The Knights Of Walpurgis

Chapter Three: Summer At Headquarters

Harry woke up around dinnertime, if the growling in his stomach was any indication of the time. He swung his legs out of bed and sat upright, successfully managing to stifle a cry of surprise at the realisation that Dumbledore was in the room with him, sitting on the other bed.

"Did you sleep well, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"Yeah, I did," Harry said. "Were you watching me sleep?"

"No," Dumbledore said. "I wanted to speak to Phineas," he pointed at the portrait on the wall, now facing into the room once more, "and then Ron came in and wanted to talk a little more about the elections. He said that you would likely wake up before dinnertime. He left a few minutes ago to help Molly set the table."

"Did you want to talk to me?" Harry asked, putting on his glasses. He stared at the floor between them.

"Actually, yes, I do," Dumbledore said. "But we can speak after dinner. I do my best talking on a full stomach."

Dinner was a surprisingly sumptuous affair, given Molly Weasley's recent arrival at Grimmauld Place and her distaste for shopping in Muggle London. Harry hadn't dwelled on the matter over breakfast that morning, but he noticed that their dinner featured a number of items that had never quite seemed to cross over into the wizarding world. Mr. Weasley, who had arrived at Grimmauld Place after work that day, seemed delighted by the Muggle food.

"Hermione's been such a help," Molly was saying to Dumbledore. "I managed to get enough for breakfast from the Burrow, of course, but if she hadn't been around to go shopping for me, well, we'd be eating bread and cheese right now."

"A fine snack," Dumbledore commented. "However, I agree that it is better for us to have something a little more substantial." He picked curiously at his gammon steak. "Probably."

Harry avoided Hermione's eye as they watched the five pureblood wizards tackling Muggle food with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Ron was eating as happily as he ever did, Ginny kept taking sips of orange juice to wash her food down without having to actually taste it, Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley were attempting to appear as though they were enjoying their meal, but were clearly longing for something more familiar, while Dumbledore was treating his meal as though interested in it at a molecular level, rather than as food. Mr. Weasley, meanwhile, was savouring each mouthful as though he had never tasted such an exquisite meal.

"And these are..." Dumbledore began, poking at three golden-brown grids on the side of his plate.

"Potato waffles, sir," Hermione said.

"I tried waffles in France, many years ago. With cream. And strawberry jam," Dumbledore said, taking an experimental bite. His face became blank. "Perhaps my memory of the taste has faded over the years..."

Harry turned his snort of laughter into a cough as he turned away from Hermione's affronted expression. He could imagine that she had been eager to help Molly prepare a Muggle meal made from processed, frozen and dried foods, but the reality of the matter was that the Weasleys, Dumbledore and McGonagall were not taking well to the unusual menu. Only Ron, whom Harry knew would happily eat anything, and Mr. Weasley seemed to be enjoying the meal.

Finally and much sooner than if Mrs. Weasley had prepared the meal in her customary fashion dinner was finished. Hermione and Mrs. Weasley cleared the table, McGonagall engaged Ron and Ginny in a discussion about the Gryffindor Quidditch team and Harry was left alone with Dumbledore, who eyed him in a similarly curious way to how he'd been looking at the gammon steak a few minutes before.

"I would like to see Buckbeak, Harry," Dumbledore said.

Harry nodded and led the way upstairs to Mrs. Black's old bedroom, where Sirius had housed Buckbeak the hippogriff after coming back to his old home the year before.

Harry and Dumbledore bowed to Buckbeak, who bowed graciously in return, and Dumbledore stepped forward to stroke the hippogriff's beak. Harry, after a moment's hesitation, followed his lead. He stared at Buckbeak's head, watching Dumbledore only from the corner of his eye.

"Fascinating creatures, hippogriffs," Dumbledore said. "Very proud, very loyal, and they can remember incidents that took place years ago. I am sure that our friend here would not be overly inclined to be friendly to young Mr. Malfoy, were he to walk in here right now."

Harry's mind turned to memories of Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin student in Harry's year, lying at Buckbeak's feet with a deep cut running the length of his forearm.

"I suppose not," he said.

"I wonder, sometimes, if Buckbeak understands all that he has witnessed over the last few years. Hagrid's first year as a teacher, Sirius on the run from the Ministry of Magic, life here at Grimmauld Place, it must all seem rather confusing to him. I know Sirius used to come here sometimes and talk to him, when it all became too much."

"When what became too much?" Harry asked.

"Sirius was under a great deal of pressure from the moment he left Azkaban, Harry. The stress of chasing after Peter Pettigrew was extremely tiring, and the following year he was very concerned about you, of course. Last year the stress of staying here while his friends were in danger and he was unable to be with you... It grew to the point of near incapacitation. Sirius, being the sort of person he was, did not wish to burden Remus or Tonks or myself with his burdens, and so he would come here to talk to Buckbeak. While he was always welcome to talk to any one of us, he chose to speak to someone who could not speak back."

"Why?" Harry asked.

"That I do not know," Dumbledore said. "Sirius derived satisfaction and relief by talking to Buckbeak, and that is the important thing."

Harry looked up into Dumbledore's eyes, an action that still felt a little unusual after Dumbledore had spent the previous year avoiding his gaze. He glanced away quickly, not feeling ready to face the headmaster directly.

"I think I understand what you're trying to say," Harry said. "I will talk to someone."

"Splendid. I understand that it is hard for you, Harry. You have a noble streak in you that is not uncommon in your family, and because of it you seek to take on the responsibilities of the world. In time, you will come to realise that not everything is your responsibility. Voldemort's return is not. Neither is Sirius' death. Since the events of that night, I have been able to speak to all of your friends who accompanied you. All admitted that, in the same situation, they would have gone to the Ministry if they were able. Not one of them expressed any regret at their decision to join you."

Harry glanced quickly up at Dumbledore's face, which for a second was as fierce as Harry had ever seen it. It immediately lapsed once more into the Headmaster's standard expression of good cheer.

"I do hope, however, that it will not come to this. While I appreciate that you are rarely able to manage a quiet year, Harry, it would be nice. Now, I believe we were discussing Sirius?"

Harry nodded mutely, his gaze settling on the ground.

"You have thought, of course, that Sirius' death is in some way your fault. It is quite natural for you to think so. It is also quite wrong. Harry, on that evening, you acted on the information available to you. You tried to use the Order to get help, but could not be certain that it worked. You trusted in the vision that you had seen, as you did before Christmas last year, when Arthur Weasley was injured, and your actions saved his life. You had no reason to believe that the situation was in any way different, did you?"

Harry silently shook his head.

"Now, I would like you to consider what I am about to say: Sirius would still be alive, I suspect, if he had never escaped from Azkaban, but does that mean he should not have left there? Sirius and yourself acted in exactly the same way on that evening, Harry. You both rushed to the rescue of someone for whom you cared greatly, heedless of personal danger. You both paid the price for that choice, but you both acted out of kindness, out of compassion, out of the simple goodness in your hearts that would not allow you to stand by when someone was in pain. These are admirable character traits, Harry. You should not feel guilty for following your heart.

"While I will not absolve you completely of placing your friends and, indeed, yourself in danger by going to the Ministry, your guilt, if indeed it exists, lies in not coming to me or another adult when you began experiencing your dreams of the Ministry. I hope that, in time, you will learn to temper your intuitive need to help with the knowledge of when it is the right thing to do, and when the right thing to do lies along another path, such as consulting a teacher, for example."

Dumbledore sighed heavily, and continued.

"I appreciate that I was not, perhaps, the most approachable person last year, however. I should have been the one teaching you Occlumency, as events between yourself and Professor Snape have indicated. In not completing your Occlumency lessons, you certainly left yourself open to Voldemort's attacks," Dumbledore chided gently. "I trust you have learnt your lesson?"

Harry nodded silently, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Good," Dumbledore said. "Harry, I would like you to continue instructing your class - I feel a name change is necessary, although I shall leave that to you - this year, as well as restarting your Occlumency lessons. Do you feel capable of doing that?"

"Why me?" Harry asked, looking up again.

Dumbledore looked at Harry, his head tilted to one side.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Why do you want me to teach the DA again? You know what I... what I did to, to her," he spat. "Why would you want me to teach people when you know what I'm capable of?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said, and all trace of levity vanished from his face. "Harry, do you want me to punish you? To wave my finger at you, and tell you that you made a mistake? You did, and I can. I know how you felt for Sirius, and I know the emotions that must have burned within you when you watched him pass on. Yet I do not believe you capable of using an Unforgivable curse properly. You have to want to cause someone pain for Cruciatus curse to have any real effect. You have to want to watch them suffer, want to hear their cries of anguish, of suffering. Very few people, fortunately, are capable of that kind of feeling.

"Harry, you have had the weight of the world on your shoulders for a very long time now, and it is only natural that you should feel yourself responsible for much of what goes on around you. However, you are still a fifteen year old boy, still at school, still learning, not yet finished, if you will. I will hope that you will allow one of your teachers to offer a suggestion. You should not feel responsible for what happened with Bellatrix Lestrange. You could not have known what would happen that day. She was always a master at manipulating people, even during her days at Hogwarts. It amused her no end to stir u trouble between Sirius and Severus, and I have no doubt she played with your grief for Sirius in a most expert manner. She goaded you into attacking her, Harry, because it will have given her great pleasure to see you reduced to that. If you are looking for me to lay the blame at your feet, therefore, you are looking in the wrong place. Tell me, if she were here now, what would you do?"

"Duel with her," Harry said immediately.

"Would you use the Cruciatus?"

"No," Harry said. "I... she's older than me. I can keep moving, keep her off balance. I wouldn't need to use that on her. I'd have to be careful, but I could beat her."

"That is why I want you to lead the DA, Harry. I won't lay the blame of Sirius' death on your shoulders, Harry. What I will give you is my support, and my respect. You will always have those."

Harry looked once more into Dumbledore's eyes. He wanted to trust Dumbledore again, to be reassured by the white-haired headmaster's presence at Hogwarts, and by his belief in him, but it was difficult. Dumbledore had admitted his own fallibility after the battle in the Ministry of Magic, and Harry knew that he wouldn't be able to look at Dumbledore in the same way again.

"I have to think about it," Harry said, looking away.

"Of course," Dumbledore said. "I could expect nothing more. Harry, I know that it has been a difficult time for you of late. I know that it will take you time to adjust. I know," here Dumbledore's eyes joined Harry's in investigating Buckbeak's talon marks in the carpet. "I know that you probably feel as though I cannot be trusted right now. I can only ask that you believe me when I say you should trust in your friends and not keep everything inside you. You must learn to share your burden, Harry, for it is a heavy one even before your own noble attempts to add to it."

*

Later that night Harry lay in bed listening to Ron's regular breathing as his friend slept peacefully. Harry was used to staying awake through the night and barely even noticed his friend's occasional movements as he turned over in his sleep.

Harry was thinking of what Dumbledore had said. He had already agreed to speak to Ginny, when they both had time free. There was a lot for him to talk about, he realised.

Sirius, and casting the Cruciatus curse on Lestrange. Having Voldemort inside my head. Wanting to die...

His thoughts tailed off as he stared at the ceiling. The final moments of the battle in the Ministry of Magic, when Voldemort had done whatever he had done to take over Harry's body, was not a memory Harry wished to dwell upon. Yet it burned now in his mind, the memory of the pain as hot as molten steel that had accompanied the feeling of helplessness as he was enfolded and absorbed by Voldemort, losing himself in the depths of the dark wizard's mind.

It was a very long time that night before Harry drifted off to sleep, his last waking memory the sensation of Voldemort's high-pitched, sneering laughter scorching across the surface of his mind as his sense of self slowly eroded and he felt himself disappearing.

*

Harry stood atop a tall hill, the highest point as far as the eye could see. A rolling landscape surrounded him in all directions, and a rich, dark, pre-dawn sky spread out above his head from horizon to horizon.

He felt confused, as though someone was speaking just outside his hearing, moving just outside his range of vision. Distantly, he thought, there was the clash of metal on metal, but it was hard to be sure.

He knew where he was, he realised with a jolt. But he didn't know how he had got there, or how he would get back.

He looked around, curious for any hint of what had brought him to the place, but everywhere was empty. Something in the distance caught his eye, and he turned to face it more directly. It existed at the very limit of his vision, and he felt frustrated as it seemingly taunted him. With a deep sigh, he decided to make his way in that direction, and looked about him for a path down the steep hillside.

*

"Harry! Wake up! Mum says breakfast is ready."

Harry's eyes flickered open as he realised that he had been dreaming. He dressed silently, barely hearing Ron's constant stream of chatter even as they made their way down to a kitchen still more crowded than it had been the night before. Tonks and Mundungus Fletcher had arrived at the headquarters overnight, and the kitchen was beginning to feel distinctly cramped. Mrs. Weasley shooed Harry, Ron and Mundungus into the parlour where they enjoyed a typically large breakfast while Mundungus regaled them with tales of his adventures in the wizarding underworld.

Fuller but still unsettled, Harry carried his plate into the kitchen for washing up, and then wandered back into the parlour. He wasn't in the least surprised to find that Dumbledore had somehow managed to get past him without his seeing, nor that Ron and Mundungus had disappeared as well.

"Did you want to speak to me, Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"I had a dream last night, sir," Harry said, without preamble.

"As did I," Dumbledore said. "I suspect that yours was rather more interesting than mine, however. I was merely buying socks."

Harry bit down on what would have been a very rude remark, but before he could think of anything else to say, Dumbledore sighed.

"Forgive me, Harry. I attempted to lighten the mood, and I can tell that it was not successful."

Harry instantly felt bad for his surge of anger. He shook his head.

"It's alright," he muttered. "I just feel..."

"...curious about what you saw in your dream? Yes, that much is obvious, even if I were not a skilled Legilimens, Harry."

"Did you-" Harry felt the anger flare inside him again, even as Dumbledore held up a hand in a pacifying manner.

"I do not look into your mind, Harry. I very rarely use my abilities unless I have the implicit permission of the person whose mind I am to be looking at."

"Then how did you know what I was feeling?"

"Should you reach my age, Harry, you will discover that you have learnt a great deal about human nature. In your case, you went to bed happy enough, and came down looking distinctly unsettled. You also - forgive me - are thinking such troubled thoughts that for a Legilimens such as myself, it is impossible not to perceive something."

"You said you didn't read my mind!" Harry said.

"And I did not," Dumbledore replied. "But ask yourself this, Harry, if you see a person with a plaster cast on their leg, how much do you need to examine them to know that their leg has been broken?"

Harry slumped back in his seat, uncomfortably aware that he had once again been on the verge of seriously losing his temper with Dumbledore.

"Harry, you have a very forceful mind, and when you are feeling particularly strongly about something, be it happiness, sadness, anxiety or anything else, it is evident to Legilimens such as myself, Professor Snape, and Voldemort. We do not need to search, for it is right in front of us.

"Tell me about your dream, Harry."

Harry recounted the details of his dream, such as they were. All he could really remember were the hills.

"I sort of recognised it," he finished, realising the truth as he spoke it. "Ever since school finished, I've been having these strange dreams, almost jumbles of memories. A battle, I think. These hills I saw last night, it's where the dreams are taking place. The dream feels like the ones that I was having last year. It felt just as real as when I was dreaming about the Department of Mysteries."

Dumbledore appeared to be thinking for a long moment, and then inclined his head slightly.

"I suspect that Voldemort would not attempt to fool you the same way twice," he commented. "Do you have any idea when you may have been in this place before?"

Harry shook his head. "I felt like there was more, like last year again, but that when Ron woke me up it was interrupted. I don't know what was going to happen."

"Very well," Dumbledore said. "If and when you feel ready, Harry, I wish you to resume Occlumency lessons so that you may have a greater degree of control over your mind, even while you sleep. It may turn out that this was nothing more than a memory of a dream you have since forgotten, but it does not do to take chances. I shall not pressure you though, Harry. The decision, as always, is yours."

Harry nodded gratefully, knowing that at some point he would have to resume the Occlumency lessons he'd abandoned months before, but also knowing that trying to attain a state of emotional calm - essential for repelling the mental attacks of a skilled Legilimens - would be simply impossible around Dumbledore as things stood at the moment.

Harry stayed quiet as Dumbledore rose and left the room. He knew what his next step was. He had to talk to Ginny.

*

Hermione and Ginny were in the kitchen talking about the OWLs, which Ginny would sit at the end of the year and of which Hermione was desperate to hear the results.

"Of course," Hermione said. "Normally it doesn't even take a day to mark each set of exam papers. Unfortunately, that Umbridge woman sealed the papers in a vault at Gringotts. Heaven only knows why. Professor McGonagall said that the goblins are proving very difficult to convince to release them, even to Professor Dumbledore. Of course, they've been mistrustful of wizards ever since Ludo Bagman cheated them-"

"Er, Hermione?" Harry interrupted, unable to wait for a break in conversation any longer. "D'you mind if I have a word with Ginny?"

Hermione looked slightly surprised. "Oh. Of course not, Harry. I'll speak to you both later. I'll go and see if your Mum needs a hand."

"She's fine," Ginny said. "Go and find Ron, if you like. I think he was hoping to spend some time with you today."

"Really?" Hermione asked. "Well, okay. Bye, then."

She walked past Harry, muttering distractedly under her breath. Harry stared curiously after her, before turning to Ginny who was grinning, her eyes sparkling in what Harry though of as a very mischievous way. Fred and George, Ginny's older brothers, often wore similar expressions and Harry felt immediately cautious.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Ginny looked at him, tilting her head slightly as though sizing Harry up. Her wide grin faded as she bit her lip, but her eyes still betrayed her amusement. She shook her head, and fixed Harry with a more serious expression. He had the curious feeling that he'd failed some kind of test, although he had no idea what exactly he'd been being tested on.

"Nothing to worry about," she said. "Just having a little fun with Ron. What did you want to talk about?"

Harry took a seat across the table from her. He clasped his hands in front of him and stared intently at them.

"Sirius," he said quietly. "And some other stuff, too."

Ginny bit her lip again. "Would you like a drink before we start, then?"

Harry nodded, grateful to delay the conversation he knew he had to have.

Ginny returned with a tray of tea and biscuits. Harry took a ginger biscuit and began to turn it over and over in his fingers, staring intently at it as Ginny poured their tea.

"We don't have to talk about this," Ginny said. "I can get Hermione, or Ron."

"No."

Ginny looked at him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Where do you want to start?"

Harry considered.

"Christmas," he said at last. "We were here, and Sirius was happy."

"I remember."

"When we left, he gave me a magic mirror I could use if I wanted to talk to him. If I'd used it that day, Sirius would still be here."

Ginny sipped her tea and watched him silently.

"I tried to talk to him, but it never occurred to me to use the mirror. I didn't even really know what it was. He just told me that it was something I could use to talk to him, but after we found out that Umbridge was monitoring communications... I was worried about Sirius being in trouble! And when I thought that Voldemort had him, and Kreacher said he was gone... I didn't think!" He scraped his hands back through his hair. "Dumbledore said that I shouldn't feel guilty about that. He says I'm not responsible for Sirius' death, but..."

He tailed off. Ginny picked up a broken biscuit and began to nibble on an edge.

"I was so worried about Sirius." Harry sat forward, staring at nothing as his hands clutched at thin air. "I wasn't thinking straight. Hermione would have made me use the mirror, but she didn't know about it. I should have known better than to trust Kreacher, but house elves aren't supposed to lie. I couldn't have known Kreacher was lying about Sirius," he said, his speech increasing in speed, his movements becoming more frantic. "I couldn't have known that the dreams that Voldemort was sending me were fake, either. I saw your Dad getting bitten, and everything was exactly as I dreamt, right up until the time Sirius wasn't there."

Ginny sipped her tea again.

"I wish Sirius was here," Harry said, settling back in his chair. "Just for a minute," he added, his voice now slower and quieter. "He could tell me what I should do. I went to him whenever I needed advice over the last two years, but now he's gone, and I'll never see him again. I wish... I wish he weren't dead. It's that simple. I wish that my godfather was still alive, every bit as much as I wish my parents were still alive.

"I saw Snape's worst memory... When has supposed to be trying to teach me Occlumency, I saw it. I shouldn't have done it. I invaded his privacy, and it was stupid and dangerous of me. I deserved what I saw there - Sirius and my dad bullying him - I thought for a long time that that was what they were like, but Dumbledore said to me that I'm not finished yet. He's right. I'm only fifteen, the same age Sirius and my dad were. Who they were then isn't who they became a year later, or two years after that. I saw that one moment in time, and I know that Sirius and my dad turned out okay. Everyone says so. I've done things that I'm not proud of in the past. What if someone looked in my Pensieve and saw me yelling at Ron and Hermione? Or Cho? Or hexing Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle at the end of fourth year? I wouldn't look very good, but that's not who I am, not all of it, anyway. Just look at what happened after that moment. Sirius survived for twelve years in Azkaban for me. He escaped and spent a year as a dog, eating rats and living wild so that he could be close to me. I had that time with him, at least."

Ginny's eyes were on the plate of biscuits as she played with a loose strand of hair.

"Did you ever hear about the Mirror of Erised?" Harry asked, sitting back in his chair. He clasped the table to stop his hands shaking. "I found it in my first year. It's a mirror that you look into and it shows you your deepest heart's desire. When I looked in, I saw my family. My parents, my aunts, my uncles - not the Dursleys - my cousins, my grandparents, everyone. Now I'd see Sirius as well, I s'pose.

"Dumbledore... The last night I saw the mirror, well, before it showed up when I was fighting Quirrell, the last night I saw it Dumbledore found me and told me something. I forgot about it until just now. He said 'It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live'. I guess that's what I've been doing this summer. I've been thinking of the past too much. Thinking about Sirius, about my parents, about what I could have done differently. I could have let Sirius and Remus kill Peter Pettigrew, and maybe everything would be different. But Voldemort would have found a way back, wouldn't he? When it comes down to it, he's evil, and it's not my fault fault. He's evil, and we have to fight, don't we?"

Ginny opened her mouth to reply, but Harry ploughed onwards.

"I suppose that's why I agreed to carry on with the D.A. I hope people still want to join. It all seems a lot more real now. I had a letter from Seamus asking me if there was anything we should be doing to prepare for if we ever have to fight. I suppose it means I'll have to be really focused on it this year. I might have to give up Quidditch, if I'm even back on the team. I want to play, but if I have to be responsible for the D.A. then I don't know if I can balance them."

He smiled slightly.

"Hermione hasn't mentioned that we start studying for our NEWTs this year, but I know she's itching to get into it. I suppose I am, too, a bit. I'm bored of all the stuff I've been reading about all holiday, anyway. I'm ready for whatever's next."

He looked at Ginny's empty cup, and blinked.

"Sorry, Ginny. You've just sat here and listened to me going on and on. I can't have been talking much sense. It must not have been much fun for you."

Ginny shrugged.

"I guess I should go and find Ron. He's probably about ready to kill Hermione if she's still going on about the OWLs. Sometimes I wonder how those two can be friends when they argue so much, you know."

He stood up. Ginny opened her mouth as though about to reply, but seemed to think better of it.

"Thanks, Gin," Harry said, draining the last of his tea. "It's helped, I think, us having this conversation."

With a slight smile on his face, he headed out of the room, in search of Ron and Hermione.

*

"Ron?"

Ron jumped. He had been staring intently at the door of Hermione and Ginny's room and apparently hadn't even noticed Harry's none-too-silent approach.

"Are you looking for Hermione?" Harry asked.

"Er, yeah," Ron replied. "Er, she's in her room."

"Good. I need to talk to the two of you. Do you want to knock?"

"Er... What if she's doing something? I mean, she went in there twenty minutes ago and she hasn't come out yet."

Harry looked around the spartan surroundings of the landing.

"You've been waiting out here for twenty minutes?"

"Er..."

The door opened, and Hermione emerged, looking somewhat flustered. She saw Ron, and beamed.

"Oh, Ron! Good, I wanted to speak to you. Um..."

"Hermione, do you have a moment?"

"Harry!" Hermione squeaked.

"Er, yeah," Harry replied. "Hermione, are you okay?"

"Yes, of course. I didn't expect, I mean, I didn't see you there. That's all."

Harry looked at his two friends, who seemed to be avoiding one another's gazes.

"Did you two have an argument or something?" he asked.

"What? No, of course not," Ron replied, frowning at him. "Why d'you think that?"

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but then decided to pass over the subject.

"Forget it," he said. "Listen, I wanted a word with the two of you."

"Of course, Harry," Hermione replied. "What do you want to talk about?"

Harry stared at the skirting board for a moment. "Everything, really," he said at last.

*

"Okay," said Harry, sitting at the kitchen table. "I have to fight Voldemort."

"But-"

"I do, Hermione," he said, staring at nothing as he lined up his thoughts. "Not now. Maybe not even soon. But it's what the prophecy in the Department of Mysteries said."

"The prophecy was smashed," Ron said.

"Dumbledore was there when Trelawney made the prophecy," Harry said. "He heard it all." Harry proceeded to repeat the wording of the prophecy. As he said "Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives," Hermione looked away and Ron let a long breath hiss between his teeth.

"S.P.T to A.P.W.B.D," Hermione recalled, when he had finished.. "The labeling on the prophecy. Sybil Trelawney..."

"...to Albus Dumbledore, yeah."

"What does this mean?" Ginny asked.

"Dumbledore's known about this since before I was born," Harry said. "He told me he wanted to tell me, but never felt that the time was right."

"But..." Ron said.

"Yeah," Harry replied, exchanging a glance with Ron. "I could have done with knowing that a few years ago. But I can't change that, and I know now."

"So, what are you going to do, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"I'm not sure. I need to think," Harry said. "Since I've been here, since I've spoken to Dumbledore, I'm sort of getting more ideas for this year. He wants me to coach the DA again."

"Do you want to?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I do. I think it helps a lot of people. I don't know how we're going to do it, if we're going to take on everyone who wants to join, or just keep it small, but I think it's important. But I need to learn stuff, too."

"New spells?" Ginny asked. "Yeah, we all learnt a lot in the DA, but you were teaching us."

"We can work on that together," Hermione said. "It's important that you learn all you can, if this prophecy is correct, but-"

"Divination is a woolly headed discipline, yeah, Hermione, I know. But this is a real prophecy. I have to face Voldemort, and..."

"And?"

"Nothing," Harry shook his head.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"Was there anything else, Harry?"

"Yeah, one other thing," Harry said, staring resolutely at the tabletop.

"What is it?" Ron asked.

"Last year... I wanted to apologise. Everything just seemed to be going wrong. I know I took it out on all of you. I just wanted to say that I was sorry, and that this year I think I'm going to need you all to help me out. I can't do it all by myself. I," he swallowed. "I learned that last year." He looked up. Ron looked at him blankly, Hermione's eyes looked suspiciously shiny. Ginny watched him closely, the hint of a smile tugging at her lips. "I want you, and Luna, and Neville, and everyone to be around. I know it's a lot to ask-"

"We'll be there," Ron interrupted. "When have we not been?"

"Of course we will," Hermione said.

"Good, thanks," Harry replied, smiling. "I'm going to make mistakes, I know that. I'm just hoping that with people around to help me, they won't be as big as last year."

*

Harry tried to stay busy over the next few weeks. Order members seemed to be forever popping in and out of the Black house, often only staying for as long as it took to scribble a note that they left with Mrs. Weasley. Harry and the others were always ushered out of the way whenever someone arrived, although Harry was somewhat relieved to see several members of his escort from the previous summer were still alive and involved with the Order.

At times, the house would almost lose its depressing air, when Mrs. Weasley had cooked one of her delicious meals, and Order members converged as if the meal had been widely advertised. As he savoured a mouthful of pasta one night, Harry looked around the table and couldn't help but smile as Fred and George played the clown for the entertainment of the other diners. Harry fleetingly remembered Remus, whose wounds seemed to finally be healing, and wondered whether the last war had been similar, with snatched moments of happiness supporting the Order members through the darkest of times. The thought sucked all the good humour from him for several minutes, and it wasn't until Ginny, who had been pointedly ignoring the twins all evening, began to recount the story of one of the Gryffindor Quidditch team's hopeless practises the previous winter that he began to smile again.

When the house wasn't as busy, and there were only five or six people scattered around its huge inside, he found it to be as depressing a place as he remembered. He was constantly reminded of Sirius. Occasionally, he would be struck short of breath as he found a book that he remembered Sirius reading, or unearthed a picture of a very young Sirius with his parents and younger brother. Mrs. Weasley had set the four of them to work on keeping the house livable, and had apparently decided that the bedrooms on the second and third floors of the building would be the main target. The four of them worked in pairs, spraying Doxies, chasing spiders, and donning thick gloves to tackle a nest of unidentified creatures with magically enlarging teeth that nearly severed Ron's nose before Mrs. Weasley could make it upstairs. Ron took out his frustration on a stray ashwinder, a fire-born serpent that had escaped from the kitchen and was looking for a place to lay its eggs. Ron trapped the snake outside the slightly open door to the attic, and while he engaged in a titanic struggle accompanied by frightened gasps from Hermione Harry noticed a long nose and beady eyes peering from the darkness beyond the door.

As Ron managed to wrestle the furiously wriggling ashwinder into the crate Hermione and Ginny had brought along, Harry stepped around them and approached the attic door. He swung it open and stared down at Kreacher the house elf, glaring back at him without a hint of fear in his eyes.

"Hello, Kreacher," Harry said, unsure of what he would say, or do, to the elf.

Kreacher said nothing.

"Hello, Kreacher," Harry repeated, more firmly. Behind him, he heard the lid slamming shut and Ron panting for breath as the snake thrashed inside the crate

"Filthy scarhead," Kreacher muttered, still barely audible as he stared more furiously at Harry. Harry felt reminded of his Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape months before and remembered Snape's continued orders to clear his mind of extraneous thoughts and emotions.

Harry wanted to kill Kreacher. He didn't feel as though it was an extraneous emotion. He didn't want to clear his mind of it.

Everything was quiet behind him. Even the ashwinder seemed to have stopped

"You..." Harry breathed, holding Kreacher's stare. "Sirius is..."

"Harry."

He felt the others come to stand behind him. Someone laid their hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

"You told them... You told them to come to the Ministry," Harry snarled, fingers itching to be around Kreacher's neck. The elf stared back, as still as if he were a statue. Only the slight rise and fall of his bony chest said that he was alive.

Harry remembered. Even as he stared at Kreacher, he saw Bellatrix Lestrange casting the curse that knocked Sirius back through the veil. Harry shuddered, and his gaze dropped away from Kreacher's. He remembered the Death Eaters, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix and the others, gathered around the six of them, threatening to kill Ginny to try and make him give up the prophecy.

He remembered the feeling of Voldemort possessing him, making him long for the release of death.

He faced Kreacher again.

"You betrayed Sirius, and now he's dead, Kreacher," Harry whispered.

He thought of Lucius Malfoy, bound and guarded by Aurors, he and his fellow Death Eaters awaiting transport to Azkaban.

He closed his eyes, and exhaled. All his sad, angry thoughts of Sirius faded, his anger dissipated.

Sirius would have appreciated the humour in that.

"You still failed, didn't you?" Harry asked, opening his eyes and meeting Kreacher's unmoving glare with a grin that felt at least partly genuine. "You sent your precious pureblood masters off to the Ministry and they got caught. You failed them, Kreacher. I shouldn't think they're very happy with you. They'll probably give you clothes."

For the first time, Kreacher's gaze faltered. Harry reached out and shut the door to the attic, leaving Kreacher alone in the dark with his failure.

Harry turned away from Kreacher, and met the gazes of the others steadily.

"Well?" he said. "There's still a lot to do. Let's get on with it."

*

By the end of the third week, just after Harry's birthday -Ginny, Ron and Hermione had clubbed together to buy him a magical floor-cleaning mop, among other presents- almost all of the bedrooms had been cleaned. Harry was finishing his scrambled egg, and idly wondering where the others were, when Mrs. Weasley approached him slowly.

"Harry..." she began cautiously.

"Yes?" he asked, fork mid-way to his mouth as he watched her cautiously.

"There's only one bedroom left to clean, dear," she said. "Ron, Hermione and Ginny weren't sure if you'd want help or not."

"Why wouldn't I want help?"

Mrs. Weasley looked at him sadly for a moment, before saying, "Because it's Sirius' room, Harry."

A few minutes later, four teenagers stood outside the door to Sirius' room. In fact, it had been the master bedroom, long ago, and Sirius had taken it over in a bid to try and remove the lingering feeling of his parents from the house. Sirius' childhood room had long ago been scoured clean of his presence, he had told Harry the year before.

"Are you sure you want us here, Harry?" Hermione asked. "We have other things we could be doing."

"Yeah, I'm sure," Harry said. "Sorry I'm making you miss mucking out Buckbeak, though."

Ron snorted, and Harry laid his hand on the doorknob. With a twist, he pushed the door open, and they stepped inside.

"It's so... stark," Hermione whispered after nearly a minute.

Harry looked around. There was hardly any stamp of personality on the room. A clean patch on one grubby wall marked where a picture had once hung. Harry thought that he remembered Sirius and Remus carrying a large wedding portrait of Sirius' parents downstairs the year before. The bed was unmade, and two photo frames stood on the bedside table.

Otherwise the room was almost completely bare.

Harry walked over to the bed and sat down, the fingers of one hand twining in the covers as he reached with the other hand for the pictures. He picked up the first of the heavy, silver frames and stared at the picture it contained.

Inside the frame, Sirius and Remus were sharing a picnic with James and Lily Potter, and Peter Pettigrew. All five of the teenagers in the photo were laughing, and if Harry squinted, he could see a flash of sunlight reflecting on the gold ring on his mother's finger. Harry stared blankly at the picture for a long moment before setting it carefully back on the table. He picked up the other frame. This one held a much newer photo, taken the summer beforehand. Sirius had joked that he wanted a new family portrait for the Black household, and had dragged Harry, Tonks and Remus in front of an ancient camera. The picture Harry was grinning a little self-consciously as Sirius wrestled with Tonks, his cousin. Remus looked on with a poorly-concealed smile on his face.

"Harry?"

He looked up. Ron brandished a feather duster uncertainly.

"Yeah, let's get on with it," Harry said, setting the picture back down and taking the duster from Ron.

As bare as Sirius' room was, it took the four teenagers longer to tidy up this one than most other rooms in the house. Harry kept his head down, trying not to think of anything as he dusted listlessly. More than once he glanced over his shoulder to see the others glancing at one another, or engaging in hushed conversations. Harry tried not to think about what they might be talking about either.

*

It was after lunchtime by the time they gave up trying to clean out Sirius' bedroom. Harry felt glad to leave the room behind, although he felt certain he would be returning before the end of the holidays.

The four of them quickly gulped down some chicken and ham sandwiches in the kitchen before Ginny and Hermione disappeared off to help Mrs. Weasley with setting gnome traps in the narrow garden behind the house. Ron and Harry were stalling over their last sandwich, knowing that as soon as they swallowed the last bite that their plates would whisk off to the washing-up bowl and they would be expected to go up to the top floor and muck out Buckbeak, a task that had been neglected for several days.

Finally, they could put it off no longer and with a shared grim look, they took their last bites. The clattering of their plates was joined by the chiming bell that alerted the inhabitants of the house that someone had Apparated inside the four walls.

"Maybe it's Hagrid," Ron said hopefully. "He could help us with Buckbeak."

"I'll go and look," Harry said, getting up from the table and making his way along the narrow hallway to the front parlour, where hushed voices could be heard. He pushed open the doorway, hoping that Hagrid was one of the visitors. He was no more enthusiastic about mucking out Buckbeak than Ron was.

Instead, he found Tonks, Dumbledore and Fawkes.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said. "My apologies for our unannounced arrival. I am afraid that we had to go to Diagon Alley for some business."

"Order business?" Harry asked, eagerly. He still hadn't heard much about what the Order had been doing since the assault on Birmingham.

"No, this was nothing to do with the Order," Dumbledore said. For the first time, it occurred to Harry that Tonks and Dumbledore were both wearing very somber, dark robes. "Not directly, in any case."

"It's something to do with Sirius, isn't it?" he asked. Tonks nodded.

"It was the reading of his will," she said heavily. "Remus should have been there, but he's not ready to leave hospital yet."

"We would have taken you along as well," Dumbledore said. "But it would have been a needless risk."

Harry felt a small flare of anger, but it quickly died away. He wouldn't have wanted to attend the reading of Sirius' will, even if he had known of it.

"You will receive a copy of the will in due course, Harry," Dumbledore continued. "But the bare facts are that the Black estate is to be divided equally between yourself, Remus and Miss Tonks here. This house will continue to be used by the Order until Voldemort is defeated, and then its fate is to be decided by the three of you."

Harry stared blankly at Dumbledore, and then turned to face Tonks, who looked very subdued. Her hair was a muted brown colour, and tied back into a tight bun that made the young Auror look a little bit like Professor McGonagall.

"Sirius had something else he wanted you to have," Dumbledore added, taking a large, rectangular envelope from inside his robes. "He gave it to me in March, and asked me to look after it for him. He asked me to pass it on to you, in case something happened to him." Dumbledore paused, and then sighed. "I apologise, for it slipped my mind until this morning."

Harry looked at his headmaster curiously. He suspected that few things Dumbledore did occurred by accident, and for a moment he had a feeling that Dumbledore had held onto the envelope until he felt that Harry was ready for it. He felt anger flare in him again, and for a moment he was ready to yell at the old wizard for keeping Sirius' message from him. Then he looked closer at Dumbledore, who appeared as old as Harry ever remembered seeing him. With a stab of guilt, Harry realised that Sirius' death had affected Dumbledore deeply as well. He struggled to ignore the mingling emotions, tried to close his mind down as he had when dealing with Kreacher. If he was going to learn Occlumency from the white-haired wizard, he needed more than anything to learn that control over his emotions.

And now's as good as time as any to start, he thought, as he took the envelope from Dumbledore. He nodded politely to his headmaster, who looked slightly relieved.

"Hogwarts, please," Dumbledore said, and before Harry could look up, he and Fawkes had vanished.

"I'll leave you to look at that, Harry," Tonks said. "I think I'll find Molly and see if she needs any help. I feel like doing something useful now."

Harry nodded absently, staring at the messy scrawl on the front of the envelope. He wanted privacy while he read Sirius' last words to him.

*

To Harry

Harry sat on Sirius' bed. He pulled his knees up to his chin and checked again that the door was firmly shut. Opening the envelope he pulled out the sheet of thick parchment inside.

Dear Harry, he read.

If you're reading this, then I'm either dead or I've had too many glasses of firewhiskey. Either way, I'm not going to feel too good in the morning, so please don't shout too loudly, okay?

I guess that if I'm dead, then Dumbledore has probably given this to you. I would have left it with Remus, but the chances are that if I'm gone, he will be too. If I'm wrong, and he's still around, tell him that it's up to him to keep up our legacy.

And you, as well, come to that. Now, a little hippogriff tells me that you're the one responsible for Fred and George starting up their joke shop. Harry, my boy, that was brilliant!

Now, I want you to take some of that merchandise of theirs, and make Hogwarts your playground, do you understand me?

You've had the world on your shoulders for a long time, Harry, but you're growing up to be someone I'm very proud to call my godson. Yes, you've got a temper on you, but so did your mother, and it never did her any harm. You'll learn to control it in time, and one way that will help is to learn how to blow off some steam. So prank away, my boy.

Now, another way to have some fun is to find yourself a girlfriend. Reading between the lines of what Hermione and Ron wouldn't say at Christmas, you might already have one, but if not, I think it's about time. You'll be sixteen this summer, and I was already...

I'd probably better not tell you what I was 'already' doing as you're too young to know that. Suffice to say that the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Magic is there for a reason. Some rules you probably shouldn't break.

(Until you've had a bit of practice at breaking the lesser rules, anyway.)

Listen to me, lecturing you on how to break rules. Is there a school rule that you haven't broken yet? But you keep doing it for silly reasons like 'doing the right thing' when really you should be doing it for fun, honour and getting into the girls dormitory after lights out. Trust me on this - It's worth all the effort.

Harry, what I'm trying to say is that you should probably lighten up a bit, alright? Now, I know Voldemort's targeted you for death, but when you go, do you want to say that you wish you'd had time to learn the immensely complex Homorphus Charm, or that you wish you'd been able to make it to your date with that cute Hufflepuff on Saturday night?

Don't get me wrong, Harry, I really am very proud of you, and I always will be. I just hate to see so much potential going to waste. You've got a lot of genetic - and cultural - mischief-making in your bones, and it'd be a shame if you never had the chance to lay siege to the Slytherin dormitories, or discover the fabled lost passageway into the prefects' bathroom that the girls prefer.

I suppose what it comes down to is this, Harry: like it or not, you're the one who seems to be stuck with protecting this world. You might want to spend some time discovering some things that are worth protecting. I meant what I said earlier. I know that you, like Remus and your father at times, have a tendency to withdraw into yourself. You have to fight it, Harry. You have friends who'd die for you, as I would for you. One day you'll find the girl for you, as James did with Lily - although the prat took long enough to get his act together, but that's a story for another time - and then you'll know all that you need to know to beat Voldemort.

Until that time, I suppose, you should pay attention in class and all that stuff. You never know, even one of Snivellus' potions might come in handy one day. Good job you've got Hermione, right?

I hope not to see you soon, unless I'm drunk and you know a good hangover charm when I see you tomorrow morning.

Yours forever marauding,

Sirius

To be continued...