Distorted Reflections

Chapter 1: One Strange Gift Shop

One thinks of summer as going to the beach, the mall, and being with friends, while the sun shines down - just for you it seems - with just the hint of a breeze, enough to tell the unwary victim of sorts that summer will last forever and will never be conquered by the horrors of Advanced Algebra and Trigonometry and the complicated poems by Emily Dickinson.

What one does not expect is for it to be raining, not only to be raining, but to be humid. One does not expect it to be so muggy that your clothes stick to you from the sweat that pours from you in rivulets, despite there being a countless number of fans in the room, nearly drowning out the drumming of the rain on the windows, taunting the unlucky occupants within.

However, in London, in a house called Twelve Grimmauld Place, this was exactly what fifteen-year-old Harry Potter's fate was, though the fans had been recreated by several strong Cooling Charms on the room. Harry lay on his back, bare-chested (he had disposed of his sweat-drenched shirt some time ago), his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, making him look very much like the large black dog lying next to him. The dog pushed a tennis ball toward Harry with its nose, its tail wagging slightly. Harry sighed and half-heartedly threw the ball, letting it bounce off the wall and wiping a new sheen of perspiration off his body from all the sweat that this simple motion had evoked in him. The dog came back with the ball now, its claws click-clacking on the tile of the living-room floor and dropped the ball at Harry's side, giving a doggy grin before changing back into Harry's godfather Sirius Black.

"Hot, are you?" he asked, ruffling Harry's already-messy hair in a fatherly gesture.

"Just a little," Harry said sarcastically.

"Well, it's not like you could go anywhere, anyway. So why don't you just keep your old godfather some company?" Sirius said sensibly.

Harry grinned slightly. "I know, it's just so . . . depressing, you know? Like a million dementors," he said. "And it's wicked boring here, even with my 'old godfather,'" he added hastily when he saw Sirius's expression. The man had been sentenced to twelve years in Azkaban (without a trial), after being wrongly convicted of murder and had had to live with those dreadful creatures outside his prison cell day in and day out.

"Just keep your sprits up," Sirius suggested. "It's like that Patronus Charm Remus taught you, isn't it? Just think of a happy memory."

"Yes, Professor Black," Harry teased, humoring his godfather as he racked his brains for a happy memory, sobering as he fell upon one. It was of his parents, sitting and talking to him -

"Oh, so the sleepyhead's finally awake," James said.

"Good morning, baby boy!" Lily greeted, bending down so as to be at the eye-level of her son, just starting to open his eyes in the crib. "Do you know what today is? It's your birthday, Harry! It's your first birthday, you're one today!"

There was a happy gurgle from baby Harry and James chuckled, picking Harry up and throwing him in the air, laughing as Harry's face broke into a grin. "Happy Birthday, Harry!" James said as Harry landed in his arms again. "I love you," he murmured into the baby's ear, his whiskers tickling it and making Harry giggle. Lily wrapped her arm around her husband, gazing lovingly at baby Harry. The threesome left the room then, and Harry, instead of following them was enveloped in a thick fog and the memory was ending. . . .

Harry fought against the fog thickening around him, but was brought back to the present nevertheless to Sirius's worried face swimming in front of him. "Are you alright, Harry?" his godfather asked concernedly.

"Yeah. Fine," Harry mumbled, swiping at his cheeks angrily and hoping that his eyes weren't too bloodshot. Harry could see that his godfather wasn't about to give up on the issue and opened his mouth to reassure Sirius when the door creaked open to admit Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Remus.

"Hey, mate," Ron said, flopping down next to his friend while Hermione and Ginny went to sit on the sofa. "How are you?"

"Hot, tired, and miserable," Harry grumbled. "You?"

"The same," Ron answered, stripping off his own maroon T-shirt and wiping his sweaty face with it.

"Wow, it sounds as if you two have had a pretty rough day, sitting on your asses and doing nothing," Remus teased, sitting down in an armchair.

"It isn't our fault that Mum didn't need us to do any chores, today," Ginny said, drawing her long red hair into a ponytail to keep it from sticking to the back of her neck as Hermione did the same.

"Where is Mrs. Weasley, anyway?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, her and Dad decided to have a little fun up in the bedroom," said Fred, walking into the room and lounging against the doorway.

"So they'll be up there for quite some time," George added, echoing his twin and chuckling. There was laughter from the four kids while the two adults tried hard not to laugh. Once the laughter died down, there was a collective sigh from the assembled group, basically saying, "I'm so bored!" in no uncertain terms.

"Hey, Harry, do you want to play wizard chess?" Ron finally asked in an attempt to break the moroseness of the assembled group.

"Sure," Harry said, shrugging as Ron struggled up and plodded up to his room to get the chess set that he and Harry had used many a rainy day. Ron's footsteps finally died down as they went up the stairs, and Harry savored the silence, trying to imagine that he were somewhere much cooler than this. Like Hogwarts in the wintertime, he thought longingly. Ah, that was the life, sitting in front of a roaring fire and being kept just warm enough to feel glad that you were inside walls; however, his natural-born daring making him go out into the snowy courtyard and have snowball fights with the Weasleys and Hermione now and again. And, most happily of all Christmas Day, waking up to the pile of presents at the foot of his four-poster (which he had never had at the Dursleys), and of course, the wonderful Christmas Feast in the Great Hall with the thirteen beautifully decorated Christmas Trees. He regarded Hogwarts as his home, he decided, his family. . . .

Baby Harry was tearing apart the yellow wrapping paper to find whatever this bright guise was hiding. What could it be? Then, a pair of well-manicured hands were gripping his and helping him to unwrap the gift, revealing a blue baby blanket with a pattern of lilies emblazoned upon it. Harry looked up into almond-shaped eyes exactly like his own emerald-green ones.

"Do you like it, baby boy?" Lily asked. Harry cocked his head at her, however, seemed to understand what his mother was saying, for next second, he had stuck the blanket in his mouth and was sucking on it contentedly. There was a chuckle and Harry looked up into the face of his father.

"Merry Christmas, pup," his father said, picking him up and rocking him to sleep, and, as baby Harry fell asleep, the adult Harry felt fog obscuring his senses yet again and was brought back to the present once more.

"Harry? Harry?" Harry was woken up again to Ron shaking his shoulder.

"Wha-?" Harry asked, clueless.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Hermione asked, concerned while everyone else stared at the trio.

"Yeah. Fine. What happened?"

"Well, you kind of . . . drifted off, I suppose, but your eyes were still open, your face was just . . . blank," Ron said, very worried.

"The same thing happened before you came in, Ron," Sirius commented, concerned and the worry lines on his gaunt face standing out more. "He and I were just talking and he went all rigid like that."

"Sorry. It's just this weather, you know," Harry lied. "I guess I'm going crazy," he said, trying to get a laugh out of his friends and they gave half-hearted grins. Was he going crazy? he asked himself. He was seeing things that had happened before he could even remember them, before he was supposed to remember them and he was going blank by just thinking about his parents. If he told his friends that, they'd think he was crazy, for sure. But, asked another voice in his head. Suppose the memories aren't really real and Voldemort's using them to open your mind so you can be possessed? He decided that he'd slip it casually into the conversation when he was talking to Sirius and Remus another time, but not now, not when they were all so worried about him (not that they needed to be).

"So, do you want to play?" Ron asked, starting to set up the chessboard.

"Oh, sure," Harry said, taking the black chess-pieces from Ron's hand and setting them up on his side of the board. "Bet you ten Galleons I win this time," he teased gently.

"You'd better have those Galleons ready, then," Ron teased back, moving a highly courageous pawn of his, which, for no reason at all, he had named Dan. Harry returned with a knight that had a tendency of swearing if he wasn't picked to move within the first couple of turns and then gave a blistering obscenity when he was torn apart by one of Ron's pieces, especially if it was a pawn ("a mere pawn, huh! I can take him!").

Within fifteen minutes, Ron had taken three pawns of Harry's, a knight (thankfully not the swearing one), and a bishop while Harry shook his head at his own mediocrity compared to Ron's chess-playing as he stared at the pawn that he had managed to take painstakingly after the knight had been taken (and he guessed that Ron had let him take from mere pity).

"Like I said, I hope you have those Galleons ready," Ron said after he took Harry's second knight with precise moves from a brutal queen and several brave pawns (Dan included). It replied with a blistering obscenity as it slid off the board, unconscious, to rest with the other taken pieces. As Harry was chewing his bottom lip, thinking of the proper move to make with his remaining pieces, there was a loud crash from the entrance hall many floors below and there was the scream of a woman, "Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers -"

Sirius groaned, got up, stretched, and walked to the door, shouting, "Tonks, did you fall over that umbrella stand again?" over the din of his mother's screams.

"I'm sorry!" Tonks lamented. "I swear, the thing moves! That's the third time I've tripped over it!" she said, as the occupants of the living-room heard her trying to right the heavy troll's leg.

Sirius sighed and swept down the stairs to help his niece and there were more angry screams from his mother's portrait as Sirius shouted back just as loudly back at her. "Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!"

"YOU! Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh -"

"I said - shut - UP!"

"You traitor, letting these half-breeds and blood-traitors in here! YOU ABOMINATION!" There was another angry scream from her before Sirius managed to pull the curtains closed around her (from what the kids could guess), and he helped Tonks to right the umbrella stand once more, before there was a bark-like laugh from Harry's godfather and he and Tonks began talking in excited voices, much like Arthur Weasley sounded when speaking about Muggle machinery, Harry thought.

"What do you think is going on?" Ginny asked, walking to the door.

Everyone exchanged clueless glances, but their gaze turned back to the doorway when there was a loud thumping on the steps and Sirius's groan. "These Muggles could never make things easy, could they? Put a Shrinking Charm on it for Merlin's sake!"

Tonks laughed. "Well, the magical world wouldn't really be a secret, then, would it?" she said.

"Well, why not you?"

"My forgetfulness at work, Sirius," Tonks teased. "But we're almost there, now. Look."

"What the bloody hell is that?" Remus asked, going to the door and peering over Ginny's shoulder as his curiosity got the better of him.

"What's what, Remus?" one of the twins asked, looking out as well. "Oh, I've heard Dad go on about these things before."

"Yeah," the other twin agreed. "Isn't it a . . . a. . . .?"

"Oh, I know what that is!" Ron exclaimed. "It's a veletision!"

"You mean a television?" Hermione asked, stifling a giggle as Sirius and Tonks moved through the crowd of people with a heavy box in their hands. They lowered it onto the ground, wiping sweat off of their faces and panting heavily.

"You need a bit of a workout, Padfoot. At Hogwarts you could have lifted twice that weight by yourself," Remus teased.

"Hey, you try lifting this up two flights of stairs, Moony. You aren't a spring chicken, yourself," Sirius replied, sweeping his wavy black hair irritably out of his face.

"What did you get a TV for, anyway, Sirius?" Harry asked his godfather, standing up to help open the box.

"Entertainment, what else?" Sirius mumbled. Harry still didn't look satisfied at this vague answer, so he elaborated, "You know, Quidditch games, R-rated movies, all that good stuff. I've been thinking about this for a while now, actually."

"Did you just say Quidditch games? I thought that this was a Muggle TV," Harry said, confused.

"It's part of the Wizarding Wireless Network," Remus explained. "Sirius will do a spell on this. . . ."

"Television," Harry supplied.

"Thank you, the television - which will make it have certain capabilities."

"But you're a wizard. . . ." Ron said to Sirius.

"Took you a while," Fred or George teased.

"No, what I mean is, how'd you find out about a . . . television?" Ron asked.

"I may be a wizard, but I still have Muggle-born or half-blood friends and Tonks's Dad is a Muggle, so she told me about it. But I didn't know she'd pick it up today!" he finished, with a grin at the Metamorphmagus.

"That's why I'm your favorite niece," she teased.

"You're the only one who hasn't gone over to the Dark Arts," Sirius said grimly as he tried to open the box.

"Here," Harry said, handing Sirius the knife that could open anything that he had been given for Christmas last year by his godfather. Sirius grunted his thanks (which made him sound a bit like Uncle Vernon, Harry thought), and the contents of the box were revealed a moment later.

"Whoa," Harry murmured as he gazed into the box. "How much money do you make in the Auror business, Tonks? You went all out here."

"It was my dad, Ted. He spoils me," the young Auror explained with a giggle. "And he makes a fair amount as a news anchor, I believe."

"Is this a good model, then?" Sirius asked his godson.

"Good? It's great!" Harry exclaimed, gazing on in wonder as the high-def television was lifted out of the box by the two Marauders and they flicked their wands to plug it into a wall socket that Harry hadn't seen before. Another flick of his wand and there was a VCR attached to the television.

"Another way your Dad spoils you?" Hermione asked with a giggle, nodding at the VCR.

"Yep," Tonks replied. "I figured Sirius would want one for those R-rated movies of his," she said while Fred and George raised their eyebrows at each other. They obviously intended to see some of those movies. Meanwhile, Tonks turned to Sirius for a reply.

"Perfect," Sirius said happily, glancing the TV up and down while Fred and George looked at the plugs that their father collected and grinned.

"You kids have fun, then," Tonks said. "I'm off to catch some Death Eaters."

"Have fun! I wish I could come with you," Sirius said wistfully.

"I'll send you a postcard and maybe even a T-shirt. Does I defeated Voldemort and all I got was this lousy T-shirt sound good to you?"

"Perfect," Sirius teased and Tonks laughed and waved cheerily at the group before Disapparating with a pop.

Harry sighed and turned back to the chess game, but Ron raised a hand. "I'll stop the carnage, here," he said. "Besides, I want to enjoy this thing, if what I've heard about it is true. You can really watch Quidditch games on this thing, Sirius?" he asked incredulously.

"Yup," Sirius said, grabbing the remote and flicking through channels until he found a Quidditch game between the Cannons (Ron's face brightened) and Puddlemere United (Harry noticed the former Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team - Oliver Wood - playing as Keeper). The guys cheered on their favorite team - Ron and Remus for the Cannons and the others for Puddlemere - while the girls simply looked bored, cheering however when Oliver Wood made a spectacular save, using a particularly hard Quidditch move called Starfish and Stick.

Just as Puddlemere made another goal on the Cannons, making the score 120-40, Tonks burst into the room, her hot-pink, spiky hair in disarray as she gasped, waving something in the air and looking as if she were about to collapse.

"Tonks, what is it?" Sirius asked, leaping up from the ground, the Quidditch game forgotten and holding the young witch by the shoulders. "What's happened to you? Was it the Death Eaters? Was it my dear cousin, Bella?" he asked with a wry grin which Tonks returned with a dry gasp which Harry could only guess was supposed to be a laugh, before collapsing against Sirius. Sirius gave an oof of surprise and Remus hopped up from his armchair which the two men guided the Metamorphmagus into while the kids looked on anxiously. Tonks was usually the most cheerful member of the Order, seeing her in this state was very rare.

"What happened? What is it?" Sirius asked, very worried while Remus comfortingly rubbed the Auror's back.

"Should I get Mum?" Ginny asked.

"Maybe, if she gets any worse," said the man, looking helpless. "I don't know if she was hit by a spell or what. Can you, Remus?"

"Nope," the werewolf replied, feeling Tonks's limbs and chest over for any broken bones; there were none, she just continued to gasp. "Harry," she finally managed to say and, with a prod from Ron, Harry came over to the young witch.

"What is it, Tonks?" he asked anxiously, kneeling by her side as Sirius laid a hand on his shoulder and everyone else looked on anxiously.

"Harry, you're famous," said Tonks, with a small giggle. "You're famous, kid."

"I know I am," Harry said, confused. What had the Death Eaters hit Tonks with?

"No, Harry, you're famous," Tonks said, squeezing Harry's hand and grinning at him, as if this made everything so much clearer.

After this declaration, you could have heard a pin drop in the living-room of Twelve Grimmauld Place. Sirius and Remus looked at each other, did Tonks need to go to St. Mungo's? This had been a simple Death Eater meeting; in fact, the Order had only been suspicious that they were meeting in the Department of Mysteries to try and get the weapon, but it had obviously been more than that and what had they done to Tonks? "Ginny, go and get Molly," Remus ordered the young redhead.

Ginny nodded and turned to leave while all the other Weasleys and Hermione glanced worriedly at Tonks, who was still gripping Harry's hand fiercely. "No! Wait, Ginny!" Tonks called. "Harry really is famous! Look!" With that, she lifted what she had been holding in her hand and which no one had really been paying attention to in all the hubbub. Harry saw the title first and his mouth dropped open as he read the title on the movie. "Harry Potter and the Battle for Hogwarts," he murmured and there was a collective gasp throughout the group.

"How the hell did the Muggle world find out about us, mate?" Ron asked worriedly.

"I don't know," Harry said, thinking.

"Wait, didn't you tell us about that Muggle friend you had, Jo, or whatever her name was?" Hermione asked thoughtfully and Harry struck himself on the head.

"But I never thought she'd tell!" he exclaimed, very upset. He'd messed up that day on the train with Hagrid and now Muggles were going to track them down and use them as they would a magic genie.

"It isn't your fault, lad," Sirius said gently. "We have good hiding places, they won't find us."

"But if they're already making movies of us, then they'll know where to find Hogwarts and Hogsmeade and . . . oh, this is all my bloody fault!" Harry said, burying his face in his hands.

"Harry, don't worry!" Tonks exclaimed, sounding relatively normal for the first time since she had burst into the room.

"Don't worry? Don't worry?" Harry asked hysterically. "The Muggle world will be looking for us soon to find out what makes us tick and you're telling me to not worry?!"

"No, no, no," the young Auror said, actually laughing a bit now. "You see, this Jo woman has made books of these, too."

"Yeah, sure, I definitely won't worry, now," said Harry sarcastically. "For all those people who don't have TV's, there are books all about us! Oh, I'm feeling absolutely grand, right now!"

"Harry!" Sirius exclaimed, amazed at his godson's rapid change in attitude.

"He's right, Sirius," Ron said. "The more publicity, the more that the Muggles will come after us! How dare she? I thought that she was your friend," he murmured angrily, kicking at the leg of the coffee table in frustration.

"I shouldn't have told her in the first place," Harry murmured guiltily.

"Hey, you two, hold off with the pity fest and let Tonks make her point. I think I know where she's going with this," Remus said sternly.

"Thanks, Remus," the Metamorphmagus replied before continuing. "You see, you two, well, all of you actually, Jo published this as fiction!"

"Fiction? Fiction? Well, that's just great, it's. . . ." Harry started and then realization hit him. "Bloody hell, it's fiction, the Muggles don't really believe in this world, because who the hell would believe in magic? It's fiction! Yes!" All of the occupants shook their heads at Harry's enthusiasm, but knew that if their world had been discovered, Harry would have blamed himself as he blamed himself for everything that happened in the wizarding world.

"Where did you get this, anyway, Tonks?" Hermione finally asked, once Harry had stopped shouting that the Harry Potter series was indeed fiction and was now simply grinning broadly, shaking his head now and again.

"A gift shop," Tonks teased. Then, with a look from all of those assembled. "You really don't know?"

"Of course, not," Remus said.

Tonks sighed, yet everyone could tell that she wanted to tell them the story. "Well, I went to the Ministry of Magic to head them off, by the telephone box, you know?" Everyone nodded, Harry coming out of his reverie, he had gone to the Ministry only a few days ago for his hearing. "I borrowed Moody's spare Invisibility Cloak and was waiting to see if anyone came when I saw some hooded figures go into a pub right near there. I guessed that they must be having some sort of meeting there to plan an attack, so I followed after them."

"What is this leading up to again?" Ron asked.

"Let her tell the story, Ron, shush," Hermione admonished.

"I followed the two blokes into this private room - I think it was Crabbe and Goyle Sr., they were really heavy-set, all muscles and no brains."

"Yeah, that sounds like their sons," Harry commented.

"When I followed them into there, I saw a ton of Death Eaters there, I'm pretty sure it was the whole squadron, and those Muggles didn't think twice about it, they were a pretty shady bunch, too, now that I think about it. Even Snape was there, because he's acting as a double-agent, isn't he?" Tonks said, pausing thoughtfully for a moment and Harry could tell that she was thoroughly enjoying the power that she had over the occupants of the room as they waited with bated breath for her to continue, Sirius and Remus exchanging glances about Snape's 'double-agent' role in the Order.

Finally, she started again. "Well, they were all seated around this table, Lucius Malfoy was heading it and there they were, there were the seven Harry Potter books and movies. . . ."

"But how can there be seven?" Harry asked, confused. "I'm not even through with my fifth year yet."

There was a pause as everyone considered this strange quandary, until Hermione exclaimed, "Oh!"

"What is it?" Ginny asked.

"This morning's Daily Prophet!" Hermione said triumphantly. "Look! Look at this!" She shoved a section of the paper under their nose, and, in the bottom, left-hand corner, there was a small article which she read aloud.

Break-In in the Department of Mysteries?

Last evening, there was an alarm sounded down on Level Nine, specifically in the Department of Mysteries. The portrait of Everard, a former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry swore that he saw a hooded figure entering the Department and thus began to shout until several Ministry representatives came, including the Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt and Mr. Arnold Weasley who works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, both of which work on floors far away from Level Nine. What were these two doing down here? Was it possibly one of their own men who was sent to steal? Was their motive to try and get the public riled, to destabilize the Ministry and therefore let the eccentric Albus Dumbledore (who they are thought to be in contact with), take over from Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, Order of Merlin, First Class, Head of the Wizengamot, etc. . . .

Despite the shouts of the portrait Everard (who is more trustworthy than the formerly mentioned Ministry representatives), when the Unspeakable, Broderick Bode, searched the Department, he insisted that nothing was taken. The only person seen in the vicinity of the Department that evening was Mr. Lucius Malfoy, a former school governor and known for his generous donations to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. When, under the influence of Veritaserum, he was questioned about this, he replied, "I would never steal anything from the Ministry, this place has been the center of power since Merlin, and taking something would destabilize it, something that Dumbledore wishes all too much and I am on the side of the Ministry in this war of logic. . . . Bring it home? Never. I would not wish to put my family in danger, particularly my son, Draco, who I am trying to instill my values of the Ministry in."

There is no doubt that the Department of Mysteries was not stolen from, and the only thing that there are rumors about right now is the mental health of Professor Albus Dumbledore, recently stripped of his Order of Merlin and taken off the Wizengamot, and, of course, his accomplice of sorts, the juvenile delinquent, Harry James Potter, who had attended a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry a few days previously.

"That's complete bullshit," Sirius said frankly once Hermione had finished. "Complete and utter bull. I mean, Harry, a juvenile delinquent. . . .?"

"Let me guess, it's by Rita Skeeter," Harry said, annoyed as Hermione closed the paper with unnecessary vigor.

"Obviously," Ron said.

"But that's not the point!" Hermione exclaimed and her friends gaped at her. They knew Hermione well as being the Know-It-All, the promoter of elf rights in SPEW, and her hatred of the unscrupulous news reporter, Rita Skeeter.

"It's not?" Ron asked, confused.

"No, it very well isn't!" Hermione said, exasperated. "Lucius Malfoy was the only person found near Level Nine besides our people, so it's obvious he did something!"

"But what?" Ginny asked.

"Bode. She mentioned Bode," Hermione murmured, flipping back and skimming the article.

"I remember him. He was at the Ministry the day of my hearing, a bit strange-looking," Harry commented.

"Unspeakables always look strange, Harry. They work with the most mysterious things in our world," Sirius informed his godson. However, Hermione's face had lit up at Harry's words.

"What if Lucius put him under the Imperius Curse?" she asked suddenly. "What if they needed him to nab something for them and he took it?"

"Say, that does make sense," Ron said incredulously. "And maybe . . . do you think that it was a Time-Turner?"

"Exactly!" Hermione finished excitedly, actually pounding her fist on the coffee table in enthusiasm and seeming completely oblivious to everyone else in the room except herself, Harry, and Ron. "Exactly, and Bode could have gone forward in time to get the books and movies!"

"What's a Time-Turner?" Sirius asked curiously.

"Something that lets you go forward and backward in time," Harry clarified. "Hermione and I used it to save you back in third year." Sirius nodded.

"Can you use a Time-Turner to go forward in time?" Remus questioned. "From what I've heard of them, the Ministry gives them out very rarely, and they usually only go backwards."

"Only a few do both," Hermione told him. "And those are even harder to get, but since Bode's an Unspeakable. . . ."

"But why would the Death Eaters want the books and movies of us?" Ginny asked.

"Maybe. . . ." Harry started grimly and everyone turned to him.

"What? Don't leave us hanging, mate!" Ron said, enthusiastic at solving a mystery with his best friends as they had done so often before.

"Maybe they wanted to see how we defeated them, or how they defeated us, so that they could have the greatest possible advantage," Harry murmured, as if to himself.

"That does make sense, now that I think about it!" Tonks said, placing a hand to her head. "They were all gathered around there, reading through these books over and over, highlighting things, ripping pages out. It was quite funny actually, seeing Death Eaters looking all nerdy instead of out there maiming innocents. There was a TV set up for later on when they watched the movies."

"Crabbe and Goyle must have had a bit of trouble," Sirius said, trying to add a bit of levity to the situation but failing dismally as he saw his godson look up from reading the summary on the back of the movie box. The boy's face was grim and it made him look more like a forty-year-old man than a teenager.

"What is it, Harry?" Remus asked.

"This is the seventh one," Harry said. "This is the seventh one," he repeated, a manic glint in his eye. "We can beat them to it."

"You mean we can figure out how to destroy them?" Ginny asked.

"Yeah," Harry replied.

"Well, let's do it," Tonks said excitedly as Ron took the movie from Harry and popped it into the VCR - the Quidditch game had ended, and no one really cared about the score.

"Is it R-rated?" one of the twins asked.

"It's PG-13, that's close enough," Ginny teased, though there was a grimmer note in her voice.

"Whatever," the other twin said as they each sat down, leaning against the side of the couch now.

"Shush, it's starting," Remus admonished as the screen changed from blue to black, and he sat down in the armchair, squeezing in next to Tonks. After all, they all had to be here to see it. . . .

Mrs. Weasley appeared in the doorway now. "Oh, I see that you finally got that TV you so wanted, Sirius," she said. "That's a good thing to watch on a rainy day like this, family time, you know, after all, who knows how much family time we'll have with this war going on." There was a murmur of assent from the motley band and Molly knew that she was fighting a losing battle, trying to make conversation when there was a flashing box in front of them. "Would you like me to make some popcorn or something?" she asked.

"Huh?" Ron asked intelligently.

"Food, Weasley," Harry managed to tease as a preview aired.

"Oh, sure. Thanks, Mum," Ron said, grinning while the boy that Molly cherished like a son turned and grinned at her, too. The others eyes flicked slightly toward her, then went back to the television set.

"No problem at all, dears," Mrs. Weasley said, leaving the doorway. All of the occupants of the living-room heaved an internal sigh of relief; at least, now there wouldn't be anyone to distract them from vital information that they might need in the coming war. The last preview ended now and they all leaned closer to the TV screen, to see the movie that would determine their destiny.