Chapter Two: Sirius's Place

Harry and the Dursleys sat for three hours that night talking. It was the longest actual conversation he'd ever had with any of them, and it never once devolved into a shouting match or insult-fest. There were apologies all around for the way things had gone in previous years. Dudley was suddenly encouraged to not only be polite to Harry, but also to interact with him as family. By the end of the evening, even Vernon had given up his anger. He didn't like the boy, but he'd made certain he would never be able to do any of his freakish magic in the house, so he supposed he could live with it.

Harry was no longer alone in doing the chores the next day. He ran through everything with Dudley, showing him each chore and how Aunt Petunia expected it to be done. Harry was a patient teacher, and working together, they actually got it done in a reasonable amount of time. They were then released to do as they wished for the rest of the day. Harry headed for the park as usual, but as Dudley had decided to follow him, he also brought the fitness books he had been working from. "Actually, if you get fit, your boxing coach might be quite pleased. Running is good for your heart, and strength training will help you with your weight. Both will help you with your endurance in the ring."

Harry had upped his run to five miles, and he hoped he would be able to continue his physical workouts when Remus and whoever he was working with came to get him. He'd hate to lose what he'd gained. He was packing his wooden sword, both for practice, and because he would need an untraceable weapon present if the Ministry was trying to catch him at underage magic. He also wanted to become proficient at it, and try to build something closer to a real lightsaber. It wasn't as if he didn't have enough money to buy a focus gem for it, if he didn't already have one in his vault. He wanted it to be an emerald or a sapphire, though. A ruby would not do at all!

Aunt Petunia had promised to get the rest of the books back to the library for him, and Dudley was going to recheck the ones on pure physical fitness.

And then came the day when Remus returned. He had with him quite a gaggle of wizards and witches. He had his wand out in the blink of an eye when he spotted Mad-Eye Moody among them. No one would blame him for that, not after finding out about Barty Crouch Jr. impersonating him all last year. But his wand was in his left hand. His right had gone to the grip of his sword, which he was already beginning to think of as his primary weapon. It was strapped across his back in a denim scabbard he'd made from an old pair of jeans that were too tattered to save.

"Put that down before you poke someone's eye out, Potter."

"It's all right, Harry. He's with me. He's not Polyjuiced," said Remus.

But Harry did not yet lower his defenses. Instead, he reached out into the magic and said, "Remus Lupin. What form does a Boggart take in your presence?"

Remus grinned, proud of him. "A full moon." He detected no lie, and was grateful. "And what form does your Patronus take?"

"It's a stag."

"There we are. Everyone is who they look like."

"Then why is his wand in his left hand, Lupin?" Now Moody had his wand out.

"Because my right is on the hilt of my wooden sword, which would quickly become something else entirely if you proved false. Now," Harry paused and replaced his wand in its makeshift holster, another denim construct. "I'll guess that the All-England Best-Kept Suburban Lawn Competition win was bogus?" The Dursleys had gone out to accept the award, but Harry had stayed behind in case anything should happen.

"Right you are. Wotcher, Harry." This was the woman with the sparkly personality that he'd often sensed watching the house. Her hair was very purple at the moment, as well as short and spiky.

"And I don't suppose you have the five-hundred pounds of prize money?" He shook his head at her negative. "All right, I have to go to Gringott's at some point anyway. I'll have them send the money. My family is just starting to treat me as something other than a house elf. I'd like to build on that, and not set them off about wizards again." He saw her expression of consternation. "Hey, don't worry about it. I've got more than enough to cover it, and it's worth it to keep this new spirit of good will going around here. So where are we headed? The Burrow?"

"No, not the Burrow," answered Remus, motioning Harry toward the kitchen. "Too risky. We've set up headquarters somewhere undetectable. It's taken a while to get set up."

Mad-Eye had taken a seat at the kitchen table and was sipping from his hip flask, his magical eye spinning in all directions, taking in the Dursleys' many labor-saving appliances.

"Let me introduce you to everyone. This is Alastor Moody."

"Yes, I know."

Then Remus went around the room introducing folk. There was Don't-Call-Me-Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Elphias Doge, Dedalus Diggle, Emmeline Vance, Sturgis Podmore, and Hestia Jones. He nodded to each in turn, uncomfortable with their continued staring at him. "A surprising number of people volunteered to come and get you." Remus winked at him, enjoying his discomfiture just a little. Of course, he would. He was once a Marauder, and that wasn't something one just grew out of.

Harry smirked at him. "Glad you're enjoying this."

"Yeah, well, the more the better," said Moody darkly. "We're your guard, Potter."

"We're just waiting for the signal to tell us it's safe to set off," said Remus, glancing out the kitchen window. "We've got about fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes later, with Harry wearing his Quidditch gear and Disillusioned for safety, all were broom-mounted and on their way. The uniform would keep him warm if they went too high, and the way Moody was talking, that was exactly what they'd be doing, and the goggles would keep his vision clear. He had the wooden sword across his back, and Tonks had tied his trunk to her broom. Hedwig had remained with Remus in the location they were going to, so he'd taken the opportunity to clean her cage and it was tied to the back of his broom.

It felt wonderful to be flying again, but Harry kept in mind that what they were doing was dangerous, and paid careful attention both to Moody's changes in direction and what the ambient magic could tell him. They mostly went eastward into London, but Moody had them zigging all over the place to prevent someone following them or a Muggle from seeing them. Harry wanted to ask why they weren't all Disillusioned, but realized it was only him they were worrying about being spotted.

Finally they landed, and despite Moody's paranoia, no one had been following them. Harry was given a slip of paper with a hand written note on it in script he vaguely recognized. Moody said, "Read quickly and memorize."

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.

He wanted to know, of course, what the Order of the Phoenix was, but he held his tongue for now. He memorized the script, and then Moody ignited it with his wand, allowing it to turn to ash and blow away in the wind. The group was standing at number eleven, and to the left was number thirteen, but when Harry concentrated on the script, he saw the battered door to number twelve, as if it had popped out of nothingness and into the wall between the other two. It was as if another house had inflated between them, pushing the other two houses out of the way, but Harry knew it was only an effect of his mind making up the difference. The house had always been there, if he were not mistaken, under the protection of the Fidelius Charm.

Harry walked up the stone steps, and examined the door. He noted that here was no keyhole and no letter box, just a tarnished silver knocker in the form of a twisted serpent. The magic was in the knocker, and he touched a finger to it with a little magic, which caused the door to open.

"Brilliant, Harry," said Remus. "Get in quick, but don't go far inside and don't touch anything."

The hall was completely dark, and not wanting to trip over anything, Harry pulled a small orb of light out of the ambient magic, very faint, so that it didn't blind anyone, but still enough to see where he was going. It was a pale, ghostly blue, and it stayed over and in front of him so as not to obstruct his vision.

"You're something else, Harry," said Tonks.

Moody lit the gas lamps along the walls, and Harry let his light go out. Moody removed the Disillusionment, then he heard someone hurrying toward them and soon saw Ron's mother, Mrs. Weasley, emerge from a door at the end of the hall. "Oh, Harry, it's lovely to see you!" she whispered, hugging him and then holding him at arm's length to examine him. "Well you're looking better this year than last, that's certain. Dinner will be after the meeting." She turned her attention to the bunch of wizards behind him. "He's just arrived, the meeting's started."

Everyone started filing past Harry and into the door Mrs. Weasley had just come out of, but she did not allow him to follow. "Sorry, dear, but the meeting's for Order members only. Ron and Hermione are upstairs. You can wait with them until the meeting's over and then we'll have dinner. And keep your voice down in the hall."

"Why?"

"I don't want to wake anything up. I'll explain later, I've got to hurry, I'm supposed to be at the meeting—I'll just show you where you're sleeping."

She took him silently down the hall, past doors and silent portraits, past an umbrella stand that looked as if it were made from a severed troll's leg, then up a staircase with a row of shrunken heads mounted on plaques on the wall. Looking closer, he realized they were house elf heads, all with the same snout-ish nose. This house seemed to belong to a Dark wizard, and Harry drew his magic around him like a cloak, protection against the oppressive atmosphere. What on earth would possess them to set up their headquarters in such a place?

When they reached the second landing, Mrs. Weasley whispered distractedly, "Now, Ron and Hermione will explain everything, dear, I've really got to dash. You're the door on the right." And with that, she hurried off downstairs again.

The instant Harry came into the room he was virtually flattened by Hermione, who had launched herself across the room upon seeing him. "HARRY! Ron, he's here, Harry's here! We didn't hear you arrive! Oh, how are you? Are you all right? Have you been furious with us? I bet you have, I know our letters were useless—but we couldn't tell you anything, Dumbledore made us swear we wouldn't, oh, we've got so much to tell you, and you've got to tell us—the dementors! When we heard—you're so lucky the Ministry seems to not have noticed—"

"Let him breathe, Hermione," said Ron, who was grinning as he closed the door behind Harry. Still beaming, she let him go, but before anyone could say another word, there was a soft noise and Hedwig landed gently on his shoulder.

"Hedwig! I'm glad you stayed, girl." She clicked her beak and nibbled his ear affectionately as he stroked her feathers. "You would not have liked that flight by broom."

"Good choice wearing your Quidditch gear, mate. Did Moody run you through a cloud bank? Tonks is always yelling at him for getting her soaked."

He nodded, gently moving to sit on the nearest bed without dislodging Hedwig. "All right, I know that you haven't been able to post me any news, so why don't you two catch me up? At some point this year, I'm going to find another way for us to keep in contact; mirrors or charmed parchments, something!"

"That's a good idea, Harry," said Hermione. "Okay, as you know because you were given the secret, this is the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. It's a secret society founded by Dumbledore. It's the people who fought against You-Know-Who last time. They don't let us into the meetings, so we don't know everything, but we've got a general idea."

"Fred and George have invented Extendable Ears, you see," said Ron. "They're really useful."

"Extendable—"

"—Ears, yeah. Only we've had to stop using them lately because Mum found out and went berserk. Fred and George had to hide them all to stop Mum binning them. But we got a good bit of use out of them before Mum realized what was going on. We know some of the Order are following known Death Eaters, keeping tabs on them."

"Some of them are working to recruit more people into the Order," said Hermione.

"And some of them are standing guard over something. They're always talking about guard duty."

"That was probably me."

"Oh, yeah."

Harry chuckled at the look of dawning comprehension on Ron's face. "So, since they won't let you be part of the Order, what have you been doing? Other than homework? You said in your letters you've been busy."

"We have, decontaminating this house. It's been empty for ages and stuff's been breeding in here. We've managed to clean out the kitchen, most of the bedrooms, and I think we're doing the drawing room tomo—AARGH!"

With two loud cracks, Fred and George had materialized out of thin air in the middle of the room. The two owls in the room both jumped, and ended up flying to the top of the wardrobe.

"Stop doing that!" yelled Hermione.

Harry was grinning, though. "You two passed your Apparation tests, then?"

"With distinction," said Fred, who was holding on to what looked like a very long flesh-colored piece of string.

"It would have taken you about thirty seconds longer to walk down the stairs," said Ron irritably.

"Time is Galleons, little brother," said Fred. "Anyway, we're trying to hear what's going on downstairs." He held up the string, and Harry realized this must be one of the Extendable Ears.

"You want to be careful," said Ron. "If Mum sees one of them again—"

"It's worth the risk. That's a major meeting they're having."

The door opened again and a long mane of red hair appeared. "Oh hello, Harry!" said Ron's younger sister, Ginny, brightly. Turning to Fred and George she said, "It's no go with the Extendable Ears, she's gone and put an Imperturbable Charm on the kitchen door."

"How d'you know?" said George, looking crestfallen.

"Tonks told me how to find out," said Ginny. "You just chuck stuff at the door and if it can't make contact the door's been Imperturbed. I've been flicking Dungbombs at it from the top of the stairs and they just soar away from it, so there's no way the Extendable Ears will be able to get under the gap."

Fred heaved a deep sigh. "Shame. I really fancied finding out what old Snape's been up to."

"Snape?" said Harry, curious. "Is he here?"

"Yeah," said George, carefully closing the door and sitting down on one of the beds; Fred and Ginny followed. "Giving a report. Top secret."

"Git," said Fred idly.

"He's on our side now," said Hermione reprovingly.

Ron snorted. "Doesn't stop him being a git. The way he looks at us when he sees us. . . ."

"Bill doesn't like him either," said Ginny, as though that settled the matter.

"Is Bill here?" he asked. "I thought he was working in Egypt."

So they went through everything that had been happening over the last month, telling him about Bill, and Fleur Delacour, Charlie, Percy, and the smear campaign that the Daily Prophet was running. Of course, Harry had realized what the paper was doing, since he'd been sure to read it through every day, but the other information helped him to tie the whole picture together with what the Ministry was doing. And the fact that Percy believed the Minister and the Prophet over his own family was just horribly sad.

After a while the sound of footsteps on the stairs alerted them to the return of Mrs. Weasley. "Uh-oh." Fred gave the Extendable Ear a hearty tug; there was another loud crack and he and George vanished.

Seconds later, Mrs. Weasley appeared in the bedroom doorway. "The meeting's over, you can come down and have dinner now, everyone's dying to see you, Harry. And who's left all those Dungbombs outside the kitchen door?"

"Crookshanks," said Ginny without a blush. "He loves playing with them."

"Oh," said Mrs. Weasley, "I thought it might have been Kreacher, he keeps doing odd things like that. Now don't forget to keep your voices down in the hall. Ginny, your hands are filthy, what have you been doing? Go and wash them before dinner, please." Ginny grimaced at the others and followed her mother out of the room, leaving Harry alone with Ron and Hermione again.

"Who's Kreacher?" he asked.

"The house-elf who lives here," said Ron. "Nutter. Never met one like him."

Hermione frowned at Ron. "He's not a nutter, Ron—"

"His life's ambition is to have his head cut off and stuck up on a plaque just like his mother," said Ron irritably. "Is that normal, Hermione?"

"Well—well, if he is a bit strange, it's not his fault—"

Ron rolled his eyes at Harry. "Hermione still hasn't given up on spew—"

"It's not 'spew'!" said Hermione heatedly. "It's the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, and it's not just me, Dumbledore says we should be kind to Kreacher too—"

"Hermione," Harry interrupted them, "how would you feel if someone offered you money to bed them?" Harry knew this would shock her, but perhaps it would get her to see.

She balled up her fist. "W-what are you talking about?"

Remembering when she had decked Malfoy in third year, he held up a hand. "Peace. You would be insulted, humiliated, certainly angry. But why?"

"Because that's a horrible assumption! The thought that I would take money for something that should—" she stopped, her eyes widening. Her jaw dropped and her fist loosened. "—be an act of love. Merlin, I've been a fool."

"No. It's not wrong to want to see them treated well, but you have to think about their culture in this, as well. Dobby is the exception to the rule, an elf who was injured and debased so much by his master that he decided he would never again accept an order without compensation, and was willing to betray that master to save my life."

Ron said, "C'mon, I'm starving." He led the way out of the door and onto the landing, but before they could descend the stairs— "Hold it!" Ron breathed, flinging out an arm to stop Harry and Hermione walking any farther. "They're still in the hall, we might be able to hear something—" They saw Professor Snape, and Harry was very curious what he would be doing for the Order, but no clue was given them. Then they heard the door open and close quietly. "Snape never eats here," Ron told Harry quietly. "Thank God. C'mon."

"And don't forget to keep your voice down in the hall, Harry," Hermione whispered.

As they passed the row of house-elf heads on the wall they saw Remus, Mrs. Weasley, and Tonks at the front door, magically sealing its many locks and bolts behind those who had just left. "We're eating down in the kitchen," Mrs. Weasley whispered, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs. "Harry, dear, if you'll just tiptoe across the hall, it's through this door here—"

CRASH.

"Tonks!" cried Mrs. Weasley, turning to look behind her.

"I'm sorry!" wailed Tonks, who was lying flat on the floor. "It's that stupid umbrella stand, that's the second time I've tripped over—"

But the rest of her words were drowned by a horrible, earsplitting, bloodcurdling screech. The moth-eaten velvet curtains Harry had passed earlier had flown apart, but there was no door behind them. For a split second, Harry thought he was looking through a window, a window behind which an old woman in a black cap was screaming and screaming as though she was being tortured—then he realized it was simply a life-size portrait, but the most realistic, and the most unpleasant, he had ever seen in his life. Worse, because his senses were extended, a state which was quickly becoming a habit, he could feel the darkness behind the foul vision.

The old woman was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed, and all along the hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell too, so that Harry actually screwed up his eyes at the noise and clapped his hands over his ears, as well as dropped his hold on his magic for relief.

Remus and Mrs. Weasley darted forward and tried to tug the curtains shut over the old woman, but they would not close and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though trying to tear at their faces.

"Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers—"

Tonks apologized over and over again, at the same time dragging the huge, heavy troll's leg back off the floor. Mrs. Weasley abandoned the attempt to close the curtains and hurried up and down the hall, stunning all the other portraits with her wand. Then a man with long black hair came charging out of a door facing Harry.

"Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!" he roared, seizing the curtain Mrs. Weasley had abandoned.

The old woman's face blanched. "Yoooou!" she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man. "Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!"

"I said—shut—UP!" roared the man, and with a stupendous effort he and Remus managed to force the curtains closed again. The old woman's screeches died and an echoing silence fell. Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes, Harry's godfather, Sirius, turned to face him. "Hello, Harry," he said grimly. "I see you've met my mother."

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Before dinner, Harry learned that his was Sirius's childhood home, which was why a portrait of his mother was in the hall. They couldn't get rid of her, either, no matter what they tried. Harry vowed to give it a go later in the week. Sirius was going stir crazy, locked in the house with nothing to do, because it was too dangerous for him to be about. Wormtail had to have told Voldemort about him being an Animagus, so it was useless as a disguise.

Harry said, "Hey, I've got an idea. I don't know if it'll work, but let's give it a shot. If you don't mind me changing your hair color a bit, that is?"

"All right, now Remus was going on about you doing wandless magic. That'll come in very handy. You want to try something, go ahead."

So Harry took a deep breath and reconnected to the magic around him. He focused on Sirius's hair, and leached out some of the color. Instead of black, his hair became a warm penny brown. "Now give it a go and let's see if it sticks."

Sirius pulled a strand of hair in front of his face to look at it. "Well that's different. You didn't use a coloring charm."

"No, I actually removed the natural color, only not all of it. Didn't want you looking like a Malfoy." He held up his hand and there was a tiny pile of black dust. "It was more of a banishing charm applied on a microscopic level."

Sirius shrugged, then transformed. If Harry had used a coloring charm, it wouldn't have stuck. His fur would have been black anyway. But this was a more physical effect, and instead of a black dog, he was a reddish-brown dog. He pulled a paw up in front of his face to see it, and then he changed back. "Harry that's brilliant! Now no one will be able to recognize me!"

"And it's semi-permanent. I didn't remove the pigment-making cells in your head, just the pigment that was already in your hair, so it'll come back in black as your hair grows, or if you just want it all back, you could use a hair-growing charm and cut the brown off."

"Wow, Harry! You really did get Lily's brains, didn't you! How did you do that with such fine control? And wandlessly!"

"I've been working on something all summer. It was an idea I got from a story about a group of people called Jedi and their fight to free their galaxy from the evil Emperor!"

"Wait, I've heard that one. Lily dragged all of us to see this Muggle moving picture in a big theater once. Star Fights, or something like that."

"Star Wars. And I've never actually seen the films, but they wrote books based on the movies, and Hermione gave me the complete set so I'd have something to do over the summer. What she didn't expect me to do was figure out how to use magic like Luke Skywalker uses the force."

Hermione shook her head. "I've read those books, too. The real how isn't in them, not even when he's training on Dagobah."

"I know. I went to the library there in Surrey. I got everything they had on Star Wars, then on physical fitness, martial arts, and meditation. It took me three tries to find a martial arts book that had sword work, but I've been working every day." He shook his head. "I'll be honest, I was using it to deal with what happened in the grave yard." Harry rubbed his arm where Wormtail had cut it open to get his blood for the ritual. "It really helped me to look at things. I was feeling so guilty. I'm not completely all right; that's going to take time. But now I know I will be.

"Once I knew how to meditate, I began to touch my magic and once I could do that, it was easy enough to let my magic touch the ambient magic of the world around me. I hadn't planned on trying any wandless magic until we were back at school, because I wasn't sure that was how it worked. I was hoping, but I wasn't going to try anything at the Dursleys'.

"Then the dementors came, and I let the magic tell me what to do, just as the Jedi let the force guide them. Because of that and the fact that I'd been practicing with my makeshift practice sword for three weeks, I drew it and used a variant of the Patronus that fit right into the Jedi mythos." He was still wearing his sword across his back since he hadn't had a chance to change clothes, so he stood and drew it to show them. He pulled his magic and his joy at being back in the magical world and said, "gladius Patronum." It wasn't urgent, like it had been before, so the sword filled in a bit more slowly with the light of the Patronus. "It cut through the dementors as if they were air. I don't know if it'll cut anything else, though."

Ron grabbed an apple from the basket on the work table in the middle of the kitchen. "Head's up, Harry!" Then he threw it. Harry caught it one handed, his Seeker reflexes coming into play. He could have tried to cut it mid-air, but if it didn't work, it would have splattered the apple all across the kitchen. Instead, he dropped the apple onto the magical blade.

The apple landed on the floor in two smoking halves. Harry quickly disengaged the blade and Ron reverently said, "Wicked!"

Harry smiled at his friend and sat back down. The wood of the sword was barely warm, and he let Sirius take a look at it.

Meanwhile Fred and George, while trying to help their mother, decided that they would levitate the entire mess to the table, including a large cauldron of stew, an iron flagon of butterbeer, and a heavy wooden breadboard, complete with knife, all hurtling through the air toward them. The stew skidded along the table, leaving a long burn mark, the flagon of butterbeer fell with a crash, spilling its contents everywhere, and the knife skidded off the board. It would have imbedded itself in Sirius's hand, but Harry stopped it midair. Harry'd never tried this before, but unlike Luke Skywalker he had no preconceived notions about gravity, and holding the knife up gave him no trouble.

"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!" screamed Mrs. Weasley. "THERE WAS NO NEED — I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS — JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!"

"We were just trying to save a bit of time!" said Fred. "Sorry Sirius, Harry—didn't mean to—"

Harry and Sirius were both laughing. Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness. Harry gently lowered the knife back to the breadboard. "I think you two need a little more control before you try something like that again," said Harry.

"Boys," Mr. Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, "your mother's right, you're supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you've come of age—"

"—none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!" Mrs. Weasley raged at the twins, slamming a fresh flagon of butterbeer onto the table and spilling almost as much again. "Bill didn't feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn't Charm everything he met! Percy—" She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden.

Harry quietly said, "I'm sorry if I've caused your family any trouble, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley."

She looked at him in shock. "Oh, no, Harry." She took a deep breath. "What Percy has done is his very own fault, and none of yours. I-I just miss him."

Mr. Weasley said, "I love all of my children, including Percy. But he's wrong, for doing what he's done and saying what he's said. That he's said it about you and Dumbledore doesn't make it either of your faults."

"Let's eat," said Bill quietly.

"It looks wonderful, Molly," said Remus, ladling stew onto a plate for her and handing it across the table. For a few minutes eating was silent, then Mrs. Weasley started talking about the cleaning of the house, including a suspected boggart in one of the cabinets and curtains full of doxies. Tonks started making faces at the table, and while the kids were nominally distracted, the adults started talking about Bill's attempt to bring the Goblin Nation to their side, which wasn't working well because the King, Ragnok, was feeling very anti-wizard in general thanks to Ludo Bagman.

Then Sirius tossed a cat among the pigeons. He said to Harry, "You know, I'm surprised at you. I thought the first thing you'd do when you got here would be to start asking questions about Voldemort."

"I did," Harry said slowly. He noticed that everyone at the table was at attention, and Mrs. Weasley was freaking out. "I'm very concerned that he's going to come after me again, as well as all those who I consider friend or family." He swallowed hard. "Vader did that."

Mrs. Weasley said, "You're only fifteen, Harry. It's not your job to worry about all of this. It is the job of the responsible adults to protect you, not the other way around." She glared at Sirius.

"That has never stopped him before, Mrs. Weasley." Harry shrugged. "I'm not asking for anyone to give me information that would put someone in danger. But I will ask to be informed if something directly affects my safety or that of my friends. I think we can be smart about it, don't you? I think I should have been warned that the Ministry might try and get me expelled, for instance. I did all right, but more information could have helped me avoid the situation all together."

Everyone seemed surprised. "You're not just going to dash off after him if you know where he is and what he's doing?" asked Remus. He was the calmest of the adults at the table, and he knew Harry well enough to ask the right questions in the right way. He'd told Harry by the question exactly what Mrs. Weasley was afraid of.

Harry snorted. "Okay, I know I have a bad track record. To be fair, in first year, when we three went after the Philosopher's Stone, it was because we tried to warn people and they wouldn't listen. Second year, me and Ron went to Lockhart to tell him what we knew, and he tried to Obliviate us. He did it again down in the Chamber, but he'd stolen Ron's wand to do it, and Ron's wand was broken, so it backfired on him. At that point we couldn't do anything else. There wasn't enough time. We went after Sirius in third year because he had Ron, and then we went to rescue him at Dumbledore's urging. And the Tournament was not my choice.

"That said, I can't continue to be kept in the dark." He looked right at Mrs. Weasley. "It's going to get someone killed."

"Harry," she began, "you are not your father, you're only a boy—"

"No. I am also a target. So are my friends and my family. Your children and Hermione have chosen to align themselves with me out of friendship. Sirius is my godfather. My Aunt and cousin are actually starting to care for me as family, which is a very new situation. You and Mr. Weasley have always cared for me like I was one of your own. And Voldemort would cheerfully torture any one of you to bring me out of hiding."

Hermione spoke up timidly. "Harry, you think You-Know-Who is going to do what Vader did, torturing a friend to get you to go off halfcocked?"

"I do. I just don't know how he's going to do the taunting. Unless—" Harry thought furiously. It could be. He remembered a dream he'd had, just a night or two before the dementor attack, a dream of a door in a corridor. "Do you think he knows about our link? That would do it. With Luke, Vader knew that he would sense his friends' pain through the force once he progressed far enough, and that as his son he had the same weaknesses that allowed the Emperor to get his hooks into him."

"Snape does think Voldemort knows about your link to him," said Sirius.

Harry sat back in his chair, just thinking about that for a moment or two. "And the Order is trying to both recruit for itself and prevent others from joining him?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Weasley looked like she wanted to explode, but Harry kept on. "I've seen the smearing the Prophet's been doing of me and Dumbledore, and based on his reaction in the hospital wing in June, I'm guessing it's Fudge who's behind all of that. Why's he acting like that?"

"Because he'd rather believe that Dumbledore is trying to make a power grab than that Voldemort is back, and Rita Skeeter's foul reporting gave him the excuse he needed to believe it," said Remus.

Mr. Weasley said, "And while the Ministry and the Prophet both say that you're crazy and Dumbledore is a liar, it makes it very hard for the random wizard on the street to believe the truth."

"And of course most of the people in the Order either can't afford to pop off about it or wouldn't be believed anyway," said Harry. "And Sirius would be arrested and Kissed." He looked up from the table to Sirius. "I want you to learn the Lightsaber Charm, Sirius, and we need to practice with it, see what is actually needed for it to work. I've been working with what I already had on hand, but other things might work better." He paused, a thought coming to him. "What could I do to prevent Voldemort from using the link?"

"Well, you've already started, I think," said Sirius. "It's called Occulmency, and it takes the kind of mental training you seem to have taken upon yourself to learn. I've got a book on it around here somewhere, I'll make sure you get it. But at some point you'll need someone to attempt to attack your defenses so that you can see how well you've done. And while you're at school, you should use your wand. You spoke of operational security earlier, and I think that skill of yours should be a secret known only to those you trust."

Remus nodded, and Mr. Weasley said, "I agree. It would certainly be an ace in the hole if you needed one."

"So Voldemort is basically allowing the Ministry to do his work for him at this point. He doesn't want to openly attack people right now because he's doing something he needs to be secret first."

Sirius smirked at him. "Have you been studying strategy, too?" Harry grinned in return. "Well you're not wrong, and once he has it, he'll change his tactics. Once he's sure he can win, he'll start attacking more openly."

Harry nodded. "That makes sense."

"All right, that's enough!" said Mrs. Weasley. "I agree that Harry needs to know enough to defend himself in an emergency, but you've told him and everyone else here plenty. Everyone to bed. Now."

"Yeah," agreed Harry. "It's been a long night. I've got a lot of homework to finish, and I want to read that book of Sirius's, and I also know that you were wanting to work on the drawing room tomorrow. Sirius, do you have a back garden where I can set up a treadmill or something? I don't want to get behind with my physical training."

Sirius nodded. "There is. It needs cleaning up a lot, though."

Harry grinned. "I'll help with that. I'm good at weeding a garden."

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Mrs. Weasley was intent on keeping the children out of the fight, and she didn't trust them to agree to it, so she did her best to keep them all busy. Following breakfast they were all herded into the drawing room to deal with the doxy infestation, as it was much worse than she had originally thought.

Doxys were a type of fairy, covered in black hair, and sporting very sharp tiny teeth. Their bite was also poisonous. Everyone was spraying the curtains with Doxycide, and the little blighters themselves. More than one person cast aspersions against the house elf Kreacher, which angered Hermione, but she wasn't convincing anyone about this particular elf. He was downright nasty, and he was completely in love with Walburga Black.

"Kreacher's old. He probably couldn't manage—"

"You'd be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione," said Sirius, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be dead rats. "I've just been feeding Buckbeak," he added, in reply to Harry's inquiring look. "I keep him upstairs in my mother's bedroom. Anyway, this writing desk—" He dropped the bag of rats onto an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which, Harry now noticed for the first time, was shaking slightly.

"Well, Molly, I'm pretty sure this is a boggart," said Sirius, peering through the keyhole, "but perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shifty at it before we let it out—knowing my mother it could be something much worse."

"Right you are, Sirius," said Mrs. Weasley.

A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails that had been triggered the previous night by Tonks knocking over the umbrella stand.

"I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!" said Sirius exasperatedly, hurrying back out of the room. They heard him thundering down the stairs as Mrs. Black's screeches echoed up through the house once more: "Stains of dishonor, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth . . ."

"Close the door, please, Harry," said Mrs. Weasley.

Harry agreed, not wanting to hear any more of the old woman's vile invective. Fred and George pocketed more than a few of the unconscious doxys as they were working. They mentioned that they were still doing product development for their joke shop, and they wanted to experiment with doxy venom. It took all morning to round the tiny beasts up, they and their eggs all put into a bowl, which Fred and George were looking greedily at.

Mrs. Weasley took the scarf she'd been breathing through off of her face and ran a hand through her hair. "I think we'll tackle those after lunch." She indicated the dusty glass-fronted cabinets on either side of the mantelpiece. They were crammed with all number of horrible and interesting things, including an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper. Harry was almost sure it was full of blood, and the thought sent a chill up his spine.

That was when Mundungus Fletcher showed up at the front door with the stolen cauldrons he'd bought. Mrs. Weasley went downstairs to berate him for his foolishness, setting off Mrs. Black, and all together affording the cleaners a short break, and a meeting with a most unusual house elf named Kreacher. The Weasleys disdained him, and Hermione wanted them to show him respect, without herself showing respect to the Weasleys for the fact that the elf was insulting both them and herself.

Following the urging of the ambient magic, Harry reached out to the elf with his magic, with just enough influence to make him want to answer questions, then he asked him, "Kreacher, to a point, I understand why a pureblood woman such as your Mistress would despise us. What I would like to know, and I demand an honest answer, is why do you?"

"Because it upsets Mistress so."

Slowly, Harry nodded. Everyone else was giving him strange looks, but he had to concentrate on the insane creature before him. The Muggles had a word for this: Stockholm Syndrome. He'd been trapped by his abusers so long that he had come to rely on them, even to love them. He'd be very surprised if most house elves didn't suffer from some form of it. "Was Mistress Black your favorite of this family?"

"No." Harry fought to keep from expressing his surprise. "That was Master Regulus." An actual smile came to Kreacher's face. A subtle urging came from the magic in the air, a softer memory coming from the elf that Harry wanted to nurture. "Young Master was kind to Kreacher, said Kreacher was his very own elf. He needed help with something for the Dark Lord, and Kreacher was honored to help. Master Regulus gave him the locket, said to destroy it. But Kreacher could not! Kreacher tried everything he could, but it would not break! Kreacher failed in his orders!"

Harry saw that he was starting to panic, and would have begun to punish himself. "Easy, Kreacher." He sent calming waves out with his magic, willing the elf not to harm himself. "What was the thing that Master Regulus wanted you to destroy?"

Kreacher pointed to a heavy locket inside the glass cabinet. It was gold and embossed with a stylized green "S". "Tell me the story, Kreacher. Perhaps I can help you to finish Master Regulus's work."

"Master Sirius ran away, good riddance, for he was a bad boy and broke my Mistress's heart with his lawless ways. But Master Regulus had proper pride; he knew what was due to the name of Black and the dignity of his pure blood. For years he talked of the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns . . . and when he was sixteen years old, Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord. So proud, so proud, so happy to serve . . .

"And one day, a year after he had joined, Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked Kreacher. And Master Regulus said . . . he said . . . he said that the Dark Lord required an elf."

"Voldemort needed an elf?" Harry repeated, looking around at the others, who looked just as puzzled as he did. Sirius had come into the room as well, but was quiet so as not to interrupt the tableau.

"Oh yes," moaned Kreacher. "And Master Regulus had volunteered Kreacher. It was an honor, said Master Regulus, an honor for him and for Kreacher, who must be sure to do whatever the Dark Lord ordered him to do . . . and then to c-come home. So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord did not tell Kreacher what they were to do, but took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake . . ." The hairs on the back of Harry's neck stood up. Kreacher's croaking voice seemed to come to him from across that dark water. He saw what had happened as clearly as though he had been present.

". . . There was a boat . . There was a b-basin full of potion on the island. The D-Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it. . . ." The elf quaked from head to foot. "Kreacher drank, and as he drank, he saw terrible things. . . . Kreacher's insides burned. . . . Kreacher cried for Master Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but the Dark Lord only laughed. . . . He made Kreacher drink all the potion. . . . He dropped a locket into the empty basin. . . . He filled it with more potion.

"And then the Dark Lord sailed away, leaving Kreacher on the island. . . ." Harry could see it happening. In his mind's eye, he watched Voldemort's white, snakelike face vanishing into darkness, those red eyes fixed pitilessly on the thrashing elf whose death would occur within minutes, whenever he succumbed to the desperate thirst that the burning potion caused its victim. . . . But here, Harry's imagination could go no further, for he could not see how Kreacher had escaped. "Kreacher needed water, he crawled to the island's edge and he drank from the black lake . . . and hands, dead hands, came out of the water and dragged Kreacher under the surface. . . ."

"How did you get away?" Harry asked, and he was not surprised to hear himself whispering. Kreacher raised his ugly head and looked at Harry with his great, bloodshot eyes.

"Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back," he said.

"And the Dark One didn't expect you to be able to do that, did he?" said Harry, mostly to himself. Of course Voldemort would underestimate the magic of what he would consider to be a creature far beneath his notice, save for the fact that they would do his bidding without question.

"Well, then, you did what you were told, didn't you?" said Hermione kindly. "You didn't disobey orders at all!"

But Kreacher shook his head.

"So what happened when you got back?" Harry asked. "What did Regulus say when you told him what had happened?"

"Master Regulus was very worried, very worried," croaked Kreacher. "Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and not to leave the house. And then . . . it was a little while later . . . Master Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard one night, and Master Regulus was strange, not as he usually was, disturbed in his mind, Kreacher could tell . . . and he asked Kreacher to take him to the cave, the cave where Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord. . . ."

"And he made you drink the potion?" said Harry, disgusted. But Kreacher shook his head and wept. Hermione's hands leapt to her mouth: She seemed to have understood something. "M-Master Regulus took from his pocket a locket like the one the Dark Lord had," said Kreacher, tears pouring down either side of his snoutlike nose. "And he told Kreacher to take it and, when the basin was empty, to switch the lockets. . . ." Kreacher's sobs came in great rasps now; Harry had to concentrate hard to understand him. "And he ordered—Kreacher to leave—without him. And he told Kreacher—to go home—and never to tell my Mistress—what he had done—but to destroy—the first locket. And he drank—all the potion—and Kreacher swapped the lockets—and watched . . . as Master Regulus . . . was dragged beneath the water . . . and . . ."

"Oh, Kreacher!" wailed Hermione, who was crying.

"So you brought the locket home," Harry said relentlessly, for he was determined to know the full story, instinctively knowing this was information that no one else had, information they needed. "And you tried to destroy it?"

"Nothing Kreacher did made any mark upon it," moaned the elf. "Kreacher tried everything, everything he knew, but nothing, nothing would work. . . . So many powerful spells upon the casing, Kreacher was sure the way to destroy it was to get inside it, but it would not open. . . . Kreacher punished himself, he tried again, he punished himself, he tried again. Kreacher failed to obey orders, Kreacher could not destroy the locket! And his Mistress was mad with grief, because Master Regulus had disappeared, and Kreacher could not tell her what had happened, no, because Master Regulus had f-f-forbidden him to tell any of the f-f-family what happened in the c-cave. . . ." Kreacher began to sob so hard that there were no more coherent words.

Harry shook his head. They'd get no more out of him, but what they had gotten was plenty. He reached out with his magic, and with a very brief touch against the elf's mind to help him, ordered him, "Sleep, Kreacher."

Everyone was stunned. Sirius stepped carefully around where the elf was sleeping fitfully, still crying and unable to rest. "Amazing, Harry. What made you think to question him?"

"Stockholm Syndrome. It's a Muggle term for when a slave or prisoner becomes dependent upon his master or captor for survival. House elves certainly have it, probably to an entity, even Dobby who disobeyed his masters to save my life. He adopted their attitudes as his own." He looked up at Sirius. "Who was Regulus?"

"My little brother." Sirius's voice was small. "I knew he'd joined the Death Eaters, but I didn't know he'd defied Voldemort, or that he'd died doing it." He swallowed thickly. "I'd never have thought he'd have the courage to do it, even if he suddenly decided that Voldemort was wrong." He sighed. "And of course I couldn't help him. There was too much bad blood between us. He knew he couldn't come to me, because I wouldn't believe it."

As one they turned to the cabinet with the locket in it. Harry probed it with his magic, and when Sirius would have picked it up, Harry grabbed his arm to stop him. "Don't touch it. That thing feels foul. In fact, it feels familiar. It—" He flipped through his memories. "Riddle's diary." Ginny flinched. "It reminds me of Tom Riddle's diary, only even darker and more evil. If it's similar—well he made the diary when he was sixteen. He must have been an adult by the time he made this one. What kind of enchantment could that be?"

"I—I don't know," said Sirius. "But I bet Moody does. How did you destroy the diary, Harry?"

"I stabbed it with the fang of Slytherin's basilisk that he kept in the Chamber of Secrets."

"I'll ask Moody tonight."

~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~ ~o~

Note: I know I'm skipping around a bit(or a lot), but even though I'm using the material already in place, I'm changing Harry himself quite a bit at this point, and perhaps others later.