A/N: Many of you may think that I am dead. Obviously, I am not, or else I wouldn't be writing this now. LOL! I don't know how many months ago I last posted, but I am VERY SORRY! My evil American Literature teacher assigned my class the research paper from hell, which was supposed to be on an American writer. I chose to do Jack London. (Sorry, I can get off topic sometimes!) Anyways, now that it's over, I can probably get more chapters up!

Chapter 6: Of Summers and Friends

Three people were seen by the neighbors walking toward the neighborhood's play park. One was the dreaded delinquent, Harry Potter, whom everyone avoided unless they wanted to be harmed in some way. Another person of the group had long, fiery red hair, but no one seemed to know who this girl was. And the third person of the party was the strangest of them all: it was a young woman with short, green, spiky hair wearing clothes one would expect to see on a housewife.

All three persons were closely watched until they disappeared around a row of hedges separating the swings from the jungle gym.

What the suspicious inhabitants of Little Whinging did not see were two men, one oddly dressed and another wearing a long raincoat and a bowler that tilted over his left eye, sitting on a bench behind the shrubs. A gangly teenager with red hair and widespread freckles was also with them.

When Harry came into view, Ron Weasley leapt from the bench and nearly tackled his best friend to the ground. "Harry! How are you? Dudley didn't beat you up too much, did he?"

"Nah. After what I like to call 'the Icebox Incident', he left me alone for a week. Last week I guess I had luck because he didn't come out to get me at all," remarked Harry as he pushed Ron off himself.

Harry then greeted the two adults, Mr. Weasley and Alastor Moody on the bench behind him. Mr. Weasley enthusiastically greeted him back, but Moody just grunted. Harry noticed his electric-blue eye was fixed upon Tonks who was now changing her hair from a short, green hairstyle to a turquoise blue bob.

Moody's eye was not the only thing he noticed, he also saw that his friend, Ron, had grown another two inches and was now taller than his father.

Harry and Ginny told Ron about the exciting events of the past hour.

"Amazing!" Ron exclaimed. "Your uncle really is as thick as you say he is, Harry."

"What? You didn't believe me the past hundred times I've told you?" Harry asked in mock emotional pain.

"Well, you do know what people have been saying, don't you? It's been all over the newspapers, too," Ron said slowly and cautiously. "They're saying that you're deranged, unstable, and make stuff up to get attention." Ron grinned slowly.

At this point, Harry shoved Ron into the bushes. Ron laughed at this, "Is that the best you can do?" and returned the favor. The two boys continued shoving each other in growing ferocity until Ron landed out in the street. "Ow!" he cried. "Oy! If I could do magic right now I would hex you into oblivion!"

Ginny rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like, "Stupid boys."

"So. What are we going to do now?" Harry asked as he helped Ron to his feet.

"Oh," said a surprised Mr. Weasley, who was in conversation with Mad-Eye Moody and Tonks. "Well, Harry, we should be getting on the Knight Bus right about now." Tonks signaled with her wand hand in the road.

Instantly, a violent purple triple-decker bus appeared in front of them with a large, loud bang that shook the trees.

"If I've told them once, I've told them a thousand times not to have an entrance so conspicuous!" Moody growled angrily as the party of six boarded the violet vehicle.

Tonks led the way in front of the three teens, paying for their ride and then leading them towards the back of the bus. When the four seated themselves in the multiple kinds of chairs, Harry asked the question that he had been mulling around in his head for two weeks: "Where are we going? The Burrow?" he asked hopefully.

"No," Tonks replied; Harry's heart sank horribly. They were going to Grimmauld Place; they were going to the Order of the Phoenix Headquarters; they were going to the home of a dead man.

Tonks continued, "We're going to pick up Hermione, and then bring you all back to the Burrow, where all of you will stay about mid-August." At this moment, Ron coughed lightly and the tips of his ears turned pink. Ginny grinned at her older brother, as if she knew why Ron was coughing. Harry knew neither why Ron was coughing nor why his littlesister was smiling at him, and stared bewildered at the two of them.

Soon Mr.Weasley joined them with snacks. He had bought a bag of crisps (advertising a contest) for himself and pretzels for everyone else from a nearby corner market before Tonks had brought Harry.

Harry watched Mr.Weasley in amusement as the man pointed excitedly at the front of the bag, where it said there was a prize of one million pounds if the consumer of the crisps found a golden coin in the bag.

"Look, Tonks!" he said excitedly. "We could win a million pounds if we find a coin in here! One million pounds!"

It seemed and sounded to Harry that Mr.Weasley was more excited about the form of currency than the amount of it. Harry observed that Ginny was very talented in the sport of rolling one's eyes, for she was at it once again.

The group soon heard shouting, although it seemed that only one person was doing the act. The shouter turned out to be Alastor Moody, for his rumbling growl rebounded around the bus.

"…And if you ever make such an appearance like that anywhere near Little Whinging, I will personally punish you and see to it that you and that deranged driver are fired for good! Do you understand me!"

Harry, along with many other curious passengers, stuck their heads out into the aisle to see who was being reprimanded. He saw that is was Stan Shunpike, the pimply adolescent conductor of the Knight Bus. Stan stood rigid against one side of the bus, wide-eyed and unmoving. He nodded slowly, his beady eyes darting back and forth between Moody's wand in his hand and the man's eyes, both his normal and electric-blue, magical eye.

"I would want to be that one," Tonks remarked behind Harry. "I know from experience. His punishments are more like creative torture."

"Really?" Ginny asked keenly. "And what has he done to you lately?"

Tonks suddenly looked flustered. "Er…" she stalled as she searched for something to say. "I can't tell you. It has something to do with stuff we're working on in the Order."

"Apparently it involves something with purple feathers," observed Ginny as she plucked a purple down feather from Tonks' shirt.

Mr.Weasley shot Tonks a glance and she grinned apologetically, "Oops?"

By this time Moody was stomping down the aisle towards the group. "We'll be there in about ten minutes," he said when he pulled up a chair. "The gracious conductor has moved us to the top of the list." He smirked. His magical eye rolled over to Tonks. "Tonks! Get those feathers out of your hair!" he ordered when he spied his assistant.

"Oh, but I think they look pretty," Tonks said sarcastically.

Moody looked like he was about to say something, but at that moment the Knight Bus made an extremely sharp right turn, throwing all it's passengers and their belongings to the left side of the bus. A minute later, it made another daring move, racing into on-coming traffic then pulling out at the last moment. The rest of the bus ride was like this and soon everyone in group was green in the face and holding their stomachs except Ginny, Tonks, Mr.Weasley, and Moody.

They felt the bus slow down as they neared an open-field park. "Right. We're going to leave all our things here on the bus because we're getting back on in a few minutes," said Moody. "Bring your wands, but don't put them in your back pockets. We don't want anyone losing any body parts." Harry hid a smile as he thought about the conversation held between the retired Auror and Tonks last summer surrounding this issue. Tonks had been curious to know if anyone had lost certain 'parts' because they put their wand in their back pocket.

Soon, Harry heard shouting coming from the front of the bus. He looked up and saw Stan waving at them, arms outstretched, shouting, "Hey! You lot! Down there! Your stop's 'ere!"

As the group made their way to the front of the bus, pushing aside various chairs, Moody muttered, "I told him only to whistle." When they made it to the front, Moody gave Stan some silver sickles and said, "We'll be back on in a few minutes, so see to it that you come back. And don't even think about arriving with so much as a 'snap'."

Harry stepped off the bus, but before he had a chance to do anything else, he first had to regain control of his wobbling, jelly-like legs. Nearby, Ron seemed to be in the same condition, for he was lying spread-eagle and breathing deeply in the long grass. Ginny, on the other hand, was chatting calmly to Tonks, who was also unshaken by the bus ride.

Having calmed his legs, Harry surveyed his surroundings. The group had arrived at a Muggle bus stop at the edge of a play park in a neighborhood much like that of the Dursleys. The only difference was that this play park was teeming with kids of all ages. The play park in the Dursley's neighborhood was often as abandoned as an old mining town, a ghost town. This was so because of the neighborhood terrorizers, Dudley's gang, who often hung around the park like see gulls around a dump.

The houses in this area closely resembled Little Whinging, in that in front of each house was a lamppost and each front yard had beautiful, well-cared for flower beds. But the architecture was different. The houses in Little Whinging all had a uniform appearance, where each house was made of the same material, was the same color, and had the same shape as the dwelling next to it. However, in this area, the houses were different. Each had its own style: some were made of brick, stone, or wood; some had only one floor, but others had up to three stories; and some had balconies leading from each floor. This neighborhood seemed to be the exact opposite of the Dursley's.

The playing children paid no attention to the group of six which made their way across the park, with a strange old man in a trench coat leading the way. They walked a block before stopping in front of a house with two levels, with a balcony protruding from the second story and a spacious front porch.

Mr. Weasley volunteered to ring the doorbell. When he went up the steps on to the porch, he became thoroughly over-excited and Mad-Eye had to replace him. The doorbell rang, but nothing happened. Mr. Weasley speculated that it wasn't plugged in and began to draw an electric cord out of his pockets. Moody knocked on the door loudly. Still, nothing happened.

Suddenly a window on the upper level opened. They saw a flash of bushy, brown hair and heard an surprised 'Oh!'. A moment later Hermione's face appeared in the window. "Wow. I didn't expect you to be hear this early! I'll be right down with my things. Just give me a minute," she said and shut the window.

It had been longer than a minute when Hermione emerged from her house lugging a trunk with her initials on it with one arm and a very agitated Crookshanks with the other. Ron's head stretched towards the door, as if trying to see what the inside of his friend's home looked like. Apparently Hermione noticed because she closed the door shut firmly and said, "You don't want to see my house. It's so messy it looks like a hurricane came through."

"I'll wager it's not as messy as ours," Ron muttered under his breath.

Tonks noticed her young friend struggling with her trunk. "Here let me help you with that," she said. "Pondusine." The trunk instantly became lighter than a feather.

"Thanks, Tonks," Hermione said gratefully.

"So how's your summer been, Hermione?" asked Ron, looking at his feet.

"Summer? What summer?" sighed Hermione. "For the last month I haven't been able to relax one moment. From visiting previously unknown Muggle relatives to turning my house into a playschool for several toddlers, I haven't had time to relax. Not to mention the amount of work our professors have decided to dump on us. Do you know how hard it is to write down the ingredients for the Draught of the Living Dead while a 3-year old is whining in your ear for the billionth time about how Donald is now putting pens up his nose? Very hard." When she finished saying this, she looked even more bothered than ever.

"So you baby-sit?" Ron observed.

Hermione sent him a look of death. "Yes, Ron."

"Why put yourself through the misery?" he continued. At this point, Ginny poked him in the side and told him to shut up.

"Alright, everyone?" said Mr. Weasley, putting his hands together. "Then let's go." He started off towards the play park, but Moody stopped him. "I just want everyone to know before we go that they are doing a good job of acting like Muggles and I expect you all to continue the good job."

"Yeah, and so far no one's blown off their bum!" added Tonks cheerfully.

"Okay. Let's go," Mr. Weasley said as he led the group to the play park. At the Muggle bus stop, Tonks threw out her wand hand into the road.

Instantly a sign appeared below the bus stop sign. It read:

Thank you for choosing the Knight Bus. Since you are in a heavily populated Muggle area, the Bus will be disguised as a Muggle bus called the MM Express. We will be with you shortly.

A moment later, a normal city bus pulled up next to them. The door opened with a hiss. Stan Shunpike poked his head out and said, "Hello there, Mr. Moody, sir. Getting back on?"

Moody replied calmly, "Yes" as the party of seven boarded the bus.

After loading Hermione's things into the luggage space above them, group sat down in their former seats.

"So we'll be going to the Burrow now?" Harry asked Mr. Weasley as he passed a bag of pretzels to Hermione.

"Yes. Where you'll stay till mid-August when we must go to Headquarters," replied Mr. Weasley. Then, seeing the saddened face of Harry, "We must go there, Harry. It's for your safety and ours. And we'll be meeting some new faces that we want all of you to be acquainted with."

Soon the Knight bus arrived at the group's final destination, the Burrow. They said good-bye to Tonks and Moody who remained on the bus and entered the familiar house.

Harry had arrived at his second home.

A/N: Again, I apologize for my lack of chapters. I hope you like this one. It took me a long time to actually type it.

For those of you who are wondering what 'pondusine' means, it is Latin and a combination of the words 'sine' (without) and 'pondus' (weight). Clever, eh?