Author's Note: I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to post this chapter. I have been working on it nearly every day... I've just been stuck with this story and haven't yet found my path. If you have ideas that you'd like to discuss with me, I would love your input (either here or via email at hegemonemilo at gmail dot com).

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Kneeling at the hearth, the four of them huddled as close as they could to the spot where Fred and George's voices were being piped through the wall.

Harry reached forward, lightly following the sound with his fingertips across the dusty hearthstones until he found the corner where the hearth joined the wall and the tiny hole where the voices were coming through.

The twins were talking over each other—it sounded like they were arguing… maybe about whether or not to tell them about what they had found… it was hard to tell as their voices were really far away. On either side of him, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were jostling his shoulders, trying to get closer as well.

"Harry, you're covering the hole. We can't see!" Ron complained.

Harry pulled his hands back and sat on his heels, letting the three of them crowd forward, wondering what there was to see. He couldn't imagine there was much of a view into the secret room as the hole was so tiny—about the size of a galleon.

"Nio," Harry asked the snake coiled on his neck. "Do you want to investigate?"

"It reaks of rat," Nio said in protest. "I'd rather not."

"Rat?" Harry repeated in English and Ron gasped.

"Scabbers? Did Nio say something about Scabbers?"

"Just that the hole smells like rat… maybe it is where Scabbers is hiding?"

"How could Scabbers get in that hole?" Ginny asked. "It is so much smaller than him."

"Rats and mice can squeeze into holes much smaller than their body size—they just need to get their skull through and then they can compress their ribs to get the rest of their bodies through tight spaces," Hermione elucidated.

"Fred, George! Is Scabbers in there?" Ron asked urgently.

There was some scrabbling on the other side of the hole and then Fred or George's voice (Harry couldn't tell) came through clearly as if he were speaking through a pipe. "No sign of him mate. Can you all be quiet? Hang on a sec."

"How did you get in there?" Harry asked in a stage whisper. "Can you show us?"

"Yeah! Let us in!" Ron echoed.

"I think we should tell your parents," Hermione said quietly, her head turned in Ginny's direction.

The twin's voices kept echoing through the little hole, but at a greater distance. They were still talking over each other and occasionally words and phrases were distinguishable, but didn't make any sense.

Harry started to stand up and squished something under his heel. He felt the floor under his foot and discovered a mangled chocolate frog; its gooey insides sticking to his fingers.

"Ew! Sorry little guy," Harry said, wondering where he could wipe his hand. He stood up and started walking toward the sound of the dishes washing in the sink (were they perpetually washing?). He didn't flick out his staff… not wanting to muck it up with chocolate frog guts and feeling fairly confident that he could make his way across the kitchen without running into anything. Once he'd washed his hands, he used his wand to clean the bottom of his shoe and hoped that he hadn't tracked chocolate frog across the floor… reminding himself that this wasn't Aunt Petunia's kitchen and he wasn't going to get whacked if he had.

"Where'd Harry go?" Ron asked, his voice bouncing a bit off the recessed walls of the fireplace.

"Over here, mate," Harry said, leaning against the sink. He couldn't hear Fred and George's voices anymore.

Harry made his way to the table after hearing the bench rock and guessed that Hermione or Ginny were sitting at it. Before he'd found the bench, footfalls sounded on the back steps, a tremor echoed through the floorboards, and the kitchen door slammed open.

"How could you hear us?" Fred demanded over the clamoring of Ginny, Hermione, and Ron who were all trying to get answers about the secret room from the twins. One of them had rushed over to the door on the other side of the kitchen and was closing it.

"There's a hole by the fireplace," Hermione explained, her footsteps pattering to the spot they had been kneeling. "See, here?"

"We've got to seal that up," George muttered. "Hand me that old tea towel, would you Ron?"

The sound of rending fabric made Harry jump and he edged closer to the fireplace, listening as the twins stuffed the hole with it.

"You lot, come with us. But you can't tell anyone. Understand?" Fred had grabbed Harry's arm and was pulling him toward the door.

Harry stumbled and pulled back. "Oi!" he protested.

"Sorry, mate," Fred apologized. "Er, do you want to hold my arm?"

"No," Harry said, irritated. "Just don't grab me, okay?" He flicked out his staff and swept it in front of him, feeling no remorse when Fred yelped as it hit his ankle. "I'll follow you. Where are we going?"

"Shush. We'll explain when we get there," George said, in hushed tones.

Someone put their hand on Harry's back to hurry him through the door and he was jostled by Ron or Hermione. As he felt for the top stair with his staff, he could hear Ginny admonishing the twins for ruining one of their mum's favorite linen.

"That old thing?" Fred questioned.

"She'll notice it's gone!" Ginny insisted.

"I'll fix it later. Come on now, Gin, before anyone else comes in," Fred hurried Ginny along behind Harry and closed the kitchen door.

Ginny came up next to Harry and brushed her arm against his and he stored his staff as he took her offered lead, grateful as she subtly guided him through the tall grasses, around the garden-gnome holes and mounds that littered the yard.

They were making their way around the side of the house; the twins still insisting on quiet and rushing them along. They paused at the corner and Fred or George pushed Harry against the wall unceremoniously. Harry resisted the urge to push him off and swallowed his annoyance.

"What's wrong, Sthei?" Nio asked.

"I hate how they are shoving me around," Harry seethed.

"What's with the hissing?" George asked.

"Talking to his snake," Ron muttered. "Oi, Harry! Ask Nio if he can smell Scabbers out here."

"Hush!" Fred admonished as he crunched through the tall grasses.

Harry lowered his voice and translated Ron's question into Parseltongue. Nio's head was bobbing under Harry's chin and he felt the whisper of the snake's tongue against his jaw as the snake sampled the air for the rat's scent.

"No, Sthei, the rat isn't out here, either."

Harry let go of Ginny's elbow and reached out to find Ron who he could hear trodding along in front of him, grasped his sleeve and when he felt Ron turn toward him, shook his head.

Ron sighed and resummed his heavy plodding.

"It's Mum!" Ginny hissed and someone (Fred?) tugged on Harry's sleeve, pulling him into a crouched position and listing him sideways so that his shoulder was jabbed by a stone protruding from the wall they were creeping along. Harry huffed out an exasperated sigh as he steadied himself against the wall wondering where Mrs. Weasley headed and had she seen them?

Up ahead Hermione and George were having a whispered argument about whether or not they should be revealing themselves to their mum.

Harry's left calf began to cramp and he tried to shift his weight, but then Fred was pulling him up by his arm again and everyone around him had started walking forward. Harry wasn't sure if he should continue crouching as he walked, but decided to straighten up as his back was protesting. He pulled his arm from Fred's grasp and put it on Ron's back, his left hand ghosting over the stones, mortar, and timber of the Burrow's exterior wall that they were creeping around.

Harry was guessing that they were coming up to the corner and Ron had nearly come to a stop. Ginny was peering around him and then Ron turned a corner and Harry followed him. Ron jogged forward and Harry lost contact with his back and then Ginny was nudging his arm and he took her elbow again. She hurried forward, guiding him around bushes and clumps of grass. Harry thought Fred had charged ahead with Ron.

Then they were huddled up again with Hermione, Fred, George, and Ron and someone pushed down on his head, forcing him into a crawl.

"Lower, Sthei. You're going to strike your head," Nio warned. "They are going into a very small crevice. I don't know how they are doing it. It must be some of your stick stuff."

Harry stroked Nio's head in thanks and turned his face toward Ginny who was crawling next to him.

"What do I do?" he asked.

"Just follow Ron. He's going in," Ginny whispered.

Harry reached out in front of him, but couldn't find Ron's back. His fingers stubbed against the stone wall and he shook them out to diffuse the pain. He tried again, more cautiously and encountered the wall and traced his fingers lightly over the mortar, then followed a slanted bit of wood embedded in the wall until he found a crack that got larger as he followed it.

Ginny whispered, "That's it. Go in there."

He sat back on his heels. "How?"

"I don't know…" Ginny paused. "They just went in… it looked bigger when they were going through."

Harry cocked his head. "Did they all go in already?"

"Yeah, just us left. Come on, follow me." There was a scrabbling as Ginny moved past him. He put his hand on her back, but she just slipped away and his hand was grazing the wall again.

"Nio," Harry hissed. "How did they get in? Did you see?"

"They were just crawling forward, Sthei, and then they were gone."

"They didn't use their wands?" Harry asked as he felt along the crack in the wall again, trying to find the entrance. He couldn't even detect a magical tingle like he felt when he was near an egress or a heavily warded door. Maybe because the whole Burrow thrummed with magic from all the extra warding… there wasn't any tingle that stood out from it.

"No sticks."

Harry put his ear against the wall and held his breath while he listened. Nio slid along his neck, reorienting himself so that his head was farther away from the wall. Harry hoped to hear his friends calling to him from the other side of the wall.

"Can you hear them?" he asked Nio.

"They sound very far away… not just on the other side of the wall," Nio explained. "Their vibrations come from deep in the earth."

Harry dug his fingers deeper into the crevice and felt something moving and then someone's hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward so that he was unbalanced. Harry yelped and put his other arm across the crown of his head, expecting to head butt the wall, but instead he was being pulled through a narrow tunnel, dirt and gravel falling on his back and shoulders, grinding under his knees. He fell forward across a tangle of limbs and wooden floor boards thick with dust, coughing as he tried to right himself.

"Oi! A warning would be nice!" he grumbled, turning his face away from the bright lights; he guessed that more than one person had lit up their wands to light the space.

"Oh! I'm sorry, Harry. I panicked when you didn't follow me through," Ginny said as she pulled herself out from underneath him.

"You just disappeared … I couldn't find the entrance."

"Check this out, Harry! Someone has been living here. Do you think it is Black?" Ron said, hovering over Harry. "Here, take my hand."

Harry stuck his hand in the air toward Ron's voice and Ron grasped it and helped him up.

"Thanks and why aren't you creeped out by this?" Harry asked as Ron hoisted him up.

"What?"

"Someone living in your house? That you don't know about?" Hermione answered, her voice pitched a bit higher than usual.

"It's definitely creepy," Ginny muttered from behind Harry as she fiddled with a piece of china. "Look at this! They took mum's favorite tea cup."

"And Mum thought I broke it and hid the evidence!" Fred whinged. "As if. Would have repaired it and she'd never know."

"Just duplicate it… that way we sneak it back in… maybe even convince mum that she lost it and whoever is living here won't know that we've found them out," George said.

"Bloody brilliant! Oi, Ron! No touching. Stop rummaging around—I knew we shouldn't have brought you lot in here," Fred had lunged across the small space, knocking past Harry in his hast.

Harry flung out his arms trying to regain his balance and hit something that came crashing down around his ankles.

He landed hard on his bum and just started flailing. Frustration at constantly being pulled and pushed like a pinball boiling over so that he was a mess of limbs striking out.

"Mate! Lighten up! What's your problem?" Fred exploded in exasperation. "Are you a toddler?"

Harry got his rage under control after a bit of rolling around on the floor and pulled himself into a tight ball, now embarrassed by his outburst. He stuck a finger under Nio's coils at his neck that had constricted when he hit the floor.

"Sorry," he hissed into his arms to the snake.

Someone was rubbing circles on his back, someone else was picking up the things he'd knocked to the ground and setting them on a dull wooden surface. He wanted to shake the hand off his back, but didn't want to indulge in more pettiness. He was glad he couldn't see the pitying expressions that must be on their faces.

Nio hissed near Harry's ear.

"What do you mean by that?" Harry asked.

"Is he telling you more about Scabbers?" Ron asked (he had been helping Hermione put the stack of books back on the table).

"It was a bunch of books that I knocked over?" Harry said, distracted from his conversation with Nio.

"Yeah, strange ones, too," Hermione said. "Really dark and dangerous. I think we should tell the adults… this place gives me the shivers."

"What did the snake say about Scabbers?" Ron asked again.

"Nio said that it smells like a rat down here, but not like a rat. I'm not sure what he's on about," Harry said, turning to Ron and then asking Nio in Parseltongue.

"Yeah… he can't explain it beyond that," Harry sighed.

"These books…" Hermione said absently as she flipped through one. "They are really dangerous. We really need to tell someone now."

"Naw, Hermione. We're not going to show anyone this place… it is the perfect spot for me and George to work on our products!" Fred said. "And this is why I didn't want to show them, George!"

"I know, but she has a point. Mate, the Head Auror is here hunting a mass murderer," George hissed back. "And it looks like one has been bunkering in our house."

"All right. I'll give you that," Fred conceded, as the two of them were retreating to a quieter corner and the intensity of the light in the room dimmed.

The rest of the kids had frozen in place, though, so that they could make out every word the twins were muttering.

"Let's tell them with the condition that after they catch the bloody bastard, we get to use this room. It's fair; after all…we found it. Finders, keepers, and all that."

"All right, we'll tell mum and dad," George announced when they turned around to face the others.

"And you lot will help us convince them that we need the space for our inventions," Fred demanded sternly.

Ginny snorted, "Good luck with that."

"Harry," Fred said, a little too oily for Harry's comfort and came over to Harry to sling an arm over his shoulder. "You'll put in a good word for us, won't you? That wallet we made you… pretty sleek, isn't it? Just imagine the other things we could make for you if we had a space like this to work in."

Harry winced away from the bright light that came with Fred and smiled uncomfortably while Hermione harrumphed softly in protest, still leafing through the pile of books.

"Sure, mate. The wallet is handy… but remember the T-shirt? Whenever I wear it, it says something different… that I can't read. So while it is bloody entertaining for everyone around me, the joke's on me. Literally," Harry jabbed Fred with his elbow to drive home the point.

"Ah! All right, all right. We'll do a better job of including you in the joke next time. We're new to this market. Still have some kinks to iron out," Fred said, jumping away from Harry to avoid more pokes.

Harry cocked his head to the left listening to someone crawling around on the floor.

"Ron, what are you on about?"

"Looking for Scabbers!" Ron said from across the small room. "Do you think that Black was living here? Is that why you could navigate to him? He was that close? Maybe he took Scabbers!"

"What would that mangy dog want with the rat?" George laughed.

"That's unlikely, isn't it?" Hermione agreed. "Though from what I've read about Sirius Black, these could be his books. The Black family has a dark history."

"Ha! Dark history. That's a good one!" Fred said.

"Whoever has been living here has been taking stuff from our house for years. This went missing the year the twins started at Hogwarts!" Ginny exclaimed.

"How can you remember that?" George asked.

"Mum was so fussed about it; she talked about it constantly," Ginny said. "She'd try to summon it every morning."

"But it didn't come when she summoned it? Does that mean that there are wards on this room? Wouldn't they have kept us from finding it?" Hermione questioned.

"We may have accidentally tampered with the wards on the Burrow," George said sheepishly.

"What?" the younger kids said in a chorus of disbelief.

"Just a bit of a mishap with one of our experiments… might have taken down the wards for a day. We got them back up… with no one noticing, I'll have you know," Fred said with a bit of pride.

"Warding is really advanced magic," Hermione said with awe.

"Don't we know it!" Fred said with a groan.

"Wait. When was that?" Ginny asked.

"Don't worry, Ginny. We got it back up before we flew out to meet Harry," George said.

"But you had to be talking a lot about Harry, right?" Hermione said.

"Do you think that's how Black knew Harry was here?" Ron asked, his voice coming from the floor where he was still crawling around looking for Scabbers.

"I suppose it could be," Hermione said gravely and the little room got very quiet.

The hair on the back of Harry's neck rose as he felt all their eyes on him. He swallowed and turned toward the wall. He was overwhelmed with a jumble of feelings—mostly his own safety and the safety of these people who loved him. He had a sudden urge to leave the space, but wasn't sure where the door was… if there even was a door for that matter.

He reached out to where he could sense the wall through the way the air and sounds bounced off it. He expected it to be plaster, like the walls of the Burrow, but was surprised to find a rough wall with mortar oozing out between crumbling bricks… as if the space had been built quickly and without care.

Everyone was still quiet and he assumed staring at him… the floor creaked under his feet as he felt along the bricks, trying to find the way out.

"What are you looking for," Ginny asked.

"The way out…I need to get out of here."

The space had a feeling, and maybe an odor, that was too reminiscent of the cupboard under the stairs… and the similar feeling of being simultaneously hidden and exposed.

Finally, he found a crevice that made a tingle spark through his body and he pushed into it until he had fallen out into the high grasses that surrounded the Burrow.

"Sthei, where are we going?" Nio asked as Harry rose on his hands and knees, sputtering to get the grasses out of his mouth. "Back to our home under the stone circle?"