A/N: The second part of the Unmasked trilogy, first can be found on my profile.
Chapter 1: New Faces in Old Houses
"Alright girly, number one Grimmauld Place. You sure this where you're 'posed to be?" I looked away from the muggle taxi driver to the street I was on. Run down and a little seedy. That's what I would use to describe this area, the cabbie was right, it didn't look like where I was supposed to be at all, but I knew it was right.
Mrs. Weasley had known where I was going, it was the only explanation for why she let me leave her and her family at the train station and get into a taxi. She also might have been a bit miffed that Fred and I broke up on the same day she found out we were dating. I don't think she'd just let me walk off though.
"Yeah, no, this is right. What's the fare?" The cabbie was already suspicious of me because of my massive trunk and owl, but his face screwed up even more when I started sifting through my pocket money to find muggle change. I hastily tried to put the huge gold galleons away before he saw them, sickles and knuts looked more like muggle money, so I left them out as I pulled some crumpled notes out of my back pocket to give to the man along with the coins.
"Right, thanks, have a nice summer!" The cabbie yelled as I got all of my things out of the backseat of his car. I waved as he sped off down the street, he was nice.
I had told the cab driver I was going to the first house on the street, in reality I just knew it was the street I was going to. I had blacked out the front of the letter on the train, and just gave the paper to the driver as a list of instructions that were on the back. He followed them quite happily, and here we were.
I slowly walked my way down the street, dragging my trunk and owl cage behind me, sifting through my things for the piece of parchment I hadn't looked at yet today.
Ajax hooted indignantly at being caged, and I shushed him as I stopped and pulled out the paper. I was at number ten.
The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix are found at number 12 Grimmauld Place, London.
I read the piece of parchment several times, then put it away, and went further down the street to where number twelve should have been.
Of course it wasn't, why would it be. But the words twelve Grimmauld Place floated through my mind as I stared at eleven and thirteen, and all of a sudden, things started to move.
It was as if a third house was squeezing its way out, I took a few steps back as a house even more run down and dirty than the rest emerged onto the street. This was obviously where I was supposed to be.
I hauled my trunk and Ajax up the steps until I stood on the front porch. I knocked three times, and only had to wait a few moments before the door was pulled open and I was ushered inside by no one other than Sirius Black himself.
"Veronica."
"Sirius." He looked much better. His face wasn't as drawn and waxy, though it was still pale, and his hair was shorter, and no longer had dirt or mats. The facial hair he had wasn't patchy and uneven, all in all, it just looked like he'd had a good shower, and a haircut, and a three course meal.
"Keep your voice down, I'll show you 'round." His voice was no more than a whisper and as we shuffled through the entryway, I looked around at the decor. The room might have been grand and beautiful years ago, but the moth eaten curtains and dark, stained walls told a different story now.
"What is this place?" I asked, also whispering, and as we started up the stairs, I recoiled at the sight of what looked like shrunken and dried house-elf heads.
"My mothers old house, she's dead so it belongs to me now, I gave it to Dumbledore for the Order of the Phoenix- oh speaking of that where's the paper?"
I faltered for a moment before giving the piece of paper that had the address of this building on it to him.
He pointed his wand at it and the paper quickly curled up in flames, leaving a pile of ashes in his hand which he brushed off on the already dirty wall.
"What's the Order of-"
"Just call it the Order, and it's an opposition to the Death Eaters, a regrouping from the first war."
I nodded taking it all in as we reached the first landing, and Sirius opened a door. The bedroom was small, and rather disgusting, Sirius stood in the doorway and I peered around him, our faces mirror images of disgust.
"Is this my room?" Sirius looked at me disapprovingly.
"I don't hate you, this was supposed to be shared by you, Hermione, and- oh what's her name? Youngest Weasley?"
"Ginny." Sirius snapped his fingers.
"Yeah, Ginny. You, Hermione, and Ginny, but maybe not, considering this." He waved his hand at the room.
"It's not that bad, with some cleaning spells it could be habitable."
Sirius shrugged, "I guess, but it's already five, and nobody wants to clean on their first day of summer vacation. We'll get food, and I'll tell you about everything."
I let Ajax out of his cage, and with much difficulty and a few aggressive spells from Sirius, I was able to open the window in the room and let him fly out to hunt.
Sirius said he wasn't the best cook, and he had only been in the house for less than a week, so when he pulled a magically frozen container of Mrs. Weasley's stew out of a cupboard, I wasn't all surprised.
We ate as we talked. Dumbledore and a few others had apparently been by before I came, and there had been a meeting then, which I wouldn't have been allowed to go to anyway because I was underage and still in school, but nobody was coming to stay until the second week of July. Even then, it was just the Weasleys and Hermione, Harry wasn't going to come until later for some reason. Sirius got agitated when I mentioned his name so I dropped the subject.
"So it's just me and you for two weeks?"
"Yeah I know, how boring right." I smiled, but then thought he might be serious, and only when I saw his grinning face did I recognize the joke.
"Well I know it's not very fun to hang out with a sixteen year old, but we should probably make this place habitable before everybody else gets here." He rolled his eyes and my grin became wider.
"That's a miracle waiting to happen, would you like to win the lottery while we're at it?"
"It'd sure be nice."
I technically wasn't allowed to do magic outside of school, but Sirius explained that the wards on the house made it impossible for the ministry to tell. I slept not in the awful bedroom, but on a recently scourgified couch, and the next morning we started some work.
Sirius taught me cleaning and banishment charms I didn't already know, and we tackled the little problems one at a time.
The curtainful of doxies would have to wait, as would the various cupboards filled with things, but the piles laying around were put away, and the several inches of dust and debris cleaned. By late afternoon, the sun was actually shining throughout the house in the now clean windows, it made a welcome change. The only place we hadn't been through was the top landing, I didn't press, but I was curious as to why.
"So what's behind those curtains?" Sirius winced as I pointed to a pair of moth eaten velvet curtains in the entrance hall, we hadn't touched those yet, and they looked disgusting.
"What's behind them isn't so nice, it's why we keep our voice down when we're around here."
"Is it worth trying?" Sirius sighed and shrugged.
"Why not."
The second he touched the curtains to pull them back I was faced with an onslaught of noise.
"FILTHY DISGUSTING HEATHEN OF MY BLOOD! DOESN'T DESERVE TO WALK AROUND THESE WALLS, DEFACING MY HOUSE WITH HIS SCUM!"
The woman in the painting was horrifying to say the least. Yellowing skin and bulging eyes, she was practically foaming at the mouth as she yelled at Sirius. Her black hair flew behind her, ratty and tangled, the same state as her black dress. The things she yelled were horrible, and got worse as her white eyes focused on me.
"SCUM OF SCUM! WHY AM I SURPRISED! NEXT THING I KNOW YOU'LL BRING HALF-BLOODS AND MUDBLOODS THROUGH MY WALLS, AT LEAST IT'S PURE! MAYBE IT WON'T DISAPPOINT ME LIKE YOU DID!"
The 'it' was directed at me, and I felt a stab of anger towards the ugly lady.
"Shut up!" I yelled but it was drowned in her continuing cries, Sirius motioned to me to help him, and after some wrestling, we finally managed to heave the curtains shut over the portrait.
"So," Sirius panted, "I guess that's your grandmother."
We tried every charm we could think of.
"How 'bout we disarm the wall, maybe it will let go of the painting." I was getting desperate, every time we cast any sort of spell near the painting, the velvet curtains would fly open all on their own, and Walburga Black would fill the house with her lovely voice. She woke up the rest of the paintings and they started screaming too, Sirius had put a silencing charm on all of them by this point.
"Something tells me that won't work." It didn't, and we moved onto other things in the evening, resigning to just whisper in the main hallway. I slapped a piece of parchment on the banister, so that whoever came into the house could see it, it read 'please whisper in this area'. At the sound of my hand slapping on the metal rail, Walburga woke up again.
"Oh for fuck's sake."
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The next few days continued in the same sort of effect, cleaning, eating, sleeping, talking. On the third day, Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape arrived, with numerous other wizards and witches I had never seen before. The portrait screamed again, and I took that to mean my little note had been stolen, or just nobody paid attention to it. It really could be either.
I stayed upstairs in my recently cleaned room, Sirius had said I couldn't join in, even though he thought it best I did. I had come downstairs just as they left, and McGonagall pulled me aside. She was wearing muggle attire of a long dress, and it looked very odd.
"When are you going for your apparition test Ms. Smith?" She faltered a slight bit on my name, and I wondered about if I should change that after I graduated.
"Well, not until after August thirteenth, that's my birthday." She pursed her lips slightly and nodded.
"The Weasley family will be here by then, ask one of them that works there to take you down. Good day." Professor McGonagall would always seem odd when she gave out advice and dressed in muggle clothes, I guess she just didn't do it that often.
"See you."
Five days in, we tackled the kitchen. Everything we touched was filled with spiders. Sirius didn't like spiders that much. I laughed the hardest I had in a long time when we opened a cupboard and more spiders than I could count crawled out, and when I looked beside me for Sirius, he was on top of the kitchen table.
"So how have you stayed hidden all this time?" I asked on the seventh day.
"Oh well, the man who's leading my arrest, Kingsley Shacklebolt, is an ally of the Order, and is feeding information currently that I'm in Tibet. A few months ago it was Guatemala." I smiled to myself.
On the eighth day, a woman I knew I'd instantly like showed up. She had vivid violet hair, and showed up all by herself.
"HEATHENS IN MY HOUSE, SPAWN OF MUDBLOODS AND BLOOD TRAITORS ALIKE!"
"Oh god, I'm sorry!" Sirius and I hurried to yank the drapes closed again, and when we did, I faced the young woman putting back up the troll leg umbrella stand that she obviously tripped over.
"Can't we just throw that thing out?" I asked Sirius, but he ignored me.
"What brings you here Tonks?"
Tonks smiled brightly, "I've come to discuss some things about the Weasley's and this house."
Sirius looked at the curtains covering the portrait of Satan (It was what I'd taken to calling her).
"Let's go to the kitchen, it's out of the way, you can come Veronica." I inwardly squealed at coming to a semi-official meeting.
"Tonks." The woman with violently violet hair said, holding out her hand.
"Veronica." She made a face as I shook her hand.
"Seems long, you should shorten it."
"Just call me Vern."
"Nice."
Tonks just wanted to know if you could apparate in and out of the house, and if not, then how to get there. She stayed for quite a while afterwards though, when we were talking, she had knocked over her water, and her hair changed from bright purple to blushing pink in what seemed embarrassment, as her cheeks turned the same colour.
"What?" Tonks laughed at the expression on my face. "I'm a metamorphmagus, means I can change what I look like at will."
"That's so cool!" I spent a lot of time asking Tonks to change what she looked like for me, obviously she found it quite fun. Sirius left after a while, and as he walked out, she changed her face to a perfect replica of his. I snorted into my hand and laughed even harder when I saw my own face peering back at me.
"Is that really what I look like from the side?" I questioned leaning closer across the table, right as I got super close, she turned back to herself, making me jump back.
Tonks left just a few hours later, but she promised to come back soon, she was so exciting.
The Weasley's came on the tenth day instead of the fourteenth. They apparated in pairs to the front porch, which was under protection. Mr. Weasley and Hermione arrived first, Hermione looking quite sick, obviously she didn't like side-along apparition that much.
Next was George and Ron, who were practically having a fight the second they materialized on the doorstep, and lastly Ginny and Fred came, with Mrs. Weasley a second behind them.
Fred looked shocked to see me at the house already, but he spotted Sirius and then his expression changed.
"Vern." George greeted me brightly as he walked past. "Got things to show you later." I snorted at his mischievous expression and began to help everybody get their things upstairs. I stopped dead on the staircase when I realized something.
"You two got your apparition license!" Fred and George looked up at me from a few stairs below.
"Huh, she's really smart." Fred said to George, then he turned his attention to me, "What tipped you off, the fact that we literally apparated here?"
"Shut up." I showed Hermione and Ginny into my room, I guess our room now, and led Ron up one floor further to his room, which Harry would join when he came.
"So our room's a floor up right?" George asked right before I started climbing the stairs again.
"Yeah wh-" Crack. The two of them and their trunks disappeared with a pop and I swore before running up the stairs to see them leisurely sitting on their trunks at the top of the staircase, blocking the hallway.
"Damn, what took you so long Vern?" Fred asked.
"So when do you turn seventeen again?" George added.
"On August thirteenth, and on August fourteenth, I'm going to apparate you across the country." I smiled, and opened the door to their room. "Your majesty's, here you go."
"Where was your room again? For scientific purposes." I shook my head at George.
"See you later, I'll call you for dinner."
"Oi Vern!" I looked at Fred, "Come up like half an hour before dinner, we made some new stuff." I grinned.
"Sure."
I was almost glad that Fred was still acting like nothing had happened between us. Wasn't it easier that way? To pretend that nothing did happen? I thought so at least. Saved me from stumbling through awkward pauses and looks, we were friends so easily, it lead me to believe that maybe being friends was better. I didn't want to risk that relationship again.