As soon as Fred burst into the kitchen against the backdrop of the nasty slurs of what must be a very old, very angry woman, his face brightened with a playful disposition.
"As I live and breathe…"
George, trailing quickly thereafter, didn't miss a beat. "...if it isn't Harry Potter!"
Harry beamed. "Hey guys."
They rushed to him as Ron shuffled through the swinging door, holding his fingers in his ears to muffle the furious tirade.
After a moment he looked up, bewildered. "Harry!?"
Harry's expression lost a touch of its happy energy. "Hey Ron."
The brothers surrounded Harry immediately, grabbing every available seat nearby. Sirius smiled contentedly at the reunion, then joined Molly in the remaining breakfast preparations.
"What are you doing here?" Ron threw out immediately.
"And what took you so long?" George inserted.
"Boy, do we have loads to show you." Fred added.
At this, Molly's eyes darted in their direction suspiciously. "What, Fred, might you have to show Harry?"
Fred smirked mischievously. "Love letters. All addressed to "The Boy Who Lived." Ginny's been drafting loads of them."
Molly rolled her eyes, returning to her work.
George winked, whispering. "Your investment is yielding dividends."
Ron, utterly confused, interrupted. "But really, Harry, how are you here right now? Did the Dursley's surrender you early? Are you here to stay?"
Harry shook his head. "Not quite. A lot has happened, actually. I'm… free of them, you might say. Permanently."
"Free of them!?" Ron jumped in. "That's bloody brilliant! What happened? Will you be staying here!?"
Ron's unrestrained excitement did much to bridge the gap left in the wake of his recent distance and subsequent stunted response.
Harry paused for a moment, not sure quite how to proceed.
"What happened? So, uh…" He paused, gathered himself. "Look — a bit of this is awkward to explain. I left Privet Drive for a bit last week, and Dumbledore lost track of me. So he showed up at the Dursley's, thinking I'd been nabbed by Voldemort's guys or something. It'd been the first time he'd been there since, well, maybe ever. At least since I was a baby. And after looking around he… sort of understood how bad it was there."
Ron looked a bit confused. "You mean he met the Dursleys?"
"No, they were out of town." Harry hesitated for a beat, then continued. "He found, well, I mean it isn't…" He flushed a bit. "It's just… he cast some spells that showed him how badly I'd been treated there."
Fred and George's playful disposition had halted, and Ron's confusion cast a dark shade over his features.
"What do you mean, bad?" Ron asked, slowly, as if wrestling a distant fear.
Harry didn't know how to continue. "It was bad, Ron." He stumbled through it. "They were bad people. And they did things to me that were… what I mean to say is that they didn't really ever treat me well, and sometimes it led to some pretty dark moments."
Where a moment before playful banter lit the room, now a grave silence hung.
Harry felt uncomfortable, tripping over himself to resolve the tension. "I mean, I'm okay. It's just that, you know, Dumbledore recognized how bad it had been, so he moved me immediately. And I have a home of my own now."
It wasn't until just then that Harry glanced to his left and realized Mrs. Weasley had been looming an arm's reach away, listening clandestinely to their conversation while kneading a lump of dough. Her chin was trembling, and tears were welling in her eyes.
Harry felt, in that moment, that no one had ever loved him quite the way that she had.
After at least a minute, Ron broke the silence.
"Harry, mate, I just assumed it was, I dunno… I just thought they were rude, is all. I didn't know it was…" He stopped himself.
"It's okay, Ron. It's over now." Harry's embarrassment drove him to quickly change the subject. "But you should see the new place. It's brilliant, guys."
For the next half hour, they hung on his every word as he gave them a verbal tour of No. 4 1/2 Privet Drive, reflecting on his newfound independence with profound jealousy.
"So when can we visit, Harry?" Fred asked.
"And how many cauldrons are presently available?" George followed, with a playful nudge.
Harry laughed. "Soon, I'm sure. This week, maybe? I'm spending the afternoon with Luna, otherwise we could head there now."
Abruptly, Ron's brow furrowed. "Hang on. Luna?"
Harry suddenly realized. "Oh, right — we haven't spoken in a bit." He hesitated for the briefest of moments. "Luna Lovegood. I've been spending a lot of time with her lately."
Ron's expression shifted dramatically. "Wait. Loony Lovegood!?"
For a few seconds Harry was altogether confused. "What?"
"Loony. Loony Lovegood. The barefoot blonde with radish earrings? That's what they call her at school, right? Because she's batty." Ron lips had pulled into a smirk, the faint edges of a laugh looming.
Harry's shoulders squared, and he faced Ron directly. "Ron. Don't ever say that again."
All the banter in Ron's expression vanished. He stumbled. "I, uh, I didn't…"
Harry refused to allow a response. His every word was tightly punctuated. "Ron, she's brilliant. And she means a lot to me. And if you for a moment suggest again that she's batty, I'll hex you."
His teeth clenched and he'd never been more serious.
The room had stilled, tension felt in every corner. The twins darted their wide eyes from Harry to Ron, and back again, like a tennis match. Fred faintly whistled the theme from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
Ron's face paled, and he stuttered apologetically. "Right. Sorry, mate. I didn't mean anything by it. Just what I heard people saying."
Harry relaxed a touch. "It's okay, Ron." He took a breath. "Honestly, she's great. I'd like you to meet her."
Luna sat cross-legged beneath an ancient oak whose branches stretched wide over a small stone outcropping, the Rook looming over a willow grove in the distance behind her.
Her leather-bound sketchbook laying before her, her charcoal pencil in hand, she watched intently the soft movement unfolding in the cleft of the stones.
It had taken a few hours to see anything at all. Around ten, however, a shift occurred, barely visible in the soft shadows cast between the cracks in the stone. Movement, here and there, in sporadic, rolling patterns, unfolded before her eyes. Over time, the movement shifted in degrees, from translucent to opaque. Shapes appeared over time, in black and grey and dark brown, like thick brushstrokes in an expressionist painting.
She couldn't yet make out any real details in the bustling community, but if her eyes hadn't deceived her this fairy village was the first she'd encountered to actually craft structures. Homes — or shops, perhaps, or gathering halls — were cut into the stone itself, like the ancient cliff-dwelling communities of Tibet or Central America.
She smiled in grateful admiration, and carefully sketched what she saw.
Just then, Luna's face shifted dramatically. Her lips parted, her jaw relaxed, and her gaze lifted to the distant horizon. Her breath lost its rhythm as she slowly exhaled, and a thick white fog passed over her eyes until her pupils were barely visible.
Though she couldn't hear him, Luna saw Harry shouting as the street lamps of Little Whinging lost their yellow glow. A fog of pitch black settled around him, and he ran blind down a narrow alleyway.
The torn, flowing black robes of two dementors pierced the darkness, and the color in Harry's face drained immediately. Suddenly it was very, very cold.
He steeled himself, raised his wand, and shouted. A blinding white stag emerged from his wand.
The scene shifted. A pair of Aurors stood on the pavement of Privet Drive. Harry was magically bound between them.
Again, the scene shifted. Harry stood before an emergency session of the Wizengamot. Dumbledore stood beside Harry, still bound. The session was in an uproar as Cornelius Fudge shouted for order.
The fog of sight dissipated as Luna's eyes blinked rapidly. Her vague, relaxed expression faded, replaced by wide, panicked eyes. She dropped everything and ran full speed to the ancient ash and the tin can, punctured on one end with thread loosely attached.
"Harry Potter!"
Harry had just begun to wonder whether Luna would show for lunch when the front door of his home swung open wildly.
Luna burst in, breathing hard, rushed to him, and wrapped him in a tight, fevered embrace.
"Luna! Is everything okay!?" Harry held her tightly with his left arm, his wand in his right hand pointed toward the door. Adrenaline coursed through him powerfully.
"Harry." She whispered between breaths. "I saw you."
"You saw me?" Harry repeated, confused.
"I saw you attacked." She dug her face into his chest, attempting to control her gasps. She pulled away for a moment, steadying herself. "In three days time you'll be attacked in an alley of Little Whinging. Two dementors, Harry, will fall upon you in broad daylight."
Harry was struck by a tense mingling of fear, apprehension, confusion, and unbelief.
"Luna, are you sure this wasn't a dream?"
She shook her head. "I saw it, Harry. I'm a seer, and I saw it. It will happen, Harry Potter, and I'm more certain of that than I am of anything."
Harry pulled her back into a comforting embrace. "Okay." He resolved to trust her fully. "Okay. I believe you, Luna."
She tightened her embrace, dug her face into his neck.
After a long pause, she whispered softly into his ear. "You'll have to kill them, Harry. It's the only way."