione went on.

"And he didn't put it as nicely as that," said Ron darkly. "That was when the shouting really started. Mum sent us all upstairs at that point - "

" - but Fred and George had their Extendable Ears ready and we heard the rest of it, too," Ginny concluded.

"Extendable what?" Sirius asked.

Hermione gave Ginny a look that was somewhere between reproachful and alarmed, but Ginny shrugged.

"Extendable Ears," said Ron. "You know, Fred and George create lots of stuff like that, they want to start a joke shop when they leave school... Extendable Ears go down stairs and through corridors and under doors and everywhere, and you can listen in on conversations with them."

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

"We know it wasn't right," Hermione said very quickly.

"That's not what I was thinking," Sirius said. "But go on."

"It went from bad to worse," Hermione continued. "Percy said all that about his career and that Mr Weasley wasn't - wasn't helping him enough." She looked uneasily at Ron. "And then he said that he was proud to be offered to work so closely with the Minister for Magic himself, and that it was the Minister who decided where the wizarding world was going, not Dumbledore, and that - that everyone in the Ministry who didn't agree - "

" - deserved to be sacked," Ginny said flatly. "That's what he said."

"How did Dumbledore come into it?" Sirius asked.

Ron shrugged. "I dunno," he said. "Does it matter?"

"I think it does," Hermione said, frowning. "But I can't remember either. Sorry."

"Never mind," said Sirius. "What did your dad say to that?"

"Dad said Percy wasn't going to speak ill of Albus Dumbledore," said Ron, "and said it very loudly, too. And then Percy shouted back that Dad was an idiot to run around with Dumbledore, that Dumbledore was heading for big trouble and Dad was going to go down with him, and that he - Percy - knew where his loyalty lay and it was with the Ministry, and if Mum and Dad were going to become traitors to the Ministry he was going to make sure everyone knew he didn't belong to our family any more."

"And that was the point when he stormed out of the kitchen, packed his things and left." said Hermione.

"Without another word," Ginny added sadly.

Sirius's mind was racing now. A disagreement between father and son about the son's chosen career was nothing unusual. It might be unpleasant, but it was nothing to worry about. But that this disagreement should have turned into accusations of disloyalty, even treason, was extremely disquieting.

"Hang on," Sirius asked Ron, "is that exactly what he said, that Dumbledore's heading for trouble, and that your mum and dad will go down with him if they turn against the Ministry?"

"Yep. That's what he said. And loud enough to hear it even without Extendable Ears."

"He said that he wanted no part in them becoming traitors to the Ministry?"

Ron nodded.

"'Traitors' is a strong word."

Ron shrugged. "It's what he said."

"What are you thinking, Sirius?" asked Hermione.

"I was wondering what, or who, gave Percy the idea to accuse his own parents of treason, just because they advised him against accepting a job in Fudge's own office," he said slowly. He could hear Dumbledore's voice in his mind. You might find that there are some who are not to be trusted - among your own friends, too, and maybe even among your closest family. Sirius fervently hoped that Mr and Mrs Weasley had taken this to heart, even at the family's dinner table.

"Where's Percy now?" he asked the three others.

"We don't know," Ginny said. "We think he's gone to stay with a colleague for the moment, but Dad says he's asking around trying to find a place of his own."

"Does he know where you are?"

"Nope," said Ron.

"Definitely not?"

"Definitely."

"He left before Mr and Mrs Weasley told us we were coming here," Hermione explained. "On Monday evening, Percy wasn't home yet, Mr Weasley said at dinner that he and Mrs Weasley had something very important to discuss with us, but that we should wait for Percy. But when Percy came, he was all in a flutter about his promotion, and wanted to talk about that first, and then the argument started, and we were sent to bed and didn't hear anything about this place at all until breakfast on Tuesday, when Percy was already gone."

A wave of relief swept over Sirius. What a close call it had been - if the Weasleys had informed their children of their plans one day earlier, or if Percy had been subtle enough to keep quiet about his new position as one of Fudge's personal lapdogs, Fudge might very well know all about the Order of the Phoenix now. Sirius felt his blood run cold at the thought. It seemed they had to thank heaven that Percy had been the self-important twit that he was - it had prevented a disaster.

"Sirius?" Hermione asked.

"What?" Sirius blinked, coming out of his thoughts.

"You look really worried."

"Oh, I'm not worried, it's quite all right," he said, shaking off his unease. "Good news, actually." He gave the two girls a smile, but quickly stopped when he caught the look on their unhappy faces and realised that he could hardly expect them to see anything good in the situation.

"Look, I didn't mean - " He couldn't find the right words to explain his relief. "I'm sorry to hear that, about your brother," he finally said. He turned from Hermione to Ginny, from one small sad face to the other. Ron's sister looked back at him blankly. "No, about that, I'm sorry, I really am. Believe me."

The two girls exchanged a look, and very reluctantly, they both nodded.