The travel was a bit of a blur to Harriet. Disillusionment charms cast above and below the group flying in V formation in the bright sunlight, she could hardly make sense of where or how far she'd been flying. The occasional command to turn this way and that came from Moody's bellowing throat. Before she knew it they were landing on a dirty London side street.
"Here," Moody said sharply handing Harriet a slip of paper. "Read this. Memorize it."
"Headquarters of the Or-"
"Not out loud! Just read it."
Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix can be found at number 12 Grimmauld Place, London.
As soon as she had read the paper, it vanished into smoke.
Within moments Moody had produced his wand, tapping a pattern into the brick wall of what Harriet could only assume held Number 12 Grimmauld Place.
"When we step inside, be quiet." Kingsley announced as a gothic-style door appeared in the brick, "just until we get past the foyer."
Harriet nodded her understanding and waited. Then, the door swung open.
She was immediately embraced in a bosom she could only assume was Molly's. Her familiar scent making Harriet feel at home for the first time since her embrace in the hospital wing in May.
"Hello, dear." Molly cried softly. Harriet's ears covered on one side by Molly's hand, the other by her chest her greeting was muffled but just as sweet as Harriet imagined it would be. She loved Molly. Loved all the Weasleys really, but Molly held such a special place in her mind. She was the first motherly experience Harriet had ever had. Showing up to Molly's house at twelve half-starved of more than just food, Mrs. Weasley had taken her in as her own for the few weeks a year she was allowed to have her. Ron had even told her she and Mr. Weasley went as far as petitioning to Dumbledore allowance to keep Harriet through the summers and holidays. Although Harriet knew it would never be allowed, just the thought that someone had wanted her like that made her love for Molly so much more real and valued.
"Hello, Mrs. Weasley how are you?" She smiled as Molly held her out in her arms, Harriet's guard stepping around her and the doorstep to get into the building. Molly, quite used to Harriet showing up every summer with the unexplained bruise or two took a look in Harriet's face, shook herself as if she was shaking away her thoughts, and planted a smile on her face that looked a bit more theatrical than Harriet was used to.
"I'm fine, darling. I have waited on you all afternoon! Come on," she paused putting her hands on Harriet's back. Molly guided her to the stairs and moved to follow her up, "the meeting will start shortly. Let me show you where the kids are and then you can perhaps have yourself a nice clean-up before dinner? Sound good?"
Now she knew she must stink. Must look as if she hardly takes care of herself. Molly was quite obviously being kind, but to mention having a bath when her first concern was almost always feeding Harriet otherwise, Hari knew she must look like a troll.
"Meeting? What meeting?"
"Oh don't you worry about all of that. The Order meetings are only for the adults, dear. You just say hello to the children and have you a wash-up. Hermione is here, did you know?"
No, Harriet did not know. She had only been given scraps of information over the long month she had been at the Dursleys. She had assumed Ron and Hermione were together wherever they were, their letters almost identical in pleas and excuses, they must have been in cahoots. But no, she would have no way of knowing Hermione was here.
Yet sure enough, as Molly directed her to the third door and stepped back downstairs it was opened to reveal her best friends. Hermione, her dark skin and braided hair looking all the more apologetic as her letters made her seem. Ron, behind her covered in even more freckles than Harriet could remember, two inches wider in the shoulders and perhaps a bit taller they ought to have seemed like water to a man dying of thirst. Yet all Harriet could feel was anger.
Here they were. Together. And clean. And fed, and together. She was jealous to her core. It was the monster again. This creature that had grown in her over the summer. This anger she had no name for.
Hermione made a motion to hug her, but Harriet held her hands out before she could complete her embrace. Her best friend pulled back as if she had been electrocuted, making Harriet finally feel shame for the action she's allowed to match her thoughts.
"I need a bath," she explained. "I just didn't want you to choke on my body odor." Her lie coming off so easily it might not have even had to be a lie.
"What the hell have you been doing? Did Mad-Eye make you bloody run here?" Ron asked, wrinkling his nose up at the state of her.
"No, Ron. I've not had a shower in half a week. Is that alright with you?"
"Is it the depression?" Hermione asked, with a timid tone. At Harriet's horrified expression she continued, "only I've been reading these pamphlets my mother gave me on grief. It's quite common to let your personal hygiene go a bit when you're mourning."
"No Hermione. It's not the depression," Harriet deadpanned. "I was on punishment. I wasn't allowed to be in the bathrooms for very long. It doesn't matter" she added once she realized she'd given too much detail to her explanation. "Follow me to the bathroom. I have a thousand questions and deserve at least a few answers. Ron, can I borrow some clothes? Remus has my trunk and he's not back yet."
Ron turned back into the bedroom and began digging through the dresser. "Hold on we'll go to mine and Ginny's room. Anything he's got is going to be too big for you." Hermione began to mother the pair, falling back into her usual place in the threesome.
"I don't really care Hermione I'm just going to sleep in it after dinner. I don't want to wear anything but a T-shirt and maybe some of your boxers, Ron. Nothing tight on my legs."
The time for avoidance was quite over. Harriet couldn't care less if they, like everyone else would see the belt welts. What could be said about something that happened days ago? Something she was sure Remus was getting his two cents in about back in Surrey. A small part of her even wanted them to have to look at her. Wanted them to know what it meant to her body that she was sent back off to the Dursleys every summer. But this was not Hermione and Ron's problem. Was no one downstairs problem either. She was only bitter.
"Oh no!" Hermione cried after getting a look at her legs. "Harriet! That looks horrible."
Silence fell over the room as Harriet picked through Ron's underwear drawer, hoping for everything that each pair was clean. "It's fine, Hermione. These will work. Let's go."
"Me too?" Ron asked, awkwardly.
Ron had seen Harriet and Hermione in various states of undress before. And vise versa. You couldn't almost die once a year with someone and not have seen them in their delicates at least a dozen times. Many nights since third year, Harriet had found herself walking into the boy's dormitories. Sneaking into Ron's room he shared with Seamus Finnegan, Dean Thomas, and Neville Longbottom. Crawling into bed with Ron after a particularly horrible dream she couldn't quite figure out. Cedric might have been bothered by the comforts she found in her male best friend, but what the Hufflepuff didn't know never would have hurt him. Voldemort did that, Harriet thought ruefully.
"Yeah, you too. Unless you've got nothing to say.. where the hell even are we? Grimmauld place? Who lives here?" Harriet replied, staring at Ron accusingly.
By the time she had made it halfway into the clawfoot tub, Hermione was explaining everything. "Dumbledore told us we couldn't tell you anything, Harriet. He said it was for your own safety that we didn't put anything too incriminating in our letters."
"Well, you're in front of me now. Incriminate me!" Harriet demanded to Hermione and a back-turned Ron.
"We don't know anything more than what we've told you! I swear! They don't tell us anything. The Order meetings are for members only, you have to be overage to join. Mrs. Weasley is dead serious about excluding us too."
"Then what is he so keen to leave me out of? Why has he told you two to practically ignore me for a month?"
"He's really feeling it I think, Hari," Ron said, turning sideways to reply. "I don't know. Something seems, worse about him. He sounds as old as he looks all of a sudden. You know the man is like 150. I think it finally all caught up to him this summer. You-Know-Who being back and the Wizengamot chunking him off his seat. He's embarrassed about this whole thing with Sirius, and he blames himself. He's paranoid. And old as shit."
This made Harriet giggle. Yes, Dumbledore was in fact, old as shit. But when had that ever stopped him from making sure Harriet was in the know?
"He'll be at your hearing, I'm sure," Hermione commented, reminding Harriet of a new worry she had now that she was away from the Dursleys. "Are you, you know... worried about that?" She asked.
Harriet took a deep breath and held it in her lungs. She released her hands from the side of the tub and sank. Her ears filling with water, she leaned back and wished for a tsunami. A flood. Anything really to keep her focus on the current. When it didn't come, she floated back up to the top.
"No." She said quietly. "It is what it is."
After she was dried off and dressed in a Chudley Cannons shirt and the most festive pair of plaid boxer shorts she'd ever seen, she threw her long hair into a towel turban and gathered her dirty clothes.
"I'd kill to be able to do magic, you know? I could levitate these clothes and not even worry about cross-contamination" she joked. "Where's our room 'Mione?"
"Oh well. Mine and Ginny's is right down the hall. But I think Sirius had somewhere else in mind for you to sleep?"
"Oh ok, so where?" She asked. Perhaps Sirius wanted her closer to him. Perhaps she was rooming with Tonks, she thought hopefully.
"I think he wanted to be able to show you. Let's just wait for him." Hermione replied, glancing suspiciously at Ron. "Here put your clothes in my hamper for the time being."
She followed her friends into the stairwell where an angry Ginny seemed to be whisper screaming to her twin brothers.
"It's my turn to try you've had it for half an hour." She argued, reaching for something flesh-colored in Fred's hand. "I've got better hearing anyways. And I'll be considerate enough to translate for the rest of us. Oh look, see now we have a group. Hand it over"
Ginny turned to side hug Harriet, "nice outfit" she laughed.
"Missed you too," Harriet returned in a sisterly fashion.
"It's Harriet's turn," George said, suddenly. "It's only fair that she get to eavesdrop first. They are probably talking about her anyways."
Fred sighed and handed over an ear. Attached to the canal was a long withered string, cascading down the stairs all the way to a closed-door at the end of the foyer. Hari could only assume that was where the meeting was being held. She quickly grabbed the ear and held it to her own.
"This is brilliant. Did you make this?" She asked Fred. Both twins nodded proudly, as Ginny shushed the group.
"...can't imagine the implications if I were to be so obvious" Severus Snape's voice creeped out of the ear as if he were in the hallway with them.
"Snape?" She asked, incredulously.
"Yeah," Ron replied. "Git."
"If it were me, I wouldn't care. Say you're running leg work. Make something up. It sounds to me like you don't want to pay your dues." Sirius replied.
"And what would you know of paying dues, Black?"
"Enough," Dumbledore said quietly. "We all have our role to play. Remus, have Sirius bring you up to speed on our new schedule. Can I ask if anyone has any further comment concerning the issue on the table?"
"No further comment, Headmaster. However, I will tell you there is some type of listening device sitting right outside the door." Moody said sharply causing the upstairs group to bump heads as they all attempted to get away from the stairwell. Harriet dropped the ear and made a full 360 attempting to find something in the hallway to look busy doing. Her friends seemed to be fumbling just as much.
"BOYS!" Molly's voice echoed from the downstairs hallway. "Get down here right now! What have I told you about interrupting?"
"Why is it always us?" Fred sighed.
"Almost as if it IS always us." George agreed and they both made their way down the stairs, the rest of the clan made to follow.
Then, the door to the meeting burst open as the members made their way out the door.
"Oh, now you are all welcome to stay and have dinner of course." Molly turned her attention from the children to the members filing out into the hallways.
"Got to be going on, Molly. This new schedule will take some getting used to." Moody replied leading the pack.
Before Harriet could register embarrassment for her state of undressed, The headmaster, the potions master, and the head of Gryffindor house made way into the hallway. Dumbledore walked swiftly out the door with little regard to the children. Snape followed hastily, after an upturned eyebrow in Harriet's direction.
"What an impressive piece of headgear you have on Miss Potter." Minerva McGonagall said with a snark.
Harriet reached up to her towel turban in an attempt to try and hide it, "oh well. Yes. Thank you I was trying for something... a bit leisurely." She replied, dumbly.
McGonagall gave her a knowing smile, and with a sharp goodbye, she followed the professors out the door.
"I know you must be hungry, dear. We'll all have diner shortly." Molly said patting Harriet's cheek. However, Harriet was hardly present. Instead, she was focused on the meeting room doorway where Remus stood, her godfather tucked closely under his arm. He was wearing what Harriet could only assume to be a three-piece suit. It was tailored perfectly to his body, practically painted on. A stark difference from the prison attire she had met him in. Near-freedom really suited him.
"As I live and breathe," Sirius said with a dramatic flourish. "The lady of the hour."
Harriet rushed around Molly and into her godfather's embrace colliding her head towel with his chin. He pulled it off with a swift motion and buried his face in her wet hair. "And such regal attire she has chosen to dine in." He continued in a mock-posh accent.
"I missed you," Harriet whispered, aware of the audience in the hallway.
This caused Sirius to skip a breath. Suck air into his lungs and hold it there as he held her tightly.
He seemed speechless, which Harriet had decided was a rare form for Sirius Black.
Without ever fully taking his hands off her head, her shoulders, her neck; Sirius led her and the group into a massive dining hall. The table was filled with a buffet line of food down the center leaving enough room on each side for dining.
"Here, we'll let the children go first," Molly called to the room, gesturing for Harriet's arm. "Come here, dear we'll fix your plate."
Ron snickered as Molly began to baby Harriet through the dressing of her plate, asking "what about this, dear... let's have one more. Do you think you could eat this?" Harriet took a moment to catch her godfather's eye. He was watching them carefully, his lips pressed in a tight line his eyes would drift down from her toes all the way up to the top of her head, and over to Molly as if he were sizing them up. When he caught Harriet's eye, he smiled and turned away.
She took a seat in between Remus and Sirius, neither man seeming to mind. She had a feeling dinner conversations would soon turn into the vat of information she was searching for, and she figured she might need a good seat in the nosebleed section.
Soon enough, the conversation drifted. After Tonks had shifted her appearance more times than Harriet could count, explaining her gift of being an anamorphamagus to Harriet in simple and technical terms. After the gang had ticked the Mickey out of Harriet for her choice of outfit. After Mr. Weasley had asked Harriet and Hermione if they believed "Long Live the Queen" was a type of magical manifestation or if it was just something the muggles say. Percy had been brought up and then immediately dropped, a look of "I'll tell you later" written all over Ron's face. Once all other topics seemed to have been exhausted, the air began to get thick in the room.
Then, "you know, I'm surprised at you." Sirius announced. "After a month of badgering me in your letters, I just knew the first thing out of your mouth would be about Voldemort."
Molly and Hermione sucked in a simultaneous breath at the name. However, Harriet sat up straighter and brighter than she had all afternoon.
"It was!" She exclaimed loudly. "Only this lot says you all won't tell me anything even if I ask."
She looked around the room at the adults, hoping if she caught someone's eye they'd begin to divulge.
"And they are correct!" Mrs. Weasley said firmly. "You're much too young. There is no sense in involving you in something that would only keep you up at night."
Out of respect for Molly, Harriet sat firmly on the guffaw that nearly slipped out of her mouth. "I don't mean to be rude Mrs. Weasley but the only thing that keeps me up at night is that I don't know anything."
Sirius placed a hand on Harriet's back and opened his mouth in explanation only to be interrupted.
"You are much too young, dear." Molly continued. "There are dark things at play, Hari. Dark. Unimaginably dark things, and what kind of adults would we be if we were responsible for opening you up to them?"
Sirius began again, only for Harriet to speak over him. "I don't know what Dumbledore has told you all about what happened at the tournament but I'm not quite sure you can get much darker than actual cannib-"
"-Alright!" Sirius said loudly. "Just pause. Just a moment."
Sirius seemed to be trying to decide how to word his next statement. Or perhaps he just wanted Harriet to stop talking, having heard the story of the graveyard once already. Judging by Molly and Tonk's shocked face it appeared he and Dumbledore hadn't informed the rest of The Order much at all about that night. Harriet had certainly not told Hermione and Ron. Not repeated the full story once in fact, aside from moments after in Dumbledore's office.
"Just... let's not compare war stories. I don't intend to tell her anything she ought not to know, Molly." He held the hand not rubbing Harriet's shoulder up in the air as if he were directing traffic. "However, she deserves to know the brass tax. She deserves to know there are actions at play. No one is sitting on their arse, for lack of a better term."
Molly huffed and stood up from the table. "Fine. The rest of the children will go. Get up. All of you. Go upstairs. You're done eating, get up Ron."
A display of arguments prattled out amongst the youngest at the table "you can't make us leave, mum. We're of age." The twins started in "We're joining up as soon as we leave school. What's the point in preventing it a couple of months when we can be of use now." Harriet hardly remembered a time that the boys had ever sounded so mature. It sent a chill up her spine at the seriousness of it all.
After a short argument, Molly succeeded in sending one of her four children present, up the stairs and into her bedroom. Ron and Hermione had been allowed to stay using Harriet's loyalty of, "she'll just tell us everything you say once she gets upstairs. Won't you? Won't you, Hari?"
"Of course I will," Harriet replied with a smirk and an upturned nod causing Remus and Sirius to chuckle.
"Oh I've heard about you three," Sirius laughed. "You fancy yourselves investigators? Snape called you the 'golden trio', only I don't believe he meant it as a compliment."
"Snape wouldn't know a compliment if it ran up and bit him in the-"
"Investigators that saved your hopeless-"
"Enough!" Molly stopped Harriet and Ron's lewd comments in their tracks causing the remainders at the table to snicker behind their folded hands and water goblets. "If you fancy yourselves, adults, for the time, then while we are at this table you will act like it!"
The table began to get serious. "Go on then, ask away." Sirius gestured.
"Where is Voldemort? What's he doing?"
"He's laying low as far as we know, Hari. Biding his time. Letting Pettigrew and a few of his grimier minions do his work. Do you know who Greyback is?" Tonks asked, and after a nod from Harriet, she continued. "The more astute Death Eaters won't be acting out just yet. The names you gave in the spring... Malfoy, Avery? They're higher-ups. You-Know-Who will want them as close to the minister as they can get before they show their cards."
"Nothing has been in the paper. Nothing in the news. I've been trying to keep up thinking even the muggles might feel it coming." Harriet began, feeling like a conspiracy theorist. "There was that one, that seemed off... the muggle caretaker last year? Out In Hangleton. The muggle authorities said it didn't seem like any foul play was involved but it FELT wrong. I can't explain it. But nothing since."
There were a lot of things Harriet couldn't explain. The dreams she would have. The random bouts of pain and anger. The buzzing noise she would be so consumed with that all she could do was sit down and ride the wave of it all when it happened. All she knew was it was related to Voldemort. To her scar and their connection.
Tonks sat back in her chair and seemed to consider Harriet for a moment. Hari knew it would be a mistake to show her hand so fully. To tell the table of her visions as if she thought they were fact. Perhaps she could say it to Dumbledore, the man so off the wall himself she hardly censored her theories or imaginations around him.
"He's after something. I know that. I've dreamed about it. The Order knows what he's after?" She asked, quietly.
This seemed to shake the adults around the table. Molly looked toward the corner of the ceiling, then the adjacent corner, down to the floors. Anywhere really that she couldn't catch Harriet's eye.
"Dumbledore doesn't want me to know?" Harriet asked.
Tonks blew a breath out her nose and smiled, "Blimey. You any seer blood in your family, Hari?"
Sirius placed both hands on the table, and leaned back, popping the joints in his back with an exasperated breath. "Dumbledore believes... there is some truth to these dreams that you have. We know you dreamt about Wormtail. Before. Dreamt that he was caring for Voldemort before the resurrection. Those dreams were proven to be quite accurate. However, Dumbledore does not wish you to put too much stock in them just yet."
"And what do the rest of you wish?" She asked before she could stop herself. Dumbledore's elusive actions had begun to grate her nerves. She'd never felt so arrogant. So expecting of action. The man himself ought to be here explaining this to her, she thought bitterly.
After a long moment of silence in which it seemed no one was willing to go against Dumbledore's wishes, Remus spoke softly. "Ultimately, Hari. We want to be able to look out for your safety. Your health. Visions like this, intuitions; they're unheard of. Even seers seem to have a less accurate outcome. It's no secret you have a connection to Voldemort. Whether it be your wand. The curse. Something deeper, we don't know." He paused to glance around the room, almost as if he were reassuring everyone he would remain figurative in his speech.
"All we know is that we in this room and Ginny upstairs are quite aware of what it means to have Voldemort inside your head. I think Dumbledore worries. He does not want you to dwell on any of this on the chance that it may consume you."
"Well," Harriet began with a bitter jab. " if he's worried he's got a funny way of showing it. Hull me up in Surrey for over a month, no word. He's got a squib parked in our neighborhood spying on me for who knows how long, and doing a bad fucking job of it by the way. Someone orders a dementor attack out on me in broad daylight and now I'm up for a disciplinary at the ministry and the man can't even look me in the eye. You know Remus, if he was worried about my sanity. My health, you'd think he wouldn't leave me out to rot at the fucking Dursley's for five weeks but I'm just a kid I don't know shit, huh?"
Deep breaths could be heard around the table but Harriet refused to catch anyone's eye. She could feel the monster again, rising up in her chest. Forcing the words out of her throat before she could sugar coat them. She couldn't very well stop now.
"So tell me," she continued. "Voldemort's looking for something. Do we know what it is? Or is this brand new information?"
"It's being guarded." Remus began, causing Molly to panic.
"That's quite enough!" She exclaimed wringing her hands.
"That's hardly anything at all!"
Harriet had never yelled at Molly in such a way. She was struggling to keep her composure.
"We believe," Sirius announced loudly. "That Voldemort is unaware of exactly what he's after. It's given us enough of an advantage to ensure it's well guarded."
"What is well guarded? What? Like a weapon or something?"
"No more!" Molly cried. "I'm putting my foot down. I have only ever had Harriet's best interest at heart and as someone who is responsible for her I am saying that that is enough!"
"She's not your child," Sirius quipped quietly.
"She is as good as!" Molly was getting emotional, now. Her voice wobbling as she demanded a halt to the conversation. "Who else has she got? Certainly not you!"
Sirius gave a look as if she had slapped him.
"Molly!" Arthur exclaimed.
"She most certainly does, Molly. She most certainly does have me!"
"And what do you have to offer her, Sirius? Tales of experience. 12 years in prison, and stories of her father from boyhood. You cannot just come into her life and pick up where you left off! She isn't James, Sirius!"
"I know that! I know she isn't James-"
"She isn't your friend! She's a child! She is at my house every summer starving and covered in bruises because of a choice YOU made! If you wanted to be responsible for her, you would have missed your chance. No, your only concern is that you've got your best friend back. You would just as soon induct her into the order than try to give her a CHANCE to BE a child!"
"Fine!" Harriet yelled over the arguing adults. "Let's do that then. Induct me. I want to join. I want to fight!"
Sirius leaned back and threw his hands out, palms up in a 'what am I supposed to do' gesture.
Molly's chest was heaving, and Sirius had a grip on the table cloth that turned his knuckles white. Harriet spared a glance at her friends who suddenly looked more childish than they had seemed in years. Quiet and mousy they watched the fight like a tennis match.
"What a curse it is to be loved so fiercely," Remus said softly, in a joking tone. He looked down and met Harriet's eyes.
"Fucking hell..." Sirius said under his breath. He pushed his chair back and stood, dug in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and walked out of the kitchen as he placed one in his mouth. Remus excused himself and followed.