A/N: Okay, you can hate me. Im so sorry that it took this long for the update. If it makes you feel any better, I now am a chapter ahead already! And now I have internet, so updating will be way easier. All in all, I am in a possition to wrap this fan fic up withing the next month.
I have been getting a lot of possitive fedback and some really good suggestions. Im sorry that the chapters arent that long. I feel that they cover the approriate amount of information with the right amount of snap. Im trying to work on it. Also, there is a bit more magic in this one. Yay! If I didn't get around to answering your question/concern, my appologies.
Without further ado....
As the pressure around Harry and Adam released the familiar smell of dust and stale sweets filled their nostrils. Without looking around to acknowledge the pop of another person appearing, Harry grabbed his younger brother by the scruff of the neck in one hand and wrenched open the trap door quickly tucking him into the passage below before drawing his wand and rounding to face his haggard looking father.
"Harry!" Adam yelped as his older brother stepped down so hard on the trap door that it nearly caught his fingers.
"Drop your wand," Harry snarled harshly his own wand shaking inches from his father's nose.
"Harry, I we cannot waste time with this—"
Cutting him off, Harry repeated his words in a dangerous whisper, angry tears collecting in the corners of his eyes.
James locked eyes with his son for a long moment before bending down and gently laying his wand on the ground, raising his hands into the air.
"Accio wand."
James watched as the narrow strip of wood flew through the air to be snatched in his eldest's hand with lightening reflexes.
"You can't be let it unless you are immobilized."
"I understand."
"I can't know if you are you or not," Harry's tone was almost apologetic through his anger.
James nodded and braced himself.
"Petrificus totalis, Muffliato, moblicorpus." In three swift movements, James's limbs were locked together, he couldn't hear anything, and he was caught just before his face hit the ground. Harry left his immediate line of vision and moments later returned with a cloth that he tied around his father's head obscuring his eyes. He ignored the protests of Adam and his worried yelps of "you're going to be in so much trouble."
James did not struggle, he did not try to protest. The fact that he gave up so easily made Harry's sense of unease grow by the step. As James relaxed into the holds, it felt like only moments later when he found himself on the ground hearing, all spells removed, a heated argument lighting up the background.
"—in the hell were you thinking!" Sirius's voice echoed off the stone walls around them jarring James's newly awakened senses.
"I was thinking that I didn't want the enemy—" Harry began.
"James is not the enemy! He had been fighting against the enemy since before you were even an itch in his pants!"
"I know but you weren't there!"
"I didn't have to be there I know my friend and I know that he would never—"
"HE WAS PUT UNDER THE IMPERIUS CURSE!" Harry finally bellowed.
The room fell silent and all eyes that were not already trained on the argument turned towards them.
"They took mum," he pressed on, seeming to deflate after his explosion. "They took mum and Imperused him to make sure that he got into our safe ground and brought me back. He wants to kill me. He said that if Dad didn't bring me to him, they would kill her."
Sirius's eyes filled widened and he looked between his godson and his best mate searching for a contradiction finding only two defeated Potter men.
Hermione walked forward cautiously and put a hand on Harry's arm. He turned to her only for a moment before he had to look away for fear of breaking down.
"Sirius," James spoke for he first time. "What Harry said is true. But I am not Imperused. Feel free to test me or do anything that you need to do to verify that it is me, otherwise You-know-who is going to kill my wife and come here looking for Harry. The battlements have been severly weekended by Dumbledore's death. We don't have the time for you to be second guessing me."
Sirius examined his eyes and nodded. Kingsley Shacklebolt walked forward, pulling out his wand. James turned and began to head toward the antechameber of the Great Hall. Several order members followed him.
"Harry?"
Harry looked up, his body and mind numb.
"This will take abousome time, then we can start planning," Sirius said. "Go get some rest."
"But—"
"I promise you will not be left out of the plans," He interrupted Harry's protests and followed his best mate to the small antechamber just behind the head table in the great hall where they were all gathered. A low rumble of talk in the hall and all eyes on Harry.
Questions were flying around like varying from Why him? to Is he the traitor?
Head spinning, Harry held fast to Hermione's hand and tugged her trough the small crowd of what had been only Christmas guests but was rapidly becoming mixed with students with questioning eyes and the teachers who had been left behind to watch th corner of the room Madame Pomfrey was nursing Professor McGonagall. It was as if everyone was afraid to leave the suport of the other people around them. The shaddow that had been threatening Hogwarts for years seemed to pressing it's nasty black nose against the windows. Safety had been threatened. The professors looked scared and on edge while the students looked curious. Harry could feel the weight of eveyone's gaze like hot irons on his skin. He bypassed his younger brothers who were finding their friends among those gathered and searched the room for the tail tell signs of Ron's form. It wasn't long before he spotted him trying to console a crying Kate.
He caught Ron's eye and without saying so much as a word, he grasped Kate's hand. They began to follow Harry and Hermione out of the filling Great Hall and began to scale the familiar trail to Gryffindor Tower. For once Harry didn't complain that his sister was following them, that she was invading the sanctity that had always been only the three of them. In the past few hours, she had somehow become one of them, not only a sister, not only a girlfriend, but one of their friends.
Their footsteps echoed loudly off of the cold stone walls of the castle. Portraits whispered as they tried to push through their neighbor's frames, trying to get as close to the action of the Great Hall. By Ron's side, Katie was quietly gasping for air as tears rolled down her face. Hermione tried desperately to hold back her own sobs as tears rolled down her face. Ron's face was set in a hard grimace of determinations as he held tight to Katie's shaking frame. Harry's head was spinning with a million thoughts.
The crack that had fractured his picture of a perfect life the night of their move less than a year before had finally split wide open and was bleeding trickles of who he thought he was all over the ruins of his family. For so long, the chaos that seemed to be a bedmate to the rest of the world had been kept out of the bubble that was Harry's life. Now his mother had been kidnapped. His Father may or may not be under the control of Voldemort. He himself was being hunted down. It was all too much.
"Password?" the Fat Lady intoned absentmindedly as her friend Violet whispered in her ear obviously filling her friend in on the gossip of the hall.
"Bezoar," Ron said.
All of them scrambled through the now open portrait hole, avoiding the questions that were shot back at them about being in the common room when they ought to be with the other students.
Hermione flicked her wand lazily at the lamps on the walls and the room was flooded with a warm glow that touched no one's heart. All of them sank into their normal seats before the fire and were silent for a few heartbeats.
"So your Dad is a traitor?" Ron asked bluntly.
Harry snorted and slid his hands down his face as he rolled his eyes.
"Ron, I think there is a little more to the story that we are currently unaware of," Hermione intoned, trying to keep her obvious annoyance from her voice.
It took Harry a moment more of processing before he began telling them all what had happened at the house after their departure. When he started, he could barely catch a breath. All of them sat in silence as he relayed the story. He was grateful, fearing that any break in his speech waould punch a hole through the last dam of self control that he was struggling to hold on to. As he came to the end of the tale, he stood, unable to hold back any longer and turned his back to them facing the fire as unwanted tears rolled down his cheeks.
They all sat in relative quiet digesting the information at hand.
"So," Ron began, "What are we going to do?"
Harry almost laughed. It was less than a year ago that they had sat in the same spot with the same question on their lips. How far less sinister the task ahead has seemed. How less close to home had things felt. Now the only decisions that faced them seemed dark and uncertain. There was no hint of excitement at the prospect of an adventure—no ring of hope lilting about the room. There was no joy.
And unlike last time, Harry already knew the plan that lay ahead, well at least part of it. He did not need Hermione's brains to figure it all out. He just didn't know how to say it to make them understand that it was the only way.
"Don't even think it." Hermione's voice was closer to him than he had expected and he jumped. "There is another way."
He smiled to himself as he wiped his tears away before turning to her. "I have to go," Harry said in a voice that sounded more brave and sure than he felt. "It is the only way."
"No!" Kate burst out, a fresh burst of tears streaking down her face. "You can't! Dad and Sirius and the rest of the Order, they will find a way to—"
"To what?" he cut her off staring her dead in the eye. "He has Mum and he is going to start picking all of you off one by one until he finds a way to me! I'm the 'loose end' and I won't see my family and those that I love die for me!"
"But—"
"I am not asking, I am telling!"
"You're my big brother!" she shouted. "We shouldn't have to choose between you and Mum! It's not fair!"
Harry gathered her sobbing form into his arms and held her as she shook. His mind took him back to the times when they were young and she had come to him in the middle of the night, tears streaming down her face and that same look of terror in her eyes. She had been too afraid to walk up the long flight of stairs that disappeared into the attic room that their parents had shared with the then-still-baby David. Their rooms being adjacent had made Harry's room the closest thing to safety. When they were young, he had simply told her funny jokes, or consentrated on her so hard on her stuffed pigmy puff that it would dance and coo, making her laugh until all the fear was gone, replaced by a peaceful sleep.
Those times were gone, though. He held her at arms length and tried his best to lie to her. "Don't think that way. I am going to go out there and get Mum back. Everything will be okay, I promise."
She nodded and turned took her seat back at Ron's side. Harry found himself suddenly happy that the two were together. RRon could be her strength now. At least she wouldn't be alone.
"What is our plan?" Ron asked again.
"Our plan? There is no our plan." Harry said pacing up and down the room. "You guys are going to distract and I am going to escape."
All three of them began voicing their protests at once. Finally Hermione's voice cut over the rest of them. "You can't go alone! You won't stand a chance of saving your mum or yourself!"
"We can help!" Kate piped up.
"But—"
"Listen, Harry, if you insist on playing the hero here, then you aren't going to go at it alone. We have plenty of time. We can come up with a plan before the others even realize that something had happened."
"But—"
"Sit down and shut it!" Hermione shouted, nonverbally summoning a roll of parchment, ink and quill to her and preparing for what was promising to be a long night indeed.
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