Harry Potter and the Sect of the Serpent

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Revelations

"Oh, my head. What hit me?"

Harry looked up from where he was dressing at Ron, who had rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head in defense against the morning sun now blazing through his windows.

"The floor, I think," Harry replied unconcernedly. "Fred said they had some trouble getting you up the stairs."

"Those bloody bastards," Ron moaned. "Why didn't they tell us what was in those stupid things?"

Harry smirked. "Presumably because that would have spoiled the fun of watching you get toasted on Marsh-Mellows."

Ron glared at him.

Harry reached for his towel and toothbrush, ignoring Ron's look, and noticed the memory box sitting on top of the dresser. His own recall of the previous night was more than a little blurred, but he distinctly remembered putting his memory into the box. He reached out and ran a finger tentatively over the raised carvings. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Then again, Hermione going for Prime Minister because she would look smart on TV had also seemed like a good idea.

"Hey Ron," he said, his voice cracking inopportunely. Ron, who was again buried under the covers, did not seem to notice.

"Yeah?" came his muffled reply.

"I need to talk to you and Hermione; after breakfast maybe?"

Ron threw back the covers to squint at Harry curiously. "What's up?" he asked.

"Nothing really," Harry insisted. "I just need to tell you some stuff. Alone," he added significantly.

Ron nodded and Harry headed for the bathroom, his stomach tied painfully in knots.

The twins turned up for breakfast, and only the threat of Mrs. Weasley finding out what had happened the previous evening restrained Ron from attempting double fratricide -- that and his blinding headache.

Bill and Charlie had apparently gone back to Bill's flat at some point during the night and had not yet reappeared. Mr. Weasley had already left for work. Hermione was looking rather green and barely touched the plate of kippers and tomatoes that Mrs. Weasley put in front of her. Ginny seemed intent on stirring as much sugar as physically possible into the coffee she'd convinced her mother to make her. She glanced up when Harry came in, blushed brilliantly red, and promptly knocked the butter off the table with her elbow.

"You lot are awfully quiet this morning," Remus observed placidly. "Late night?"

Fred sniggered into his plate and George grinned wildly at Ron.

"Hermione, aren't you feeling well?" Mrs. Weasley asked. "You've hardly touched your kippers. They're very fresh. Bought them from the fishmongers just yesterday."

Hermione's eyes bulged slightly as she stared down at her breakfast. She shook her head. "Just not very hungry is all," she whispered.

Harry poked at his own breakfast halfheartedly. His stomach felt like lead, and it had nothing to do with the Marsh-Mellows.

"How 'bout you, Harry," Fred whispered theatrically as Mrs. Weasley got up to get more tomatoes from the stove, "any adverse side effects?"

"You're evil," Harry hissed under his breath. "Evil incarnate, the both of you. Why didn't you tell us what they would do?"

George scoffed. "Evil doesn't tell."

"Wait 'till you see what we've brought you today and then tell us we're evil," Fred said with a mad grin.

"Do they give hangovers, then?" Remus asked airily. Fred and George whipped around to stare at him.

"Yes," Ron said firmly through gritted teeth.

"How did you--" George began.

"You only had the one..." Fred finished.

Remus smirked. "I smelled the Firewhiskey in them as soon as you opened the tin." He tapped the side of his nose and took another drink of his tea as Mrs. Weasley shuffled past with the skillet, dolling out tomatoes. "Rather brilliant, actually," he whispered.

Remus turned to Harry and smiled wistfully. "Sirius certainly would have appreciated them," he said so softly that only Harry could hear. Harry's stomach sank into his knees as Mrs. Weasley approached him with her skillet.

"Wouldn't you like a bit more, dear?" she asked.

Harry stood up abruptly. "Actually, I think I'd like to be excused." He waited just long enough for Mrs. Weasley's nod before bolting for the kitchen door, feeling Remus' eyes on the back of his head, and hearing Ron make a similar request.

You have to do this, he told himself firmly. Just open the box and get it over with. Telling them can't be any worse than not telling them has been...

Inside Ron's bedroom, Harry stared at the box sitting on Ron's dresser and took a seat on the camp-bed next to Ron's bed. He wondered if he wasn't getting worked up for nothing. It might not even have worked, as he had been mildly inebriated the night before.

Ron followed him into the room a few moments later with Hermione trailing at his heels. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and sat down on the end of Ron's bed, hunched over slightly. "So what's up?" she asked. "Ron said you wanted to talk to us."

"Er, yeah..." Harry said reluctantly.

"Is this about last night?" Ron asked.

Harry's head snapped up. "What about last night?" he demanded.

Ron squinted at him. "You and Remus. Did he tell you something about the Sect?"
"Oh," Harry sighed, relieved. "Not really, but he did tell me something about Professor Lindell: her sister Penny married a Death Eater -- a Malfoy!"

"What?" Ron squawked. "No way."

"That would explain a lot," Hermione reasoned.

"Like what?" Ron asked, frowning.

"Like why Professor Lindell thought her sister had been murdered. If her brother-in-law was a known Death Eater, it's no wonder she was suspicious."

"And why Penny was friends with Snape," Harry added. "I mean, if she married a Malfoy, that means she was probably friends with lots of Slytherins, not just him."

"That must be why Professor Lindell hates Snape so much," Hermione breathed. "She thinks he knew about her sister's murder."

They were all quiet for a moment, digesting the new information. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

"Everybody decent?" Ginny called through the closed door.

Harry balked.

"No more than usual," Hermione replied, smirking. Ginny threw open the door, followed closely by the twins.

"So, no hard feelings, then?" Fred asked, striding confidently into the room. "We were just having a bit of fun after all, I mean -- you did have fun, didn't you?"

"You are so going to pay for that little bit of fun," Ron growled. "You won't know where, or when, or how, but you'll pay."

"Will we know that you've done anything?" Fred asked casually, picking his teeth in the mirror on Ron's door.

Ginny looked around the room for a minute and then tentatively sat down next to Harry on his bed. She smiled at him and quickly looked away.

"Hey, what's this, Ron?" George asked, picking up the memory box from Ron's dresser and beginning to fiddle with it.

"That's mine!" Harry said quickly, his heart starting to pound as he reached for it.

George raised the box away from Harry's desperate grasp.

"Oh yeah," Ron said, "that's that memory thingy that Professor Lindell gave Harry..."

"I want to see," Fred said, walking over to his brother and snatching it from over his head. "You said she was a looker, right Ron?"

Fred was now poking at the box on the other side of the room.

"No!" Harry cried, getting to his feet. "Remus said it would only work once--"

But it was too late. Harry heard the box click ominously as Fred found the revolving piece, and he watched in horror as the little lid slid back and the picture shot onto the ceiling. For a moment, he clung to the faintest hope that Remus was wrong -- that it would show the Gryffindor common room and a girl with glasses and long auburn braids, but as George snatched the box from Fred and swung the it around so that it projected against a blank stretch of wall, he knew that wasn't to be. Dumbledore looked out over Ron's room, a sad, weary expression on his tired old face; Harry turned away and cupped his face in his hands.

"The prophecy's smashed," he heard his own voice say, distant, tinny, sounding strange and vacant disembodied from his head.

"Prophecy?" Fred said. "What pro--"

"Shhh!" Ron insisted, holding up a hand.

Harry sank back down onto the bed, dread seeping through him like a slow chill, freezing him solid from the inside out.

"The thing that smashed was merely a record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries..." Dumbledore's voice was saying. "But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly." Harry heard Hermione's sharp intake of breath.

He lowered his hands and watched the others as they watched the wavering image on the wall, transfixed. The twins slowly sank down onto Ron's trunk at the end of his bed, their eyes never leaving the wall; George was very careful not to disrupt the image from the box in his hands.

Hermione and Ron were watching with similar expressions of insatiable curiosity. Harry couldn't breathe. Of course they would want to know what the prophecy said, he reasoned. They had, after all, risked their lives trying to keep it from the Death Eaters. But that didn't mean that they should.

Harry saw Dumbledore remove the Pensieve from the cabinet beside Fawkes' perch, saw him draw the memory from his temple, the silvery strands just barely visible in the little image on the wall. But as the tiny figure of Professor Trelawney rose from the stone basin, Harry averted his eyes. He had watched it once, and lived it a thousand times over in his dreams; he did not need to see it again.

"...AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES....THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES...."

The last word echoed strangely as the picture flickered and died. The room was silent as the little lid of the box slid shut with a final click. Harry couldn't bring himself to look up. He felt old tears, long repressed, stinging at his eyes, and heard the pounding of his own blood in his ears. He was sitting on the edge of the cot, leaning forward, his hands clasped together between his knees, as though he were praying. For what, he wasn't sure.

The silence was palpable, as though everything was suddenly swathed in cotton since the memory had ended. Harry fought hard to swallow around the lump in his throat. When he looked up he knew he would see Ron's dumbstruck, frightened, face; he would see Hermione's look of horror, and have to listen to her insist that they go to Dumbledore. Harry felt Ginny moving next to him. The mattress was shaking.

Across from him, Ron stood up abruptly and kicked the wall. Harry jumped at the sound of his foot crashing into the baseboard, but he couldn't bring himself to look up.

Even the twins were silent, and Harry felt that this was an ominous sign. Whenever something bad happened to him in the past, the twins had been there to make light of it, joke about it, make it all seem a bit less hopeless; now they had nothing to say.

"It's not true," Hermione stated at last, shattering the silence. Her voice was eerily calm and composed. "Prophecies indeed. What a load of rubbish." Harry didn't answer. He heard her stand and felt her footfalls reverberating through the floor as she began to pace. "I mean," she continued, addressing no one in particular, "you can't honestly believe that sort of thing. Trelawney is a fraud. We all know it. A fake and a fraud. I wouldn't trust her to predict the weather let alone the outcome of a war!"

"Hermione," Ron said softly.

"No!" she snapped. "I refuse to believe it. It isn't true. Remember all those times she saw the Grim in Harry's tealeaves? She kept telling us that he would be dead before the year was out, and he wasn't, was he?

"Harry," she said suddenly, coming to stand in front of him. "Harry, say something. Tell them it isn't true."

He couldn't even lift his head. He was so tired.

"Tell them you don't believe it, Harry."

"Hermione..."

"No, Ron! It isn't true. It can't be true. Because, if it is... If it is..."

Harry was clenching his hands together so tightly that his fingernails were digging into the backs of his hands. Hermione had stopped raving. He stared at his hands, white knuckles, red marks where his fingers were digging into the skin. He took a deep breath at last and raised his head.

Next to him on the cot, Ginny had pulled her knees up to her chest. Her face was resting on her fists clasped together atop her knees, and her whole body was shaking as she stared blankly in disbelief. Harry considered reaching out to her, but the thought of her crying on his shoulder made it all seem too real, and he looked away.

Hermione and Ron were standing together in the middle of the room. Ron had his arms around her, holding her tightly to him, one hand resting possessively on the back of her head, fingers nestled in her hair. Hermione had her head on his chest and her eyes squeezed shut, fingers clutching at the fabric of his shirt.

Harry had seen Hermione cry before. He had been the cause of it more than once, and so he knew what it looked like. Always before, her crying had consisted of a lot of snuffling, red puffy eyes, and occasionally even a high pitched bawling that sent both Harry and Ron running in horror. But now...

Now she was just crying. She turned her head to one side, and he watched the streams of tears running down her face in an expression of silent grief; he felt his own eyes begin to prickle as he watched her, and hastily looked away.

Ron's eyes were dry but vacant, staring off into space as he held Hermione and tried to comfort her. His expression was serious and set, but it wasn't the gaping disbelief that Harry had been expecting. It wasn't the fear he remembered seeing in his best friend's expression whenever Harry said the name Voldemort or spoke about him. Ron looked strangely calm, resigned, determined, and distinctly unafraid. Harry's mind reeled for a moment, trying to decide who it reminded him of -- Bill perhaps, or Charlie -- before he realized that it was just Ron. Just Ron, but looking older than he had ever looked before.

He glanced at last at the silent twins who were looking not at him, but at one another. They too looked serious, their regularly flapping jaws set, their laughing eyes somber. It was not an expression he was accustomed to seeing on their normally jovial faces.

Everything seemed frozen. But for the soft sounds of the others breathing, Harry could hear nothing. It was as though someone had taken a snapshot -- a plain, Muggle photograph -- and frozen this wretched moment in time.

Suddenly, tentatively, a hand reached out and covered both of his. Harry marveled at how much smaller Ginny's hands were than his own. He looked over slowly to see Ginny looking directly at him, biting her lip, her blue eyes wide and firm, trying to blink back the tears that were finally spilling out of the corners. She didn't say anything at first, just squeezed his hand tightly. Harry felt his heart beating painfully, and wondered if it had, at some point, stopped.

Harry tried desperately to think of something to say. He wanted to tell her to stop crying. He wanted to tell her that it would all be okay, but he sat in silence, fighting the raw, bitter feeling in the back of his throat. It was the same feeling that had engulfed him in Dumbledore's office that warm spring morning. It had not stopped hurting, he realized, he'd just gotten used to it. He wanted to leave the room, wanted to stomp the frozen ground outside, to scream at the sky. Yet still he sat.

"You should have told us sooner," Ginny whispered. "You shouldn't have had to carry this all alone, not after everything..."

Harry just shook his head. He could not explain.

Hermione broke away from Ron at last, and she seemed to crumple, sitting down on the floor where she had been standing, curling her feet up under her, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. Ron, arms empty, began to pace the room, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and hunching over as he strode three steps across and three steps back.

"This doesn't change anything," Ron said finally as he lowered himself back down onto the bed. His voice seemed loud and unfamiliar in the silence. He shrugged. "I mean, we all knew..."

"Wait," Fred said hollowly. "Just wait a minute here. What are we saying?"
"'Neither can live while the other survives...'" George repeated, his eyes glazed and voice uncertain.

"Are we saying that Harry is supposed to... to--"

"To kill Voldemort," Harry said suddenly. "Or die trying." He tried to make his voice sound light, unconcerned, but it came out dead and emotionless instead. They all stared at him, and he looked into the eyes of each.

This is the truth, he thought as he looked from one to the next and willed them to see it. We all wanted the truth, but we didn't want this... Even Hermione looked up and met his gaze at last.

"Do you believe it?" she demanded. Harry blinked. He hadn't ever really thought about whether or not he believed it. Dumbledore said it was so, and he had accepted it. Not happily, not willingly, but he had accepted it -- eventually.

"I don't think it matters what I believe," he replied at last.

"Of course it matters!" Hermione began, rising to her knees to look him in the eye. "Harry, if it isn't true--"

"If it isn't true, it won't make any difference. Voldemort will still come after me. He'll still want me dead."

"But he doesn't know about the prophecy!" Hermione said desperately. "He doesn't know--"

"He knows part of it," Harry replied calmly. "The first part. That's why he killed my parents and why he tried to kill me. That's why he marked me. He didn't know he was doing it at the time, but that's what happened."

"But Harry--"

"The prophecy could have meant me, or it could have meant another wizard born at the same time, but it said that Voldemort would choose one of us and mark him as his equal. He chose me."

"It doesn't matter," Ron said firmly. "And it doesn't change anything. We all knew it from the start, even if we didn't. It's been all about you from the very beginning. You're The Boy Who Lived." He looked up at Harry, his expression firm and inscrutable. "And we were with you at the beginning, and we're with you now. To the end." He glanced down at the floor then, suddenly embarrassed by what he had said. "And that's all."

The others were quiet for a long moment. Then Fred cleared his throat. George nodded.

Hermione was still staring at Harry, silently begging him to tell her that it was all a bad dream. She looked exactly the way he'd felt in Dumbledore's office all those months ago.

"So," Fred said. "Looks like we've got work to do."

Harry frowned at him. "Work?"

Ron gave Harry the look he usually reserved for second years who questioned his authority. "We've got a lot of work to do if we're going to help you fight," he said very slowly and clearly, as though speaking to a small child.

"What? No! You heard what it said--"

"Yeah, sure I did," Ron interrupted him. "It said that you have to kill Voldemort. Fine. Good. The sooner the better, I say. But it didn't say that you have to do it alone."

"And it didn't say anything about the hordes of angry Death Eaters at his beck and call," George added.

Harry was shaking his head emphatically. "NO. You're not going to fight. Look what happened last time--"

"You went without us last time," Fred said sensibly.

"No!" Harry shouted. "Look, just because I have to die doesn't mean that the rest of you--"

"Die?" Ginny yelped, matching Harry's volume. "Nobody is going to die except Vol-Voldemort." She crossed her arms over her chest determinedly. "We won't let you die. And I, for one, plan to live forever."

"Here, here!" Fred agreed, raising an imaginary glass.

Harry began to feel that the conversation was getting out of hand. Suddenly, Hermione stood up and headed for the door.

"Where are you going?" Harry asked her. She didn't even pause.

"To get my new books. There's bound to be something useful in them..."

"Why?" Harry demanded.

Hermione paused at the doorway and blinked at him. "It's what I do," she replied.

"She's right," Fred said with a nod. "We've got lots to do and less time to do it in! George, where did we put that--"

"Under the floorboards in Ginny's room."

"What?" Ginny snapped, leaping off the cot and following her brothers out of the room. "What did you put under my floor?" She stood to follow them out the door, but paused for a moment and glanced back at Harry, her expression unreadable.

Harry watched them go, slack-jawed and dumbstruck. He looked back at Ron who was watching him closely.

"Want another round of chess then?" he asked, reaching under the bed for the box. "That last game wasn't really fair. I mean, I was distracted--"

"Ron," Harry said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone. "What just happened?"

Ron looked up at him sympathetically. "It's OK, Harry, really. But no matter how much might think you'd like to, you're not going to go through this alone."

The rest of the day passed quietly. Ron didn't say much and neither did Harry. The twins left almost immediately after tearing up half the floorboards in Ginny's room looking for whatever it was they had stashed there. Ginny herself was nowhere to be seen.

Ron and Harry moved down to the kitchen, where it was warmer, and set up Ron's chess set on the kitchen table to play for a while, Ron beating Harry easily every game. Eventually Hermione reappeared with four books under her arms and set up next to them, pouring over the texts as though she would find the answers to all the world's problems in their pages.

Harry leaned forward over the chessboard, contemplating his next move and trying to keep his mind only on the little black and white pieces in front of him, when he noticed that Ron was giving him a strange look.

"What?" he asked, still scrutinizing the board. "Am I walking into some sort of trap you've laid me?"

"What's that thing you're wearing?" Ron replied. Harry looked down to see his amulet hanging out of his shirt like a pendulum over the board. His first reaction was to stuff it back into his shirt and pretend that it was nothing, but he remembered what Ron had said about not having secrets from one another any more and sighed inwardly.

"It was my dad's," he explained, holding out the chain so that Ron could get a better look. "Remus gave it to me for my birthday. He and..." Harry swallowed hard. "He and Sirius wanted me to have it."

Ron looked away from the amulet with a sympathetic expression, and Harry realized that he hadn't said Sirius' name aloud to Ron or Hermione since... Well, since last May. Ron quickly shifted his gaze back down to the little gold amulet.

"What's all that funny writing on it?" he asked, gesturing towards the markings on the amulet.

"What funny writing?" Hermione asked, looking up from her book.

"I think they're runes," Harry said, holding the amulet out again, this time so that Hermione could get a look at it. "Professor Lindell said she thought it was a puzzle."
Hermione nodded. "They're runes all right." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "I could translate it for you, if you like. Then maybe we could solve the puzzle."

"What happens if we solve it?" Ron asked.

Harry shrugged. "Probably nothing. Professor Lindell thought it was a speliquary -- something to keep spells in -- but she said that since it hasn't done anything magical so far, it's probably empty."

"Still," Hermione said. "It might be nice to know what it says..."

Harry thought about it. He had no idea what kind of spells it could be used to hold, but if he could unlock it and store one in it -- something powerful, like a Patronus, or a shield charm -- it might come in handy. Slowly he nodded and drew the chain up over his head.

"I'll just copy them down and you can have it back," she said with a kind smile. Harry nodded, softly fingering the place on his neck where the chain usually sat, and watched it in Hermione's hands. Hermione quickly grabbed her quill and a spare bit of parchment and began copying down the symbols.

"You're in a right mess, you know," Ron said with a grin. "You've already lost one knight, and your other one isn't in a very good position."

"Thanks," Harry grumbled. "I hadn't noticed."

"You could still win though," Ron mused, examining the chessboard with a practiced eye. "You'll just have to pick your moves very carefully..."

"This is interesting," Hermione said, turning the amulet over in her hands. "I recognize a few of the ones on this side, but this other side..."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Well, the runes I know about are part of a pictorial language. This one, for instance, means 'lion'. And this one is 'to bind.' Most of these others are familiar, I'd just have to look up their exact meaning."

She flipped the amulet over then. "But on this side, I don't recognize any of the symbols."

"Maybe you haven't learned those words yet," Ron said with a shrug.

Hermione shook her head. "I don't think they're words at all." She handed the amulet back to Harry, who gratefully slid it back over his head and tucked it into his shirt.

Remus wandered in then, a steaming mug of tea in one hand and a book in the other. He smiled at them, pulling out a chair next to Harry.

"Hello Professor," Hermione said pleasantly. "Are you still enjoying your holiday?"

"I'm having trouble getting used to all this luxury," he said with a smile.

Ron made a face. "Luxury? Lithuania must really be bad."

Remus laughed. "Well," he said thoughtfully, stirring his tea.

Before he could finish his thought, however, the fire in the Weasleys' enormous hearth cracked loudly and turned green. All four of them turned to look as Mr. Weasley's head appeared among the flames.

"Hi Dad," Ron said, getting up from the table and kneeling down on the hearthstones.

"Ron," Mr. Weasley said, his voice sounding grave, "go get Remus and your mother right now."

"I'm here," Remus said, hurrying over to crouch next to Ron.

"What's up, Dad?" Ron asked.

"Go, Ron! Fetch your mother!"

Ron nodded and jumped to his feet, dashing out of the kitchen. Hermione and Harry exchanged wary looks.

"What is it, Arthur?" Remus asked. His voice was calm but serious.

"The raid went badly. We just got word. They knew we were coming."

"What? How?"

Mr. Weasley shook his head, which was an odd thing to watch when it wasn't attached to his body. "I don't have all the details. Kingsley just flooed. There's someone down. He said they could use some extra wands, if you're up for it."

"Of course," Remus answered promptly.

"Arthur?" Mrs. Weasely came hurrying into the room with Ron directly on her heels. "What is it?"

"Molly, the raid went badly. Kingsley said that Dumbledore wants the children back at school right away. He's set it up so that they can Floo securely to Gryffindor Tower in ten minutes time.

"No!" Harry said, getting up and heading for the fireplace. "We can help. I want to--"

"This isn't up for debate," Remus said firmly. "You're to go back to school. Ten minutes. Gather your things." Harry stared at him. His tone was harsh and firm, and his eyes were hard. Harry was forcibly reminded of the only other time he'd seen Remus angry with him, when he'd found Harry sneaking into Hogsmeade with the Marauder's Map in his third year.

Harry shut his mouth, but scowled blackly.

"...just get them packed," Mrs. Weasley was saying.

"There's no time," Mr. Weasley urged. "Dumbledore was adamant that they get back to Hogwarts as soon as possible. All of them. We'll send their things along later."

"All right," Mrs. Weasley said, sounding worried. "Ron, go find your sister."

"But Mum--"

"NOW, Ron!"

Ron turned quickly on his heel and headed back out of the kitchen. Harry turned and saw Hermione quickly putting the chess pieces back into their box and gathering her books and papers together.

"You can Apparate to my office once the kids have gone," Mr. Weasley was saying to Remus. "Molly, I'll send word if we need you, or if I hear anything else."

Harry blinked. If they needed her? He'd never pictured Mrs. Weasley in a fight, and he realized with a cold shock that if Mr. Weasley was even considering calling on his wife, whatever had happened must have been pretty bad.

With a pop and another flash of green light, Mr. Weasley's head disappeared from the fireplace. Remus was consulting his pocket watch.

"Right," he said briskly. "Four minutes. Grab your cloak, Harry."

Harry scowled as he turned to fetch his cloak from the hook by the door. Why was he being sent back to school all of the sudden? Dumbledore might have said all of them, but Harry knew that he really meant him.

"Two minutes," Remus barked. "Where's Ron?"

Ron reappeared moments later with a very stunned looking Ginny in tow. Harry noticed that her eyes were red rimmed, and he looked quickly away.

"Right, that's it," Remus said, snapping his pocket watch shut. "You first, Harry."

Remus gave him a stern look and Harry frowned. He reached into the pot of Floo powder that Remus was holding out for him and grabbed a handful.

"Remus--

"Now Harry!"

Harry scowled. He tossed the powder into the fire and stepped into the green flames.

"Gryffindor Tower!"