Chapter 96 – At Odds
All week, Pharaoh Nitrocris had heard stories about Hogsmeade, an she was most anxious to visit it on Saturday with her new friends. She was disappointed that Neville Longbottom had committed to going to the Winter Lands to help the warriors, but excited at the prospect of spending the afternoon in one of the archetypical English wizarding villages. She'd dispatched an owl mid-week to her trusted advisor that she would only be available to meet with him at Hogwarts on Saturday morning.
At the appointed hour, it was not her advisor but her uncle, Prince Aktenat, who stepped through the floo in the Great Hall. After suitably formal greetings, they repaired to one of the ground floor classrooms, transformed by the house elves for the day into drawing rooms for the use of the visitors.
Nitrocris fumed silently. She would have enjoyed the chance to visit with her advisor and get caught up on what has been going on in the Palace. She knew that her uncles were not at all happy with her reliance on the advisor rather than one of them in her absence, tangible evidence of her minimizing their roles and influence. Unfortunately, it still would have been an easy matter of protocol for her uncle to take her advisor's place at this meeting with her. It just meant that this would be an uncomfortable meeting rather than the pleasant visit she'd been anticipating.
She took a seat in one of the armchairs as soon as she entered the room and gestured for her uncle to take the seat opposite her.
"Nitrocris, my brothers and I believe that you should return from this place immediately. Your place is in Egypt, not in England."
Well, that was blunt! The young woman carefully schooled her features into a neutral mask to hide the rage building within her. Very calmly, she answered "Yes, uncle, you and your brothers made that point to me several times before, when I received this invitation from Harry Potter and again when I traveled here a week ago. I do not agree with you. I belong right now at this important conference, where I am learning things that will enable me to protect and defend the magical people of Egypt. My attendance here is not open to discussion or comment, and I will be staying here until the conference concludes next week."
Nitrocris kept any trace of defiance or argumentation out of her voice, but she expressed herself with certainty and finality. The experience of the Calling and this trip had caused her to realize that her uncles had usurped her natural power and place for far too long. She was more committed than ever to sustaining the changes she'd already made, and establishing her own rule on her own terms. She mused to herself that if they were upset with the changes she'd begun making up to the point that she came to England, they would be apoplectic over the changes she'd started planning during her time here at Hogwarts.
For his part, her uncle was not going to be easily discouraged. He and his brothers had bristled for years under the reign of her father. He treated them all like second-rank members of the family, but at least he had been their older brother. They had all secretly rejoiced when he had only managed to sire one heir, and a daughter at that. There was no love lost when Nitrocris' father died young. The brothers moved quickly after his death to surround the young girl and block all others from having access to or influence over her. Few accepted their outward insistence that they were all doting uncles, but there was nothing anyone could do. All that remained now was to get Nitrocris married to one of their sons, and it happened that Aktenat's oldest son, Ramessis, was the right age.
"You waste your time here. This is not an appropriate place for the Queen of Egypt! You belong in the Palace, with your family."
Nitrocris could not help but notice that he was denying her of her rightful title of Pharaoh, no doubt already assuming that she would wed his son and yield her power to rule to her cousin.
"Uncle, I have no time to continue to repeat myself. If you have no business to conduct here, you are to leave."
Her uncle realized that perhaps he'd pushed too hard, so he quickly tried a different tack.
"My dear niece, we simply look forward to having you back with your loving family. Ramessis, in particular, misses you so. He is very anxious for the day that you and he marry."
"Uncle, once again, I must repeat myself. I will not marry Ramessis. Now or ever. I will wed the person of my choosing, at the time that I deem right for me. I grow very concerned that your persistence in continuing to raise issues on which I have already given you my considered and final answer is not a symptom of poor memory on your part, but of something more sinister – a refusal on your part to accept the decision of the rightful Pharaoh of Egypt. The consequences of such a traitorous course of action would be severe, indeed."
She stood regally as soon as she'd finished speaking. "Please remind your brothers of the importance to their continued standing as members of the Royal family that they remember the decisions that I have communicated to them. I will not react kindly to constant challenges to my decisions. Good day to you."
She strode from the room. A house elf immediately popped into view to escort this apparently-no-longer-welcome guest back to the floo by which he had arrived.
X X X X X X X X X X
In Hogsmeade that afternoon, Hermione and Ron joined a large and boisterous table full of their fellow Gryffindors and one Egyptian Pharaoh at the Three Broomsticks. Hermione looked upset, and Ron looked sheepish as he tried to calm her down.
She'd been hoping for some time alone with Ron today, but he'd spent the morning flying about the Quidditch pitch. The best she had managed was to lag behind the others on the walk into town, so they were alone for not much more than half an hour. Every effort she made to engage him in a serious conversation was rebuffed. Every suggestion that they might spend some time alone either later that day or tomorrow was dodged. She finally exploded.
"What is it, Ron? Have I misread the situation? I thought we were special to each other, but you are pushing me away!"
"No, Mione! Nothing's wrong! Don't be so sensitive. I like to spend time with you, you know that. It's just . . ." He shrugged. "I think maybe we were moving too fast, or something like that. I don't know."
He did look pained by the situation, she had to give him that. He'd never been one to deal well with his feelings, there was that, too. She cursed the hormones that had driven her to be a bit forward with Ron the last time she was able to lure him to the privacy of the greenhouses at night. She never imagined she'd scare the poor boy into an extended period of celibacy.
Or was it something else, quite the opposite?
"If you found someone else, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?"
That took Ron by surprise. "Someone else? Of course not, Hermione! How could you even think that?"
Hermione did not know what to think right then. She'd manage to fall for the one prudish member of the Weasley family (she'd even seen uptight Percy cuddling Penelope Clearwater when they were at school), and it seemed she just had to wait for him to catch on, or get over himself, or whatever. This was horrible.
Once they settled at the table in the Three Broomsticks and ordered their butterbeers, they were swept up in the noisy conversation and bustle around the table. Hermione noticed that, with Neville not in the group, there was some shuffling among the others to sit next to Nitrocris and catch her eye. The flirting was shameless. Nitrocris was doing her best to ignore the boys, in favor of learning more about Hogsmeade, Hogwarts and Harry Potter, but it was not easy to carry on a conversation over all the bawdy banter. It did not make Hermione feel better that Ron was comfortable joining in all that, either.
After an hour or so, a still out-of-sorts Hermione excused herself and went to the restroom, planning to sneak out a side door and head back to Hogwarts. She was surprised that she was joined in the restroom by Nitrocris.
"Are you planning on heading back to Hogwarts now, Hermione? Might I join you for the walk? I'm getting a bit of a headache from the noise back there," she asked. Hermione was glad for the company and showed the other girl the door that enabled them to leave without walking through the main room.
Nitrocris was very interested in what she might learn from Hermione, who could be trusted to answer her questions directly and not with foul innuendo as most of the boys did.
"Did you know that you would be sorted into Gryffindor when you came to Hogwarts?"
"I'd read about the Houses before I came here, and actually expected to be sorted into Ravenclaw. I was happy to go to Gryffindor, though. I'm not sure that you see the traits of bravery and honor in yourself so clearly, but I knew I was a good student."
"How is it that a Gryffindor like Harry Potter became the bondmate of the Slytherin Head of House? Harry told me that he was almost sorted into Slytherin but asked not to go there, so I don't understand why he chose a Slytherin as his bondmate."
Hermione was one of the few who knew the story of Harry's sorting. He shared that very infrequently, so it told Hermione something of his relationship with Nitrocris that he'd confided this to her. As a result, she was willing to say a bit more than she might otherwise when Harry's private business was involved.
"At the start of the school year, there was a very difficult political situation here in Great Britain, and we learned that Harry was going to be placed in great danger by someone for political gain. We were casting about for a way to avoid this danger, and I thought out loud that as Harry was old enough to be married, there should be some way to avoid the problem. Marriage was the only solution we had on such short notice. Professor Dumbledore has an old magical artifact, the Marriage Stone, and he consulted it. He spoke Harry's name to it, and it identified Professor Snape as Harry's soul mate."
Hermione smiled ruefully as she took a breath before continuing. "Professor Snape had never liked Harry, and that's actually putting it very mildly. It took some strong persuasion by the Headmaster, but he got them married, and that averted the potential catastrophe for Harry. It took quite a while, but they are getting on very well now, I think."
With an almost conspiratorial giggle, Nitrocris added "Two such handsome men!"
It was Hermione's turn to giggle at that. "Harry's like a brother to me. We met on the train here the very first day, and he was my first friend here. Snape, on the other hand . . . Let's just say he's cleaned up very nicely."
The rest of the walk back to the castle passed in discussion of the various boys and men that Nitrocris had encountered during her brief stay, one offering the newcomer's view and the other providing some background. All the while, Nitrocris was mulling over in the back of her mind all that she had learned about the Marriage Stone.
X X X X X X X X X X
Later in the afternoon, Harry, Neville and Severus returned from the Winter Lands bearing a crate that contained one of the magical forsythia that they'd found growing wild near the edges of the forests there. Harry went back to the castle while Neville and Severus brought the crate to the greenhouses. While Neville went to consult Professor Sprout's books to learn what he could about the appropriate habitat for this plant, Severus helped himself to a cup of tea from the pot that was always steaming at the back of the greenhouses.
The little witch was in her office when Neville got there. "Neville, good to see you back, boy! How was the trip to the Winter Lands? Did you get the fields sown?"
"Yes, ma'am. Harry and Professor Snape cleared and tilled the fields with their magic, so the warriors and their families were able to get everything planted very quickly. Professor Snape found an interesting new plant that he asked us to try to grow for him here. I'd never seen one before – it's a magical form of forsythia."
Professor Sprout's jaw went slack and her teacup shattered as it slipped from her fingers.
"Merlin, no, tell me you did not bring a magical forsythia to Hogwarts!"
"It's in the crate by the door back there."
The little woman could move very quickly when circumstances warranted, and she clearly felt this was a time to move as fast as possible. Neville ran after her, curious as to what could possibly be the problem with this plant. They were utterly benign in their natural habitat, which was more than could be said for most of the things he was growing and tending in the greenhouses.
Severus had been strolling along the outside of the greenhouse, and returned to the crate immediately when he heard Pomona Sprout arrive. "Come to see our new find, Pomona?" he asked cordially.
She shot him a murderous glance, which piqued his curiosity. Hufflepuffs, even those who served as Heads of House, never got that angry.
She carefully approached the crate and gently lifted the top to look in, and uttered a soft curse when she saw that there was, indeed, a magical forsythia in there, and the exact species about which she was most concerned.
"What is the matter, Pomona? It's a forsythia – albeit a magical one. Just like the muggle variety grows all over here, the magical ones are all over the Winter Lands."
"Oh, this is a serious problem. Can you run to the floo, Neville, and firecall for the Headmaster and Hagrid to get here right away. We have a potential catastrophe on our hands."
Severus was completely confused. He'd asked Pomona and her greenhouse team to provide space and care for any number of dangerous and even a few poisonous plants, and not a whimper. He could not see why or how a spring-flowering shrub that did not hurt anyone was such a threat.
The Headmaster had flooed to Professor Sprout's office as soon as Neville reached him, and he dispatched a house elf to find Hagrid and get him to the greenhouse right away. The three professors and a confused student stood around the crate inspecting its contents.
"Headmaster, I'm quite sure that neither Neville nor Professor Snape are aware of the danger we have with this plant, but we need to deal with it right away. Gentlemen, magical forsythia do have a little burst of sunlight in their flowers, I'm sure you saw that. You can even crush a flower and release the burst; children love these things." Actually, the Headmaster looked very anxious to see that himself.
"What few know upon seeing them in their natural habitats is that these plants are extremely fragile and cannot be transplanted. Once a plant is established, it cannot be moved. It might last a day or two, at most, in a new spot. When this plant dies, the light in its flowers and stems does not release outward, but collapses inward. The collapse creates little black vortexes, the things muggles are calling black holes. They suck up all the sunlight around them, and kill all vegetation in the area. If we put this in a greenhouse, it would kill everything in the greenhouse when it died. A large plant can create a dead space over an acre; even a little one like this will probably render a good part of a garden or forest an unusable dead zone for decades to come."
Severus was amazed at this, and a little suspicious that such a small plant could cause such harm.
Albus seemed surprised as well. "Can we send it back to the Winter Lands by port key?"
Pomona shook her head. "It will not be put back in the exact place that it was growing, so it will die there, too, and they'll have to deal with the dead zone."
"Hagrid might know of a place that could be used. Perhaps a crag up in the highlands, or a remote part of the moors. I asked a house elf to summon him here, so ask him to place this for us when he arrives." Albus patted Neville's shoulder as he went back to the floo.
Neville looked positively stricken. He had no idea, no idea at all that he was bringing such a dangerous plant back here, and creating such trouble. Pomona saw his distress, and had to admit, this was not his fault. She, too, patted the boy's shoulder in empathy. "You never know, Neville. Better to leave a specimen of an unknown plant in place until you can do the research and return for it later. There, there, lad. We'll get this taken care of."
Severus was starting to feel nagging feelings of guilt, an emotion he did not enjoy. He looked somewhat sheepishly at his colleague. "I will remember that, as well, Professor Sprout," he offered.
She snorted angrily at Severus and did not respond. He was old enough to have known better, and she was not giving him any slack. "Go along, Longbottom. Professor Snape and I will get this addressed with Hagrid when he arrives." Once Neville was out of earshot, she turned on Severus.
"I am very willing to give Longbottom some slack here. But not you, Severus, you should know better. You know that magical plants are seldom what they seem based on casual observation. The dangers can come from all directions – a poisonous leaf or bud, or sap that leaches into soil, or thorns and branches that can entrap passersby, all sorts of things. I realize that where this grows wild, it looks benign. Children love it, and are completely safe playing with it there. But moving it has changed it entirely into a terribly harmful plant."
Severus' great discomfort at being dressed down, and justifiably so, by his colleague was suspended when Hagrid lumbered out of the greenhouse.
"'Ere you are! What 'ave we got there?" He peeked into the crate on the ground and clucked. "Cute little plant – pretty flowers."
"That's our problem, Hagrid. That cute little plant does not survive transplanting, and when it dies, it will suck in all the sunlight around it for several days, so there will be a black spot several yards around day and night where it was planted. All vegetation on the land around it, going a few yards beyond the blackness, will die and the land will not support plant life for several decades. We need to get it moved and planted where that won't be a problem."
Hagrid looked only slightly surprised by the news. With a small sigh, he observed "Ah, i'n't that always the way? The ones that look all peaceful-like cause all sorts of trouble. I know jus' the spot for this little thing, up in Scotland. No one around, no one will see anything. I'll take it on my motorbike."
X X X X X X X X X X
Severus had a most uncomfortable walk back to his rooms, smarting inside from Pomona's words. As much as he hated to admit it, he'd come close to causing a major catastrophe.
Things did not improve when he got to his rooms. If he was expecting solace and sympathy from Harry, he was wrong. He'd not even gotten his cloak off and hung by the door when Harry stalked in from the sitting room and opened fire.
"I cannot believe that you would put yourself in harm's way like that, Severus! Wandering off right near a Winter Lands forest, just to look at the flowers? What on earth were you thinking? You were in a forest up there before – you know how dangerous it can be!"
Severus didn't see this in quite the same way. "Excuse me? Who wandered over for a chat with a nest of Black Wyrms? Right up next to a half-dozen of the creatures, who'd just devoured three or four eight-foot tall Grendlings, whole, in one gulp?"
Harry's train of though was broken by that, and his brow creased has he processed what Severus had said. "Huh? I was never in any danger. Black Wyrms are allies, for Merlin's sake! They led me home when I got lost in the ley lines. They felt our presence, Severus – they remembered our magical signatures from the battle at the Well of Despair. They told me that they interceded when they realized that the Grendlings were threatening you and a Winter Lands child. It was the Grendlings who were the threat! And there you sat, admiring flowers with that little boy as a pack of Grendlings lined up in the forest to pounce on you."
Severus had not seen Harry get so riled up in quite a while. The boy looked really angry. And Severus himself started to feel the biting weight of a really, really bad day. He hadn't done anything right all afternoon. Thinking that he went along to protect Harry, he thoughtlessly placed himself in a position where Harry's Gryffindorish tendencies came to the fore, treating him to the indelible image of his bondmate standing alone right in front of those enormous, blood-thirsty Wyrms. He'd be having nightmares for months.
And then he made shockingly wrong assumptions about a plant! He was still stunned that a harmless-looking shrub that grew wild and was actually child-friendly in its native habitat could cause such devastation to Hogwarts! He was just relieved that Hagrid knew of a place where a week or so of blackness and then a dead zone that lasted for decades would not be a problem.
Severus could not come up with one of his usual scathing comebacks to Harry. He settled for his best glare, and headed for his store of potions. He needed the strongest pain relieving potion he had for the headache blossoming in his head. If he was up to having a bite for supper, he'd have something brought to him here later.
He'd always cautioned Albus about him being a bad match for Harry, notwithstanding the opinion of the Marriage Stone. His fumbles up to that point had all be in the area of making Harry happy. Now that things were generally improving in the quality of his relationship with the young man, he goes and does something that could prove physically dangerous to him. Maybe he didn't need pain potion as much as he did a bottle of firewhiskey!
Harry recognized the signs of one of Severus' headaches. He also realized that he'd actually gotten the last word in what he thought was an argument, although that did seem to veer off course at the end. He opted not to gloat over his apparent victory, but quietly slipped out of the room and headed off to the Great Hall for supper.
X X X X X X X X X X
Amelia Bones had decided that it was time for her to solidify her position as acting Minister of Magic by hosting a dinner party for the members of the Wizengamot. Her staff had persuaded her to host it in one of the Ministry reception rooms rather than her admittedly-modest home. Of course, there were no house elves in the Ministry building – since no wizard resided in the Ministry itself, house elves did not regard it as a "house" – but her own two house elves had reached out to their network across Great Britain for help. A sumptuous dinner was assembled from contributions from the kitchens of great houses as far away as northern Scotland.
As the group stood to leave the table, Minister Bones decided that her party had been a great success. Her colleagues – some friends of long standing, some new friends, some former enemies – had all been unfailingly polite and decorous. She smiled to herself: it was amazing how easy it could be to declare success if you set your standards low enough.
There had been some concern about her guest list. She was delighted to invite Remus Lupin, who was proving himself to be a thoughtful and practical leader, but had her reservations about his mate, Sirius Black. Fortunately, Remus kept Sirius in check. She was not really sure what to do about Lord Aventine. He accepted her invitation and a place was duly set for him at the table, but frankly, well, she could not bring herself to even think about the dining habits of vampires. He'd sat through the dinner, though, playing with a glass of wine and simply ignoring the plates of food set before him until they were cleared with all the others.
Surprisingly, Albus Dumbledore agreed to attend; he seldom joined any functions at the Ministry.
Minister Bones had fully expected Lucius Malfoy to attend alone, although of course, the invitation was extended to both Lord and Lady Malfoy. This was not the sort of event at which one expected Narcissa to appear. To Amelia's great surprise, Narcissa did indeed arrive on the arm of her husband. She was gorgeously dressed in robes of the most current and flattering style, and was actually quite cordial to all.
Of course, that's what went on at the table.
"Please, Narcissa, it is very important to us, politically, that we both attend this dinner," Lucius had pleaded when he received the invitation. "This is the first event that Amelia Bones is hosting in her capacity as Minister, and it is a prime opportunity to chat up some initiatives I am backing and gathering support. You can get so much more accomplished in a social setting like this, and I want the matters I'm backing to pass easily. I need to establish a tone right off; that will help with everything else I have to do."
Narcissa had moved back to Malfoy Manor once the repairs and renovations had been finished, enticed by Lucius' offer of a trip to Paris to fill her newly-expanded wardrobe with a selection of robes and dresses from the finest wizarding ateliers in the city. An official dinner with Minister Bones had not been part of that discussion, and Lucius was not entirely sure that Narcissa's good will would carry so far as to cover attending such an event.
"These are disgusting people, Lucius! It was bad enough that I had to endure that awful dinner with the Weasleys after Draco married into that band of hooligans. They were all at least wizards! There will be a VAMPIRE at this dinner, Lucius – I shudder to think how that will work. And a werewolf! And if Diana Snape-Brand attends with her Winter Lands husband, a FARMER!"
Lucius duly went with Narcissa to Paris, where several trunks full of the latest (and the most expensive) robes and dresses were purchased and dispatched back to the Manor. He took advantage of her desire to visit with some friends while she was there to formulate a back-up plan, should he not be able to persuade his wife to join him at the dinner based on logic alone.
He visited the premier jeweler in the nicest wizarding part of the city, the 23rd Arrondissement, and found an amazingly beautiful opal, one of Narcissa's favorite stones. He had the plum-sized bauble set in a necklace of diamonds and emeralds. He either had a card to play to get her to this dinner, or he had a birthday gift in hand a few months early.
Narcissa never yielded on the matter of attending this dinner party as the date drew closer; if anything, she grew more insistent that there was no reason for her to attend, and that the gathering held no interest for her. The more she resisted, the more Lucius convinced himself that this dinner was going to be significant to his political and financial future, and that somehow it would matter that Narcissa accompanied him. Finally, at breakfast on the Saturday of the dinner, he played his final card and offered up the beautiful new necklace for her to show off at dinner that evening.
Narcissa knew all about the necklace, of course. A friend of hers had seen Lucius entering the jewelers and passed the information along to her. She'd looked for and found the box the day they returned from Paris. If Lucius expected her to play the role of a political wife in this new world of theirs, it was going to cost him.
Cursing to himself at the venality of his beautiful but cold-blooded wife, Lucius finally secured her agreement to attend.
X X X X X X X X X X
At Riddle Manor, Lord Voldemort had been gathering his loyal followers to his home. He'd only been able to track down about a fraction of the people who'd taken his Dark Mark before; without the Marks, he could not summon them (or torture them until they responded to the summons). He and his loyal Death Eaters had visited their former associates and brought those who could be persuaded to Riddle Manor to rejoin their Lord. A few came willingly, a few came when their families were threatened, and a few were missing entirely. Others were now on the other side; Voldemort looked forward to dealing with the traitors, like Snape and Malfoy, when the time was right.
As his minions arrived at the Manor, each was required to accept a new Dark Mark. All had gone through that ceremony before, so the mystery and nervousness were no longer part of the experience, but they willingly submitted. What had Voldemort completely perplexed was the fact that the Dark Marks never seemed to last for more than a week, at most. Some were even gone the day after he placed them.
In a rage, he'd gone looking for his old notes and records, but he'd last had them in his possession years before his recent "absence." He wasn't sure where he'd put them for safekeeping or even if he'd taken any care at all to store them safely. He knew then and was sure he would always remember how to place the Dark Mark on a follower's arm to make him or her a Death Eater. He'd been doing it regularly before his absence, and he'd begun doing that as soon as he became whole again.
His concern that he was doing something different now that made the Marks impermanent faded when one of his minions noted that he had accepted the Mark the first time over 20 years ago, and that one disappeared, too. Voldemort pondered that for a bit and finally concluded that had never lost his touch, or made an error, in the process that affixed the Dark Mark, so there must be something else at work here.
Voldemort suspected that he had somehow changed the basic nature of wizards with his sleeping spell. His assessment of the evidence before him caused him to believe that as a result of the sleeping spell, the magic that was used to place the Mark now acted differently, or the body of the Death Eater accepted the magic differently. He wondered if he might be able to revise his process for affixing Dark Marks enough to address this change.
Cursing the fates that created this problem at the most inopportune of times, he had locked himself away in the Riddle Manor library and had spent days theorizing on different approaches to affixing Dark Marks. He'd actually affixed his Dark Mark to several Death Eaters on Friday morning, using his new approach, and was anxious to see if this way produced a more long-lasting Mark. Unfortunately, one recipient of that Mark sought out the Dark Lord the next evening to show his already-unmarked forearm. He was immediately subjected to an Avada Kedavra for his trouble, as the Dark Lord railed at the world for creating this problem.
X X X X X X X X X X
Molly Weasley was waddling along toward the Great Hall for Saturday night supper, accompanied by her husband, Arthur. Her feet were swollen, her back ached, and she was tired, so Arthur walked slowly, allowing her to lean on him for support.
As they neared the entrance to the Hall, Molly spotted her new acquaintance, Petunia, who was just entering the Hall with a group from the Hufflepuff dormitories, and called out for her to wait.
Molly did her best to hurry up to get to Petunia, intending to introduce her to Arthur, but when she reached the tall, thin woman, she realized that she'd not caught her surname.
"My dear, nice to see you again. I wanted to introduce you to my husband, Arthur Weasley. Arthur, this is Petunia, and dear, I did not catch your last name when we were introduced."
Not understanding the assessing look that Arthur was giving her, she smiled and replied "It's Dursley, Petunia Dursley."
Arthur was thinking that he'd seen her before, but he had no idea where. Once he heard that surname, though, he knew. He'd gone to pick Harry up at the home of his aunt and uncle back in Harry's fourth year, and he'd met this woman then. She was Harry's aunt!
Molly had never met Harry's family, but the name Dursley rang a bell. It took a few seconds for everything to fall into place, but by then, Arthur had drawn back his fist and punched the woman square in the jaw, sending her sprawling on the stone floor.
Arthur took his wife's arm and with much dignity, guided her around Petunia and into the Hall. Molly looked at her husband with pride and admiration as they found their seats for supper.