Will had been sitting quietly on the bed in the room Harry had left him in, trying to get his head round what was happening. He was alone; Kirjava had slinked off round a corner to explore.

He could hear the other boy moving around somewhere, but only barely. This place was huge – and empty. The bed he was sat on was enormous and covered with some sort of elaborate bedspread, but he could clearly see woodworm holes in the frame and although the bedspread may have at some point in history been a deep red, it was now a most uninspiring tone of grey.

Harry seemed to have forgotten him. No matter; he was good at thinking things over on his own. Sighing heavily, he flopped backwards onto the bed, raising a cloud of dust as he did so.

"Will! Are you in here? Oh, there you are. That Harry boy is sat crying his heart out up there. But I think we ought to leave him alone," Kirjava's head appeared round the doorframe, "he seems to want privacy. This place is huge; you could easily fit thirty people in the top two floors alone. I wonder why it's so empty?"

"I wonder why on earth we came at all!"

"Come on, you know why. You could see as well as I could that Harry – and that Lupin person – were scared by whatever was following them. Although I'm a little concerned about Mary, if there's a chance that whoever was after the knife-" Will sucked in a breath in shock, "-don't act surprised, you know that was what they were after. Anyway, I hope Mary has the good sense to avoid trouble."

Will paused a moment before replying. "I don't think she'll be in any danger. What they wanted was the knife, and that's not there any more. Which means-"

"That we're the danger."

"Yes. But why would anyone, let alone a total stranger, want to bring that upon themselves? If someone's after the knife, then they must know what it does, which means that-"

The sound of the front door below opening stopped him abruptly. Eyes widening, he jumped to his feet and crouched against the wall behind the door, Kirjava curling herself up in his arms.

Someone entered – no, more than one person, there was far too much noise. They didn't sound dangerous; Will knew from bitter experience that the majority of people going into places where they shouldn't be tended to be as quiet and furtive as they could. The low sound of voices from below comforted him slightly on this logic - but, he reasoned, there is always a first time for everything.

"Harry!" The shout made Will jump; he hadn't been expecting it. But it was more of a squeal of delight than of anything else, suggesting that these people, whoever they were, knew Harry – and liked him. Warily, he stood up and went to the top of the stairs.

At the bottom were six or seven people, most of whom had startlingly red hair. They had to be close relations. The one person without red hair Will recognised – barely. Harry was surrounded by four excited people all hugging and slapping him on the shoulder in greeting, and from where Will was standing he could hardly see Harry for the redheads swarmed around him.

"You must be Will." A calm voice called up to him. There was a fifth redhead, a much older woman – the mother? Will wondered – stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at him. "We were expecting you; Harry's being here is a bit of a surprise, I'm afraid. Now, I expect that you could do with a cup of tea, no?"

The woman bustled him into the kitchen, talking without pause whilst she sat him down and put the kettle on. Will didn't really mind; the fact that Harry clearly knew these people, and knew them well, had left him feeling rather isolated. It wasn't an emotion he was unfamiliar with, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

"…I do wish they'd let us clean up a little in here before we left, these teacups are a state." The woman – Molly Weasley, she'd said her name was, exclaimed over the pile of dishes. "No matter." And then she produced a long wooden stick – which could only be another wand – and muttered something under her breath that might have been Latin. To Will's amazement, the neglected washing up started cleaning itself – and doing a rather good job of it, he noted.

This was getting stranger by the minute. Of course, he'd seen magic before, but never on such casual level – these people were so, so nonchalant about using magic. He'd had no idea that it could be used for such commonplace things, and their seeming disregard for it certainly didn't tally with the reverence for their powers which Serafina and the other witches of his acquaintance had. And that Professor Lupin had done magic; he'd never heard of male witches before, and he didn't look like a shaman. No, these people definitely weren't using magic in any way that he was familiar with.

"You realise," Kirjava said softly as she wound around his ankles, "that they probably won't tell you anything unless you tell your story. And that would mean-"

"Telling them about Lyra." He sighed. "I know."

"Sorry dear, did you say something?" Molly Weasley was looking at him rather strangely.

"Um, no. No, I didn't." It was strange; this woman didn't see to be able to see Kirjava. Odd, then, that Harry had. Maybe it wasn't something to do with magic after all, but more to do with the individual – but that didn't make sense!

"To be fair," Kirjava pointed out, "nothing really has made sense these past few hours." He couldn't really argue with her.

Molly was still watching him, with a slightly puzzled expression on her face. As Will glanced up at her, she shook her head slightly and beamed. "Well dear, I'm sure you'd like some peace and quiet – there's no point trying to introduce you to that lot yet." She gestured towards the hall, where Harry and his friends were still making a fair bit of noise. "Why don't you go get yourself settled in. You might want to straighten up a bit as well; Professor Dumbledore will be along shortly with the rest of the order, and you'll want to look presentable."

So Will found himself being ushered back up the stairs, noticed only by the youngest redhead, the only girl, who was perhaps two years younger than himself. She smiled warmly at him, before turning back to the conversation with the boys.

"That's Ginny, my youngest," Molly said proudly, noticing where he was looking, "But don't worry, you'll get to meet everyone later."

Before he knew it, Will had been skilfully removed. When he thought about it, he was a little resentful at the way he had been shunted out of the way, obviously in order for the others to have a private conversation.

"They could have asked – I wouldn't have minded." He said to Kirjava.

"Really?"

"Well, maybe I would have… A little… Alright, - don't look at me like that!- a lot. I wonder what they're saying."

"Probably something to do with Harry. Nobody seems to have expected him to be here; remember what Lupin said about 'protection'? There's something odd going on there."

Will had forgotten about that, but she was right. Then again -
"Something stranger than broken knives that could split things smaller than atoms?"

"Good point."

I wonder, Will thought, what a normal life would be like.


I know, I know, this has been absolutely ages in the process. What can I say? I'm terrible at commitment!

This chapter's a lot shorter than the others; this is because I originally wrote the story to go on Schnoogle, where they have a 3000 word min. limit. I don't, however, have the time or energy to write that much per chapter and adhere to the strict grammar rules they have on there. That means that this is unbeta'ed - so please, please, please! Feel free to criticise away!

My thanks to Adelian, who really spurred me on to get this chapter finished.