Out of the Books

Chapter 20 - Hunting Plans

Harry had a hard time falling asleep that night; and his messed up day-and-night rhythm after the celebrating through the night at Bill's and Fleur's wedding wasn't the only reason for that. Too many thoughts, emotions and memories were causing a turmoil in his head. Had it only been ten hours ago that he had learned of his family returning to his world? That he had learned of having a younger brother and sister?

Were it not for the book, Amy and Leo had brought from the other world, lying on his night stand, Harry probably wouldn't be sure whether he had dreamt everything that had happened today. Before turning off the light he had leafed through the pages of the slightly tattered book and imagined how it must have been for the twins to read about their brother's life and the wizarding world, as if everything that had happened to him during his first year at Hogwarts wasn't more than a fairy tale.

Harry smiled at the thought of his brother and sister. He was really looking forward to get to know them better. He had been right about one thing: Amy and Leo did like Fred and George Weasley. During dinner Harry had introduced the two sets of twins to each other and for the whole evening the four of them had been sitting together, talking, laughing and maybe plotting - Harry didn't even want to know.

Harry himself had used the chance to catch up all the lost time with Sirius. When he had seen his godfather standing in the hall of Grimmauld Place this afternoon, silencing the portrait of Mrs. Black, Harry had at first thought that he was hallucinating. Talking with Sirius during dinner had been totally different than getting to know his parents and siblings earlier that day. Not that he hadn't been incredibly happy about the chance to have a family now, but being together with Sirius had been so much easier and much more fun than the emotionally ladden and sometimes tense conversation the Potter family had had before everyone else had arrived. With Sirius Harry had already common memories to be shared; and before Sirius' "death" the two of them had developed something, which Harry sometimes caught himself thinking of as a father-son relationship. Now that his own family was back, Harry didn't know whether he should feel guilty that he was closer to Sirius than he was to them. He shook his head confusedly. Maybe he should give himself more time to get to know everyone.

With a smile he remembered how everyone had enjoyed himself or herself this evening. Molly and Remus had thrown a simple but delicious dinner together for everybody. He had seen that his father had talked with Ron and Hermione for a long time. From what Harry had heard, James had talked a lot about his experience of teaching physics and P.E. in a muggle school - no wonder about the subject of conversation when Hermione was around, but the two teenagers had also shared their memories of the Golden Trio's adventures with Harry's father. His mother had looked like being pestered with questions about the Veil and her dreams by Bill, with Remus and Ginny listening to their conversation. Bill was working as a curse breaker for Gringotts, and even though Harry didn't know so much about the oldest Weasley brother, he knew that he had a weakness for unsolved mysteries.

They had parted late in the evening in the agreement that they would keep the arrival of Harry's family and Sirius quiet for now and that Hermione and Ron would come over to Grimmauld Place again in the morning. Later, when Arthur and the older Weasley brothers came home from work, they and Molly and Ginny would join them and all of them would start making plans on what to do now. The five Potters, Sirius, Remus and Tonks stayed at the old Black family home, where Harry was now lying in bed, letting the day pass before his mind's eye before finally falling asleep with a happy sigh.

When Harry walked into the kitchen the next morning for breakfast he saw that he wasn't the first one up, even though it was still quite early.

Lily was sitting at the table, having a steaming cup of tea in front of her. Amy and Leo were bouncing up and down in front of her, begging their mother to finally show them how to do magic.

Harry stood in the door for a few moments, watching them in content amusement before his mother noticed him.

"Good morning, Harry." She smiled and beckoned him to join them at the table.

Before he had even reached the chair his brother and sister had surrounded him.

"Harry, you can show us this cool flash-light spell, can't you?" Amy asked him excitedly.

Harry laughed and poured himself some tea. "Sure, I can. After breakfast."

While he was eating, Harry and Lily talked about Harry's friends and especially the Weasleys. Lily had known Molly and Arthur from when they had been in the Order of the Phoenix during the first war against Voldemort. When Harry was born, Molly had often given Lily advice on how to deal with a small child. Now Lily was grateful that the Weasleys had welcomed Harry in their family with open arms, while she and James had been absent.

Lily had been surprised to see the band of red-haired children, who had crawled all over headquarters sixteen years ago, all grown up. But on the other hand, Harry had grown up as well. So much had changed while they had been gone.

True to his word, Harry got up from the table as soon as his plate was empty. "So, you mean the Lumos-charm, right?" Harry asked the twins in reference to his promise to teach them some magic.

"Yes, exactly. That's what Dad said, when he lit up his finger," said Leo.

Harry raised his eyebrow in respect. He knew how hard it was to control wandless magic; in fact he had never managed to do it intentionally. He had only done it when he was in desperate situations. He made a mental note to ask his father later whether he could help him to use his magic in this way.

Lily left the three siblings to their lesson with a proud smile and went to see whether Sirius and Remus were already awake and whether the shower had more success in waking James up, than she. In half an hour they expected Ron and Hermione to come over and it would not be nice to have the men still walk around in pyjamas.

"Well, I won't teach you to light up your finger," Harry told his brother and sister. "It is very hard to do magic without a wand. You don't have your own wands yet, so you can practice with mine." Seeing their impatient and excited faces, Harry smiled.

"Okay Amy, ladies first." Harry handed Amy his wand and showed her how to hold it correctly. "Now, as you already know, the Lumos-charm causes light. For it to work you need to wish for light at the same time as saying the word 'lumos'," Harry explained.

Amy nodded and fastened her hand around the wand. Wishing very hard for a bright spot of light to show up at the point of the wand, she said the incantation.

Nothing happened.

"Try it again," said Harry encouragingly. "It hardly ever works at the first try."

Amy tried at least a dozen times more without success and then gave the wand to Leo, whose results were not much better than his sister's.

"What are we doing wrong?" he asked almost desperately after another ten minutes of unresulting wand-waving.

"It takes some practice. You really have to imagine yourself causing the light. You give your own energy to accomplish it."

Leo and Amy nodded, though they looked somewhat doubtful and Harry smiled encouragingly at his brother and sister.

"It is really hard with a wand that is not your own. Why don't we leave it for now? All the others will be here anyway in a minute. Maybe we can buy wands for you sometime in the next days."

The twins were not happy about abandoning their magical practice, but at that moment the fireplace came to life and a moment later Hermione stepped out of it, Ron following shortly after her.

Ten minutes later, the whole Potter family, Sirius, Remus, Ron and Hermione gathered noisily around the large kitchen table. Lily was putting a large plate of crumpets on the table, Sirius following her, carrying a beaker of ice-cold pumpkin juice.

"So, now what's the plan?" he asked, as he let himself fall into a chair between Remus and Leo.

"I don't know," said Lily as she sat down next to James. "Maybe we should let Albus know that we are back and invite him to join us in the evening, when we meet again with all the others."

While James and Sirius nodded at her suggestion, Harry visibly paled and Ron and Hermione glanced at him and at each other in concern, while Remus had his eyes narrowed in anger and pain.

Noticing the unexpected reaction to Lily's proposal, James and Sirius looked around in confusion. When no explanation came forward, Leo ignorantly piped up in defence of his mother, "Why not? In the book Professor Dumbledore seemed like someone, who knows just about everything. He could sure help us now."

Harry closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Yes, his brother was right. Dumbledore would know for sure what the right thing to do next would be. The only problem was that he had been killed not even ten weeks ago - murdered by a man, whom he had trusted, even though he was a Death Eater.

"Lily, Albus is dead," whispered Remus in a voice, raw with emotion.

There was a shocked silence on the side of the table where the Potters and Sirius were sitting. It was not fair. Sure, they all had known that time had passed in the wizarding world, while James, Lily and Sirius had been away, but it had never come to their mind that people might have died in the mean time.

"How?" asked Lily, and didn't need to explain what she meant.

"Snape." There was a hate in Remus's voice as James and Sirius had never heard from the normally so self-controlled werewolf before. "The killing curse."

"But...why? I mean, Snape is a bloody git, but Albus trusted him, didn't he? Maybe they only made it look like it, and Albus went into hiding," rambled Sirius helplessly.

Harry shook his head automatically. "No," he said flatly. "I was there. He killed him right in front of my eyes. Professor Dumbledore was weak from a potion he had drunken before and asked me to call Snape, so that he could heal him. I didn't get far. Malfoy got in the way and Professor Dumbledore put a full body-bind on me to keep me from interfering..."

Harry told his parents, Sirius and the twins the whole story of looking for the Horcrux in the cave, returning to the castle and finding the Dark Mark over the Astronomy Tower, and finally the almost successful attempt of Dumbledore to talk some conscience into Malfoy so that he wouldn't kill him, only to have Snape coming to the tower a minute later and finishing Malfoys job.

"...no, it wasn't just to fool Voldemort. Snape really killed him," Harry finished his relation to the events of this fateful night in May.

Heavy silence fell on the kitchen. All of them had wanted to speak about the war against Voldemort, had wanted to exchange information and news on what had happened during the time when they hadn't been together. But talking about Dumbledore's death had brought their dire situation home again. Dumbledore had been the one to lead the resistance against Voldemort. He had been the one with knowledge on almost all branches of magic, with insights into the ministry and with a whole life of experiences and wisdom. What was the Order of the Phoenix supposed to do without him?

There had been an Order meeting two weeks after Dumbledore's death, but it had soon become clear that the old wizard had been the one to hold all those people with their different backgrounds, experiences and opinions together. Without him there seemed to be too many arguments to do anything productive. Also fear and mistrust were always present after Snape had turned out to be a Death Eater after all. The Order threatened to fall apart.

Remus shook his head. The return of James, Lily and Sirius had made him forget how much Snape and Voldemort had hurt the Order with taking Dumbledore away.

A sudden idea made him look up and gaze thoughtfully at his friends, who he had believed lost for such a long time.

"Isn't there hope that Dumbledore meets this author, Mrs. Rowling, as well? Maybe he finds the way back into our world too."

While everyone else at the table looked intrigued and hopeful at once, Lily shook her head sadly.

"I don't think that he will come back. You remember that we arrived in this other world exactly in the same state, we were in when we left the wizarding world. We kept on aging there, we could hurt ourselves and people died in this world as well. Dumbledore is 148 years old now. How could a man in his age survive in a world where no magic exists? I'm sure he died in this other dimension, if he had ever reached it, and moved on to whatever comes next."

Sirius nodded hesitantly. "Even if it wasn't his age. Harry, you said that Dumbledore was weakened from the potion he had drunken in the cave. If that stuff was poisoning him and only a potion could have saved him, then he would have died in a world without magic anyway, because potions are magic."

It felt almost as if they had lost Albus Dumbledore for a second time, when they realized that there was no hope of him ever coming back. For a long time nobody knew what to say.

Finally James cleared his throat. "So, it looks like we are on our own now against Voldemort." He stated the obvious, feeling helpless. He looked at Lily and his children. There had never been a question whether he should go back to the wizarding world, to help Harry in the fight against Voldemort; and he didn't regret coming here. But only now the danger he had brought the rest of his family into, sank in.

Lily returned his look reproachfully. She could guess what her husband was thinking, and even though she wasn't happy with the danger, the situation brought for her children, she didn't want James to blame himself for a decision all of them had made together.

To put James off from his train of thought, Lily turned towards her eldest son. "Harry, I was wondering. When we first met you yesterday, you were being shouted at by Molly. What was that about?"

Startled by the sudden turn of the conversation, Harry looked up at his mother. When her question had finally registered with him, he blushed and searched Ron and Hermione with his eyes, asking them for help. When they didn't say anything, he sighed and answered his mother.

"Er, ... I told you about the trip to the cave, where Professor Dumbledore and I were looking for the Horcrux. Well, I already told you that it wasn't there anymore and we only found a letter instead." Harry was looking at Sirius now. "The letter was signed with R.A.B." He was now watching his godfather closely, waiting for his reaction.

Sirius frowned, while all the other adults and the twins had blank looks on their faces.

"And what was written in the letter?" Sirius asked slowly.

Harry carefully pulled an old and crumpled piece of parchment out of his robe pocket and showed it to his godfather.

He put it on the tabletop in front of him to read it, and James and Remus curiously leaned forward to see what was written in the letter as well.

The frown on Sirius's forehead deepened and when he had finished the letter, he looked at his godson, his eyes wide with astonishment.

James and Remus, as well as Lily and the twins, who hadn't read the letter, were now completely puzzled.

"So what has all of this to do with Molly telling you off for coming to Grimmauld Place without you telling her?" Lily asked Harry impatiently.

Sirius spoke before Harry had the chance to answer. "Do you all remember Regulus, my brother, who became a Death Eater and then was murdered by one of his fellow Death Eaters, without any of us ever knowing why?"

Remus, Lily and James nodded, having no clue were this was going.

"Well, apparently Voldemort had a very good reason for killing him, even though he probably didn't even know it."

James rolled his eyes. "Padfoot, could you please tell us already what all of this is about?" he asked with a pained sigh.

Ron couldn't help but throw a grin at Harry, while pointing at Hermione with his eyes.

Sirius cleared his throat dramatically and set up straight. He had never thought that he would feel proud of his brother, but stealing a Horcrux, a seventh part of Voldemort's soul, was something that raised his respect for his little brother.

"Regulus Antares Black went through the cave, probably sometime in the beginning of 1980 and managed to take the Locket away, which Voldemort had turned into a Horcrux," he announced proudly.

"Looks like Harry found out that this letter was written by Regulus and was searching for a hint here about where my brother might have hidden the Locket, am I right?" Sirius grinned at his godson.

"Actually Hermione found out about Regulus, but yes, we wanted to find out something about Regulus so I called Kreacher, to see whether he knew anything. But when he didn't react, we decided to come here and look for him." Harry mentioned Kreacher's name with barely hidden distaste.

"Of course!" Hermione cried out. "Kreacher didn't react, because you are not his master anymore, Harry. Now that Sirius is back, Kreacher doesn't need to listen to you anymore!" she exclaimed, apparently excited that she had figured it out.

Harry shrugged. Now that Sirius was here, he didn't need Kreacher for information and he couldn't care less about the house-elf. "So, have you ever seen the Locket? Have you noticed anything of Regulus having hidden it here in the house?" Harry asked his godfather.

Sirius shook his head. "But I'm sure that we can find either the Locket or a hint on where Regulus has hidden it, in the house," he said enthusiastically of finally being able to carry out a task which actually helped in bringing down Voldemort.