Fly Me Back

Harry Potter : Fly Me Back

Chapter Three : Damage Control

Harry Potter hated doorknobs.

(One --)

He had always regarded them with a certain amount of distrust, thanks to his relatives. Whomever was on the other side of them usually came with an angry voice, a back of the hand, or any other matter of general unhappiness. It didn't make any difference if it was a doorknob that he had never seen or one that he used every single day. He just couldn't like it. The knob to his room (or rather, Dudley's second bedroom) was as old as the Dursley house itself. It was a discolored, almost stained brass that Harry always felt left a dingy feeling on his hands when he used it. The entire time that he had spent on this side of the door told him, without a doubt, that there was no such thing as a good anything on the other side of it. Never once had anyone come through that door with a good word or a kind voice. The turning of that doorknob always brought some degree of doom.

(Two -- )

Harry knew, without a doubt, that this time wasn't going to be any different and wished that it would just hurry up and open already.

Fred and George were apparently of the same thinking because as they continued their count off, they both armed their wands, igniting them with two very different shades of blue. They backed up, sticking to their shoulder to shoulder stance, pushing the unarmed Harry backwards along with them until he actually toppled backwards on his own awkward feet and landed hard on the floor. Without looking back to see if his aim was anywhere near accurate, George opened his left hand for Harry to grip and pull himself back up. The trio then continued backing up until the twins were certain they had enough space between themselves and what would soon be an open door. The twins's eyes gleamed as they both opened their mouths to issue their curses at whoever was starting to push the door open without their permission.

From the other side of the door, a muffled voice called, "Harry?"

(THREE!)

Whether it was because they were all a bit jumpy after everything they had seen in the last hour or that he just didn't want to risk anything else happening to his family, George let burst his hex before the door was open enough for it to reach its intended recipient. Angrily he shouted, "Petrificus Totalus!"

Fred, equally angry and worried about his brothers and father, prematurely bellowed, "Stupefy!"

With two jinxes hitting the door at the same time, a large chunk of it was blown to pieces, violently sending splinters all over the carpeting in the room. Reflexively, the boys all ducked and covered their heads from the shards of the blast. However, the owner of the voice on the other side of the door didn't need such time, and to his advantage the jagged opening had left just enough room for their would-be assailant to return the curses with one of his own.

"Expelliarmus!"

With that one word, everything that Harry had ever thought about doorknobs was changed forever.

Standing there framed in the doorway and grinning the most wonderful grin that any of the three boys had ever seen in their entire lives was Harry's godfather, Sirius. He shrugged when his hands remained empty of the wands that he had called for, his own wand apparently in need of repair. "That trick is going to need some work."

Harry was so dumbfounded at the sight of the dead man in his doorway that he did the only thing that he could think to do at all -- he stood there, mouth agape and looking like a complete idiot.

Concerned when Harry didn't blink or make a sound for at least thirty seconds, Fred waved a hand in front of his friend's face to get his attention. "Harry?"

Without taking his eyes from the cheerfully waiting wizard, Harry reached his hand up and held tight to Fred's wrist to push it out of his line of sight. He stood there, unblinking, afraid to close his eyes, just in case his godfather should disappear again, like a ghost in a dream. When Sirius just smiled at him, he shakily asked the twins, "Do you see him?"

While Sirius let loose one of his warm, one of a kind barking laughs, Fred and George laughed at their stunned friend as if he were finally being let in on the end of a really good joke. "Don't be a such a git," said Fred, waving his friend off. "Of course we see him."

George took two very long steps across the room to shake hands with Sirius and nodded apologetically at the hole in the blasted door where the no-longer-dead wizard's head had been just a moment before. "Sorry about that, mate. I suppose we got a bit carried away."

"Expecting someone?"

"Not you," said Fred, as if absolutely nothing were wrong with the fact that the man who everyone had believed dead and gone for the last two months was standing there in front of them looking very happy, alive, and not at all ghostly. "We weren't expecting to see you until next week some time at headquarters."

"Well, from the looks of things downstairs, you should be rather happy to see me then, shouldn't you?"

George chuckled ruefully. After he and Fred had sounded the alarm for help and their father had arrived with reinforcements, the twins had been immediately sent off to Harry's room to get his belongings prepared for departure. Based on the explosions they had been hearing and what they had seen out the window, though, he could just imagine what sort of destruction had been done to Harry's house. "Left a mess, did they?"

"That's one way to put it."

Fred happily took the bait and asked, "What's another?"

Sirius comically winced and ran a hand through his dark hair. "No amount of magical talent is going to get this house cleaned up again, even if you had a month."

While everyone else laughed, Harry just stood there, still doing his best not to blink. Unfortunately, the longer he waited, the more the tears welled up in his eyes in their attempt to keep his eyes from drying out until he had no other choice but to blink them away. His eyes stung with the first blink from having gone so long without that protection so that he had to continue to blink rapidly until his eyes were comfortable again.

When they were, Harry was surprised to see that his godfather really was still standing there in the doorway. His grin had smoothed out a little, probably from waiting for Harry to show some sign of recognition, but it was still very much there. In fact, if Harry really thought about it, this was probably the happiest that he had ever seen Sirius. The way his godfather looked at the moment actually reminded him of the picture of his parents' wedding, more than anything. Sirius had cut his hair short again, so that Harry could actually see the man's eyes, which were still working their way toward losing that hollow, Azkaban-worn look every time the two wizards saw one another. He looked like he really didn't have a care in the world, he was so happy. He looked healthy, too, except for maybe the lack of weight to him, although even that looked better than it had when Harry had first met his godfather. He looked like maybe he had seen some sun in his absence from their lives instead of being cooped up inside that dark, evil house of his family's. Harry made a mental note to tell Sirius once he found his voice again that he thought his godfather should keep his hair short like that. It made him look younger and much more like that loving, fun, daring man that they had all come to love instead of the dark, brooding, accused murderer that the entire wizarding world thought him to be.

Evidently Harry had been staring at his godfather for far too long for the wizard's taste because the smile gave way to a creased brow of concern. "Say something, Harry."

After a still silent beat, Harry managed to ask the only question that seemed at all natural considering that he was looking at a dead man. "Are you a ghost?"

"It's all right, Harry. Everything is going to be just fine."

That wasn't exactly the answer that Harry was looking for. It was a simple Yes or No question and Sirius talking to him like he was a kid with a skinned knee wasn't going to cut it. With a hard, direct emphasis on each word, Harry clearly asked again, "Are you a ghost?"

"You've spent enough time around them at school." Sirius spread his hands out to the sides, leaving his entire body open to observation. He looked down the length of his frame, particularly his feet where they touched the ground. When his head came back up to look at his godson, the smile was back on his face. "Do I look like a ghost?"

"No . . . " Harry had followed his godfather's line of sight as it had gone up and down his apparently solid body and wanted more than anything to believe what he was seeing. His memory, however, was telling him that this was far from possible, that Sirius had disappeared behind that curtain and . . . "But you -- you're dead."

Sirius flinched at the words as if they actually hurt him like punches. He looked guiltily at his godson, immediately sorry for what he could only imagine Harry had been going through in the two months since that night in the Department of Mysteries. There was a look to him that said that he knew that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to make up for that pain and grief, but at the same time, he had to at least try to explain it all away. "I'm so sorry for making you think that, Harry, really truly sorry. But you were meant only to think that I was gone, Harry, until it was time to tell you otherwise. I realize that it was cruel to put you through that, but none of us could see any other way for us to -- "

Harry's eyes were suspiciously steeled on his godfather's, and, as much as he wanted this reunion to be as pleasant as possible under the circumstances, that didn't mean that he didn't have the right to be angry. There was maybe a little too much anger in his voice, but by the time he got his question out, it was too late anyway. "By who?"

"I'm sorry?"

The young wizard's voice didn't soften, no matter how hard he told it to. "By who was I meant to think that you were dead, Sirius?"

"The Order. Dumbledore."

"The Order? You mean Lupin knew about this, too? I don't believe you."

Harry couldn't believe that. Even if everyone in Professor Dumbledore's circle -- the people that made up the Order of the Phoenix, the people dedicated to the fight against Voldemort, the people that Harry trusted beyond all others -- were aware of some sort of plan like this, there was just no way that Professor Lupin would be in on it. It was all Harry could do these days to keep Lupin's voice out his head when he woke up every morning and when he went to sleep every night. He couldn't breathe or get the pressure of Lupin's arm off his chest or stop hearing that godawful, terrible break in the man's voice when he had tried to tell Harry that his godfather was . . . well, that he wasn't going to be . . . The point was that there was no faking that kind of grief. The way that Lupin's voice had broken wasn't something that even the best actor in the world could pull off. Harry had not been in the least bit mistaken when he'd seen the look in Lupin's eyes downstairs, either. There was a hatred in there that cannot be faked or even conjured. There was just no possible way.

He shook his head, his mind made up that he was right and Sirius had to be wrong. "No . . . No, no, he wouldn't do that to me. No. Neither would you. I know you wouldn't. You would never have let me think that you were dead. No."

Sirius raised an eyebrow quizzically at his charge. "I let everyone believe that I had actually done all of those things that put me in Azkaban for twelve years now, didn't I? What makes you think that I'm not capable of lying to you now if it is for your own protection?"

"Protection from what?"

"Voldemort."

At the name, Harry's gut sank through his toes, and it wasn't because he was having the reaction that every other wizard seemed to have whenever they heard the name. Even Fred and George had sucked in wordless gasps when they heard it, and they had become much better in the last year than they had been. No, this time his stomach was letting him know that he was right, that there was no way that this person he wanted so badly to see was truly Sirius. There were too many holes in a theory like that. Trying to keep the dejection out of his voice, he pointed out, "You didn't know he was going to be there. You had no idea Voldemort himself would be there. And he didn't appear until after you . . . You didn't know."

"No, we didn't," Sirius conceded. The left corner of his mouth pulled up wryly and his head cocked to the side as he continued. "None of us knew for certain what we were doing, with the exception of getting you and the others out of there all in one piece. Once we were there, it all just fell into place."

Harry tried not to sound too combative as he pointed again to the big hole in Sirius's story. "I still don't understand how thinking that you're dead is supposed to be some great protection for me. How is that 'protecting' me?"

"Don't look at me," said Sirius, shrugging again in his still too-loose robes. "All I know is that this is all just part of a bigger thing that I don't have a part in. This was all Dumbledore."

"I don't think so." Harry shook his head thoughtfully, running through every possible scenario in his head where Dumbledore would have put him into that sort of position and, happily, he couldn't actually think of a single one. "Dumbledore wouldn't do that to me, either. You didn't see him when we were in his office after you . . . after the night that . . . after it happened. He didn't know it was going to happen any more than you did. I don't care if every single person in that room deliberately stopped dueling to make certain that I saw everything. Even if that entire thing was staged, he wouldn't have been able to lie about it to my face once we were alone in his office. I don't care what you say. It was not planned and no one wanted to me to only think you were dead. Dumbledore wouldn't be that cruel to me."

Again Sirius looked like he had taken a punch to the gut with Harry's words, as if he were mentally punishing himself with the boy's words for what he knew in his heart had been an incredibly harsh thing to do to his godson, regardless of reason or good intentions. "It wasn't meant to be cruel, Harry. It was meant to keep you safe until we could find a better way. That's all that matters."

"Safe from Voldemort," Harry repeated wearily.

"Yes."

"And how exactly was your death supposed to keep me safe?"

"After you told us that Snape ended your Occlumency lessons, we felt that we had to find another way to keep Voldemort from using me against you."

A bit melodramatically Harry threw his arms open to the side to direct Sirius's attention to his once again hastily packed trunk. "Well, it didn't keep me safe tonight, now, did it? This house is destroyed, I'm willing to bet that my aunt is downstairs in hysterics, and my uncle is dead -- unless, of course, you're going to tell me that he's alive and well, too, that everything we just went through downstairs was just a ruse as well."

Calmly, with a bit of a knowing snigger in his voice, Sirius told him, "As a matter of fact, Harry, it was."

"Really," was Harry's angry retort.

"Yes, really."

"Then what about my wand? Where is it? If this was some wonderful plan from Dumbledore, then my wand must be perfectly safe and sound as well."

Sirius glanced each way over his shoulder to check for any stray listeners before telling Harry in a very hush-hush voice, "Actually, Harry, it was part of the plan that they take it."

"You wanted Death Eaters to have my wand and leave me without the protection of magic. I have to say then that this isn't one of Dumbledore's more brilliant plans."

"Probably not, but for now it's working. Now get your things. We need to get to headquarters before those nit wits I call cousins realize that they are taking their master a toy wand, courtesy of the twins there, and come back for you this time. Let's go."

Harry couldn't believe it. Fred and George were in on this as well? How could they, of all people, have gotten themselves involved in this plan without telling him a word about it? And worse yet, how did he end up with a toy wand if he had been alone in the Muggle world the entire time since leaving Hogwarts? Would they have really allowed him to be completely wandless, completely unprotected for all this time? Harry's arms crossed over his chest, simple words not enough to convey his absolute disbelief at the expanding absurdity of his godfather's explanation. "Wait a moment. A toy wand? Are you telling me that I . . . "

"Listen, Harry. Right now, this is all going our way. But the success of all of this depends on us getting you out of this house and to headquarters before any of Voldemort's people realize what we've done to them. You need to get your things so that we can go."

"But how do I know that you're really you? You still haven't exactly answered my question. I saw that curse hit you. I saw your face before you went behind that Veil. You knew it, too. So how are you standing here?"

"Magic." Sirius smiled at the simplicity of his answer, a strange glint in his eye as he spread his hands wide to show the plainness of it. He was standing there, just as plain as could be. What other explanation could there be? "I grant you, that isn't the most technical answer in the world, but it's the best one I have for you right now."

Harry stared down his godfather and repeated, "Magic."

"Yeah. Magic."

"So you really are most definitely not a ghost? You are really standing there."

"I really am here."

"And I'm not crazy," said Harry, although it was more of a question than a statement. He reached out and pointed at the man, half afraid that if his hand reached close enough to his godfather it would just wave right through him. He searched the identical faces of his friends, looking for any sort of sign that they were going to jump out at him and yell "Surprise" at any moment. "I'm not losing my mind. That's Sirius. He's really standing there -- not dead."

Sirius crossed his arms over his chest and lazily leaned against what remained of the door frame. "Well, if I had an uncle like yours, I probably would be crazy, too."

"Didn't that mother of yours teach you to have any respect for the dead?" From behind Sirius, a gruff voice sounded behind him that had a such familiarity to it that nearly knocked Harry back down to the floor. As the question was finished, a sight popped into view that was just as shocking. A smiling Uncle Vernon sidled up next to Sirius, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the other side of the doorway, mirroring Harry's godfather. Together, the men laughed at Harry, mimicking the boy's fish out of water mouth as it gaped open and shut with the struggle for word, or syllable, or sound at all.

"Who are you kidding, Dursley? You've met my mother." Sirius nudged Vernon in the bicep and screwed up his eyes at the man like he had lost all reasoning.

"Then it's a good thing the boy has me to teach him how to behave, isn't it," Vernon retorted smugly.

Finally finding his words again, Harry asked, "Do I?"

For the first time, Vernon addressed Harry instead of his not-so-dead counterpart, the strangeness of it maybe even more out of place than the simple fact that Harry was looking at not one, but two dead men in front of him. His uncle didn't speak to him with the threatening voice that Harry had forever associated with his uncle, but it wasn't the sickly baby talk that he still directed toward his sixteen year old son, either. Instead, he used an almost calm, almost normal voice like the one he would use with a fellow man or a neighbor. Truly begging the boy's pardon, he asked, "Excuse me?"

Harry's voice seemed to progressively find an angry strength as he forced himself to ask what he felt was a very fair and smart question and, regrettably, the question that no one in the room seemed to have an answer for as of yet. "Do I have you to teach me how to behave? Do I have you at all? Because unless that was a really tremendous light show down there, I watched you die. I was holding onto you when that curse hit you and I know that there isn't a counter for it. You died," He turned a dark look on Sirius, his anger much more focused on the man who had been missing from his life a great deal longer than his uncle. "And you -- I watched you disappear, Sirius. I watched that curse hit you and you fell back. You went behind that curtain and you didn't come back out. Lupin and I both . . . " Harry trailed off, still unable to let himself actually think about what he had felt that night and every night since, the terror of being held back by Lupin, knowing that the man was right and that they had both lost the most important person in their lives. There really weren't words for how angry he was with his godfather if that had all been just a . . . There just weren't words. He narrowed his eyes furiously at this apparently alive-and-well Sirius and asked, "If you aren't really dead, then how-how-how could you leave us like that? I don't care if there was 'a plan' or not. Do you have any idea what we've been -- what I've been -- How could you leave me like this, thinking that it was entirely my -- that you were dead?"

For the first time in their brief, tense reunion, there was absolutely no trace at all of the young, happy Sirius that Harry had been seeing. The facial expression and body language were replaced with a deflated sadness that Harry wasn't sure how to read, but it reminded him much more of the emaciated figure he had first been introduced to. The godfather's chin dropped just a little in his unhappiness. "I had a whole speech prepared for what I was going to tell you when we saw each other again. I tried to get it out earlier, but I suppose I didn't really account for all of the questions you must have and the interruptions I would get. I should have known better. But here it is . . . You need to know, Harry, that I didn't want to put either one of you through that, but in order for any of this to work -- "

"In order for what to work? This incredible 'plan' that I keep hearing about and you have yet to explain to me?"

Harry's godfather looked over his shoulders in all directions, still concerned that they might be heard by people that shouldn't be listening to what he was about to say. Apparently unsatisfied with his search, he shook his head. "Not here, Harry. It isn't safe to talk about this here."

"Well that's just too bad because I'm not going to listen to it anywhere else. I want to know right now what exactly is going on here. And 'magic' isn't a good enough reason." Almost as an afterthought, Harry added, "And I think your best friend, who is downstairs right this minute just as miserable as I am, needs to know as well -- or were you planning to just wait another twelve years to do that to him again?"

"Now hold on just one minute, Harry. That's not what I -- "

"Then again, how do I know that you're actually you? None of this makes any sense anyway. For all I know, you could be a couple of Voldemort's Death Eaters just trying to mess with our heads!"

Sirius and Uncle Vernon looked at each other, more than just a bit confused. "How do you mean? Who else would we be? He already told you we aren't ghosts."

"She . . . " No matter how hard he tried, Harry still couldn't bring himself to say her name, even if his uncle and godfather were actually alive. In his mind, Bellatrix Lestrange was and would always be a murderess and woman who orphaned him twice. It hadn't been a dream. He had seen it, both times, with his own eyes. The things that witch had done to him were unspeakable and her name stirred things in his heart that were too difficult to put a name to. Until he found a better way to do it, she was going to be "She" in his mind because anything else was too hard to say. "S-s-she -- She used Polyjuice Potion to disguise herself as Dudley. You could just as easily be doing the same thing."

"Ahh, that." Vernon tugged thoughtfully on his moustache and turned to Sirius, who simply shrugged in response. Neither of them had apparently prepared an answer to that challenge beforehand. After a series of twitches and shrugs, the wizard and the Muggle turned back to their charge, hands spread wide. Vernon looked at his nephew simply and said, "I suppose that you're just going to have to leave with us to find out."

With a stitch of a smile (the very first genuine smile Harry had ever received from the man), Harry's uncle turned wordlessly on his heel and swept out of the room. As he headed down the hall toward the stair, the same tune Vernon had whistled the night he nailed the windows shut trailed happily along behind him until it quietly died off somewhere near what sounded like the front door.

Harry looked back at Sirius, who was still waiting for him, grinning like a fool. The boy studied his godfather, not yet convinced that he was seeing what he wanted more than anything else in his entire life to believe was real. He looked for some sort of sign, anything at all to tell him that the man in front of him was really real. If the wizard before him was Sirius -- the real Sirius -- he would give him some sort of sign that only he, Harry, could see and understand. He had to. There was just no way that the real Sirius would ever leave him like that. He would give a sign. He would. He would . . .

Not a sign, however, was to come, no matter how badly Harry wished for one. Instead, Sirius just bark-laughed at him one more time, crossed the room to stand toe to toe with the boy, and clapped his godson on the shoulder. There was a mischievous gleam in his eyes as he cocked his head to the side to indicate the doorway.

"Get your trunk. It's time to go, Harry."

(One -- )

"Time to go where?"

"There." Sirius turned his back on his charge and moved to leave the room again. When he reached the door, he grabbed the dingy old doorknob and began to pull the door shut. "Coming?"

Harry could actually feel his feet struggling along with his mind. They wanted to go. Oh, how they wanted to go. His feet, along with the rest of him, wanted more than anything to go with Sirius and follow him wherever he led because, after all, Sirius -- the real Sirius -- would never deliberately lead him into danger or let anything at all happen to him. His feet were also planted, fighting that impulse to leave. It was as if his feet knew before his head that this just wasn't happening, that this was all entirely in his imagination and that when he blinked again, all of this would be just an imagined memory, just like it had been every other day since that night. None of this was happening at all and his feet weren't going to give him the heart break of following Sirius into this trap. If only his feet could actually make up his mind for him . . .

(Two -- )

And then, without warning, they did. They stayed right where they were, where they should be.

After the long beat that Harry didn't make a move to join him, the older wizard shrugged. "Apparently not."

Just like that, the demolished door slammed shut between Harry and Sirius once again. He stood there, cursing his feet and silently begging the man to come back and take him along. Then again, where to? No matter how hard he tried or how many different ways he imagined it happening, Sirius -- the real Sirius -- wasn't coming back for him. He could run through that same conversation every day, with a different explanation every time of how to bring his godfather back to him, but the result was always the same. He was still looking at empty space where the wizard should have been. Every time he saw it, Harry always ended up alone. Instead, all he could do was stare at that cursed doorknob and watch it turn while he, Fred, and George waited to see who was waiting to attack them from the other side of the door.

From the other side of the door, a muffled voice called, "Harry?"

(THREE!)

Harry Potter hated doorknobs. He was beginning to think that they were probably the most horrible inanimate things in the world. But even as he tried to pull himself away and go as Fred had told him to, his eyes were fixed on that doorknob, hoping for a miracle and yet waiting for the final shoe to drop on his entire existence.

Of course, none of them were literally waiting for a shoe but, in what had to be the strangest show of bravery from his cousin that Harry had ever seen, one of Dudley's clunky size twelves peeked around the corner of the door and with a yelp went flying into the room to land with a thud in the center of the triangle formed by the three boys inside.

It wasn't until the shoe landed and rolled into Harry's foot that he realized exactly what he was looking at. Unfortunately, Fred and George didn't get a chance to see what it was as they naturally reacted to what looked to maybe hit George in the head. Instead they finished their countdown and lit the tips of their wands. Their voices clear and angry, they let their curses go with a force that blew the bedroom door from its hinges into the hallway to land on the recipient of the different colored blue jets of light.

While George cautiously ran to the demolished door to see who the now unconscious victim of their hexes had been, Fred looked at Harry. "Harry? You all right, mate?"

The young wizard answered with a barely grunted, "Hmmm."

Fred chuckled at the response. He had become quite fluent in Harry Mumble in the nearly six years that they had been friends. Given the craziness of Harry's five years at Hogwarts and the treatment he had received at the hands of his fellow students whenever something went wrong, Harry had been more likely in such situations to mumble answers to all questions than actually answer so that anyone who truly cared would have to learn how to interpret the wizard's grunts. Harry should, however, know better than to think that he would be able to get by with such an answer with a Weasley. Whether he liked it or not, Harry was family and if none of the rest of them were allowed to use such answers, well, then, neither was he. "Meaning?"

A sadness clouded Harry's voice that neither twin was expecting. "I can't even get this right in my imagination. I don't know why I expected it to be any different now."

"What?"

"Nevermind." Harry pushed his latest fantasy out of his mind with a shake of his head. He gave Fred a reassuring smile, turned to George, and even though he was fairly certain he knew the answer to his question he asked, "Who is it? Is it Dudley?"

George stood over the frigid body laying half in the room, half in the hallway, pointing down at it with a big smirk on his face. It was, quite possibly, the first time that Harry had ever seen George Weasley speechless. "Um . . . "

Fred and Harry swapped shrugs and crossed over to the other side of the room to look down at the body as well. When they saw him, they too lost all sense of their words.

The twins had apparently chosen their jinxes well because a small voice in Harry's head whispered evilly in his ear that his cousin had never looked better. Fred's head cocked admiringly to the side as he looked down at the results of his Jelly-Legs Curse, which was the uncontrollable watery wobbling of Dudley's legs. One the other side of the Muggle boy, George was looking down with an identical expression at his handy work, the Knotos Curse, which had Dudley's arms elongated by a good ten feet and tied into a series of sailor's knots that it would take at least an hour to untie without any magical help.

"Uh . . . " Fred began swinging his arms back and forth, clapping them in front of him and looking anywhere but down at the body on the floor.

"Whew . . . " Harry's lips puckered while his lower jaw moved side to side nervously as he too tried to avoid looking down.

Then, without realizing that they were doing it, a chain reaction of guilty laughter started among the three boys. They all looked nervously at one another before somewhat triumphant grins covered their faces. Sure, they had probably over done it, especially considering that he was a Muggle, and a Muggle whose life was currently being tossed upside down and around at that. If they hadn't been operating under such dangerously stressful conditions, they probably would have to expect a good wailing from Mrs Weasley for the mistreating of the Muggle and overuse of magic or something. (They may yet, if Mrs Weasley found out about Dudley's current state.) At the same time however, this was Dudley they were talking about, the cousin who had tormented Harry for all but the first year of the wizard's life. Fred and George had planned to do something like this for Harry upon their departures from Hogwarts anyway, when they couldn't be punished under the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Magic anymore. As horrible as their current situation was, the small comfort that the boys could take at having given Dudley a taste of his own medicine was certainly deserving of at least a smile.

George -- who was choking on his laughter through his nose because he was trying so hard to hold it back -- was the first to manage to actually say anything. He looked down at Dudley with a dramatic look of concern. "Do you think we should kick him to see if he's still alive?"

Harry looked for an instant like maybe he was willing to take that suggestion to heart, but his mischievous expression drooped when he remembered exactly what was going on around them. Feeling sick, Harry sat down numbly on the top of his trunk. He was up there preparing for an on-the-fly escape from his aunt and uncle's house because Death Eaters had come for him -- or rather, his wand -- and in the process had managed to kill his uncle, knock two Weasleys unconscious, and destroy the house that he had grown up in. Harry felt a guilty clog in his throat as he realized that they were actually joking about kicking Dudley when he was so down in so many ways. Granted, any other day he probably would have taken George up on the idea, but with everything that was going on around them, that was hardly the way to be going about things.

If any of them needed an actual reminder of that, they got it in the form of a hollered growl from what sounded like somewhere near the sitting room. "Would you three kindly finish your fooling around and get down here to help us?"

All three wizards in the room jumped nearly out of their skins at the sound of Moody's voice. George rolled his eyes, trying to make a suddenly dark Harry smile again. "They're the ones who told us not to let anyone else in . . . "

"I saw that, Mr Weasley. Now fix that boy and get down here to help us. We don't have time for this nonsense."

Already ahead of Moody, Fred was bent over Dudley with his wand lit and pointed at the oversized boy's wiggling legs. There was an almost sad look on his face, as if he was truly sorry to see his handy work go to waste. However, he wasn't above leaving his friend's awful cousin indisposed for a few more seconds as he paused to wave his brother down to the end of the hallway. "Go find out what they want us to do."

George nodded and went loping down the distance of the upstairs hall and down several steps of the stairway to get a clear view of the wizards. Even from all the way down in Harry's room, Fred and Harry heard the low whistle George made. Before they could ask him what the whistle was about, though, he had gone on to holler over the rail to Moody. "What do you need us to do?"

"In case you missed that blaring noise, that would be the Muggle police, coming for us . . . "

Fred drowned out the rest of what sounded like another rather annoyed order from Moody as Dudley regained consciousness and tried futilely to scamper away from the ignited wand in Fred's hand. He unceremoniously shoved the boy's twitching shoulders back down to the carpet with as vicious a glare he could come up with considering that he wanted to laugh. Instead, he conjured up a memory of Dudley's elongating tongue after eating a piece of one of his and George's inventions for the joke shop, the Ton-Tongue Toffee. "Sit still before I force feed you a toffee!"

Dudley's eyes flew open in a panic and he tried even harder to get away from the brightly lit tip of Fred's wand. Seeing his cousin just inside the door, he threateningly begged, "Potter, get these weirdos away from me before I tell Dad you -- "

He didn't get the rest of his threat out because George came back hurriedly, a scowl on his face. "What's wrong with Harry? Moody just asked me what's wrong with him."

Fred looked back into the room at his friend, a mirrored look of concern on his face as well. The twins exchanged glances before Fred turned back to the squirming Dudley and George tromped over the splintered door to get to his friend. He knelt down in front of Harry, put a strong, attention grabbing hand on his friend's shoulder, and shook it roughly. "Harry? Come on, mate. You've never freaked out on us before. You can't do it now, not here. Let's go, before Moody gets any madder than he already is."

"I know."

Harry sighed and looked at his friend. He closed his eyes for a second then nodded with just his chin. George was right. Moody was right. They didn't have time for him to be upset. His uncle was dead, and no matter how he felt about the man, he didn't have time to figure out what those feelings were right now. He needed to get his trunk, his broom, and Hedwig's cage just like he had every summer for the last five summers and leave this place once again. Right now he needed to pull himself together and deal with all of the rest of it later. With that final realization, he opened his eyes and looked around his room one last time, not really sure if he was ever going to see it again. He looked at his countdown calendar once again, the one where he crossed off the days until his return to Hogwarts every year. He looked at the mess of the bedsheets that he would probably never sleep under again. His desk, his chair, his broken down wardrobe. He froze each little item into a memory then slapped his hands on his thighs. Life at number four, Privet Drive, was finally over.

Almost.

The sirens from the police cars were so loud now that Harry knew they couldn't be much more than a few blocks away. Snapping back into himself, Harry stood and started giving orders once again, as he had always done. He dashed to the side of his wardrobe to get his broomstick then Hedwig's cage, all the while pointing from George to his trunk.

"Let's go. George, I've got this stuff if you can get Fred to help you with my trunk."

"No need. I've got it," George smiled, glad to see his friend come back to his senses. He raised his wand and with a wave levitated it. He chuckled when he immediately noticed his friend's head whipping around, looking for the first of several owls with notes from the Ministry regarding the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Magic. With a smooth, teasing wink, he added, "Yeah, it's good to be considered an adult."

Harry, too, laughed in relief, shook his head, grabbed up his things, and started for the smashed doorway. He stepped unceremoniously over what remained of the door and into the hallway and looked down at his whimpering cousin. As much as he felt sorry for Dudley, he really didn't have the luxury of dealing with his cousin's inability to form words at the moment either. He kept walking, trying not to look down at the meaty boy, then -- as he should have known since it was Dudley they were dealing with -- without much warning, Harry felt a finger hooking around the cuff of his jeans. Before he could stop it, the hook became a full vice grip around his ankle. Unfortunately, his other foot had made the advance in the next step, and since the other couldn't follow, he toppled face first into the carpet, spilling Hedwig's cage and his Firebolt down the hallway.

The domino effect continued as George's foot found the sole of Dudley's only still shod foot. As he landed with his head in the crook behind Harry's knee, the invisible strings that were keeping the trunk floating in the air were mysteriously severed. The trunk crashed to the ground, barely missing all four boys. The latch, however, snapped open and the contents of the trunk were flung to all corners of the hall with absolutely no discrimination at all as to where they landed.

The guilty feelings that Harry had for his cousin's predicament were pretty much eradicated with that one trip. As soon as George had fumbled himself out of Harry's way, Harry whirled around onto his back with a venomous look that had only darkened his features once or twice in his entire lifetime. His ears burned red as he growled, "For God's sake, Dudley, for once in your spoiled life, knock it off!"

He was about to continue to really let his worthless cousin have it when he caught sight of lights from the police car dancing warningly on the walls of the stairwell ahead of them to herald the coming of the police. His lower jaw jutted out and he sucked in air to prepare to give Dudley the scolding of a lifetime when he just shook his head instead. With an irritated grunt, Harry pushed himself up to his feet and waved his hand at the chaotic mess of his belongings.

"Forget the trunk. We'll have to come back for it," he barked. With one last glare at Dudley, Harry whipped around on his heel and stomped down the hallway, calling for Fred and George to follow him. "Come on."

The three wizards thundered down the ravaged stairwell two at a time. When they landed on the ground level, they all collided into one another. The looks on all of their faces said all there was to say, but George managed to sum up the damage to the front of the house in one very well chosen word.

"Wow."

Hearing the raucous announcement of the young wizards' arrival, Professor Lupin popped his head up from behind the spell-scarred sofa and pointed his arm out the wrecked doorway. "Harry, you need to get out there and deal with the Muggles. Say whatever you have to say to get them out of here without asking too many questions. Go!"

As the police sirens grew louder and the lights brighter, Fred exchanged first a look with his brother then Lupin and asked, "What can we do, Professor?"

Without meaning to sound as impatient as he probably did, Lupin shouted, "Help him!"

The twins started out the door, eager to back up their friend and finally be allowed to help the Order like they had been begging to do since the summer before. Before they made it out the door, though, George pulled on Fred's arm and dragged him backwards a few steps into the arch between the sitting room and hallway. He couldn't even believe that he hadn't at least asked about his father and brother who, for all he knew, were still unconscious in the backyard. Quickly he asked, "What about Dad and Bill? Shouldn't we -- "

"Mad-Eye's taking care of them. Go help Harry."

Harry had pulled back to wait for his friends, and once they joined him the trio ran through what had been the front door onto the lawn. When they stood there, shoulder to shoulder, looking around, Harry wasn't in the least bit surprised to find that they were far from alone. All up and down Privet Drive, the neighbors had come out of their houses to be a part of the goings on at number four, some still in their pyjamas, robes, and slippers. Men were walking up and down the walk, trying to be inconspicuous by walking their dogs and watching number four the way that people slow down to watch a car accident site as they pass it by. Those that weren't directly on their lawns watching had opened their blinds wide, their heads peeked out into the hot July night and whispering to the faces in the windows closest to them.

"Terrific," George grumbled. "An audience."

The three boys exchanged helpless looks. There was nothing that they could do to get rid of the onlookers now, even if they had all the time in the world. They were going to have to explain all of this to the police with the entire block listening in. It was almost enough to make Harry wish that they could do this inside where all that remained of the windows were nailed shut against the prying ears. Then again, the sirens and lights had attracted more than enough attention and those that hadn't been drawn from their homes from the goings on before were certainly listening up now. Every set of eyes on Privet Drive locked in on the police car as it came to a direct halt in front of number four, assuring the pedestrians' complete attention for the duration of the policemen's visit.

"Um, no pressure or anything, Harry, but what are you going to tell them," asked Fred out of the corner of his mouth.

George tried to keep as innocent a face as possible as he deadpanned, "Tell them they've got the wrong house."

Harry fought the urge to reach up and smack his friend across the back of his dear but mental red head. There would be absolutely no denying that number four was the house that the officers were looking for. If the pedestrians on the walks and lawns with car crash curiosity weren't a direct clue, the shrapnel that remained of the front door would certainly be a sign with a bright flashing red arrow declaring, "Chaos and Destruction This Way".

"Yeah, that should do it," replied Harry dryly.

An odd metallic clonk from the police vehicle announced that whatever Harry was going to decide to tell the officers, he was going to have to come up with it in a hurry. The doors on either side of the car opened, and in perfect unison a black clad leg struck out on either side as if the car itself had grown spidery limbs. Together the two officers placed their hands on the top edges of the car's doors and used them to propel themselves out of their blissfully air conditioned seats into the hazy heat outside. The expressions on their faces told the trio of wizards that the officers were none too happy about having to make that transition.

Still, with manners that would make even his aunt and uncle proud, he politely extended a hand to each officer and asked, "Can we help you, Sirs?"

Exchanging one last look with his partner, the officer on the left incredulously began. "Can you help us? We received several telephone calls regarding a disturbance at this address this evening, young man. Would you three care to explain yourselves?"

There was a moment where Harry could just see both of the twins fighting the urge to answer, "Not at the moment, no," but was quite proud of them for keeping the impulse to themselves. For all of their joking and attempting to keep him together under the circumstances, Harry knew that they understood the seriousness of what was happening. The wizarding and Muggle worlds were colliding on his front lawn, and unless he could come up with the right excuse, the results could be . . . well . . . not so good. The results were something that Harry couldn't even begin to imagine.

So, instead of spouting the first thing that came to his mind, he put on as innocent a face as he could muster and asked, "I'm sorry, Sirs, but explain what?"

This time the other officer gurgled at the boys. "Explain what? Son, this house is missing its front door. And all of these people that are gawking at you claim they thought they had missed Bonfire Night because of the light show going on in your yard. Now, we'll ask you again -- would you care to tell us what is going on here?"

"Nothing, really," said Harry weakly.

"Nothing."

"Yes, Sir. Nothing. Nothing is going on. Nothing," said George, who now had on the face that he used whenever he and his brother had been caught doing anything they shouldn't be doing by Mr Filch, Hogwarts's ill-tempered, student loathing caretaker. That expression, in any other situation, was worth its weight in gold.

"Nothing," repeated the officer on the right. He was apparently the friendlier of the officers because he smiled at George and smoothly asked, "If you're doing nothing, how will you know when you're done?"

The officer on the left answered the question for the boys before they could come up with an equally sarcastic answer. "Perhaps when your front door is blown off its hinges?" He turned to his partner, playfully smacked him on the chest and then used the hand to gesture at what remained of the front of number four. "Oh, look, I think they're done."

Officer Right smiled again, but he let it droop as he came closer to the end of his question. "Good. Then I suppose we can try this again. What the bloody hell is going on here?"

Unable to control himself any longer, Fred muttered so that only Harry and George could hear, "Out of control hand of Exploding Snap?"

While George tried to cover his snigger at his brother, Harry actually would have been perfectly happy to kiss Fred (after giving him a good whack on the head anyway). Inconvenient though it was in timing, Fred had actually finally given Harry an inkling of an idea of what he could possibly use to explain what had happened with the house, if they could pull it off.

Before Officer Left could open his mouth to ask Fred to speak up, Harry jumped in over him, "Fireworks."

Officer Right's eyebrows disappeared under his neatly cut blonde hair. "Excuse me?"

"We were playing with fireworks to um . . . to um . . . " Harry was just about to falter again in his explanation when he looked at George, who winked at him. He wasn't exactly sure what George was trying to tell him, but he just kept on stammering until he found any sort of reason that might make sense. "Uh . . . You see, it's um . . . It's their birthday, Sir. And we were just celebrating. We just got a little too close to the door, I suppose -- "

Officer Left craned his neck to attempt to see the full range of damage that the trio of boys were blockading from his and his partner's view. Without even thinking about it, George casually moved to separate himself half an inch from Harry's side to shield the house and the chaos of what was inside from view. The move, however, did not go unnoticed by either officer, nor did the delayed spark from the broken light fixture that made an unfortunately all to clear POP in what remained of the front hall.

Nothing, it seemed, was going to get by either officer. They each took a step back, looked casually around, then focused their interrogating stares on the boys once more. For the first time that he could ever remember, the eyes of authority actually passed over Fred and George with a suspicious glance then zeroed in on Harry. Normally it was the other way around. The twins, however, didn't appear to have sustained anywhere near as much damage as Harry, as the officers were all too happy to point out to them.

"You expect us to believe that getting a rocket too close to the door did that kind of damage?"

Harry gulped. "Yes, Sir."

The officer on the right reached out a long, meaty arm and pointed at Harry's face. "Really? And those scratches on your face? I suppose the cat did that?"

Harry reached a hand up to his cheek, feeling around for the streaks of dried blood that he had forgotten about. He couldn't believe that he had forgotten them, but then again, the sting from such small wounds seemed of little importance at the moment. It was strange, though, to think that he had received them less than an hour ago, when all he had been doing was walking around the backyard. Considering everything that had happened and what he still needed to do, there was a sort of relief in Harry's voice that he could truthfully say, "Yes, Sir."

"And that black eye you've got coming in?"

"Boxing with my cousin earlier this evening, Sir," explained Harry with a growing confidence. Silently, he added, Well, sort of.

Officer Right was just about to open his mouth to ask another question when Officer Left appeared to have a light bulb go off over his head. He narrowed his eyes darkly at the wizards in front of him and cocked his head to the side a bit to make sure that his ear was closest to the boys in order to hear their answer clearly.

"If you three were up here with this supposed rocket that tore up this door, who was in the backyard with the others?"

"The others," asked Fred, immediately realizing what the man was asking and hoping to give Harry time to think of an answer for the question.

"The ones that were making all of the commotion and lights in the backyard."

The three wizards all exchanged glances, desperate for the others to come up with an answer that might satisfy the officers enough to leave without asking too many more questions. With no other option, Harry was about to suggest that it had been Dudley and opened his mouth to do so when his words were drowned out by an insistent cry from the edge of the lawn.

"I did it!"

Breathlessly, Mrs Figg came flopping through the yard in her carpet slippers, hand bag swinging violently against her legs from the effort of walking and trying to keep her feet covered at the same time. In her arms, Mr Tibbles struggled to get out of her grasp, squirming like her arms were covered in water. As the woman continued to huff her way along, shouting "I did it" all through the entire length of Vernon's perfectly manicured lawn, the cat wriggled so much that she had to let him pounce to the ground with a hiss of disgust. The officers and wizards all watched her approach with looks of horror all over their faces. The boys couldn't believe that she was stepping in to help just when they had found a good way out and the officers, well . . . the officers had never in their lives seen anything quite like Mrs Arabella Figg and probably never would again. Both officers actually took a step backwards when she finally reached the group congregated in front of number four and breathed windlessly into their faces one more time, "I did it."

Officer Left was the first to recover from the woman's eccentric appearance. He stood up a little bit straighter and tugged on his tie before asking her, "You did 'what' exactly?"

"I gave them the chemistry set," Mrs Figg told them proudly between pants. She shot a look over to Harry that he couldn't quite read, but it went something along her lines of We'll take care of this. Don't you worry. To the officers, she continued to explain. "I should have read the box better for what was included in it, is all. I had no idea that it was actually powerful enough to blow up a house. If I had known, I would have made certain that they had adult supervision . . . "

It took every ounce of energy any of the three wizarding boys had not to groan and bury their heads in the flower beds that lined the front walk. Of course, Harry couldn't help but be grateful that the Squib was trying to help them out of what was certainly going to be a rather difficult situation, but her timing couldn't have been any worse. He told himself that if they all got out of there unscathed, he was going to find a way to properly thank her for having tried to help him now twice in one evening. He still thought her nuttier than a fruitcake at Christmas, but in the last year she had endeared herself to him with a kindness that he had never expected from anyone in the Muggle world. Keeping her protective eye on him was the nicest thing any Muggle had done for him in his days on Privet Drive, even if she smelled like over-boiled cabbage. Her valiant effort at the moment, however, thoughtful as it was, was going to cause problems and Officer Right was right on top of it.

"Chemistry set," he asked her, as if the boys had as of yet failed to come up with an explanation of what had created the commotion that evening.

Huffing a little less, Mrs Figg brushed some hair out of her face to make herself a bit more presentable as she explained, "Yes, Sir. It was a birthday present for young Harry, you see. He's always been so good in school with them that I thought he might enjoy -- "

Both officers eyed the twins, but it was Officer Left who gestured at them and asked, "And which one of these young men is Harry?"

The woman smiled endearingly at Harry, who was trying desperately to be as invisible as possible. When she pointed and waved directly at him and making it plain that he was the boy she was talking about, he half smiled and waved weakly back. For something distracting to do while he tried to think of another way to wrangle them out of their mess of stories, he reached down to pick up Mr Tibbles, who was conveniently circling his legs for attention. For a moment, the boy and animal looked at one another affectionately. Mr Tibbles licked Harry's hand near one set of scratches to apologize for the warning wounds then looked up for a response until Harry curled his fingers around the fur behind the cat's ears and whispered in his ear, "Thanks."

As soon as Harry stood up again he wished he hadn't because Mrs Figg gestured at him holding her pride and joy. "He's the one with Mr Tibbles there."

"The cat that scratched him earlier tonight?"

Harry was quite proud as Mrs Figg went on with such ease to casually wave off the officer and tell them as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Oh, yes, well . . . Mr Tibbles can be quite affectionate, and as you can see, he's quite fond of Harry, Sir."

Officer Right looked down at the large cat in Harry's arms, who stopped licking the boy's face apologetically for the scratches to protectively glare at the man. The policeman studied the cat for a moment, then asked for clarification. "And Mr Tibbles is the cat."

"Yes."

"I see. And who are you?"

"Terribly sorry. Where are my manners?" The woman pushed up her sleeve and the handle of her handbag where it was tied to her wrist half way up her forearm to clumsily extend the hand first to the officer on the right and then Officer Left. "Mrs Arabella Figg." She winked again at Harry before going on. "Harry and I have tea together twice a week and he helps me with certain chores around the house. I'm a family friend, you see. I knew his parents, bless their hearts."

"Knew?"

Seeming to forget who she was talking to and why, Mrs Figg glanced around in a way that would have appeared distractedly to the officers. Harry knew better though. He knew that she was looking around for any further signs of trouble. His heart went out to her in thanks. After the incident with the dementors last summer and now the chaos of the night, he could see that there were no lengths that she wouldn't go to to help him. For all of the years of miserable mid-afternoon teas and droning repeated viewings of every single picture she owned of every cat she had ever owned since birth (and some she didn't), she really was a grand lady. Still mad, certainly, but one of a kind grand. He truly hoped that he'd have the opportunity to thank her some day.

Unfortunately, in her distraction she was talking airily about things that didn't really make any sense and would in no way help them out of their predicament. "Well, yes, Officer. I've known his family for quite some time, you see. Well, I didn't exactly know his parents, but I knew of them. Everyone knew of them. There isn't a person alive who doesn't know of Lily and James Potter and their son. This boy's parents were . . . "

While Harry shot the woman a look to try to get her to change the subject immediately, her words were drowned out by another one of Aunt Petunia's screams that, in truth, couldn't have been better timed if they had sat down and planned the entire thing. He never thought he would be so grateful to hear that godawful sound shatter the eardrums of anyone in a ten block radius. He was almost inclined to think that he was grateful enough to hug the woman when this was over -- almost.

"NO! I want you people out of my house immediately," Petunia bellowed sharply. "Do you hear me? I want you OUT! Out out OUT! NOW!"

At the sound, Officers Right and Left lost all sense of wanting to negotiate with the young men and eccentric lady on the lawn any longer. Before any of the wizarding trio could react, the two officers busted through their human blockade, one of them on either side between Harry and a twin. The twins each stumbled to the side, losing their footing and instinctively grabbing at Harry's shirt sleeves to anchor their balance. Harry's arms dropped Mr Tibbles and instantly reached out in front of him to hold the balance for all three of them, straining against the weights pulling him down. It wasn't until Mrs Figg dashed forward and pulled on Harry's hands that the group were able to stand upright again. By then, however, it was too late.

"NO! Nononononono! Absolutely not! NO! VERNON!"

From inside the house, Aunt Petunia's repeated series of screams bounced out what remained of the doorway and down the street for every pedestrian to hear, clear as a bell. The four people on the lawn all exchanged groans as they heard the murmurs that followed. The whispers, however, were all too soon covered by yet another scream from the lady of the house, prompting the group to make their own rush into the house.

"Stop this at once! I will have no more of this nonsense in my house! Now stop it! VERNON!"

When they got inside the jinx-burned archway that led from the front hall into the sitting room there was no question of why exactly Harry's aunt had taken to bawling out her pleas again. The living room looked like absolute chaos and she was standing right there in the middle of it.

"Wow," said George, still unable to come up with a better word to describe what they were seeing.

What was left of what had been the formal sitting room was covered floor to ceiling in scorch marks from missed and deflected curses. Chunks of plaster were missing, putting random holes the size of large fists into the walls. The fire place mantle and the picture frames that had graced the top of it were reduced to ashes that still dirtied the stuffy July air. All of the furniture remained overturned with holes and burn marks pocking them everywhere.

Still, in the midst of chaos, the lamps remained, shedding light on the range of expressions from the faces of a host of battle weary wizards, a terrified Dudley clinging to his furious mother, and two very confused and equally frightened policemen.

Harry couldn't blame them. This was one scene that if he were a true Muggle, he wouldn't want to walk in on either. The insane extent of the damage was one thing, but the people themselves were another story. Right there in the center of the room was an unconscious, quivering form in a mask that, if either one of the officers had seen enough of them, they'd think she was some psychotic killer from a horror movie. Standing over her was Mad-Eye Moody, his magical eye working over every inch of the Dursley household. About ten feet from him, Remus Lupin was still hovering worriedly behind the overturned sofa over the semi-conscious witch that had joined the fight with Moody's arrival. Behind them in the archway between the sitting room and dining room, Bill Weasley was holding his father up, who had one arm around his son's shoulders and the other clutching the surely bruised ribs he had from the kick he had taken. Farthest away in the corner stood Aunt Petunia with Dudley sitting in the chair next to her, clinging to her skirts like a toddler.

The most disturbing things, though (he could be fairly certain) were the hands of the wizarding men in the room. All four of the men, on the arrival of the officers, had sunk their hands into their robes to conceal their wands but had rather conspicuously neglected to take their hands away. While he understood why they would feel the need to have their wands at the ready, he wished they weren't all being so quick to the wand. After all, they had all just been attacked and his uncle was dead because of it. However, he knew that if he didn't find a way to warn them that Muggle police didn't exactly trust people with their hands concealed inside their pockets these days, they could all be in even more trouble than they already were in.

Officer Left was the first of the two to manage to make a sound, croaking out, "What on earth have you crazy people been doing in here?"

Seeing the police arrive and being as thick as ever, Dudley stood and started forward with the happiest of looks on his face, like he had just been rescued from the rooftop of a floating house in the middle of a flooded river. "Arrest these weirdos! They are -- "

Before Dudley could say anything else, and (more importantly) before the now more than just suspicious officers could make a move, Moody and Lupin whipped their wands from under their robes and aimed them skillfully at the officers. Together they shouted, "Petrificus Totalus!" While they bent over to make short work of the policemen and their memories, Bill pointed his wand at Dudley and sent a Silencing Charm at him with an annoyed glare.

Aunt Petunia screamed as the jet of light struck her son, but it stuck in her throat when she realized that, for all appearances, he was perfectly fine. She cupped her son's face in her hands and looked her boy up and down, checking for any sign of damage at all. When she was unable to find anything wrong with him, she turned angrily on Bill. "What did you just do to my son?"

"He made the stupid git shut up is what he did," Fred informed her hotly. "And as far as I'm concerned, that imbecile is lucky that is all that happened! He could have put everyone here in -- "

"That's enough, Fred," said Mr Weasley quietly. He smiled gently at his son, who was opening his mouth in unison with his twin to protest. Before the boys could retort he said again with fatherly forcefulness, "That's enough. I think we have enough to be concerned with right now."

"Exactly," agreed Moody, turning away from the two officers who, thanks to himself and Lupin would no longer remember anything of their last half an hour. He focused with obvious frustration on Fred, George, and Harry for explanations. "What happened out there?"

"She screamed," George said, still seething. He turned on Petunia with an unpleasant glare, his hatred of Harry's family not reserved for only his friend's stupid cousin. He had never made it a secret that as far as he was concerned, the Dursleys were all dangerously stupid and mean. When he got another warning glance from his father, George pointed defensively at the woman. "Everyone on the street heard her scream!"

Lupin's already alert eyes flew open even further at the same time that Petunia's did. Without even realizing they were doing it they asked in unison (albeit for very different reasons), "Everyone on the street?"

The adult wizards of the Order all turned to one another urgently, knowing full well that if everyone on the street had been aware of what had happened in the Dursley household, they were running much shorter on time than they thought. Silently they all agreed that one of them would have to take charge, and after a moment, Moody stepped forward with a start to issue orders to everyone in the room.

He turned first to the twins, who quickly forgot their anger with the Dursleys over the prospect of being able to help. "Fred, George, upstairs now. Get Harry's things. Don't miss anything because we won't be back. Pack up a bag for Mrs Dursley and her son as well. We can't leave them here. You have two minutes. Go!" With identical nods, the boys took off up the stairs, their long legs able to take three stairs at a time.

To Bill he ordered, "Once you have further taken care of the Muggles' memories, walk them out to their car and make sure they believe the story you give them." He looked at Harry quickly, his magical eye moving so fast that it made Harry nauseous again. "We need a story, any story. What did you tell them, Harry?"

While Harry told him "Fireworks", Mrs Figg jumped in with "Chemistry set".

"Oh, dear." The woman's face registered her mistake immediately and she glanced apologetically between Harry and Moody. "I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

Gently so as to not hurt him any further, Bill released himself from his father's weight and turned to the woman from two streets down. "It's all right, Mrs Figg. Really. We appreciate that you tried to help Harry." He crossed the room, put a hand on her shoulder, and directed her toward the semi-conscious policemen, who were starting to move again. With a quick look at Moody for an okay, he bent over and took one of the policemen by the shoulders. "I like your plan better. Why don't you help me get them outside, would you?"

She recovered her eagerly helpful expression with his encouragement. "Of course. What about the people on the street? Everyone is out there walking their dogs."

With a gruff irritation, Moody told her, "The Ministry is bound be Apparating in at any minute now. They are going to have to take care of it." A stitch of a smile crossed his face while he appreciated the woman in front of him as she reached down for the other policeman's shoulders. "A chemistry kit? Good thinking. Thank you."

She replied to Moody but looked at Harry as she smiled, "You are quite welcome."

While the pair escorted the wobbling policemen out of the house, Mr Weasley trudged slowly across the charred room, his hand still clutching his bruised side. He looked sourly down at the two bodies remaining on the floor. He first indicated the witch in the Death Eater mask with distaste. "Is she the only one?" On Moody's nod, he focused his attention on the witch under Lupin's care as she groaned, signalling a painful return to consciousness. "How is she?"

"She'll be better when we can get to headquarters so that someone besides myself can heal this leg." Lupin nodded toward the witch's leg, which was jutting out at a very unnatural angle that put sick expressions on the faces of all of the wizards in the room. "And she's going to have quite the headache when she comes around, but other than that, she'll be fine." With a casual smile, he added, "Trust me. She'll be driving us all into the cracker ward by dawn."

With another groan, the witch weakly managed to inform them, "I heard that."

At the sound of the woman's voice, there was one thing away on their list of problems, prompting Lupin's face to become a deal more relaxed with his relief. "Welcome back."

"Uh-huh," she groaned ruefully, putting a hand first to her knocked head and then her broken leg. She breathed in heavily a few times in pain before her eyes finally opened and looked seriously into Lupin's. "What happened? Is everyone all right? What about Harry? Did you get him out?"

"We're working on it right now," said Lupin reassuringly.

"Is he all right?"

Lupin smiled a strange smile that Harry couldn't quite read and then directed her attention to him. "Why don't you ask him?"

Taking his question as a cue to step in, Harry sheepishly waved at the woman. He hated meeting new people. Introductions almost always meant the obligatory hello before the new person's eyes did the widening in shock thing as they immediately focused up on the scar on his forehead. Meeting new people always made him wish that there was a spell to make scars disappear. Still, she was obviously someone that he was going to have to know, so he softly said, "Hi."

"Hullo," the black-haired witch replied. She returned a short wave at him with a tight grin laced with both pain and apology. "Sorry I didn't get to introduce myself earlier. We were a little busy -- "

"Which we need to be right now," Moody growled impatiently. "We can save the reintroductions for when we are all safely at headquarters. Remus, can you bind her leg up enough for her to make the trip so that we can get out of here? I want to be gone before the Ministry gets here."

Lupin shook his head. "One of you better do it. I've never been very good with healing charms and I don't think I can do it well enough that it won't cause further damage on the journey back."

Through gritted teeth, the witch muttered, "At least he's honest."

Moody directed the other adult wizard in the room to take care of the witch's leg. "Arthur."

"Of course," said Mr Weasley, removing his wand from his robes and aiming it steadily at the woman's twisted leg. He gave her an apologetic grimace as the tip of his wand lit up in his hand. "I won't lie to you, Molly, this is going to hurt."

Harry didn't hear her response because he suddenly noticed that no one had been paying his aunt or cousin any attention in the corner of the room. In her devastation, Petunia, however, was completely oblivious to what the wizards were saying. While they had been busy organizing their escape, she had reached for the chair that had been vacated by her son, her face a picture so dismal that Harry actually felt sorry for her. She looked like her entire life had just crumbled in on her. The thing she had feared more than anything in the six years since Harry had received his first Hogwarts letter was that people would find out that her nephew wasn't a normal boy. The idea that she had anything else to fear never even seemed to strike her. Nothing in the world could possibly be more devastating than the entire neighborhood hearing what had been going on for the last hour. Nothing. She stared out into space, muttering to herself, "Everyone on the street. They all heard? What are they going to say? I'll never be able to show my face in the . . . " On and on she went until the frustration had built to the point of explosion. "VERNON!" She allowed him an entire half a second before bellowing his name once again, stomping her foot angrily. "VERNON? VERNON!"

To say that Harry felt sick really didn't do justice to the feeling that he was having. She didn't know yet. In all of the chaos of what had happened in the last hour and their urgent need to get everyone out of the house as soon as possible, no one had thought to sit Petunia down and tell her that her husband was gone. He had heard her yell her husband's name several times in the last few minutes, but it didn't even occur to him that she was calling for someone who could not answer. She didn't know.

She didn't know.

All eyes in the room fell on Harry as he took a very slow walk over to his aunt. They all fell away as he opened his mouth to speak, though, desperately sorry for the family and wanting to give them as much privacy as could be managed and still conduct the business at hand of escaping. Harry's voice was barely above a gruff whisper as he spoke her name. "Aunt Petunia?"

The woman whipped furiously on her nephew. "Where is he, Potter? What have your freaky friends done with him? VERNON!"

"Aunt Petunia -- "

The woman's voice rose in pitch as the panic started to set in. Her husband wasn't answering her and her nephew wasn't speaking up offering any explanation for himself or Vernon's whereabouts. Something obviously wasn't right and she didn't like the way that everyone was looking alternately at her and the floor. "Right now, Potter! I demand to know what exactly is going on here, beginning with where you are keeping my husband. VERNON!"

No matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn't gulp away the lump at the back of his throat. He clenched his teeth together as he drew in the breath to try again to tell his aunt that his uncle wasn't just hiding. "Aunt Petunia -- "

The closer her nephew got to her corner of the room, the higher pitched and quietly helpless her calls became. "VERNON -- VER-non -- Vernon! Vern-no- . . . "

His voice recovered, Dudley gave one futile, distraught cry. "Dad?!"

"Aunt Petunia . . . "

That was it. Dudley grabbed onto his mother's waist, sobbing uncontrollably, none of the wracked syllables discernable as anything but pained expressions and vowel sounds. Petunia's arms wrapped protectively over her son's head, shielding his ears from the news that she knew was about to come to her. She looked helplessly at her nephew, silently begging him to lie to her, but when their eyes met, she saw everything that she possibly needed to see. Harry's eyes closed slowly in defeat, unable to actually bring the news to words. When she realized that he wasn't going to tell her, she looked to the men in the room until she met the sad eyes of Mr Weasley.

"Mrs Dursley," Arthur began, folding his hands in front of him. "I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we are all sorry for your loss -- "

"I don't -- No," Petunia said defiantly.

Moody continued on for Arthur, the effort of making his voice as consoling as possible for her obvious to everyone who knew him. "We truly are sorry, Mrs Dursley. Unfortunately, right now we need to get you lot to -- "

Apparently thinking that the wizards had missed her message, she repeated angrily, "No."

From the floor, the witch that Harry had heard Mr Weasley call 'Molly' spoke gently to the increasingly distraught woman. "Petunia, I know you don't understand what is happening right now, but we really do need to take you and your son some place safe."

"No! VERNON!"

Molly tried to get through to the woman again, her voice a little bit stronger this time. "Petunia, it isn't safe for you here. It isn't safe for Dudley here. And it isn't safe for Harry here. Please, Petunia. We all need to get out of here before -- "

Harry tried one last time to get through to his aunt, hoping that if these strangers couldn't convince her of the danger they were all still in, that maybe he could. "Aunt Petunia, please? Listen to them."

"YOU! THIS IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!" Mrs Dursley furiously advanced on her nephew, leaving her sobbing son to the chair alone. She didn't even notice that his hand had been clutching so hard to the strings of her apron that it stayed with him as she crossed to meet Harry. The entire walk she cursed at him. "I should have left you on the doorstep that night. I knew -- I knew I was right to get that sister of mine out of my life but no, I had to bring you inside the house that morning. And you never gave us anything but her kind of trouble. Look at you! You're a mess and my husband is . . . This is your fault, Potter, you and your family and your-your-your kind!"

While they had all watched the scene as neutrally as possible, knowing that the woman had to be allowed to at least comprehend what had happened, they were all going to draw the line at her blaming Harry for any of it. All of their mouths opened to stop her yelling, but it was Professor Lupin who managed to call her first. "Mrs Dursley . . . "

Petunia turned on Lupin then, being the first target to actually speak. Her voice was a combination of a sob and an angry howl as she demanded, "How did you do it?"

"Mrs Dursley -- "

Unsatisfied with his answer, she turned to the wizard that her husband usually referred to as 'The Freak With the Roving Eyeball' next. "I want to know what you did to him."

Indignantly Moody replied, "We didn't do anything to him."

"Fine. These freaks in the masks, what did they do to him?"

There was a certain sadness in her voice that Harry couldn't quite figure as Molly started, "Petunia, you really don't want to know about . . . "

"Yes, I do. I want to know." The widow turned back to her nephew who, based on the way the other people had come into the room to fight those other freaks, Harry was the only one of them who had actually been back there with her husband and was therefore the only person to see it happen. "Was it the same thing that killed my sister and that boy? Did they blow him up the way your parents . . . "

Stung by the callous description of the deaths of both his parents and his uncle, Harry flinched, but managed to reply, "Yes."

With that one word Mrs Petunia Dursley's world finally collapsed. Her face seemed to go completely blank, her eyes staring straight ahead but not seeing anything. She closed in on herself, her knees bending until they touched the floor and curled her legs under her. She began to rock back and forth, softly crying and telling herself that this was entirely impossible. Several people opened their mouths to speak, but no sound could come out.

It was over a minute later that Fred and George clomped back down the front stairs with Harry's belongings, shattering the cold silence in the room like a pick to ice. "Hey, Dad, I think we got every -- Oh . . . "

The boys set the trunk down gently beside the wall and tiptoed over to the others to watch helplessly as the room stood still. Everyone looked at one another, too afraid to look at Harry or his aunt and cousin. They gave Harry's relatives as much of a brief silence of respect for the family's private grief as was possible before Moody announced in a whisper to his fellow members of the Order that they no longer had time to allow for mourning. "Remus, we need to go. Harry?"

Both Lupin and Harry nodded and moved toward Petunia, but Remus was the first to reach her. He knelt down in front of her, speaking softly like he was speaking to a spooked animal. "I'm terribly sorry, Mrs Dursley, but we need to leave. You need to come with us now."

"NO," she hissed, slapping his extended hand away.

"We need to get all of you to safety. We aren't going to leave you here."

"No," argued Petunia. She stood once again, her knees threatening to buckle on her, but she managed to steady them. Then, after politely smoothing the lines of her dress as a proper lady should, she stomped her foot into the splattered pudding that had captured Dudley's face earlier. Her eyes closed for a moment at the blunder so that she could regain what little composure she had left. When she finally spoke, her voice was a strange calm that Harry was quite certain he had never heard from his aunt in his entire life. "I want to know. I want to know what exactly happened here tonight and what on this earth could possibly be so special about my nephew that we had to go through all of this. I have been threatened by the headmaster of that-that-that school, by all of you, by burning red envelopes . . . Not a single one of you is leaving this house until I get some answers. I think I deserve to know what exactly we have gone through all of this for."

Moody looked at her for a split second like he was about to consider her request but, caution prevailing, his wand called Harry's trunk to him. He reached down for the handle and told her, "I'm really very sorry for your loss, Mrs Dursley, but right now, if you would kindly take a look around this room, you would see that we really don't have time for explanations -- "

"No, Mad-Eye," Lupin interrupted. "She's right. If we expect her to let us take her, her son, and her nephew from this house, we are going to have to give her at least some sort of reason why she should trust us."

Petunia shifted her hips and shoulders in smug triumph -- she really didn't like The Freak With the Roving Eyeball -- only to have Lupin give her a stern look that sent her limp again. "Understand, however, that we truly don't have time for all of your questions right now, Mrs Dursley. I promise you that when it is safe for us to bring Harry to see you, we will sit down and answer every single question you have to the best of our abilities. For now, I need you to only ask what it is you need to know to trust us enough to take you to safety. Can you agree to that?"

Harry had never looked so small as he did at the moment when he pleaded with his aunt, "Please, Aunt Petunia?"

When she looked back at him, she wore an expression that Harry had only once before seen on her horsy face. It was the same look that she had the night that he and Dudley had been attacked by dementors the summer holidays before, the look that had made him realize a blood connection with her for the very first time. She seemed to regard him for a moment with that look, seeing her nephew in front of her, her nephew who, for the first time, she realized truly had been in need of whatever protection it was that that old codger of a headmaster had seen in her and her blood.

"They'll protect us," she asked him. "These people that have threatened us on several occasions will protect us now if we go with them?"

"Yes, they will," said Harry with such tension in his voice to let her know that all of their lives depended on her answer. He knew that, regardless of what they had said in the train station last month, none of the wizards in his life would deliberately hurt his mother's family, even if for no other reason than the enduring respect they had for Lily Potter. None of them were that kind of wizard. And, as much as his aunt and uncle had always distrusted his mother and the direction her life had taken her, Petunia seemed to understand better than Uncle Vernon ever had that the wizards, particularly the Weasleys, all cared far too much for him to ever let anything happen to him or his family if they could help it. "And like they said, when it is safe, someone will bring us together and we can tell you everything. You and Dudley will be safe."

"And they'll answer all of my questions?"

Moody was apparently annoyed with Petunia's need to continue asking for verification that they were going to be taking care of her and her family because he let out an impatient, "Yes. Not right now, but yes, soon we'll find a way to tell you everything you want to know. Right now we need to get out of here. Potter, help me get your trunk and we'll -- "

Without even realizing that he'd done it, Lupin volunteered for the job of keeping Mrs Dursley calm and on their side with the tired look he shot Moody that screamed, Give it a rest! Instead of actually yelling, though, he as calmly as ever let the man know with his tone that there would be no argument here. "I think we have time for one question, don't you, Moody?"

"As long as it's a quick one," Moody grumbled. "Fudge is going to have his people here any moment and once that sideshow gets here it's going to be a real battle to get Potter out of here without their interference."

"Agreed." Lupin focused in on Harry's aunt again, his expression as gentle as it could be but still give her the sense of urgency that he needed her to have. "What can we tell you, Mrs Dursley, to get you to trust us enough to come with us tonight?"

There was a long silence as Petunia looked around at all of the faces that were staring expectantly at her. She regarded each person as if she had a specific question for each and everyone one of them. She seemed to see Moody and know that, from his expression, any question would have an answer too long to give at the moment. She looked like she wanted to ask him what could possibly be so important, now that the freaks in the masks were gone, to make them have to leave in such a hurry. Harry couldn't quite tell what question it was that she wanted to ask Molly -- who Harry didn't understand how his aunt could recognize -- but it looked like it was probably quite the doosey. When she met eyes with every single one of the Weasleys it was clear that she had so many questions to ask them about so many different things involving the last five years that she didn't even know where to begin. The look she gave Lupin was one of a familiarity that Harry had never seen in her face before for him, but she seemed to be contemplating leaving the hardest questions for him. Then, when she looked at Harry, there were questions there that didn't even have words behind them yet.

Petunia Dursley surprised them all, however, when she stared unblinking right at her nephew and instead of naturally asking anything about what was going on or why in the world he was so important that they had to go through all of this she asked Harry, "Did you do everything that you could to help him?"

No one in the room was as confused or surprised as Harry. He looked around at all of the others for the briefest of seconds before asking her to explain her question. "I'm sorry?"

"You asked me what the one question was that I could ask you to make me trust you enough to go with you. That's my question. I know you hate him, but when Vernon came out into the backyard and that-that w-w-w-w-wit-woman attacked you, did you do everything that you possibly could to save your uncle?"

Harry didn't have the slightest idea how to answer her, but he opened his mouth anyway, hoping that the right words would just come out. He didn't get the chance to answer her, though, as the first word out of his mouth was drowned out by all too familiar CRACK of someone Apparating in the backyard. It was quickly followed by many more coming from every which direction and sounding like an enormous roll of bubble wrap being violently twisted by a giant's hand. The BANGs were shortly followed by screams from pedestrians seeing people appearing out of thin air echoing all down Privet Drive. Instinctively Harry's hand went to the back pocket of his torn jeans only to come up empty, wandless. While the eyes of the wizards in the room searched wildly for the barrage of wizards that they knew were about to drop in on them, Harry's brilliant green eyes remained locked in overbright panic on those of his aunt, who was still waiting for the answer to her question. Aunt and nephew regarded each other, both of them knowing that he needed to answer her and do it quickly.

Time had finally run out for them all.

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If you've had half as much fun reading this chapter as I've had writing it, well then I've had twice as much fun writing it as you've had reading it. Thanks for reading!