Chapter 3

August 2, 12 PM

Oh my gosh! There's been an attack! Voldemort and several of his Death Eaters attacked the Ministry of Magic last night and killed several people. Fortunately there was only one member of the Order of the Phoenix that was actually killed. There were several injured however, and are now in St. Mungo's. None have suffered the incurable though, like what happened to poor Neville's mum and dad.

The one person from the Order that was killed was poor Sturgis Podmore. He was killed after being out of Azkaban for only a few months. He sure had it rough.

I supposed we'll have to get used to losing members. I guess it's just part of fighting Voldemort. It's not a safe job at all.

The few of the several that are now in St. Mungo's are Kingsley Shacklebolt, Amelia Bones, Elphias Doge, and Dedalus Diggle. Susan Bones normally lives with her aunt, Amelia Bones, but since she is in St. Mungo's, Dumbledore has arranged for her to temporarily stay at Grimmauld Place until her aunt recovers.

5 PM

Dumbledore just left. He came to give the members of the Order some instructions and to tell Harry, Ron, and me some important information, which surprised me considering we're underage and not in the Order. I'm also astounded that there were no objections to be heard from Mrs. Weasley.

He told us some more information about the attack at the Ministry, since he had just been to see Minister Fudge and was informed of some more details that weren't in the Daily Prophet. Like how not one single Death Eater was unmasked (surprising that wasn't in the Prophet if you ask me).

Some really good news is that a few Ministry officials swore that they had caught a glimpse of Wormtail because he was apparently present during the attack and now the Ministry is investigating the situation and will clear Sirius's name if there is evidence supporting the case. I fail to see why they would have to investigate this situation considering Dumbledore's only been telling the Ministry that Sirius was innocent for about FOUR years. I mean they really seem to be taking their own sweet time. There's supposed to be an article about this in the Daily Prophet tomorrow. I wonder if it will actually tell us anything useful.

Dumbledore also told us that he's been able to recruit even more new members of the Order, including a couple of aurors that I'm yet to meet. He wouldn't tell us any names, but I imagine we'll find out soon enough.

It also turns out that Dumbledore is also setting up a secondary headquarters somewhere at Hogwarts. He said he wasn't going to tell us where just yet, but he did say that it definitely wouldn't be the Room of Requirement because he wanted to let students discover its "delights."

Dumbledore also showed us a way of communicating to people outside of Hogwarts without using owl post or floo powder. He gave Harry, Ron, Ginny, and me little mirrors we can speak into. All we have to do is say the name of the person we want to communicate with into our mirrors and we can talk wit them. Every member of the Order of the Phoenix has one so we shouldn't have to deal with owl post very often.

One thing I noticed when Dumbledore was giving the mirrors to us was the look on Harry's face. It was almost like he had seen one of these before. He was looking at it sadly like it reminded him of his parents or something.

9 PM

I was right. The mirror did remind Harry of something. It reminded him of Sirius. He told Ron and me after dinner that Sirius had given him one of the little mirrors when we left Grimmauld Place after Christmas last year. He just didn't know that until after Sirius died when he was packing his trunk last year and found the little package at the bottom of it. He said that he had sworn to himself that whatever Sirius had given him that he would never use it and that he was absolutely miserable that he hadn't thought of at least opening it.

Now he blames himself for Sirius's death even more. I can tell he's really hurting. He's in so much pain because of it. I can't stand seeing him like this. He locks himself in his room for hours at a time and refuses to talk to anyone. Despite all the times I have told him that it wasn't his fault Sirius died, he won't listen. He says that if he only had opened the package, he could have saved Sirius's life and he never would've had to check to see if Sirius was at home using Umbridge's fire if he had known he could've used something much easier. That's probably true, but still, he really can't keep blaming himself for things like these.

People are going to be killed because Voldemort's back. That's just the way it is and how it's going to be until Voldemort is defeated. Until then, there's not much we can do other than try and stop him from accomplishing his plans. That's just the way it has to be.