Katie almost screamed at what she saw in the dim light of the wand.
"Oh god." George muttered, trying to look away from the decaying body that was propped up against a dumpster. "Oh god." He said again this time he was able to tear his eyes away from the pale figure and look at Katie who was grown even more pale the woman that they had found.
"Mum.Mummy?" she said almost inaudibly. "Oh god, they killed her!" she said a little louder this time. "George.that's.that's my mother!" she almost screamed, her voice was rising with every word.
"Katie, let's just go... we'll tell someone about this in the morning ok? Let's get out of here." She nodded stiffly and allowed him to lead her out of the dark alley and into the dimly light streets of London, never taking her eyes off of the body.
Once they got quiet a bit of distance between themselves and the alley, they apparated to The Burrow, no one really spoke the whole time they were walking, or when they went to sit down in the living room that was starting to become overgrown with cobwebs because the family was mostly living at the Order headquarters during the summer months.
Finally, after almost a half hour of silence in the living room Katie spoke up. "When can we go back?" she asked, her voice was shaking rather badly. George just looked at her sadly.
"We can't go back. We're on our own until we can be sure that nothing will happen to you," was his reply.
"Why does everyone suddenly care about me?" she asked. "I mean, I was perfectly happy living in that tiny apartment with my mother and that creep Harold and then you guys came along saying that they wanted me dead and all kinds of other shit." She said, her voice was still shaking and her eyes were starting to water.
"Katie, don't say that. If Snape hadn't heard that they were planning to kill you, then you might have been in an alley somewhere. Where would that leave me and Fred and Angelina, and all of our other friends?" he said, trying to make her see things in a different light.
"I guess.but why does all of the sudden my life just have to change? I don't understand. I want to talk to my friends. And if I did get killed, then maybe my mother wouldn't be the one in the damn alley." When she said this, it was almost as if she had just realized it. The unshed tears in her eyes suddenly started to flow freely down her face.
Katie hardly ever cried, especially in front of people. She didn't want anyone to think she was weak, and it worked, but everyone has a soft stop for their parents, even if they were trying to get you killed.
"Oh Katie, don't cry. I can't handle crying women." George said, looking around frantically. It was true; he was horrible with comforting people, especially when they were crying.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly, looking down at her hands.
"No, don't be sorry," he said, "It's not your fault," he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly, trying to maker her feel a little bit better.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, looking up at him once the crying had stopped.
"Well.I can't leave you now," he said, "Tomorrow, we'll disguise ourselves, go to the shop, because you know Fred will be there, and we'll just tell him that we can't go back." He said, looking into the fire thoughtfully.
"And tell him about my mother too," Katie said, also looking into the fire.
"Yeah, that too," George agreed. "It's been a long day; I think we should get some sleep before we find somewhere else to go tomorrow."
Katie nodded in agreement. "Where do you want me to sleep?"
"Well, normally I would say Ginny's room, but since we might have someone following us, you can have Fred's bed for tonight, that way if either of us hears anyone we can easily wake the other up." He said. "That and it's not every day I get to sleep in the same room as a cute girl," he added, grinning cheekily to lighten the mood.
Katie rolled her eyes and followed him up two flights of stairs to the room that had peeling letters that read "Gred and Forge" you could see where the "G" and "F" were picked off and moved over.
"Do you think that anyone's following us?" Katie asked after she changed and laid down in the bed closest to the window.
"I donno, but you can never be sure that you're safe. I mean, we thought we were safe at headquarters." George said. Katie could see his outline sitting up in bed and reaching for a candle which lit once he touched it. "Don't you worry about that though alright?" he said. "That's what I'm here for."
Katie could tell George was scared; he kept looking over at the window and then at the door that they had left open a crack so they would be able to see any kind of light that might have been turned on in the hallway.
She herself was freaked out to say the least. Her mother, that was trying to kill her, was now dead, and she had to run off from the place that she thought was safe.
"How did they find out where I was?" Katie heard herself asking after a few minutes of silence.
George looked over at her. "I honestly have no idea. It was some one in the order, or at least in the house, but I don't know who it could have been." He said slowly. "That's why we can't tell anyone, not even Dumbledore, where we go."
"So you're saying that it was Dumbledore?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him.
"No, I'm saying that we can't trust anyone but each other right now." He said, Katie heard a hint of anger and annoyance in his voice, but tried to ignore it. "If we don't trust each other, this won't work. We'll both be killed,"
"I know." Katie whispered looking down at the gap between the two beds. "Lets just go to sleep." She suggested as she lay back down in the bed and let the welcomed the warmth of the blankets around her.
"Yeah," George said. "Goodnight," he whispered as he blew out the candle and placed it back on the small night stand.
The next morning, Katie woke up to find George poking her with the spoon he was using to eat a bowl of cereal. He was sitting on the edge of her bed with the bowl balanced in his hand poking her with the spoon that he held in the other.
"What are you doing?" she asked as she sat up and tried to dodge the spoon.
"Waking you up and eating breakfast. Here, I brought you some cereal." He handed her a bowl and a different spoon than the one he was poking her with. "We have to leave soon, I suggest you take a shower before we leave, we might not be able to come back here,"
Katie took the bowl and nodded he head. Soon, after eating a showering, they two were changing their hair and eye colors. The apparated to Hogsmeade first, then they used the floo network to get to Diagon Alley. This was Katie's suggestion so that it would take them longer to be tracked down if they were in fact being followed.
Katie pulled her now raven black hair up into a messy pony tail as they walked down the street in Diagon Alley toward the joke shop. She was trying to look casual, and she figured it was working since they hadn't gotten a second look.
Finally they stepped into the shop and up to the counter where Fred was ringing up a little boy's order of nose bleed nuggets. After the boy left, the shop was relatively empty again and George began to talk to Fred, telling him that it was he and Katie in an undertone, but complaining about canary creams in a louder voice for the rest of the shop to hear so they wouldn't get suspicious.
"Sir, I'm very sorry, how about we go in the back and discuss this in privet?" Fred said, leading them to the back room that wasn't anywhere near as neat and orderly as it was when Katie had been there last.
"Alright, here's what happened" George said as he began retelling the tale of the dark detectors and the alley, some of which he had already heard from those who were still at the house when everyone was at the shop to investigate.
"So, chances are we aren't going to be seeing you in a long time?" Fred said, looking at his brother with raised eye brows.
"Exactly." George said. "Now, tell me about what happened here last night after I left. Did they find any one?"
Fred shook his head and looked at his watch. "I got to go, sorry to cut this short but if you remember right we had that meeting today with Zonkos?"
"Oh, yeah, well good luck." George said standing up, Katie following suit. Soon, they were aparating to Hogsmeade and using the floo network to get back to The Burrow.
"Were should we go now?" Katie asked as they sat at the large wooden table in the kitchen eating lunch.
"I donno." he started. "Do you think that Harold guy would still be at your apartment? We could crash there for the night and then stay at my flat the next night."
"I don't think he'd stick around, after all, I have a feeling that he was the one who killed her." Katie said, looking down at her plate
After finishing their lunch in silence, they headed upstairs to gather the few belongings that they had brought with them before heading off into London.
"I say we change our hair again just to be safe, and then take a train from town to King's Cross. Then we can just walk the rest of the way." George said as they checked around the house to get rid of any evidence that they were ever there.
"Sounds good." Katie said in a voice that she was hoping sounded cheerful. It of course did not, but George decided not to say anything about that and just leave her alone as they walked down to the small town about a mile away from the Burrow.
"Do you ever travel by train, other than to school?" George asked as they walked into the small train station. Katie shook her head and he continued. "Well, this works in the same way as the school platform, only you want to go between two and three to get to the wizard ticket booths." George explained as he led her over to the very solid looking wall.
They casually leaned up against it, and none of the other people even noticed their sudden disappearance. There weren't very many wizards or witches on the platform waiting for trains. Maybe only 6 or seven were milling around the different platforms. It was almost another train station all together.
They went up to the ticket booth and bought their tickets to King's Cross and waited quietly on a bench for the steam engine to arrive. Finally, a large green train pulled up.
After waiting for a few of the people to get off the train, Katie recognized two of them as the Lovegoods, they were finally able to board. Not much time, or conversation, had passed before they train stopped again and a loud voice announced their arrival at King's Cross.
This station, however, was much more crowded than the other one they were on. Katie had never known that there was so much more to Kings Cross than just the school platform. It was closed off from the other platforms because this side of King's Cross was set up in much the same way, only much more crowded, than the other station.
They made their way through the barrier between Magical and Muggle King's Cross and found themselves between gates fourteen and fifteen.
After they arrived at Kings Cross, they decided to head straight to Katie's to make sure no one was there before they went shopping to get some food.
Katie lead the way into a dingy hallway on the fourth floor and all the way to the end where there was a door labeled 4C. They crept quietly up to the door just to be sure if anyone was in there that they wouldn't be heard.
It was completely silent on the other side of the door, there wasn't so much as a piece of parchment moving in the breeze of an open window. Dead silence is all that they found when they opened the door as well. However the apartment looked rather lived in.
There wasn't any dust anywhere, and it was a little bit cleaner than Katie's mother used to keep it. All of her mother's things were still present though. If Harold had killed her mother, he hadn't gotten rid of, or even moved any of her things from their usual places. He even kept the cover on the couch like her mother always insisted; even though it was a rather known fact to Katie that he hated that couch cover.
They crept into Katie's old bedroom. It was turned into a large dark arts library. It had the death eater robes and masks hanging behind several other things in the closet, and her bookshelf was now packed with volumes upon volumes containing dark magic.
Her bed was removed and it was replaced with another bookshelf, this too was filled up with books containing dark spells. When the finally made their way to her mother's bedroom, it was just as it normally would be, the bed was left unmade with sheets and blankets hanging off of it. There where still two piles of clothes, one on either side of the bed.
"It's almost like she never died," Katie whispered when she saw how her apartment looked as it always did. George just nodded his head in agreement. She was going to continue, but he clamped a hand over her mouth and pointed to the small bathroom.
Katie removed his hand and then looked toward where he was pointing, but only after glaring at him. There was a light on the in the bathroom, something that wouldn't be so strange, but there was also a boiling noise as well as some one moving around.
They crept closer to the small bathroom and looked through the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. It was a rather large crack so they could see quite a lot. There was enough room to see that Katie's mother, despite the fact that she was laying in an alley, was standing over a potion and some one else was sitting on the counter.
Katie gasped when the woman near the potion turned around. It was her mother. She had the same dark brown hair and sharp blue eyes. She was just the same height weight everything. She was exactly how she was all of Katie's life. Her short dark brown hair was pulled up into a tight bun, not unlike Professor McGonagall's.
"Harold, don't give me that shit. You try drinking this every hour." The woman snapped at the man who was sitting on the counter. They couldn't see his face, but from the voice and what the woman said, it was definitely Harold Porter.
"Calm down, Bella, once we find that girl, we'll take her to master and the prophecy will be filled. Master will be stronger and we'll get a great reward." The man said, swinging his legs back and forth so that they would make a light thumping noise every time he brought them back.
"Yes, well, we better catch her soon. People are going to know something is up when Voldermort's killings stop." The woman said, walking over and leaning on the counter next to the man. "You remember what the prophecy said "A young woman named Caitlyn Bell will bring a great rise of power to the great dark wizard who kills her.""
"Yes, I remember quite well what the prophecy said, Bella, just get back to you're potion will you?" the man snapped before he stood and started heading for the door.
Katie and George made it out of the way just in time for the door to open. The man didn't even look around he just went straight into his room and slammed the door closed behind him. The two of them snuck back into the kitchen as quietly as they could and then back out into the dingy hallway. They broke into a run about half way down the hall, never stopping to look back at apartment 4C.
They didn't speak of what they heard until they were safely in a room at the Leaky Cauldron.
"How could she be there, George?" Katie asked her eyes wide as she paced back and forth in the small hotel room that they were staying in. "Why was he calling her Bella?" she asked, this time she stopped pacing and flopped down on the bed beside where George was sitting, watching her pacing around the room like a caged animal.
"I don't know Katie, I don't know." he said sighing. "This doesn't make any sense. It's all just so wrong." He said, lying back as well.
"Tell me about it," was Katie's response. The two of them spent the next two days at the leaky cauldron, never leaving their room except to go down to get some food. Once they snuck out into Diagon Alley in new disguises to go to the book shop and get some books that might be helpful to them.
They returned to the tiny, one bed room with their arms full of books about potions. Katie was flipping through a rather boring one, when George gasped and grabbed her arm.
"There it is. The Polyjuice Potion! Katie that's what who ever it was in your apartment was using!" he whispered excitedly.
"Why didn't we think of that before?" Katie said whispered back, just as excited. "We're so.stupid for not thinking of that." she said, smacking herself in the forehead.
"I'm even starting to remember the lesson on Polyjuice potions. That was the day that you and Fred kept asking him pointless questions over and over again until he got so flustered that he dismissed class." George said, talking at more of a normal level this time.
Katie started to giggle. "Yeah, he didn't even take off points for it. He got so confused after we asked him if flubberworms like to eat wolfs bane for the fifth time." she said sighing and leaning back in her chair which gave an unhealthy groan underneath her.
"Might not want to do that," George said, but it was too late, the chair gave under the weight on only two of its legs.
Katie didn't seem to mind, she just sat on the floor surrounded by splinters of wood laughing so hard that her eyes started to water.
Later that night, while they were laying in bed after dinner, George started to pick on her about it again.
"I really needed that laugh though," Katie said, as she stole most of the blankets from him.
"I think we both did," he said, taking the blankets back. They both lay in bed talking and laughing about things that weren't really worth laughing over, like the time that George caught her in the rosebushes with a Ravenclaw beater at the Yule Ball.
"So what, I was a little tipsy," she said, starting to giggle.
"You must have been more than a little," George said, before joining in on her laughter. "Have you ever looked at that guy?"
"Yes I have as a matter of fact." Katie said, giggling even harder. "I've seen a lot more of him than I really cared to see."
George's eyes widened at this statement and Katie just started to laugh harder. "Oh dear god, you're so gullible." She said, laughing even harder. For the second time that night, she was wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes. George tried not to laugh, but after a few seconds he couldn't help it and soon joined her in laughing at his own gullibility.
After they had both calmed down, they decided that they needed to make a plan to find out who was playing as Katie's mother. After they reached an agreement to sneak back into the apartment about a week later and try at catch the woman with the help of a few silencing and binding charms.
They stayed at the Leaky Cauldron, even if it was rather unsafe, it would never be expected because they never left the room with out their different hair colors, and when they did leave, they didn't really talk to any one.
The week was drawing to a close, and it was soon time for them to capture the woman impersonating Katie's mother.
a/n:ahh I'm sorry about this chapter, it's rather slow the whole way through, and then I went and uploaded the wrong chapter.grrr, well review please!
"Oh god." George muttered, trying to look away from the decaying body that was propped up against a dumpster. "Oh god." He said again this time he was able to tear his eyes away from the pale figure and look at Katie who was grown even more pale the woman that they had found.
"Mum.Mummy?" she said almost inaudibly. "Oh god, they killed her!" she said a little louder this time. "George.that's.that's my mother!" she almost screamed, her voice was rising with every word.
"Katie, let's just go... we'll tell someone about this in the morning ok? Let's get out of here." She nodded stiffly and allowed him to lead her out of the dark alley and into the dimly light streets of London, never taking her eyes off of the body.
Once they got quiet a bit of distance between themselves and the alley, they apparated to The Burrow, no one really spoke the whole time they were walking, or when they went to sit down in the living room that was starting to become overgrown with cobwebs because the family was mostly living at the Order headquarters during the summer months.
Finally, after almost a half hour of silence in the living room Katie spoke up. "When can we go back?" she asked, her voice was shaking rather badly. George just looked at her sadly.
"We can't go back. We're on our own until we can be sure that nothing will happen to you," was his reply.
"Why does everyone suddenly care about me?" she asked. "I mean, I was perfectly happy living in that tiny apartment with my mother and that creep Harold and then you guys came along saying that they wanted me dead and all kinds of other shit." She said, her voice was still shaking and her eyes were starting to water.
"Katie, don't say that. If Snape hadn't heard that they were planning to kill you, then you might have been in an alley somewhere. Where would that leave me and Fred and Angelina, and all of our other friends?" he said, trying to make her see things in a different light.
"I guess.but why does all of the sudden my life just have to change? I don't understand. I want to talk to my friends. And if I did get killed, then maybe my mother wouldn't be the one in the damn alley." When she said this, it was almost as if she had just realized it. The unshed tears in her eyes suddenly started to flow freely down her face.
Katie hardly ever cried, especially in front of people. She didn't want anyone to think she was weak, and it worked, but everyone has a soft stop for their parents, even if they were trying to get you killed.
"Oh Katie, don't cry. I can't handle crying women." George said, looking around frantically. It was true; he was horrible with comforting people, especially when they were crying.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly, looking down at her hands.
"No, don't be sorry," he said, "It's not your fault," he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly, trying to maker her feel a little bit better.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, looking up at him once the crying had stopped.
"Well.I can't leave you now," he said, "Tomorrow, we'll disguise ourselves, go to the shop, because you know Fred will be there, and we'll just tell him that we can't go back." He said, looking into the fire thoughtfully.
"And tell him about my mother too," Katie said, also looking into the fire.
"Yeah, that too," George agreed. "It's been a long day; I think we should get some sleep before we find somewhere else to go tomorrow."
Katie nodded in agreement. "Where do you want me to sleep?"
"Well, normally I would say Ginny's room, but since we might have someone following us, you can have Fred's bed for tonight, that way if either of us hears anyone we can easily wake the other up." He said. "That and it's not every day I get to sleep in the same room as a cute girl," he added, grinning cheekily to lighten the mood.
Katie rolled her eyes and followed him up two flights of stairs to the room that had peeling letters that read "Gred and Forge" you could see where the "G" and "F" were picked off and moved over.
"Do you think that anyone's following us?" Katie asked after she changed and laid down in the bed closest to the window.
"I donno, but you can never be sure that you're safe. I mean, we thought we were safe at headquarters." George said. Katie could see his outline sitting up in bed and reaching for a candle which lit once he touched it. "Don't you worry about that though alright?" he said. "That's what I'm here for."
Katie could tell George was scared; he kept looking over at the window and then at the door that they had left open a crack so they would be able to see any kind of light that might have been turned on in the hallway.
She herself was freaked out to say the least. Her mother, that was trying to kill her, was now dead, and she had to run off from the place that she thought was safe.
"How did they find out where I was?" Katie heard herself asking after a few minutes of silence.
George looked over at her. "I honestly have no idea. It was some one in the order, or at least in the house, but I don't know who it could have been." He said slowly. "That's why we can't tell anyone, not even Dumbledore, where we go."
"So you're saying that it was Dumbledore?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him.
"No, I'm saying that we can't trust anyone but each other right now." He said, Katie heard a hint of anger and annoyance in his voice, but tried to ignore it. "If we don't trust each other, this won't work. We'll both be killed,"
"I know." Katie whispered looking down at the gap between the two beds. "Lets just go to sleep." She suggested as she lay back down in the bed and let the welcomed the warmth of the blankets around her.
"Yeah," George said. "Goodnight," he whispered as he blew out the candle and placed it back on the small night stand.
The next morning, Katie woke up to find George poking her with the spoon he was using to eat a bowl of cereal. He was sitting on the edge of her bed with the bowl balanced in his hand poking her with the spoon that he held in the other.
"What are you doing?" she asked as she sat up and tried to dodge the spoon.
"Waking you up and eating breakfast. Here, I brought you some cereal." He handed her a bowl and a different spoon than the one he was poking her with. "We have to leave soon, I suggest you take a shower before we leave, we might not be able to come back here,"
Katie took the bowl and nodded he head. Soon, after eating a showering, they two were changing their hair and eye colors. The apparated to Hogsmeade first, then they used the floo network to get to Diagon Alley. This was Katie's suggestion so that it would take them longer to be tracked down if they were in fact being followed.
Katie pulled her now raven black hair up into a messy pony tail as they walked down the street in Diagon Alley toward the joke shop. She was trying to look casual, and she figured it was working since they hadn't gotten a second look.
Finally they stepped into the shop and up to the counter where Fred was ringing up a little boy's order of nose bleed nuggets. After the boy left, the shop was relatively empty again and George began to talk to Fred, telling him that it was he and Katie in an undertone, but complaining about canary creams in a louder voice for the rest of the shop to hear so they wouldn't get suspicious.
"Sir, I'm very sorry, how about we go in the back and discuss this in privet?" Fred said, leading them to the back room that wasn't anywhere near as neat and orderly as it was when Katie had been there last.
"Alright, here's what happened" George said as he began retelling the tale of the dark detectors and the alley, some of which he had already heard from those who were still at the house when everyone was at the shop to investigate.
"So, chances are we aren't going to be seeing you in a long time?" Fred said, looking at his brother with raised eye brows.
"Exactly." George said. "Now, tell me about what happened here last night after I left. Did they find any one?"
Fred shook his head and looked at his watch. "I got to go, sorry to cut this short but if you remember right we had that meeting today with Zonkos?"
"Oh, yeah, well good luck." George said standing up, Katie following suit. Soon, they were aparating to Hogsmeade and using the floo network to get back to The Burrow.
"Were should we go now?" Katie asked as they sat at the large wooden table in the kitchen eating lunch.
"I donno." he started. "Do you think that Harold guy would still be at your apartment? We could crash there for the night and then stay at my flat the next night."
"I don't think he'd stick around, after all, I have a feeling that he was the one who killed her." Katie said, looking down at her plate
After finishing their lunch in silence, they headed upstairs to gather the few belongings that they had brought with them before heading off into London.
"I say we change our hair again just to be safe, and then take a train from town to King's Cross. Then we can just walk the rest of the way." George said as they checked around the house to get rid of any evidence that they were ever there.
"Sounds good." Katie said in a voice that she was hoping sounded cheerful. It of course did not, but George decided not to say anything about that and just leave her alone as they walked down to the small town about a mile away from the Burrow.
"Do you ever travel by train, other than to school?" George asked as they walked into the small train station. Katie shook her head and he continued. "Well, this works in the same way as the school platform, only you want to go between two and three to get to the wizard ticket booths." George explained as he led her over to the very solid looking wall.
They casually leaned up against it, and none of the other people even noticed their sudden disappearance. There weren't very many wizards or witches on the platform waiting for trains. Maybe only 6 or seven were milling around the different platforms. It was almost another train station all together.
They went up to the ticket booth and bought their tickets to King's Cross and waited quietly on a bench for the steam engine to arrive. Finally, a large green train pulled up.
After waiting for a few of the people to get off the train, Katie recognized two of them as the Lovegoods, they were finally able to board. Not much time, or conversation, had passed before they train stopped again and a loud voice announced their arrival at King's Cross.
This station, however, was much more crowded than the other one they were on. Katie had never known that there was so much more to Kings Cross than just the school platform. It was closed off from the other platforms because this side of King's Cross was set up in much the same way, only much more crowded, than the other station.
They made their way through the barrier between Magical and Muggle King's Cross and found themselves between gates fourteen and fifteen.
After they arrived at Kings Cross, they decided to head straight to Katie's to make sure no one was there before they went shopping to get some food.
Katie lead the way into a dingy hallway on the fourth floor and all the way to the end where there was a door labeled 4C. They crept quietly up to the door just to be sure if anyone was in there that they wouldn't be heard.
It was completely silent on the other side of the door, there wasn't so much as a piece of parchment moving in the breeze of an open window. Dead silence is all that they found when they opened the door as well. However the apartment looked rather lived in.
There wasn't any dust anywhere, and it was a little bit cleaner than Katie's mother used to keep it. All of her mother's things were still present though. If Harold had killed her mother, he hadn't gotten rid of, or even moved any of her things from their usual places. He even kept the cover on the couch like her mother always insisted; even though it was a rather known fact to Katie that he hated that couch cover.
They crept into Katie's old bedroom. It was turned into a large dark arts library. It had the death eater robes and masks hanging behind several other things in the closet, and her bookshelf was now packed with volumes upon volumes containing dark magic.
Her bed was removed and it was replaced with another bookshelf, this too was filled up with books containing dark spells. When the finally made their way to her mother's bedroom, it was just as it normally would be, the bed was left unmade with sheets and blankets hanging off of it. There where still two piles of clothes, one on either side of the bed.
"It's almost like she never died," Katie whispered when she saw how her apartment looked as it always did. George just nodded his head in agreement. She was going to continue, but he clamped a hand over her mouth and pointed to the small bathroom.
Katie removed his hand and then looked toward where he was pointing, but only after glaring at him. There was a light on the in the bathroom, something that wouldn't be so strange, but there was also a boiling noise as well as some one moving around.
They crept closer to the small bathroom and looked through the crack between the floor and the bottom of the door. It was a rather large crack so they could see quite a lot. There was enough room to see that Katie's mother, despite the fact that she was laying in an alley, was standing over a potion and some one else was sitting on the counter.
Katie gasped when the woman near the potion turned around. It was her mother. She had the same dark brown hair and sharp blue eyes. She was just the same height weight everything. She was exactly how she was all of Katie's life. Her short dark brown hair was pulled up into a tight bun, not unlike Professor McGonagall's.
"Harold, don't give me that shit. You try drinking this every hour." The woman snapped at the man who was sitting on the counter. They couldn't see his face, but from the voice and what the woman said, it was definitely Harold Porter.
"Calm down, Bella, once we find that girl, we'll take her to master and the prophecy will be filled. Master will be stronger and we'll get a great reward." The man said, swinging his legs back and forth so that they would make a light thumping noise every time he brought them back.
"Yes, well, we better catch her soon. People are going to know something is up when Voldermort's killings stop." The woman said, walking over and leaning on the counter next to the man. "You remember what the prophecy said "A young woman named Caitlyn Bell will bring a great rise of power to the great dark wizard who kills her.""
"Yes, I remember quite well what the prophecy said, Bella, just get back to you're potion will you?" the man snapped before he stood and started heading for the door.
Katie and George made it out of the way just in time for the door to open. The man didn't even look around he just went straight into his room and slammed the door closed behind him. The two of them snuck back into the kitchen as quietly as they could and then back out into the dingy hallway. They broke into a run about half way down the hall, never stopping to look back at apartment 4C.
They didn't speak of what they heard until they were safely in a room at the Leaky Cauldron.
"How could she be there, George?" Katie asked her eyes wide as she paced back and forth in the small hotel room that they were staying in. "Why was he calling her Bella?" she asked, this time she stopped pacing and flopped down on the bed beside where George was sitting, watching her pacing around the room like a caged animal.
"I don't know Katie, I don't know." he said sighing. "This doesn't make any sense. It's all just so wrong." He said, lying back as well.
"Tell me about it," was Katie's response. The two of them spent the next two days at the leaky cauldron, never leaving their room except to go down to get some food. Once they snuck out into Diagon Alley in new disguises to go to the book shop and get some books that might be helpful to them.
They returned to the tiny, one bed room with their arms full of books about potions. Katie was flipping through a rather boring one, when George gasped and grabbed her arm.
"There it is. The Polyjuice Potion! Katie that's what who ever it was in your apartment was using!" he whispered excitedly.
"Why didn't we think of that before?" Katie said whispered back, just as excited. "We're so.stupid for not thinking of that." she said, smacking herself in the forehead.
"I'm even starting to remember the lesson on Polyjuice potions. That was the day that you and Fred kept asking him pointless questions over and over again until he got so flustered that he dismissed class." George said, talking at more of a normal level this time.
Katie started to giggle. "Yeah, he didn't even take off points for it. He got so confused after we asked him if flubberworms like to eat wolfs bane for the fifth time." she said sighing and leaning back in her chair which gave an unhealthy groan underneath her.
"Might not want to do that," George said, but it was too late, the chair gave under the weight on only two of its legs.
Katie didn't seem to mind, she just sat on the floor surrounded by splinters of wood laughing so hard that her eyes started to water.
Later that night, while they were laying in bed after dinner, George started to pick on her about it again.
"I really needed that laugh though," Katie said, as she stole most of the blankets from him.
"I think we both did," he said, taking the blankets back. They both lay in bed talking and laughing about things that weren't really worth laughing over, like the time that George caught her in the rosebushes with a Ravenclaw beater at the Yule Ball.
"So what, I was a little tipsy," she said, starting to giggle.
"You must have been more than a little," George said, before joining in on her laughter. "Have you ever looked at that guy?"
"Yes I have as a matter of fact." Katie said, giggling even harder. "I've seen a lot more of him than I really cared to see."
George's eyes widened at this statement and Katie just started to laugh harder. "Oh dear god, you're so gullible." She said, laughing even harder. For the second time that night, she was wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes. George tried not to laugh, but after a few seconds he couldn't help it and soon joined her in laughing at his own gullibility.
After they had both calmed down, they decided that they needed to make a plan to find out who was playing as Katie's mother. After they reached an agreement to sneak back into the apartment about a week later and try at catch the woman with the help of a few silencing and binding charms.
They stayed at the Leaky Cauldron, even if it was rather unsafe, it would never be expected because they never left the room with out their different hair colors, and when they did leave, they didn't really talk to any one.
The week was drawing to a close, and it was soon time for them to capture the woman impersonating Katie's mother.
a/n:ahh I'm sorry about this chapter, it's rather slow the whole way through, and then I went and uploaded the wrong chapter.grrr, well review please!