Harry's eyes widened and he tried to bolt from the room. George quickly stood in the doorway to block his escape, though, and as the boy looked frantically for an exit, Fred gathered him into his arms and carried him back to his bed. Harry seemed to realize there was no point in struggling and went slack, instead burying his face into Fred's chest.
"Harry?" Professor Lupin questioned gently.
"I don't want to talk about it," Harry mumbled.
"Why not?" Professor Lupin asked.
"It's the rules," Harry said hesitantly, burying himself even deeper into Fred's shirt.
"What do you mean?" Fred asked, tightening his hold around the boy slightly, worried.
"I can't talk about the Dursleys or I'll get in trouble," Harry whispered, seemingly more as a reminder to himself than as a response to Fred's question.
"Why would you get in trouble?" George, who had moved over to stand by the bed, questioned as he crouched next to Harry and gently pried his hand from Fred's shirt in order to hold it in his own.
"Because I'll make them look bad! And I should just be grateful that they took me in anyway," Harry told them.
"Harry, I'm going to ask you again, and this time I want you to answer me and ignore the rules," Professor Lupin spoke up. "Can you think of any reason why Fred and George would believe you're being abused?" Fred noted that he hadn't asked Harry if the accusations were true yet. He supposed Professor Lupin wanted to ease Harry into this conversation as much as he could without dancing around the subject.
"It could be because of the bars on the window," Harry admitted, peeking at the professor before burying his head back into Fred's shirt.
"What bars?" Professor Lupin questioned, looking at Fred and George curiously.
"When we went to pick Harry up from his relatives' last summer," George started.
"Ron was worried about Harry, you see, because he hadn't been responding to any of his letters," Fred explained.
"We had to break him out," George continued, "Because there were bars on his window."
"Ron was almost certain from far away that that was Harry's room too," Fred told the professor.
"And when we went to get his stuff, it was all locked in a cupboard downstairs," George said.
"And don't forget about the catflap on Harry's door, or all of the locks we had to pick to get into the cupboard," Fred reminded his twin.
"And why didn't you two come to a teacher with this before, then?" Professor Lupin asked the twins. Fred could tell he was frustrated with them.
"We were a little preoccupied with trying to keep him, Ron, and Ginny safe at school last year sir," George said defensively.
"And, we tried to tell mum about it when we got home, but she didn't believe us," Fred added.
"Harry, did you ever try to tell someone about your room?" the professor inquired gently.
"I thought somebody already knew," Harry said, shaking his head slightly.
"And why would somebody have known if nobody told them Harry?" Fred asked, confused.
"Because they knew about the cupboard, and they knew when I was moved to Dudley's second bedroom. I just assumed they knew about everything else too," Harry explained, and Fred's heart dropped.
"What do you mean, they knew about the cupboard?" George asked slowly, clearly afraid of what the answer was going to be.
"My first Hogwarts letter," Harry said. "It was addressed to the cupboard under the stairs."