Fly Me Back

"When you're little, you like to think you know everything, but the last thing you want is to know too much. What you really want is grownups to make the world a safe place where dreams come true and promises are never broken. And when you're little, it doesn't seem like a lot to ask." -- Allie Keyes, Taken

*

Harry Potter : Fly Me Back

Chapter Seven : Muggle Relations

When Harry awoke a few hours later, he forced himself to keep his eyes shut for as long as possible. Something told him that the time he was giving himself, alone and quiet, was about the only time he was going to be getting that was going to belong to only himself for a few days. He had better treasure it.

He had never really appreciated alone time before. Growing up with the Dursleys, he'd had plenty of alone time, so much so that he hadn't known what it was like to be always surrounded by people. Dudley was far from being a friend or playmate for him and they spent as much time away from one another as humanly possible (unless Dudley needed the punching practice). The only time he really spent with his relatives was mealtimes and his first run-in with either his aunt or uncle in the morning. Morning was when they preferred to delegate his chores and schedule of what they wanted him to do (clean) for the day. At the school he attended before Hogwarts, he kept to himself, not really understanding why but knowing that he was different from the other children. They didn't trust him anyway. On his first day of school, he had been so frustrated at being treated by the other children the same way that he was treated at home that he had wished for the ball some of the other boys were kicking around to explode. When it had actually happened, he tried to stay away from them. Without knowing why they were doing it, they stayed away from him, too. He was much more comfortable daydreaming under the tree at the far end of the schoolyard anyway.

At Hogwarts, he was afforded as much alone time as he wanted, for the most part. Sometimes it came in the form of everyone avoiding him for something that he had said or done without any control over it happening, but for the most part, it was just (for lack of a better word) normal. It was just accepted that everyone needed time to themselves now and then. He didn't need to have an excuse or be in any sort of state to need to have the time to himself. He just did it and no one questioned it, except maybe Hermione and Ron.

That was where the problem was. Ron and Hermione were close enough that they could question his silences. He wished sometimes that they couldn't. He loved them, as his best friends and companions, the only people he trusted beyond all others but Sirius and perhaps Dumbledore (although he wasn't so sure about that one these days). They didn't want anything from him. They didn't want recognition or the whatever it was that people like Colin Creevy got out of being able to tell others that they were on a first name basis with Harry-Potter-The-Boy-Who-Lived. But because of that, Ron and Hermione had gotten closer to him than anyone else. They could read his mood and knew when he was lying to them. They knew him inside and out. So he couldn't just walk off to sit down by the lake just to be alone. They always knew that there was a reason behind his silences and had a problem with letting him have them too often. Ron wasn't so bad about it as Hermione. He knew when to just sit there with Harry and be quiet with him, but she always wanted an explanation for everything. She couldn't help it, that was just who she was. He appreciated it from her and knew that it was only out of the close nature of their friendship that she so annoyed him, but still, someday, he was going to have to help her cure herself of that need, no matter how well-intentioned she was.

Today was not going to be the day he pointed that out to either of them, though. He was too tired to let it be today. Today, he had too many things to do, too many things to think about, too many problems to solve, and too many answers to give. As soon as he gave up his moment of silence for himself, he was going to be bombarded with questions and smothering attention from the adults in the house, swarming all over him, greedy for information that only he could provide. Fred and George Weasley could only run interference for him for long. The same could be said for the guard that was sent to retrieve him. They could only provide answers and approximations for him for so long. And as good intentioned as their efforts had been last night, he knew that he was the only person who could answer some of the questions for the Order, questions that they needed answers to soon for not only his safety, but for the safety and preservation of them all. He was the only one who could speak for what had happened in that backyard.

He just hoped he could put if off a little bit longer, at least until after lunch.

Harry really did not want to open his eyes. He wasn't just giving up alone time if he opened his them. He was giving in to the fact that when he opened his eyes, he was going to be in the bedroom that he shared with Ron in number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and not in Dudley's second bedroom back on Privet Drive. When he opened his eyes, he was going to be in a room in the house he hated more than any other house in the world. As surrounded as he was by people who he knew fully well loved him and cared for him, he was still going to be alone in it. It was going to take the end of this war -- the end of Voldemort -- before he wasn't going to be alone any longer, and even that wasn't a guarantee for him. If things went the way of prophecy, he might still be alone anyway. He didn't want to give in to that realization just yet.

They didn't know it. They had no idea how alone he was. They couldn't, unless Dumbledore had let the members of the Order of the Phoenix in on the secret that had only been shared with Harry in the event of his godfather's death. The fact was that no matter how many people stood at his side, no matter how many of them managed to come with him through to the very end, he was still going to be alone. He alone was going to have to face Voldemort; he alone was going to have to kill the monster. Of the two of them, at the end of the battle, only one of them would be left alive alone, dead at the hand of the other. How could he not be alone?

Harry hadn't figured out how to talk to anyone about that yet. There wasn't enough alone time in expanse of time and history to figure that one out. After all, how was he supposed to tell the people he loved that the only way the war was to be over was for him to become a murderer himself? He hadn't figured out how to tell himself yet.

He could see it that they tried though. There wasn't a single person downstairs who hadn't tried in one way or another to keep him from feeling alone. Even the gruff, paranoid Moody had offered up his support in ways that he probably wouldn't have done for anyone else. They were good people. Of course, they were also what most people in the wizarding world would consider to be the freaks, but at least they were with him. He wasn't exactly normal either. There he was, The Boy Who Lived, surrounded by the poor Muggle lover Weasleys, the paranoid dust bin fighter Mad-Eye Moody, the werewolf, the klutz, the brilliantly bookish MuggleWitch, the murderer . . . The list went on and on of the quirks that everyone around him wore so obviously without self-awareness. None of it mattered. They tried for him and for each other. They were all alone in one way or another, but at least they could be alone together.

Of course, it was entirely possible that Harry wasn't neglecting to open his eyes from his solitude and thoughts about his menagerie of friends at all. The area of his eye that his cousin had punched black was doing a pretty good job of preventing him from opening them just fine. And if that wasn't enough, he was thinking that he would have to mention to Madam Pomfrey that a cure for headaches was going to need to be added to that sleeping concoction of hers if she really wanted to help the world of wizarding medicine.

Urgh.

When Harry did finally manage to open his eyes, he was not at all that surprised that it was impossible to tell exactly what time of day it was. It was barely light enough in the room to make out shapes, so much so that he was not entirely sure it was daytime. His body tried to tell him that it was, but he was in a mood to argue with it anyway. The shadows from outside the window of his room drooped eerily over the furniture, making it darker in the room than he'd ever seen in the mid-day. There was no clock in the room, but since the end of the bed where Ron and Hermione had slept had long since grown cold, he could only imagine what time it was. The chill over his feet sent an extra twinge into his stomach as he reached over the end of the bed and grabbed for the t-shirt he had discarded before he went to sleep the night before. On the floor from where he had carefully tucked them under the bed, he also pulled out his round glasses. He rubbed the sleep out of his cloudy vision and, once his glasses were snug to his nose, he looked to the end of the bed where Hermione's cat Crookshanks was curled up snoozing the day away, acting, he supposed, as his in-house guard, much like the owls had around his house the night before. While he had a certain love for the cat -- after all, he had kept Harry from killing his godfather -- seeing him there was only a reminder that he wasn't exactly as alone as he would like to be. It put an even more annoyingly foggy stamp on his gloomy, weather-coordinated mood.

Whatever time it was, it didn't matter in the scheme of his day. It had been less than twenty-four hours since his uncle had been tortured and murdered in his own backyard and Harry was going to have to get up to face the consequences of that. The idea of walking downstairs and facing the concerned faces of his friends was enough to make him nervous. He knew there was going to be that awful awkward silence that he'd been through far too many times with them already. They all meant so well and he really did appreciate it, but knowing what he was about to face always made it harder to force himself to confront whatever was going to come next.

The problem with open eyes was that, in truth, Harry had no idea what was supposed to come next and therefore wanted to just shut them again. He'd never had to deal with anyone close to him that had died, not really. He was barely a year old when his parents had died. As far as he knew, he wasn't at his parents' funeral, if there was one. He didn't know. It wasn't exactly a question that he'd ever thought to ask anyone. When Cedric Diggory had died, they hadn't exactly been the closest of friends and, since Harry wasn't allowed to leave the Hogwarts hospital wing at the time, he had had no part in what took place afterward. He didn't even attend the funeral (not that he was sure he'd wanted to), although Cedric's parents had asked him to visit since. When Sirius . . . When Sirius had . . . When everything changed, things had happened so quickly afterward and when it was over, Harry had been whisked back to school by a portkey that Dumbledore set up for him right after it happened, so he hadn't been there for what happened to the others. Most of them had been unconscious anyway. But he still had no idea what it had been like for those who weren't. And seeing as how Sirius was still considered a psychopathic mass murderer and the Ministry's Most Wanted, there wasn't exactly a funeral or outcry of public mourning. No one but Harry, his friends, and the others in the Order even knew he was no longer with them. He was willing to bet that "Wanted" posters with Sirius's face still blinked out from every shop window in Diagon Alley and Hogsmead, unaware that he was no longer a so-called threat to wizarding or any other kind.

For the first time, Harry wondered what the What Comes Next had been that night. It struck him that it was odd that he had never even considered what had happened in that room after he'd taken off running. He remembered Dumbledore telling him that Tonks was going to be spending a few days in St Mungo's and that all of the others -- Ron, Hermione, Neville, and the others -- were just being patched up. He remembered that he had slipped on Moody's magical eye at one point during the battle and that his head had been bleeding so he probably hadn't been in condition to really witness what was going on around him. But Lupin, he had been fully aware of what was going on. Lupin was right there, watching the bound Death Eaters while they awaited to be contained by the Ministry. Those who didn't know right away who he was had seen how he reacted when Sirius had fallen. Had they taunted him? Had they said anything to him at all? What had he been thinking?

Even though he knew it was going to be a difficult question for the man to answer, Harry was going to have to remember to ask it when he and Lupin had their chat later that night.

In the meantime, Harry knew he couldn't put off going downstairs any longer. There was no sense in giving everyone downstairs even more to worry about. He put his feet down onto the cold floor to realize that he had only one sock on his feet. He put his hand under the covers, fishing around for the missing one, only to find it being kept warm for him by Crookshanks. He reached with his other hand to the cat's head and scratched him happily behind the ears until he purred and let Harry have his sock. He pulled it back on and then argued with his shoes until he realized that the reason he couldn't put them on was that an extra pair of socks were balled into the toes. Rather than yank the socks out, he gave up and hopped off the bed to just walk down in his stocking feet anyway. Under normal circumstances he wouldn't walk around without shoes, especially in this house, but for whatever reason, he really didn't care at the moment. He had other things to worry about.

Harry made his way to the door, digging his feet into the floorboards to push the heels of his oversized socks back up his foot along the way. While he reached for where he knew the doorknob was, he pulled his t-shirt back over his head so that he couldn't see the knob as he turned it. Once he was safely through the door, he quickly turned his shirt inside out to hide the smatterings of blood left behind from Dudley's face pounding. He only stopped long enough to make sure that he had decently pulled his shirt completely back over himself before he could be anywhere near anyone's line of sight. The last thing he needed to do was embarrass the girls like that. As he clomped down the stairs, he reminded himself to change into fresh clothes after he'd made an appearance downstairs.

A rumbling in his stomach told him that he didn't have a choice -- his first stop was going to be the kitchen. Even though he knew full well that he'd eaten an almost normal dinner the night before, he suddenly felt like he hadn't eaten in a week. Whatever potion it was that Madam Pomfrey and Mrs Weasley had put into his hot chocolate the night before, it may not have done its job of keeping him dreamlessly sleeping, but it had restored the appetite that he hadn't been entirely sure would return to him. The scent of something sweet and meaty wafted around the half-open door of the kitchen entrance, enticing him helplessly toward it. Still, he wasn't hungry enough to make himself able to go in there and face the people he saw bustling around. Instead he tiptoed down the stone steps and stood at the opening between door and frame to watch, hoping that their conversation would give him an opening into their conversation without having to face awkward stares and questions he wasn't ready to answer.

It was the women of the household who were all gathered in the kitchen, busy either making a meal or keeping Mrs Weasley company -- Harry wasn't sure which. Hermione and Mrs Weasley were both stationed over the kitchen sink, washing what he figured were the morning's dishes. Ginny sat at the far end of the long wooden table peeling potatoes without the aid of magic, which Harry knew even without seeing the expression on her face wasn't any fun at all. He'd peeled more than his share in his lifetime. There was no way he was going to help her, though -- the crinkle of concentration between her eyebrows was the first ray of sunshine he'd seen since his escape from the Dursleys' and he wasn't about to let it fade. He cringed at the thought that he was waxing poetic to himself about Ginny -- according to Hermione, she wasn't interested in him anymore anyway. Still, it was fun to watch her annoyance and he was quite glad not to be the one doing it. He really hated peeling potatoes.

A woman sat across from Ginny, her back to Harry so that he couldn't immediately recognize her from his hiding spot. She sat very well postured, very lady like, and seemed to have a delicacy about her. There was a strength about her squared shoulders and tightly wrapped hair as well. Even her grasp of the salt shaker she was using to salt the meat in front of her was of a proud, proper air. He knew he should recognize the mannerisms, but something was missing to trigger the memory. It wasn't until he heard her voice that he knew the woman as anything but delicate. She was Neville Longbottom's grandmother and, based on every experience he'd had with her (and her howlers), she was just as tough and formidable as any other witch out there. With everything she had been through and lost since the first war with Voldemort, she had to be.

"Are any of them ever going to get up," Mrs Longbottom was asking the other ladies in the room -- who also included a somewhat more mobile Molly, Madam Pomfrey, and the stately Emmeline Vance (who Harry remembered from the summer before). Over Harry's inspection of the room's occupants, Mrs Longbottom was still going on, her tone only slightly disparaging of what she was obviously chalking up to torpor. "Honestly, they are burning a perfectly useful day and there is far too much to be done just to lie about this long. It's no wonder things have progressed the way they have if this is how Dumbledore is allowing things to be conducted these days."

Mrs Weasley sounded very tired and drawn as she informed the grandmother, "I was going to give them until the food was ready before I woke them up. Arthur didn't make it back until almost six this morning. Bill was up all night with me and Alastor was up working on something that Dumbledore wanted him to do before we leave today. Remus and Molly were up all night doing -- " Mrs Weasley looked over her shoulder at Molly with a sideways grin that suggested both a motherly knowledge and a motherly unhappiness that Harry recognized all too well. " -- What exactly was it that the two of you were up all night doing?"

Molly shrugged as she fished around in the dresser for something. "Catching up. Last night was the first time we had seen each other since he and Arthur came to Romania to talk to Charlie about the Order two years ago. And before that, it had been since I left Hogwarts, other than the occasional letter to let each other know we were still alive. We had almost fourteen years' worth of insults to catch up on." Harry must have missed Madam Pomfrey give her a look because Molly added defensively, "Poppy, you and I both know that I haven't slept in the last fifteen years. That certainly isn't going to change by being in this house."

"Well, I know I for one will be quite happy to see us out of this house by the end of the week," puffed Mrs Longbottom haughtily. "This house is hardly the kind of place where I would expect Dumbledore to host something as important as the Order of the Phoenix. My son would never have set foot in a house as dark as this and he certainly would not have been caught associating himself with murdering -- "

"From what I remember of him, I think Frank would have understood, Mrs Longbottom, and you know it," interrupted Molly as she set a stack of plates down just a little too hard on the table. Harry saw a flash of anger in her that he just knew that she could be terribly dangerous if the wrong thing was said to her. In this case, he was guessing that the wrong thing was (at the very least) insinuated because her face turned red as she pronounced, "This was the most logical place for the Order to be. As dark as it and its previous owners were, it is pretty much right in the lion's den and therefore something that wouldn't be suspected. None of us like it, but from what I have been told it has certainly been useful." With a forcefulness that Harry thought was more than just a little reminiscent of Professor McGonagall, Molly also added, "And I assure you, Mrs Longbottom, not a one of us in the Order -- including those no longer with us -- ever were, are, or ever will be murderers."

"That remains to be proven," said Mrs Longbottom, her shoulders tightening even more with a sharp PING.

"No, it doesn't," Mrs Weasley argued defensively before Molly even got the chance to respond. Harry heard the dish that was in her hands smash into the bottom of the sink and the rustle of her skirt as she turned around to face the woman at the table. "And I will have no further insinuations of guilt by you or anyone else in this house, Mrs Longbottom. There are no murderers here and the suggestion of anything else is an insult."

"Sirius Black -- "

Again, Mrs Weasley beat Molly to the punch, but she certainly said enough for the both of them. "Sirius Black was a good man who died protecting and saving my family and that is how he will be remembered by everyone here. If you cannot say the same then I think it would be best if you didn't say anything at all. Need I remind you, Mrs Longbottom, that Sirius also saved your grandson?"

"Who wouldn't have been there at all if . . . "

"Neville was there because Harry needed him," said Hermione, who immediately snapped her jaw shut hard, looking like she felt her intrusion was almost as bad as interrupting a teacher. She walked away from Mrs Weasley to stand behind Ginny, who looked like she was just as angry as Hermione and the Mollys. All of the women aligned themselves on the same side of the table, opposite Mrs Longbottom. Only Emmeline Vance and Madam Pomfrey stayed away, but their expressions left no doubt which side of the table they were on. "He was there, like the rest of us, to save Sirius from Voldemort. Whether you know it or not, he was brave and he . . . "

"Which got my family involved in this awful war, again. I will not have my grandson, especially at his age, pulled into this nonsense the way that his father -- "

"This 'nonsense' is keeping you and your grandson alive, Mrs Longbottom," Mrs Weasley charged. "And I would thank you kindly to remember your manners in this house, regardless of the decor. Neville is a good boy and he was there when these children needed him. It's a pity that you cannot see that." Mrs Weasley crossed her arms definitively over her chest, waiting for Mrs Longbottom to respond at all. The longer she waited, the more both women started huffing. Then, finally, Mrs Longbottom opened her mouth to speak, only to have Mrs Weasley cut her off again. "I told you, if you cannot be bothered to say something nice . . . "

"Mum," Ginny began soothingly, only to be cut off by her mother.

"That's enough, Ginny," Mrs Weasley snapped. She must have realized that she had been harsh with her daughter because her voice softened to just above a whisper when she said, "Finish your potatoes. I'm going to get your father."

Harry heard the woman cross the room toward the door, even her footsteps sounding angry and defensive. He quickly dashed back up the steps then darted around the corner a few paces so that he could make it look like he hadn't been listening at the door and was just on his way in. He had to stop and go back a few more when he heard Mrs Weasley stop short of the door and turn back into the room.

There was no mistaking the tears in her voice when Mrs Weasley added, "We do not speak ill of the dead in this house, Mrs Longbottom, and certainly not of Sirius. I won't have it. I won't."

The door yanked back so fast that Harry was surprised that it didn't slam right into Mrs Weasley's nose. It shut just as violently, rattling the doorframe and the portraits on either side of the stair. The woman froze, her eyes shut against hope that the portraits' occupants would allow her one moment of peace. There was a soft frump from one of the black curtained frames at the top of the stair, but it managed to stay calm enough for her to start walking again without disturbance.

It was in these few seconds before Mrs Weasley discovered his presence that Harry was able to really take in the changes that had come over her over the last year. Last night, he had been too out of sorts to really notice anything but the holes in his shoes. But now, in the somewhat lighter shadows of the grand hallway, Mrs Weasley looked very small. She had lost a great deal of weight in the last few weeks, pulling the skin around her once cheerful cheeks into a permanently worried, pained expression. Her eyes now had a suspicious glaze in them, always looking around for the next thing to jump out of the shadows at her. She even walked a little more stiffly, as if every one of her worries that hadn't manifested in her face had taken up residence in her back, weighing her down and making it hard to move in any direction. He understood, of course. How could he not? There wasn't a single person in the house who could say that they weren't all feeling the stress as well. Each and every one of them was starting to show signs of weariness and fear, but none of them were as obvious as Mrs Weasley.

Harry wished he could take that away from her. He wished he could take the pain away from all of them. He also wished that it wasn't his responsibility to do so.

A CREAK in the floorboard under his foot announced his presence to not only Mrs Weasley, but to everyone on the first floor of the house. The woman's eyes snapped up to meet his before her head whipped around wildly, searching for rustlings of the black draperies covering the just-resettled portraits along the wall. It took a few seconds, but when nothing moved with awakening, Mrs Weasley turned her attention back to Harry and his wincing presence in the middle of the hall. She blinked several unfallen tears back into her eyes, willing them to stay hidden. Her smile was weak at first until she recovered and put back on her face the loving, motherly smile that Harry had always adored from her. "Good morn -- er -- afternoon, Harry. Did you sleep well?"

Not wanting to disappoint her or make her fears any worse than they already were, Harry just put on his best smile and nodded. "I did. Your hot chocolate worked perfectly."

The woman's eyes popped open with surprise, but she also seemed to realize that she shouldn't have been so surprised. "I should have known you would suspect something. I hope you aren't angry. I just wanted you to be able to have a peaceful night."

Harry hated lying to the woman, but he told himself that it was the least kindness he could do for her. She needed the lie more than she needed the truth today. He spread his grin just enough to hurt the bruise around his eye like some cosmic reminder that he was lying and told her, "And I did, Mrs Weasley. Thank you. It really helped a lot."

The lie was apparently worth it because Mrs Weasley showed the first sign of her old self when she smiled lovingly back at him. "I'm glad, Harry. You know, if I could do that for you every night, I . . . Well, I can't now, can I? And it doesn't do us any good to wish for things we can't have. So -- I was just about to go upstairs and wake Arthur. Why don't you come with me, Harry? Arthur and I wanted to talk to you in private today before everyone else wants to see you."

Harry crinkled his brow at her in confusions. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Not at all, Harry," Mrs Weasley said quickly like she was trying to banish any thoughts of wrong doing out of his head with a whip of her tongue. "Don't ever think that. You didn't do anything wrong. We just have some things that we want to talk to you about without anyone else around." She smiled at him again, her motherly warmness struggling to keep control over her and everyone around her. "Come on up. I know Arthur is anxious to see you."

Harry wished he could say the same thing. He really liked Ron's dad. Mr Weasley had taken him in as a member of the family from the first time they had met, accepting him just because he was Ron's best friend. The man had accepted him without question, even when Harry himself was doubting whether or not he had been responsible for the attack Mr Weasley had gone through last Christmas. And while he knew that Mr Weasley still didn't doubt him, Harry wasn't entirely sure that he wanted Mr Weasley to be the first person with whom he had a full conversation about the night before. It wasn't hard to figure out that that was what Mr Weasley was going to want to talk to him about.

"He wants to talk about last night?"

The apprehension in his voice wasn't lost on Mrs Weasley. She stopped mid-step and turned to look down the half stairwell that separated them. "Not a lot of it. You don't have to tell us anything that you don't want to, Harry. This isn't an interrogation."

No, you're saving that for later

, Harry thought. He immediately felt guilty for thinking that. He had no reason to think that of any of the Weasleys. When he met Mrs Weasley's gaze, she seemed to know what he was thinking. He tried to smile and cover but it was too late. She gave him a look that said she understood why he was thinking what she thought he was thinking, then turned around and went to make the final climb up the remaining stairs.

"We just wanted to make sure that you are all right. You have a long week ahead of you and Arthur and I wanted to know if there was anything that we could do for you. That's all. There are a few other things as well, but I think they will be -- er, somewhat -- welcome news and certainly nothing for you to worry about. Once we run our errands today, you'll sleep even better than you did last night. I promise."

Somehow, Harry wasn't entirely reassured by that promise, but he tried to believe it anyway. After all, Mrs Weasley had never lied to him in the five years that he had known her. After everything that they had been through, she wouldn't start now.

When they reached the top of the stairs and the door into the room the Weasleys shared, Harry couldn't bring himself to follow her inside. He hung back as far as he could and still be seen by her as she walked into the room and around the end of the bed to the side where her husband slept. While she pulled open the drapes that hung over the windows to add a little extra light into the room, Harry relegated himself to watching the swirlies of dust in the air the light showed him in the hallway, trying to keep his eyes focused on just one speck so that he could follow it all the way through the air onto the ground. It took him all of ten seconds to figure out just how fascinating dust wasn't. He suddenly felt quite stupid standing out there in the middle of the hall.

He tried not to, but his eyes floated up and into the Weasleys' bedroom. He knew he shouldn't look. The Dursleys had always made it perfectly clear that he was never to enter their bedroom, no matter what the circumstance. The Weasleys weren't the Dursleys, obviously, but it was, after all, the only place where they had any privacy at all in this horrible house. Whether or not Mr Weasley was decent wasn't even a thought to him. Harry was much more concerned with invading the only place that the two of them had left that was only theirs. At the same time, once he looked, he couldn't take his eyes away, either. He watched Mrs Weasley come back around the end of the bed and dive into the wardrobe and pull out a clean set of clothes for her husband to wear for their trip. She set them on the side of the bed where he guessed she normally slept with a wifely affection that he knew he had never seen exchanged between his aunt and uncle. Mrs Weasley then recircled the bed to where Mr Weasley was still curled up underneath the covers and snoring softly, only his red head visible. He didn't even stir when Mrs Weasley sat next to him on the edge of the bed, resting her hand on his back. The man awoke with a stuttering snore, blinking wildly from a sudden something that Harry couldn't see. He quickly turned around in the blankets, his hands up defensively before he realized it was his wife waiting patiently for him to awake.

"Hrmph . . . What time is it?"

"Noon," Mrs Weasley said softly, talking to him like he was still asleep. She yawned a healthy yawn herself before she added, "Or a little after. I've lost all track of time today."

"Did you go to sleep at all," the man asked lovingly, sounding as if he already knew the answer. When she didn't vocalize a response, Mr Weasley shook his head at her. "Molly, I know you have a fairly substantial household to run around here, but you were up all night like the rest of us. You really should have come to bed."

Mr Weasley rubbed his eyes sleepily and reached onto the nightstand for his glasses, but Mrs Weasley had already grabbed them for him. Once the man could see, there was a relaxed smile on his face. He reached for his wife's hand and squeezed it hard enough that Harry could see the tips of her fingers turn bright pink. They looked at each other, one of them wobbling the other's hand affectionately with reassurance. They didn't say anything to each other for a moment, but even Harry could see that they didn't need to. He had never seen it before, but he knew without experience that he was seeing two people who really, truly loved each other. Whatever they were trying to say, they didn't need words to do it.

"You're right. I do have a rather large household to run around here. Perhaps you should come home at a decent time instead of keeping me up all night worrying if you want me to get a proper sleep," she said with a smirk on her face that argued with her tone. "But I suppose I can forgive you just this once."

"Well, I'll thank you kindly if you would," the man retorted.

"What about the others? Do I have to forgive them as well?"

"Nah. You're my wife. I'm supposed to have privileges."

"In that case, I should yell at you more than the rest of them."

The two of them looked at each other again with such adoring looks that Harry was fascinated. It was so strange to see two people who looked like they truly loved one another, that they had chosen to spend all of their days together. They looked like if they ever had to spend more than a day apart, it would kill them both. He wondered if that was the way his parents would look at each other if they were still alive. Without thinking about it, Harry added that onto the list of questions he would pose to Lupin later that night as well.

Mr Weasley pushed himself up on his elbows and kissed his wife with a small but affectionate morning kiss, the kind that comfortable couples use for most occasions. He tried to let himself fall back onto his pillow, but Mrs Weasley put her hand to his cheek and pulled him back for a longer kiss, a kiss laced with relief that they had both woken up to face another day together. This time she allowed him to rest back onto his elbows, his head bumping into his headboard with a thud. After a quick groan, he pulled himself back up against the board to completely sit up, his hands folded neatly in his lap once they had taken a stretch over his head.

"Are they up yet?"

"I was just about to go wake Remus. He's in room right now, but I believe Alastor never went to bed after the meeting. He made the trip to Kingsley's to check on his family and to let them know why he wouldn't be home for a few days. He was also going to stop by Ollivanders to warn him about our coming and check the place out before we let Harry go there. He said he'll wait until just before dinner before he takes a sleep. I thought I would give Bill a few more hours, unless he decides to go with Molly this afternoon. He has guard duty tonight. The children are all up and running around. Ginny and Hermione are down in the kitchen putting lunch together with Poppy and Mrs Longbottom. The last I saw them, Ron and Neville were on their way to look after Buckbeak and then to resume the search for Kreacher."

Mr Weasley made a sour face at the mention of the house-elf, which Harry thought probably matched his own. "Is it wrong to hope that foul creature is never found?"

"You know we have to find him, Arthur. He knows too much."

"That doesn't mean I want him running around this house, either," Mr Weasley seethed with a rare anger. "As far as I'm concerned, Kreacher put my entire family in danger and Sirius didn't come home because of him. I don't care if we ever see him again. And I do not want that for Harry, either. He has enough to deal with."

Mrs Weasley seemed just as stung by the reminder that Sirius was no longer roaming the halls of his family's house as Harry was. Her face drained of color and her head hung low. Her eyes glistened as she softly said, "All the more reason to find him. We need to know where he is so that this cannot happen again. How do we know that he didn't have a hand in what happened last night? What if the same thing happened? What if one of you didn't make it back? If anything happened to any of you, if Bill hadn't gotten to Harry when he did, Harry could have been . . . "

"Shh . . . We made it," Mr Weasley said quietly with a relieved smile on his face, once again shaking his wife's hand. "Molly, it's going to be all right. We got him out and everyone's okay."

"Not everyone."

Mr Weasley nodded, acknowledging her argument without admitting anything. The smile drained a little from his cheeks, but his lips still at least stretched in reassurance. "Molly . . . Look, we have Harry. He's all right. The other kids are all okay, too. We have a few rough days ahead, I'll admit, but we're going to get through them the same way we have gotten through all of the days before. We're going to get Harry through this, too. I don't care what I have to do to make that happen."

"Arthur . . . "

With a certain air of resolve, the man pushed himself off the headboard and pursed his lips at her. He took both of her hands in his and chuckled a little bit. "Bill said something to me this morning and the more I think about it, the more I have to agree with him. You, Mrs Weasley, are going to get through this. You've given me seven wonderful, rambunctious, loving children. You can survive anything. You're far too strong to do anything less. And the rest of us are too afraid of what you'd do to us if we don't make it as well to get ourselves into trouble. So please try to relax a little. You're going to make yourself sick if you don't and we need you too much. Your family needs you."

"I . . . I'll just be better when this is all over and done with."

"We all will."

"I just wish I knew what it was going to take to get us there. I do not want these kids to inherit a world where we are at war when they're done with their days at Hogwarts. They deserve better than going through that the way we did. They shouldn't ever have to put some of their classes to use. They already have had to do too much."

"If we knew, Molly, we would have ended this before it ever started," Mr Weasley said. "But like everyone else, none of us, save Dumbledore, ever saw this coming. All we can do now is try to stop it from becoming what it was."

Mrs Weasley suddenly seemed to remember the other reason she had come into the room and woken her husband because she wiped more unfallen tears from her eyes with a fiery passion. When she turned her head toward the door, her face was a little blotchy, but she was obviously clear headed again. "Harry, I'm sorry. I forgot that I left you out there. There's no sense in you standing out there in the middle of the hallway with your hands in your pockets waiting. Come in here."

Harry's head jerked with the recognition of his presence. He looked between the Weasleys with an almost childlike apprehension, like a child being called into his parents' room for having done something wrong. "But that's -- it's your bedroom. I don't want to . . . "

Mr Weasley chuckled at him and waved him in excitedly. "Nonsense, Harry. Come in. We have a lot to discuss."

Mrs Weasley rubbed her husband's legs through the blankets and got up from his side. "I'll go get Remus. He needs to be in on this conversation, too."

"Remind him to bring the scrolls," Mr Weasley called after his wife as she walked across the room. She waved a hand over her head to acknowledge the request. Harry stood there, still framed in the doorway, not really knowing what to say or do. He went to his old stand by of watching the hole in his sock mysteriously grow until Mr Weasley's kind voice broke into his thoughts. "Come, Harry. Sit."

Not really sure of a reason not to follow the order but still feeling like he shouldn't, Harry took several stuttering steps before he managed to cross the threshold into the room. As he passed Mrs Weasley on her way out, she shook his shoulder with a reassuring whisper. "Go on, Harry. It's all right."

He finished his walk across the room and sat uneasily at the foot of the bed where Mr Weasley patted a spot out for him to sit on. While he sat, Mr Weasley turned a little in the bed to face his surrogate son. He pushed his glasses back onto his face as they precariously dangled on the end of his nose, unkempt from his early waking fog. "How are you, Harry?"

Harry put on his best reassuring face, even if his words didn't quite match what he was trying to tell the man. "All right, I suppose."

Mr Weasley didn't look as convinced as Mrs Weasley had been by the lie. He studied Harry's black eye for a second before he visibly forced himself to ignore it and asked, "The effects of the curse are starting to wear off?"

Guilt washed over Harry, leaving his cheeks feeling a little red. He had completely forgotten about the promise he'd made to Madam Pomfrey to look after himself. For the first time, she had given him permission to take care of himself and he had failed to remember to soak his fingers even once. There was no doubt in his mind that the school healer was never going to leave his medication up to him ever again. He looked down at his fingers and saw the blue had turned into an almost black glow, throbbing with the pounding of his blood in his veins. He hoped Mr Weasley wouldn't notice as he lied, "I think so."

"I thought so," Mr Weasley chuckled knowingly, without even looking at Harry's hands. He knew he had caught Harry in a lie without a glance. (It was probably a father thing.) "Don't worry. It isn't as bad as it looks. It should fade in a few days, if you remember to keep track of the ointment over the next two days or so. I'm sure they're a little stiff, but do they hurt much?"

Harry shrugged and flexed his fingers, feeling the tightness of them that he probably never would have noticed if Mr Weasley hadn't said something about it in the first place. "Not as bad as some things have . . . "

Even though Harry was sure Mr Weasley knew he meant about his fingers and other curses, the man looked at him thoughtfully as if he were reading a lot more into the statement than Harry had intended. "I would suppose not."

"How are you feeling," Harry asked, trying to steer the subject away a bit. "Have you seen Madam Pomfrey yet?"

"I'm just fine, Harry. I don't want you to worry about me." Mr Weasley winked at Harry as he reached over and patted the young man's knee. "That's what I have a wife for. Some day you'll understand."

The wizards shared a laugh, although Harry wasn't entirely sure what he was laughing about. He wanted to believe Mr Weasley that he actually would live to understand what the man meant some day. Two months of living alone at the Dursleys with nothing but the foreboding of prophecy clogging his mind had given him plenty of time to convince himself otherwise.

Once the laughter died down, Mr Weasley sat quietly for a moment, obviously contemplating exactly what he wanted to say to Harry next. Harry watched him silently, patiently. Whatever it was that the man wanted to tell him, it was apparently weighing quite heavily on him and he didn't want to rush him. Harry knew he owed the man that much. So when Mr Weasley had finally decided how to say what he wanted to say, Harry made sure that he was perked up and visibly listening to every word.

"You know, Harry . . . Things are about to change for you in ways that I don't think any of us had foreseen. We have a lot that we -- that is, Molly, Remus, and myself -- a lot that we wanted to talk to you about. But I wanted a minute to talk to you, just you and me, man to man."

"Okay . . . "

"I spent a few minutes with your aunt and cousin last night before I came home."

Surprised to think that he actually cared, Harry didn't recognize the tone of his voice when he asked, "Are they all right?"

Mr Weasley raised a calming hand in Harry's direction, as if the motion of his hand could actually send the bile back down into the boy's stomach from where it had risen up into his throat. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about, Harry." Mr Weasley stopped again for a moment, forming the words that he wanted so that they said what he meant. There was a tight but fatherly smile on his face like he was about to share a secret with Harry that perhaps only fathers could pass on to sons. "Harry, I think we all know that you don't have the best relationship with your aunt and cousin. In fact, I think to say you have a relationship at all is a bit of an exaggeration. I didn't believe that at first. I thought that the way that Ron and the twins talked about your relatives was the sort of thing that boys do when they talk about other people's parents. I never liked my best friend's family, either. I don't think we ever imagined that things were really as terrible as the boys were saying. For that, I'm sorry, Harry."

"It wasn't your fault, Mr Weasley."

"The thing is, Harry . . . That relationship as it existed doesn't really matter anymore. Like them or hate them, you are their relative, and, from what I saw not only last night, but in the past as well . . . that is to say . . . Harry, what I'm trying to tell you is that, whether you like it or not, you are the man of the house now. Without your uncle to care for your aunt and cousin, you have responsibilities that you never could have imagined before. The next few days, things are going to change for you. I want you to know that Molly and I -- and Lupin and Moody, all of us -- are here to get you through this."

Suddenly Harry remembered from somewhere in the recesses of his mind a Muggle book he had read in school before he had known he was a wizard and was taken to Hogwarts. The story had always stuck with him because it had been so strange to read about a family that cared so deeply for one another and were actually torn apart when the father had died. Without realizing it, Harry had images of having to stay home from school to take care of relatives that didn't care about him in the least now that his uncle was gone. He imagined never seeing his friends again because he was completely tied down doing not only his regular chores, but also going to work every day in Uncle Vernon's suits to take his place. His wild imagination aside, Harry's entire life was practically flashing before his eyes as he gulped, "Change how?"

"Well, there are things that we are going to have to talk about with your aunt when we're able to sit her down for a while. Most everything she's going to have to learn for herself, like how to take care of the bills and such while you're away at school. There are going to be issues with putting everything in her name or Dudley's. As a husband, I can tell you that there are plenty of things that I can think of right now that I don't always think to tell Molly about that are just day to day things that matter very little in the everyday, but are terribly important in the long run. The fact is though, Harry, that in the few minutes that we were with your aunt last night, I can tell you right now that your uncle took care of everything. She's going to need your help to figure out how to be self sufficient for your cousin, for herself, and for you. You need to be there to show her that she can take care of things by herself."

Relieved that Mr Weasley wasn't suggesting that Harry's life suddenly be put on hold, he came back to a much more normal sense of what was going on and what was going to be happening. Besides, Mr Weasley knew better than to think that Aunt Petunia would actually want his help anyway. He had not quite said as much, but he had to know. Didn't he? Plainly Harry told the man, "She has Dudley to do all of that. She isn't going to want my help."

"Yes, Harry, she will. I know it sounds strange to you, but your aunt isn't a stupid woman, Harry. She may not be the nicest person in the world, nor is she unbiased, but she is far from stupid. She didn't ask Dudley for help last night. She turned immediately to you and the rest of us. Whether you saw it or not, she put her trust in you. Things are about to settle in for her and when they do, there's no telling how she's going to react. You need to help her on her way."

Harry couldn't quite believe what he was hearing from his own mouth as he asked, "What do I need to do?"

"Well, first . . . Tonight, we're going to have to sit down with her and plan a funeral for your uncle."

"But I don't know how to do that."

Mr Weasley smiled again, a reassuring smile. "And that's what we are here for. We're going to get you all through this so that you can return to school without this hanging over your head. We will see you through. I wanted to be the one to talk to you about this because I think that you and I both know that this would be a little difficult for Molly to hear right at the moment, especially considering how little sleep she had. She's going to be incredibly helpful with the details, but I think we need to ease her into this. The next few days are probably going to be very overwhelming, Harry, for everyone. There are going to be Muggles in the house, Muggles who have never made it a secret that they hate anything and everything about our world. It's going to be a very trying couple of days. I want you to remember that it is okay to talk to us about these things. It's okay to ask for help. We won't think you incapable of anything if you ask for help. We all need help from time to time and this is an incredible responsibility for someone of your age, of any age."

Harry nodded. He supposed that Mr Weasley was right, although he had to wonder if any of them were going to know any better than him how to handle the situation. After all, they weren't talking about burying just any family member. They were talking about planning a funeral for a Muggle. And if that weren't enough, Uncle Vernon was a Muggle murdered by some of Voldemort's Death Eaters. It was bound to become very public knowledge throughout the day, if it hadn't already. Even Cornelius Fudge couldn't stop that kind of gossip. The Muggle uncle of The-Boy-Who-Lived being murdered by Death Eaters in their own home wasn't exactly something that the Ministry could keep quiet, no matter how much Fudge hated Harry these days. All of that made it a situation that none of them, no matter how good their hearts were, had ever faced before. Harry hoped that they would be able to feel their way through. This was something he didn't feel he had the right to screw up.

Not sure he wanted the answer to his next question but knowing that he needed to accept this mantle that Mr Weasley was having to put over him, Harry asked, "My uncle -- where is he?"

"He's safe. Once we were able to send Fudge away, Dumbledore took your uncle straight to Hogwarts. Severus spent some time with him last night to prepare him for you, your aunt, and your cousin."

"Prepare?"

"Haven't you ever been to a funeral, Harry?"

"No, sir."

Mr Weasley looked uncomfortable as he swallowed hard and tried his hardest to explain what was appearing to be a rather unhappy topic. "When we die, Harry, certain changes happen to our bodies. Part of a tradition of funerals is that people want to see the body of the person who died, so that they can see for themselves that the person is at peace. Unfortunately, Nature doesn't exactly afford our bodies that kind of time, so we have to help the bodies along until it's time to bury them. Severus was just trying to help the process along. He was up all night working on it."

"Does it hurt?"

"The process? No, Harry. Your uncle cannot feel a thing. And I promise you, whatever feelings exist between yourself and Professor Snape, he has taken excellent care of your uncle."

Not really wanting to dwell too long on the thought that Severus Snape had been anywhere near his uncle for any length of time, Harry tried to push the conversation on to whatever else it was that Mr Weasley was going to tell him to do. If he didn't, he was going to be sick at the imagining of whatever it was that Snape was doing to his uncle. Vernon Dursley was dead. Hadn't the man been through enough? The last thing he needed was to be gawked at by someone so twisted and hateful as Severus Snape. Harry was too angry to allow that to happen. And then, the further his thoughts about Snape spiralled, the more Harry wanted to throw up. Mr Weasley must have seen it because he too started to change the subject to try to make it easier for the seventh son he didn't have.

"Have you thought at all about what room you would like your aunt and cousin to stay in while they're here? We thought about putting them into the room next to the one you and Ron share so that if anything happens, you'd be able to hear it. Or would you possibly like them to be somewhere else? We can put them up just about anywhere you want."

Harry thought about this for a moment, unsure. He had no idea how Aunt Petunia and Dudley were going to react to being in the house at all. For all he knew, he wasn't going to be able to get them to move beyond the front hall. "Can I have some more time to think about it?"

"Of course," Mr Weasley smiled. "We're here to help you make this work. You can tell him when we see him, but Dumbledore asked us to also have you consider if you would like him to bring Dobby along to help out while your relatives are here. He thought that might bring them a little extra comfort to have him to cater to their needs. We know it's going to be hard on all of you. If having Dobby around can make it easier, well, then . . . "

The idea of his aunt and cousin enjoying the company of a house-elf, particularly one as original as Dobby brought a smile to his face. He liked Dobby. He had to. The house-elf had tried to save his life on more than a few occasions since his second year. Dobby may not have always had the best methods of doing so, but he more than made up for his antics with a genuine love for Harry. He had to love the little creature.

Harry only wished he could say the same for all of the house-elves that he had come across. Kreacher was the Black family's elf. He had been running around the Black residence at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, for so many years that Harry would have been sorry for him if he wasn't a traitorous, awful excuse for a creature with a pulse. It was because of Kreacher that Harry was tricked into going into the Ministry of Magic two months ago. It was because of Kreacher that Sirius had gone after Harry and hadn't come back with the rest of them. As far as Harry was concerned, if he ever saw the house-elf ever again, he wasn't going to hesitate to kill him.

It was as he was thinking about the differences between the two creatures that Harry remembered hearing Mr and Mrs Weasley talking about Kreacher and that Ron and Neville were searching for him. Harry felt his jaw tighten as he looked to Mr Weasley and tried to ask as casually as possible without breaking all of his teeth, "Speaking of house-elves . . . Mr Weasley, where is Kreacher?"

"I wish I knew, Harry," said Mr Weasley, going a little red again. "After Dumbledore got the story out of him that night, he bound Kreacher to the house with some sort of variation of the Anti-Apparation Charm. But ever since then, no one has seen him. None of us were here to see him except Molly, and by the time she was able to find the time to deal with him, he had already disappeared. Ron has been searching the house up and down for him now since the end of the school term. We'll find him, though. I don't exactly feel safe with us leaving this house until we do."

"Why? Do you think he has something to do with the spy?"

Mr Weasley eyed him suspiciously, although the glint behind the suspicion told Harry that the man wasn't exactly surprised either. "How did you know we think there's a spy?"

"Prof-Remus and Bill hinted at it last night, but no one told me very much."

"That's right. I remember Bill telling me that now. I'm sorry, Harry. I'm still trying to wake up a little here." Mr Weasley was quiet for a moment, seemingly mulling over the possibilities of Kreacher being involved with the suggestion of a spy in the ranks. The wizard almost looked disappointed when he finally said, "No. I do not think he has anything to do with the spy. It would be easier if he did, but I don't think so. Kreacher may be sneaky and evil, but he is still far too limited in his ability to be able to pass any information along. The kinds of things that we've been running into are too specific for him to have been able to repeat to anyone outside the Order. We've forbidden him from repeating the things that have come up. No, I am sad to admit . . . Kreacher isn't the spy we're looking for. The treachery runs deeper than that."

The two of them looked at each other, both in sadness. It wasn't exactly the same sadness, but they were both feeling something that they couldn't describe. It was obvious then to Harry that he had been right last night, he wasn't the only one that was mourning Sirius. He knew Remus was. He had seen that as soon as the man's eyes had flashed at him back in his uncle's kitchen at the mention of Sirius's murderess being in the backyard. He knew without even having to think about it how Remus was feeling. But Mr Weasley . . . Harry was . . . well, he wasn't exactly surprised to see the man looking so red full of hatred -- he just didn't expect it as much from him. Harry remembered the first time he had heard Mr Weasley mention Sirius as he had been arguing with his wife about whether or not Harry should be told that Sirius was on the loose and after him to kill him. For so long, Mr and Mrs Weasley had been under the impression that Sirius was a psychotic mass murderer who had betrayed his best friends. That the Weasleys had gotten beyond the idea just on the word of Harry and Ron was a great relief to him. So to see Mr Weasley just as angry over Kreacher's betrayal of them all and over Sirius's death, well . . . Harry didn't feel quite as alone as he'd been feeling in the last two months. He was still feeling very alone, but at least he wasn't feeling alone alone.

Harry asked after a moment, "Does anyone have an idea of who it is?"

"That's a bit complicated, Harry," said Mr Weasley. "And I'm not saying that it is something you couldn't understand. Don't think I'm saying that."

Harry could almost feel his cheeks flushing at having been caught. Of course he would think that. Since the day that Hagrid tracked him down to bring him into the wizarding world, people had treated him with extra care. He had been treated to only tidbits of information, doled out piece by infinitesimal piece so that he usually had to track answers down on his own. He didn't blame them. He didn't have to like it, but he understood that they were doing what they thought was protecting him. And based on Mr Weasley's expression, Harry thought perhaps the man knew exactly how he was feeling.

"We all know you are capable of understanding," Mr Weasley went on without waiting for Harry to argue. "I think Molly would rather you didn't, and if it's all right with you, I'd like to let her keep that for herself. Fighting with her is not a pleasant experience and I don't fancy doing it any time soon. I can only fight so many wars at a time." The man stared quietly at his charge for a moment before going on, a sense of urgency in his voice like he was trying to get his thought out before Mrs Weasley returned. "Harry, I think it's enough while you are here before school starts for you to know that we know that there is a spy. We know that information has been leaked and we think we know how. What we do not know yet is who. Harry, this is very important -- you need to figure out who you want to trust. You need to be very careful to decide who you reveal things to and who you put your trust in."

Something clenched in Harry's insides, not entirely certain he liked where the conversation was heading. He didn't know how or why, but something told him that Mr Weasley was right.

"I know you always have been, but it's extremely important that you take extra care now. You must be careful. Whoever the spy is, he or she is going to appear to be a friend. You need to take care."

"I will."

"I want you to know that you can trust Molly and myself," Mr Weasley said with a definitiveness that forced Harry to believe him. He didn't have any doubt, but the forceful nature of the request was still a comfort.

"I knew that," Harry grinned his confidence at the man.

"And all of our children, Harry -- not just Ron."

Even though he was fairly certain he knew the answer, Harry asked anyway, "What about Percy?"

Mr Weasley flinched at the mention of his third son. He looked as if the events of the night before hadn't quite set in with him just yet. "Well, I don't imagine you will be hearing from him any time soon. The point is, you need to decide just how close you allow people to get. We're going to try to help with that as much as possible, too. You were told we are moving to a new headquarters?"

"Yeah."

"Only certain members of the Order are going to know about it," Mr Weasley explained. "All of the other meetings will continue to be held here in this house. We want to keep this new location top secret to start to sort out the candidates of who may be the spy. Until the culprit is found out, Harry, please -- please, please -- be careful. You must keep things to either Ron and Hermione, or myself, my family, Lupin, and Moody. I have also been repeatedly informed by Lupin and Charlie that you can trust Molly, but she said she'll understand if you don't. Understood?"

"Understood."

A new CREAK in the floorboard announced the arrival of Mrs Weasley and Lupin, who sucked in coordinated yawns as they approached the doorway, pulling Harry and Mr Weasley out of their mutually consoling silences. Lupin lagged behind to allow Mrs Weasley to enter the room first then followed with a rather stiff walk, the pads of his feet barely leaving the floor enough to take steps. Whether that was from the pain in the werewolf's leg from his vaguely explained 'rough moon' or just from sheer tiredness, Harry wasn't entirely sure, but it was clear that his father's best friend was far from happy for having been awoken so soon after his attempt at sleep.

"We're all off to an early start, I see," Lupin yawned and flopped unceremoniously into the recliner that Harry hadn't noticed was hidden in the corner by the bed. In his hands, a grouping of scrolled parchments tempted Harry's attention while the man went on. "I think between the group of us, we'll have managed a proper eight hours of sleep."

"And whose fault is that," Mrs Weasley mothered him, her Mum-face going into overdrive. "No one forced you to stay up all night chatting away, did they?"

Lupin gulped and looked to Harry with one of the faces he guessed the man had promised to teach him before he and the others returned to school in a few weeks. Harry stifled a giggle while Mrs Weasley huffed at them both, knowing that she was somehow on the outside of a joke between the two of them. Seemingly much more awake and happier to be in the room, Lupin turned his attention to the Weasleys.

"Well, we have a long day ahead. Shall we?"

Mr Weasley's affirmative nod was much more cheerful than Mrs Weasley's foreboding tightening of her lips. While her lips practically disappeared with whatever stress their conversation was about to cause, Mr Weasley and Lupin tried to make up for her with reassuring smiles. Lupin half stood, reached back for the arms of his chair, and pulled both it and himself closer to the bed before sitting back down again. Mr Weasley pushed his glasses up on his nose again, making sure they were fitting properly, as if it were a ritual for any sort of conversation of this nature. Mrs Weasley was the only one who seemed to shrink from the talk, pulling herself back a little further so that if she moved much farther, she was going to disappear into the headboard. Harry hoped, for her sake, that the wizards didn't have any surprises planned in the next few minutes or she was going to be the next member of the Order to be sewn up from a crack to the head.

Lupin was the first to actually speak up and he yawned most of the way through it so that once his eyes were unscrewed from the effort, he ended up repeating what he had just said. "Sorry about that, Harry. Anyway . . . What I was trying to say was that there were a few reasons why the three of us wanted to talk to you alone this morning. Don't worry -- you aren't in trouble or anything. We just felt that some of this was sensitive enough that it shouldn't be discussed at the dinner table when anyone could walk in. You are, of course, perfectly allowed to discuss whatever we say with Ron and Hermione if you wish. It isn't anything like that."

"Not that our asking otherwise would stop you from telling them anyway," Mr Weasley added. They all chuckled. He knew the adults in his life had long ago stopped thinking that they could tell him anything without the other two knowing about it. The three of them had even used it as a weapon against the Weasleys on several occasions. "Just mind that you do not tell anyone else. It is not the sort of information that is meant for other ears."

There was a brief silence as the adults all looked at one another in turn. Seeing the looks on their faces, Harry was guessing that he had just been lied to, that he was in trouble in some way. Then he remembered what Mr Weasley had just told him about trust and how he needed to make decisions about who he trusted in his life. If there were three adults he trusted more than any others, it would be the three in the room with him at the moment. But if they were going to trust him, he was going to have to show him that he could be trusted, just as they had never done anything else for him.

"It's okay. Just start in and say whatever it was that you wanted to say. You don't have to make me feel better to do it."

Lupin regarded Harry proudly. His head raised a little bit and a smirk crooked his face as he reached over onto the night stand where he had set the scrolls he had brought in with him. "You're right, Harry. You're absolutely right. All right then. Harry, what I have in my hands here are the parchments of what remains of both Sirius and your parents' final affairs. It's a rather long story, one that I will explain to you tonight when we have the time, but for now, there are some things that we need you to sign in order for a few things to take place." The wizard produced the first scroll, which looked like it had been covered in dust for so long that people would have to dig to find it. "Before your parents took you into hiding, Harry, they set up a few requests, should anything happen to them. As you know, Sirius, as your godfather, was to be your guardian. If anything were to happen to Sirius, or if he were in any way incapacitated to carry out that duty, I was to take over. And Peter after that, and so on."

This revelation confused Harry for a moment. Why hadn't anyone ever mentioned that to him before? He had no idea that it was actually in writing that Sirius (and then Remus and so on and so forth) was supposed to have taken him. If that were true, then why couldn't he have gone to Remus instead of his aunt and uncle's house? Granted, living with Remus wouldn't have had the same protection that living with Aunt Petunia had had for him, but how different could it have been? Why wasn't he at least given the option when he was old enough to choose for himself? It was what his mother and father had wanted.

"I'm sure that probably doesn't seem right to you, since neither Sirius or I ever told you about it," Lupin said, quite possibly reading Harry's mind. "You see, contracts, Harry, in the wizarding world are magically binding. That's why you'll find that most wizards won't actually put their signatures to parchment unless they know exactly what every single word in the contract reads. A scroll like this, concerning your guardianship or some of these others, like the ownership of property and wealth, is sealed with magic once it is signed. It allows for the contracts to take care of themselves. For example, when your parents died, everything that they had set up, your trusts for your education and some of the other vaults that were put aside for when you are older, all of it was automatically taken care of. Gringotts has no control over it whatsoever. The money simply, for lack of a better word, Apparated from one vault to the next. It prevents family disputes and such."

"So when your parents died, Harry," Mr Weasley went on to explain, "everything was set in order for you."

"Except your guardianship," Mrs Weasley added with a wicked Hrmph.

"I don't understand," said Harry slowly, not liking what Mrs Weasley's unhappiness meant for him. "If everything was the way it was supposed to be, why are we even having this conversation? And why did I have to go to the Dursleys, if everything was in order? I thought you said that if Sirius wasn't able to take me, you were supposed to. I mean, I understand the bit about Aunt Petunia and the protection of the blood she shares with my mum and all, but by this contract, shouldn't it all have been taken care of then?"

"That's where things start to get a bit sticky," said Lupin. He took a brief moment to yawn again before he went on, and when he did, he didn't look any happier about what he was about to say than Harry felt. "While they were trying to put the house in Godric's Hollow together for you and getting everything together for the Fidelius Charm, your dad left it to Sirius to have me sign the parchments and, seeing as how Padfoot wasn't exactly my biggest fan at the time, he conveniently forgot to have me sign the paperwork. Thinking that if it all worked out in the end he could just fix it and your dad would understand his reasons, he had Peter sign the parchments before me so that it would be Peter next in line in my place. And then they performed the Fidelius Charm before Peter could turn the scrolls over for my signature. Then everything else happened and there was nothing we could do. So the line of guardianship ends with Peter . . . "

Harry felt all the color drain from his face. Peter? Peter Pettigrew? Peter, the man who was responsible for his parents' deaths and all of the misery that had been inflicted on all of them in the years since, he was the man who was now (in a sense) Harry's guardian? Harry suddenly felt the pressing urge to throw up. Wormtail? Wormtail was his guardian?

Lupin must have seen Harry's reaction, because he very quickly jumped back in to reassure Harry and make his next point. "Since the night of the Third Task, Sirius and I have been trying to find a way to correct the problem, but so far, since Peter is still alive, we have not been able to nullify the agreement. Everything that was put into writing when your parents were still alive is completely binding because only your parents can change it. And with the events that happened last night, we are afraid that if Voldemort finds out about the contracts, he might try to exploit that loophole. While your aunt's blood magic still holds, Peter, as your only legal guardian (including your aunt and uncle), also has the ability to take you from that house. So one of the things we need to do is have you sign this parchment that Sirius and I had drawn up for you that will declare you free of all guardianship. You're old enough now by wizarding world standards that you can contest any guardianship without it having to be acknowledged by Peter at all. It has been validated so that as soon as your signature is on it, it will be binding. You'll be able to present it at Gringotts this afternoon and put this part of it out of your mind."

"That doesn't sound so bad," said Harry. When Lupin had said it was sticky, he expected things to get a lot more complicated than that. "Where do I sign?"

"We'll get to that one in a minute," said Mr Weasley. He glanced at his wife and friend with a certain friendly urging of calm and restraint before he looked back at Harry, encouraging him to remain calm as well. "There are a few other problems that we need to go over that, if not taken care of properly, could cause damage beyond belief."

"Problems," asked Harry. "Such as?"

"Certain ownerships," said Mrs Weasley.

"The thing is, Harry, as long as Sirius was alive, everything was all right with the other affairs that had been taken care of by your mum, dad, and Padfoot when it came to you. You could have walked into Sirius's vaults at any time and it would all be safe -- every document, every coin. Everything from both James and Lily and from Sirius would have been in the vaults that Sirius had specifically put aside for you should the need arise. The only people who would be able to get into them would be Sirius and you. But now, with Sirius . . . " Lupin gulped painfully so that everyone in the room probably felt it. He quickly recovered though to his usual even, masked self. "With Sirius gone, certain other parchments are now in the care of Peter, parchments from both your parents and Padfoot. Until you sign them, all of the assets -- including this house and other properties -- that they all were going to leave you are locked away in Peter's vault. Peter is the controlling owner at the present."

"But if my signing this new scroll you and Sirius had done takes care of that -- I don't understand -- what's the problem?"

Lupin yawned a bit as he began to clarify, "It completely negates the Fidelius Charm that Dumbledore performed on this house and opens it up for anyone to find it and to come in. When the intention is to protect a location along with people, there needs to be either ownership or permission by the owner in order to perform and maintain the Fidelius Charm. And with Sirius gone -- "

Harry felt his eyes widen with a sickness he had never known in his entire life. He had to swallow a few times before he could manage to complete Lupin's sentence. "Wormtail owns this house."

Mr Weasley took over for a moment to break up Harry's concentration on Lupin for a quick minute. With a grave nod, he confirmed, "And Dumbledore doesn't have his permission to maintain or cast a Fidelius Charm on this house. He doesn't have the consent to hide it from Wormtail or anyone else. If Wormtail were looking for us, he could follow us directly here and could not be barred from entering. It is, after all, technically his house at the moment, even if it's being held for you."

Unable to figure out what the hold up could possibly be, Harry said with a certain amount of impatience, "Well then let me sign this thing so that I can give Dumbledore the permission he needs to perform the spells again."

"I wish it were that simple, Harry," said Mrs Weasley sadly.

"It certainly sounds like it's that simple," argued Harry, anxious and confused. "Unless I'm missing something here."

"If you sign it here and now, it puts the new headquarters at risk," explained Mr Weasley, shoving his glasses up his nose again.

Lupin drew Harry's attention again, patting a particular scroll with his hand to indicate which one he was referring to. He unrolled it for a moment to show Harry that his name had been printed on it in rather large script, underneath another name that was somehow magically blurred to ensure anonymity. "Without going into too much detail about it, the new headquarters we have chosen is actually yours, Harry. You own it -- that is, you will, once you've signed this. It's been hidden in trust for you by another party, chosen by your father, someone who was not one of the four of us."

His interest piqued, Harry looked to Lupin for confirmation. If any other member of the Order had been the trust holder for him, they never would have come to this house and would have just gone to the other. It had to be someone who wasn't around, someone who was close to his parents and wasn't Dumbledore. He didn't mouth the name at him, but Lupin seemed to know what he was thinking. Molly? With a nod, Harry got his answer. Wherever this new headquarters was going to be, Molly had been an owner of it. Molly knew all about this as well. His father had turned a house over to her to hold for him to have some day. Somehow, he was going to have to get Lupin to talk about her later that night when he was able to ask his questions. There was too much going on for the two of them to hide it from him for too long anyway.

Lupin went on, trying not to let the silence between them hover for too long, not wanting it to arouse a suspicion among the other participants of the conversation. He let the scroll roll up on itself as he said, "The person who has held the deed for you has drawn up the proper documents to turn the property over to you once you have signed the parchments for your emancipation. The contract that was written specifically states that the property would be turned over to you in the event of either your eighteenth birthday or your assertion of independence. In the meantime, because the current owner is still alive, permission could be given to Dumbledore and certain other members of the Order such as ourselves so that the property could be converted and protected as we needed. We wanted it to be perfectly protected before you assumed ownership, as much as we possibly could anyway. Once you sign that contract however, the property is yours and negates any prior consent that had been given over the property."

"We found a way to order your signatures so that we do not have to perform many of the spells again," Mrs Weasley explained. "It will be protected over the course of the few minutes it takes to sign everything. But some of the more powerful charms, such as the Fidelius Charm, will have to be executed again though, as soon as the transition is completed."

Lupin went on explaining, looking to the others every now and then for confirmation that he had all the facts straight. Harry understood his glances all too perfectly. All of the loopholes were starting to turn his brain into Swiss cheese, too. But he still listened as Lupin tried to simplify the next snag in their plans. "The catch is, Harry, that everything has to be timed perfectly or it will completely destroy all of the work we have done to keep the new location of Order headquarters a secret. If anything were to happen to you in between your signing of the contract and Dumbledore being able to perform the Fidelius Charm on you, the location would not be protected."

"And if anything were to happen to the current owner in between now and then, it would reverse all the spells and wards and turn the property over to Wormtail as well," said Mrs Weasley. "I assure you, however, that the other party is almost as well protected as you are no matter how hard this person tries to prove otherwise. But we still cannot afford to take any chances after what happened last night. It needs to be taken care of today."

"Because the longer that we let it go," said Lupin. "The greater chance there is that Peter will discover that everything has been turned over to him, if he hasn't already. If he finds out, the consequences to this house could be disastrous. And it wouldn't take a great deal of concentration for him to figure out the owner of the other house and how to find that person. It could be devastating if certain members of the Order were caught in either location."

Harry looked between Lupin and Mr Weasley, finally making the connection he had been hoping to make now for the last few minutes. "That's why you think this house has been compromised. You said last night that that was why we are moving to a new headquarters, that you think this house has been compromised. You think he's already gotten in and heard things, plans, and seen people coming and going. You think he knows who is in the Order."

"Yes," said Mrs Weasley quite plainly. "Things have happened and people have been attacked in the last few weeks that lead us to believe that, yes."

Half to himself and half looking for confirmation of his understanding of everything, Harry muttered it all out for himself. "So I don't sign anything until we get to Gringotts. And when I do, I first have to sign for my own guardianship, then for the properties of both this house and this other house. Then, before all of the spells can be reversed, I have to give Dumbledore consent to perform the Fidelius Charm on both the house and myself in order to keep it hidden."

The adults all glanced at one another then Lupin shrugged. "That's the short version of it anyway."

Mr Weasley seemed to relax a little, apparently thinking that since Harry had the main idea of what needed to happen, they could all feel a little more confident in what was going to take place that afternoon. He told Harry, "Dumbledore will be meeting with us in Diagon Alley so that the portion of the Fidelius Charm that makes Dumbledore your Secret-Keeper can be performed immediately when we're in the vaults at Gringotts. We're going to need you to go to Ollivanders first though, Harry. You need a wand yourself to be able to perform the spell. It's rather intricate and complicated, but Dumbledore will talk you through it. We'll be there as well."

Not entirely certain why he was asking the question out loud, Harry barely whispered, "Does it have to be Dumbledore?"

Lupin smiled gently at his best friend's son with a strange, knowing twinkle in his eye. "He thought you might have a reservation or two about it. He would, of course, consent to someone else taking on the spell for you if you wish, but he would gladly do it for you. Besides, he is the Secret-Keeper for the Order. Choosing someone else would change everything."

Harry shook his head, trying to shake the last image he had of the man out of his head. He was still very, very angry with the man, but the realist in him also told him that if anyone could protect him and was right to be his Secret-Keeper, it should be the only wizard that Voldemort ever feared. Logic couldn't provide him with any other solution. "I was just asking. It's okay. He's fine. It can be Professor Dumbledore."

"All right then," Lupin yawned and unrolled another scroll. "Then the only other thing we need you to do before we go is to have you sign this. It doesn't do you any good in the Muggle world, but it basically says that this contract and anything you sign from here on out supersedes any contract in which you were involved in both the wizarding and Muggle worlds. It also keeps anyone from trying to stop you from petitioning for your guardianship. Seeing as how we don't know what's going to happen between here and Gringotts, we can't take the chance that Peter would try to put a bar on your ability to circumvent him. Does that make sense?"

"I'm signing this so that no matter what, my contracts overrule anyone else's contracts concerning me?"

"Exactly," Mr Weasley grinned.

"Then hand me a quill," Harry pronounced, feeling a certain relief of his own. He was certainly lucky to be surrounded by people who had thought of everything. He had to wonder just how much planning had gone into figuring out how to best protect him and the Order all at the same time. He didn't know why, but having the quill in his hand and watching it glide over the parchment with his signature gave him an odd sense of hope that they were all going to make it through this.

"That settles that," said Lupin, sounding a bit more relieved than Harry would have expected. They looked at one another again, sharing their relief. Harry could tell -- Lupin was thinking the same thing he was. At least something was going to turn out right for them. Lupin rolled the scroll back into form and tapped it once with his wand, sealing it until it was to be opened again by the goblins at the wizarding bank. "We'll get this to Gringotts this afternoon, once we've picked up your aunt and cousin."

Harry cringed. "Are we really taking them to Diagon Alley? Wouldn't it be easier if we did everything else first?"

Lupin didn't seem to look too thrilled about the idea, but he said, "I'm afraid that it is the safer of the two plans. You cannot go more than a day without a wand, no matter where we're hiding you. And it would be better if we didn't have to split ourselves up to guard your relatives in one place and still keep you here. Besides, there is a lesser chance for attack. People will notice you and the Dursleys -- Death Eaters wouldn't dare attack you in the broad daylight. And we don't want to take the chance having you out in the open afterwards just to make the trip to the Burrow. There really is no good way to do this, but we all agreed this would be safest for you."

Having Dudley in a place like Diagon Alley is hardly what anyone would call safe

, Harry mused, although the imagining of it was more than just a little amusing. The idea of Dudley surrounded by all those wizards and witches with their wands in plain sight was fun, like seeing laboratory rats in a field of elephants. It would be interesting to see who was more afraid. Then again, it could also be a powder keg waiting to explode to do that. The more he thought about it, the less fun it sounded. The more he thought about, the less Harry wanted any part of the chaos that would ensue if his cousin were to set a single toe in Diagon Alley. He gulped, covering the smile from his face and asked, "Are you certain we can't go to Diagon Alley first? It would keep Aunt Petunia and Dudley from calling too much attention to us. You know that having Muggles in Gringotts is going to be suspicious, and having them in Ollivanders is going to be a mess. If we aren't careful, Dudley could get his hand on a wand and blow us all to bits before we even knew what happened. Dudley isn't safe when he's afraid."

Lupin looked to Mr Weasley, who nodded like he saw Harry's point. He sat quietly for a moment, trying to figure out what else was feasible for them to do, but by the time he spoke, it was obvious that he had come back to his original conclusion. "It isn't that we don't see your point, Harry, but the longer we keep them in The Burrow, the more chance there is of them being discovered by the wrong people. The house has sat empty for so long that if anyone should see lights or even see people coming and going out of the house . . . "

"It's not that I don't understand why," Harry began, immediately blushing when he realized he'd interrupted Mr Weasley. By the same token, though, the Dursleys were his relatives and he knew them better than anyone in the wizarding world did. To ask him not to have any insight into what would happen was a little absurd. "It's just -- er -- "

"Like I said to you earlier," Mr Weasley started, a smile on his face that told Harry that he didn't care about the interruption. "Things are about to get very interesting around here. Getting the Muggles here is going to be a challenge, but we'll figure it all out. We always do."

He wasn't entirely sure why, but the glint in Mr Weasley's eyes was enough to make Harry believe the man. Somehow, he just knew that it was the right plan, that the Order had it under control, and if it wasn't, they would find a way to make it right anyway. The Order hadn't let him down yet. They weren't going to start now. "Right. So, first to The Burrow, then to Diagon Alley."

"To Ollivanders and then Gringotts," Mrs Weasley expanded, sounding a little less excited about the excursion to Diagon Alley than the other wizards in the room. She sounded even less happy about what she said next, like she had been forced into agreeing to it. "I promised Fred and George we would stop by if we had the time as well. They thought it might be a good idea to take the Muggles there while Harry is dealing with the business at Gringotts in case things take longer than expected. We don't exactly know how Mrs Dursley is going to react to the news about Harry's guardianship."

Harry didn't hesitate the slightest when he said, "She probably won't care at all."

A flicker of anger crossed Mrs Weasley's face. He knew full well how she felt about his relatives, but it still amazed him every time to see that look in her eyes. He wondered if people knew what scariness she was hiding in there when it came to the people she cared about. She recovered nicely, though, and started, "All the same . . . "

No one really knew what to say after that. There was no hiding the fact that they all knew that, in some way, Harry was probably right. Petunia Dursley had never given them any indication that she would regard her nephew as anything other than a burden. If anything, with her husband dead and her home in a (temporary) shambles, she was going to rejoice at the news that Harry was now completely free of any guardianship and would no longer be coming to her door every summer.

There was a light rap on the door that brought them all back to the moment with a jar. The Other Molly stuck her head around the corner of the doorframe with an uneasy smile, apologizing before she even let a word out of her mouth. And, just in case that wasn't enough of an apology, she started off with a stutter anyway. "I'm really s-sorry to interrupt -- I know you lot had business to attend to this morning . . . "

"Not at all, Molly," Mr Weasley grinned and waved her into the room. "Besides, I think we were about done here for the time being. Come on in. What can we do for you?"

"Profess- -- I swear I'll get used to this before the start of the term -- Minerva was just downstairs to see you, but when we told her what you were doing, she left it to me to relay to you some news. She's already left again to go to St Mungo's, but she said she would see you tonight. Dumbledore is calling an emergency meeting tonight for certain members of the Order. She said you'd know who and what that meant." With an extra glance at Mrs Weasley, she added, "He knew you'd want to be prepared to have extra people in the house for a full night."

"What happened that she needed to go to St Mungo's," Mr Weasley asked, concerned. He looked at Mrs Weasley and Lupin for any sign that they knew what was going on and when he didn't see one, he turned back to Molly. "Was anyone hurt? Do we . . . "

Molly looked a little confused, which Harry thought he could understand. She had just arrived the night before and probably hadn't been fully informed of everything that the Order had been involved with up until her return to her former life. She spoke with constant question marks, adding to both her confusion and that of the others while they tried to decipher Professor McGonagall's message. "She said to tell you that there's been 'another attack' (?) on someone named 'Sibyll Trelawney' (?), whoever that is."

"She's the Divination professor at Hogwarts," Lupin explained, looking concerned himself.

She's a lot more than that

, Harry thought. But none of you probably know that. Professor Trelawney -- despite her ability to predict Harry's death on a regular basis -- had her job based on a single prophecy that she had made during her interview for the teaching position with Professor Dumbledore. Her prophecy is what had set in motion the entire story of his life the way he knew it. She was the reason that Voldemort had come after him as a child, the reason that his parents were dead, the reason that he had the scar on his forehead, and the reason that he had spent every day of the last five years (some of them unknowingly) of his life fighting a war that no one else could possibly fight for him. It was because of Sibyll Trelawney that he was marked to be everything that he . . . Well, it was because of her that everything was the way it was. But then, none of them probably knew that, unless Dumbledore told them. From the looks on their faces, they didn't exactly know about the contents of her prophecy either and Harry was in absolutely no rush to tell them.

A spark of recognition fluttered over Molly's face as she went on, oblivious to Harry's expression of knowledge beyond that of the others. "Now that you say that, I think I remember being told about her. She started teaching during my . . . Anyway, some time this morning -- Minerva didn't say when -- this woman was attacked in her garden during her meditations or something. There was a force of about five Death Eaters, but she somehow managed to make it through alive long enough for Dumbledore to get there. They weren't quite sure how."

Lupin asked, "But she's all right?"

"Dumbledore took her to St Mungo's himself. Minerva said it didn't look good for her. She said that the poor woman's mind is just . . . gone. Apparently the Death Eaters were trying to get some sort of information out of her that was vital to something that they were trying to accomplish and they got more than just a little overzealous with their methods. They tried to take her with them, but Dumbledore was able to stop them."

Lupin sat up just a little straighter in his chair. "Do we know what it was, this information?"

Molly looked at Harry with a strange expression on her face. "I asked Minerva the same thing. She said that Dumbledore told her that he thinks Harry might know. I'm supposed to tell you, Harry, not to worry. He thinks the information is safe and that you shouldn't panic. She said to tell you that this professor understood how important the information was and that she protected it with her life. She said Dumbledore wanted to reassure you that you're safe. You're supposed to stay with Moony and Arthur and Molly and that you are to do everything they tell you to, that they'll keep you safe."

This time, all of the adults in the room looked at Harry. He wished that they wouldn't look at him like that. The Weasleys looked worried, like they were about to be told some monstrous bit of information that was going to affect their lives all over again. He did, after all, have an unintentional habit of bringing really big things into their lives. He had brought, inadvertently, the Order into their lives and all of the Voldemort insanity and worry that went with it. He had brought the agony of the tale of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs into their lives, bringing them into the midst of the story of betrayal and power that had destroyed his family and put him in the position his life was in at the moment. He had done it all by simply allowing Ron to sit in the same car as him on the Hogwarts Express that fateful first ride five years ago. And Lupin, he had been trapped in the ongoing saga his entire life. But now he knew why and his entire life had been changed because of it. He was worried now, for many more reasons than he had been before. He was back to being the only Marauder (on the right side of the fight, anyway). He had just lost his only remaining best friend in the attempt to save Harry because of that little sphere of prophecy. How could Remus not be worried when Dumbledore was passing messages along like that? Molly's gaze was the only one that seemed in no way worried. She just wanted the information, not reassurance. He willed his eyes to stay locked on hers, willing his own to absorb some of her stillness until the others were calmed down enough not to look at him like that anymore.

"Do you know what Death Eaters would want with your Divination teacher, Harry," she asked. "She isn't in the Order and I can't imagine that someone who teaches such a worthless, unreliable subject at Hogwarts could be all that important to them."

"The prophecy," Harry whispered sadly, the truth of Dumbledore's words dawning on him even as he answered her. The clearer the meaning got, the harder he had to try with everything he had not to look at Lupin. He didn't want to know the pained expression that he was sure was on the man's face. The imagining was hard enough to face.

"The prophecy," Mrs Weasley asked, confused. "The one that we were all -- the one from the Department of Mysteries that we were guarding . . . "

"Professor Trelawney was the Seer who made that prophecy in the first place," Harry explained quietly, still looking down and anywhere but at the other people in the room. "She made it to Professor Dumbledore not too long before Voldemort murdered my parents. It was because of her prophecy that Voldemort killed my parents. It was because of her prophecy that all of this happened in the first place."

"That must have been one powerful prophecy," Mr Weasley mused darkly. Harry could tell from his voice that things were suddenly making a lot more sense to him, even if he still didn't have all of the information. "It's no wonder Dumbledore wanted that thing guarded so heavily. If V-V-V-Voldemort had gotten his hands on it . . . "

It was apparently Harry's turn to be confused. "Dumbledore never told you why you were guarding the prophecy?"

"I knew," said Lupin quietly, looking only at Harry. "But only because Padfoot told me. When your parents went into hiding, they immediately told Sirius about it since your dad had planned to keep him as Secret-Keeper. But, things being what they were . . . Sirius never told anyone else about it, including Peter, until he told me the night that Dumbledore came to the Order about guarding the prophecy. After that, we were very careful not to discuss it around anyone else, just in case. I think that, based on our history with important information getting out, we were always a little more guarded about letting anyone know we knew anything. I don't think even Dumbledore knows that we know."

Mr Weasley quickly recovered from his surprise by pushing his glasses up onto his nose once again and then explained for the remaining, equally surprised people in the room. "The rest of us knew it had something to do with you and V-V-Voldemort, and we knew that the information would be something that could change the tide of the war should he get his hands on it, but we were never told the actual contents of the prediction. Dumbledore felt it was safer for all of us if we didn't know what it said, only that it existed. He didn't even tell us who made it or who it was made to. I suppose we should have known that he would know about it, though. He always talked about how important it was to keep it safe, even from us. He also felt that it was something that he needed to share with you before he told anyone else."

"And that doesn't have to change, Harry," said Lupin with an unspoken understanding. "I would suppose that even your parents didn't know the entire contents of the prophecy, if Dumbledore felt it would keep them safer. You, Dumbledore, and Professor Trelawney are probably the only people who know exactly what the prophecy entails and, if it is that important that it remain that way, it should remain between the three of you. You don't have to tell us anything you don't want to. I might be wrong, but I expect that it's something that would best be shared with Ron and Hermione first, anyway. Wouldn't it?"

Harry didn't know what to say to that, but somehow he knew that Lupin was right. He couldn't help but be grateful for the man's understanding. He remembered something he had heard earlier that morning, when he'd been hiding underneath his father's invisibility cloak. The way that Lupin had talked about James and Sirius had always been as a brother, closer than just a friend could ever be. And the way Molly had talked about them, like there had never been four people closer in this world -- Harry knew that he felt the same feelings for Ron and Hermione that Remus had felt for his friends. He of all people would understand why the prophecy was something that he would only be able to share with those closest to him first. Even as he thought about it, he couldn't exactly form words to answer Lupin, but he managed a grateful nod that he knew the wizard would understand.

Lupin offered the short wink of encouragement that Harry needed then went on, steering the subject back a bit so that the air wouldn't be quite so uncomfortable. "The only members of the Order who need to be informed of this meeting then either already know or are in this room, except for Mad-Eye, Severus, Bill, and Charlie. Molliver, can you take care of that for us?"

The witch nodded and looked (at least to Harry) somewhat eager for what he guessed was her first official assignment from the Order. "I needed to make a quick trip up to Hogwarts today anyway to get started on the potion, so I can check in with Snape then. I'll go after we take care of that other thing this afternoon. Alastor -- I still can't believe you're all calling him Mad-Eye -- and Bill should still be asleep. I stopped by their doors and it sounded like they were anyway. Do we know when Charlie's supposed to get in? When we left Romania, he didn't think he was going to be along until tomorrow. Has that changed?"

"Hmm -- After we told him about the attack last night, he left immediately to come home," Mrs Weasley explained. "He thought he would be home in time for dinner."

Mr Weasley had a teasing smirk on his face as he told the younger witch, "He also said to tell you that you should know better than to take on four Death Eaters on your own and that you should expect a stern talking-to when he gets here."

"Terrific," Molly muttered. "Like it isn't bad enough I've got Moony here to lecture me, I have to have Charlie on my case, too. You know, ever since he started this fling with that Fleur WhatEverHerNameIs, the man act like he thinks he can replace my bro- -- oh, nevermind! You know, it's genetic. I can't help it that everyone in my family is a little on the adventurous side . . . "

Lupin cocked an eyebrow at the woman and with a snort of laughter asked, "A little?"

"Whatever," she responded, quickly ending the conversation. She quickly looked away from where she discovered Harry intently watching her and turned the subject back to the meeting that would await them later that night. "Anyway . . . Minerva said that Dumbledore wanted everyone at nine, if that was enough time. He was going to catch you up on some of the details when he meets you at Ollivanders this afternoon as well." She managed to look back at Harry, although her face had taken on that mask-like look again. "Harry, he specifically wanted to talk to you with Mr Ollivander there. Professor McGonagall said he wanted you to try to remember all the details you could about the box that Bellatrix Lestrange put your wand into. It's supposed to be important."

Harry just nodded in response, not really sure he would be able to speak. All the time they had been talking about going to Ollivanders, he hadn't really even thought about why they were going there. It was just like an ordinary conversation. They were going to Ollivanders. It wasn't the first time that he'd had a similar conversation. Ron had broken his during their unauthorized flying car fiasco of a trip to Hogwarts at the beginning of second year. The entire school year was littered with talks about a new trip to Ollivanders. It was normal. But to think that this trip to get a new wand had nothing to do with breakage or core weakness or anything . . . Somewhere out there, his wand was perfectly fine. The sisters wouldn't have put it into such an ornate, seemingly powerful box if they were only sent there to destroy his wand. Voldemort wanted it for something. They could only guess what.

At the mention of the attack on the Dursley household, everyone in the room went quiet with Harry. Reality threatened to take over once again. Behind these walls, no matter how dark they were, was safe. He was surrounded by people who would keep him safe if the walls could not. But out there . . . Out there his uncle was dead, his aunt and cousin were in hiding, and Death Eaters had invaded the only other place where Harry was supposed to have been completely safe. In here, they could ignore reality for a few minutes at a time, sometimes even hours. They could talk comfortably and have a few laughs now and then. But out there, the opportunities were quickly vanishing along with his wand.

Mrs Weasley made a small noise in the back of her throat. Mr Weasley took her hand and squeezed again, trying to calm her down. Lupin only looked at Harry, calm and waiting for anyone to say anything. The only thing Harry could think of to say was, "Okay."

Molly huffed a stray strand of hair out her face with nervousness. The look on her face said she would rather be anywhere but there at the moment. "In any case, I think I'll gather up the cleaning party so that we can head on over there. The sooner we get that taken care of, the better I'll feel."

"Cleaning party," asked Harry.

"Alastor, Bill, and I are going to your house to put everything back together before we take your aunt and cousin home," Molly explained without looking terribly thrilled over her answer. "They cannot stay here forever, you know. Muggles will start to get suspicious if they don't see your aunt soon, especially when your uncle doesn't turn up at the office for a few days. Besides, I expect Petunia is going to be asking about going home as soon as she walks through the front door to this bloody mausoleum of a house -- not that I would blame her . . . "

"Why don't you take Neville with you, too," Mrs Weasley asked, cheerfully delegating the boy away. "He's been trapped in this house now for almost a month and I think he's starting to see things in the shadows that aren't there. He'll be a great help to you. He's quite good in Herbology and should be able to put plenty of the plants back together for them."

"The gardens in the backyard are going to need some repair as well," Mr Weasley added, rubbing ruefully at his ribs, making Harry cringe at the reminder of what had happened to his aunt's precious gardens in the first place.

"Neville . . . Neville," Molly muttered while she searched her memory. "Oh! Frank's boy? The quiet little one from this morning? Certainly. Why not? The more the merrier, if it gets this project done any faster. Bill and Alastor were going to make the trip to Hogwarts with me, but they can bring the boy back instead. I needed to talk to Snape alone anyway."

A look passed between Molly and Remus so that Harry could only imagine what they were both thinking about Professor Snape. After the relationship that Remus had had with the potions master as a child and as an adult, he knew all too well how Remus felt about Severus Snape. And, based on what he had overheard about Molly's familial status, he supposed she probably felt the same way as the other Marauders would have about the greaseball (as the Marauders' Map had so eloquently put it). It was hard not to laugh at the idea of just what Molly would have to say to the wizard after all these years. It would have to be quite the show.

Harry didn't get to enjoy their by now familiar facial expression conversation, though, because a small voice called out from the edge of the stairway, pulling everyone's attention toward it. Molly pulled back to make room for the speaker in the doorway, revealing a quiet, nervous looking boy. He looked awkwardly at the adults in the room for permission to say what it was that he had to say, offering a quick smile at Harry before he got to them.

"Hi, Harry. Welcome back," waved Neville. "Uhm, Mrs Weasley? My gran said to tell you that you need to come downstairs. She said something about something being all wrong."

Mrs Weasley smiled at Neville in thanks before her expression turned sour, probably at the idea of having to return to the kitchens if Mrs Longbottom was still there. She exhaled from puffed cheeks unhappily, slapped her hands on her thighs, and stood up, ready to face the wrath that awaited her. "Well, then. Duty calls. Harry, Arthur, Remus -- you all need baths. Take your time, but not too much, please. I want to leave for The Burrow in no more than an hour, or as close as we can get to that anyway. Molly, if you would wake the others, please?"

"I'm on my way," Molly answered and swept out of the doorway, limping just ever so slightly so that only someone looking for it would notice. Harry had to hand it to Madam Pomfrey. She really was an amazing healer. The only thing better would be if there hadn't been any injuries at all.

Mr Weasley and Lupin both rose from their seats as well. Mr Weasley walked up behind his wife and placed a gentle kiss on her cheek before he turned around and moved toward the wardrobe to dig out clothes for the day, not even noticing what Mrs Weasley had already laid out for him. Lupin gathered up the scrolls he had presented Harry with and made his way out of the room, nodding at his former students as he passed them. Harry followed Lupin out, digging his hands back into his pockets as he went. He stopped shortly in front of Neville with a smile of greeting, unsure of what to say.

"I suppose I'll see you downstairs then," was all Harry could manage.

"Yeah," Neville responded, equally unable to form words.

"All right then, Neville," said Mrs Weasley with a bright chumminess. "It's you and me now." She walked over to the doorway and put her hand on his shoulder, turning him back out of the room. With a certain Mum-ness to her, she whispered with a giggle into his ear as they walked down the hall, "You can shield me from your gran . . . "

*

An hour later, after everyone had showered and eaten, the two groups of people prepared to peel off into the various missions for the day. Neville looked absolutely beside himself when Molly told him over his potatoes that he was going to be going out with them, despite his grandmother's protests. Moody and Bill quickly put an end to her protests, though, jumping to his defense. It seemed that everyone but Mrs Longbottom had come to recognize that Neville had talent beyond Herbology after his coming to Harry's aid in the Department of Mysteries. Emmeline Vance offered to join them, but they said that they were enough with the four of them. She opted to stay behind and help put to rest the orders that Mrs Weasley was leaving behind for Ginny and Madam Pomfrey to accomplish while they were gone. Ron and Hermione made it known in no uncertain terms that they would be going with Harry to The Burrow.

Another fifteen minutes later (much to Mrs Weasley's annoyance), they all checked their wands one last time. The plans were gone over one last time. The contingency plans and escape routes were gone over one more time. Everything was double and triple checked until there was nothing they could do but trample out the door and get on with their business.

The last one out the door, Harry turned around, and even though he had seen it before he was still amazed that as the door shut he could hear it closing but it disappeared before the sound of the bolt catching the door home. Suddenly shrubbery occupied the space where the house had been squeezed between the two unsuspecting Muggle households, the current home of his world invisible to anyone and everyone as if it didn't exist. A lot of things had a habit of disappearing like that from him.

A kind tug on his elbow from Mrs Weasley sent him forward, his head turning warily around in every which direction. He hadn't really realized just how jumpy he was feeling without his wand until he was once again out of the confines of Order headquarters. His hand kept reaching into his back pocket, feeling for the wand he knew wasn't there. Even though he knew full well that his pocket would be filled in just a few hours again, it wasn't full enough to be walking around. The thought that his trusted wand was somehow trapped in that bejewelled box so far away and unable to help him if something should go wrong before he should get his hands on a new wand nagged in the back of his head as they finished the walk down the sidewalk and to the car. He didn't know what was worse, knowing that he was being paranoid or knowing that his paranoia was well founded.

When they were all comfortably crammed inside the magically expanded cabin of the car -- courtesy of Tonks and her Muggle father -- Mr Weasley got behind the wheel with an almost childlike glee. Ron and Harry bit back chuckles as the man fiddled with each and every gadget on the dashboard like he had never seen any of them before. Of course, thanks to Ron and Harry, Mr Weasley hadn't had a car to examine the insides of in three years. (Hey, where is that thing these days?) Seeing him so excited, reaching over his wife and friend to pull on every handle and knob was a warm comfort to Harry that no matter how crazy his world had and would yet become, some things would always stay the same. He told himself that he was going to look for something special for Tonks just for giving him something to laugh about.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Arthur! It's a car. It's not like you haven't seen one before. Drive. We do not have all day," Mrs Weasley finally ordered. She had never really understood her husband's fascination with all things Muggle. Besides, he was going to have two Muggles trapped in a house with him for a while. He could play with them all he wanted once they were all back home safe.

The drive out of town and into the country to where The Burrow was so perfectly hidden was a quiet one, leaving Harry to his thoughts. He had a lot to think about and was grateful for the silence that he was afforded. The further out of the city they drove, the faster his mind started spinning. He was only a few short minutes away from having to see his aunt and cousin again. It wasn't exactly something that he was looking forward to.

He may not know a whole lot about his aunt other than that she was his mother's sister and a few random little bits of trivia about her, but that didn't mean that he didn't know her. Spending fifteen years in her presence had taught Harry a lot about Petunia Evans Dursley. She respected order and insisted upon it. She was very much a person in control over every aspect of her life. She had even tried her damnedest to control Harry and the person that he was prophesized to become. For the first time in his life, he was about to walk in on his aunt in a place where she had no control whatsoever. She had spent a night in a house that, as much as he loved it, even Harry had to admit had absolutely no semblance of control or order. It was a home ruled by magic, which to Aunt Petunia was the most out of order thing in all the world. It was a home of wild colors and magical instruments of all sorts. The Weasleys didn't even have a clock on the wall, except the one that told Mrs Weasley the whereabouts of every member of her family, whether they be in school, lost, or in Azkaban prison. Aunt Petunia didn't know how to live without precision and time. She didn't know how to survive without what was her perception of rules and order. One night without it was bound to cause more than just a little chaos for her.

For the first time in his entire life with his aunt, Harry had no idea what to expect from her. He had always known how she would react to things. He'd learned at a very early age just what he could and could not say, what he could and could not get by with. She was always predictable -- it was part of her order and stability. He didn't always know what to think about Uncle Vernon and was occasionally wrong enough to have a punishment to go through, but he had always been able to tell with her. Suddenly Harry was more frightened of his aunt than anything he had ever been frightened of in his life with maybe only one exception. He had absolutely no idea what they were going to be walking into The Burrow to find and that couldn't be a good thing at all.

How Dudley had survived the night Harry wasn't as concerned about, but he wasn't looking forward to finding out the answer to that question either. Dudley had always had a tendency toward violence when he was unsure of anything. Harry had the black eye to prove it. Part of him wondered if he was going to be opening the door to a fist in the eye again. He wouldn't be terribly surprised if he did. Dudley always threw his fists before he looked to see what he was swinging away at. And if Aunt Petunia was worked up at all, which she probably was, Dudley was bound to be on a double edge and maybe even more dangerous than usual.

Suddenly, as much as he knew he had a responsibility to his aunt and cousin, he really wanted to put this trip off by a year or two or however much time he could manage to wrangle out of his guardians. Somehow, he knew that Mr Weasley and Lupin had been right -- Harry was The Man of the House now and until his aunt told him differently he was going to have to find a way to take care of his relatives, to protect them from his world and everything that went with it. Aunt Petunia had put her trust in him to take her and Dudley to safety and whether he liked it or not, he had taken that mantle. No matter how difficult his cousin was going to be or how many questions Aunt Petunia was going to want answered, he was going to have to live up to the full responsibility of that trust.

There really were days that he wished he wasn't a nice person.

It was about half of the way through the trip that Harry came to that realization and made a goofy, pained noise in the back of his throat that prompted Ron to strike up a completely meaningless conversation. Suddenly, Harry found that he was talking about Hogwarts and returning to school instead of thinking about how to best protect himself from his cousin's fists, leaving him finally able to relax again for a while. Granted, talking and thinking about it made their return to school feel like it was a lifetime away, but it was still nice to hear any sound at all in the car. Harry had started wondering if any of them were even breathing, it was so quiet.

They talked some more about school, about Quidditch, anything that came to mind that would in no way involve giving Harry time to worry over anything else. He didn't really even care that both Hermione and Ron were repeating things that they had talked about the night before. He was just happy to be hearing their voices and having them at his side. He couldn't explain it, but it didn't matter what was going on in his life or what they were talking about. It could be the most important thing in the world or absolute nonsense, but as long as his best friends were with him, he could talk about and handle anything.

On and on they talked until Harry realized that they were driving up and down hills that were a very short way away from boundaries of The Burrow. Hermione told them stories about her parents' favorite patients and how they were doing, but the stories did nothing to warm him back up. He was suddenly ice cold again at the prospect that he was about to confront a horror more terrifying than what had happened the night before -- he was about to face his aunt while she was dealing with the consequences of the night before.

He had never imagined that the day would come when he would be afraid to see the only place that made him as happy as Hogwarts. Then again, the last twenty-four hours had brought about a great many things that he had never imagined would come. He really hoped the surprises were about to end.

The Burrow looked almost the same as Harry remembered it -- no surprises there. It had been two years since he had traveled to the only place in the world that he could love as much as Hogwarts, and from the looks of it, a good year since anyone had truly lived there. Then again, with Mr and Mrs Weasley dedicating so much time to the Order and the goings on at headquarters and with all of the kids being out of the house or in school, he supposed that they really didn't have a great deal of time to be taking care of the gardening. They had much more important things to be dealing with. If the only time they could afford was to come home to grab another week's change of clothes, it was perfectly understandable. Still, Harry hated to see such a warm, loving home looking so unhappy and lonely.

The grass around the dirt drive looked like it hadn't seen a mower since the first rain of the season. It was high enough in some places that the blades probably would reach half way up to his knees. In other spots, it was worn down with the unusual weight of the grass and the pressure of being long beyond what it had ever been. It was sagging in most places, mostly from the heat that they had seen in July that had turned all but the lawns of Privet Drive a withered brown. The road itself had sprung weeds that were sporting colorful flowers. The only part of the yard that he could tell looked to be somewhat healthy was Mrs Weasley's gardens where she grew vegetables to keep everyone fed and herbs to keep everyone healthy.

The house didn't look very healthy, though. The windows and shutters were all dark and closed, suffocating the rest of the house of air. It hadn't rained in several weeks, leaving dried mud caked to the crevices around the windows and doors. If he didn't know better, he'd think that no one had lived there in years. He hated seeing the house like that. It looked so sad there by itself.

He supposed that was also part of the plan, though, as well. If the house looked completely unlived in, perhaps that made it a lot safer for them. He thought he remembered Tonks mentioning the night before that the Order had had escape plans put together for him and his relatives should the need arise. If they had been anticipating needing a place to hide the Dursleys away, this would have been a perfect location to do so. Death Eaters, while they may suspect an escape to The Burrow, would arrive on the scene to find a dismal, darkened house in which no one had lived in a long time. What better place to hide, other than the other dismal, lonely place where they had left to hide?

"Oh, Arthur," Mrs Weasley sighed heavily, her hand reaching over to her husband's with a sadness that everyone in the car understood quite well.

There was a cheerful outlook in Mr Weasley's voice as he squeezed her hand just a little tighter. "It's only for a little while longer, Molly. The day this war is over, we're coming home for good. The children are going to have to drag our wrinkled old bodies out of here with an army of a hundred men before they will ever get us to leave it again. You'll see."

"It's okay, Mum," said Ron. Without thinking he added, "It's just the house."

"It isn't just a house, Ronald Weasley," Mrs Weasley protested. "That is our entire family history sitting there and we've abandoned it."

"Only for a little while," Mr Weasley said again with an almost ferocious certainty that everyone in the car looked up at him and had no choice but to believe him. "I mean it, Molly. The day this war is over . . . "

"The minute," Mrs Weasley corrected just as adamantly.

"I think we can stop for a party or two on the way," said Mr Weasley with a smirk. "And we'll shape the house up so that we can throw one of our own. There will be plenty to celebrate."

"I'd like that." Mrs Weasley kissed her husband's cheek, looking at the man in a way that made Hermione nearly swoon with envy. Ron and Harry simply blushed equal shades of red.

As Mr Weasley pulled the car around to the front door of the house to park, he started giving orders over his shoulder into the back seat. "Now, the three of you, if there is anything wrong, even a sign that we've been compromised here at all -- which I don't think there is -- I want you to leave here as fast as you can. Get in this car and drive as fast as it will allow you to. If you cannot get to the car, take the chance with the Floo Network. Do whatever you have to do to get out of here. Go to Diagon Alley and directly to Ollivanders. Dumbledore is going to be meeting us there in an hour. Mr Ollivander will look after you until Dumbledore arrives. Understood?"

"But Dad, we can't just leave you -- "

"Yes, you can," Mrs Weasley spoke up harshly, even though Harry could see she was pained with even the suggestion of having to have this particular conversation at all. "Getting yourselves to safety is the most important thing."

"Not that there is anything to be worried about anyway," Lupin added with a meaningful look at the parental Weasleys, trying to give them and the teenagers in the back seat some hope. He focused most intently on Mrs Weasley as he added in his usual calm, soft spoken way, "We're only saying this just in case there is a problem, which there won't be, so that you know what to do in the event that we aren't able to give you directions, which is not going to happen. Look at the house -- it's perfectly fine. If we needed to worry, the Dark Mark would be hanging over the house right now. As you can see, it is not. Nothing is going to happen."

While Harry watched the adults trying so hard to reassure them that everything was going the way it was supposed to, he had to fight down the urge to laugh from the strange comfort it gave him. Everyone had been trying so hard to make him feel better when he was really starting to think that it should be the other way around. He, Ron, and Hermione, whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. They had proven it on many occasions before. Some -- er, Mrs Weasley -- might say that they had had to prove it too many times already. He appreciated their efforts, but he was too worked up to want to let it go on any longer than necessary. The fact was that as much as everyone threw the word war around, they should all be realizing that they were in a war. They needed to remember to act like it. Worrying about it wasn't going to change anything that happened.

Sharply, he focused his gaze on each of his companions until he settled on Lupin, who seemed to see what he was thinking. The man nodded at him and Harry said, "You're right. It's not going to happen. So let's get in there and get this over and done with. We have a lot yet to do today."

A harsh silence greeted him until Lupin finally broke his gaze with his best friend's son. His voice was the epitome of support when he joined in with, "Indeed we do. You heard him. Let's go."

A devilish grin tugged at the corner of Ron's mouth as he pulled on the door handle. With an excited nod, he opened the door and flung himself out, more than just a little happy to be out of the car. From the look, Harry had to wonder if it had been just as long for Ron since he'd been there as it had been for himself. He piled out behind Ron, eager to stretch his legs after the drive. He'd never really liked car rides. The freedom of air rushing around his legs when he was on his beloved Firebolt was much more to his liking.

The enthusiasm was catching. The boys ran around to Hermione's door and stood bouncing on the balls of their feet, waiting impatiently for her to catch on herself. It didn't take long and, once she was out of the car, the trio started to cross the distance that remained between them and the house at a happy jaunt, leaving the adults behind in their dust. The adults all smiled at each other, feeling the joy of being out of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and back out in the country air. It was nice to see such big smiles on the faces of the children. There was nothing better in the world.

Their happiness was short lived, however. Hermione stopped mid-step, causing Ron and Harry to walk right into her. She held her hand up to stop them anyway, urging complete silence from everyone with them. Her bushy head cocked in a straining position, listening for something that only she could hear. When Mr Weasley started to speak up, she hushed him as quickly as his jaw opened. "Shh! Listen . . . Do you -- d'you hear that? It sounds like . . . "

Mrs Weasley's choked utterance of recognition was covered by Lupin's sharply worried observation. "It sounds like screaming."

"It's Mum's clock," said Ron, the gulp in his throat making it hard to speak.

Mr Weasley exchanged a nervous look with his wife. The clock, a device of Mrs Weasley's own invention, was called a clock only because they couldn't think of anything else to call it. Mounted on hands just like a clock, the faces of the Weasley family stared out from it. The hands told Mrs Weasley exactly where every member of the family was at any given time. In the last year, Harry and Hermione had been added to it as well (seeing as how if one of the three friends were in trouble, the other two were certain to follow). The only time it screamed, though, was when any of the hands pointed to the crucial stations of Under Extreme Threat and In Mortal Peril. The head that was pointed wildly in those directions would scream loud enough for Mrs Weasley to hear if she were on the other side of the moon if it had to until she reached it to find out what was wrong -- and it wasn't going to stop screaming until she did.

"MUM -- DAD -- BILL -- PERCY -- GEORGE -- FRED -- RON -- GINNY -- HARRY -- HERMIONE -- MUM -- DAD . . . "

Mrs Weasley silently ticked off the names that the screamer was calling out, but didn't need to go much further than the name of her eldest son. The second was the name that was missing. "It's Charlie," she whispered.

"We don't know what's wrong, Molly," Mr Weasley said soothingly. "Let's not worry until we see what's wrong with him."

Mr Weasley moved to the head of the group as it made one last singular movement toward the house, marching double time compared to their casual pace that they had taken up most of the way between car and house. When they reached the front door, there was a collective wrench in everyone's stomachs. The front door stood wide open. It wasn't just cracked for air or absently left with the locking mechanism half in and half out of its home in the doorframe. It had been forced open, pulling part of the wooden doorframe with it in the effort. Harry even guessed that there would be a hole in the wall where it had taken impact from the knob. He felt the impact in his chest, the thoughts and imaginings of what it could mean slamming into him and taking out his air supply. The door was wide open and all he could hear from inside was intense screaming.

Mr Weasley softly groaned in what sounded like remnant pain while his hand dove into his pocket for his wand. Immediately Ron, Hermione, Lupin, and Mrs Weasley followed suit. Nervously the three youngsters inched closer together, standing shoulder to shoulder with Harry in the middle to protect their wandless companion. Mr Weasley looked back at them with an approving nod, then signaled to Lupin to come up to the head of the group, leaving Mrs Weasley to protect her entire surrogate family from behind.

With an instructive nod from Mr Weasley, the group surged forward, all but Harry clutching tightly to the wands in their hands. Once through the door, Mr Weasley and Lupin peeled off respectively to the left and right so that they could search the house faster. Two by two, the others separated behind them. Harry and Ron followed Mr Weasley into the sitting room while Hermione took after Lupin and started for the stairs. Mrs Weasley made a direct B-line for her clock to see why her son's miniature head was screaming. Without even realizing that he was doing it, Harry silently ticked off the seconds until someone called out a good sign.

Harry didn't have to count too long to get a sign, although it was not the good one that he had been hoping for. There was a train of sounds, starting with a gasp of shock, followed by a tripping noise into the wall. There was a slapping of skin as a body hit the wall, a groan of pain, followed by another groan of disorientation. Another gasp in Mrs Weasley's already nervous voice announced the cause of her trip across the hallway.

"Oh, no!" Immediately the whispered gasp became a full on shock. "ARTHUR! REMUS! GET IN HERE!"

The entire group collided with their convergence into the small hallway toward the source of the scream. The three teenaged wizards hung back enough to make sure that the adults could all get closest. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all exchanged worried glances while the men took from Mrs Weasley's arms a body that was decidedly too long to be Tonks. The men carefully set the person down while Mrs Weasley stumbled over all of them toward the kitchen to wet down a towel. Once she was behind the cluster, Harry was able to see a crumpled Kingsley lying there, his wand hand outstretched toward a wand that he was in no way able to reach. There wasn't any blood that Harry could see, but the man had obviously taken an injury to the head. The rest of him looked just fine. Lupin's crouch straddled the wizard, a foot on either side of his legs, calling out to him in stage whispers.

"Shacklebot . . . C'mon, Kingsley, wake up!"

Another cry from Mrs Weasley sent Mr Weasley dashing into the kitchen once he got a Go Ahead nod from Lupin. Ron tapped Harry's shoulder and nodded behind them. Together, the three of them circled around under the stair to get to the kitchens. When they reached the other side, Mrs Weasley was crouched on the floor next to the fireplace.

"Mum?"

Mrs Weasley didn't hear her son. She was too busy shaking a semi-conscious Tonks back to coherency. "Tonks, wake up!" Mrs Weasley shook the witch by the shoulders as roughly as she dared and still not hurt the woman. "C'mon, Tonks. Where are the Dursleys? What happened?"

Tonks opened her eyes a little more brightly and shook her head to release the fog. She looked up at Harry while she put a hand to the back of her head. "Hrmph . . . Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is I heard your clock start screaming, Molly, and then someone hit me on the back of the head. Speaking of the screaming -- is there any way to shut that thing off?"

Mrs Weasley looked up at Ron and Harry and indicated to them to get on either side of Tonks to keep her steady. As soon as the boys were at her side, Mrs Weasley pushed herself back upright and finally approached the cause of the ongoing scream that had drawn her in the direction of Tonks and Kingsley in the first place. She tripped over her own feet and nearly collided with the wall again. Her hands landed squarely on either side of the magical contraption. Indeed, she must have been right about the screamer because she righted herself and spoke to the frantic clock hand.

"Charlie, calm down. I cannot understand you when you're screaming. Now what's the matter?"

"I'VE GOT A TAIL!"

All of the heads in the room and hall snapped to attention toward Mrs Weasley and her clock. Harry watched her intently, wondering if this was going to be The Moment. Mrs Weasley was always so worried. Harry remembered it most starting when he had run away from the Dursleys', when everyone still thought Sirius a murderer and after him. It was only afterwards and in the in-between times that she was so close to falling apart, though. For all of her worrying and fussing over him and her family whenever something went wrong, she was also incredibly strong in the middle of the situation. Last Christmas, when Mr Weasley had been attacked during his guard duty by the snake in the Ministry, she had taken charge and was more than firm in her reactions to everything going on. He remembered even thinking she looked like a saber-toothed tiger once. He had seen her enough to know that, given the right circumstance, she was one. He wished people would understand that about her more. If he thought about it, she was probably the strongest woman he'd ever known. So it was no surprise to him when she took charge of the miniature of Charlie's head that was screaming at her and the rest of the household without a second thought.

"You've been followed? Where are you? Give us details, Charlie. We can't help you unless you give us details."

The miniature head seemed to collect himself enough so that his scream was toned down to a dull roar. "Death Eaters, three of them. They knew I was coming."

"Can you get out of wherever you are," asked Mrs Weasley. "Can you shake them?"

Miniature Charlie's head looked around wildly at something that none of them could see before answering, "I think so. I don't think they know I know they're there."

"Lose them as quickly as you can without drawing too much attention, Charlie," Mr Weasley said quickly. "Find someplace safe to hide and we'll send help."

"How far away are you," asked Lupin of the miniature head. To Mr and Mrs Weasley he said, "If he's close, if he can get to Diagon Alley, we can pick him up at the Leaky Cauldron. Charlie, can you make it to Diagon Alley?"

Again the little head looked around before nodding. "Yeah, I think so. They seem more interested in following me than in killing me."

"Then we need to operate under the assumption that that's what they intend to do," Mr Weasley said after glancing to confirm between the other two. "Lose them if you can, but get to Diagon Alley. We will pick you up at the Leaky Cauldron. Better yet, go to Ollivanders. Dumbledore will be waiting on us there."

"Dumbledore, Ollivanders. Got it."

With that, the tiny head stopped talking. Together they all stared at it while they waited for it to move slowly from the Under Extreme Threat station to Travelling once again as it should be. While they waited, Ron actually had to nudge Hermione in the side to remind her that she needed to breathe. Still they watched. It wasn't until just when they were ready to turn away that the clock hand started to inch its way around to the other side of the clock. When it did, there was suddenly a lot more air in the room for everyone.

The adults all looked at one another while Mr Weasley offered his wife a comforting smile. "He's going to be fine."

"Until I see him, I am not going to make myself any promises." Her jaw set, her lips disappeared. The woman made her way to the sink to wet towels each for Tonks and Kingsley. When she returned to the cluster of wizards still hovering near her clock, she distributed the towels. She gave one to Mr Weasley and nodded to Kingsley. He took it and shrank back into the hallway with the groggy wizard. The other towel she handed to Ron and nodded down to Tonks. "Ron, Harry, you take care of Tonks and then find your cousin. He couldn't have gone too far. Hermione, come with me. We need to find Harry's aunt. I don't see her anywhere."

Mrs Weasley and Hermione disappeared up the stairs to begin the search for Mrs Dursley, calling her name out in regular intervals. Mr Weasley and Lupin attended to Kingsley, who was making very little sense at all. He muttered something about still hearing Charlie screaming in his head too loud to be able to think all that clearly. Tonks, on the other hand, seemed much more together. Harry knelt down beside her, and taking the wet cloth from Ron put it to her swelling eye, which would soon be matching his.

"Where did my cousin go, Tonks," Harry asked urgently.

The witch took control over the comforting cloth and shook her head to try to clear the fog just a little more. Her voice was a little shaky as she admitted, "I don't know. As soon as the clock started screaming, he took off running. I tried to grab him on the way out, but he put me in the wall. He hit Kingsley over the head when he tried to calm him down. The next thing I know, you're all here looking rather blurry."

"We need to find him," Harry said. He wasn't exactly worried for his cousin as much as he was worried for whomever his cousin should run into. He knew just how dangerous Dudley could be when he was scared and this was not the time to have him running about like a madman. Harry looked at his best friend and knew without either of them saying anything that Ron would be right beside him as they searched The Burrow for his missing cousin. He looked back down at Tonks, who was seeming to sit up a little better on her own. "Can you . . . "

"Go on, Harry. I'm fine. Find Dudley before he causes any more damage."

Ron stood up first and reached down to pull Harry up around the elbow. Together the two of them ran out of the already open door and out into the yard. "Which way do you want to go first," Ron asked.

"I have no clue . . . "

Harry looked out over the expanse of the Weasleys' property but didn't have the time to find a further answer to the question. A high voltage shriek turned Harry around so fast that he almost lost his footing, forcing him to take a leaping step forward to keep from falling headfirst into the bushes. He looked into each of the bushes, waiting for any sign of struggle to lead him to the source of the scream. He was about to move on to the hedges beyond when another frightened yelp directed him to a rattling in the pumpkin patch ahead of them. He put a hand on Ron's chest as a warning to hold back but with a grin told his best friend to still be ready for anything, an opportunity that he knew fully well that Ron wasn't going to let pass. Harry tiptoed over to the source of the yelp, not wanting to frighten the screamer any more than necessary by pouncing. He kept his voice as soothing and patient as possible, knowing just how dangerous Dudley could be when he was afraid. What his cousin was afraid of, Harry didn't want to know. He just knew he had to help him. Like it or not, Dudley was in his world now and he was responsible.

"Dudley?"

The balled up boy shrieked again and raised his hands above his head to signal his location. He pointed his fingers down into the surrounding leaves and magically large and healthy pumpkins, wagging wildly at something Harry couldn't see. "Get it off, get it off!"

Harry shrugged quickly back at Ron, who shrugged back, then he peered into the leafy bed, unable see anything to cause such panic. His voice wasn't quite as gentle as he asked, "What are you going on about?"

"Get it off!"

"Get what off?" Slightly annoyed with Dudley's whimpering, Harry waded into the pumpkin patch with a huff. He plunged his hands in where he approximated his cousin's legs to be, only to find that his hands weren't the only ones grasping at the wiggling bare toes. Reaching up from the dirt was a wrinkly, grubby pair of hands tickling the underside of Dudley's feet, hands that could only belong to a garden gnome. It took Harry everything he had not to burst out laughing from relief when he saw the tiny hands wriggling around like magically possessed rotten potatoes. A smirk was a perfectly acceptable reaction though as he grabbed onto one of the hands and yanked as hard as he could to pull the creature up out of the ground. It kicked and screamed while he held it up for a giggling Ron and his simpering cousin to see. "Relax, Dudley. It's just a garden gnome. They're completely harmless."

The gnome, now turned upside down and hanging by the ankles in Harry's hand, swung its fists wildly at its captor. The motion of swinging sent the gnome comically back and forth in his hand like a Punch Me clown. The obscenities it slung at the teenaged boys only made Harry want to laugh at it harder.

"Get it off, get it off, get it off," Dudley continued to cry, his fingers plugging his ears while he rocked back and forth. "Off, off, off," he muttered in imagined pain. "Get it off."

Harry glanced away from the twitching gnome to his panicked cousin. Seeing Dudley so worked up sobered the smirk off his face. He didn't like it, but he knew that the impulse that he'd had about Dudley now being trapped in his wizarding world had been the right one. Dudley was still his cousin and Harry needed to make at least this fear go away if he was going to get the dolt out of the pumpkin patch without incident or ruining Mrs Weasley's crop.

The young wizard reached down and flicked at his cousin's ear to get his attention. When Dudley looked up at him, Harry grinned goofily and waved the gnome in his cousin's face. "See? It's just a gnome. It won't hurt you. Watch."

The gnome continued grumbling insults while Harry started swinging it around in circles above his head. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," the gnome bellowed as Harry's motion made it dizzy enough that if it wasn't released soon, it was going to heave all over both of the boys. Finally, Harry's arm tired out and the gnome catapulted across the Weasleys' lawn with a belted, "WHOA!"

Harry chuckled at the wrinkly gnome while it staggered to its feet and shook its fists angrily opposite Harry's direction. Still disoriented, the gnome fell back onto its bottom with a grunt, causing Harry and Ron to laugh even harder. Unable to hold back his curiosity, Dudley hauled himself to his feet and walked over to stand next to his cousin. He knuckled drying tears from his eyes and managed a weakly disgusted laugh.

"What is that thing?"

"A garden gnome." An odd smile came over Harry's face, his sense of humor struck by an amusing idea. Knowing Dudley's penchant for picking on anything smaller than himself, a few gnome tossings would be a perfect exercise for calming him down a bit. And if it did Mrs Weasley the favor of ridding her gardens of the magical pests for a few weeks, all the better. Harry raised an eyebrow at his cousin, who was still eyeing the furious creature across the yard with confused curiosity. "Want to give one a toss?"

Dudley looked at Harry with a torn expression, torn between a disgust at the suggestion of touching anything obviously magical and a bloodthirst to pummel anything he could get his hands on at the moment. Every inch of his body, down to even in his piggy little eyes, was strained with a hurt that still hadn't managed to find expression yet. He was obviously scared and lost, and if throwing some dirty little circus freak around could delay his having to feel anything else, he'd give in this once. He set his shoulders with determination and asked, "What do I have to do?"

Ron crossed the distance between them on Harry's nod and shrugged down into the dirt. He waved a hand at Dudley to make sure the Muggle boy was watching him and then plunged the hand into the dirt, pulling out a second gnome. Once it was successfully tossed out of the garden and throwing a temper tantrum, both Harry and Ron reached down for more gnomes. It took him a few tries to actually find one, but Dudley finally managed to grab onto the leg of one and, watching to see how Harry and Ron did it one more time, actually let one fly farther than either of the other boys had flung theirs.

"Well, at least we can give Mum something to be happy about for a few weeks," Ron told Harry as he whistled in surprised admiration of distance. He looked at Harry's Muggle cousin and nodded at him. "Come on then -- get another one. They'll be coming up out of their holes to see what's going on any minute now. Gnomes aren't exactly the dumbest things around, but they're close."

Ten minutes later, the boys had cleared nearly thirty gnomes from both the pumpkin patch and the bushes that lined the Weasley home where Mrs Weasley grew herbs for her potions. They de-gnomed in silence, only releasing the occasional grunt of effort or chuckle of amusement. It wasn't until Harry flopped down into the grass that they stopped to rest. Ron laid back, putting his hands behind his head and looked up lazily at the clouds. Dudley stared at his cousin for a moment before he sat down next to him. He picked two especially long blades of grass out of the ground and set them against one another like miniature swords. He played with them for almost a full minute before he lost interest. Still he sat quietly until Harry rolled over from his back onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. He watched Harry and Ron having some sort of expression conversation that, if Harry thought about it, was quite reminiscent of the chats he'd been witnessing between Molly and Lupin.

Unable to decipher their looks, Dudley interrupted them roughly. "This doesn't mean that I like you or anything. Get that straight."

Harry froze, remembering that Bellatrix Lestrange had started out her phony conversation with him in exactly the same way the night before. His mother's bright green eyes peered into his cousin's small, bloodshot eyes, searching for any sign that he wasn't looking at the real Dudley. Feeling a strange sense of foreboding Déjà vu, Harry urged with a gulp, "Get on with it."

"D'you know what's going to happen now," asked Dudley.

"I'll have to ask Mr Weasley if anything has changed, but we're going to stop at Diagon Alley and then go back to the house," said Harry quietly. "We're making a stop at Ollivanders to get me a new wand first. I suppose we could . . . "

"No," Dudley shook his head. "I mean, what's going to happen to us -- to me and my mum. What's going to happen to us?"

For whatever reason, Harry wanted to come up with some sort of reassuring answer for his cousin. He couldn't imagine just what Dudley could be going through at the moment. After all, his parents had died before he ever got the chance to know them. But Dudley, he'd had a father all of his sixteen years. They'd been chummy, spent time together, had a relationship (even if it was a bit abnormal). The reality of the loss of that bond wasn't something that could be cured in a garden de-gnoming. The right words weren't going to fix it either.

Suddenly feeling very sixteen and useless, all Harry could manage to say was, "I don't know."

The cousins reverted back to their silence, neither one of them knowing what to say to the other. Dudley went back to playing with the grass while Harry chose to look off into the distance. His happiness at returning to the only place that made him feel as safe and happy as he did at Hogwarts continued to fade while he watched absolutely nothing on the hillside. That was the problem -- there was nothing. He'd spent so many hours practicing Quidditch over there with the Weasleys, carefree (mostly) and feeling the joys of being part of the wizarding world. It was the perfect yard for children to play in and just be children. But in the last year since Voldemort's return to power, the yard had been overgrown. The house had not seen more than a few minutes' visit a week and had lost a deal of familial warmth. The war was taking too much from them all already. It was sad to see that even The Burrow wasn't immune to Voldemort's will.

Harry was so lost in his thought that he barely noticed when Dudley threw a handful of grass into his hair. A second handful sprayed into his hair and behind his glasses before he snapped back into the moment. "Huh?"

"What did you do," Dudley repeated what Harry had not heard, quite obviously annoyed with his cousin's lack of attention.

Ron sat up and glowered angrily at Dudley. Before Harry even had a chance to respond, his best friend growled defensively, "What are you talking about?"

Dudley absently fingered the spot where a chunk of his hair was missing from the Death Eaters' attack the night before. "Last summer it was those weirdos in the hoods. Last night it was the weirdos in masks. You have to have done something to make these freaks come after you like this. What did you do to make them want to kill you so badly?"

"I didn't do anything," Harry said defensively. "I just happened to be born on the right day."

Both Dudley and Ron looked at him at the same time with different but somehow the same questions written on their faces. "Huh?"

Harry quickly looked down to avoid both Ron and Dudley. He knew all too well what he meant, but there was no way that he was going to sit there in the middle of the Weasleys' backyard and explain to the person he cared for the least in the world and the person he cared the most for in this world at the same time what he meant. While Dudley did deserve an answer, he would get it with Aunt Petunia. Ron deserved to hear the answer in a different way, one that was just him and Hermione, the three of them alone, together, and first. After everything his best friends had done for him, they deserved to be the first to know. He tried to look at Ron, who sat waiting patiently, loyally, but didn't say anything. All Harry could manage to say to cover his tracks was, "Nevermind."

"Harry . . . "

"Later, Ron," Harry said quietly. "We had better be getting back. Your mum has enough to worry about right now without wondering where we've been off to."

Suddenly, before Ron had a chance to answer Harry, a shriek interrupted them. "Oh, terrific," Ron groaned.

"What was that," Dudley squeaked and jumped next to Harry so that he was practically on top of his cousin.

Ron and Harry didn't bother to answer him. From the window at the very top of the house, a box full of papers came crashing out of the window, shattering glass and littering the contents of the box all over the yard. An incessant metallic banging quickly followed, but it wasn't powerful enough to drown out the sounds of the screaming from somewhere near it.

"Sounds like your aunt just met the ghoul in the attic," Ron chuckled.

"MUM" Dudley yelled.

Harry rolled his eyes and nodded toward the house. "C'mon," he groaned. "We better go help them before your entire attic ends up in the lawn."

The young wizards took off running, not waiting for Harry's oversized cousin. Dudley trailed quite a distance behind so that they actually had to wait at the door for him so that they could push him back into the house. He looked warily around, as if something else in the house was going to start screaming at him again as Mrs Weasley's clock had. Harry finally had to direct Dudley by the shoulders toward the stairs. Up the staircase they climbed until they reached the top floor.

"Mum? Dad?" Ron called.

"In here," Mr Weasley said, directing them to the farthest entrance into the attic. The three boys climbed the ladder up top with Dudley taking his sweet time doing so. Then again, when they got to the top, it didn't really matter who got there first. The three boys all stopped and stood in awkward silence beside Mr Weasley, watching something that none of them had ever in their wildest dreams imagined.

"Now there's something you don't see every day," Ron muttered to Harry.

Harry nodded solemnly, the sight much more stark to him than to his best friend. Not that he didn't understand why Ron was feeling the way he was . . . The only experience the Weasleys had ever had with the Dursleys was to see him behind barred windows or in the rare instances when Harry talked about them in specific circumstances. They couldn't possibly think the Dursleys to be anything but mean, awful people. Harry's experience didn't lead him to think much better of them, but they were still his relatives. After all, that was the substance of their entire relationship, the blood he shared with his aunt. Until this entire thing was ended, one way or another, they had a responsibility to one another.

Mrs Weasley and Hermione seemed to be the only people in the party to understand that. Hermione slowly moved to Harry's other side when she saw that he and Ron had joined them and she reached her hand down next to his and clasped his tightly in hers in an almost big sisterly comfort. The glibness fell from Ron's face and together the three of them watched as a crouched Mrs Weasley finally managed to overcome her distaste for Aunt Petunia. She sat down next to the Muggle woman and wrapped her arms around the woman to try and contain her sobs. When Aunt Petunia didn't protest the gesture, Mrs Weasley began to rock her softly back and forth.

Together the women sat against the wall, the shadow of the lengthening day partially sheltering their faces from their silent audience. One stared helplessly at the other, her worst fears manifesting before her eyes in the crumbled woman in her arms. The other gazed without seeing her comforter, never having quite understood that there had been anything quite like this to fear and lost now that she knew that there was. Together, Witch and Muggle wept for what had come to pass and what may yet still come for them all.

Harry didn't know how long they had been sitting there like that, but he felt a blossom of affection for Mrs Weasley like he'd never known. The fiery red-headed mother had never needed to put into words how much she disliked (okay, hated) Harry's relatives. He knew. He knew the entire family despised his relatives and he couldn't blame them. He didn't like them any more than they did. But if Mrs Weasley could find it in her heart to help his aunt, to be there to comfort her . . .

Without realizing he was doing it, Harry let go of Hermione's hand and walked over to sit down next to the women. Aunt Petunia made no move to acknowledge his presence, but Mrs Weasley looked up and smiled encouragingly at him. Her smile grew sweetly when his eyes popped open with the realization that he had no idea what it was he was doing. Comfort wasn't something that existed in any form or direction between Harry and his relatives. Somehow, Mrs Weasley seemed to know what he was thinking, and in her usual motherly fashion her face set and she took charge of both of the people surrendered to her care.

Harry flinched slightly when Mrs Weasley reached for his hand, pulling it over his head and around his aunt's trembling shoulders. He felt himself stiffen with fear, his imagination running wild with a range of reactions he knew his aunt would have as soon as she could feel him. He expected her to leap up and start raging against him, throwing every insult known to the English language at him. He expected a full on verbal and physical attack like he had never faced from her before. He expected a hand in his hair pulling him away and a finger poking dangerously close to his eye. Harry expected anything but the reaction that he got.

"Talk to her, Harry," Mrs Weasley urged. Harry could have sworn he actually heard Ron gawk at his mother like she had gone completely crackers. She must have felt it as well because she turned her head and hissed at him to be quiet. When her eyes came back around to meet Harry's they were encouraging and gentle. "Go on, Harry."

Harry sat there. He looked up at Ron and Hermione, but without answers they both shrugged back. Dudley was too busy watching Mr Weasley inching toward the corner of the attic to chase away the ghoul to notice what was going on on the floor. He waited, hoping for anyone to give him an answer. Mrs Weasley's words of encouragement, although she meant well, were hardly a published guide on how to deal with grieving Muggle relatives. A lot of words came to mind, like Ugh and Hmm and Er, but nothing really poetic or helpful seemed to want to come out.

He sat there quietly, feeling his aunt helplessly tremble in his arms. He had never known Petunia Dursley to be helpless. She hadn't been helpless a day in her life. She didn't know the meaning of the word. She was a woman who always had control and order and was incensed any time it was disrupted. But then, her world hadn't just been disrupted. Her world had been completely turned upside down, shaken, flipped around some more, shaken some more, and thrown full fisted to the ground from the highest height imaginable. He knew all to well how that felt. It was enough to make anyone helpless.

The worst part was that it was his fault. He was sitting there, urged to comfort a woman he pretty much hated (at the very least had no affection for). He was holding on to a woman who had always made him feel worthless. He had always imagined that his greatest revenge against the Dursleys, if ever he were so desperate enough to want revenge, was going to be to make them feel just as worthless. But now that he could see it, right there in front of him, he didn't want any part of it, not from this side. He didn't want to have her sitting there in his arms and feeling helpless, not when he could have prevented it.

What Harry did want was for all of it to go away. He wanted to wake up yesterday and do the day over again. He wanted to notice the warning from Mr Tibbles a little earlier. He wanted to notice the owls a little earlier. He wanted to notice the difference between Dudley and The Dudley That Wasn't Dudley. He wanted to bring his uncle back. He wanted his wand back. He wanted no one to be hurting because of him. He wanted to take it all back. But he couldn't. He couldn't before and he couldn't now. All he could do was try to make it all work for everyone. With Aunt Petunia, he needed to do the only thing that he had ever learned to do with his aunt.

With a small, sad voice Harry told her, "I'm sorry."

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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!