I'm not sure yet if the Order's Headquarters remains at Grimmauld Place or is elsewhere. In your head, it can be whereever you like for now.
Chapter Two: Worlds Collide
Clara's first awareness was of a soft mattress beneath her and someone humming faintly as they straightened the blankets covering her. Wiggling a foot experimentally, she noted with some relief that her extremities seemed functional. She opened her eyes and found herself looking up at a plump middle-aged woman withs lightly disheveled red hair and a pleasant smile on her features.
"Oh, you're awake!" The smile widened, setting off a twinkle in her green eyes, and Clara decided immediately that she liked the woman. "How are you feeling?"
"Um." She tried to sit up, and her head suddenly swam, gray tinting the corners of her vision. "Dizzy. Where… where am I? The museum? The mask, is it…?"
"It's safe, dear." The woman patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. "And so are you. I'm Molly Weasley."
"Clara Becket. Where am I?"
The smile faded somewhat, replaced by mild worry. "Perhaps Albus should…" She patted Clara's shoulder again. "You just wait right here, dear. I think Professor Dumbledore had better explain everything." She bustled purposefully out of the room, leaving Clara staring in befuddlement at the doorway.
"Er…"
The man she had classified as a hallucination the night before was, in fact, named Albus Dumbledore and was, in fact, a wizard, although no relation to Gandalf. It turned out that Mrs. Weasley was also a wizard, as were several thousand other English citizens, including the terrible creature in her office the night before, and that the terrible creature was called Voldemort and intended to take over the entire wizarding world and enslave everybody else. It turned out that a great number of other things Clara had never believed in were true as well, according to Albus Dumbledore.
"Everyone will be wanting to meet you before we go our separate ways, I expect," Dumbledore said after her flabbergasted silence had stretched on into its sixth minute. "Are you up to walking downstairs?"
"You're insane, the lot of you!" Clara snapped. "Magic is real, you're wizards, and there's a Dark Lord out to get all of us—d'you really expect me to believe that nonsense. You've kidnapped me and probably robbed the museum, that's all. Bloody rubbish. You're crazier for thinking I'll believe it than you would be for believing it yourself! You're, you're…" Her words trailed off, and she slumped back against the pillows, utterly drained by her tirade.
"The mind dislikes uncomfortable truths," Dumbledore said gently. "It does its best to ignore or dismiss them—a fact which has kept our kind safely hidden for so long. But you have a very exceptional mind, Dr. Becket, and I'm certain it's up to the task of accepting what you know." She glared up at the old man in stony silence, and he sighed softly. "Do you remember the battle at the museum, Doctor?"
She nodded, unable to deny the veracity of what her own eyes had seen, and shuddered as she remembered the horrible sound of the Dark Lord's voice. "What are you going to do with me, then?"
"We'd like you to help us," he answered, holding out a hand to her. "Voldemort seems all too interested in certain artifacts and texts, and it seems likely that your expertise can help us stay a step ahead of him. I suspect that to be the reason for his, ah, visit to your office, as well."
"It's so lovely to be in demand," she muttered bitterly, but took his outstretched hand and allowed him to help her to her feet and lead her down the stairs. Feeling a little ridiculous in her rumpled clothes, she followed Dumbledore into a room full of people, all of whom turned to look at her as she entered.
"I'm Tonks," said the young pink-haired woman who had seemed so impressed with her the previous night, capturing Clara's hand in a firm handshake. "Don't call me Nymphadora, I hate it. You put up a good fight, Dr. Becket, but I wish you'd be more careful who you hit."
"Er, sorry. You might've let me know whose side you were on."
The man beside Tonks laughed quietly. "Don't mind her, she got off lightly. I'm Remus Lupin." He smiled and shook her hand, a little gleam of mischief in his eyes despite his obvious weariness. The man seemed too young for the amount of gray in his hair, but his eyes and his smile held a warmth and a light that seemed to defy his worn appearance.
"Did you really slug Voldemort in the nose?" A teenager, with hair too bright a shade of coppery-orange to possibly deny relation to Mrs. Weasley, appeared at her elbow, grinning up at her.
"I suppose I did," she replied.
"Cool!"
"Ron, get out of here! Honestly!" Mrs. Weasley bustled over and gave the boy a gentle shove toward the kitchen door, then turned and enveloped Clara in a motherly hug. "We've met, of course, dear. Call me Molly."
A faint flicker of movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see a tall, lean figure step through the doorway, black robes billowing slightly around his thin frame. Eyes as hard and expressionless as two spheres of obsidian met her gaze, and she shivered involuntarily and looked away. He carried himself with a darkly austere dignity that fascinated her almost as much as the unmistakable aura of menace about him terrified her.
The woman she recognized from last night's misadventures as Professor McGonagall stepped forward to make the introduction. "Dr. Becket, this is Professor Severus Snape, our Potions inst—well, Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor now, I suppose. Professor Snape, this is Dr. Becket."
He regarded her with silent hostility, his black eyes appearing even darker against his pale features, then turned and swept off down a passageway in a swirl of black robes. "Pleasant fellow," Clara managed to utter wryly.
"Don't mind him." McGonagall shook her head. "He… has his reasons. And please, call me Minerva."
She stood the busyness and chatter of the kitchen for as long as she could, and then wandered into the sitting room to collapse on a faded couch, sending up a cloud of dust. Leaning back against the cushions, she looked around the sitting room, noting the thick coating of dust on everything and the general state of disrepair; she tried very pointedly to ignore whatever was moving about in the drapes.
"Good afternoon!" a tall, balding man whose remaining hair was as red as Ron's stepped in through the front door and greeted her with a cheery wave. "You must be Dr. Becket! Good to see you're up and about."
"Er, it's good to be up and about, I suppose, thank you," she replied in a tone of polite confusion, shaking the hand he offered.
"I'm Arthur Weasley, Molly's husband," he introduced himself, regarding her intently for a moment. "You're a Muggle!" he said at last, beaming.
"Am I?" She blinked up at him, uncertain whether she had just been insulted.
"Naturally," he responded easily. "Sorry. Muggles are nonwizarding folk."
"I definitely qualify," Clara replied with a chuckle.
"Now, Arthur, let her be, she's had a rough time," Molly admonished as she swept back into the room, placing a hand on her husband's shoulder. "She needs rest. I just chased Ron off, for heaven's sake."
"I'm feeling quite a bit better, Molly," Clara offered. She was keenly aware of the strangeness of this new world, and the anthropologist in her longed to grab a notebook and launch into interviews and participant observation. Another corner of her mind simply found the Weasleys' presence comforting, their cheerful energy driving away some of the lingering chill of her encounter with Snape.
"If you're sure, dear." Molly watched her skeptically for a moment, then relented and settled on the couch beside her. "Arthur works at the Ministry; he's quite the Muggle Studies enthusiast." For all the exasperation in the woman's tone, Clara detected a note of pride there as well.
Arthur nodded, settling into an armchair. "I work with Muggle artifacts that have magically, ah, tinkered with. It amazes me the way you lot adapt to the world without any magic to help you along. Technology!"
Clara smiled. "It's sort of reassuring to realize that my world's as strange to you as yours is to me. Makes me a feel a little less like the village idiot."
"After Snape got through with you this morning, I'm not surprised you feel that way." Molly shook her head with a disapproving frown.
"Dreadful man," Arthur concurred. After a moment, he ventured hopefully, "Say, I've been reading quite a bit about your kitchen appliances recently. Have you got a… oh, what was the word… a microwave?"
"Arthur!" Molly sighed and rolled her eyes.
"Of course," Clara answered, momentarily puzzled. "Doesn't nearly ev—oh. I suppose you don't really need them."
"You use electricity to heat the food, don't you?"
Molly appeared to be listening intently despite her protests.
"More or less." Brow furrowed slightly, Clara tried to remember the science of it all. "It's something to do with radiation. If I remember correctly, the radiation causes the atoms in the food to start moving very quickly, which heats it."
"I'd love to get my hands on one."
Clara chuckled quietly. "Professor Dumbledore said there's a chance of returning to my flat and fetching a few things. I could bring the microwave back with me, if you like. I doubt I'll be needing it here."
Arthur brightened; Molly winced slightly. "Would you? That'd be marvelous!"
"Oh, it's all right. It's… been nice to be able to talk about something normal. I feel better, somehow."
"I have a fine collection of Muggle electrical plugs," Arthur offered, quite seriously. "You're welcome to borrow them if you start feeling homesick."
"Arthur!" Molly sighed.
AN: While I think the culture shock of a Muggle being told for the first time that magic, wizards, and all the rest exist would probably actually be sufficient to fill several chapters in itself, it's not the focus of the story, so it's getting glossed over a bit.
Next time: Clara gets an unpleasant assignment and Snape is worse than Voldemort