Chapter Three

Harry entered the kitchen and sat down on the chair closest to him. With a jolt, he realised where he was sitting; Sirius always sat here, he thought miserably and had to consciously stop a lump appearing in his throat. No, he thought, I will not let this get to me again- it's just a chair, at a table.

He must have shown something on his face and when people asked how he was feeling, said that he was alright, just slightly tired from the day's exertions. Mrs. Weasley's voice sounded from the other end of the table.

"Are you sure Harry? You didn't look to good over there love." Again,. Harry reassured here that he was fine- then laughed as he explained that seeing Snape standing on his doorstep had been a big shock. This evidently didn't seem to satisfy Mrs. Weasley though.

"Oh, alright love, if you're sure. But you know you can always tell me if you need anything. I'm actually sure it might take some of that unnecessary weight off your shoulders if you tell me. No one should have to burden anything in silence on their own. Especially after all that you've been through lately "

Harry stabbed moodily at his potato and sausage- he knew what she was hinting that- and she wasn't being too subtle either. Why didn't she understand; he didn't want to tell anyone how he felt- there was nothing to tell! No-one would understand even if he did, they'd just try to say that they knew how he was feeling.

"I'm okay Mrs. Weasley, honest. I'm fine, I just don't want to talk about anything too deep at the moment- especially when I'm eating" Simple as it seemed, it was all he could summon up without turning the whole thing into an argument, and, with a headache already beginning to throb at the back of his head, he certainly didn't want to endure one of those. Or a lecture by Mrs. Weasley, come to that. However, unwanted as it was, this is exactly what happened.

"Yes, but Harry dear: you're still a boy. I'm not trying to degrade you, or take away the assurance that Sirius so confidently gave you; but while you are still a child, and I'm sure I speak for everyone in saying this," Mrs. Weasley paused to look around the table, daring the seated members to speak up against her, "you still need looking after and ultimately our help. Please tell me if you're upset, I can help- it's what a mother does." She looked earnestly in his direction, pleading with her eyes that he should understand.

Harry locked eyes with hers, he was flattered, but mainly stung by her words- surely she knew by know that, after all that he had been through and experienced, he wasn't a child! A timid voice piped up from the opposite end of the table.

"Well dear, maybe we should…um… let Harry decide whether he wants to talk about anything at the moment. After all, we can't make his decisions for him all of his life. We don't want to smother him too much, do we?"

An embarrassed and all to pregnant silence fell across the room as Mrs. Weasley turned in her chair to face her husband, placing all of her attention him, who- noting that he was in trouble- was slowly turning the same colour as his hair.

It was Mundungus who first broke the silence with an all too hurried suggestion of having some "stock" to look over and left the kitchen. The other members of the household, who had previously been stuck to their chairs in a petrified manner, soon seemed to spring to life. Bill jumped up from his chair, muttering something under his breath to the effect of checking the letter from Fleur had arrived and ran from the kitchen after Mundungus; Kingsley and Tonks looked at each other before claiming that they had to get back to Ministry to check some work that they had been previously working on and left in a very hurried manner. Alistair justified his excuse to leave, with a cough, that there was a sinister looking fireplace on the third floor that he wanted to look at and stumped out of the room. Charlie, recognising the tension in the air as a "pre-argument" situation, simply got up from his chair: only to return to grab the grinning twins by the scruff of their necks and haul them both out of the kitchen, knowing all too well that it would be best if they did not stay.

With unhidden dismay, Mr Weasley noticed that he would be left unaided to face inevitable the wrath of his wife and just sighed, took his glasses off and proceeded to polish them with the hem of his robes.

In just under five minutes, the party sitting at the table had decreased from a well rounded fourteen, to six: Mr. Weasley, Mrs. Weasley, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny. All of them, bar Mrs. Weasley, wanted to leave rapidly as the others had done, but they didn't- out of shear terror and loyalty, they had remained behind. Hoping that his absence would stop the argument from occurring, Harry started to rise from his chair: albeit slowly. He was stopped mid-rise by a sharp bark of, "Harry, sit down please".

Although her eyes had not left her now quivering husband, Mrs. Weasley knew full well the other happenings in the kitchen around her. With a trembling voice, she addressed her husband.

"What do you mean smother him, Arthur?"- She had stood up as she had been speaking, and now leaned forward on her hands that were placed firmly on the table in front of her. An audible gulp could be heard coming from Mr. Weasley's throat, before he finally gathered up his courage to squeak,

"Well, as I say dear: Harry is a young man now- and he might just want a bit of space right now." He paused and taking the silence from his wife as an invitation to keep going- he continued, albeit with a slight quaver in his voice.

" I know you're just trying to help dear, we all want to, but if Harry doesn't want to talk about anything that he's feeling, maybe we should just let him be. Besides, the staff are going to do all they can now to help him through his studies and we'll be here to help him through any emotional difficulties that he might encounter; even Severus has said that he would continue to teach Harry Occlumency again- provided that he doesn't look in his Pensieve any more." He finished with a small smile- although at first he had seemed quite scared, Mr. Weasley had built up confidence as he had kept going, despite the ever narrowing eyes of his wife.

"Are you saying I'm wrong Arthur in asking him to offload his stress? He's a child for goodness sake, he can't just suffer alone!"

"I know dear, I'm not saying he should, but if it's what he wants, then let him be. He'll come to us if he needs any help, wont you Harry?" Harry nodded his agreement. Mrs. Weasley then rounded on the other children- especially her own.

"And what do you two think about all of this?" she demanded, her voice squeaking with the increasing rage she was feeling. She fixed Ron first with her beady gaze, and demanded an answer with an authoritative sniff. Ron followed very closely in his father's footsteps, having noted that this might be the way to get out of an ear bashing. Finally, he plucked the courage to say a rather mature, and therefore unusual, comment.

"Well, I agree with both of you really, but in a way," Ron swallowed hard before speaking to his plate, "I disagree as well."

He looked up to find a very shocked looking Mrs. Weasley and a rather curious looking father. When prompted to explain his thoughts, he obliged, with more than a hint of worry in his voice. "Well, you both say that Harry is a wizard who has come of age- so surely that means he can make his own decisions- right?" With a nod from both of his parents, he continued, "So surely, it's up to him whether or not he tells us how he's feeling, what he sees in his dreams; sure he's still a teenager, but he is a mature one. He's gone through far in his school years than you have done in your entire lives, and with all respect, I doubt you ever will go through with anything like that." He concluded his comment on the situation with a shudder, "And I don't think I'd want to either."

For a moment, no one spoke. Each member of the small group was lost in their own thoughts: yet, predictably, it was Mrs. Weasley who spoke first. Turning to her youngest child, she asked all too calmly,

"I suppose you feel the same way too Ginerva?"

Full name, noted Ginny, not good. With a small sigh, she nodded: however, she didn't stop there. "Well, as Ron says, with all due respect Mum, Dad- it is up to Harry who he tells about his dreams and worries: and really, in my eyes, the best person to do that would be Lupin. He of all people knows what it's like to have nightmare-ish dreams, and loose a person dear to him. He's had a lot of that. Harry will also have Dumbledore to confide in if he needs any kind of advice or help."

Harry couldn't have felt more gratified towards Ginny at that moment. She of all people knew really how he was feeling; she knew what it was like to see things, to have had Voldermort having some sort of control over his mind. Harry made a conscious effort and gave a half-smile in her direction; he was sent a sympathetic one in return. Mrs. Weasley looked at Hermione, silently asking her if she felt the same as the others- this however, had no affect what-so-ever as Hermione's attention was fully absorbed by a fluffy ginger rug that had appeared and had settled itself across her lap. This seemed to be the final straw for Mrs. Weasley.

"Well, fine! I'm only trying to protect Harry from anything- seeing as he hadn't had much of this is the past. Everyone just seemed to let him get himself into danger and get hurt, even his own doing. No-one was there to stop him running straight into that mess at the Ministry and help him see sense, so what's going to stop him waltzing straight into the Dark Lord's Inner Circle itself!" She shrieked hysterically, waving her arms around to try and add emphasis where it wasn't needed. A rather hoarse yet contrastingly calm voice sounded from the doorway.

"I will Molly."

Everyone turned to see a very tired and rather nettled looking Lupin standing in the threshold of the kitchen. The fire that had been lit in the room to keep up the warmth illuminated his care-worn, exhausted looking face that boasted new scratches and bruises, and an all-too-thin body that seemed to be swamped in robes that appeared to be two sizes too big for him. He stepped forward into the room and sat down in the chair that had previously been occupied by Kingsley, but his eyes had never left Molly. He took a while to cross his legs (he did this with a rather pained look on his face) before he spoke again in his usual, rational manner.

"I realise that we haven't, as we had promised that we would, looked after Harry very well when it comes to checking that he was alright, both physically and mentally. We made our mistake when we weren't exactly, what you could say completely vigilant over him; and believe me Molly, it is something that I personally do not revel in." As he spoke, his voice seemed to grow more and more tired, but that did not hide the bite in that last comment. "I also realise that we need to improve our method of watching over him, seeing as you so rightly say that we did let him walk straight into the path of danger in the Ministry; but something that you must not forget to add in your lectures of our sloppiness in that area, is the fact that we did do our best to bring him back and get him out of that mess. A mess that we paid for most dearly." Lupin's voice seemed to cut through the silence of the room like a knife, adding even more emphasis to his words. His eyes, although reflecting the light of the fire, were completely cold and his mouth had formed a thin line on his already drawn-in face. Molly had sat back down in her chair and was being completely silent, her head bowing with every word that her challenger spoke. Now for most people, this might have been enough to silence a person, but not Mrs. Weasley. Hearing a pause in Lupin's speech, she looked up again- her eyes locked with his and she fought back with refreshed gall.

"I hear what you are saying Remus, but still with all due respect, that does not excuse what happened. That boy" she now pointed her finger with a sharp movement "needs to be protected twenty-four seven: no exception whatsoever. And I'm afraid, although I know that what you call "mistakes" are made: they cannot afford to be made here."

Throughout her speech, Harry had listened in unmasked fury. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Lupin had just given a very good way of ending a debate that could have turned into a full on row that could have cut deep wounds into both sides and had evidently hurt himself while doing so, and yet here she was challenging everything- again! A new voice joined the debate.

"Molly dear, don't make this any worse. We're all tired, no one really wanted this topic to arise like this; and I don't think any of us want to keep talking about it. Besides, what you have just said wasn't one hundred percent fair: no one could have prevented Kreacher from saying that Sirius wasn't here when Harry tried to find him, no one was in the house to say otherwise. There was nothing any of us could do."

Mrs. Weasley broke her stare with Lupin to turn to face her husband, before quickly looking back to Lupin again. Realising that she wasn't going to be able to say more in front of the children, she ordered them to go to bed. While the others willingly obliged, Harry remained- fury etched in every premature line that had formed across his face.

"What are you going to say?" he demanded. He wasn't going to leave now that it had gone this far. He wasn't faced with much choice of whether or not he was going to bed, as Lupin spoke before Mrs Weasley could.

"Harry, please, just go to bed. I don't want you to hear any of this if it gets violent." Harry didn't challenge this- he could hear the plea in his ex-Professor's voice and didn't want to make him anymore weary or pained than he already was.

Back in their room, Ron couldn't stop talking about the row that had occurred downstairs.

"I've never seen him look so angry and sad at the same time, and Mum! Well, all I can say is that I'd love to be a fly on the wall when that argument really does start. What about you? Harry?"

Harry remained silent with his back turned towards Ron, hoping that he would think that he was asleep. But for the rest of the night, while Ron slept, Harry ran through the events in the kitchen over and over in his head, thinking how much Mrs. Weasley really didn't understand, and how much he was going to need Lupin as well as support him. It was no surprise that Harry didn't get to sleep that night.