Chapter Two: The Dursleys at Grimmauld Place
They walked up the front steps and Lupin opened the door and ushered them in. As soon as the door was closed behind them Lupin wheeled around to face Harry. "What on earth possessed you to do so much magic?!" Lupin spat in a hoarse whisper. Harry noted that he probably did not want to wake the portrait of Sirius' mother by shouting.
"I'm sorry, I wouldn't have, but there were Death Eaters at my Aunt and Uncle's house when we got there."
"Are you sure, Harry? You know what this will look like to the Ministry, don't you?"
"I know, but it couldn't be helped. They sent a stunner at us as we tried to get out of the car!"
"But where was your guard? There should have been someone there the moment you arrived!"
"I don't know; I didn't expect anyone to be there, though I suppose I should have. Who was supposed to be guarding me?" Harry asked.
"I was," a female voice said from the doorway. Tonks turned to close the door behind her before continuing. "That was a right good bit of magic you pulled from your sleeve. Don't worry, I saw the whole thing. Ya worried me some when ya disappeared, but I had a hunch I'd find you guys here. I sent the Death Eaters after a mirage and then turned back toward headquarters," she finished.
"Thank goodness you were there, Tonks. At least Harry will have someone to vouch for him if he has to go back to court for this."
Harry thought back miserably to the day he had gone with Mr. Weasley to be tried for underage wizardry. He remembered Umbridge with her little black bow, questioning him and trying to throw him out of school. Now that he knew the Dementor attack had been sent by her to silence him about Voldemort's return, the memory was enormously more unpleasant than it had been to begin with. But Dumbledore had been there to help him then, and Harry was sure Dumbledore would do the same now if Harry were to need it. Harry realized, then, how much Dumbledore had always been there for him, but then, the old wizard had also kept a lot of important things from Harry. Harry's conflicted emotions must have shown on his face then because Lupin spoke again.
"I'm sure it will be all right, Harry. You should be proud of yourself. You saved your family's lives tonight." Harry suddenly remembered that the Dursleys were there. He noticed they had huddled into a corner of the entrance hall, a little too close to Mrs. Black's portrait, holding each other's arms. Suddenly Harry couldn't be angry with them anymore. They looked frightened out of their minds. And who could blame them? Having to be in this horrible place and having no understanding of what those heads were on the wall across from them, it reminded Harry of the time he'd found himself lost in Knockturn Alley.
"I'll show you to a bedroom that you can use until it is safe for you all to go home." Harry placated them. Truthfully, he wondered if there would be a home for the Dursleys to go back to at all once the Death Eaters were done with it. He thought the crestfallen look on Aunt Petunia's face was a good sign that she felt the same as he did about their prospects of returning home. "Come on, he encouraged. We don't want to stay here. That portrait behind you might start screaming at us all if we are too noisy."
Uncle Vernon glanced furtively behind him at the drapes that hid Mrs. Black's portrait and turned back looking confused. They followed Harry up the stairs to the room that Harry and Ron had shared the previous summer.
"This room has only one thing in it to worry about. That empty portrait on the wall may speak to you from time to time, but don't be alarmed." He could see they were already sufficiently alarmed.
"Is there a room without talking portraits in it?" Aunt Petunia almost whispered.
"Not that I'm aware of," Harry said truthfully, "But this one is really tame. Phineas Nigellus may show up now and then in the frame, but he will have just come from Dumbledore's office at Hogwarts. There's no place safer than Hogwarts." The Dursleys didn't look convinced.
"I spent most of last summer in here, trust me, it's fine." He turned his back on the frightened trio, annoyed that they were still acting so strangely, 'But then,' he thought to himself, 'this has to be weird for them.' He left them there deciding to head to the kitchen to wait for the Ministry's owls, which he was sure would come to expel him and charge him with his supposed crimes. He found Hedwig there and thought about owling Ron and Hermione about this strange turn of events. Just then the fire in the kitchen grate came alive with green flame and Dumbledore stepped out.
"You've had a busy day, I understand," he smiled wanly, looking at Harry over his half-moon spectacles. "I've been to the Ministry already. They were in a right state. I will need to take Nymphadora over there with me later this evening, but I believe I will be able to straighten this out. What I would like to know, though, is how you knew they were there. Was it your scar?"
"Yea," Harry replied, awestruck at Dumbledore's advance knowledge of the situation. 'How does he do that?' he wondered. "My scar burned, and the lights were all out. Aunt Petunia always keeps the entryway light on when they are out. Of course it helped give them away that someone sent a curse at us from inside the house. How did they get in there anyway? I couldn't get any spells to go through the wards when I tried to defend us all with my wand."
"I'm not entirely sure how they did it. They had to have fooled the wards into believing it was the Dursley family, or you, who entered first. Of course once they were in, they had the advantage being behind the wards. I would assume that the protections were weak because you had been away for quite a while."
"Are you saying that my presence protects the Dursleys as much as they protect me?"
"Not exactly. Actually, you are much better protected than they are when you are there, but your presence does strengthen the spell," Dumbledore replied.
"I see," was all that Harry could think of to say. He felt awkward standing in front of the kind faced man, knowing he had caused more trouble for him and that he had just days before been in this man's office throwing his things around.
"Don't worry, Harry, they will be able to return home in a few days. In the mean time, perhaps it would be wise to bring Molly and her children here. Someone will need to tend to the Dursleys' needs while they are here, and I daresay you could do with some company."
Harry smiled, "It would be nice to have Ron here," he said gratefully.
"I'll just go speak with Remus and Nymphadora then," Dumbledore finished, and swept out of the room.
There was no point sending a letter to Ron if he'd be there in a day or two, so Harry wrote a short cryptic note to Hermione hoping she would understand it and sent it off with Hedwig. He then looked into the pantry, found a stash of butterbeers, and took four of them with him back up the stairs. 'If this doesn't soften them up toward the wizarding world,' he thought looking at the dusty bottles, 'then nothing will.' He found his Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin sitting on one of the beds together still looking frightened and confused. As he entered he saw them jump slightly in alarm and then relax a little when they saw it was him.
"I brought you something to drink," he said holding out the bottles.
"They're dirty," Aunt Petunia spoke shakily.
Harry wiped the bottles off on his shirt. He could have cleaned them more thoroughly with his wand, but he knew since his life was not being threatened by the bottles that he should not try any magic now. Aunt Petunia's nose curled up as Harry again held out the bottles. But Dudley quickly stuck out a beefy hand and grabbed one of the bottles. Before his parents could stop him he wrenched off the lid and began to drink. Harry supposed Dudley must be pretty hungry by now. When nothing of any consequence happened to Dudley upon drinking the butterbeer, Vernon and Petunia seemed to give in and tentatively took the other bottles from Harry. Harry sat down on the bed Ron had been in last year, as the Dursleys were on the other, and began to drink his own butterbeer. They sat in silence drinking for a long time. No one knew quite what to say. Soon Dudley had finished his bottle off and looked to Harry.
"Are there more of those anywhere?" he asked, "That was pretty good, and I'm starved."
"Sure," said Harry, "I'll get you one."
"Can I come with you?" This question surprised Harry.
"I suppose so," he responded, but Uncle Vernon seemed skeptical.
"Dudley, I would prefer you stayed in here, son."
"It's ok, Dad, if Harry were going to do anything to hurt us, wouldn't he have left us at home in the first place?"
Suddenly Dudley didn't seem quite so dense to Harry. Harry couldn't help smiling a bit as he led Dudley down to the kitchen.
"Where are we anyway, Potter?" Dudley asked, beginning to sound more like his old bullying, commanding self.
'At least he's feeling more at home,' Harry thought, but then wondered suddenly why that mattered to him at all. He decided to shake things back up again just a little.
"This is my Godfather's house," he responded.
"But isn't he a…"Dudley stopped walking and looked as if he would bolt for the front door.
"Yeah, that's what they say he was…" Harry trailed off, not willing to talk to Dudley about Sirius when he still had not even talked to Ron or Hermione about any of it.
"Was?" Dudley asked.
"Let's just say he won't be coming around while you are here," Harry said. He continued walking though, hoping Dudley would take the hint that the subject was closed and not caring if the big oaf bothered to follow him. But Dudley continued on into the Kitchen with Harry, still keen to get another butterbeer.
"Any chance of a bite of normal food in this place?" Dudley asked looking around for a refrigerator and not finding one.
"Wizards eat the same stuff everyone does," Harry stated, annoyed and amused at the same time. The confused look on Dudley's face was priceless.
"But, where's the refrigerator?" Dudley asked, clearly baffled.
"Well, we don't use electricity, magic interferes with it, so we use charms to keep our food from spoiling," Harry explained patiently.
"I won't eat anything with a charm on it," Dudley started, "Not after what your friends fed me."
"No one told you to eat the candy they dropped, Dud." Harry laughed at the absurd memory from the summer before his 4th year at Hogwarts. The image of Dudley's oversized tongue lolling from his pig-like face was filed under 'hilarious' in Harry's memory. "Don't worry, Dud, Fred and George haven't been here for months. They won't have cursed the food. Watch out for any sweets you find laying around though. You never know what those two might have dropped."
Harry began looking around for food in the pantry then, as Dudley carefully sat at the kitchen table, looking as though he expected it to jump up and bite him. It occurred to Harry again how strange it was that Dudley, his Aunt and Uncle too for that matter, were not more hysterical than they were at the moment. 'I suppose total immersion in a new world will leave anyone stunned for a while,' he thought as he prepared Turkey and sprout sandwiches for the Dursleys and himself and another for Lupin when he spotted him coming into the kitchen.
"How are you, Harry?" Lupin began, sounding concerned.
Harry chose to ignore the urge to start shouting that he was fine and said quietly, "Hungry, as I suppose you likely are, too?"
"You know what I mean, Harry," Lupin pressed.
"Why don't you take these back up to your parents, Dud," Harry sighed as he held the plate out for Dudley to take. Dudley looked curiously from Harry to Lupin before taking the plate of sandwiches and leaving the room with it.
"Look, Lupin, I'm not ready to talk about this yet," Harry began.
"You're not the only one who lost a friend, you know," Lupin responded.
"I'm sorry, I really am. I know it was my fault, all my fault. If there was anything I could do to bring him back…." Harry looked at the floor as the tears began to well up in his eyes. He turned and ran from the room, not wanting to look into Lupin's eyes. He mounted the steps two and three at a time until he had reached the attic where Buckbeak had been kept. He wondered where the creature was now. By the silence in the attic, he was quite sure Buckbeak was no longer in the house. He found an empty room in the attic and sat on the floor, his head in his hands. Memories of Sirius and the Department of Mysteries came flooding back to him as tears flowed down his face. "All my fault, all my fault…" he muttered to himself as he cried. He fell asleep there on the dusty floor of that attic room hoping the Dursleys and Lupin and Dumbledore and everyone else would just leave him alone for a good long time.
As he cried the burning in his scar began to grow and ache. Soon the pain was piercingly hot, and he clamped a hand to his head. Far, far away he heard the echoes of a conversation and an image burst upon his mind.
"You have failed us, young Malfoy. If not for your stray stunning curse, they might have entered the house and I would have had my revenge at last. You are unpredictable and unsteady. You are not yet prepared to enter my ranks."
"Yes, my Lord," Draco cowered before the horrifying creature standing over him.
"Go back to your school, back to that old fool, Dumbledore. Be on your way. I have weightier matters to attend to."
"Yes, my Lord," Draco repeated, backing slowly away from the Dark Wizard. Fear, anger, and loathing were playing across Draco's face.
"I will find you Potter," the Dark Lord spoke into the empty room. You will die in the end. I will destroy you in plain view, for everyone to see. You cannot hide from me."
Red, slitted eyes pierced the image in Harry's mind until they were all he could see. Harry cried out in pain as his scar threatened to split in two. He barely registered the sound of feet pounding up the stairs as he screamed, before he blacked out entirely.