Chapter 3

Travel and Reassurances

As soon as Harry reached the bottom of the stairs, the pink haired witch (he thought was called Tonks), took his trunk and Hedwig's cage and headed outside. The group followed silently. Once they had all reached the back yard, Moody called out, "Right, Potter, Tonk's will be harnessing your belongings to her broom, we'll be flyin' in tight formation, you keep to the center of the group and on her tail, if the worst should happen and we are all killed, the second guard will meet you just keep flyin' east, we're just waitin' on the signal."

"Right," said Harry, privately thinking that the man was being overly paranoid but after the Triwizard tournament-that was possibly a plus, after all if they really are out to get you it's not being paranoid.

"No worries, Potter, no one's going to be killed," said a dark man Harry had never met before in a slow deep voice.

Soon red sparks were seen in the dark sky above and they took off with the nights frigid wind whipping past them, Harry was secretly grateful for the cold as it numbed his body and made him temporarily in a blissful pain free state that allowed him to keep flying for what seemed like hours as Moody made them keep steering off course as often as possible. They had passed by towns, cities and country side before Remus signaled for their decent back to the ground many feet below.

Upon landing, Harry dismounted is broom with a pained grimace as he jarred his leg. Luckily everyone else just attributed it to him being numb from the cold. Looking around, he found himself on a dingy street, with Gothic style houses; to his right was number 13, to his left number 11. He blinked. Then it came to him someone must have hidden the one in between. Suddenly he was broken out of his thoughts by a piece of parchment being shoved into his hand by Moody.

"Read it and memorize" he was told.

On the parchment in a recognizable spidery scrawl was written "The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, London."

Harry handed the parchment back to Moody who promptly burned it. Looking up at the houses once more, Harry saw Number 12 sliding into view between numbers 11 and 13. Its architecture was of the same style as the rest of the neighborhood, and looked as if it had been run down over the years due to neglect. Following Remus, Harry entered the front door.

Entering the house, Harry immediately noticed that the interior had the same feeling of neglect. However, he was not allowed to ponder why this Order was staying in this place for very long as , greeted him with one of her traditional hugs. However, this one was both physically and mentally painful to him as she pushed on his broken ribs, cuts, and bruises and he was reminded of the fact that someone he thought might be a mother figure for him, had really been deceiving him all along.

"Harry—why don't you head up stairs to Ron's room, I'll call you to dinner shortly," said Molly Weasley with a motherly smile that did not quite meet her eyes

Not having any other choice if he didn't want to reveal his plans, Harry started once again towards the stairs, wincing slightly with each step. However, when he was about to head up them, he caught a glimpse of the kitchen, which was currently holding what looked like a meet (Harry figured it must be the Order), and saw Sirius with them, however just as he was heading up again so as not to get caught, Sirius gave him a small smile, and a wink, and Snape glanced at him and inclined his head slightly. He took this to heart, and realized he had more possible allies than he had originally thought. Thanking Merlin, that one of them would probably be able to heal him soon, Harry began the slow and painful climb up to Ron's room, not looking forward to it in the slightest.

AN: This chapter is a bit shorter than originally planned…but the next will include the rest of the info that this one would have held…I wanted to get it out to my highly appreciated readers soon…but was delayed due to work and HP 6 movie being release. Thank you to all that reviewed it is really helpful and encouraging. Also thank you for all the favorites and alerts! :D