Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or associated works, including any content from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, recognizable or otherwise. This work is not for profit.
Sirius was waiting inside. He engulfed Harry in a hug. "I'm glad you're alright."
"I'm fine, just a little shaken up."
"The rest of the Order is waiting in the kitchen. You should go there so they know you're safe. And then you're going to explain, to me, exactly what happened over these last twenty four hours or so."
He made his way into the large room downstairs. "I'm here," he stated simply.
"Harry, dear, thank the heavens you're well!" Mrs. Weasley came running up and hugged him even tighter than Sirius had.
"No, really, Mrs. Weasley, I'm alright. It's good Tonks was there to get me out of Azkaban."
"I was only glad to help."
"She wasn't the only one." Moody came limping through the door as usual. "I was in a Disillusioned boat rowing parallel to yours, waiting to jump in if the situation needed to be rectified," he stated in his usual gruff voice. "Good job on that, Tonks."
The Metamorphmagus, to her credit, took his compliment in stride.
Harry, though, was surprised. "You can Disillusion whole boats?"
"It takes an incredibly talented wizard, one skilled in the art of disguise."
Harry remembered a conversation he held with Dumbledore back in his first year. "Like Dumbledore."
"Yes. But for the sake of plausible deniability it could have been anyone. Now, I heard quite a story from your friend Longbottom."
"Neville. He got out alright, I remember."
"Indeed. He gave us back your Invisibility Cloak and we managed to get your stuff back before the Ministry could lay its hands on it." He jerked a finger upwards. "It's all upstairs, just waiting to be opened. But first, you'll tell us exactly what happened."
Harry sat down and began his story. "I had a vision where Voldemort had captured Sirius and was torturing him in the Department of Mysteries."
Sirius frowned. "You know that Voldemort could easily be influencing this visions of yours. As much as I hate Snape, he's right that you needed to close off your mind."
"He talked to me directly, in the dream, and told me to come alone. I knew that it was influenced by Voldemort, but it seemed pretty clear that he wasn't bluffing," countered Harry. "And he said he was watching the Order, so I'd actually have to come alone. Well, I sort of panicked and roused Neville and Hermione. I took Neville with me under the Cloak, as you know, and told Hermione to ask Professor Flitwick for help," he continued. "Said help never arrived."
"Umbridge caught Hermione and a couple other members of your club sneaking around at night," spoke up Remus Lupin. "It was the worst possible thing that could have happened for you."
"You know what happened as I went with Neville down to the Department of Mysteries - we were ambushed in the big room with rows and rows of prophecies."
"Your gullibility that night showed no sign of vigilance whatsoever," Moody noted, "But your escape was damn well impressive. Managing to stay intact among falling rows of prophecies and exploding glass without any protective magic - not to mention your precise shot at Malfoy. I bet the damn snake won't show his face for days."
"Yeah, well, we managed to get back to the lifts, and that was when my scar started burning, and I knew that Voldemort had arrived." People flinched throughout the room. "I made Neville leave under the Cloak, and confronted him."
"What happened?" asked Lupin.
"He invaded my mind, trying to possess me. I barely managed to push him out in the end, at great pain to both him and myself. And then he challenged me to a duel."
Harry described the events of the duel, recounting how Voldemort had turned the Priori Incantatem back on him - including an explanation of the brother wand effect for those who didn't already know.
"That wandless trick of yours is also impressive. I think I can mold you into a good fighter in no time."
Harry looked up, surprised. "What else are you going to do, now that you're kicked out of school, eh, Potter? Clean up the house? No, we're going to train you, make you one of our own. You still have a role to play in this war."
"If he gets to actually do things as a wanted fugitive, then I'd better be able to go outside the house," complained Sirius.
"Perhaps, perhaps not, Black," growled Moody.
"What about your trial? What happened there?" Tonks asked this time.
"They took me before a couple of people who were obviously Fudge lackeys, as well as Umbridge and Fudge himself. Predictably, it didn't take long for their verdict. They fed me Veritaserum, but they only asked me about whether I had caused the damage, which I technically did, and for the location of Dumbledore, as well as a list of all the rules I had broken. I was only a third of the way through my list before they grew tired and just decided to chuck me into Azkaban, figuring that since I didn't know where Dumbledore was and was 'unable' to say where Sirius was, I didn't actually know much of value."
"They didn't even ask you about whether Voldemort was back?" asked Sirius.
"No, and they probably would've rationalized that my mind constructed it in my head due to my delusional state or something. Anything but confront the truth."
"One thing still doesn't make sense to me," pointed out Lupin. "Why did you just immediately run to the Ministry? You could've contacted Sirius through the mirror."
"I did use the mirror, but Voldemort answered the mirror." Gasps rang throughout the room. "That was actually when he told me to come alone."
Remus' eyes narrowed. "How did he get his hands on the mirror?"
Sirius', for his part, widened. "Kreacher. I ordered him out of the house sometime over the winter holidays. He must've gone running to my dear cousins, the little bastard," he growled out. "KREACHER!"
The old house-elf appeared with a pop. "Vile master calls Kreacher. How Kreacher wishes to clear mistress' house of the filthy Mudbloods and blood-traitors -"
"SHUT UP!" Sirius took a deep breath. "Did you steal my mirror and give it to Voldemort?"
"Kreacher did not give nasty master's mirror to the Dark Lord, no, Kreacher didn't."
He took another deep breath. "Did you steal my mirror?"
"Yes, Kreacher gave master's mirror to Mistress Bella, yes, he did..."
"Dammit!" he swore. "Kreacher, go to your attic and don't leave the house unless I order you to. And don't interfere with any of the Order of the Phoenix."
"Kreacher will follow nasty masters' orders." The decrepit house-elf left the kitchen.
"I guess that's the end of this meeting, then,"
declared Sirius.
"Wait," cautioned Lupin. "If Voldemort has the mirror, then he can unravel the connective magic behind it..."
"...and possibly exploit it to damage us from the inside. He can't compromise the Fidelius, but he could try something else," finished Moody. "We need to destroy it, or get it far away from the building," he concluded.
The two men rushed upstairs, Harry and Sirius hot on their heels. They rushed up to the trunk, which was propped against the wall in Harry's room, and Lupin frantically opened the trunk, reaching for the mirror.
"Wait, it could be trapped!" was all Moody could exclaim before the scarred werewolf grasped the mirror, yelped as it left burns on his fingers. He jumped back.
His touched seemed to set off something in the mirror, because it began buzzing at a higher and higher frequency, and began to glow red.
"It's going to explode!" Moody banished the mirror towards the window with his wand, and the other three dived back out of the room.
Right as the mirror impacted the glass, it let loose a fiery explosion of magic, and Moody put up a shield just in time which only barely held against the fiery onslaught. As the flames died down, the explosion exhausted, the four occupants of the room stared at the hole that now existed in the side of the building, as well as the destruction and fire that started in the building right next to it.
Moody collected his wits first. "We need to clean up the debris in the other house before the Muggle police arrive. It's pretty hard to explain something like that, but if we get there in time it could be a spontaneous gas explosion or something."
Lord Voldemort leaned back in the head chair of the Malfoys' dining table. He was temporarily using the manor as a base of operations, as he preferred to avoid using Riddle manor, the property of such filth, unless as a last resort, like during the previous year. Lucius Malfoy, face showing the scars where glass had pierced his face, exited the room, having informed his Lord of the most recent developments.
The Dark Lord frowned. Harry Potter had escaped yet again, both from him and from Ministry custody. And that too without letting him access the contents of the prophecy. The child's defiant words had scared him, a little, although he would never be caught admitting it to anyone. Dumbledore knew the prophecy, and no doubt would tell the boy, now that their connection was nigh impossible to utilize, without the immense pain that had arisen at the end of their mental duel.
On the other hand, though, his plans were progressing. Most of the dark creatures had rallied to his call, only the Dementors not following him to maintain the charade for the Ministry. Speaking of the Ministry, Fudge still was unaware of his return, and Harry Potter and Dumbledore were outlaws. While that was good, and hindered his enemies from countering his growing power, he needed to get rid of the old fool before moving on the conquer the Ministry. But he was patient this time around, unlike the last. If worst came to worst, he could even wait out a generation, until Dumbledore died, and then emerge from the shadows to take over Magical Britain, purge the fool Muggles, and then, finally, conquer the world. Nothing would stop him from achieving his goal, now that he had returned to physical form. For nothing could kill him - he had buried his Horcruxes far and deep, and only the diary had been destroyed by the incompetence of Lucius. His family would pay dearly for that mistake.
Furthermore, he now knew the location of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. The exploding debris, which blew through the dimensional barrier that kept the house hidden from standard reality under the Fidelius, immediately told him where it was. It was located, in fact, right where the old Black family house was, but obscured by the Fidelius, which made sense. The Black house had in fact not been demolished, as was believed. Instead, Dumbledore was using it for his pet organization. That was of no concern - his Death Eaters would be watching the space between Eleven and Thirteen Grimmauld Place constantly from now on.
HARRY POTTER ESCAPES MINISTRY CUSTODY
In a surprising twist of fate, Harry Potter, convicted for the destruction of Ministry property, also the perpetrator of the murder of Cedric Diggory, escaped from a boat on the way to Azkaban. "We are still unsure how he managed to escape," reports Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, "But one Auror was found tied up in an alleyway, alerting us to the situation. Most likely someone impersonated the missing Auror and knocked out Harry Potter's guards en route to Azkaban."
The boat was found floating free in the middle of the ocean.
"It is clear that Harry Potter had outside help," noted Minister Fudge. "Be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior, and report it to the Ministry immediately. We are now offering a reward of a hundred galleons for information leading to the capture of Harry Potter, and a thousand galleons for Albus Dumbledore."
With both Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore on the loose, the Ministry has released guidelines for recognizing family members and friends. Agree upon a question to ask each other when you meet, to confirm identities. "It is better do this than risk exposing yourself to these two dangerous individuals," Fudge continued. "I would rather all citizens of Magical Britain be safe from these criminals."
A/N: And so the saga continues, with another setback for our heroes!
Also, I'd like to announce that I am relatively close to completing a short story of only a couple of chapters, a so-called "dimensional travel fic," subverting all/most of the standard tropes of reality travel. I'll probably announce its release in one of these chapters, but be on the lookout for it anyway, because if you can read 35k of this, you can surely read it. And review it. And review this. (hint, hint)