As Harry lay on the ground panting, he realized that this was the first year that someone had tried to kill him before the school year had even begun.

Three Aurors stood with their backs to him and Dudley, driving the dementors away, the light from each individual patronus lighting up the night.

Moody turned and grinned at Harry.

Harry heard a muffled shriek from Dudley beside him. He glanced over at Dudley, who looked almost as pale from Moody's appearance as from having his soul almost devoured only moments before.

Somehow, the initial shock of Moody's appearance had stopped mattering over the past year; the scars, the artificial leg, none of it mattered. Only the crazily spinning eye continued to be creepy, and Harry suspected it would continue to be so even if he knew the man for a hundred years.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"Had a tip," Moody said quietly. "Ye've got good friends Potter. Trust me when I say we'll be lookin into this."

If they hadn't shown up, Harry would have had to defend himself with magic. Given that he'd already been charged with underage magic in the past, it might have caused him problems, or even caused him to have his wand snapped.

Voldemort must have someone in the Ministry, Harry decided, someone who wanted to destroy him legally if they couldn't find any other way to do it. After the way his and Voldemort's wands had interacted he doubted Voldemort wanted to risk a direct confrontation, at least without borrowing someone else's wand.

"It's been decided to take you someplace safe, at least until this is all wrapped up," Moody said.

Dudley finally spoke up. "What about me? I'm not safe?"

Moody flicked his wand in Dudley's direction, and Dudley collapsed, his face hitting the concrete. At Harry's look, he shrugged. "We're going to obliviate him; it's not like he'll remember any of this."

"He's not going to be in danger, is he?" Harry asked. While Dudley had been horrible to him throughout his entire life, he didn't deserve to have his soul ripped out and devoured.

"Safest place for your kin is at home and away from you," Moody said. "I wanted to take you from the very start of the summer, but Dumbledore insisted you have time with your family."

"Why me?" Harry asked.

Moody gave him an incredulous look. "You and your friend beaned Voldemort in the head with a rock. He'd have had to come after you anyway, but now he really wants you dead."

A moment later, Moody dragged him back to his house in order for him to gather his things. Seeing his aunt faint at the sight of Moody was almost enough to make up for it all. Even better was when Moody obliviated all of them.

"Not in favor of leaving Muggles with any information about the Wizarding world," Moody said. At Harry's look he said, "They can't defend themselves; they're an open book to any Wizard who comes passing by."

Even if they were to ward the house like the Weasleys warded the barrow, it'd be an easy matter for anyone who knew anything about his family to simply track his uncle to work or his cousin to school. Harry wondered why no one had bothered attacking him at home in the past.

If he'd been a burgeoning Dark Lord, he'd have hired Muggle private detectives to track down all his enemies who lived in the Muggle world. Private detectives would be able to pick out patterns, and it would be an easy thing to attack someone coming out of the grocery store, or work.

He could even use magic to command the Dursleys to drive him somewhere where he could be ambushed. In his darker moments, Harry sometimes thought it wouldn't even take magic. If the people who were after him were anyone but Wizards, they'd have given him up gladly.

Luckily they were stubborn and wouldn't give Wizards the time of day even if they were Harry's enemies. Unfortunately, they wouldn't likely be given a choice.

The only thing that had saved him so far was that the Death eaters were just as prejudiced as the Dursleys. The idea of using Muggles for anything would never even occur to them.

Harry thought that having a team of Sniper might make the whole Wizarding war much easier. From what he'd heard, the bullets killed you before the sound ever reached you. Unfortunately, that was why Wizarding society in general would turn on anyone who used Muggles as weapons of war.

If he'd been a Dark Lord, Harry suspected that he'd have sent Muggleborns and Halfblood followers to serve in the military. Wizard snipers would be even more deadly than Muggle snipers, and they'd be marginally more acceptable also.

As Moody took him from his house, Harry reflected that it was a good thing he wasn't a dark lord.

It was a hidden house that only revealed itself to those who'd been given the secret. As Harry entered, he wondered if he'd have been forced to live in a place like this if he'd been given to a Wizard family. Undoubtedly there were a lot of Death Eaters after the war who would have loved to have killed the baby who had banished their master.

Mrs. Weasley was waiting on them and she rushed him up the stairs. Apparently there were wizards here already who were having a meeting, and Harry wasn't invited.

Considering that he was one of the people who were at the top of the Death Eaters' list of most wanted murder victims, he'd have thought that he deserved a chance to speak up on his own behalf.

The fact that Ron and Hermione were here already made his irritation flare up even more. He'd been left out in the open with his Muggle relatives, bait for Voldemort or his minions to take up where they left off while Ron and Hermione were here, safe and sound?

It wasn't until he saw Steven standing behind them that he felt a little better. Steven had to be at least as high on the death list as he was; after all, he'd been responsible for the death of Quirrell and he'd almost given Voldemort a concussion and revealed him to the world earlier than he'd planned."

"Hermione was staying with me and the gems for part of the summer," Steven said, "When Dumbledore started the Order up again. Since he asked Pearl and the others to join, we came with him, and Ron came with his mother."

"What's the Order?" Harry asked. "There was something on a piece of paper Moody made me read, but..."

"The Order of the Phoenix," Hermione said. "It was Dumbledore's group that fought in the last war. Your parents were members, and so were Ron's."

"I'd have thought the Ministry would have done something," Harry asked blankly. "Don't they have Aurors out looking everywhere? They went crazy when Sirius escaped, and he was just an escaped lunatic as far as they were concerned."

Hermione scowled and her face had a sudden dark expression. "Things have gotten bad, and it's not Voldemort doing it as far as we can tell. If the Ministry keeps treating regular Wizards the way they have been, they'll have a war on their hands, just not the war they expected."

"Fudge has declared martial law." Ron said. "Suspended elections until You Know who is found. He's started doing things..."

"He's putting people in Azkaban without trial," Hermione said bluntly. "And not just Death Eaters either. Anybody who says anything against the Ministry is assumed to be on the side of the enemy."

Harry stared at the others; he'd read issues of the Daily Prophet, even if he'd only skimmed the headlines and gotten the issues a week late. He hadn't heard anything about any of this.

"Can he do that?" Harry asked. "Can't somebody stop him?"

Hermione shook her head. "Wizarding society doesn't have any checks and balances; if he was charged with a crime the Wizengamot could depose him, but under martial law that's unlikely to happen."

"He's hoping that Voldemort gets captured," Steven said, glancing at Hermione. "Then he can say that it was all for the greater good and he's likely to be popular again."

"We're in hiding as much from the Ministry as from the Death Eaters," Ron admitted. "Fudge was always threatened by dad, and dad says it wouldn't take much for them to trump up some kind of charges."

"We'll probably be ok in school," Hermione said. "Handcuffing children without very good reason might be just enough to push people over the edge."

It was a lot to take in.

"I'm surprised that Rita Skeeter hasn't been all over this," Harry said.

Hermione glanced at Steven and looked a little guilty. "She's been indisposed all summer."

Ron smirked. "She's an unregistered animagus...turns into a beetle. Amethyst bubbled her and has been entertaining her all summer."

Terrorizing her, more likely, given Amethyst's behaviors toward people she didn't like.

"We'll probably let her out soon," Hermione said. "I doubt she'll like what's been happening any better than we have."

After a summer at the mercy of someone who was worse than the Weasley twins, Harry didn't see how they'd get Skeeter on their side. Of course, being an unregistered animagus involved jail time, and there were no trials currently, so she couldn't exactly accuse them of anything.

Glancing back at the stairs, Harry said, "So who's in this Order?"

"Snape's in," Steven said. His tone indicated that this vindicated his opinion of the man, an opinion that Harry didn't share.

"My parents," Ron said. "Sirius...we think there's at least twenty of them, but they don't let us into meetings, and since mom found out about the extendible ears the twins invented, we haven't been able to listen in either."

"I blame Sapphire," Hermione said, scowling.

"You can't blame Sapphire for everything," Steven protested. "I'm sure one of the others would have figured it out eventually."

"I'm sure they did in the future and told her about it, so she stopped us from doing it in the past...um...present."

"Sapphire...?" Harry asked.

Steven's face lit up. "Oh! Sapphire finally reformed, and she said it's just a matter of time before Ruby wakes up. Everybody's going to be ok!"

A voice came from behind him, "The meeting is over, and everyone can come down for dinner."

Harry turned and stared. A small woman floated at the top of the stairs. She had blue skin an blue wavy hair that completely covered the top of her face so that he couldn't see her eyes. She didn't have a nose at all. She was wearing a blue floor length dress and he wouldn't have known she was floating at all except that she'd missed the top step and was floating a foot back from where she should have been.

"You're welcome," she said, although Harry hadn't said anything. "We're going to be very good friends."

All Harry could do was stare as she floated down the stairs.