Passing a row of House-elf heads on the wall, they entered a room with plywood covering one part of the wall, It looked new, as though something had happened to the wall and someone had shoddily tacked up wood to cover the hole.

"What happened here?" Harry asked.

Hermione grimaced. "There was a horrible painting there permanently stuck to the wall. It liked to scream at everyone and curse at anyone it thought inferior."

"Which was everybody," Ron said. He'd found a hunk of cheese from somewhere and was chewing on it even though they were heading for dinner.

"Amethyst warned her," Hermione continued.

Harry had seen what Amethyst's whip could do on a small scale. The hole in the wall was a lot bigger than a simple painting would have covered.

"It was inevitable," the woman floating ahead of them said , even though she didn't seem as though she was listening in on their conversation.

"We were glad to see her go," a voice came up from up ahead. "It was even worth losing the wall."

Harry straightened as he recognized Sirius's voice. Sirius stepped around the corner, and he smiled at Harry. He'd found time to get a shave and a haircut and he was dressed well, at least for a wizard.

"We think he's trying to impress Pearl," Hermione murmured in his ear.

"Welcome to my house," Sirius said. He gestured expansively. "I'm the last of the Blacks, so all this is mine. I was happy to offer it as a headquarters for Dumbledore; it was the least I could do after everything he's done for me."

Although his tone of voice was congenial, there was a bitter undercurrent. With Peter Pettigrew dead, Sirius's chances of ever becoming exonerated were vanishingly slim, especially considering the current political climate.

The fact that Dumbledore had left him to rot for more than a decade without even trying to get him a trial had to sting, but at least he was doing what he could now to fight the real villains.

Mrs. Weasley was a better cook than the house elves, or maybe it was just the company. After a summer spent with the Dursleys, any food tasted delicious.

Harry found himself watching Amethyst and the new Auror Tonks as they kept trying to top each other with the shapes they twisted their faces into. They'd already done Dumbledore and Snape and most of the teachers at Hogwarts.

Snape, fortunately wasn't eating with them. Hermione said he never did, even though Steven had tried to get him to do so.

Unlike Amethyst, neither Pearl nor Sapphire ate anything. They simply sat at the table and listened to the conversation. Sirius spoke to Pearl in a low voice, and occasionally she gave an amused chuckle.

Sapphire didn't say anything at all.

Once the final course of the meal was finished, and the plates had been whisked away, Sirius spoke. "It's been decided," he said, with a glance toward an irritated looking Mrs. Weasley, "that it's better to discuss certain matters with you than to let you take action without knowing what you are up against."

"It would be inadvisable," Sapphire said quietly.

"I still think they are too young," Mrs. Weasley said disapprovingly.

"This affects me and Harry," Steven said, "More than anybody. If it's something that affects us, we need to know."

Undoubtedly the gems would tell Steven everything anyway, although Harry did recall hearing Steven talking about them trying to hide things from him in the past so as not to worry him.

"Unfortunately, some of what we will be talking about involves Order secrets," Sirius said. "So Harry and Steven and Hermione can stay. Everyone else needs to leave."

"Why can Hermione stay and I have to leave?" Ron protested, even as Ginny and the twins chimed in after him.

"First, because your mother doesn't want you involved in this," Sirius said. "Second, because Hermione made herself a target the moment she fused with Steven during the ball last year, and because she already knows enough of what we are going to say to make partial information dangerous."

"They'll just tell me whatever you say," Ron said. He glanced at Harry and Hermione pleadingly.

Harry's first impulse was to agree loyally, but a glance at Hermione, who shook her head slightly kept him from saying anything.

"They'll tell you some of it," Sapphire said. "But some secrets they'll have to keep."

"She creeps me out," Ron muttered.

A moment later, he and the others were ushered out of the room along with Mrs. Weasley, who went with them, undoubtedly to make sure that they weren't listening in.

To Harry's surprise, even some of the Aurors stood up and left the room, including an Auror named Fletcher and Tonks.

In the end they were left in the room alone with Sirius, Pearl, Amethyst and Sapphire. It was only in that moment that Harry realized how bare the walls were. The rest of the house was covered in paintings and knick knacks; house elf heads and other strangeness. The walls here were bare.

Maybe they didn't trust even the paintings to keep their secrets.

"There are secrets we'd like to be able to share with you," Sirius said, "But there is a concern that You-Know-who might use his link with you to steal secrets from your mind."

The thought had never occurred to Harry, although it probably should have. No wonder no one wanted to tell him anything! Voldemort could use anything he knew to hurt the people he cared about.

"Dumbledore considered asking Snape to teach you Occlumency," Sirius said. At Harry's look, he said, "It's the art of protecting one's mind from outside influences. Snape is the best at it of anyone."

Harry scowled. The thought of having anything to do with Snape outside of school was hard enough. This, though seemed like it would involve some kind of mind reading, and the last thing he wanted to do was allow Snape access to his thoughts.

"It was brought up, however," Sirius said, glancing at Sapphire, "That your relationship might make learning difficult. It's been decided that Remus and I will alternately teach the three of you Occlumency."

"You two know about it?" Steven asked. "Hermione told me it was a pretty rare skill."

Sirius looked smug. "How do you think we got away with as much as we did as Marauders. Dumbledore was a legilimens and we had to learn it to keep up."

Which might be part of the reason they didn't want the Weasley twins to listen in. Learning to protect their minds from mind reading would make their pranks even harder to unravel.

"Why not Ron?" Harry asked.

"Occlumency is a difficult subject," Sirius said. "It was thought that Ron might not have the drive to learn it. Besides, teaching it to three people is going to be difficult enough, even with two teachers, given the time frame we have."

"Are you and Amethyst and Sapphire going to be learning with us?" Steven asked Pearl.

Pearl smirked. "It turns out that gems have a natural resistance to that kind of magic. Being inorganic might have something to do with it. Also, even if a human wizard gets through, he'd have thousands of years of memories to sift through. Humans aren't designed for that kind of thing."

"Snape had a migraine for three days after he tried it on me," Amethyst said. "And Pearl and Sapphire are both at least twice as old as I am."

"Shouldn't that make me immune too?" Steven asked.

"Sorry dude," Amethyst said. "You think like a human and you've got a meat brain."

"You saying I'm a meat head?" Steven asked, pretending to be outraged. The slight smile on his face gave away his true feelings.

Hermioone giggled, and Harry glanced at her, startled. Hermione didn't giggle.

Teaching the three of them made sense anyway. Harry had a feeling that the gems were involved in whatever secrets the Order was hiding from him, and if they were it was likely that Steven already knew about them. He needed to learn occlumency then almost as much as Harry. Hermione would doubtlessly learn it faster than either of them and she could tutor them both.

"Time's short?" Harry asked, thinking back to what Sirius had been saying.

Sirius glanced at Sapphire again for a moment before nodding. "It's not just the Death eaters we have to worry about. Fudge considers Dumbledore a threat to his power, and he's likely to take it out on anybody in the Order that he can find."

"What about Voldemort?" Harry asked bluntly.

"He wants you and Steven dead," Sirius said. "And he's likely to send assassins after you, especially Steven, since it's thought that he wants to defeat you in front of his followers."

"We'll keep you guys safe, though, " Amethyst said. "You've got nothing to worry about."

There was no way she could guarantee that, and Harry knew it. It was another empty promise like the promises adults had been making his entire life.

"That might have been good to know before I was sent to live with my Muggle family!" Harry said angrily, ignoring Amethyst, although after the incident with the rock it had almost been inevitable.

"There are blood wards on your house," Sirius said. "That will keep you safe until you become an adult as long as you stay there at least part of the year."

Harry stared at him for a moment. That would explain a lot; certainly why he was required to go back to the Dursleys when Sirius was his godfather and had been more of a family member than his actual blood family ever had.

It still didn't explain why the Death Eaters didn't simply have someone follow Uncle Vernon's car back to their house when he came home from Hogwarts, then kill them when they weren't in their house. Blood wards hadn't protected him from dementors after all.

Wizards were idiots.

"What has Voldemort been doing?"

"No one is sure," Sirius said, and this time he did not glance at Sapphire. "It's suspected that he's gathering his forces in secret. You forced his hand early, but the Ministry has been playing into his hands by cracking down on everyone. They haven't caught a single Death Eater, but they've rounded up a lot of innocent citizens."

Harry glanced at Hermione and Steven.

"Voldemort blackmails people," Sirius said. "Or he uses magic to control their minds. He'll kidnap someone important to them to force them to do what he wants. The last thing he'll do is work out in the open until he has enough power to face us directly."

Harry sighed. For the first time in a long time he did not have any stupid optimism that this would be the year that everything turned around and finally got better.

At the rate he was going, he'd be lucky to make it to Halloween.