(OotP) CHAPTER THREE: Alas, the Real World Calls

The next day, Ellie made the mistake of glancing at The Daily Prophet.

It wasn't the first time it had happened that summer, of course. Sirius used a fake name to subscribe to almost wizarding paper there was, eager to cling to the real world in any way he could without actually being able to enter it. He had started attempting to hide them from Ellie after the first article she saw that called her a dirty liar, but sometimes he forgot.

Today's headline: Lies Abound: Why the Continued Silence of Sirius Black's Rumoured Daughter Tells Us All We Need to Know About You-Know-Who's Alleged Return.

She was in the kitchen, nibbling on an overcooked biscuit, which she nearly choked on when she saw the headline. Sirius, who was sipping on black coffee nearby, immediately glanced up at her. As soon as he saw the paper, his eyebrows furrowed, and he marched over to whisk the paper away from her.

"Arthur must have left that there," he grumbled. "I'll talk to him."

"Have you read it?"

"Skimmed it. Don't bother wasting your time with it. They're fishing."

"But… 'Continued Silence?' Doesn't that imply they've asked me some sort of… of… question?"

He sighed, running a hand through his dark hair, which had started to grey quite a bit over the summer. "The Ministry officials have reached out to your mother several times this summer, looking to 'interview' you. When she refused them the last time, they even insisted on coming into her home and looking for you."

Ellie's eyes bulged. "What?"

"She made up a story, of course. Said you were with distant cousins in Malta. Don't think they believed it, though. Especially considering the headline of that article."

Ellie could hardly believe that her mother was still covering for her, even after cutting her out of her life completely. "Have… have you talked to her? To Mum?"

"Not directly, but the Order sent Tonks her way to make sure our stories lined up."

Ellie hadn't gotten to know any of the Order members very well just yet, but from what she had seen of Nymphadora Tonks, she liked her. It was probably the colourful hair. "Did she say how Mum seemed?"

Sirius' expression darkened. "Not great. But it's to be expected, Ellie, after hearing what she heard about you."

He had a point there, she supposed. And yet… How touched could she allow herself to be, given that her mother still hadn't spoken to her in nearly a year, even after hearing that she had almost died?

"I should do something," she said, deciding a change of subject was in order. She gestured to the article. "About this, I mean. If they claim I'm being 'silent,' I should speak up."

"Speaking up would mean coming out of hiding. You'd have to explain where you've been—and there's a chance you'd be tracked back here when you returned."

That was that, of course. If there was any chance of her leading anyone back to 12 Grimmauld Place, it wasn't a risk worth taking.

And she definitely wasn't ready to leave permanently—especially now that Fred was there with her.

But she didn't like the thought of people believing Fudge's truth over the real one.

She'd write to Harry, she decided. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would help.


Before she got the chance to send her letter to Harry, she received some very bad news about him.

He had been caught using underage magic, and had been summoned to a Ministry hearing to determine his sentence.

"Hang on," she said, staring at her father in disbelief. Sirius wasn't the only source she'd had on the matter; Harry himself had sent her, along with Ron, Hermione, and Sirius, letters detailing exactly what had happened to him. But she still could hardly believe it. "He used a Patronus charm to fight off dementors in Little Whinging, and they're trying to say he broke the law?"

"Dementors in Little Whinging is a big deal," explained Tonks, who had been hanging around 12 Grimmauld Place quite a bit lately. "Means they're acting against the Ministry's orders—or on the Ministry's orders, which, of course, would be even worse."

Ellie shuddered at the thought. If it had been on the Ministry's orders, did that mean the Ministry was already in league with Voldemort? That couldn't be, could it?

"Is he coming here?" asked Fred, who hadn't received a letter but had gotten the gist of things from Sirius' summary.

Sirius nodded. "We're sending some members of the Order to go and fetch him. He'll stay here until his trial. Arthur will take him when the time comes."

"I want to come," Ellie announced. "To the trial."

Fred groaned. "What?"

"I want to come," she repeated. "Break my silence. Support Harry."

Sirius glanced at Tonks, who gave him a bit of a shrug. "Couldn't hurt. They're sure to ask him some questions about the night at the graveyard while he's there. If she's there to back him up…"

"Back him up?" repeated Molly as she and Arthur entered from the kitchen. "Nonsense. Ellie wasn't there when Harry was attacked by dementors, and that's what the hearing is about."

"Hang on now, Molly," said Sirius. "If she wants to go on the record about that night, we should let her. Ellie has a right—"

"I'll see what Harry says," Ellie interrupted firmly. "And then I'll decide."


"Well, of course I want you to. The entire wizarding community's been saying I'm mental for months now, haven't they?"

Ellie grinned at that, but Fred looked less amused. They were together again—Ellie, Fred, George, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny—all in Ginny and Ellie's bedroom. There had been an unmistakable resentment in Harry's gaze when he locked eyes with Ron and Hermione, who had been following Dumbledore's orders in limiting their communication and detail with Harry, but less so when he saw Ellie and Ginny, who had both more or less ignored the request and told him the truth.

"They're just going to say she's mental, too," said Fred with a frown. "And then they're going to continue spreading rumours about her parentage, and—"

"They're not rumours," Ellie interrupted firmly; "they're true. And if the worst thing they can say about me is that I'm Sirius Black's daughter, let them. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

Fred's eyes clouded over with sympathy at that, but he didn't back down. "You could become a pariah, El. They'll say things about you—about both of you—"

"I don't care!" she insisted. "If Harry's going to be one, I'd rather be one with him. We were all there together. He shouldn't have to go through this alone."

Fred's gaze softened at that, and, finally, he nodded. "I understand. Only…"

It didn't take much to follow his train of thought—especially not when she zeroed in on his thoughts the way she had been training to do. "No," she said quickly. "You stay here."

"I was there, too." His voice was soft—almost meek. "The more of us support the same claim, the more they have to believe us."

"You have a family to think about, Fred. Your dad works for the Ministry. You can't get him into any more trouble than he's already in."

He stayed silent for several seconds, then, finally, nodded. "Reckon it wouldn't do either of you much good for me to be there, anyway. Nobody cares what I have to say."

His words made her heart ache for more than one reason. How many times had Fred felt overshadowed by Ellie over the years? Now it was the fame and media attention, but before that, it had been romantic attention, magical power, exposure to dangerous situations…

She didn't want any of it. If she could run away with Fred and live a powerless, simple life with him where everyone left them alone, she would.

Me, too, he told her with a thin-lipped smile. But alas, the real world calls.


A few days later, Ellie found herself alone in the kitchen with Nymphadora Tonks while the rest of the teenagers attempted to eavesdrop on the ongoing Order meeting.

It wasn't the first time they had tried, nor even the second or third. Fred and George had created an eavesdropping device called Extendable Ears, and used them to try to gather intel on what the Order was meeting about. The Order tended to use spells of their own to keep their meetings locked down, though, and so far, none of the teenagers had deduced much useful information.

"Why aren't you in the meeting?" Ellie asked Tonks casually as she poured herself a cup of coffee, then one for Tonks, as well.

Tonks rolled her eyes. "Had to take a breather. Too many angry, old men shouting things we all already know."

Ellie couldn't help but giggle at that. Tonks was closer to her age than the rest of the Order, she supposed. "They mean well, at least. I reckon they're just about the only people in the UK who believe me, Fred, and Harry."

Tonks' expression softened. "I don't think that's true. What about your friends back at Hogwarts? Surely they know the three of you well enough to know you wouldn't lie about a thing like that?"

She hoped Tonks was right about that. Ron and Hermione, of course, had believed them straight away, but they were different. While she couldn't quite fathom Dean, Lavender, or Neville turning on her like that, she couldn't be sure until the start of term.

"Well," Tonks said, clearing her throat. "I believe you. And more than that, I have your back. Which is why I think I should tell you that… I'm here, Ellie. If you ever want to talk."

Despite her fondness for the colourful-haired witch, Ellie stiffened at the offer. Was Tonks really offering out of the kindness of her heart? Or had someone asked her to?

Tonks must have sensed Ellie's concern, because she went on, "The rest of the Order—they know you're going through a tough time, but they don't know how to help you. What happened to you—your shield, and the situation with Cedric—it's not exactly territory any of them have been in before."

So they had asked her to—or at least, they'd discussed Ellie in that room. She squirmed uncomfortably at the thought of all those people talking about her, even if it was out of concern. "And you have?" she asked Tonks with a frown. "Been in that territory?"

"'Course not. No one has. I do know what it's like to have an unusual ability—" she gestured to her hair, which was shifting from green to blue as they spoke "—but mine, thankfully, doesn't tend to put me in hospital."

Ellie managed a weak laugh at that. "Lucky you."

"I've never been shy about talking about the hard stuff, though," Tonks continued. "Had a rough go of it back at Hogwarts myself. Mum was a Black, you know—before she married Dad, who's a Muggle-born. They disowned her for it, and all the pure-bloods at school pretty much ostracized me over it."

That, Ellie hadn't known. Sirius had mentioned something about being related to Tonks, along with (much to her dismay) the Malfoys, but he hadn't gone into the details. If Tonks' mother was anything like her, though, it made sense to Ellie that the Blacks had disowned her.

She felt certain that they would have disowned her, too, if they were still around.

"I'm sorry," she finally said. "That must have been hard."

Tonks shrugged. "For a while. Talking about it made it easier, though."

Ellie sighed. It wasn't hard to see what Tonks was getting at, but what was the point? "I really don't see why rehashing a painful night over and over again is supposed to make me feel better. What's there to say? My shield was the only thing keeping them alive, but it wasn't strong enough. We couldn't all make it to the Portkey, so someone had to sacrifice themselves. And we let Cedric do it. And now we have to live with that."

It was the most she had said about that night since the night happened, and to her surprise, it felt… good. Like letting out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

"You let him do it," Tonks repeated gently. "Because he offered to. Right?"

"Probably because he knew how hard it would be to go on knowing that he was the reason someone else had died. Which is what's happening to us now."

Tonks remained silent for a moment, then said, even more softly, "I don't think that's why he did it."

Ellie tried to remain calm, but it wasn't easy. What business did she have acting like she knew what Cedric had wanted? Had she even met Cedric? "No? Tell me, then. Why did he do it?"

"Because he loved you, Ellie. And he knew how much you loved Fred."

Instantly, tears crashed into her eyes, and her anger morphed to pain and regret. Was this really supposed to make her better? It made her feel a thousand times worse.

"I realize how guilty that must make you feel," Tonks told her. "But can't you see how beautiful it is, too? In sacrificing himself, he was able to give you the greatest gift in the world—your own life, and the life of the boy you love. Can't you see how devastated he would feel now if he knew you were holding yourself back from being with that boy on his account?"

Ever since Cedric had died, Ellie knew, on some level, that he would have expected her to stay with Fred. He was too good a person to ever wish unhappiness upon her from the grave.

But she had still thought of her resistance toward being with Fred as a courtesy to his memory—something that protected it.

Was it possible that Tonks was right—that rather than protecting Cedric's memory, she was dishonoring it?

"Just think about it," Tonks told her, finishing off her coffee and setting it in the magical assembly line of self-cleaning dishes. "And come see me anytime you need to talk."

And just like that, Ellie had made another lifelong friend.


Had to squeeze a Tonks scene in there - she was always one of my favourites! And Ellie sure was in need of a wake up call. Think it will stick? We'll cover the hearing next in an extra long chapter, so make sure not to miss it, and keep that support coming!