Chapter 2: Fly on the Wall
"Extendable ears, puking pastilles, the list goes on!" I picked up the flesh coloured string and wound it around my fingers.
"You know, we're not allowed in meetings because we're underage and still in school-"
"Just you're uderage Vern." I shot George a look.
"Anyway, after you've decided to forget about your younger siblings and their friends," I stared a little harder at George, "What if we put these outside the doors, and we can listen to what they're talking about."
Fred and George looked at each other, then back at me.
"They're having a meeting after dinner aren't they?" Fred asked, and I nodded, just then, we heard Mrs. Weasley's voice shouting, and then the portrait started screaming too.
"Bill mentioned he was coming round for dinner, I bet that's him."
"Tonks said she was coming too, they'll stick around for the meeting after." The twins looked at me in confusion.
"Who's Tonks?" They asked in unison.
"Oh she's great, I think she knew your brother Charlie in school, she mentioned him last time she was here, she's an auror."
"Cool." They said with identical grins.
We went downstairs and met up with Ron, Hermione and Ginny on the first landing. Bill and Tonks seemed to have arrived at the same time, and the general ruckus of them coming inside had caused Satan to start screaming again.
Diner passed in quiet introductions and good food for the first time in a while for Sirius and I. Us young folk retired to our rooms in a false sense of tiredness.
"What have you got planned Vern?" Ginny asked at my pacing.
"Extendable ears, we're planning on using them on the order meeting tonight." Both Ginny and Hermione's eyes went wide. We heard a telltale crack of apparition from above us, and then outside our door. Fred and George were there, and Ron was running down the stairs behind them.
They pulled the flesh coloured strings from their pockets, and in a horde, we crowded around the top of the staircase leading down to the dining room door, and Fred and George each dangled a string down, angling it carefully.
With a crackle, the earplug like piece sprang to life, and we fervently listened to the order meeting. It was rather boring, and we all took to sitting after a while of them just talking about the ministry and recruitment.
"All this work, and not even a mention of You-Know-Who's name." Fred said, and shook his head.
"What was that?!" Mrs Weasley's sharp voice penetrated our silence. Fred swore and both the twins jerked up the strings, I saw Ron's face go pale.
"Are these things foolproof? Or do they sometimes work both ways, and transmit our voices down the same way that their voices come up?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"They've been known to malfunction." George said quietly, and with a crack, they both apparated away and we ran. I darted to our room and shooed Ginny and Hermione inside. Mrs. Weasley opened the dining room door the exact second that I closed our bedroom one, and Ron disappeared around the curve in the staircase. We pulled out random stuff as we heard Mrs. Weasley's footsteps coming up the stairs, she knocked, and right before she came in, I righted my book so that it wasn't upside down.
"Shouldn't you girls be getting to bed?" She asked a bit shrewdly, though she didn't have any evidence that we were snooping, she probably thought that we were just covering for Fred and George.
"Yeah we were just reading a bit Mum." Ginny lied quite convincingly, she even had a fake sleepy smile on her face. I hid my real one as Mrs. Weasley left and continued up to check on the rest of her sons.
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The happy starting to summer soured off slightly as July got underway. We weren't really allowed to go outside, and after ten days, the pain of that hadn't set in yet, but after three weeks, I was aching to feel a breeze on my face.
It was the addition of Mad-Eye Moody really. He showed up on the eighteenth day with a vengeance. It was weird meeting him, considering he'd been my teacher for an entire year, but technically he hadn't been my teacher, because Professor Moody was an imposter.
By the way the real Mad-Eye acted, it was a wonder Dumbledore even employed him, or maybe the odd tendencies he had were magnified by spending a year locked in his own magical trunk, whatever. He was nuts.
Fred and George worked more on the extendable ears, and finally we could sit around the banister and listen without fear of our voices being transmitted back down. One time Tonks had opened the door to the dining room so fast to leave she had seen us, but she was a good sport, and ended up teaching Ginny and I how to tell if the door was charmed or not.
Our cleaning of the house got us almost nowhere, and the place still looked dismal when Harry's birthday rolled around, and Ron and Hermione brought the subject of him up again, no one had any concrete answers, but the following night, Hedwig arrived and brought them for us.
Harry had been attacked by dementors, everybody freaked out, Dumbledore showed up, and an order meeting happened that was so secret not even Tonks gave us any hints on what happened in it.
"Stupid bird pecked me until I wrote back." Ron irritably said. Even though we couldn't hear anything, the general seating arrangement around the railing still held true, and Ron held his hand that Harry's owl pecked while she waited for responding letters.
Sirius had been more solemn, not being allowed to do anything was getting to him. One late night, we ended up being the last two in the kitchen, and somehow he told me how frustrating it was to not do anything on the brink of a new war.
I understood somewhat, at least the freedom thing I could relate to. The bad papers and publicity, the illegal animagus, Sirius couldn't do anything without risking his safety, but he was a man of risk, and I could see how much it was affecting him.
Four days after the letters arrived, a team was sent to retrieve Harry. Two nights ago, Tonks had rounded up Hermione and I to help her write a believable letter to Harry's Aunt and Uncle to get them out of the house. Hermione believed that a lawn competition wouldn't work, but Tonks and I had faith, and it seemed to have paid off.
"I'm sure Harry'll only wanna talk to you two." Ginny said to Ron and Hermione, they agreed and resigned to wait in Ron's room for him, Ginny and I and the twins split up respectively. But there was a shared feeling that more would be said that night.
My intuition was correct, and very shortly after the Order meeting started, and we heard the quiet ruckus of Harry arriving, the shouting began from above us.
"SO YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN THE MEETINGS, BIG DEAL! YOU'VE STILL BEEN HERE, HAVEN'T YOU? YOU'VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER! ME, I'VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS' FOR A MONTH! AND I'VE HANDLED MORE THAN YOU TWO'VE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT — WHO SAVED THE SORCERER'S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED BOTH YOUR SKINS FROM THE DEMENTORS?"
Ginny groaned and rolled over on her bed, throwing the book she had been pretending to read to the ground. "There he goes." She said.
"That's nasty stuff."
"Fred told me he wanted to listen in on the meeting tonight, said it would be important, wanna see if the doors been charmed?" Ginny asked and started rifling through her trunk, pulling out some dungbombs.
"Sure, but do we have to throw dungbombs? Can't I just throw my boot?" She gave me a look as we walked downstairs and the sound of Harry's shouting got softer.
After only about four dungbombs, we knew our answer.
"Well shit." I cursed as the fourth one flew towards the door, only to fly back away like it hit some invisible shield.
"Better go tell them." We were going up to the twins room, but stopped when we heard their voices coming from Ron's room, Ginny knocked and the door opened to reveal all five of them standing around, Harry still looking positively ferocious.
"We thought we heard your voice Harry, very quietly though don't worry, how's it going?" George snorted, but Harry gave my words nothing more than a cold look.
"Anyways," Ginny started pointedly, "The extendable ears are a no-go Fred, the door's been imperturbed."
"How d'you know?" George asked, looking disappointed.
"Just chuck stuff at it, if it flies away its been imperturbed."
"Tonks showed us one night, after you all ran away cause you thought she'd rat us out." I added in.
"Damn, would've really liked to hear what Snape had to say." Fred said with a sneer, Harry looked disturbed.
"Snape's here?"
"Yeah, got some top secret report, still a git though."
"He's on our side now Fred." Hermione said, though there was a shadow of doubt in her voice.
George answered for him, "Doesn't stop him from being a git though now does it?"
"Bill doesn't like him either." Ginny said this as if it settled the matter, and I smiled a bit at her idolization of her oldest brother.
We talked about the rest of the Weasleys, carefully avoided the subject of Percy, who I knew had a massive row with Mr Weasley, and was now stonily ignoring the family in pursuit of his career.
We talked a bit about the Daily Prophet, it made me irritated, what lies the papers were spilling about Harry. We didn't get them anymore in the house, Mrs. Weasley would have a fit if we did.
The twins apparated away the second that the aforementioned Mrs. Weasley took a step outside the door. She knocked once, and poked her head in, "The meeting's over, you can all come and have dinner, also, who left a pile of dungbomb outside the kitchen door?"
"Oh just Crookshanks, he likes playing with them." Ginny lied convincingly.
"Oh, I thought it might be Kreacher, he likes doing odd stuff like that." Mrs. Weasley said as she left the room, probably expecting us to follow her, which we did.
Kreacher was odd, I had only seen him once, and Sirius had barked at him to leave before I had properly met him, he said I wouldn't want to, and in some way I believed him. Though I did wonder why.
I met the twins on the way downstairs, and a thought popped into my head, "Hey, how did you guys keep making more joke stuff? I thought you had no money?"
George recoiled, "Who told you we had no money?"
My head turned back around to Fred as he spoke, "You're not gonna believe it but Harry gave us his Tournament winnings, he didn't want 'em."
George seemingly accepted the fact I knew they had had no money. "He went all noble and said he had enough money, that we should have some, and that with You-Know-Who back we would need some laughter in the world."
Satan's picture sprung to life as Tonks tripped over the umbrella stand for the umpteenth time and I clapped my hands over my ears and ran downstairs as all the other portraits started screaming and the hall was filled with horrible noise.
"Typical." I said when I finally reached the kitchen, continuing the conversation from a minute ago.
"I know right?" George chortled to me as he slipped past and we all sat down briefly, before getting back up again to help Mrs. Weasley get dinner ready.
A lot of people from the order meeting had stayed. Tonks and Bill were regulars at dinner, and they graced the table with their presence yet again. Mundungus was a relatively new one. I had heard from meetings the past few days that he was in deep shit for supposedly letting Harry get attacked by dementors in favour of some cash. But he seemed alright, if not a little dumb.
The dinner was quiet apart from Fred and George practically killing Harry and Sirius with a pot of soup near the beginning. Harry still seemed on edge, but the additions of people like Lupin, Mundungus, and Tonks seemed to make things a bit brighter. The real interesting stuff happened after dinner.
I was talking to Tonks about the school I was planning to apply to, to become a PI for the ministry. She was telling me that it and the auror programme were intertwined, and that she had visited the school a few years ago, it was in Ireland.
"... thought the first thing you'd ask after you got here was stuff about Voldemort?" Sirius' loud voice carried to the opposite end of the table, where Mrs. Weasley and Sirius seemed to having a mental standoff.
"I did! Ron and Hermione don't know, they said they haven't been allowed to order meetings." Harry protested. Ron and Hermione had the same expression on their faces, nervous curiosity.
"He deserves to get his questions answered after being holed up for a month-" Sirius started, but was interrupted by George.
"Hold on! Why does Harry get to have his questions answered?"
"What about ours?" Fred said angrily, "You're too young to be in the Order!" He mocked in his scarily accurate Mrs. Weasley impression.
"It's not my fault that nobody's told you anything, it's your parents decision-" Sirius looked rather irritated as someone cut him off yet again, this time it was me.
"Everybody hold up, especially you Sirius, you're my parent but you've been telling me for a month that I can't know anything! Why's that?" There was silence for a moment around the table, I had locked eyes with Sirius, and neither of us were looking away any time soon.
He did first, but didn't answer me, and I felt rather snuffed. The resulting argument between him and Mrs. Weasley was like watching an aggressive tennis match. It was scary, but you just couldn't look away.
"Molly, you are not the only person at this table who cares for Harry, Sirius sit down." Lupin's voice was always calm, I had only heard it raised once, and it wasn't something I wanted to hear again. But I could hear the tension. Mrs Weasley looked as if she was about to faint, and Sirius sat down, his face impassive, so still that his features could be carved from solid rock.
"I want to stay." Harry said decisively.
"Fine, but Ron, Ginny, Hermione, Fred, George and Veronica, all go upstairs now please." Mrs Weasley said tersely, looking rather angry and put out.
"That's not fair!" The twins shouted.
"I don't want to!" Ginny yelled hotly.
"If Harry's allowed why aren't we!?" Ron shouted for himself and Hermione, who would probably be shouting herself if she didn't have such problems with disobeying authority.
"Molly, you cannot tell my daughter what to do, she will be staying." Sirius's voice drowned out the protests as he spoke up for me, and I nodded my thanks.
"Fred and George are of age, we can't make them do anything." Mr. Weasley piped in, sounding awfully tired.
Mrs. Weasley took a heaving breath. Her eyes darted from me to Sirius to Harry and her kids, then back to me again. "Fine!"
"Harry'll just tell us everything later, won't you harry?" Ron bit out, Harry looked at him for a moment.
"Yeah, course I will." Both Ron and Hermione beamed.
"Fine! I give up, Ginny- BED!" Ginny was not quiet, she raged and stormed all the way up the stairs, shouting and stomping, and waking every portrait up on her ascent. She slammed the door so heavily I could hear it through the portraits shrieking.
"Well." Sirius started only after Lupin returned from closing the Satan's curtains.
It was no new news. I exchanged a look with Fred about twenty minutes in. We knew this. It was all they'd talked about in the meetings we had listened to. Where Voldemort was, what he was doing, who was he recruiting. His methods, his madness. It was annoying to have to have a whole fight to listen to the same stuff over again. I suppose I wasn't expecting them to give up their deepest darkest secrets to a group of teenagers, but still.
We had reached a lull. My mind was reeling, listening in a damp hallway and actually being there was different. I was thinking about Voldemort, his plans. How the ministry was falling apart due to fear, how everything seemed to be falling into place for an evil tyrant. Everything except for this group of witches and wizards that grouped up in a basement every week.
"I think that's enough." Mrs Weasley's voice startled me, she looked furious.
""You can't order us around-" Fred began.
"Watch me." Mrs Weasley snarled, and I realized it would probably be best to leave it at that for one night.
Only two more quips and we were walking upstairs.
"Vern?" A voice spoke from behind me.
"Hmm?" I turned to face Sirius, who squeezed past me on the stairs and motioned for me to follow him into the drawing room.
"Why are we in here? The doxie curtains aren't being cleaned tonight I hope." I said, eyeing the curtains overlooking the street, they were faintly buzzing and rustling.
"No, I actually feared you might be irritated at me for not telling you anything when I could have." He said, I turned to face him, seeing the wry smile on his face.
"Well, there is that of course, don't let me forget."
"I didn't think anybody else would approve." He said, I looked past him stonily to the wall I knew was covered with a tapestry of my family tree.
"And I didn't think you gave two shits about anybody else's approval." Sirius heaved a sigh.
"I'm sorry." I knew he meant it, but I wasn't finished, I had to get out what I felt.
"Harry's here for a few hours and you wanna spill every damn secret these walls hold to him. What am I? Some homeless person on the street?"
"No! Of course not!"
"Prove it." I held my head high. I looked Sirius full in the face, and it was the same expression I wore, staring back at me. Defiance, irritability, hurt.
"I don't need to." He almost seethed, his composure dangerously close to cracking, too bad mine was already shattered.
"Yes you do! You would break a whole fucking mountain down for Harry James Potter! You'd shatter it to the ground! And while there's nothing wrong with that, you have to remember that I am right behind you! I'm here too, I don't care if I'm only here because of a drunken whim eighteen years ago. I don't care one bit, because I am here, and you're the only family I've got!" I didn't realize I was crying until I felt a tear slip off my chin. I wiped the moisture away angrily.
"I don't know what to say to that." Sirius' voice was quiet, and he sat down heavily in a chair that was behind him.
I shook my head, "I don't expect you to, I don't think there's anything you can say right now."
I left then. Crossed the hall to my room, Hermione was filling Ginny in about what was said after dinner, and if any of them heard anything that had been said in the other room, they didn't say.