Chapter 3:

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.

Here's the new chapter, sorry it's short and that it took so long.

This story will only be updated occasionally, just letting you know.

Flashback:

"Hey dad, can you help me with this?", Will's immature voice sounds subdued.

Giving him a grin, James replies, "Of course son, is that your summer homework from Hogwarts?".

Will looks forlorn, "Yea, we have to name ten different charms, their uses and how to cast them. It's so hard!"

James looks amused, "Well, have you figured out which charms you're going to use?

"No, I can only think of four." Will's twelve-year-old frame starts to shiver like he's about to burst into tears.

"There there, calm down kiddo, I know it seems hard now but the more frustrated you get the harder it will become." James' voice is soft and comforting.

"I know, I know, I just never thought that learning magic would be so hard and boring." Will's sniffles seem to decrease.

"At least you get to learn magic at all." I muttered under my breath.

Apparently, it wasn't as subtle as I wanted.

James turns to me half in anger, half in guilt, and says sternly, "Harry, that's a terrible thing to say to your brother, apologize and go to your room."

I glance at my brother, he looks startled, as if he hadn't even thought about it.

James is looking at me expectantly, but I just glare at him and run out of the room.

I hate waiting.

Why can't Will just carry a mobile around like a normal person. Hell I'd even be ok if he had a pager.

Sirius forced me to wait for him at the Leaky Cauldron. I'm now sitting at one of the disgusting booths in the corner of the main room sipping a Firewhiskey and trying to remain inconspicuous behind yesterday's Daily Prophet. So far it seems to be working, the only looks I'm getting are from a Kneazle reading the newspaper, and an old crone who looks like she wants to steal my wallet.

Nothing suspicious.

Tom seems to glance in my direction every now and then as well. He seems worried that the moment a Death Eater walks through the door their supernatural muggle sense will tingle and they'll start shooting curses.

Newsflash Tom, Death Eaters aren't that smart.

Anyway, just as the clock is about to turn ten, when the meeting was supposed to start, Sirius walks into the room lazily, bids Tom a farewell, and makes for the door. I intercept him just as he puts his hand on the knob.

"Forgetting something Black?" I ask, my voice filled with sarcasm.

Sirius looks startled but studies me in an unconcerned fashion after taking in my muggle clothes. His expression turns to surprise when I remove my sunglasses, "Harry!" he exclaims loudly, "I was just looking for you, we need to go if we're going to make it to that meeting." I hide a snort as he tries to cover the fact that he forgot about me before frowning. "Shouldn't you, you know, keep it down?" I ask glancing subtly around. "Why?" he asks puzzled, "There are no listening charms around, I checked."

I barely resist the urge to face-palm.

"Never mind, let's just get out of here" I say. I'm really hoping Sirius didn't have a big influence on my brother.

Grimmauld Place looks exactly like it did when I used to come as a kid.

As Sirius leads us through the main hall I can see the evidence of how old and unkempt this place is. The peeling floral wall paper looks like it might have once been white and purple but age has turned to a near solid gray. Cracks give the corners an unsteady feel, like they might be more suited to a prison. There are no windows, and the whole hall is lit by light spilling out of the doorways on either side. It's easy to see that people live here though. For one, whenever someone moves upstairs, the whole ceiling shakes and the smallest amount of dust falls. I can tell that without magic this place wouldn't last a week.

Sirius looks slightly abashed, "Well it was definitely worse before I inherited it."

I give him a look, "Sirius I've been here before, you know, I remember."

Now he just looks embarrassed, "Oh right, sorry I forgot."

I ignore the unintended insult, and look around the place, "So where's this meeting?" I ask.

This seems to wake Sirius up, "Oh! Just through here."

He leads me through the second door on the right and with an unnecessary flourish of his hand presents me with a large empty room complete with a long table.

I look around unimpressed, "Is this some kind of joke?" I say looking at Sirius, "Where is everyone? The meeting was supposed to start 5 minutes ago."

He looks abashed again, "Well they usually don't show up on time. I mean even Dumbledore is always at least a half hour late."

I stare at him exasperatedly, "What kind of operation are you running? How do you expect to keep up with the Dark Lord if you don't even have the discipline to show up at meeting on time."

I'm honestly shocked by this, no military force, no matter how small, would ever maintain discipline this badly. How do they organize themselves or, more importantly, how do they fight together if they can't be bothered to show up at meetings on time?

A gruff voice answers my outburst, "We don't keep up with the Dark Lord. It's been a problem with this Order since it was founded."

I turn, startled. The man standing in the doorway, looks like someone put his face in a meat grinder. A mane of pale dirty red hair frames a squat face complete with several scars. He is dressed in uninspired wizard robes and carries a gnarled cane. The strangest part of him though, was a massive swirling eyeball placed over his left eye like a gruesome eyepatch.

I knew who it was immediately, "Mad-Eye Moody I presume?" I say politely but still stilted at the former revelation.

"Aye lad," he says frowning, "And who might you be? I don't think I've seen you around here before." Great, now he's fingering his wand.

"My name is Harry Potter, I'm looking for my brother, Sirius invited me." I say quickly, I could already tell this was not someone I wanted to piss off.

Mad-Eye evaluates me carefully, "Black, have you checked him for Polyjuice?"

Sirius looks startled at being addressed so abruptly. "Well…" he hesitates, "Of course, I remember now, I checked him just before we apparated here." His lie might have been more convincing to a five-year-old.

"Did you now?" Moody asks sarcastically, "Well then maybe you won't mind me checking again." He looks angrily at Sirius, then turns to me as if to test my trustworthiness.

I shrug, "Go ahead, I got nothing to hide."

Moody's expression doesn't change at the statement, he removes his wand and casts a few diagnostic spells.

"He's clean," he announces after a solid five minutes of casting, man this guy is paranoid.

Moody turns back to Sirius and glares, "You're very lucky Black, if this had turned out to be an imposter, I would've killed you myself." He glances at me again. "As it is, we still don't know who this guy is, or what his motives are. For all we know he could be a spy for the Dark Lord."

I meet his gaze evenly, "I don't think the Dark Lord uses squibs for spies, Moody."

Ha, that shut him up.

Moody seems to reevaluate me, before turning back to Sirius, "What the hell did you bring him here for. This is no place for a squib." He says angrily, "I say we just Obliviate him then toss him back out on the street."

Sirius seems to take offence to that, "Hey! He's Will's brother. Apparently Will asked him to help us."

Moody sneers, "How the hell can a squib help us defeat the Dark Lord?"

I stare back at him coolly, "I have plenty of experience with terrorism." They both look at me sharply, "Not to mention I'm probably better disciplined than all of your vigilantes combined." I add on as an afterthought.

Moody sneers again, "And what experience with terrorist would a squib like you have?"

I meet his eyes, or eye as it were, evenly, "Well considering the British military has been fighting in the Middle East for almost a decade now, I think we know what we're doing."

Moody and Sirius seem surprised.

"You joined the military?" Sirius asks, "When?"

I shrug, "If you and my parents had been paying any attention to what I was doing you would have known that I entered the Royal Military Academy right out of secondary school. I've been doing it ever since."

I leave out the fact that I left the military a two years ago.

I catch Moody's eye, the real one, he doesn't say anything but there's a tiny expression on the grizzly auror's face.

Is that...respect? It's gone before I can make it out.

Instead, he turns to the rest of the room, "We should get this meeting started.", he ambles over to one of the chairs alone the far side of the table.

He's right, while we were talking about five other people showed up. They keep glancing at us subtly, or at least trying to be subtle.

As I take my seat at the end of the table I get a lot of curious looks but no one says anything.

I guess if I'm good enough for Moody, I'm good enough for them.

My presence is slowly forgotten as more and more people filter into the room and the level of conversation rises.

I observe quietly as different people arrive, looking for familiar faces.

There's an attractive woman with bright pink hair arguing with a large red headed woman who emits a mother hen vibe. I'm pretty sure her son was my brother's best friend when we were kids.

I also recognize Kingsley Shacklebolt talking in low tones with Moody, they periodically glance up at me and whisper some more.

Finally, after almost a half hour of waiting, Albus Dumbledore graces us with his presence.

"Welcome all, friends and allies" he begins unnecessarily dramatically. "I know you all have places to be and things to do so we'll just jump right in. Let's start with reports."

He turns to Lupin, "How are you doing with the werewolf packs Remus?"

Lupin somehow pales even more, "It doesn't look good headmaster. We already know that Greyback's pack joined the Dark Lord a year ago, and since then the other packs are more inclined to listen to him instead of a lone wolf like me." He drops his head slightly, "I fear it won't be long before more decide to join as well."

Great, I think to myself, just what we need, more enemies.

The headmaster only nods slightly, "Thank you Remus, we will continue to look out for this problem. Does anyone else have news they wish to share?" He looks around the room.

Just then the door bursts open. Everyone cranes their necks to see what the trouble is only to see my brother, striding in looking extremely annoyed.

"Don't worry," Will says sharply, "we're here."

My brother looks over his shoulder in frustration, "Come on guys, we're already very late as it is, the least you can do is try and move a little faster."

"We're coming," says a new voice, one that I haven't heard in a very long time, "Give us a second."

As Lily and James Potter finally enter to room Will turns to the headmaster, "Sorry we're late sir. Won't happen again."

Dumbledore just smiles, "Don't make promises you can't keep Will." He says eyes twinkling, "But no harm done, why don't you take a seat and we'll continue."

But Will had stopped paying attention to Dumbledore and was staring directly at me in shock.

"Harry?" he asks.