You could cut the tension in this room with a knife.
I don't regret shit. Not for a moment, but I can't pretend a film of resentment hasn't settled onto my shoulders as I continue to look at the witch and wizards surrounding me, their faces masks of caution illuminated by the firelight.
Try to be grateful.
I can't. Fuck that. All I can feel right now as that these people are manipulative douchebags, and that I hope to god they realize that that's how I feel and don't try to be obnoxious and friendly now or anything.
As though reading my thoughts, Albus Dumbledore rises from his armchair and makes his way to the door, Kingsley Shacklebolt close behind him. The other two don't move from their places, McGonagall in a stool next to my armchair, and Moody practically standing sentry two steps from me. They must have communicated silently, who would stay and who would go.
Dumbledore turns back to face me once he reaches the door. "I am going to summon the rest of the household," he explains, "to introduce you to our cause and keep the Order of the Phoenix on the same page." He hesitates a moment before adding, "I must ask that you keep the specifics of this arrangement between those of us in this room for the time being, I am not certain how to accurately portray this morning's events just yet."
Yeah, that's understandable. Shit is pretty whacked. So I nod at him, and he turns once more and leaves the room with Shacklebolt to rally the troops. Almost as an afterthought, Fawkes the phoenix waddles out the door behind its master.
Douchebag bird.
Once they're gone, I steel my shoulders, switch my brain to get-the-fuck-on-with-it mode, and attempt alternative conversation with my designated guard dogs.
"1996, huh?" I blindly snag a shortbread cookie and throw one of my legs haphazardly over the arm of the cushiony chair, "That means good 'ole Billy Clinton is up for re-election in the States. How are you all feelin' about that? Don't worry, I won't ruin it."
The subject change has floored them, it appears. McGonagall is looking at me as though I've grown nipples along my hairline.
Undeterred, I battle on, "Unfortunately, I'm pretty fucking unaware of UK music from this time period, unless…" a thought occurs to me, "The Spice Girls don't count, do they?"
Moody suddenly bursts forth with a growl, "NO THE SPICE GIRLS DON'T BLOODY WELL COUNT." He uses his great, scarred paw to scoop up several of the horrifying jam-centered cookies, turns on his heel, and stomps towards the door.
"Radiohead, then? Coldplay? The Kinks?" I gasp with sudden inspiration, "Oh my god! Is your favorite song 'Lola'?"
His mouth full of shitty cookies, Moody only manages an unintelligible growl, and a hand gesture I vaguely recognize as being technically vulgar in the UK, before he slams the door behind him.
I sigh and stuff another shortbread into my mouth, my eyes losing focus as they settle on the fire. With a start, I remember McGonagall only because she rises from her stool in order to sit in Dumbledore's freshly-vacated armchair.
I feel a new stab of unease as I study the severe-looking older woman. She looks every inch Maggie Smith from Harry Potter, down to the brooch at her throat. I can't get a read on her. Does she like me? Does she think I'm a shit?
My question is answered when her eyes begin to sparkle with humor, at what I can only assume was my incredibly hilarious and skillful ribbing of Alastor Moody. She rests her hands on the arms of the chair imperiously, and speaks to me in a soft, kind voice, "What is your name, dear?"
My brow furrows. Have we really gotten this far without them learning my name? Weird.
My mouth is full as I respond, "Finnie."
She allows a small, quaky smile, "I don't know that I have ever known a Finnie in my lifetime."
I shift a bit in my seat, and hurriedly swallow the rest of the cookie, "It's actually Sjofn. 'Seo-fin.' But, that's so, you know….no thank you."
She nods knowingly, "You are named after the Nordic goddess of love. That's quite ambitious of your parents."
"Tell me about it."
We share another smile, and then go quiet. Without further conversation, she leans forward and pours us each a fresh cup of tea. We sit in companionable silence while we wait for whatever is supposed to come next, and I'm grateful. It seems for fucking ever that I've had a moment to collect myself. Flying by the proverbial seat of my pants might be decent life skill, but it is draining.
About forty minutes later, the door opens and Kingsley is there. He pauses briefly and assesses our demure and ladylike silence – complete with tea – before his low voice carries, "Ladies, we have as many Order members as we could reach waiting for you in the kitchen. If you would come with me."
I place my tea back onto the table with nervous hands. Springing from my seat with an energy I don't actually feel – swear to god I could sleep for a month – I lead the way out the door.
Kingsley slips past me in order to walk ahead, and despite his brisk pace I do my best to absorb my surroundings. The walls are similarly paneled as the room we just left, and cobwebby sconces are evenly distributed with flickering candles as we approach a set of stone steps leading upward. We pass another door on the opposite side of the hall, and begin ascending the stairs, which are carpeted with a rich, burgundy runner that looks much cleaner than anything else I've seen so far.
The steps are corkscrewed, and I fucking hate them. Very claustrophobic. But as we emerge onto what is clearly the first floor of the dwelling, I realize that the lack of light was not necessarily a product of being in a basement so much as it was simply the aesthetic choice of the Order's headquarters. My memory returns to me, and I recognize that all the dark, grimy splendor I'm seeing is actually the Black Family Home. Turning a corner, we are in the foyer from which I can see the infamous portrait of Mrs. Black, her curtains drawn tight. Before I can absorb a crazy lot more, I'm ushered down a hallway and toward a three-step drop into what I'm sure is the kitchens, based on the amount of fucking noise.
I stop suddenly and grab Shacklebolt's sleeve. He halts too, and turns to me in surprise, so I make it quick.
"Who all is in there, exactly? I've read your story, remember, so I'd like to know now to minimize how much of an asshole I look like."
Understanding flits across his face, and he turns fully to face me. With no preamble he begins, "Tonks, Remus, The Weasley's, the kids are out of school, so they're here, plus a few of the Hogwarts professors, Mundungus, Hagrid can't make it but a couple Aurors may have arrived by now, Aberforth-"
"Ok ok ok – shit, fuck. So, everyone?" I spit out, alarmed.
Kingsley looks surprised that I'm surprised, "Well, yes." And without attempting to make sure that I'm good to go, he proceeds into the kitchen space.
I follow only after McGonagall has prodded me in the spine with her thumb. As I descend the couple of steps and turn the corner, my eyes are assailed by the sudden bright cheerful fuckery that is the kitchen. I wince.
Shit, fuck. It's like the high school lunchroom all over again.
The room goes dead silent. Not wishing to instigate full eye contact with 30 different people just yet, I do a mellow scan of the seats left in the room – I identify Dumbledore, sitting at the crux of the misshapen circle of people – and without focusing on any one face for too long, I see a seat next to Moody and make a beeline.
The kitchen space manages to be both spacious and cramped, likely due to the sheer number of folks in it at the moment. Mismatched chairs, benches, and stools are both occupied and unoccupied and the distinct smell of a massive roast dinner is easily identifiable from against the wall containing access to the ovens, stoves, counters and whatnot. I duck a couple of times to avoid hanging pots and pans, until I reach my goal. I realize once I'm there that Moody is glowering at me, so I smile cheerfully in response. McGonagall has followed me thus far, but at this point veers just slightly so that she ends up standing at the front of the room, on Dumbledore's right.
Unfortunately, now that I've sat, there's no way to avoid looking into the sea of faces. The first feature in the crowd that draws my eye is actually Fleur's hair—holy shit it's like beacon. I keep my face composed and try to give an unruffled air of slightly reckless swagger which, honestly, comes a bit too naturally. My gaze flicks over quite a few gingers, a black-haired boy with glasses, my smile brightens a tad when it reaches Hermione – she always was one of my favorites – but finally, I make myself turn my attention to Dumbledore. After which I raise an eyebrow as if to say, 'Let's get this show on the road.'
Dumbledore's eyes twinkle at me for just a moment before he turns his face toward the rest of his audience. After which, I immediately allow my gaze to zone out on the foot of the chair directly in front of mine (which I think holds Tonks, as pink hair is a distinctive feature. Not all casting choices were perfect though, it would seem).
"Everyone, if I may have your attention," he begins.
Hmm. People were likely still a little distracted by my 'clearly does not belong here' type of entrance.
He continues in a grave voice, getting right to the point, "At the end of the last school term, I shared with many of you my fears that the destiny of the Order and its members has been irrevocably tampered with." He pauses for effect, and I resist the urge to lift my eyes just yet, but my brows lower and I listen hard.
"After some research and consultation with the centaurs, who, as many of you know, were most distressed by the events which plagued us last month-"
"Yes, what was the deal with all that, then?" I raised my eyes finally to see that it was the black-haired youth in glasses who could only be Harry Potter that had interrupted the Headmaster, "They didn't used to give a rat's arse about us or the war. Then suddenly, on the last day of exams, they storm the castle and make a huge fuss."
Most of the younger student-age participants sit at an angle from my chair, so that I am seeing them in profile. Tonks' vibrant hair blocks a significant amount of my view, but closest to us beyond her is Hermione, who keeps stealing glances at me.
Curious girl.
A tall ginger sitting next to Harry – Ron? – leans toward him in order to murmur loud enough for most of us to hear, "Didn't quite mind them taking the piss out of Umbridge though, right mate?" A slender redheaded girl beside him lifts the back of her hand up to her mouth to hide a smile. "Whatever they were on about led to that being bloody well handled, at the very least," he finishes.
Dumbledore, with much more patience than he showed me an hour earlier, takes this interruption in stride. "Yes, it would seem that the Hogwarts High Inquisitor will not be returning to her post this coming term, as she is continuing treatment for phobia-related, post-traumatic stress disorder at St. Mungos." He sighs, as though this is not necessarily a good thing, "To return to the issue at hand-"
But the redheaded girl pipes up, "Does this mean you'll be returning to Hogwarts, Headmaster?"
An older woman seated a pace behind the schoolchildren lightly whispers a quick admonishment to Ginny for the interruption. With a start I recognize Molly Weasley, her worried and serious face at comical odds to the flour coating her hands and hair.
After a quiet moment, Ginny offers a small, "Sorry, sir."
People around the room are fidgeting a lot, and murmuring can be heard breaking out in sporadic bursts. This lot has clearly not been on the same page for quite some time.
I move my gaze back to Dumbledore as he begins to speak again, this time louder, "Yes, my dear, I have been offered a full apology by the Ministry for the events which transpired this past year that led to the warrant for my arrest. And, if I may add, I intend to do my best here at this time to fully disclose all those unanswered questions which I know many of you have been dying to ask for several weeks. So if you would just bear with me, I assure you I have every intention of giving as complete a summary as possible."
Ginny blushes to the roots of her hair. I nearly scoff.
Yeah, ok, he did not scream at you. Calm down.
Moody must have felt my shoulders jump with the inclination, because he glances at me with his magical eye. Reaching the same comparison that I did, his eye moves back to Dumbledore, but a grin breaks out on his face and he lets out a small, "Heh."
My stomach warms unexpectedly. Something as simple as sharing this brief inside joke does wonders for my disposition – I suddenly feel more confident that everything is going to be alright, that I'm not going to feel like a worm ground by a boot heel all the time. I turn to face forward in time to see Tonks whipping her head around quickly, caught watching us.
Dumbledore continues his rather somber pronouncement, "This apology to me, and subsequently to Sirius Black, was inspired, in short by the very bloody event by which Lord Voldemort made his reentry into the wizarding world a few short weeks ago. During which, he personally assassinated eleven witches and wizards quite publicly on the steps of Gringotts. He and a select group of his Death Eaters, including Bellatrix Lestrange and Peter Pettigrew, stormed the bank with the intention of breaking into a high-security vault, and I'm afraid to say that, after torturing, killing, and imperiusing many of the goblins who had the misfortune of being at their posts that day, they were successful. And that the vault they entered and pilfered, was my own."
An awed sort of silence follows, and it's clear that Dumbledore is allowing those of us, for which this news is new, a moment to process.
Personally, my brain is blank. None of this makes any sense.
I mean, yeah the whole 'magic is real' thing will take time to sink in, but even OUTSIDE of that this shit does not make sense.
Whatever happened with the Department of Mysteries prophesy adventure? Centaurs storming the castle? THAT never fucking happened. What on earth could have changed Voldemort's trajectory so completely? Or, is it possible that this all truly happened in the history of wizard kind, and that J.K. Rowling's books were edited with fictionalizations? I'm going to need to figure that out.
Something Dumbledore said swam to the forefront of my turbulent thought process, and my head snaps up from its reverie.
Turning to Moody, his magical eye meets mine almost immediately and I can feel my face contort in confusion as I say, much louder than I intended, "Sirius Black?"
Moody's eyebrows lower, and he opens his mouth to speak. But before he can, somewhere in front of my chair, past Tonks and past the kids, drawls in a deep voice, "Present."
Before I can slow down and think, I shoot up out of my chair. The source of the voice is a man sitting on Harry's left, farthest away from me. His long legs are stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles, and he's slouched down in his seat with his arms crossed – the perfect picture of carelessness. He's looking at me – well, everyone is fucking looking at me – with a touch of confusion but a little bit of arrogance, like he's used to his name being a talking point.
My mind turns off again.
He looks like fucking Johnny Depp.
Like an older version of the Gilbert Grape Johnny. But still, it's uncanny. I can see the whisper of tattoos at the base of his throat, the edge of his wrists, and even at his knuckles.
Totally inappropriately, my stomach turns over and my lady parts clench just a tad.
Ok, Finnie, that was unnecessary.
My mind begins spinning once again, because that's sure as shit Sirius Black. And once I accept this, the flirty endorphins I got a moment ago seeing his handsome ass disappear, and I can feel the blood drain from my face.
I thought they said it was 1996. As in, the beginning of the sixth book – right?
"I thought you said it was 1996," I blurt unceremoniously to Dumbledore, McGonagall, whoever. I can't tear my eyes off Sirius.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
My hands are shaking in my sleeves, and I feel distinctly ill. The fidgeting and murmuring amongst the other members of the Order has resumed with a vengeance. Dumbledore must recognize my distress because he is quiet as he inquires, "What is it? What is wrong?"
No, they need to answer me. "I thought Harry was sixteen," I say, a little louder, and my eyes flit to the boy for just a second.
The fear is morphing into anger now.
Just how fucked up is this world I'm supposed to be fixing?
"He'll be sixteen in two weeks," Sirius says with an undercurrent of annoyance. His eyes are narrowed at me, and he's sat up in his chair more securely.
Oh, oh no. Something really is wrong.
Why the fuck aren't you dead?
I'm shaking now. They didn't tell me; they didn't divulge the full truth of whatever is going on here. They made me believe that I was agreeing to wartime servitude by the terms of the war in the story that I understood – not by whatever stage is set here after they've fucked with the timeline of history.
Oh god. OH GOD. Sirius never died. This means that the fight for the prophesy never happened – does Harry even know about the prophesy? Is it even possible for him to become the same person he had to be in order to defeat Voldemort in the books? What else haven't they told me?
Dumbledore rises suddenly from his chair and captures my eyes with his. "Come with me, now," he commands in a low tone.
[MAD-EYE MOODY]
Alastor Moody found himself standing as well, leaning heavily on his good leg like usual. The spunky, if reckless, muggle girl next to him looked fit to explode about something. He had a bad feeling about whatever has her in such a state – something to do with Sirius.
Dumbledore best get her away from the others before she says something we don't want 'em knowing just yet.
Shaking with a rage that he recognizes from earlier, when they cornered her into helping them – 'into doing the right thing' he thinks furiously, correcting himself – Moody herds the ticking time bomb of a chit through the throng of onlookers, toward where Dumbledore is now moving. They meet the Headmaster in front of the open larder. A relatively roomy thing, it seems Albus has no interest in directing this bloody circus too far from the rest of the meeting.
Suppose he wants to handle this quick-like.
Minerva arrives a second later, close behind Albus, and he ushers her into the larder. The girl follows with no direction, Moody's magical eye seeing the riotous black power roiling about in her gut and in her head, a sure sign that whatever has her so distressed, also has her angry and defensive enough to be pulling on that inner demon.
Dumbledore begins to enter the small space as well, and turns briefly back to Moody to shake his head that he should not follow them, before shutting the pantry door firmly behind the three participants. Odds are, the room is going to be mighty cramped as it is.
Moody turns his back to the closed door and stands guard, surveying the mass of faces which convey shock, confusion, annoyance, and fear in equal parts. Tonks keeps trying to catch his eye and mouth 'What is it? What's goin' on?' but he pointedly ignores her. Arthur Weasley and Sirius have risen from their seats, looking as though they want to confront the situation. Arthur opens his mouth and begins, "Mad-Eye, really now – "
Instinctively, Moody rolls his magical eye backwards to the three behind the cupboard door when, apparently before anyone in there had thought to cast a muffliato, the muggle girl finally lets loose. Her words, though muffled, resonate throughout the kitchen.
"WHAT, IN THE ACTUAL FUCK, DID YOU PEOPLE DO?"
Kingsley, rounding the standing, shocked figures of Sirius and Arthur, points his wand immediately at the closed door behind Moody and says, "Silencio."