Harry was more than a bit surprised when they landed in the middle of what looked like a muggle neighbourhood. Even though he wasn't quite sure what The Order of the Phoenix was, he was expecting to be in the wizarding world.

"Are we in the right place?" he ventured as Tonks and Moody unpacked his things from the broomsticks.

"We are," Moody replied. Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out a piece of parchment and handed it to Harry. "Read that."

Opening up the parchment, Harry read the words – Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, in Dumbledore's neat handwriting. Still not sure what it meant, Harry raised his head to ask, only to be confronted with the two houses they'd landed in front of slowly move apart and reveal a hidden house in the middle of the street.

"Awesome," he gasped, watching the house magically appear in the street as though it had been there all along.

"A bit of a drama if you ask me," Moody grumbled. "We wouldn't have to deal with all this fuss if the sodding Blacks had lived in a normal wizarding house."

"The house is wizarding, it's just the neighbourhood that's muggle," Tonks pointed out.

"Did you say Blacks?" Harry interrupted, sensing that Moody and Tonks could bicker for hours. "As in Sirius?"

"It was his parents house," Moody replied. "As you know, there are certain elements of our world based in London, but a lot of magical people live outside of the city as it's easier to go unnoticed in other parts of the country. However, the Blacks wanted to live in London, so they found a way to build their house in the middle of a muggle neighbourhood."

"Quite ingenious if you ask me," Tonks remarked.

"Quite foolish if you ask me," Moody shot back. "And people wonder why we have to deal with so many muggles seeing magical things."

"So why exactly are we at Sirius's parents house?" Harry asked, once again interjecting between the bickering pair.

"Sirius now owns the house, and he's allowing the Order to use it as Headquarters," Moody replied. "You'll get a proper explanation once we're in the house, but for now all you need to know is that the Order was founded by Dumbledore and it's made up of witches and wizards who are willing to fight the dark forces."

"Although how many of them will stick around remains to be seen," Tonks muttered.

"Nymphadora," Moody hissed in a low voice. "Now is not the time."

"Harry's going to find out the truth soon enough," Tonks retorted with a shrug as she picked up Harry's trunk and led the way to the front door. "Come on, Harry, everyone will be waiting for you."

Wondering just what was going on, and what exactly he was walking into, Harry silently followed Tonks into the house, with Moody bringing up the rear. Twelve Grimmauld Place was dingy and sparsely lit when Harry crossed the threshold, but he'd hardly had time to consider the fact the house was nothing like he'd imagined Sirius growing up in, when an awful screeching started from an ugly portrait on the wall. Harry was rather taken aback when the bitter looking witch in the picture shouted at him and spat hatred about blood traitors taking over her house.

"Ignore her," Moody said as he yanked a curtain over the portrait, which muffled her cries. "She is not happy with our presence here."

"So I gathered," Harry murmured. "And I'm assuming that charming woman was Sirius's mother."

"She is," Tonks confirmed with a nod as she neatly stacked all of Harry's belongings beside the bottom of the stairs. "Just leave things here, Harry. Your stuff can be sorted later."

Gently placing Hedwig's cage on top of his trunk, Harry turned and followed Tonks down a dim corridor. At the end of the corridor was a partly open door, and before he even reached the door, Harry could see light spilling from the room. He could also hear voices, but it sounded to him as though people were arguing and sniping at each other. Still, the noise didn't stop Tonks from pushing open the door and entering a large kitchen.

Harry tentatively followed Tonks into the kitchen, and the second he appeared in the room, everyone fell silent. At one end of the large kitchen table sat the Weasleys – Molly, Arthur and their four youngest children. Professor Dumbledore sat at the opposite end of the table, along with Professors McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout. Hagrid was sat at the middle of the table next to the former Defence Professor, Remus Lupin and a couple of other people Harry didn't recognise. However, Harry didn't get a chance to say hello to any of them as Sirius rose from his seat on the other side of Remus and pulled him into his arms.

"Harry, it's so good to see you," he said jovially.

"It's good to see you too, Sirius," Harry replied with a grin. "All of you," he added, glancing around the room and smiling at everyone else, especially Ron as he'd missed his best friend.

"Sit down Harry, and I'll make you some food," Molly said, jumping to her feet. "You must be hungry. And tired. Maybe an early night is in order."

"No, I'm not tired," Harry said as he slipped into a spare chair beside Sirius and looked around the room. He could feel the tension in the air, and he wanted to know what was going on. "Is this about me?" he asked in a quiet voice. "Are you all stressed about my hearing at the Ministry? Do you think I'm going to be kicked out of Hogwarts?"

"No-one is kicking you out of Hogwarts, Harry," Dumbledore said in a decisive voice.

"So what's going on then?" Harry demanded. "I can tell something is going on, and I'm well aware that people were arguing before I entered the kitchen."

"You need to tell him, Albus," McGonagall said, her tone of voice sounding distinctly frosty to Harry.

"Yeah, we all know what's going on," Tonks added as she and Moody also sat down at the large table. "Harry deserves to know the truth."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?" Harry asked warily, glancing around the table at all the solemn faces.

"No mate, you won't," Ron said heavily, and Harry wondered if his best friend had been crying.

"Okay, I'm ready," Harry said as Molly handed him a cup of tea and slid a plate with a large slice of corned beef pie smothered in gravy in front of him.

"I guess we should start with some background," Dumbledore said wearily, and Harry got the distinct impression that whatever was going on, the headmaster would rather not tell him. "This is the Order of the Phoenix," he explained, gesturing to the group around the table. "Or at least part of it. I first founded the Order during Voldemort's first rise to power. We were a way of fighting back, and doing our best to keep the world safe."

"Sounds like a good idea," Harry said when Dumbledore paused.

"It was. And I still believe we stand for what is best in our world," he added, sounding almost defiant.

At his words, Professor McGonagall gave a very unladylike snort, while a couple of other people shook their heads. Even Fred and George looked totally disgusted with Dumbledore's claim, and Harry couldn't help but wonder just what he was about to find out. Judging from the looks around the room, it wasn't going to be good.

"Back during the first war we received some intelligence about Voldemort," Dumbledore continued, not rising to people's reactions to his earlier statement. "A lot of what reached out ears were just rumours and most of them proved inaccurate, but this one proved to be real. The rumour was that Voldemort had a wife, and that his wife was expecting a baby."

"Voldemort has a family?" Harry gasped in shock. Of all the things he thought he might have heard, this wasn't one of them.

"It took us by surprise as well," Dumbledore muttered, choosing not to actually answer the question Harry had asked. "For weeks we worried about what to do, and what a child of his could mean for our world. All we could see was disaster and more death ahead for our world if he had a child to raise in his image and train to take over from him. It wasn't a future any of us wanted," he finished in a whisper.

"What did you do?" Harry choked out, a cold feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. He could well understand the Order being worried about Voldemort having a child, but he wasn't liking the way Dumbledore was talking.

"We decided to act," Sirius answered when Dumbledore seemed incapable of continuing his story. "We came up with a plan that would keep us all safe, including You-Know-Who's child. Once we knew about the wife, we set out of find out everything about her life. We found that they'd hired a nanny for when the child was born, so I befriended the nanny. Through her we knew when the baby was born and that it was a girl."

"But you didn't stop at just watching them, did you?" Harry whispered when Sirius stopped talking.

"No, we didn't," Remus confirmed in a low whisper, and when he looked up, Harry could see the devastation in his eyes. "More than anything, I now wish we'd taken a different course of action, but at the time we were all on board with it."

"What did you do?" Harry questioned.

"What needed to be done," Dumbledore answered, finding his voice again. "We couldn't let Voldemort raise a child, not with his darkness. With the help of the nanny, we faked an illness for the child when her parents were away and she was rushed to St Mungo's. I have everything sorted at that end and by the time Voldemort and his wife returned, their daughter was dead."

"You killed an innocent baby?" Harry spluttered, feeling bile rise in his throat at the thought of people he trusted doing such a wicked thing.

"Of course we didn't," Molly gasped. "We faked her death, and removed her to safety."

"Before Voldemort and his wife were even back in the country, I had their daughter out of the wizarding world and settled with a muggle couple," Dumbledore said. "She was safe away from Voldemort's darkness, and because he thought she was dead, he wasn't looking for her. It was the perfect plan, and no-one should ever have known it had happened."

"Until you decided to mess with things and brought her back into our lives," Sirius spat, glaring angrily at Dumbledore. "What's happening now is all your fault."

"I would say you and Molly need to shoulder your part of the blame," Remus accused, giving his best friend a look of pure disgust. "Or are you conveniently forgetting that it was you two that caused Hermione to run in fear of her life?"

"Hermione?" Harry frowned at the unexpected mention of his best friend, before he slowly started putting the pieces together and coming to a devastating conclusion. "Hermione was the baby you stole," he whispered after a couple of minutes deduction. "She's Voldemort's daughter."

"Makes you sick, doesn't it?" Ron spat. "All this time I thought she was our friend, when really she was the enemy."

Taken aback by the venom in Ron's voice, Harry looked over at his friend and almost recoiled at the hatred burning in his friend's eyes. It was clear that Ron hadn't taken the news well, and while Harry could only think of the suffering Hermione had been put through, his friend seemed to be focusing on who her father was.

"It's true, isn't it?" Harry demanded, turning away from Ron and towards Dumbledore. "Hermione was the baby you stole."

"She was the baby we saved," Dumbledore corrected.

"Say what you want, but you lot stole her," Harry hissed, not caring who saw how angry he was at what had happened. "I'm not saying that it was ideal that Voldemort had a child, but you had no right to take that child. What about her mother? Did anyone give any thought to what you were doing to her? She thought her child had died. How could you put anyone through that pain?"

"She was no innocent, Harry," Sirius warned his godson. "She knew who she was married to, and what he was capable of."

"And that warranted kidnapping her baby and making her think she was dead?" Harry scoffed. "That poor woman, she must have been heartbroken. And what about Hermione? You stole her from her parents, and what, just handed her over to some couple you didn't know?"

"She wasn't just handed over to some random couple," Dumbledore argued. "She was with people who loved her."

"I suppose that's more than you gave me," Harry snarled, his anger at what had happened to Hermione bringing up a few issues he'd suppressed over the years. "I was just dumped with the Dursleys because they happened to be relatives of my mother. They certainly didn't love me, hell they don't even want me."

"Maybe now is not the time for this," McGonagall said quietly, her own guilt flaring up due to all the times she'd allowed Dumbledore to override her concern for Harry's well-being with his horrid family.

"Now is the time to focus on Hermione," Harry said fiercely. "What did Professor Lupin mean when he said she'd ran for her life? What happened to her and where is she?"

"Not here," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "She was here, up until yesterday when she went missing," he added.

"What happened?" Harry repeated in a low voice.

"Yesterday we realised she was missing, and thanks to her under-age magic trace, we were able to track her location this afternoon," Dumbledore explained. "She's at Malfoy Manor."

"Malfoy Manor?" Harry repeated in surprise. "And just how did she get there?"

"How do you think?" Sirius snorted. "Bloody Snape."

"Snape took Hermione to Malfoy Manor?" Harry questioned. "Why?"

"Because she went to him for help," Remus informed Harry with a sad sigh. "After what she heard, she clearly didn't trust any of us."

"Just what did she hear?" Harry demanded of his godfather. "Please Sirius, tell me the truth."

"I didn't know who Hermione was," Sirius said with a long sigh. "When we agreed to take You-Know-Who's daughter it was on the understanding that she would be raised away from magic and kept out of our world. But then Molly told me that Hermione was that child. Not only was she learning magic and back in our world, but she was in our lives. Your life, Harry. That danger we all tried to stop was back."

"Hermione isn't a danger to me," Harry insisted "She's my best friend."

"She's You-Know-Who's daughter," Ron spat. "She can't be trusted, Harry. She's the enemy."

"Do you really think that?" Harry asked, turning to his friend. "After everything Hermione has done for us, done for me. Do you really think she's the enemy? She's saved my life Ron, more than once. If it wasn't for Hermione, I wouldn't still be here," he added, slowly looking around everyone in the room. "She is not the enemy, she is my best friend."

"Good for you, Harry," Fred said. "We've been saying the same thing all afternoon."

"Yeah, who Hermione's father is doesn't define who she is as a person," George added.

"Exactly," Dumbledore said with a nod of his head. "Which is why tomorrow morning, I will be going to the Ministry with the Grangers and we will be bringing Hermione home with us."

"But why exactly did she leave in the first place?" Harry asked. "And why was she in fear of her life?"

"She never should have been allowed back into our lives," Molly whispered, more to herself than to Harry. "I wasn't going to give her the chance we hurt my children."

"We weren't going to give her that chance," Sirius corrected, looking straight at Harry. "Her father killed your parents, Harry. James and Lily are dead because of him. I wasn't going to allow his daughter the chance to get close to you and lead you to your death."

"What did you do, Sirius?" Harry asked in a quiet voice, already fearing the answer.

"Molly and I vowed to get rid of her," Sirius answered, sounding completely unrepentant. "We didn't know she'd heard us."

"So not only did she overhear who she was, but then she heard two people she trusted, plotting to kill her?" Harry snapped, looking at both Molly and Sirius in disgust.

All Harry could think about was how the pair had disappointed him. He'd loved Molly as a surrogate mother from almost the second he'd met her, and while he was still just getting to know Sirius he already idolised him and had hoped he would be like the father he'd never had. Now they'd both shown their true colours, and their actions made him sick. Maybe at a push he could have understood the Order's actions in kidnapping Hermione all those years ago, but he would never be able to understand Molly and Sirius plotting to kill the girl he thought of as a sister. These weren't the actions of good people, and quite frankly he couldn't blame Hermione for running.

"How could you of all people do this, Sirius?" Harry questioned. "You know what it's like to be judged based on who your parents are. You fought to prove you were different from the rest of the family. Yet you weren't willing to give Hermione the same chance."

"Don't you dare compare me, and what I went through with my family, with Hermione," Sirius hissed.

"Why not?" Harry demanded. "It's the same thing. You're judging Hermione on who her father is, yet you did everything in your power to prove that you weren't like the rest of the Blacks. If you were given the chance to prove yourself, why didn't you give Hermione the same chance?"

"Because it's a whole world of difference being from a family who supports You-Know-Who, than being his flesh and blood," Sirius argued. "His blood runs in her veins, Harry. She's the daughter of the darkest wizard the world has ever known. Her very presence in our world is a threat to our safety. I'm not saying Hermione herself is evil, but there is a potential for darkness in her that we can't ignore."

"So basically it's one rule for you, and another one for Hermione," Harry snorted in disgust. "Well you know what Sirius, all your fighting to prove you were different to your family was in vain. You're not a good person at all. In fact the whole lot of you make me sick," he added as he shakily got to his feet. "I hope to god you don't get Hermione back, because she doesn't deserve to be brought back here."

"You do understand what her being at the manor means, don't you?" Dumbledore questioned. "It means she's in contact with Voldemort. If we leave her where she is, he'll corrupt her and everything we've ever done to protect her will be in vain. If we leave her then she truly will become your enemy."

"Hermione will never be my enemy," Harry returned with a fierce shake of his head. "If I had some place else to go, or even if I knew how to get back to the Dursleys, I would leave here now. But I don't, so could someone please show me where I can sleep."

"I'll do it," Sirius volunteered, getting to his feet.

"No," Harry said, backing away from his godfather. "I don't want to talk to you right now."

"I'll show you to your room," Tonks offered.

Thanking Tonks, Harry followed her from the kitchen. As he did so, he heard Molly assuring Sirius that he would come around and he just needed a bit of time to accept things. However, Harry honestly didn't think that time would change anything. The people he'd loved and trusted the most had betrayed the one person who'd been there for him unconditionally since he'd entered the wizarding world, and he would never forgive them for that. Because of the Order, he might never see Hermione again, and if he did, she may no longer be his friend. But he would always be her friend, and he would do everything he could to keep her safe and out of the clutches of the Order.