The Aunt Petunia fiasco, as Harry privately called it, did not improve in the days before Harry left for London. In fact, from Harry's perspective, things only became increasingly pear shaped.
Aunt Petunia's vague proclamation with regards to Shacklebolt only made her a more sympathetic figure to Dudley, who had gotten it into his head that Shacklebolt had somehow inadvertently saved his family by trying to seduce his mother while disguised as a muggle. His feelings about his mother were solid. His opinion on Shacklebolt, however, tended to vary.
Uncle Vernon, from what Harry could gather through his frequent and shameless eavesdropping sessions, was now far less concerned with why Aunt Petunia had come home, and far more concerned with fixing both his marriage and his reputation in the neighbourhood.
Harry knew that if he said anything now, when everyone was so happy and relieved to be a family again, he'd be perceived as a vindictive liar who was trying to spoil everything. More to the point, he'd become the outsider again.
He tried hard not to bristle when he and Aunt Petunia were in same room, and counted the days until he could leave. On the morning of his departure, he and Dudley said their goodbyes, and Harry spent the morning in his room, making extra sure he hadn't forgotten to pack anything.
The letters had died down to the point where Harry was able to see almost all of his bedroom floor, and even those piles were dwindling as they finished sorting. He binned most of them and stuffed the more significant letters into a shoebox, which he had packed in his trunk (which he'd packed into his expandable box, which he'd packed into a satchel) in preparation for his trip to London.
When the doorbell rang, Harry was already waiting in the hallway, ready with his bag and buckets of anticipation. He opened the door and grinned at Remus, who stood unassumingly on the doorstep holding one end of a leash. Harry's grin widened as Sirius whined low in his throat and nudged Harry's knee in greeting.
"I'm leaving, bye!" Harry called, shutting the door behind him and turning to Remus. "We're not driving again, are we?"
Remus smiled. "No, I'm afraid not. It's good to see you, Harry."
"Good to see you too," Harry said, scratching Sirius' ears and taking a deep breath of the summer air. "If we're not driving, how are we getting there?"
"We'll be using muggle transportation," Remus said as they strolled through the neighborhood. "Not exactly secure, but precautions have been taken, and it's unlikely that any of the more... unsavory characters looking for us will know how to navigate the Underground."
"Right," Harry said. "So we're taking a train to London? Because the Underground doesn't run in Surrey."
Remus blinked. "Well, obviously," he said, recovering admirably. "We'll just apparate and go from there."
They had strolled into the park near Privet Drive, and Remus let Sirius off his leash. He barked joyfully and dashed off into the foliage. Harry and Remus kept walking.
"What kind of precautions?" Harry asked as they passed a large bush, ignoring the rustling and swearing coming from its depths. Remus folded up the leash and stuck it in the pocket of his tweed coat.
"Well, if you look closely, you'll notice the many and varied disguises of your guard, for one thing," Sirius said in an undertone, having freed himself from the bush with an impressive amount of nonchalance. He straightened his waistcoat and plucked a leaf from his hair. "For example, my disguise is that of an unassuming business man, out for a walk on his lunch."
"He insisted," Remus said, smiling despite the longsuffering tone in his voice. "He even researched his role."
"It's a good disguise," Harry said, nodding with approval. "Except there's no reason for a businessman to be taking a walk in a child's park in the middle of Little Whinging. The dragonhide boots are also kind of a giveaway."
"The dog was a better disguise," Remus agreed. "At least until we get to London."
"Bugger that," Sirius said, slinging an arm around Harry's shoulder. "I'm not an animal, Remus. I have a heart, just like you and Harry. When you cut me, I bleed."
"When you cut dogs, they bleed," Harry said. "And no one notices them then, either."
"Shut up, Harry," Sirius said, grinning. "I hate leashes."
Apparating went as planned, and soon they were riding the tube all over London.
"We can't go straight to our destination," Sirius said. "It's Unplottable, among other things, but we'd rather no one even be aware of the general area."
Harry spotted a blind man at the first station. He wouldn't have looked twice, except for the obvious limp and the chunk of nose missing under his dark glasses.
"Is that Moody?" Harry whispered as they boarded. "The real one, I mean?"
"Good eye, Harry," Sirius said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Don't be too obvious about looking."
They played a subtle game of 'spot the wizard' until they had ridden almost every line, and were on their way back to the heart of London. According to Sirius, there were still a couple people Harry had yet to notice.
"The man in the trenchcoat," Harry muttered, swaying toward Sirius with the movement of the train and glancing toward the man in question. "He's wearing pink Wellingtons."
Sirius peered in the direction Harry had indicated, frowning. "Remus?"
Remus looked as well, and Harry realized suddenly that Remus and Sirius were both gripping their wands.
"Not one of ours," Remus confirmed. "Next stop."
They exited the train calmly, and boarded the next arrival. The man hadn't followed them.
"Kingsley saw him," Sirius said as Harry and Remus peered at the map, trying to figure out where their detour was taking them. "He's taking care of it."
"We're still going in the right direction," Remus announced, after Harry found their location. "We'll be there soon."
"Thank Merlin," Sirius said. "We should just duck into a loo and apparate the rest of the way."
"We have to wait for-"
"I know, I know," Sirius grumbled. The train stopped, and a woman tripped through the doors and jostled Remus.
"Wotcher," she said, grinning. Harry had spotted her three lines ago, due to her vivid pink hair and complete inability to deal with the movement of the train without falling over. The hair was dull brown now, but she was otherwise still mostly recognisable. "Kingsley says all clear. We're going direct at the next stop."
"Finally," Sirius said, grabbing the woman's arm to steady her as the train started moving again. "Give him the key, Tonks."
She passed a small roll of parchment to Harry, who opened it and read 'The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is located at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.'
They arrived at Grimmauld Place by midafternoon. It was a dreary looking townhouse on the outside, and the postwoman walked right past without seeming to notice it, her eyes slipping easily from eleven to thirteen.
"It's an old family place," Sirius said as they approached the front door. "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. I lived here when I was a kid. Hated every second."
Inside, the first thing Harry noticed was the troll leg they were using as an umbrella stand. There was a portrait on the wall, currently spitting invective at nothing in particular, though when she saw Sirius, her volume and focus increased.
"Shut up, you old bat," Sirius shouted over the noise, and used his wand to pull the curtains that framed her closed. "The Order is remodeling," he told Harry as they walked down the narrow, dusty hall toward a door. "It's a work in progress."
Sirius and Remus led Harry through the house, pointing out various rooms and objects of interest.
"That was my grandmother's favourite house elf," Sirius said as they passed the stairs. There was a whole row of stuffed house elf heads lining the staircase, but Sirius was pointing only at the one closest to them, so Harry tried very hard not to look at the rest.
"The House of Black has some very archaic traditions," Remus explained apologetically when Harry turned to him for an explanation. "They're a very old pureblood family."
Harry decided to ask Pansy in his next letter if her family stuffed house elves when they died. It seemed like there was no way he wouldn't get an interesting response. Their tour soon ended in the basement kitchen, where two of the Weasleys were having tea.
"Oh, you must be Harry!" This was obviously Mrs. Weasley. She stood up and beamed at him. "It's so good to finally meet you, we hear so much about you from the boys, you know! Have a seat, I'll get you a cuppa. You boys have a seat, too, you must be tired from your trip."
Harry sat down next to the youngest Weasley, the girl. He knew her name. Ron had told him her name before. It started with a G, he was almost positive. Harry hated when this happened; it was very awkward.
"Hi," he said, smiling at her and hoping to fake his way through. She blushed and smiled back. Remus sat down across from them, looking over their shoulder to where Sirius and Mrs. Weasley had struck up an intense debate that seemed to be about the house itself.
"Hello," she said, and paused briefly. "How has your holiday been?"
"Alright, aside from the dementor attack," Harry said with a shrug. "Yours?"
Her eyes widened and Harry realized she might not have heard about that. Hastily, he added, "We were fine once we got behind the wards, really."
Mrs. Weasley bustled past, setting down a jug of milk and a mug of tea for Harry. "I understand, Sirius, but it is safer here at headquarters - why do you think we're here? Ginny, get the sugar, would you?"
Harry hid his relief and looked up as the kitchen door opened. It was the Headmaster and another man with a long beard.
"Mr. Potter!" the man exclaimed, "I see you've arrived safely. So good to meet you at last, my boy. I don't care what the Prophet says, if Dumbledore trusts you, that's good enough for me!"
"Thank you, Dedalus," Dumbledore said, smiling. "Molly, I'll have a cup if you've made a pot. How was your trip, Mr. Potter?"
"It was alright," Harry said, fiddling with his tea. "The Tube was fun."
"Albus, we have to talk," Sirius said, and all the energy he'd been focusing on his argument with Mrs. Weasley turned toward the Headmaster instead. "I see no reason why Devon-"
"Sirius, we have discussed this many times," Dumbledore said patiently, and the two of them plus Dedalus took a seat at the table, arguing. Harry and Ginny exchanged glances.
"Hey, Harry," she said suddenly. "You should see the library here. It's really great."
"Wow, yeah," Harry said, suppressing a smile. "I love libraries. Let's go see that."
They got up and left the kitchen together. Harry grinned at her as the door closed behind them. "Sirius has been trying for weeks to convince Remus and Professor Dumbledore to let me stay in Devon for part of the visit," Harry said, rolling his eyes. "Apparently the house with the detatched body parts lying around is safer."
Ginny giggled. "Imagine going downstairs for a glass of milk in the middle of the night and running into one of the heads in the dark," she said. "It's not pleasant."
Harry made a face and resolved to be extra careful.
"Who else is staying here?" Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.
"Well, all of us, of course," Ginny said. "And Hermione, and there are some Order members coming and going at random. Sometimes Snape is here, too," she offered, though she made a face when she said it.
"Snape?" Harry asked, his full attention caught. "I haven't heard anything about him since... the end of term. Do you think he'll be around soon?"
"He's not here often," she told him. "He only visits- FRED! GEORGE! I TOLD YOU TO STOP IT!"
Harry stumbled back against the wall, startled badly by her sudden outburst. She had made a fist in the air and was yelling into it. Harry looked closer and realized there was a string dangling in her grip; she proceeded to yank on it, hard.
"Ow!"
"Merlin, Gin!"
"How are we supposed to become successful businessmen if you shatter our eardrums?"
"If you don't stop eavesdropping on my conversations, you'll be lucky to graduate from Hogwarts," Ginny said, glaring at the twins who had just materialized at the top of the steps.
"But Ginny, we never talk anymore!"
The twins assumed wounded expressions as Harry and Ginny reached the top of the steps. "We can feel the emptiness in our hearts where your presence once lingered." Fred clutched at his chest and waved his other hand through the air erratically.
"If this, this madness, is the only way to be near our dearest sister-"
George bowed his head. "Then we will do whatever it takes."
Harry glanced at Ginny. She wasn't buying it, and was, in fact, opening her mouth to say so. Fred interrupted.
"Harry! Good to see you again, old chum!"
"We simply must catch up," George informed him, grabbing one of his arms. "We hear you're an evil dark wizard these days?"
Fred grabbed the other. "Would you say that's a profitable line of work?"
Harry wrinkled his nose. "Not especially."
"Ah, but you aren't experiencing an economic downturn in the House of Potter, are you?"
"No?"
"Lovely!"
"They've been trying to raise money to fund their line of pranks," Hermione explained half an hour later, having discovered Harry surrounded by Weasleys in a hallway and done the proper thing, which was to whisk him away and give him a chance to sit down. "They tried to talk my father into investing when we met them in Diagon Alley a few weeks ago. Weasley Wizarding Wheezes."
"They're doing a pretty good job, though," Harry said, sitting cross legged on his new bed. "Did you see those ears they made?"
"I see them all the time," Hermione said with a foreboding expression to match her tone. Harry was sharing a room with Ron, and she had propped herself up against the footboard. "And I feed them to Crookshanks when I do. If they didn't want their merchandise ruined, they wouldn't spend all their time spying on people who have half a brain."
"It's beta testing, Hermione!" One of the twins called this to them from outside the door. "If the people with more than half a brain can't spot them, then everyone else won't be able to either!"
Hermione stood up and stared around at the floor, finally finding and stomping on the offending ear, which had been skittering toward the door in a belated bid for escape.
"Ow," the other twin said. The ear was tugged under the crack at the bottom of the door, and Hermione huffed.
"As I was saying," she said, sitting back down on the bed and rolling her eyes. "They're a complete menace."
Harry didn't end up seeing Snape at Grimmauld Place for several days. They didn't cross paths at all until a particularly upsetting nightmare had Harry carefully navigating in the dark to the kitchen and sitting down with some tea in the middle of the night, when Snape happened to floo in. His arrival startled Harry out of helplessly morbid thoughts about the last sounds Karkaroff had made before he died, and he nearly upset his tea.
"Mr. Potter," Snape said, unsurprised.
"Professor Snape," Harry said, eyeing him carefully. He looked fine. All seemed to be in order. "How are you?"
"As well as can be expected," Snape said, moving further into the room and removing his cloak. "And you?"
Harry wrapped his hands around his mug and shrugged, turning his thoughts determinedly away from darker things. "Things have been pretty eventful. My aunt came back."
Snape didn't respond immediately, but Harry continued anyway. "Dudley's thrilled, but she's only back because she's scared. I'm almost positive."
"Have you been practicing your Occlumency?" Snape asked. Harry glanced up at him, then back down at his tea.
"Yeah," he said. "And it does help. I don't have nearly as many nightmares when I practice before bed." He paused, looking at nothing in particular. "I just don't know what to say to Dudley, or if I should say anything at all."
Snape raised an eyebrow, and Harry ducked his head and sighed.
"Yeah," he said. "I probably shouldn't do anything unless I know it won't make things worse. I don't like it, though."
"That is rarely relevant in these matters," Snape said. "I have business to attend to, but we will speak soon about your progress."
"Yes, sir," Harry said. Snape had given him a thick book on Legilimency before the end of term and his disappearance, and Harry was glad to know he'd been right to assume that he should have been reading it during break. He hated doing unnecessary schoolwork.
"See that you get some sleep, Mr. Potter."
"Yes, sir."
"What do the burn marks mean?"
Harry and Sirius were in the drawing room, taking advantage of a bit of free time to hide from Molly Weasley, who had taken charge of sprucing up Grimmauld Place and didn't take no for an answer. Harry ran his fingers down the lineages of the Black family tree, pausing at familiar surnames. There were a lot of them. Even Neville was related to the Blacks.
"Family members who brought shame on the House of Black by being decent human beings," Sirius said. He pointed to one of the scorch marks in the most recent generation. "That's mine."
Harry paused, debating whether he should ask, but Sirius was already continuing.
"Being sorted into Gryffindor was bad enough," Sirius said, not without pride. "But the last straw was when I ran away and moved in with your father and his family," he said. "Dorea and Charlus would have been disowned too, if my mother had known I went to them." Harry let his hand trail over the tree to where his grandparents were indicated. The tree didn't go into detail when the family member took another name, but it wasn't hard to guess who 'one son' meant.
"Uncle Alphard went down with me," Sirius said with a grin, pointing out another scorch mark. "He gave me a bit of money. My mother didn't appreciate that at all."
"Who are the rest?" Harry asked. "What did they do?"
"Well, my cousin Andromeda married a muggleborn," Sirius said. "You've met her daughter. She doesn't even seem to be on here... Tonks, I mean. The Metamorphagus."
Harry grinned. "So that turned out alright," he said. He liked Tonks. She had helped even the playing field yesterday when Fred and George took advantage of being allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts to make Harry's bacon try to bargain for its life at breakfast. Her pig snout was sensational, as was her persistence in chasing them down and giving each of them one of their own.
"Without a doubt," Sirius agreed, looking for another burn mark. "Cedrella almost had it worse than Andromeda, from the stories. She married a Weasley." Sirius pointed out a mark a couple generations up.
"You're even related to the Weasleys?" Harry asked. A scuffling noise at the door had them both looking up.
"All the pureblood families are interrelated," Sirius said, peering with worry at the half open door and lowering his voice. "Molly's my cousin by marriage, and Arthur's a second cousin or something like it."
"We're related?" Ron asked with interest, pushing the door open further and balancing a box of dusty antique pottery against the frame. "That's fascinating. Tell me more."
"You should know this, Ron," Sirius said, relaxing now that he knew he wasn't about to be forced into some elaborate doxy extermination scheme, like yesterday. "Your family follows their own bloodline as closely as the rest of us, even if you don't mind a bit of mixing now and then."
Ron set his box down on the floor and closed the door carefully behind him. "Well, yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck. "But I'd much rather be in here learning about how the Weasleys are blood traitors than out there polishing candelabras."
"Fair enough. You're in good company." Sirius waved him over to where he and Harry were leaning against a table, examining the tapestry together. "All the blood traitors in the Black family for the last couple centuries have been muggle lovers or Gryffindor lovers."
"Or squibs," Ron said. "Right?"
Sirius peered at the family tree and stabbed his finger at another burn mark. "Or squibs, that's right. You'd think they'd disown people for things like unhealthy obsessions with death-" He pointed at three or four different names with a bitter twist to his mouth, "Or sheep-" His finger prodded at the name of one of the unmarried men of an older generation, "Or even kleptomania-" Harry was surprised to see him point at one of the Longbottoms. "But the Black family has drawn their line in the sand, and they've stuck to it. Death Eaters are fine. Gryffindors, not so much."
"The Malfoys fit right in," Ron said under his breath, then seemed to remember suddenly that Harry was in the room and went red around the ears. "Er, sorry," he said. "Didn't mean anything by it."
Harry, who had been avoiding looking at that part of the tree entirely, shrugged. "S'fine," he said. "It's true."
Sirius glanced at Harry but refrained from commenting, which Harry was grateful for. He knew how he felt about Draco's father, but he'd only just this week managed to get the kind of distance that would allow him to think about Draco at all, let alone how he felt about their ruined friendship.
"The whole Black family are a delight to be around at holidays," Sirius agreed. "Now let me tell you about Araminta Meliflua and the Muggle-hunting Bill she tried to push through at the Ministry..."
A/N: Because I end up repeating this every time Ginny shows up: No, there will be no Harry/Ginny. None whatsoever. I just don't have it in me. It makes no sense in this universe.
