****Author's note: I don't own HP or the HP universe. JK Rowling does, and I am grateful to her for allowing me to play with the world she has so artfully crafted.****
'Bye, Harry!' said Hermione, and she did something she had never done before, and kissed him on the cheek.
'Harry - thanks,' George muttered, while Fred nodded fervently at his side.
Harry winked at them, turned to Uncle Vernon, and followed him silently from the station. There was no point worrying yet, he told himself, as he got into the back of the Dursleys' car.
As Hagrid had said, what would come, would come—and he would have to meet it when it did.
Whatever the Dursleys' past experiences of having their terrifying wizard of a nephew home for the summer holidays had been, this particular summer was remarkably…normal. No house elves showed up to ruin important business dinners. Nobody needed deflating after their fourth glass of brandy. There were no letters with too many stamps or deafening phone calls asking for Harry. Uncle Vernon didn't need to think about locking Harry in his bedroom and putting bars over the window again, because apart from meals, Harry never made any attempt to leave it.
There were several reasons for this. One being that the list of people Harry wanted to communicate with did not include any of the three Dursleys. Hedwig was therefore making mad dashes from Privet Drive to the Burrow, Hermione's house, and wherever Sirius was hiding, which was presumably much closer to Harry than he had been the previous summer. He worried about Hedwig making so many trips, but her indignant hoots every time Harry asked her if she needed rest were reassuring enough. Harry had even received a letter from Dumbledore confirming that his stay at Privet Drive would not last past a fortnight, at which point he would be relocated elsewhere (Dumbledore had not gone into specifics).
The second reason was that Harry could not stop obsessing over the prophecy. It occupied his thoughts so completely that he was often unable to give any thought even to Voldemort—where he might be hiding or what he might be planning. The more Harry thought about his conversation with the headmaster in the early morning hours after the third task, the more he realized that Dumbledore had—whether intentionally or not—left out several details. Who was the informant who had passed the information about the prophecy to Voldemort? What powers did he possibly possess that Voldemort did not have? And why, if he had been marked for such a dramatic showdown, had he not been prepared, trained for it? How could Dumbledore have let him sit through Lockhart's DADA lessons knowing his future included a fight with Voldemort, with the future of the wizarding world at stake?
This was a conversation he would be having with Dumbledore soon. Very soon. His surety and conviction about that did not surprise him. It was a feeling similar to the one that had come upon him suddenly in the hospital wing when he had boldly asked for his place in the Order. The desire to do something, anything, to bring down Voldemort had not faded away since that night. If anything, it had intensified. The graveyard seemed to have stripped away a layer of—naïvety? Delicacy? Harry didn't know quite what had gone, but he knew that the graveyard would forever be a turning point in his life, for better and for worse.
Speaking of the graveyard, the third and final reason Harry spent most of the time in his room was that he was barely sleeping. Nightmares came to him literally every single night. Sometimes they featured Cedric's dead body, sometimes Wormtail's ragged breath as he pierced Harry's arm, sometimes the overpowering smell of blood, smoke, and shouts as the figments of his parents disappeared and he ran for his life. Whatever the particulars of the vision, the constant was that Harry awoke sweating, panting, usually wrapped in his sheets as if they were a straitjacket. The strange glances his relatives had been shooting at him out of the corners of their eyes told him that he had probably been yelling in his sleep, maybe moaning or crying. Sometimes, if his parents featured strongly in a particular dream, his eyes would be wet when he woke up. Harry had therefore become almost nocturnal, sleeping off and on during the day when the nightmares were at least slightly less intense.
There were fleeting moments, however, where his mind did drift away from the graveyard and the prophecy, towards a memory of a certain girl with sleek, shiny hair wearing a periwinkle-blue dress. A girl who had happened to kiss him on the cheek as they said goodbye at King's Cross. A girl who he would, in fact, be seeing in less than a week. In one of her letters, Hermione had mentioned—without going into any details—that when Harry arrived at wherever he was going, she would already be there. Harry didn't quite know what to make of these new thoughts, for thinking of Hermione in that way—even remotely in that way—was definitely something that had never happened before. He had been trying to imagine their reunion in a few days time. Would it be different than before? Awkward? Nervous? Or had Hermione even meant anything other than a chaste display of friendship? And even if she had meant…something more, how did he feel about that? He was a marked man, destined for a deadly showdown that he surely had very little chance of winning. Would it even be right to get close to someone in such a way if his lifespan would possibly be measured in months, not years?
As it turned out, Hermione's greeting upon Harry's arrival at headquarters was perfectly normal. A simple hug and hello was all there was time for before Harry was whisked off to the kitchen for the first Order meeting he would be present for.
The flight from Privet Drive to the Burrow had been uneventful, however thoroughly Mad-Eye had planned out the security precautions. Harry had wondered why flying was necessary, but he hadn't been on a broomstick for almost a month and had no complaints about getting to break out his Firebolt again. The Burrow remained the same as Harry had known it the previous summer, although the various trees and shrubs in the garden looked, if possible, even more wild and overgrown. It had been a mild shock to see his godfather, in great black dog form, roaming the garden and scanning the sky for arrivals, though realizing Sirius was there filled Harry with a warm glow of happiness. Upon entering the kitchen, however, that glow was quickly snuffed out when Harry saw his least favorite person in the world, Severus Snape. There were about fifteen people present, comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Snape, Sirius, Lupin, Bill Weasley, a wizard with an earring and a deep, steady voice who Harry learned was named Kingsley Shacklebolt, two more wizards named Mundungus Fletcher and Sturgis Podmore, and three witches: Nymphadora Tonks, Emmeline Vance, and Hestia Jones. Dumbledore was not present, which both surprised and disappointed Harry—he had two weeks worth of questions and grievances that had been rattling around his head the whole time he was stuck at Privet Drive. It was a tight fit in the Weasleys' kitchen, although eventually everyone managed to find a chair.
The door was shut and magically locked, the shutters were drawn over the kitchen window, and candles were lit. Snape murmured an incantation under his breath, and Harry looked questioningly at Sirius.
"Checking for magical interference," Sirius muttered, looking at Snape. "All clear?"
Snape merely nodded, his contempt for Sirius evident across his pale face.
"Very well," Sirius said, shooting a nasty look of his own back at Snape. "As Dumbledore is not present tonight, Order rules dictate the most senior member should lead the meeting. I will therefore assume that role. Any objections?"
No one spoke, though Snape glowered again. Sirius ignored him.
"First order of business," he said, a slight edge to his voice, "is to bring Harry up to speed. A lot has happened in the past three weeks. Arthur?"
Mr. Weasley leaned forward, his bald patch reflecting the flicker of the candlelight. "Almost immediately after the third task, the Ministry began taking precautionary measures against Dumbledore. You saw Fudge's reaction, Harry. His position has not changed; in fact, he has only entrenched himself further into believing that you and Dumbledore are either willfully attempting to mislead the wizarding public into potential panic or that Dumbledore has been hoodwinked by your story and is acting recklessly, but without malice. Either way, the Ministry is determined to stamp out any rumor of Voldemort's return."
Harry, who had been taking the Daily Prophet at Privet Drive, nodded. Given the insults towards him and Dumbledore that the paper had been shoehorning in wherever possible, this piece of news was not a surprise.
"Fudge has also been very curious about your location and movements," Mr. Weasley continued. "The Ministry does not know the exact address of your aunt and uncle's house, for the matter of where to send you fell to Dumbledore after the death of your parents. The Ministry is only aware of the general location. Although we have recently acquired an actual headquarters, we felt it was better to bring you here first. The Ministry will be far less suspicious of you coming here, and it will therefore be easier to move to headquarters when it's time. It's also why you had to fly here. Any magical form of transportation associated with or regulated by the Ministry would have enabled them to determine the location of your relatives' house."
"Where is headquarters?" Harry asked.
"Central London," Sirius said. "My parents' old house. It's going to need a lot of work to make it habitable. Nobody's lived there in almost ten years. But it's not connected to anyone the Ministry might suspect of being in the Order, and it has every protective charm on it known to man, so Dumbledore thinks it will work well."
"The thing you must know, Harry," said Mr. Weasley, his voice now slightly sharper, "is that the Ministry will be looking for any excuse to bring in you or Dumbledore. They would love to be able to question you. So listen to me: you absolutely must not use magic, no matter what. Any hint of underage magic, and there will be Ministry officials knocking on our door. Do you understand?"
"Yes," said Harry. The candle continued to flicker, casting shadows across the table.
"The two main priorities of the Order right now," Sirius said after a moment, "is to grow our own ranks by recruiting new members and to find out what Voldemort is planning and doing. Unfortunately, neither of those efforts are going particularly well. The Ministry's crackdown on the Order's message is making it difficult for us to convince others to take us seriously. We also have to be far more cautious in who we approach, particularly anyone within or connected to the Ministry. We can't afford to lose the contacts we do have in the Ministry, because Voldemort will definitely have his own."
There were slight shudders from most of the members present every time Sirius uttered Voldemort's name, but Sirius did not seem to particularly care.
"And what is Voldemort planning?" Harry asked. Lupin spoke up now.
"We're not entirely sure," he said, his voice soft but steady. "You see, after the night of the third task, Voldemort went underground. He knows Dumbledore will be aware of his return, even if the Ministry doesn't believe it, and he knows Dumbledore will have recalled the Order. To our best knowledge, Voldemort seems to put whatever plans he had or has on hold. We've been tailing known Death Eaters and possible supporters, and none have engaged in any suspicious activity. Obviously, however, we can't see everything. To that end, our best source of information has been Severus, who has retaken his place among the Death Eaters as a spy."
Harry looked at Snape now, not with displeasure as was usually the case, but with curiosity. He had long known Snape's history as a former Death Eater turned spy. He knew that Dumbledore, while trusting him, had never given him the DADA job for fear of Snape being too close to the Dark Arts. He had wondered, several times, whether Snape's regret and remorse was genuine, and whose side he was really on. Perhaps his suspicion had shown on his face, for Snape's look of disdain towards Harry had sharpened into antipathy. His lip was curled.
"I believe Potter doubts my true allegiance," he said softly, looking down the table at Sirius now. "This is partially your doing, Black. The fifteen-year-old we are, for whatever foolish reasons, trusting our secrets and our lives with has doubts about my own trustworthiness. What say you to that?"
Sirius looked from Snape to Harry, then back to Snape. He seemed to choose his words carefully. "I don't believe Harry has expressed any doubt about your loyalty, Severus. As far as I'm concerned, Dumbledore trusts you, and as we all trust Dumbledore, that finalizes the matter."
Snape sneered, but looked away from Sirius now, addressing the group at large. "I do not have much new information to report. The Dark Lord is still keeping me firmly at arm's length. I believe that he does not yet trust me again, nor do many of the senior Death Eaters. It is therefore difficult for me to ascertain what the Dark Lord's ultimate aims are, as he is very good at compartmentalizing his orders so that very few of his followers get the complete picture of his plans. As best I can tell, the Dark Lord's current goals are similar to ours: to attract more followers and to find out what the other side is doing. To that end, I have been ordered to continue spying on the Order so as to provide as much information as I can."
Sirius had not taken his eyes off Snape the entire time Snape had been speaking. "I can't help but notice, Severus," he said, his voice again very measured, "that this report is almost identical to the one that you gave about two weeks ago. Are you telling us that you have made no inroads into Voldemort's inner circle?" He had hid his skepticism in his earlier affirmation of Snape, but it now leaked through into every word.
Snape's eyes flashed. "The Dark Lord does not trust easily, Black," he said, anger evident in his voice. "I know for a fact that Dumbledore is satisfied with the information I've provided. If you have concerns, perhaps you should take them up with him."
The two men stared at each other, though neither said anything further. Lupin cleared his throat. "I think that settles Snape's report. Does anyone else have anything to bring up?"
The rest of the meeting passed quickly, for no one had any major information to report. Within five minutes, Sirius had called an end to the meeting and most of the room was dispersing, ready to leave.
"Harry," Arthur muttered, motioning to him. "A moment."
Harry finished shaking hands with Tonks and Lupin, who left the kitchen and exited through the front door of the Burrow. He made his way over to Mr. Weasley. It was now only the two of them and Sirius in the kitchen, as Mrs. Weasley had gone to see off the disapparating Order members.
"Ron and Hermione are upstairs," Mr. Weasley told him. "They're probably still awake. But Harry, I need to make it clear: information that is discussed in meetings does not leave the room. You cannot share Order business with people outside the Order, even if we know they are trustworthy. Do you understand what I'm saying, Harry?"
Harry looked at him, his stomach suddenly dropping slightly. Of course if he had thought about it at any length, he would have realized that he wouldn't be able to tell Ron or Hermione anything. But he hadn't. The three of them had never kept secrets from each other, except for maybe if one wasn't speaking to the other two. How would they take it when he told them he was sworn to secrecy, even after everything they had been through together?
"You took an oath, Harry," Mr. Weasley said, his voice quiet but firm. "You swore to follow Dumbledore's orders. This comes from him."
Harry nodded, resigned. "I won't say anything."
Sirius let out a slight chuckle. "They'll already know quite a bit, mind. Fred and George have invented these strange string things that lets them listen in on people from a distance. We've had to start putting charms on the kitchen to keep them out, although they probably got quite a bit of use out of them before we caught on."
"Even still," Mr. Weasley said, sighing slightly. "We can't take any chances. The stakes are too high. Goodnight, both of you."
Harry and Sirius bade Mr. Weasley goodnight and, after a moment, climbed the stairs themselves. Sirius was sleeping in the attic. On the fifth floor landing, Harry saw that the door to Ron's room was ajar and a flame was lit inside it, indicating that Ron at least was still awake. Sirius opened the hatch in the ceiling and climbed up, and Harry, feeling unusually nervous, pushed open Ron's bedroom door.