Once they were finally in the air again, the trip to the Order of the Phoenix Headquarters didn't last long.
As they landed outside 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry again felt his grief for the loss of his Godfather. Now, however, he finally began to realize even without Sirius, he was not alone. His family might be gone, but outside with him and waiting inside for him were other people who cared for him.
Before they could even reach the door, it opened of its own accord. Out stepped a hat with a stuffed vulture attached. At once, Harry recognized the older woman wearing it and hid a smile at the memory of a certain boggart. As she began to berate Mad-Eye Moody, Harry felt a large upsurge of sympathy for both the auror and Neville Longbottom.
"What took you so long, Alastor? We have all been waiting here worried sick. The group after yours is already back and the next one is due. You should have been here -"
As the woman scanned the group, her gaze fell on Professor McGonagall and her voice faltered for a moment. Looking at the young, at least to her, woman she took in the sight of the disheveled woman cradling a broken wrist with dried blood still spattering her dress. Mrs. Longbottom frowned, but not unkindly. In a much calmer voice, she continued speaking.
"Come on inside, Minerva. Let's get you cleaned up."
She sent a piercing look at Moody. "You know better, Alastor. She shouldn't be out like this. Not with things the way they are. It's not safe for her."
Turning back to Professor McGonagall, she spoke again. "Come with me dear, I can fix that wrist easy enough. Merlin knows, Neville has given me more than enough practice. We'll just find an empty room."
When McGonagall made no move to go with Mrs. Longbottom, the woman spoke again. "If you prefer, I can get Molly Weasley. She's in the kitchen."
McGonagall took only a moment to respond. "No. No, need to bother Molly. I am certain you can manage it."
Mrs. Longbottom gave a reassuring smile. The two women walked off together to the sitting room. It didn't start off empty, but Mrs. Longbottom quickly had it cleared out and closed the door.
As another group of aurors landed, Harry asked, "What other groups?"
Moving into the house, Loki explained. "Rather than send a single large escort like last summer, small groups have been leaving your aunt's house every fifteen minutes all night. The hope was to confuse any Death Eaters and draw them out to attack the wrong group. We suspected the reason Lucius was asking for a trial was to give Voldemort a chance to get you out in the open."
Moody snorted. "Didn't quite work like planned, but you arrived safe so mission accomplished."
"Kind of risky though." said Harry. "I mean they picked the right group. With so few of us, it could have turned out very differently."
Loki shook his head. "You were with Kitten. She would never let anything bad happen to one of her children."
Harry was stunned. Suddenly something clicked in his mind. The sensation he felt when Professor McGonagall touched his skin, that pleasant burning. Loki was related to her and he felt burning when he touched her too. Harry was not yet an adult by wizard standards so maybe the enchantment didn't actually harm him yet. If changelings hid their children in other families….
The shock in his voice was incredible. "Professor McGonagall is my mother?"
Loki looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Charms and potion lessons are all well and fine, but what ever happened to Literature? Children today have no sense of figurative and metaphoric."
Watching Loki walk away in disgust, Harry noticed the portrait of Mrs. Black remained covered and silent.
Still blushing, Harry asked Moody a question that had been bothering him since before the summer. "Why did our own Ministry people use four stunners on Professor McGonagall without warning?"
Moody looked Harry in the eye. "We haven't had a chance yet to talk about what happened earlier tonight, but I rather imagine from what you saw, you already know the answer to that. If you are going to attack Minerva McGonagall you catch her off guard and you damn well better incapacitate her with the first blow or you won't get a second chance."
Harry considered this for a moment before asking another question. "When they hit Professor McGonagall with the Crucio spell, it didn't effect her. She cast through it. I want to learn to do that. Is it occlumency or some other thing like that?"
The look on Moody's face told Harry he had said something very wrong. At Harry's words, he looked so horrified. There was something else in his face, but Harry couldn't place the other emotion. Malone's head was down, but Harry could see the flush spreading across his face. He turned to Lupin, but there was no help there either.
It was Tonks who gently broke it to him. "Harry, there isn't a way to resist Crucio. It's just something you can get used to after a while if you don't…"
Lupin was still watching the door Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Longbottom had disappeared behind. He turned to Moody and tilting his head hesitantly asked, "Do you think that's wise?"
When Moody didn't have an answer, Lupin started to head towards the door. Malone put a hand out to stop him. "The hell you will. Moody can go."
Lupin sighed. Moody nodded. After crossing the room he knocked and entered the sitting room.
Watching the exchange, Harry had finally had enough. Malone McGonagall's dislike of werewolves was sickening.
"Just because a person is a werewolf one night out of the month, doesn't give you the right to treat them like trash all the rest of the month."
The look of confusion on Malone's face made Harry think he might have made another wrong assumption.
Malone's response, "You're a werewolf?" confirmed it. "That's just lovely. I can honestly say it could not have happened to a nicer fellow."
"Bite me." was Lupin's cheeky reply.
Tonks looked outraged, but Shacklebolt wandered away from the group with a laugh.
Harry was reassured to discover Professor McGonagall's nephew was not in fact a racist. Remembering Lupin's comment about going to school with Malone, he assumed the dislike was something relating back to that.
Before he could say anything else to make himself look like an idiot, someone tried to smother Harry in a hug. When Hermione finally released him, she immediately began to rant.
"Harry we were getting so worried. We expected you a lot earlier. We heard you broke the restriction on the use of magic by underage wizards again. Then they said you used an Unforgivable on a Ministry owl trying to deliver a warning letter to you. Dumbledore went to find out what happened and straighten everything out with the Ministry. What were you thinking?"
Harry didn't even try to answer Hermione as now Ginny pulled him into a hug. Looking up, he saw Ron, Neville and Luna standing alongside Hermione. He gave a wave to the others.
"Oi Harry." Ron grinned.
"What are you doing here?" Looking further into the house, for the first time he noticed the rather large crowd of people milling around the Black house for the early morning hour and amended the question. "What are all of these people doing here?"
It was Ginny's turn to talk. "We were waiting for you to get here for the meeting to start. Of course now Dumbledore is gone, so we can't start anyways."
Neville grinned. "Dumbledore says we are all allowed to come to meetings now. My Gran wasn't too pleased. Since we go to the Wizengot day after tomorrow, well actually by now its just tomorrow, and that's what tonight's meeting is about, she brought me."
As Neville spoke, Harry noticed Moody and Mrs. Longbottom come back into the room. The soft look faded from Mrs. Longbottom's face as soon as she was out of the room. From across the way, Harry couldn't hear what was being said. He could however, tell from the new expression the man was being berated again. Professor McGonagall did not come out but Harry could see her in the background of the room. Her hair was not in it's usual bun, but the tangles were gone. After Mrs. Longbottom walked away, Moody remained to keep watch at the door.
Finding it odd that Moody felt the need to still stand guard inside the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, Harry put aside the questions he wanted to ask Hermione and excused himself from the group to go investigate.
Ever vigilant, Moody noticed Harry approaching. With a wave of his wand, the door closed. Watching both of Moody's eyes follow after Professor McGonagall until the door closed safely behind her, Harry had a sudden revelation. Before he could think to stop himself, he had said it aloud.
"You're in love with her."
The natural eye turned to him, while the blue one kept vigil through the door. Moody said nothing.
Suddenly feeling very awkward, Harry wanted nothing more than to have not said the last few words. But having already said them, he couldn't help but explain. "Sorry. It's just the look in your eyes…err well eye at least, the way you watch her…It's the way Ron looks at Hermione." He finished boldly, looking Moody directly in the eye. "You should tell her."
Moody returned Harry's gaze for a moment before stating matter-of-factly, "I have known Minerva almost all of her life. She will never see me as anything but a monster."
Seeing Harry's fallen expression, Moody went on. "No, I don't mean my face and leg. She could never be that shallow. I mean the person on the inside."
Moody gave a twisted half smile while looking past Harry at someone entering the house. "Besides, I thought you were supposed to be one of the clever ones? Surely in five years you picked up on something."
Harry was silent as Moody walked away. Moody stopped when he reached the newly arrived Albus Dumbledore. They were close enough that Harry could hear Moody's report.
Dumbledore glanced at Harry and sent him a smile. Unsure if Harry was still angry at him, Dumbledore did not try to approach him. Harry returned a small smile at Dumbledore in greeting, but kept his distance. Oddly enough, after the nights events, he was feeling happier and more secure, but he wasn't ready to completely let go of his anger at Dumbledore just yet. Still the small smile seemed good progress to Dumbledore, because a twinkle came to his eyes before he turned back to Moody.
"I see Harry has arrived safely. What happened?"
Harry could tell Moody was sequencing his statements carefully. "Everyone arrived safe. One small injury, a broken wrist, after the fact. It has already been taken care of. Did you know Minerva was coming?"
The startled look on Dumbledore's face clearly answered that question. Moody smirked. "I would certainly love to know that woman's source of information. If I asked her, I'm sure I would just be told it was common sense we were moving him tonight or a song and dance about wind conditions. I don't buy it and I still would like to know how she managed to be at 4 Privat Drive all day fourteen years ago, before anyone even - "
"Moody!" Interrupted Dumbledore, "What happened with Minerva? Where is she?"
Harry had never seen Dumbledore look frantic before. Moody caught the look as well and began to explain.
"She is fine Albus. We were being followed and some of us stopped to deal with it. I sent Minerva and Potter ahead. It was a trap. I don't know the details, you will need to talk to Potter for that, but by the time we caught up with them…Minerva and Potter had taken care of things."
"Where is she?"
Moody motioned behind him to the door. Without another word, Dumbledore crossed to the door.
Harry had a good view into the room when Dumbledore opened the door. Professor McGonagall was at the window, one hand still at the pendant on her neck. As soon as Dumbledore entered, they both began to cross the distance. Harry looked on as they met in the middle and embraced. There was no awkwardness, it looked as if it was something they did every day. Professor Dumbledore's back was to Harry, but he imagined the man's face had something like the look of relief and affection clearly displayed on Professor McGonagall's face.
With a flick of his wand, Moody closed the door giving the two Professors some much needed privacy. "Go find a new hobby Potter. Peeping isn't very rewarding."
Both eyes facing forward, Moody walked away.
As they landed outside 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry again felt his grief for the loss of his Godfather. Now, however, he finally began to realize even without Sirius, he was not alone. His family might be gone, but outside with him and waiting inside for him were other people who cared for him.
Before they could even reach the door, it opened of its own accord. Out stepped a hat with a stuffed vulture attached. At once, Harry recognized the older woman wearing it and hid a smile at the memory of a certain boggart. As she began to berate Mad-Eye Moody, Harry felt a large upsurge of sympathy for both the auror and Neville Longbottom.
"What took you so long, Alastor? We have all been waiting here worried sick. The group after yours is already back and the next one is due. You should have been here -"
As the woman scanned the group, her gaze fell on Professor McGonagall and her voice faltered for a moment. Looking at the young, at least to her, woman she took in the sight of the disheveled woman cradling a broken wrist with dried blood still spattering her dress. Mrs. Longbottom frowned, but not unkindly. In a much calmer voice, she continued speaking.
"Come on inside, Minerva. Let's get you cleaned up."
She sent a piercing look at Moody. "You know better, Alastor. She shouldn't be out like this. Not with things the way they are. It's not safe for her."
Turning back to Professor McGonagall, she spoke again. "Come with me dear, I can fix that wrist easy enough. Merlin knows, Neville has given me more than enough practice. We'll just find an empty room."
When McGonagall made no move to go with Mrs. Longbottom, the woman spoke again. "If you prefer, I can get Molly Weasley. She's in the kitchen."
McGonagall took only a moment to respond. "No. No, need to bother Molly. I am certain you can manage it."
Mrs. Longbottom gave a reassuring smile. The two women walked off together to the sitting room. It didn't start off empty, but Mrs. Longbottom quickly had it cleared out and closed the door.
As another group of aurors landed, Harry asked, "What other groups?"
Moving into the house, Loki explained. "Rather than send a single large escort like last summer, small groups have been leaving your aunt's house every fifteen minutes all night. The hope was to confuse any Death Eaters and draw them out to attack the wrong group. We suspected the reason Lucius was asking for a trial was to give Voldemort a chance to get you out in the open."
Moody snorted. "Didn't quite work like planned, but you arrived safe so mission accomplished."
"Kind of risky though." said Harry. "I mean they picked the right group. With so few of us, it could have turned out very differently."
Loki shook his head. "You were with Kitten. She would never let anything bad happen to one of her children."
Harry was stunned. Suddenly something clicked in his mind. The sensation he felt when Professor McGonagall touched his skin, that pleasant burning. Loki was related to her and he felt burning when he touched her too. Harry was not yet an adult by wizard standards so maybe the enchantment didn't actually harm him yet. If changelings hid their children in other families….
The shock in his voice was incredible. "Professor McGonagall is my mother?"
Loki looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Charms and potion lessons are all well and fine, but what ever happened to Literature? Children today have no sense of figurative and metaphoric."
Watching Loki walk away in disgust, Harry noticed the portrait of Mrs. Black remained covered and silent.
Still blushing, Harry asked Moody a question that had been bothering him since before the summer. "Why did our own Ministry people use four stunners on Professor McGonagall without warning?"
Moody looked Harry in the eye. "We haven't had a chance yet to talk about what happened earlier tonight, but I rather imagine from what you saw, you already know the answer to that. If you are going to attack Minerva McGonagall you catch her off guard and you damn well better incapacitate her with the first blow or you won't get a second chance."
Harry considered this for a moment before asking another question. "When they hit Professor McGonagall with the Crucio spell, it didn't effect her. She cast through it. I want to learn to do that. Is it occlumency or some other thing like that?"
The look on Moody's face told Harry he had said something very wrong. At Harry's words, he looked so horrified. There was something else in his face, but Harry couldn't place the other emotion. Malone's head was down, but Harry could see the flush spreading across his face. He turned to Lupin, but there was no help there either.
It was Tonks who gently broke it to him. "Harry, there isn't a way to resist Crucio. It's just something you can get used to after a while if you don't…"
Lupin was still watching the door Professor McGonagall and Mrs. Longbottom had disappeared behind. He turned to Moody and tilting his head hesitantly asked, "Do you think that's wise?"
When Moody didn't have an answer, Lupin started to head towards the door. Malone put a hand out to stop him. "The hell you will. Moody can go."
Lupin sighed. Moody nodded. After crossing the room he knocked and entered the sitting room.
Watching the exchange, Harry had finally had enough. Malone McGonagall's dislike of werewolves was sickening.
"Just because a person is a werewolf one night out of the month, doesn't give you the right to treat them like trash all the rest of the month."
The look of confusion on Malone's face made Harry think he might have made another wrong assumption.
Malone's response, "You're a werewolf?" confirmed it. "That's just lovely. I can honestly say it could not have happened to a nicer fellow."
"Bite me." was Lupin's cheeky reply.
Tonks looked outraged, but Shacklebolt wandered away from the group with a laugh.
Harry was reassured to discover Professor McGonagall's nephew was not in fact a racist. Remembering Lupin's comment about going to school with Malone, he assumed the dislike was something relating back to that.
Before he could say anything else to make himself look like an idiot, someone tried to smother Harry in a hug. When Hermione finally released him, she immediately began to rant.
"Harry we were getting so worried. We expected you a lot earlier. We heard you broke the restriction on the use of magic by underage wizards again. Then they said you used an Unforgivable on a Ministry owl trying to deliver a warning letter to you. Dumbledore went to find out what happened and straighten everything out with the Ministry. What were you thinking?"
Harry didn't even try to answer Hermione as now Ginny pulled him into a hug. Looking up, he saw Ron, Neville and Luna standing alongside Hermione. He gave a wave to the others.
"Oi Harry." Ron grinned.
"What are you doing here?" Looking further into the house, for the first time he noticed the rather large crowd of people milling around the Black house for the early morning hour and amended the question. "What are all of these people doing here?"
It was Ginny's turn to talk. "We were waiting for you to get here for the meeting to start. Of course now Dumbledore is gone, so we can't start anyways."
Neville grinned. "Dumbledore says we are all allowed to come to meetings now. My Gran wasn't too pleased. Since we go to the Wizengot day after tomorrow, well actually by now its just tomorrow, and that's what tonight's meeting is about, she brought me."
As Neville spoke, Harry noticed Moody and Mrs. Longbottom come back into the room. The soft look faded from Mrs. Longbottom's face as soon as she was out of the room. From across the way, Harry couldn't hear what was being said. He could however, tell from the new expression the man was being berated again. Professor McGonagall did not come out but Harry could see her in the background of the room. Her hair was not in it's usual bun, but the tangles were gone. After Mrs. Longbottom walked away, Moody remained to keep watch at the door.
Finding it odd that Moody felt the need to still stand guard inside the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, Harry put aside the questions he wanted to ask Hermione and excused himself from the group to go investigate.
Ever vigilant, Moody noticed Harry approaching. With a wave of his wand, the door closed. Watching both of Moody's eyes follow after Professor McGonagall until the door closed safely behind her, Harry had a sudden revelation. Before he could think to stop himself, he had said it aloud.
"You're in love with her."
The natural eye turned to him, while the blue one kept vigil through the door. Moody said nothing.
Suddenly feeling very awkward, Harry wanted nothing more than to have not said the last few words. But having already said them, he couldn't help but explain. "Sorry. It's just the look in your eyes…err well eye at least, the way you watch her…It's the way Ron looks at Hermione." He finished boldly, looking Moody directly in the eye. "You should tell her."
Moody returned Harry's gaze for a moment before stating matter-of-factly, "I have known Minerva almost all of her life. She will never see me as anything but a monster."
Seeing Harry's fallen expression, Moody went on. "No, I don't mean my face and leg. She could never be that shallow. I mean the person on the inside."
Moody gave a twisted half smile while looking past Harry at someone entering the house. "Besides, I thought you were supposed to be one of the clever ones? Surely in five years you picked up on something."
Harry was silent as Moody walked away. Moody stopped when he reached the newly arrived Albus Dumbledore. They were close enough that Harry could hear Moody's report.
Dumbledore glanced at Harry and sent him a smile. Unsure if Harry was still angry at him, Dumbledore did not try to approach him. Harry returned a small smile at Dumbledore in greeting, but kept his distance. Oddly enough, after the nights events, he was feeling happier and more secure, but he wasn't ready to completely let go of his anger at Dumbledore just yet. Still the small smile seemed good progress to Dumbledore, because a twinkle came to his eyes before he turned back to Moody.
"I see Harry has arrived safely. What happened?"
Harry could tell Moody was sequencing his statements carefully. "Everyone arrived safe. One small injury, a broken wrist, after the fact. It has already been taken care of. Did you know Minerva was coming?"
The startled look on Dumbledore's face clearly answered that question. Moody smirked. "I would certainly love to know that woman's source of information. If I asked her, I'm sure I would just be told it was common sense we were moving him tonight or a song and dance about wind conditions. I don't buy it and I still would like to know how she managed to be at 4 Privat Drive all day fourteen years ago, before anyone even - "
"Moody!" Interrupted Dumbledore, "What happened with Minerva? Where is she?"
Harry had never seen Dumbledore look frantic before. Moody caught the look as well and began to explain.
"She is fine Albus. We were being followed and some of us stopped to deal with it. I sent Minerva and Potter ahead. It was a trap. I don't know the details, you will need to talk to Potter for that, but by the time we caught up with them…Minerva and Potter had taken care of things."
"Where is she?"
Moody motioned behind him to the door. Without another word, Dumbledore crossed to the door.
Harry had a good view into the room when Dumbledore opened the door. Professor McGonagall was at the window, one hand still at the pendant on her neck. As soon as Dumbledore entered, they both began to cross the distance. Harry looked on as they met in the middle and embraced. There was no awkwardness, it looked as if it was something they did every day. Professor Dumbledore's back was to Harry, but he imagined the man's face had something like the look of relief and affection clearly displayed on Professor McGonagall's face.
With a flick of his wand, Moody closed the door giving the two Professors some much needed privacy. "Go find a new hobby Potter. Peeping isn't very rewarding."
Both eyes facing forward, Moody walked away.