Fly Me Back

From "Emily Post's Etiquette"

Chapter 33, Pages 600-601

"At Times of Loss and Grieving"

The Role of Friends When a Death Occurs

Immediately on hearing of the death, intimate friends of the deceased should call or go to the house of mourning and ask whether they can be of service. There are countless ways in which they can be helpful, from assisting with such material needs of the family as food and child care, to helping with notifications and details of the funeral, making phone calls, and answering the door.

When you hear of the death of a less intimate friend, you call at the home or funeral parlor according to the directions contained in the newspaper notice. At the house, you visit briefly with the family. At a funeral home you sign the register and offer the family your sympathy. If by chance you do not see them, you should write a letter to the family at once. Telephoning is not improper, but it may cause inconvenience by typing up the line, which is always needed at these times for notifying members of the family and/or making necessary arrangements.

What to Say

In speaking to members of the bereaved family in a different part of the room form the coffin or even in another room adjacent to that where the coffin lies, what you say depends entirely on your relationship to the family. Acquaintances and casual friends need say no more than "I'm so sorry" or perhaps "He was a wonderful person." Closer friends might ask whether there is anything they can do to help or say that "We are going to miss John so much, too." Visitors should not ask about the illness or the death, but in some cases widows or widowers feel a need to talk about it. If they do bring the subject up, their friends should offer as much comfort as possible by listening and discussing it.

In reply to visitors' comments, the family members need say only "Thank you for coming," or "Thank you so much," or "You're very kind."

Visiting friends who happen to meet at a funeral home greet each other just as they ordinarily would. If a stranger is present, and introductions are made, the response is the usual one, "I'm very glad to meet you." Naturally, laughing and giggling are in very poor taste, but short chat about subjects other than the unhappy reason for the meeting is perfectly correct.

*

Harry Potter : Fly Me Back

Chapter Five : "Chapter 33, Pages 600-601"

Harry wasn't entirely positive, but from his line of vision from just inside the back door way, the sky appeared somewhat different from what it had looked like when he had been out in the backyard for his walk. He couldn't imagine why. The sky had virtually been the same since recorded history when people actually took the time to care what the sky looked like. Granted, these were the same people that thought that everything revolved around the earth, but he supposed that if the only way to look at the sky was with a man's own two eyes, it might appear that way. The point was that, of the stars that they put up on the map many thousands of years ago, most of them were still up there. There was no reason why what had happened in a span of ninety minutes -- tops -- at number four, Privet Drive, would change something so huge after thousands and thousands of years of stability. Yet somehow, it had.

It hadn't changed the way that Professor Trelawney, his Divination teacher at Hogwarts, always claimed things would change after a dramatic event in a person's life. The moon hadn't gone a mysterious, misty red. The stars weren't any less bright than they were before. The backdrop of space wasn't any blacker than it had been before, except for maybe right above the neighborhood, but that was just as easily explained by the Obliviators turning out all of the streetlights while they worked their magic on the memories of the neighbors. Physically, the sky looked just exactly the way it had when he'd left it, peaceful and welcoming.

Still, the sky looked colder somehow, and he knew that his feet didn't want to leave the ground. They were a lot happier on the ground where there was something under them and they could be warm and safe. They didn't want to be dangling over the rain clouds that were starting to roll in from the northwest, let alone flying through them. They didn't want anything to do with the cold that comes with the altitude that they were going to have to be flying at to remain undetected by the random Muggles looking up at the otherwise beautiful night sky. He knew it was completely irrational, but at the same time he was fairly sure that rationality had nothing to do with it. His feet were much more in control of what he was doing than his head was.

If his head were the one running the show, he would be much more capable of telling his feet to shut up and let him do the thinking for them all. His head would know that once they were outside they were going to be taking off from the middle of an entire parliament of still-unconscious owls. They were going to be standing the backyard where She had attacked them, where She had murdered his uncle and hurt both Bill and Mr Weasley. His head would know that every second that he and his rescue party wasted before getting airborne was another second that more Death Eaters could show up at the house to finish the job that She had begun. His head would know that Mr Weasley was only going to be able to buy them so much time before the Ministry came looking for him.

Then again, it was his head that usually got him and Ron and Hermione into trouble in the first place. Maybe he should just listen to his feet.

His feet, along with the rest of him, weren't given much of a choice as he felt a gentle but quite forceful nudge in the back from the tip of Kingsley's wand. "I know you don't want to, Harry, but you have to. Go on," he urged softly.

Knowing that the Auror (or soon to be ex-Auror, if Fudge had his way, Harry guessed) had never and would never intentionally lead him astray, Harry followed the order, turned to his back to what remained of the doorframe, and moved his feet sideways along another six inches before they stopped dead again. Dead in their tracks. Stuck. He couldn't move. His right foot was stuck. And when he looked down to see why his foot was stuck, he had to look back up to the sky again thanks to a vivid reminder of why he had had to look up in the first place. His foot was stuck and it didn't want to move and his head didn't want to be in control because that would mean that he would have to realize that his foot was snagged on the cufflink of Uncle Vernon's dress shirt that he had worn to work that day. His head sent only a brief message to his feet before it tried to shut off again.

We're stuck, boys!

Numbly, Harry felt his foot rise up and down and swish side to side, shaking crazily at the cufflink. He fought the urge to curse his uncle for never buying him jeans of his own instead of passing down to him the worn jeans that Dudley had outgrown. Plenty children all over the world wore their big brother or big sister's old clothes all the time. There was no need to be angry with his uncle for that. These particular jeans had been worn out enough around the hem from being too long and dragging along on the pavement that all that remained of them was the tell-tale groupings of bluish-white fringe. It was one particularly thick band of worn strings at the top of his cuff that caught on the cufflink like a fish on a hook.

Harry half expected his uncle to sit up and start yelling at him for being such an idiot. A child would shake that foot-cufflink-hand combination around until they fell apart at the link. A man would just reach down and unhook himself. Had he, Vernon Dursley, raised a man or a child? For the first time in his life, Harry actually wanted his uncle to call him an idiot. Vernon could call him a moron, an imbecile, whatever he wanted. Harry wanted, more than anything else at the moment, for his uncle to sit up and yell at him. Uncle Vernon could send him to his room for three days without supper if he wanted. He just had to sit up and do it.

Then again, that was why his feet were the ones in control and not his head. Silly boy, they told him, dead people don't sit up and they certainly don't talk!

Harry looked to his right where Kingsley was once again preparing to prod him along while his eyebrows raised to ask for the cause of the hold up. Harry tried to look down, really he did. But, for all of his trying, his head was back in control for a second and it told him not to look down. If he looked down, it would make it all real. And at the moment, he was quite happy to enjoy the veil of denial that was pretty much holding his mind together for him at all since this had all begun. Oh, how he wanted his feet to be the ones in control, but his stubborn head suddenly didn't want to let go. Since his feet weren't going to be able to take over, he gave in long enough to wave his hand down in the general direction of his uncle, hoping that Kingsley would see it and know what to do.

"Tonks," Kingsley called out softly. When she turned around, he directed her attention down to Uncle Vernon and his still-and-now-forever-unseeing eyes.

She gasped, and with an apologetic look at Harry pointed her wand over the man. There was a comforting smile on her face that he realized was meant for his uncle as she whispered a soft incantation. From the tip of her wand, a long white sheet appeared and gracefully floated down over him, mercifully covering him from head to toe. Harry kept his eyes on hers as he felt Kingsley perform a spell of his own, disentangling Harry from his uncle and covering the man's arm with the sheet.

"I'm really sorry, Harry," Tonks started. Her face was contorted in a way that made Harry think that maybe she was going to change her appearance for the trip they were about to take. Tonks was a metamorphmagus, which meant that she could change her appearance at will. It was a skill that had come in quite handy not only for her as an Auror, but also as a member of the Order. If Harry's head were able to think about it enough to form thoughts, it would make perfect sense to him that she would do so before they took off. Her yellow curls didn't become purple spikes or anything, though. Her face just remained tight in struggle until she managed to come out with, "I know that we weren't exactly nice to him when we saw you off from the -- "

"JUST WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, SIR?"

"Not now, Tonks," Kingsley interrupted gently when they all heard the Minister of Magic exploding inside the house. Harry saw him smile at her apologetically as he urged, "We can talk about this later."

"Right. Sorry."

Tonks offered Kingsley an apologetic nod then turned her back once again on the escaping company, leading the charge out of the demolished house and into the spell-scorched backyard. With a little nudge, Kingsley sent Harry after her through the back doorway and passed the end of the sheet where Uncle Vernon's business-leather clad shoes were lifting the sheet at awkward angles.

As he inched his way through, Harry tried like mad to once again keep his focus up and away toward the sky so that he couldn't take stock of any more of the damage. Seeing all of the death, injury, and devastation around him only made his head hurt worse than it already did. By the time he was safely passed what remained of the screen door, his headache was becoming so awful that it was getting hard to even see straight. Part of him had hoped that walking through the doorway would have been like emerging through some fairy tale magical portal, that he would be coming through to a side where he could leave the disaster behind. Instead, it was more like getting a new pair of glasses -- he never really noticed the frames until they were in some way changed. He may never have noticed the doorway before, but as he walked through it this time, he was unable to tear his ill-adjusted eyes away from every gouge and splinter.

Still, Harry forced himself forward. He knew that if he stopped again, Kingsley's well-meaning, comforting hand would be on his shoulder to urge him along and the last thing he wanted at the moment was to be comforted. Comforted could come later, long after he had felt whatever it was that he was supposed to be feeling at the moment. If grief and anger were to follow, so be it, but he wasn't going to allow his heart any executive decisions until his head was back in control. And, seeing as how his feet weren't about to be allowing that any time in the near future, he didn't have the luxury of comfort for himself or anyone else. So forward on his feet he went and hoped that they wouldn't relinquish their powers of control any time soon.

It wasn't until Harry felt a sharp tickle in the hole of his shoe that he realized that he was on the grass. He was in the yard, out the door, and away from most everything that had happened. He was outside, passed the damage. Time had been moving so slowly for him that he felt that it was going to take forever, but there he was. He could breathe again. They were outside, almost home free. All they had to do was get on their brooms and kick off into the air. He would be back in the skies, his favorite place in all the world, too high up to look at anything but the moon and stars. He'd be able to breathe again.

His feet started to itch as if they were perfectly aware of the fact that they were not yet in the air and therefore not yet safe. Over and over he told them to relax, not to bring down his hope that they were going to escape without any further damage. He had to believe that they were going to be all right. He had to believe that they were going to be safe. He had to.

Holding on to that hope became a little bit harder when he heard his aunt's voice crying softly behind him. "Please . . . Please let me see him."

Honestly afraid to see what he knew was a crumbled look of torture on his aunt's face, Harry couldn't make himself turn around. All he could do was listen as Professor Lupin tried to calm her down long enough to get them up in the air.

"Mrs Dursley . . . "

"Please. Haven't I done everything you have asked of me? Now it's your turn to do something for me. I want to see my husband. Please."

"Mrs Dursley, I really don't think that that is such a good idea."

"Why? What's wrong with him? What did they do to him that he needs to be covered like that?"

Harry was about to turn around and try to help Lupin in comforting his aunt when he heard the witch called Molly speaking in a soft voice to the newly made widow.

"Petunia, it isn't that. I assure you that he looks just fine. But you have a little too much to deal with right now and we need you to have a clear head right now, or as clear as possible under the circumstances. Seeing Vernon isn't going to do that for you."

"We'll bring him to you tomorrow," Lupin added. "Arthur won't let anything happen to your husband, Mrs Dursley. He will care for him as if he were a member of his own family. He is going to take the best care of him possible so that the rest of us can take you and your son to safety."

"Which we need to be doing right now," growled Moody from what sounded to Harry like just inside the doorway. "Out you go, Mr Dursley."

Knowing that he was probably going to have to step in between his ill-tempered cousin and his equally irascible protector, Harry turned around to face the back door again. He begged his head to let his eyes focus enough so that he could see only Moody -- who was taking Dudley by the oversized elbow and half-pulling, half-pushing the man-child over the threshold of the back doorway -- and not the covered body that he was standing over. Harry didn't have to work too hard with his eyes, though, because they popped wide open in shock. Dudley, too stunned (perhaps) with everything happening to and around him, was actually allowing himself to be pushed out the door without so much as a grunt of dissent.

The rest of their party clomped out behind them until they were all standing in the middle of the Dursleys's backyard. As soon as they had the room to work, the twins went about the business of conjuring a harness to hold Harry's trunk and Hedwig's cage to Fred's broomstick. Bill conjured a second harness to attach the bag that the twins had packed for the Dursleys to Kingsley's broom. Tonks and Moody stood apart from the group for a moment, talking in whispers. Harry watched them as they both gestured with their hands in various directions and numbers. He looked away quickly when they both happened to look towards him and stopped talking. When he looked back, it was as if they had been waiting for him to look back because Tonks offered him a reassuring smile before Moody took her by the shoulder and turned them both so that their backs were to him.

For the slightest of seconds, Harry felt that familiar surge of anger and frustration that he usually felt around the members of the Order. He hated that they spoke in whispers and quickly stopped talking whenever he would come into a room. He hated that they only answered certain questions for him and that even those answers were as vague as possible to keep him in the dark. Wasn't he the one, after all, that all of this was about? Wasn't Voldemort after him more than anyone else? Hadn't he been through enough that they could see that he was perfectly capable of handling whatever it was that was going on? Didn't it make sense for his own survival that he be just as informed as the rest of them?

Of course, it was also one of the things that endeared them all to him. They let him be a kid, which, in all reality, he still was. He was still only sixteen years old. He knew perfectly well that he'd seen more than any sixteen year old ever should have to in that span of time. And, considering how the evening was going, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that he couldn't hear Tonks and Moody. His head hurt enough from both the knocks he'd taken and from the sheer effort it was taking just to keep himself together without screaming for all the world to hear. Maybe, just this once, he wasn't going to argue with them. Let them be in control. His head hurt too much anyway.

Suddenly it hurt a great deal more. From right behind his ear a shout came blurting out, the force of it so jarring that Harry clamped his hands over his ears and whipped around. He glared pleadingly at his aunt to keep her voice down and save him the pain, but she was far too busy accusing Professor Lupin of being completely mental to notice him.

"You want me to what?" Aunt Petunia looked at the broomstick in Lupin's hand like it wasn't good enough to even be kindling for their old fireplace. Then she looked with even more distaste over at the owner of the broomstick, Tonks, and what was now her curly green hair and shook her head violently. "I will do no such thing!"

Remus tried to maintain his mantle of comforter and guide as he gently took her elbow to redirect her attention to him and the young Auror's broom. "Mrs Dursley, I'm sure it looks rather strange to you, but we have no other way to transport you and your son to safety."

Aunt Petunia looked at him accusingly, like she just knew that somehow he was trying to make this as miserable as possible for her. "You can't just wave your w-wand-things and go there? That is what that sound is that keeps happening all around the house at all hours of the night, is it not?"

"It is. And yes we can, Mrs Dursley, but you can't. Apparating is a very difficult thing, even for most fully trained wizards." Looking for a quick example (seeing as how all of the other wizards in the yard were all capable of Apparating), Lupin indicated Harry and his Firebolt. He smiled reassuringly at Harry so that it would be known that Lupin had the utmost confidence in him and that he was only being used as an example. "Not that he isn't quite capable of doing so, but even Harry doesn't Apparate yet. He isn't of age and can't test for his license until next summer. We have to take him in the same way."

"There are no other ways?" Aunt Petunia looked witheringly at the broomstick in Lupin's hand, dreading to hear the answer. She knew she had run out of options, but if it kept her from riding around on a household cleaning supply in the middle of the night, she was going to exhaust those options. "There has to be something."

Lupin dipped his chin in acknowledgement, but there was a certain intensity to his voice that only Harry and maybe some of the others who knew him would have been able to pick up. He was losing patience for the newly made widow and she was wasting time at not only the risk to herself and her son, but all of the others. "There is something we call a 'portkey', but they need to be authorized by the Ministry, and based on what just happened inside the house, I doubt that we can be expecting any favors or authorizations from Fudge for our benefit."

Aunt Petunia eyed the twins and pointed a quivering bony finger in their direction. To Lupin she asked, "What about that thing that they did to the fireplace? They blew up my fireplace -- "

There was a quick twitch under Lupin's jaw before he commandingly took hold of both of Aunt Petunia's upper arms. He looked her hard in the face, speaking as clearly as possible. "Mrs Dursley, I understand your anxiety. Really, I do. But I don't think you truly understand the seriousness of this situation. So here it is." When Aunt Petunia opened her mouth argue (You'd better believe I understand the situation -- my husband is dead!), he let go of her arms to show her that he was still on her side. Quietly but quite urgently he told her, "As you very well know, your nephew was attacked tonight by witches who are loyal to the wizard who has tried to kill him on several occasions and has killed both your sister and your husband. And the fact is, we do not know why. We don't know why they chose this particular night or why they chose to take Harry's wand but not Harry himself. We don't know a great deal about any of this. And that means, Mrs Dursley, that we are far from safe. We are standing here out in the open without any protection other than what we can give to one another and let me assure you, Mrs Dursley, that if Voldemort himself should return here, there will be no protection. No one has ever survived an attack by Voldemort -- except Harry. We cannot protect you and we cannot truly protect him. Therefore, we need to leave and we need to leave now. I don't mean to be harsh, but considering the circumstances, I really do not have a choice. You need to take this broomstick, walk over there to Tonks with it, stand over the end of it with her and hold her about the waist. You need to hold on tight until she lands. And when it is all over, you will be someplace where we can protect you and your son and you will have the time to realize everything that has happened. Now, if you please . . . "

"Remus . . . "

At the soft whimper from a few feet away, Harry turned to his left where the witch called Molly was starting to look quite shaky on her feet. He immediately started over toward her, not even realizing that he was doing it. Before he made it two steps, though, Lupin had put a hand up to stop him. Without a word, his father's best friend took over, running to the witch's side while calling to Tonks and pointing her to Aunt Petunia. It was only as the wizard was running that Harry noticed that Lupin was running in a way that favored his left leg. The guilt struck Harry and made his head ache even more. Lupin was hurting now because of all of this, too. How many more people were going to have to be in pain tonight just to get him out of the house? Hadn't they all been through enough?

"Molly?"

Lupin reached her, and, paling slightly with his concern, he looked her up and down to check over her injuries. Based on the tell tale tightness in his jaw, he must have realized that his lack of color was practically a flush compared to the ghostly pale glow she was taking on from the obvious pain in her head and leg. The increasingly tired looking wizard broke eye contact with her and searched out Bill, who was holding onto the back of his head while he waited with his brothers for the order to move out. Lupin's brow furrowed in greater concern as he looked quickly over to Harry, who guessed that it was apparent that he wasn't exactly feeling all that well either. It was in that look that Harry saw the first sign of real despair in Lupin's face. The man was starting to wonder if they were all going to make it out of there in one piece now, too. Needing more than anything at the moment to have Lupin to stay positive at least long enough for them all to get out of the backyard, Harry tried to smile at him, and seeing the look, Lupin took the smile and nodded slowly but definitively. "Right . . . Okay. Moody . . . "

Moody stared down the Weasley brothers one last time with both eyes locked as he clomped backwards to join with Lupin and Molly. The men each draped one of her arms over their shoulders while Moody issued one more set of orders to the brothers. "No detours. We'll see you at the second checkpoint. Don't wait for us if we miss each other. Keep going. We'll have your mother alert the others so that if you get into trouble, send up sparks and someone will be along to help."

Lupin looked at the boys and opened his mouth to add to the sentiment, but Bill seemed to understand what he was going to say before he said it. Bill interrupted him with reassuring words of his own. "With our lives, Professor."

"All right then," Lupin nodded gratefully. "Shall we?"

Without another word, three wands were raised and with a solitary BANG, three bodies disappeared from the backyard to a shriek from Petunia and a yelp from Dudley.

"That would be our cue to get out of here as well," Kingsley offered definitively after a quick moment of relieved silence. The first of them were away and they were that much closer to safety.

The first real pangs of sadness tugged on Harry as he watched the tall, handsomely balding wizard reach out a strong hand to Dudley. His cousin seemed to barely comprehend what was going on because he very mechanically took the outstretched hand and allowed Kingsley to pump it without objecting at all.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr Dursley. If you would come with me, please . . . " When Dudley didn't move, Kingsley held steadily to the hand and pulled the teenager closer to him. "Come along. I know you heard Lupin tell your mother what to do. Stand with your feet on either side of this broomstick with me and hold on tight. You won't have to do anything else. Just hold on to me and I'll get you there safely in one piece."

With that same robotic manner, Dudley very quietly straddled the broomstick and wrapped his hand suffocatingly around Kingsley's middle. Empowered by her son's apparent bravery, Aunt Petunia swept her hair out of her face and marched over to Tonks and did the same.

"If we must do this, let's get it over and done with," she pronounced.

Everyone else followed suit with Harry and the Weasleys mounting their brooms in almost perfect synchronicity. While Fred and Kingsley checked the rigging of their baggage one last time, Harry took a quick moment to reassure his aunt and cousin one last time that they were going to be all right. "They will take good care of you. Just trust them and listen to them and you will be all right."

"And when will we see you," Aunt Petunia asked him. Saying inside the house that she would trust them to take her and her son away was apparently quite different from actually doing it. "Or will it be like last summer when they took you without any explanation but a letter?"

"I will see you," Harry promised. He looked to Tonks for confirmation. "As soon as you've settled up tonight, you'll let me know that you're all all right?"

"First thing," the witch nodded forcefully so that both Harry and his relatives could see.

"See?" Harry offered his aunt a smile of hope. "They know what they're doing."

"We've had escape scenarios for your entire family planned for a long time now," Tonks said reassuringly. "We have a safe house waiting specifically for you."

"We just didn't think we'd be doing this with so few wizards on hand," Bill said under his breath so that only Harry and the twins could hear him. A little louder he asked, "Kingsley, are you sure you don't want me to go with you? It would balance us out, three wizards in each direction."

Kingsley shook his head. "Chances are, if anyone is going to be followed, it will most likely be Harry and the rest of you. They'll know we'd take him to headquarters and with Harry without a wand, we can't take the chance of him being under protected. We'll be safer doing it this way."

"In that case," Bill reached out and shook hands with Kingsley. "Fly safe."

"You'll have an owl from us shortly," Tonks smiled.

Sensing that this was the end of the conversation, the Dursleys pulled even tighter around the waists of their protective escorts. They both whimpered as their feet left the ground and Tonks and Kingsley hovered for a moment to get their charges adjusted to the sensation of being on the broomsticks. Harry even thought he saw his cousin smile as seconds later he and the Weasleys watched the four of them shoot forward and disappear into the hot July night.

Then, from out of nowhere, another voice caused the group to all jump back into the moment. "WEASLEY!!!"

The Brothers Weasley all looked back into what was left of the Dursley household and broke out laughing. From somewhere inside they could still hear Cornelius Fudge futilely flapping about and, in all honesty, making quite a fool of himself doing so. His screams echoed in the backyard, scaring the few remaining owls back into consciousness. They all took his bellow as a sign that they needed to leave the yard at once and fluttered away in groups of three and four, hooting angrily at the screeching voice in the house below.

"I think they have the right idea," Fred laughed.

"It isn't funny," Bill told his brother, although he did have half a crooked grin on his face as well. "Mum's going to go completely thermal when she hears about Percy."

"Good," said George with an ugly tone. "He deserves it."

"But she doesn't," argued Bill. "But Fred's right. Let's get a move on. If we aren't at the checkpoint by the time Mad-Eye gets there, he's going to make us all miserable for the next month."

Silently they all agreed with him and with one swell of collective movement, the quartet of wizards was in the air. Higher and higher they climbed, first straight up and then at an angle, flying into what was possibly the only cool air over all of England. Before Harry even knew it, they were over the countryside with nothing to see for miles but green and freshness, the city lights long behind and below them. The air grew almost frigid the higher they went, but Harry didn't care to notice. He was in the air.

He knew that he should probably be thinking about other things, but for just these few moments, he wanted to let himself pretend that nothing was wrong. He was in the air and nothing could hurt him here. There had never been and he was quite certain there would never be another feeling like this in all the world. To have the entire world below his feet, away from him and unable to follow was nothing compared to just the sensation of peace that he felt. Cold as it may be, he was safe and warm inside. This was the only place in the world where he could just be Harry.

That certain feeling of ecstasy, he knew in his head, couldn't last forever. When his feet touched back down on the ground, his problems would be there waiting for him like gravity to hold him down and paralyzed again. For these precious moments while he was up in the air, he knew he was somehow free, but he also knew that this too was all in his mind. Things were just as dangerous here in the skies, as Moody was kind enough to remind him of when they caught up at the second checkpoint. They could be seen by Muggles. They could have been followed by Death Eaters. There were any of an entire array of problems that could have followed him to the skies, but as far as he was concerned, he really didn't care. He wanted to give himself this time to just enjoy this one (as of yet untouched by evil) part of his life. He always hated giving it up over the summer holidays and, no matter what the circumstances, the first ride was still always the best.

As with all good things, it came to an end far too quickly. As soon as he heard Moody tell them to start their descent an hour after they had taken off, Harry's heart dropped back down out of his head and into his toes. The familiar thumping of his heart in his ears that he enjoyed in the air was suddenly a great deal faster with an unmistakably childish desire to scream and throw a fit until he was allowed to have his way and never leave his broomstick again. But follow the Auror downward he did until the lights of the target neighborhood were more than just twinkling pinkish-yellow bugs. They grew and grew until they had definition as street lamps and headlights, zooming around carelessly, unaware of anything in the world but their purpose of guiding people toward a destination.

Harry just didn't think they would be guiding him and his guard to that particular destination.

While the others landed and prepared to close another formation around him, Harry blinked several times to clear out his eyes. They must have been a little more frozen from the altitude they had flown from than he thought because as he set his feet on the ground and looked around him, he could have sworn he knew exactly where he was. But there had to be some mistake. They would never bring him here, not after everything they -- he -- had been through. There was just no way that they would ask him to take sanctuary here. Yet, the more he blinked the less he could deny that his vision was in perfect order. There was no mistaking it now -- he was standing half a block away from number twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Bill shouldered the end of his broom and clapped a hand on Harry's back, trying as inconspicuously as possible to start the younger wizard walking forward. "C'mon, Harry, I know you're tired, but we're almost -- "

"Are you kidding me?" Harry interrupted him, not even remotely trying to hide the incredulous horror in his voice. "Do you realize where you brought me? After everything that's happened, and Sirius, and-and you're still using -- "

Before Harry could finish his sentence, Moody jumped in with his usual overly-cautious warning, "Not here. Never talk about things where ears can pry, Boy! You know better."

Bill smiled tiredly. It seemed that he was finally allowing the pain from his mid-air collision with his father to catch up with him. In fact, the entire group of wizards that were standing at the end of the street was suddenly looking much more tired and ragged than they had even when they were still up in the air. Their eyes all still looked incredibly alert to the sights and sounds around them, but their bodies were moving much more slowly. Bill's smile stuck out in the darkness in comparison to the faces around him. His voice, however, seemed just as tired as the rest of his body. "Give him a break, Mad-Eye. He's had a rough night."

"That's no excuse for sloppiness," Moody snapped. "Sloppiness gets the best of us killed, Weasley. I've buried more wizards and friends in my years than I care to count. There is no need to add to the number because of carelessness. Times are hard enough. Now, if you don't mind, you take up the rear so we can get these boys in the house."

Whether he was actually feeling admonished by the man or just too tired to argue Harry couldn't tell, but Bill nodded and replied, "Yes, Sir."

They didn't say anything else as they marched down the street under cover of darkness, the wizards forming a protective diamond around Harry. Moody was charging ahead at full speed, his cloak thrown over his shoulders to give himself full mobility should anyone strike from the bushes that lined the sidewalks. The twins flanked Harry on either side, their wands raised but not yet illuminated to keep their approach to the hidden house undetectable to eyes unadjusted to the night darkness. Bill followed close behind -- a little too close. His toes caught the back of Harry's heels on several different steps, sending the entire entourage surging forward in a half-running, half-skipping momentum to keep from sending their hands scraping to the pavement. On Moody's glare, Bill gave Harry a few extra steps of lead before following him again until they reached the sidewalk between numbers eleven and thirteen, Grimmauld Place.

Battered and grimy, a dark black door appeared in front of them, followed by equally disgusting walls and windows until a full sized house had materialized in between numbers eleven and thirteen. Harry glared angrily at the serpent shaped silver door knocker, wanting to rip it and every nail that held it out of the door. That serpent was a mere hint of reminder of just how much he hated this house and everything that it had stood for. No one seemed to notice him, though, because Moody went ahead and tapped his wand to the right of the knocker just once, releasing a chain reaction of clink noises and the sound of metal scraping metal as the chains slid away to open up. To Harry's disappointment, the mangled looking door creaked inward and revealed a dark, evil looking front hallway for them to enter into. Number twelve, Grimmauld Place looked as welcoming as ever.

As soon as the five wizards climbed the worn stone steps and were inside the darkened hall, the door slammed itself shut, gobbling them up hungrily. Harry looked back at the door, fighting every urge he had not to run up to it and pull savagely on the handle to try and let himself back out. He hated this house with every passion he'd ever had and being back inside it only made the feeling even worse. Maybe it was just him, but seeing severed house-elf heads and troll legs that had been fashioned into umbrella stands didn't exactly say "homey" to him. The black drapes that hung over all of the living portraits that lined the halls, while they kept the portrait occupants calm, did nothing to make it any more welcoming. He couldn't understand how people could live surrounded by such depressive darkness. Every minute he had spent in it last year had only increased his understanding of why Sirius would choose to run away from his family without looking back. He hated the house for keeping his godfather for as long as it did.

Most of all, in the entire three seconds that he had been in the house, he had already expected Sirius to come running through the kitchen door to greet him at least ten times. This house had been unbearable as it was. To have to live in it without Sirius was going to be impossible.

It wasn't his godfather who came charging through the hallway to greet them, though. Mrs Weasley came running down the stairs so fast that she had to hold on to the rickety banister to keep from taking a tumble down the rest of them. The light in the hallway was dim to keep from awakening things that they would all rather stayed asleep and quiet, but even in what little light there was, Harry could see Mrs Weasley hurriedly wiping tears from her face with her free hand. From the soft sniffle he heard her make, she had been crying for quite a while. He remembered all too well how terrified she was that nearly everyone in the family was involved in the Order and could only imagine what sort of thoughts had been going through her head when the majority of her family had left just hours ago to come to his rescue. His heart broke for her.

When Mrs Weasley got to the bottom of the stairs, the foot on the floor swung out before the rest of her body could join it, sending her nearly flying through the hallway. All of the wizards at the end of the hall rushed forward to help, but Moody was closest and managed to get to her first, catching her just in time to keep her from crashing to the floor. The pair laughed awkwardly while he helped her straighten up. The woman forced a smile on her face as she smoothed her long crocheted dress over her hips and wiggled her ankles, trying to find her balance again. When she looked back up at all of her boys again, the tears were somehow gone.

"Thank you, Alastor," she whispered.

"My pleasure, Molly." Moody looked her over with pursed lips, studying her still obviously frazzled demeanor. "All right?"

"Almost," she nodded and tried to look at least a little more convincing. Her brow furrowed though when she looked down at the hand he was holding her shaking hand with like she was feeling something that they couldn't see. As soon as she saw the look of concern on her face, Harry remembered that Moody hadn't exactly escaped the Dursleys' uninjured either. "You've got the time now. Go get that checked out," she half-told, half-begged him.

"It's all right, Molly," Moody started to protest. When he saw the look of resolve coming over her face, he finished with, "But if it will make you feel better . . . "

"Minerva brought Madam Pomfrey with her when we informed her of what was going on." Mrs Weasley looked once more at Moody's hand with a sharp intake of breath then turned his shoulder and sent him on his way into the door at the far end of the hall where they normally had their secret meetings for the Order. It wasn't until she heard him open the door to go in that she let the breath out again. She looked at the boys with all seriousness. "She's waiting on all of you."

"We're fine, Mum," whispered Fred gently. Mirroring his brother's reassuring smile, George added, "Really, Mum. We're all right. All of us."

Mrs Weasley apparently couldn't resist any longer because she rushed forward to her sons, pulling them all to her chest in relief. Harry tried to pull back enough so that it would be just a family moment, but she latched onto his sleeve before he could get away and squeezed the oxygen out of him with the rest of their party. Two sobbing sniffles later, she released them only enough so that she could look them all over to be sure they were real or uninjured, whichever reason Harry wasn't sure.

She continued to look them all over, her gaze lingering the longest on Harry, as she asked, "Are you sure you're all all right?"

"We're fine, Mum," said Bill, squeezing her bicep in reassurance. "Nothing happened that we weren't all taught very well how to handle. Right?"

The mother narrowed her eyes on her eldest son with dark suspicion. She obviously knew she was catching him in a lie and she was not in the least bit happy with it. "Then explain to me why there are holes in the sleeve of this brand new shirt and why I felt blood on the back of your head, young man."

"It's okay, Mum," he protested and raised his hand gently to the side of her face to pull in her focus before dutifully kissing her on the cheek. "I can get a new shirt."

"You know exactly what I mean," she glared with her Mum-eyes. "What happened?"

All at once, a flood of information started pouring out on Mrs Weasley in shouts of anger and frustration from her sons. They all tried telling the story at once from their own point of view with wild gestures and the stamping of feet. Harry's head hurt a little too much to catch all of it, but he was pretty sure he heard a few rather colorful words being used to describe what happened between Mr Weasley, Percy, and Fudge. The more they told her, the louder they got trying to outtell the others until they were all finally yelling. Suddenly Mrs Weasley must have remembered where they were, but she remembered far too late in the conversation because there was a collective frump of curtains along the length of the wall.

" . . . PERCY FIRED -- "

"Would you all hush up," Mrs Weasley whispered as loudly as she dared. "You're going to wake up the -- "

"FILTH! SCUM! BLOOD TRAITORS! YOU DARE TO BRING THAT MUDBLOOD BACK INTO THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS!"

" -- portraits," Mrs Weasley groaned in exasperation.

The boys all dove for various portraits and pulled out their wands, attempting to stun them all back into silence. As always, the most vocal and obnoxious portrait, the one of Sirius's mother, gave up an unbelievably strong fight for an inanimate object. Mrs Weasley had been near tears again as it was, but she was brought to the brink of breaking down again as she began a battle with Mrs Black. On and on Mrs Black shouted and screamed, flinging insults at the Weasleys and Harry.

"Will you kindly shut up already," Mrs Weasley finally sobbed, her body shrugging in on itself and her wand dropping to the floor. "You miserable old woman . . . I HATE THIS HOUSE!"

"WELL NO ONE IS ASKING YOU TO STAY HERE, NOW, ARE WE?" Mrs Black retorted.

"Molly?"

Several wizards came charging out of the room at the end of the hall where Moody had disappeared into just moments before, concerned about all of the noise in the hallway. As soon as they saw the boys struggling to calm the portraits down, they all drew their wands and took charge of the remaining paintings, many of which had subjects who went on cursing the occupants of the Black house and their bloodlines long after the drapes were covering them. Muffled though the shrieks were, they took a good minute to die down enough for Harry to be able to take his hands away from his ears. Old Mrs Black was the last to give in, fighting with all her might against Professor McGonagall and the twins. Then, at last, the only sound remaining was Mrs Weasley's quiet crying in front of the portrait she hated more than any of the others.

"What a miserable old hag," Mrs Weasley moaned, tearing up again. "I swear, I don't know how Sirius lived with that woman for as long as he did. She's awful. I hate her. I hate her, I hate this house, I hate-hate this awful old . . . "

"Shh . . . Shh . . . "

Bill wrapped long, comforting arms around his mother so that she could sob all over his already damaged shirt. He looked over the top of her head at his brothers, all three of them exchanging helpless glances with one another. None of them could imagine just how terrified she had been every day since Harry had come out of the Triwizard maze just over a year ago, but they hated to see her so worried at the same time. Bill looked at Harry with a weak smile, like he wanted to tell his friend that everything was all right and that her fear would pass. But Harry, having seen the forms that the boggart took when she faced it last summer holiday, knew that the fear wouldn't pass. And as brave a face as the others put on, he knew that they were just as scared. They had to be. Of course, they didn't need to be. Between Mrs Weasley and himself, he was fairly certain they had the fear factor covered.

"We really are okay, Mum," George told her, his twin nodding ferociously at his side.

"Your father isn't back yet," the woman argued, sobbing anxiously into her son's shirt.

"He'll be here in just a bit, Mum," said Bill, still speaking in a soothing whisper. "There's nothing to worry about."

From the doorway at the end of the hall, a wizard that Harry didn't recognize called softly and nodded his head back in towards the room. "Bill . . . "

"Yeah," agreed Bill. He pulled back slightly from his mother so that he could look down into her face. "Let's go sit down, Mum. I think we could all use a few minutes, don't you?"

The man pulled his mother close again and kept his arms wrapped sideways around her as she sniffled and allowed her eldest child to guide her out of the darkened hallway into the fire lit room. As they walked, she muttered, "I'm so sorry for . . . I know I shouldn't be like this. It's just that things are getting so much worse than they were before and with all of you being so involved . . . "

Mrs Weasley couldn't finish her sentence, but Harry was pretty sure he knew what she was thinking. She had wrenched her head over Bill's shoulder so that she could look at him as they walked and her reddening eyes had said it all. Tonight had been all the evidence she needed -- they could only be lucky for so long.

" . . . one lucky young lady," Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts's stern but most beloved healer, was saying when Harry followed the others into the room. "You should be thankful that Arthur Weasley is as good a field healer as he is or you'd be in even more pain tonight." The woman looked up when she saw everyone coming into the room and added in the direction of them all, "I know you all have things to discuss, but when you are ready to tuck in for the night, I want you to come find me, Molly. There is a sleeping potion with your name on it. No arguments."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Molly was saying from the sofa where she was stretched out.

Lupin was at her side, looking down at her with a lopsided grin. "Welcome home, huh?"

Molly didn't look in the least bit amused. She gritted her teeth as she retorted angrily, "Somehow, some day, I'm going to find a way to blame all of this on you."

Harry didn't hear what Lupin's answer was, although whatever it was, it inspired a chuckle from the witch. The amused sound drowned out the sounds of what was going on around him enough to provoke Madam Pomfrey to snap her fingers in front of his eyes and beg his attention a second time.

"Potter?"

He blinked at her, not realizing at first that she was the person standing in front of him. Even though he had heard her voice and heard it mentioned that she was in the house, he still wasn't expecting to see her. She just seemed out of place somehow. But then, seeing anyone from Hogwarts in this house never seemed quite right. She was too gentle hearted to be in a place as dark as this. Then again, he was fond enough of everyone in the room to say that they all were.

"He took a few knocks to the head, Poppy." Moody growled an answer for Harry when he still didn't manage to let Madam Pomfrey know what had happened to him. "And Figgy's cat got to him, too."

Madam Pomfrey started feeling around his head and all up and down his arms and torso. She clicked her tongue and muttered to herself the entire time, making a list of all of the minor scratches, the black eye, and the goose egg and gash on the back of his head. When she ran the length of his arms, she stopped at his fingers, pulling them a little closer to her face so that she could examine them a bit more carefully. Curious as to what she was seeing, Harry tried to pull his hands closer to his own eyes, but she quite forcefully yanked them back. He was able to look at them only long enough to see what he guessed she was seeing. His fingernails, which were lined with blood from feeling the cut on the back of his head when Lupin had checked him over in the kitchen, were also sporting a strange blue coloring that looked like he had stuck his hand into a tub of blue food dye. He could only guess that it was some sort of side effect from the jinx that She had used on him. Whatever it was, the healer reached into her carpet bag and pulled out a jar of white ointment that she handed to him.

"Dip your fingers in this now while I'm here and again tonight before you go to bed. If they still hurt in the morning . . . "

"But they don't hurt now," he protested.

She ignored him with that same forceful tone that she always used with him at school every time that he tried to convince her that he was all right and didn't need any of her attention. "If they still hurt in the morning, Potter, I want you to continue dipping your fingers every three hours until the pain and the coloring go away. It takes longer for the Electricus Curse effects to dissipate the more you avoid treatment, Potter, so don't forget. I won't be able to make that headache go away for you, but a full night's sleep should help it. I mean it, Potter -- a full night's sleep."

Harry faked a yawn for her, although the look on her face seemed to say that she knew he was faking it. Still, he faked it until it actually did stretch into a yawn, popping his jaw from the strain of opening so wide for so long. "A full night. I promise."

"See that you do," she said commandingly. There was a brief silence before her expression softened a little. She smiled so awkwardly that Harry didn't even have to guess what was coming next. He wanted to interrupt her and tell her that she didn't have to say anything, but before he could she was saying softly enough for only him to hear, "I'm very sorry about your uncle, Potter. Please, pass my condolences on to the rest of your relatives, would you?"

Mostly because he had not the first clue what he was supposed to say -- it wasn't like there was a handbook on how to behave in this particular situation -- Harry numbly replied, "I will. Thank you."

Madam Pomfrey stared at him with the strangest expression he had ever seen on her face for the longest time before she jolted herself back into the moment. Without any further acknowledgement she jerked her head to the side so that she could seek out her next patient. When she found him sitting on the arm of the chair his mother was sitting in, she crooked a finger at Bill and beckoned him over to her where the best light in the room was. "Now, Mr Weasley."

While the healer turned her attention, Harry took the opportunity to try and melt into the fireplace mantle. He'd never felt so out of place with these people in the entire time that he'd known them. They had just saved his life, but he hadn't the slightest idea what he was supposed to say to them next. "Thank you" wasn't going to be enough, but anything more than a simple expression of gratitude wasn't going to seem right either. He made it out. His uncle didn't. That just didn't seem right. He didn't have the words to say why it wasn't right, but it just wasn't. It was better just to hide.

Hiding turned out not to be an option, though. Without warning he was buried in a soft bush of brown and red hair and the oxygen left his lungs in a rush from several pairs of arms squeezing his arms to his chest in a vice. His first instinct was to struggle, but he quickly found that the more he struggled, the tighter the grip became. But when he heard Hermione's voice, he allowed himself to just stand there and wait for her to let go. She sounded so upset, he just couldn't bring himself to make it worse by pulling away.

"Oh, Harry, we were so worried," she said into his shoulder with a mixture of fear and relief. "When Fred came running into the kitchen saying that Death Eaters were . . . "

Hermione must have felt his body jolt at the words 'Death Eaters' -- he knew he did -- because she let her sentence trail off without any further explanation. Harry wasn't sure, but he almost wished that she would have finished the sentence because, to make up for the slip, she hugged onto him even tighter than before. He was honestly hoping that no one would give her any provocation to hug him any more because if she did, she was going to bust every rib in his chest. Not that really minded. It was Hermione and he didn't have a better friend in the world, except Ron. Her hugs he could handle.

The youngest of the Weasleys and the only daughter, Ginny, picked up where Hermione left off into Harry's other shoulder. "And then when Mad-Eye and Professor Lupin came back . . . Oh, Harry! We're so . . . "

Harry looked between the two girls' heads to where his other best friend, Ron, was standing awkwardly by. Long and gangly as ever, he probably could have encircled all of them together and still managed to pat Harry on the back, but instead he just tried to smile at his best friend. His expression was a strange mixture of sadness and relief as he mouthed, "Hiya, Harry."

Mrs Weasley suddenly seemed to recover from her fears and return to full Mother Mode because she stood up from her chair and marched over to where the girls were smothering Harry with their relief. She stood behind them and put hands on their shoulders to let them know she meant business. "Girls, I think it would be a good idea if we all let Harry have a chance to breathe."

Both Ginny and Hermione looked almost hurt at the insinuation that they were being anything other than adequately concerned and relieved at the sight of their friend. Seeing their disappointment, Harry spoke up in protest, "It's all right, Mrs Weasley. I'm fine."

She looked at the boy that she thought of as a seventh son with a suspicious eye. Unsatisfied with his answer, she reached in between her daughter and Hermione and turned Harry by the shoulder toward the door. "Well, then, you can be fine in the kitchen. You look like you should be eating something before you head up to bed."

"That's okay, Mrs Weasley," Harry protested. "My aunt actually made a large dinner for once tonight, so I . . . "

Every single conversation stopped in the room when Harry trailed off. All of the eyes in the room darted first to him and then to any inconspicuous object somewhere in the room as far from Harry as possible. That they looked away was perfectly all right with Harry. He didn't want to see them looking at him. He could only imagine the range of thoughts that they were all having about him at the moment, and frankly, he wasn't sure that he wanted to know.

It wasn't until he was sure that he heard people in the room starting to breathe again that he spoke up to finish his thought. "I'm just not hungry."

Trying to sound cheerful under the circumstances, Mrs Weasley shook her head at him and said, "Nonsense. There is still plenty left from dinner and I had just put a pot of hot chocolate on the stove when Fred and George . . . well, when they came to get the others. It should be ready by now," she finished awkwardly.

"I'm sure it's wonderful," said Harry.

"Bill, Fred, George, you too. Let's go."

Without another word, the Weasleys, Hermione, and Harry all followed the family matriarch out of the meeting room and into the hallway, leaving the others to say whatever it was that they were saying about what had happened earlier that evening. They all were especially careful not to bump anything or to step on the third floorboard from the left next to the troll leg umbrella stand so that it wouldn't creak. The last thing they needed was to awaken all of the portraits again, especially Mrs Black.

Once they were all piled down the stairs into the kitchen, Hermione started for the dresser to pull out spoons while Mrs Weasley went to the stove top to check on the hot chocolate and left overs. Ginny took over distributing tea cups and saucers. Harry, Ron, and the twins all sat quietly at the table, watching the girls in uncomfortable silence. Even though none of them but Ron were really all that hungry, they were all extremely grateful when Mrs Weasley directed Bill to put the first plates of food in front of each of them because it gave them something to do.

After about two minutes of nothing but the scraping of forks and otherwise stale silence, Fred grumped, "All I can say is, where's Peeves when you need him?"

Ron snorted out his nose with laughter at the suggestion that they needed Hogwarts's most obnoxious poltergeist for entertainment, which sent everyone in the room into a relieved chorus of chuckles and more snorts. It wasn't exactly the funniest thing that Fred had ever said, but finally they could all relax and just be themselves again.

It was nearly an hour later before the conversation, laughter, and food started to slow down. They had talked about how the Quidditch World Cup was coming along -- it was in Argentina this holiday -- and how Ireland had completely fallen apart in the first month of the season. They had talked about Ginny's stay with the Grangers at the beginning of the month and how she had learned to live amongst the Muggles for two weeks. They talked about how Fred and George's joke shop, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, was doing, which, it seemed, was quite well. He hadn't even had time to notice the finery that they had been sporting all night. George even grumped that he was going to have to buy a new pair of dragonhide boots after accidentally stepping in Dudley's pudding earlier. Harry even learned that one of his schoolmates and fellow Gryffindor Neville Longbottom was staying in the house with his grandmother. They had both gone up to bed early that night after a long trip back from somewhere that Harry didn't quite catch.

"But you can see them in the morning," said Mrs Weasley. "I'm sure Neville will be very glad to see you, Harry. He's been just as worried about you as the rest of us."

"Just watch out for that toad of his," said Ron with an unamused chuckle. "He's been in my bed three times this week."

"So this is where all of the excitement is," yawned Remus, opening the door and announcing his arrival to the kitchen and the conversation. He didn't even bother to try and hide a second yawn as he tromped heavily into the room, an equally sleepy Molly on his arm. Neither of them said anything else by way of greeting, but Lupin indicated a spot on the bench at the end of the table to her and helped her to maneuver her way into it before sitting down next to her. Once he was seated, he looked up and down the length of the table with yet another yawn. "What is everyone doing awake? We were thinking we would be the only ones still up and about by now."

Mrs Weasley turned her Mother's Eye onto all of the occupants of the kitchen with a loving sternness that Harry was sure no other mother in the world could possibly have mastered to this extent. It was too brilliant for anyone else to be able to replicate. Using the voice that she had to match it, Mrs Weasley agreed. "So was I, but I can't seem to get these children to stop talking. If you ask me, I think that bed sounds like a wonderful idea. There isn't anything that happened tonight that can't wait to be talked about until morning."

Molly shook her dark head with a yawn. "I'm so tired I don't think I could sleep even if I tried." She bumped her shoulder into Lupin's with a smile that stretched into yet another yawn. "What do you say, Remus? Want to take advantage of a concussion and beat me at chess for the first time in your lowly existence?"

"I am quite certain, my friend, that I don't need you to have a concussion in order for me to win at chess against you."

"In the twenty-six years that I have known you, Moony, never once have you even come close to beating me. I don't know what in the world makes you think that you can do it now."

Harry watched the banter between the two obvious friends with a curiosity that he couldn't quite understand. There was just something about the way that they reacted to one another that was almost familiar to him. And with her calling him Moony, there had to be something that he was missing. If there was one thing that he had learned with Professor Lupin and Sirius in the few years that he had known them, it was that if he asked a question about them, they usually were willing to give up the answer. Seeing the familiarity between the two people next to him, he had to hope that she was just as willing to do the same.

"Excuse me?" Harry froze for just a second as they both looked at him like he was mental for interrupting a well-rounded banter, but he went on anyway, needing to satisfy his own curiosity more than to hear the two of them go at it. "I'm sorry. And I don't mean to be rude or interrupt, but -- well -- when you came to the house tonight and you -- er -- I was just wondering . . . who are you?"

The black-haired Molly looked at Harry like she was either too tired or too confused to understand the question. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, it's just -- you've called Professor Lupin by the nickname that -- you've called him Moony. I heard you call him that in my aunt and uncle's as well. I was just thinking . . . "

"How I could possibly know him by that name," she smiled and finished his awkwardly phrased thought for him. "Or how I know that he and your father called Sirius Padfoot and that they called your dad Prongs?"

Harry suddenly felt very silly, like maybe he was asking a question that had an incredibly obvious answer that he had just seen fly over his head and missed. Sheepishly he screwed up his face in awkward apology. "Uhm, yeah."

There was a strange silence in the room as Molly and Remus turned to another and for the longest time seemed like they were secretly having a conversation to concoct an answer for him just by looking at one another. Lupin shrugged at first with an expression that Harry couldn't quite read. She nodded at first, but then she started shaking her head. The more Lupin nodded affirmatively at her, the more she shook her head in the negative. The silent argument was apparently ended with a very definitive nod from Molly because Remus once again shrugged and turned back to face Harry, his face once again that cool mask that he seemed to wear whenever the subject of the Potters came up around groups of people. When Harry looked at Molly, a mask slipped over her face as well.

"That's a really long story, Harry, and I think you've had a long enough night as it is." Her face relaxed just a little before busting out into a devilish grin that gave rise to a chuckle from Lupin. "Let's just say that your Uncle Moony here wasn't quite the sweet, innocent child that he likes to pretend. When he, your dad, and your godfather were seventh years, they had a certain first year to take the brunt of their pranks who could do absolutely nothing about it."

"It was entirely out of love," Remus protested. "Besides, it was all Sirius and James. We never got a say in -- "

"Uhn-huh," she argued with a feigned indignation. She clawed her hand up over Lupin's face and shoved him to the side without looking at him. "Go away!"

"So you knew my parents as well?"

A sadness flickered in Molly's eyes, but she quickly recovered and answered, "I was very fond of them all."

"All the dung bombs in our beds to the contrary," Lupin muttered into his butterbeer.

Molly cast him a dirty look and waved him off while she went into a further explanation. "At any rate, Harry, Remus and I have known one another and have been friends for many, many moons, since I was about five years old. I also knew your parents, and Sirius, and Pet- -- " Her face seemed to freeze in shock for a moment because she (like so many others) still couldn't believe that it was Peter Pettigrew who had betrayed the Potters and that she was actually talking about the same person who the entire group had loved so much. Her eyes darkened in disgust before she realized what she had been saying and went on, trying very quickly to fill the gap she had left in the conversation. "Well, I knew most everyone in that circle. I was told that I was just too young to be a part of it at the time. As for how I know their nicknames, it wasn't exactly a secret. They called each other by their names everywhere they went as long as there weren't too many teachers around. It wasn't like anyone would know what they meant."

"Don't you remember, Harry?" Lupin joined in, a secret smile on his face. He raised an eyebrow at Harry, quizzing him with a strange amusement. "When Severus caught you with the Marauder's Map during your third year, he asked whether it was possible that you had gotten it directly from the manufacturers? He knew as soon as he saw the names popping up on the parchment that it was something that the four of us had put together."

"He got his hands on the map?" Molly looked absolutely tickled at the idea that Harry would have found it, although a bit confused. "But I thought Filch confiscated that from James that night that they sneaked into the kitchens to bring you food while you were in the hospital wing after one of the full moons? The night that Peeves turned all of the paintings in the second floor of the East Wing upside down?"

"He did, but . . . " Lupin glanced knowingly at the twins, who tried very hard to hide under the table so as to be unseen by their mother. "It turned out that certain parties of unknown identity managed to lift it from one of Filch's drawers and put it to some use. I dare say that the map has indeed been a fantastic aid to certain magical mischief in Hogwarts's hallowed halls in the last few years."

"I'm still mad you lost it," grumped Molly. "It was an awfully difficult six years without it. I had to find all of the secret passages on my own."

"We were going to make you one, but things got a little bit busy on us," Lupin started, but seemingly remembering what the things were that had caused them to be so busy he quickly changed the subject. "But anyway, Harry, Molly and I have known each other for quite a long time. We have -- "

Before he could finish his sentence, a knock on the kitchen door announced a new arrival, who hollered into the room, "Molly?"

"Yes?" Both of the Mollys in the room answered and turned toward the door. The women glanced at one another and both rolled their eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. Mrs Weasley shrugged sweetly and walked over to the door to talk to whoever was on the other side of it while the other Molly grumped. "This is going to be great fun."

"Of course, you could just use your given name for a few weeks until they get to school," Lupin teased.

Harry got the feeling that there was some sort of long-standing joke involved with the suggestion because he watched the woman's face screw up in distaste and push at Lupin's shoulder again. When they both started laughing, Harry asked her, "Your name isn't Molly?"

The woman shook her head in a so-so manner to indicate an indecision. "Ehh . . . It is and it isn't. It's my middle name. My given name is the same as both my grandmother and my mother, Eliza. My family called me by my middle name to alleviate the confusion since my grandmother was called Ellie and my mother Eliza. I suppose they thought that they had run out of options by the time I came around because I've always been Molly. If anyone calls me by anything else, I tend to look around the room for my mother."

"Uhm, Professor, what did you mean, until they get to school," asked Hermione from the end of the table where she and Ginny had been watching the conversation with curiosity.

"I'm not your professor anymore, Hermione. You're going to have to get used to calling me Remus one of these days." Lupin smiled at her. He always knew that if anyone could be counted on to never miss a single fact in a conversation, it was Hermione. With a flair of his hand, Lupin prepared to introduce Molly to the rest of the occupants of the table, who, although they had been listening quite intently to the conversation, they hadn't been properly introduced to her yet either. He was interrupted, though, by a hand on his shoulder and a soft whisper in his ear from Mrs Weasley. To her he asked, "You're certain?"

"Dumbledore is on his way to confirm it now."

The mood in the room suddenly dropped again, everyone becoming much more rigid in their seats. Every set of eyes seemed to open just a little wider, every set of ears perked just a bit higher. Something was happening, and considering that the adults were speaking in whispers, it could hardly be anything good. Harry was about to open his mouth to be the first to ask when he was interrupted by the kitchen door creaking open loudly and shutting again.

With an echoing clomp, Moody tiredly made his way from the door and along the length of the table to where Harry was sitting. He was cradling the hand that had been caught in the banister cross fire, but with the other he clapped Harry on the back with as affectionate a gesture as he ever offered anyone. "We just heard from Kingsley and Tonks. Your aunt and cousin are perfectly safe."

Having put his relatives out of his mind for a few minutes of reunion, Harry's thoughts switched back to the disasters of the evening. No matter how he had felt about their behavior in the past, he was suddenly much more aware of the fact that they were his only blood relatives and didn't really want anything to happen to them. And since his aunt's house was supposed to have been the safest place in all the world for him to be besides Hogwarts, he could only imagine where they could be where they would be 'perfectly safe'. He was even surprised at the concern in his voice when he asked, "Where are they?"

"The Burrow, for tonight," said Bill with a chuckle. The idea of Mrs Dursley in a magical home like The Burrow didn't exactly hurt the funny bone for any of them. He leaned forward onto his crossed arms on the table, relaxed, as if he was relieved to finally let Harry in on what was happening to him and his relatives. In all of the excitement of trying to help Harry out of the house and to headquarters, a great many questions had had to go unanswered for his friend that could now be resolved. "The house is in the middle of nowhere and unplotable, and although we don't have near the sort of protection that we do here in this house, it's protected enough for emergencies. Besides, we'll be moving them tomorrow."

"Where?"

"We've got some extra rooms upstairs until we get ourselves completely moved into the new headquarters," Lupin explained. "That's why they're at The Burrow tonight. It isn't ideal to have them here and exposed to the -- er, uhm -- darker aspects of this place, especially tonight. I think they've probably had enough dark magic for one night. But we aren't entirely ready to make the transition yet and until we are, this is still the safest place for us."

Harry was fairly certain he'd missed all of that. In his effort to hide his excitement at the prospect of any kind of departure from the house that his godfather had so hated, he hadn't even heard anything beyond the words 'new headquarters'. His excitement plummeted when it suddenly occurred to him to ask the next logical question. "New headquarters? Why is the Order getting new headquarters if this is still the safest place?"

From over his shoulder, Harry heard Mrs Weasley clear her throat in that overprotective threatening way she had of letting the adults know that they were treading into dangerous information territory by her standards. "I think that this can wait until you've all had a chance to rest. Don't you, Remus?"

"No, please, Mrs Weasley," Harry protested. He hated it when she switched into that mode, although it endeared her to him at the same time. Still, she was darned near dangerous when she was feeling this protective of him. He sat up straighter and popped his eyes open just a little wider to show her that he was perfectly awake and capable of taking on more information. This was his chance to ask questions before they all figured out what to keep secret from him. He wasn't about to let the opportunity slide away, no matter how much his head hurt. "I want to know. Please?"

Mrs Weasley reached over his shoulder and put a new piping hot cup of hot chocolate in front of him. When her hand pulled back, it found a resting spot of comfort on his back between his shoulder blades. "Harry, I really think that . . . "

"I'm all right, Mrs Weasley. I'll go straight to bed afterwards, but a few more minutes . . . Please?"

"I suppose I can't stop you," she acknowledged sadly. Harry suddenly noticed that the tears weren't entirely gone from her eyes yet. He hated that his wanting to know what was going on was making her so upset, but at the moment, he didn't really know what else to do. Neither, apparently, did she because she added, "But if you change your mind, it's perfectly all right that this wait until morning. You're home now. We will all still be here in the morning."

In the pit of his stomach, a little voice tickled it cold and taunted, Yeah, I certainly hope so!

"It's only for a little while," he reassured her with a smile.

The smile didn't seem to do the trick, though, because Mrs Weasley distractedly reached down and snatched up the cup she had just placed in front of him. She walked back to the stove and started to ladle more hot chocolate into the cup without even noticing that it was already full. As hot liquid ran over the brim and onto her fingers, she dropped the cup and let it shatter all over the countertop. The Weasleys all looked at one another with significant looks until the twins got up to come to their mother's aid.

While Mrs Weasley was distracted enough to perhaps not hear what they were about to say, Lupin turned in his seat to look more directly at Harry. He locked his tired eyes on Harry's in a way that suggested he was saying more than his words were going to be indicating. "Harry, we aren't entirely sure, but we think that this particular safe house has been compromised."

"But Sirius, he said that his father had put every protection imaginable on it, and Dumbledore, too. How could anyone have found out -- " Harry stopped himself as Lupin's eyes grew even wider to try and somehow send the answer to his mind without actually saying the words. Suddenly Harry knew exactly what it was that Lupin was trying to tell him and the feeling in his stomach was in no way going to be warmed up by the hot chocolate Mrs Weasley was crying over. "You think there is a spy, like before?"

"We're moving into a new location," Lupin repeated, his own version of an affirmative answer.

"That's why it took us an extra day to come after you," Bill added, trying to steer the subject somewhere where they wouldn't have to speak in meanings and codes. "Dumbledore didn't want us pulling you out of the Dursleys' until we knew for sure that you would be safer with us than with them. And we needed to know that we could get you out of there safely and between Moody on work for the Order in Romania and -- "

"You were in Romania?"

"To bring Molly back with me," said Moody and nodding over to the young witch. "We were literally walking in the door tonight from the trip back when we ran into Dumbledore and he sent us to your house. Charlie was going to be coming home with us too, but when we got word that your uncle had gone about nailing every window in the house, we left him behind so that we could arrive sooner should we need to come after you. He should be along in a day or two."

"So you did know about the nails and everything?"

Lupin shared a look with Mrs Weasley, who had huffed rather loudly at the mention of Uncle Vernon's rampage. "None of us were very happy about it," he said for her and all of them. "But he wasn't hurting anyone either, so we just let it be. We had people around the house as well as the owls everywhere. If anything were to happen, we would know about it right away."

"The first few weeks we saw you outside more than we had before, so we thought maybe that our conversation with your relatives had done some good for you," Mrs Weasley added bitterly.

Moody explained, "We also saw your uncle getting more nervous and then after he nailed all the windows shut, Dumbledore said he wanted us to be as inconspicuous as possible and leave you alone. He figured that it would be better for you and your relatives if your uncle was given some time to relax a bit."

Over by the stove, Fred turned around and leaned up against the counter, bracing himself comfortably with his hands on the ledge. "But since our ears have finally recovered from the yelling you did last summer when you found out about the Order tailing you, George and I were going to stop by tonight to sneak in and let you know that we didn't forget about you. We knew it had been four days when we had said three and we didn't want it to go any longer without you at least knowing why. But then we saw that git Malfoy's mum and her sister following your cousin down the block and decided we'd better get help."

"Figgy's cat has been hanging out with us keeping us company when we're on watch, so we sent him back to your house to keep an eye on you until we figured out what was going on," said George, backing the story up just a bit.

"We followed them into the park a few blocks from your house. As soon those dolts your cousin hangs around with left him alone, Malfoy stunned him and dragged him over to the bushes."

"Fred saw her pull out the knife and bend over him, so he started to go to your house to warn you about them and I tried to stun them off of Dudley."

"But as soon as he got a shot off, they turned around and started popping off curses left and right," grumped Fred. "Two more Apparated in right next to them and took over so that they could do whatever it was that they were doing to Dudley."

Harry, as much as his head was hurting with the flood of information, was quickly putting the pieces together. "That must have been how they got Dudley's hair for the Polyjuice Potion." He couldn't manage to say the murderess's name, but he went on to explain anyway that, "She showed up in the backyard disguised as Dudley to try to get closer to me and get some information. I'm not sure what she wanted to know. But that's probably what they were doing -- getting the ingredient for the potion."

"That makes sense from what we saw. Anyway, when they got one right over my shoulder," Fred said ruefully, rubbing unconsciously at his ear, "We both Disapparated here to get reinforcements."

Mrs Weasley whimpered and fiddled with the pot on the stove some more. George reached over and rubbed his mother's shoulder in comfort. "It missed, Mum. Don't worry."

Fred went on, slowly making his way back to the table with nearly overflowing refilled cups of hot chocolate in his hands for the unusually quiet girls and Ron. "But when we got here, people were still scattered everywhere because they didn't need to be here for the meeting for another hour. Snape was supposed to give one of his updates tonight. But he got here early, so we sent him to school to find Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore. Dad was just getting home from the office, so we had to wait a minute for him and Moody wasn't back yet."

Lupin looked between the of-age Weasley brothers and added, "So we were trying to figure out how to get you and your relatives out with just the four of us when Moody and Molly made it back."

"I sent them on ahead," said Moody, his voice a little more gravelly than usual from being tired (or at least, Harry thought he looked awfully tired -- sometimes it was hard to tell with Moody's scars). "We thought that they could at least keep busy the four that Fred and George had seen until we could get more help. Molly and I went to the Ministry to find Tonks and Kingsley and let them know that there was trouble before Fudge found them so that they would be prepared and make sure they got on the mission. That's why she and I arrived after everyone else."

Bill went on to explain what happened next, his face looking angry or frustrated or some sort of feeling that Harry wasn't sure what it was. All he knew was that when Bill started talking about Aunt Petunia and Dudley, he didn't look in the least bit happy.

"When we Apparated in, we heard your aunt screaming, so we all went into the house first. Dudley was stuttering so badly that we couldn't make out what he was saying and your aunt was so busy trying to save her dishes that she didn't have the time to answer us. So we split up to find you. We sent Fred and George upstairs and Lupin and Dad stayed in the house to protect your relatives. I came running around back, but by the time I got there . . . "

Harry and Bill fixed gazes hard at one another knowing that they were the only ones who had been in the backyard to actually see what had happened, the only two in the yard to know what it had been like. Harry couldn't imagine what it had been like for Bill, to be running around the corner of the house like that, seeing that an Unforgivable Curse was leaving the wand and that there was absolutely no way to stop it but that he had to try something. And to see it rushing toward Harry at unbelievably agonizing speed . . . Somehow, Harry knew that they were thinking the same thing -- they were both incredibly grateful that he was still alive, but had just a few things gone their way and Bill been able to get to the backyard just two seconds earlier, maybe his uncle wouldn't be dead. Both of them opened their mouths to say something to each other, but Harry beat his best friend's big brother to it.

"You did the best you could," he said, trying to sound consoling and reassuring at the same time.

"I'm sorry I didn't get back there sooner, Harry."

"It wasn't your fault."

Bill was about to open his mouth to respond, but a rap on the door announced a new arrival to the kitchen. Professor McGonagall poked her head around, her lips tight and tense. She looked angrier than he thought he had ever seen her. Her eyes flashed directly to Harry's, but after a quick glance she looked up at the members of the Order. Shortly she informed them, "He's here. We were just talking and thought that considering the circumstances the meeting should go on as scheduled."

Mrs Weasley looked like she wanted to protest and did. "Minerva, I really think that we need to talk to Harry about everything before -- "

"Actually, Mrs Weasley?" Harry interrupted. "Uhm, you know . . . I think I . . . Would it be all right if I just went up to bed?"

"Harry, are you sure? You've barely touched your dinner."

Harry looked up at Mrs Weasley's forehead so that it would look as if he were actually looking her in the eye. He realized that she would probably know the difference -- she did have that strange "Mum-sense" thing that he had heard the Weasley children talking about on many occasions -- but he just couldn't bring himself to actually look at her. He knew that if he let her see his eyes, she was going to know too much. At the moment, he didn't want anyone to know anything. More than anything, he just wanted to be alone.

"Yeah. I just -- er -- I'm sorry, Mrs Weasley. I think I'm a little more tired than I thought I was. If it's all right with you, I think I'd rather just go on up to bed."

"Of course, Harry, of course. Just finish up your hot chocolate for me and you can tuck in."

Even though he was fairly certain that the draught didn't exactly taste right, Harry nodded and drained the cup she handed him of all of its chocolaty contents. He pounded his chest as he felt the tight ball of heat go painfully slow down every bit of tubing from having swallowed too much heat at once. How it made it passed the rock in the back of his throat, he didn't know, but it hurt more than he could ever remember it hurting to swallow.

With an obviously fake yawn, Hermione added, "I'll go with you, Harry."

Before Harry could say anything in response, Mrs Weasley stepped in. "To your own room, Hermione. I think you all need to get up to bed. Ginny, Ron, Fred, George, that means you, too."

"I'm sorry, Molly," Professor McGonagall interrupted. "But we'd like it if Fred and George would join us for this. Dumbledore wants to see them."

Mrs Weasley's face screwed up like she was about to argue but her shoulders slumped, knowing full well that this was an argument that she had no hope of winning. Her sons were old enough, they were in the Order now. She couldn't keep them out anymore. But that didn't mean that she couldn't do something about the other children in the room. "Fine. Ginny, Hermione, to bed. You, too, Ronald. And remember, you're sleeping in Sirius's room tonight so that Harry can have your room to himself if he wants." She glanced between Professor McGonagall and Harry, her eyes trying to dictate the answer to the Assistant Headmistress while she asked, "What about Harry? Does Dumbledore want him tonight, too?"

McGonagall smiled as wide a smile as she ever did at Harry. Her voice was incredibly understanding as she said, "Not tonight. Everyone in the room agreed. You've had enough for tonight, Potter. We'll talk about the rest of it in the morning."

Harry's heart froze again, not wanting the conversation to keep coming back to the same topic. He didn't want to think about what had happened any more tonight and the more he stayed around everyone, the harder it was going to be to avoid it. Maybe a little too quickly he blurted, "In that case, I'm going upstairs."

"Harry?" Mrs Weasley walked over to stand behind him while he got up from the table. As soon as he was standing, she wrapped her warm, motherly arms around him and held tight onto him. When she finally pulled away, she caught something in her throat. He hated to see it, but he knew he saw tears starting to well up in her eyes again. But she went on, determined to get out whatever it was that she was going to say. "I know that this probably isn't the right time, but I just wanted to say -- er -- that is, I wanted to -- we all wanted to say -- uhm -- Happy birthday, Harry."

"Thanks," he muttered. From the way that everyone had been behaving around him since the escape from Privet Drive, he knew that there were going to be a lot more sharing of condolences ahead. That he was already mechanically answering them was a little disturbing, but at the moment, he wasn't ready for any heart-felt reactions to the I'm sorry's and the Is there anything we can do's. Then, as he was about to walk away from her and head upstairs he realized what he had just heard. "Wait a minute. What?"

"Happy birthday, Potter," Moody added and raised his cup at Harry, who was staring stunned. He had forgotten his own birthday.

"Yeah, Harry. Happy birthday," the twins repeated.

"Hedwig should have your presents," Mrs Weasley explained. "We sent her just before . . . We don't know where she is, but she should be back soon."

This time, Harry was ready for the heart-felt thanks. He looked at them all, hoping that they would understand that he didn't know what else to say. "Thanks."

Mrs Weasley nodded at him, the only smile he had seen on her face all night lighting it as best she could. "You're welcome. But it's all right, Harry. Go on up to bed. Your night has been long enough. We'll see you in the morning."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. "Good night."

A chorus of Good Night's followed him out the door. As he walked down the darkened hallway toward the stairs, he heard a few more of them excusing themselves for the night. He could hear the members of the Order talking excitedly through the door where they were waiting for the other members to join them. Harry didn't remember the rest of the walk up to the room that he and Ron normally shared, but he remembered later on being grateful that his friends had let him take the walk up by himself.

He was very quiet as he shut the door to his room behind him, careful not to wake the portrait in the room of his godfather's great-great grandfather Phineas Nigellus just in case he was in the room. He walked over to his bed and sat down, suddenly too tired to do anything else. He kicked off his shoes, unable in his tiredness to actually bend down and take them off. He was even beginning to think that he was too tired to make the effort to lay down when he jumped a little and stood up. Someone was behind the door.

"It's just me," came Ron's voice as he opened the door the rest of the way, walked in, and shut the door behind himself again.

The best friends regarded each other for a moment, awkward, not having a clue what to say. They both rocked on the heels of their feet, back and forth, looking at each other then away and back again. Finally, Ron offered a crooked, weak smile and took a step toward the bed, freeing Harry up to go back to getting ready for bed.

Harry sat back down as before, his legs dangling rigidly over the edge. He studied the hole in his shoe some more, not even caring that he had pretty much memorized the shape and size of every string that held the two sides of it together from staring at it so much. He had to reach down and turn the shoe over just to keep it from holding his attention.

Ron's attention span was much more focused. He didn't manage to make it any further into the room than Harry's bed instead of his own. He sat down at the foot and leaned back against the decorative wrought iron foot board. He wrangled his shoulders from side to side until his spine sat in a comfortable position. He crossed his legs under him and crossed his arms over his chest. Then, realizing just how cold it was in the room even for July, he leaned over onto his right elbow so that he could pull the folded quilt out from underneath his bottom and went through the entire comforting process all over again. Once he was comfortable, he flung the corners of the quilt out until it was straight, tucked it in around his folded knees, and snuggled the hem of it up underneath his chin. It wasn't until he was positive that he was quite comfortable that he looked back at Harry again with a weak, tired, but chummy grin.

The smile he offered, however, was wasted on Harry. While his best friend had been settling, unsettling, and resettling himself, Harry had moved to the head of the bed and was sitting propped up against the headboard watching him. The effort of keeping his eyes open became more and more difficult as his eyes tired out just from watching all of the work Ron was going to to make himself comfortable. Not that he didn't appreciate the gesture -- he did. It was wonderful to actually see Ron's smile in living form other than in a photograph. And, more importantly, there was no doubt in his mind that when he woke up in the morning (unless Mrs Weasley checked in on them and made him go to Sirius's room) Ron would still be there at the bottom of his bed.

Harry wondered if maybe that was why he loved Ron so much. All he had done was sit on the bed and smile. He hadn't started in asking questions or offered awkward condolences. He hadn't tried to comfort him with the appropriate platitudes and he hadn't urged Harry to cry. Ron had just sat on the end of the bed and was listening to the silence with him. He was there for when Harry needed him and was just going to be quiet until then. Ron was, quite honestly, the only person that Harry didn't want to send away at the moment and for that he was grateful.

He couldn't tell for sure what Ron was thinking, but if he had to guess, it was that he was just as happy to be sitting there without having to talk as Harry was to have him there not talking. They were both just too relieved that Harry was there and alive.

They looked at each other for the longest time. Harry even managed in the middle of it to break his gaze at his best friend and pull back the quilt that was waiting for him. Without bothering to even pull off his dirtied jeans, he nestled himself under the coolness of the sheets. Then, as a second thought, he sat back up and pulled his bloodied T-shirt over his head and tossed it unceremoniously onto the floor. He laid back down and pulled the coolness back over him, grateful for the cocoon of childhood, dreamy safety in it. He curled himself onto his side and angled himself and his pillow over the width of the bed so that he could still look at Ron, afraid to close his eyes just yet.

Without warning, Harry had to shut his eyes anyway. He closed them as quickly as he possibly could because he knew that Ron would see the one thing that he promised himself that he was never going to let anyone see. But when he thought it was safe enough to open his eyes and not have the hot tears come pouring out of them, Ron was still looking intently at him. He wished Ron would look away or get up and go to his own bed, but he didn't move or say anything. He just sat there, listening to the words that were in the tears and didn't say anything back. Seeing that only made it harder for Harry to hold them back. Soon, for the first time since Harry could really remember, he allowed himself to just sit there and cry. He cried for the parents he had never known, for his newly widowed aunt and orphaned cousin, for his uncle, for Sirius and all of the years he lost, and for himself for losing it all. He cried for the secrets that he still hadn't told Ron about, about the knowledge that had been imparted to him at the end of the school term. He cried for the future he didn't yet understand and the future that his uncle was never going to have. He just plain cried. Still, all Ron did was sit there with him. Harry thought that maybe he saw a few tears on his best friend's face, but couldn't see through his own enough to be sure. What he was sure of, though, was that he was glad to have Ron there, quiet and loyal and the best friend he could ever have asked for.

It was only minutes later as he cried himself off into a blissfully dreamless sleep that Harry wondered if this was what it meant to be brothers. If it was, he knew he had the best brother in all the world.

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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!