Title: A Perfect Storm

Summary: 3rd installment of Trial & Error series. GoF. Vanessa Potter has never been able to catch a break. Her brother attracts trouble like Bludgers to beaters bats, and this year doesn't appear to be any different. With him forced to compete in the Triwizard Tournament, Professor Trelawney's terrifying prediction about Lord Voldemort, and an anxiety that she can't seem to shake, she'll need her friends now more than ever. Her only desire is to keep Harry safe…but all of the signs are placing her brother right in the middle of a terrifying storm that neither one of them can escape.

Disclaimer: I'll do this once to avoid the repetitiveness of doing so every chapter. I do not own any of the characters in this story other than my OCs. All Harry Potter storyline plot and characters belong to J.K. Rowling and/or Warner Bros. I make no profit from this story.

Chapter One

Vanessa Potter was a particularly light sleeper. She had learned to be fairly quickly, given the insanity that was her life.

When she'd been younger, she'd been forced to wake up at all hours of the night to take care of a very young Harry — because he woke up hungry or sick, it truly didn't matter; her aunt had no desire to take care of him in either instance. As she'd gotten older and they'd both gone to Hogwarts, these late nights had become less frequent, but were replaced with much more harrowing concerns. Her brother had the ability of attracting trouble — and murderers — in a real and terrifying way. This kept her up at night alone, but this summer…this summer they were both on edge.

Neither one of them could forget about the prediction Professor Trelawney had made, and a lot of nights, Nessa awoke in a fright at every odd thump or creak. The likelihood that it would be either Voldemort or Peter Pettigrew was slim, but she was not fond of knowing that they were stuck in a defenseless Muggle town, with no ability to use their magic, while she wondered day and night if Peter had finally set out to do what Trelawney had said he would do. She hoped not, prayed he was too much of a coward to get so close to someone so volatile.

But that evening, at the beginning of August, her worries were confirmed.

She was awoken suddenly by the sound of Harry's hard breathing from beside her. She jolted awake in a panic, sitting up so quickly that she made herself dizzy. Looking around the room, she relaxed a little when she realized there was nothing out of the ordinary. She looked over at her brother, who lay next to her on the bed.

They'd always had to share the same twin size bed. Under the cupboard, they'd barely had any room at all, but when they'd been moved up to Dudley's second bedroom, the Dursleys had refused to buy another bed for Nessa — or anything larger than a twin. The older they got, the more complicated it became to fit and they now had to sleep on their sides every night in order to rest comfortably. He was already facing her when she turned to look at him, and he did not have time to school his features into calm before she caught the panic.

His hands were pressed over his face, directly over his scar, and he was covered in sweat. He rolled over and reached out for his glass on the bedside table without saying anything, his breath still coming out in sharp, panicked bursts. She rose and turned on the lamp next to the bed, lighting the room sharply and making her eyes hurt from the sudden change in brightness. Harry still said nothing as he scrambled out of the bed, over to their wardrobe and looked into the mirror inside it. He was skinnier than normal because they were barely fed at their aunt and uncle's. Other than that he looked the same, but she didn't like how closely he looked at his scar in the mirror, as if he were looking for something out of the ordinary.

Her attempt at remaining calm broke then.

"Why are you looking at your scar, Harry?" she whispered, careful to keep her voice low despite her panic. If she woke the Dursleys, they'd never hear the end of it.

He turned slowly from the mirror and eyed her closely — too closely, in her opinion — before sighing heavily.

"I had a dream about Voldemort," he said evenly, walking around her and sitting on the window seat.

She hesitated and decided to take a seat on the bed instead in case he wasn't in the mood to be crowded at the moment.

"Like a nightmare?" she said curiously.

Something about his tone had been off when he'd said it. In the way she had come to expect when he was going to tell her something that she would not like hearing.

"I don't think so," he said, almost too quietly for her to hear. "It — it felt real."

She refrained from pointing out that a lot of dreams felt real in the moment.

"What happened?" she asked instead.

"I — it's hard to remember," he said, squeezing his eyes shut tight in order to conjure up the memory of it. "Peter was there…and Voldemort…and a – a snake on the floor of some dark room." She tensed and was grateful that his eyes were closed so that she did not have to attempt to hide the panic his words brought up. "They were — they were talking about having killed someone. And — and then they started talking about killing me, I think."

She was careful to keep her expression blank when he opened his eyes again. Not that it mattered because those words seemed to cause him some alarm, and he was looking around the room now as if expecting Voldemort to pop out from behind the dresser. But there was nothing unusual in the room.

They had been allowed to keep their trunks and wands with them this summer — only because Harry had mentioned that her godfather was a werewolf and his was an escaped murderer (who was innocent, although he conveniently failed to mention this). Nessa's side of the room was tidy, as was her usual, and Harry's was haphazard — a book on the Chudley Cannons open on the floor, his robes and books spilling out of his trunk, his cauldron full of textbooks he'd crammed in it.

Harry did not seem able to sit still, even knowing that everything looked the same as it had before they'd gone to bed, and kept walking back and forth between the bed and the window seat.

Nessa would have tried comforting him, except she was panicking herself and trying to figure out if she could manage to convince him — as well as herself — that what he had seen was merely a dream. Last year, she'd have been convinced it was; she put about as much stock in dreams as she did in Divination. But after the way the year had ended, with a prediction from her worst nightmares and Dumbledore's confirmation that it had been a real prophecy, she couldn't even tell anymore what could be believed and what couldn't. Not something she particularly liked admitting either because she'd always found comfort in things that were rational and tangible.

"Harry, what are you doing?" she inquired when he stared out the window as though he were expecting Voldemort to come waltzing down the street right in front of him. When he said nothing, she said, "He's not out there."

"Are you going to tell me it was just a dream?" he said in a long suffering voice.

She felt a little bad because he was clearly used to her trying to rationalize everything that happened to him.

"No," she said quietly. "It could have been, but…you don't seem to think it was a dream, do you?"

He continued staring out the window and didn't say anything for a long moment.

"Do curse scars normally hurt years afterward?" he asked her suddenly, refusing to look at her. "The last time it hurt he was near me, but I don't think he could be now, could he?"

"No, I don't think so," she agreed. For one thing, she was entirely certain that both of them would be dead by now if he were. "I don't know about curse scars though, Harry. I've never really had any reason to look something like that up…"

Harry nodded slowly, as if he were barely listening to her. She jumped when he stood up abruptly and made his way over to his desk.

"Sirius might know," he said, sounding hopeful.

She relaxed a little; Sirius had given Harry a great deal of comfort over the summer and it made her constant worrying of him feel a little less intense. Sirius seemed to worry about as much as she did. He'd written to Harry twice since they'd gotten back for the summer. Both times the letters had been delivered, not by owls, but by large, brightly colored tropical birds. Hedwig had not approved of the flashy birds at all and Peanut had tried to eat one of them when it had landed in her food bowl.

She watched him without a word as he started scribbling furiously, the cold gray light that preceded the sunrise slowly creeping into the room through the window. She watched him until the sun had risen, the walls of their room turning gold and the sounds of movement beginning in Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room next door. He'd started and stopped several letters in this time, crumpling up ones that he didn't feel were good enough, but he seemed to settle on one and read it to himself before nodding to himself once.

She watched him still as he went to the wardrobe to get dressed for the day. He paused after pulling out his clothes and looked at her disapprovingly.

"You can quit staring at me now," he said with a raised eyebrow. "I'm fine."

She looked away from him so that he could dress — Aunt Petunia didn't like it when they used the bathroom so early in the morning, although Nessa could not for the life of her figure out why — and sighed heavily.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I just — I hate not knowing what the hell is happening anymore. The fact that Peter was there…"

Harry finished dressing and came to sit on the bed, which was her cue to swap with him and get dressed for the day herself. Looking in the mirror, she grimaced at the sight of herself. She was also skinnier than she had been when they'd left Hogwarts, although not as much as usual, considering all of the food they had hidden under their bed this summer. Her eyes were the same emerald color as her brothers, dull from lack of sleep and concern, and her auburn hair was a mess on one side from having to sleep on it all night.

She brushed out her hair, pulling it up into a bun, and rubbed at the edge of her eyes in an attempt to wake herself up. She was paler than normal, from having just woken up or because she was worried about her brother she couldn't quite tell, and it made the small amount of freckles across the bridge of her nose appear much darker than normal. Sighing heavily, she grabbed a light sundress covered in a sunflower pattern and pulled it over her head.

"Sometimes I wish we'd killed him," Harry admitted quietly from behind her as she puttered around the room aimlessly. "If we had…none of this would be happening. Sirius would be free…Voldemort would stay hidden…"

She paused and looked over at him. It was a feeling she'd had herself on a few occasions, and she wasn't sure if she hated that about herself or if it was a normal thing to feel on an occasion like this one.

"If Peter didn't help him return to power then someone else would have," she said eventually. "We did the right thing in letting him live."

She wished she believed that. She'd not particularly cared one way or the other if he had lived or died that night. She'd been perfectly clear on that when the question had been posed to her. The only reason she'd let him live at all was because Tori had tried to kill him herself for betraying her mother. If she hadn't had to save her best friend from a life of guilt, she didn't think she would have bothered stopping Sirius and Remus at all. Although she supposed, she had honored Harry's wish in letting him live as well, if only because the idea of her brother watching someone die in front of him was a cross she didn't want him to have to bear.

"If he comes back —" Harry said cautiously. "If he comes back, we're going to be alright, won't we?"

He said it so hopefully, so afraid, that she didn't have the heart to do anything but smile at him stiffly and nod.

"Of course, we will," she lied through her teeth.

-o0o-

By the time they arrived in the kitchen, the three Dursleys were already seated around the table. None of them looked up as they entered or sat down. Uncle Vernon's large red face was hidden behind the morning's Daily Mail, and Aunt Petunia was cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horselike teeth.

It was a horrible thing to think, but when Nessa looked at her aunt, she was grateful she'd gotten so much of her mother's looks. Although, Aunt Petunia didn't agree — she often told Nessa how disheveled she looked, how pale she was, how her eyes were too big for her face. Her aunt was a good deal of the reason that she was insecure about how she looked, but she tried to ignore it most of the time. It could have been much worse, considering the way Aunt Petunia looked.

Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual. This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. When Aunt Petunia put a quarter of unsweetened grapefruit onto Dudley's plate with a tremulous "There you are, Diddy darling," Dudley glowered at her. His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual; Aunt Petunia always insisted that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him — Nessa thought he had the brain of a fruit fly — while Uncle Vernon maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway." Nessa thought he was still a nancy boy anyway, considering his confidence and pride came from bullying others, rather than working for anything, although she supposed this could be subjective. But they'd skated over the accusations of bullying on the report as well — "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn't hurt a fly!" Aunt Petunia had said tearfully. Never mind the fact that he had broken Harry's arm on purpose when they were children; or that he used to play a game with Nessa with which he wanted to see how hard he had to hit her to cause her to bruise.

However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away. No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore. The school nurse had seen what Aunt Petunia's eyes — so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on her gleaming walls, the comings and goings of the neighbors, or any number of Vanessa's flaws — simply refused to see: that far from needing nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.

So — after many tantrums, after arguments that shook the wall of the Potter siblings' bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia — the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Dudley's favorite things — fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers — and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called "rabbit food." To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too. She now passed a grapefruit quarter to Harry — it was much smaller than Dudley's Nessa couldn't help but notice — and merely stuck her nose in the air haughtily after looking Nessa disdainfully up and down, skipping her altogether.

Nessa rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Her aunt may not have been able to see that Dudley was overweight, but she had no issue implying to her that she'd put on weight at school. It was a favorite pastime of hers. One that Nessa didn't particularly care for — she wasn't a size zero like her aunt, but she was still rather slim, and she had no interest in arguing with her aunt over food. The older she got, the worse it got. It was almost as if her aunt had some vendetta against her growing into a woman — she'd needed larger bras this summer to accommodate for her growing chest and her aunt had nearly lost her head about it. She'd come back with bras even smaller than the ones she'd already had. She'd had to write to Tori and have her send her some instead — a true testament to their friendship because she had not found this request at all awkward — and Tori had done so with a note stating she hoped Aunt Petunia would do the world a favor and choke on her morning coffee.

Aside from her own issues with Nessa, she also seemed to think that the best way to keep up Dudley's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more food than she and Harry. But Aunt Petunia didn't know what was hidden under the loose floorboard upstairs. She had no idea that she and Harry were not following the diet at all. The moment they had gotten wind of the fact that they would be expected to survive the summer on carrot sticks, they'd sent Hedwig to all of their friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently. Hedwig had returned from Hermione's house with a large box stuffed full with sugar-free snacks. Hagrid had obliged with a sack full of his homemade rock cakes (neither of them had touched these for fear that they would need to write to Hermione with pleas for help from her dentist parents to fix their broken teeth.) Mrs. Weasley, however, had sent the family owl back with Hedwig, both owls laden with food: two enormous fruit cakes and assorted meat pies (with a few bars of Honeydukes white chocolate thrown in from Tori). It had taken Errol five days to recover from the journey. And then on Harry's birthday, he had received four superb birthday cakes, which he had been kind enough to share with her. They still had one left, and so Nessa did not bother arguing over the fact that her aunt had given her no food. She would eat some meat pies once she got back upstairs.

Harry attempted to hand her half of his own grapefruit, shooting their aunt a harsh look behind her back, but she shook her head and nodded at him to eat. He did so without complaint, although he was still glaring at Aunt Petunia.

Uncle Vernon laid aside his paper with a deep sniff of disapproval and looked down at his own grapefruit quarter.

"Is this it?" he said grumpily to Aunt Petunia.

For once, Nessa did not blame him. She had no idea where the Smeltings nurse had gone to school, but she was almost one hundred percent certain that the diet plan the family was currently on was not at all the healthiest way to lose weight.

Aunt Petunia gave him a severe look, and then nodded pointedly at Dudley, who had already finished his own grapefruit quarter and was eyeing Harry's with a very sour look in his piggy little eyes. Uncle Vernon gave a great sigh, which ruffled his large, bushy mustache, and picked up his spoon.

The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit. She heard talking at the door, and someone laughing, and Uncle Vernon answering curtly. Then the front door closed, and the sound of ripping paper came from the hall.

Aunt Petunia set the teapot down and looked curiously to see where Uncle Vernon had got to. She didn't have to wait long to find out; after about a minute he was back. He looked livid.

"You," he barked at Nessa and Harry. "In the living room. Now."

Nessa shared a bewildered look with Harry, wondering what they could have possibly done this time, and got up to follow Uncle Vernon out of the kitchen and into the next room. He closed the door sharply behind the three of them.

"So," he said, marching over to the fireplace and turning to face them as though he was about to pronounce them under arrest. "So."

Nessa had learned not to say anything when he got like this. His temper was not to be tested on most days, but whatever he was so upset about right now, seemed to take the cake. Not to mention the strain he was under from lack of food.

"This just arrived," said Uncle Vernon. He brandished a piece of purple writing paper at them. "A letter. About you."

She shared a confused look with her brother. No one they knew would be sending a letter to Uncle Vernon. And certainly not by Muggle post.

He glared at them both, then looked down at the letter and began to read aloud:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,

We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry and Vannessa about my son Ron and my daughter Tori.

As Harry and Nessa might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place this Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

I do hope you will allow us to take Harry and Nessa to the match, as this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn't hosted the Cup for thirty years, and tickets are extraordinarily hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Harry and Nessa stay for the rest of the summer holidays, and to see them both safely onto the train back to school.

It would be best for Harry to send your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is.

Hoping to see Harry and Nessa soon.

Yours sincerely,

Molly Weasley

P.S. I do hope we've put enough stamps on.

Uncle Vernon finished reading, put his hand back into his breast pocket, and drew out something else.

"Look at this," he growled.

He held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley's letter had come, and Nessa had to cover her mouth to hide the twitching of her lips and hold down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys' address in minute writing.

"She did put enough stamps on, then," said Harry, clearly trying to sound as though Mrs. Weasley's was a mistake anyone could make. Their uncle's eyes flashed and Nessa stomped on Harry's foot in warning.

"The postman noticed," he said through gritted teeth. "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny."

Neither she or Harry said anything. Pointing out to him that it was, in fact, funny would not be helpful. Other people might not understand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but they had lived with the Dursleys for long enough to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Their worst fear was that someone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs. Weasley.

"So — can we go then?" Harry asked when Uncle Vernon continued to glare at them in silence.

A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon's large purple face. The mustache bristled. There must have been a furious battle between Uncle Vernon's two most fundamental instincts as they came into conflict. Allowing them to go would make them both happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing them to disappear to the Weasleys' for the rest of the summer would get rid of them two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having them both in the house. To give himself thinking time, he looked down at Mrs. Weasley's letter.

"Who is this woman?" he said, staring at the signature with distaste.

Nessa didn't know why he cared. He'd have sooner handed them off to a kidnapper at the park selling candy in a white panel van.

"You've seen her," said Harry. "She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog — off the school train at the end of last term."

Uncle Vernon screwed up his enormous face as though trying to remember something very unpleasant.

"Dumpy sort of woman?" he growled finally. "Load of children with red hair?"

Nessa scowled. It was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone "dumpy," when his own son had fully achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall. Harry stomped on her foot when she opened her mouth to say so.

She glared at him.

"Quidditch," Uncle Vernon muttered under his breath. "Quidditch — what is this rubbish?"

"It's a sport," Nessa drawled, her tone suggesting that he was ignorant for not already knowing this. She took great pleasure in watching him puff up slowly. "Played on broom —"

"All right, all right!" said Uncle Vernon loudly. She noticed with some satisfaction that he looked vaguely panicky. Apparently his nerves couldn't stand the sound of the word "broomsticks" in his living room. He took refuge in perusing the letter again. She watched his lips form the words "send us your answer…in the normal way." He scowled.

"What does she mean, 'the normal way'?" he spat.

"Normal for us," said Harry, and before their uncle could stop him, he added, "you know, owl post. That's what's normal for wizards."

Uncle Vernon looked as outraged as if Harry had just uttered a disgusting swear word. Nessa pressed her lips together to keep from grinning in satisfaction. They were truly pushing it, messing with him like this, but she couldn't help but enjoy it; he was so overly dramatic. Shaking with anger, he shot a look through the window, as though expecting to see some of the neighbors with their ears pressed against the glass.

"How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?" he hissed, hsi face now a rich plum color. Nessa had to fight against the urge to roll her eyes at the theatrics. "You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I put on your ungrateful backs —"

Not entirely true. She was wearing clothes she had bought herself because her aunt had refused to let her wear anything other than Dudley or Harry's hand-me-downs. Another effort with which Nessa suspected her aunt used to try to make her feel ugly and unappealing.

"Only after Dudley finished with them," Harry said coldly, and, indeed, he was dressed in a sweatshirt so large for him that he had had to roll back the sleeves five times so as to be able to use his hands, and which fell past the knees of his extremely baggy jeans.

"I will not be spoken to like that!" said Uncle Vernon, trembling with rage.

Nessa huffed and opened her mouth to snap back, but Harry spoke over her.

"Okay, we can't see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I've got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know — my godfather."

Nessa covered her laugh with a cough. She watched the purple from Uncle Vernon's face recede blotchily, making it look like badly mixed black currant ice cream.

"You're — you're writing to him, are you?" he said, in a would-be-calm voice — but they had already seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear.

"Well — yeah," said Harry, casually. "It's been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn't, he might start to think something's wrong."

Uncle Vernon looked to Nessa now, trying horribly to glare at her through his fear.

"And — and you?" he said.

She shrugged noncommittally.

"I wrote to Remus last week," she said truthfully. "I'm sure I can expect a letter back any day now. The full moon is tonight, so he's a bit busy at the moment."

She smirked as these words caused her uncle to choke on nothing but air and Harry had to look away to hide his grin.

There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do at this point. If he didn't let them write to Sirius and Remus, then they would think they were being mistreated. If he didn't let them go to the World Cup, they would write and tell them both, and they would then know that they were being mistreated. She could see the conclusion forming in her uncle's mind as though his face were completely transparent.

"Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy…this stupid…this World Cup thing. You write and tell these — these Weasleys they're to pick you up, mind. I haven't got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your — your godfather…tell them…tell them you're going."

"Okay then," she and her brother said brightly.

They turned and walked toward the living room door, fighting the urge to grin at each other. They were going…they were going to the Weasleys', they were going to watch the Quidditch World Cup!

Outside in the hall they nearly ran into Dudley, who had been lurking behind the door, clearly hoping to overhear them being told off. He looked shocked to see them both grinning broadly.

"That was an excellent breakfast, wasn't it?" said Harry. "I feel really full, don't you?"

Laughing at the astonished look on Dudley's face, she shoved her brother down the hall and followed him upstairs back to their bedroom.

"OUCH!" said Harry suddenly as a small, gray, feathery owl collided with the side of his head. Nessa couldn't help the laugh that erupted at the sight. It was the owl that Sirius had given Ron at the end of last year. It was an eccentric thing — it whizzed excitedly around the room, not at all deterred by having run into Harry's head. It had dropped a letter at Harry's feet. Harry bent down and tore open the envelope, reading aloud.

Harry — DAD GOT THE TICKETS — Ireland versus Bulgaria, Monday night. Mum's writing to the Muggles to ask you and Nessa to stay. They might already have the letter, I don't know how fast Muggle post is. Thought I'd send this with Pig anyway.

Nessa looked up at the tiny owl now zooming around the light fixture on the ceiling and snorted. An odd name for an owl that small and excitable.

We're coming for you whether the Muggles like it or not, you can't miss the World Cup, only Mum and Dad reckon it's better if we pretend to ask their permission first.

Then Harry snorted and showed her the letter, where there was a long line across the page, as if Ron had been fighting for his life in the middle of writing to them. Tori's cursive scrawl appeared next.

Nessa — I told Molly and Arthur not to bother with the Muggles, you know, but they're much nicer than me, as you well know. Molly says I can't come to pick you up because she's afraid I might tell your aunt that she looks like a horse (which she does!)

Ron's scrawl came back then.

Harry — Fred and George just tackled me for that ridiculous note —

Another horribly untidy line. Ron must have fought back harder this time because there was a huge hole poked through the parchment this time around.

Harry — we did no such thing. Such slander Ronnie spills about us. Hello, munchkin, please tell the Muggles to take a Bludger to the head. If they'd like, I'll give them one free of charge.

Another struggle apparently and then —

Hello, love (and Harry, I suppose). I've got to make this quick, as Ron has lost patience with us and is pulling my hair. I'll see you soon! We miss you. We have great plans for the Muggles when we come to visit. Goodbye, beautiful. (Oh, and Harry, I suppose).

Harry rolled his eyes and pretended to gag. Ron's untidy scrawl appeared again.

Bloody hell, I can't stand the lot of them.

If the Muggles say yes, send Pig back with your answer pronto, and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday. If they say no, send Pig back pronto and we'll come and get you at five o'clock on Sunday anyway.

Hermione's arriving this afternoon. Percy's started work – the Department of International Cooperation. Don't mention anything about Abroad while you're here unless you want the pants bored off you.

See you soon —

Ron

& Tori

& Fred

& George (the handsome one)

& Fred again (that last bit was a lie — his excitement to see Nessa has gone to his head)

Nessa snorted and Harry rolled his eyes, snapping at Pig to try and get him to stop zooming for long enough to send back their reply. He scribbled something on his letter to Sirius and sent Hedwig out after the smaller owl.

Nessa grinned widely. They would be leaving the Dursleys by the end of the day tomorrow. To hell with the meat pies; this called for celebratory birthday cake.

By twelve o'clock the next day, their school trunks were packed with their school things, and they'd emptied their hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food. Nessa looked around the room to make sure her brother had not forgotten anything, double-checking for any forgotten spell books or quills.

The atmosphere inside number four, Privet Drive was extremely tense. The imminent arrival at their house of an assortment of wizards was making the Dursleys uptight and irritable. Uncle Vernon had looked downright alarmed when Harry informed him that the Weasleys would be arriving at five o'clock the very next day.

"I hope you told them to dress properly, these people," he'd snarled at them over dinner the previous night. "I've seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They'd better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that's all."

Nessa shared a foreboding look with her brother. Her brother wasn't the type to have thought of such things, truthfully, so she knew he hadn't mentioned it in whatever his response had been. She had rarely seen Mr. or Mrs. Weasley wearing anything that the Dursleys would call "normal." Their children might don Muggle clothing during the holidays, or on weekends when they were not required to be in their school uniforms, but Nessa was entirely certain that this was a more recent trend in the Wizarding world. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley normally wore long robes of varying states of shabbiness. What the neighbors would think, Nessa could care less, but she severely hoped that the Dursleys would not be horribly rude to the Weasleys if they wore robes to pick them up.

Uncle Vernon had put on his best suit. Nessa knew it was not a gesture of welcome, but an attempt to look impressive and intimidating. She didn't know why he bothered; the moment Mr. and Mrs. Weasley stepped through the door, he'd withdraw into himself from fright. Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. He had emerged from his last wizard encounter with a curly pig's tail poking out of the seat of his trousers. Hagrid had come to take them to Diagon Alley that year, as Nessa had told McGonagall before leaving the semester prior that her aunt and uncle were not likely to do so, and he had lost patience with Uncle Vernon's foul talk of wizards — and the fact that Dudley had eaten the birthday cake he had made specially for Harry. Hagrid was not allowed to do magic and, therefore, had no idea how to rid Dudley of the tail — and Nessa highly suspected he wouldn't have bothered even if he did know — so Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had had to pay for its removal at a private hospital in London. It wasn't altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy.

Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn't even protest at the food (cottage cheese and grated celery), and Aunt Petunia had been too nervous to notice that she had forgotten to starve Nessa this time around. But Aunt Petunia wasn't eating anything at all; her arms were folded, lips pursed, and she seemed to be chewing her tongue.

"They'll be driving, of course?" Uncle Vernon barked across the table.

She looked nervously at her brother again. She didn't think they'd said how they'd be getting here. They likely should have asked that; there were a number of different ways for wizards to travel that didn't include Muggle transportation. She'd been too excited about leaving to care about how they were getting them, however.

"I think so," said Harry.

She kept her face carefully blank, despite the lie. The Weasleys didn't even have a car anymore, thanks to her brother, so unless they had bought a new one, she deeply doubted this statement. Although, she supposed they could always borrow a Ministry vehicle as they had done before. Sirius Black was still on the loose, after all.

Uncle Vernon snorted into his mustache at this reply. He normally would have asked what car Mr. Weasley drove; he tended to judge other men by how big and expensive their cars were. But Nessa knew that, no matter what car Mr. Weasley drove, Uncle Vernon would not have been impressed.

The heavy, stifling silence and tension forced her to spend the majority of the afternoon in their bedroom with her brother, checking and double checking that they had everything they needed. Harry watched her in wary amusement — she was fussing the closer it got to five o'clock and she truly did not know how to stop. Finally, at a quarter to five, they went back downstairs and into the living room.

Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions, and peering through the curtains nervously, as though there had been a warning of an escaped rhinoceros. Uncle Vernon was pretending to read the paper, but his eyes were not moving, and Nessa suspected every one of his senses was zeroed in outside for the sound of an approaching car. Dudley was crammed into an armchair, his porky hands beneath him, clamped firmly around his bottom. Nessa could only sit there for a few minutes before the tension in the room started to make her anxiety rear its ugly head. She hustled out of the room and took a seat on the stairs in the hall, trying to control her breathing and heart rate now that it had been triggered. Her brother joined her not long afterward.

Five o'clock came and went. Uncle Vernon, perspiring slightly in his ridiculous suit, opened the front door, peered up and down the street, then withdrew his head quickly.

"They're late!" he snarled at them.

Nessa did not have it within her to respond. The anxiety had awoken like a beast and it was all she could do to remind herself that this was not a life or death situation — at worst, it would be a horribly awkward confrontation. Harry was rubbing her arm soothingly, as she let her head thunk onto the wall and released slow, steady breaths.

"I know," he said to their uncle. "Maybe – er – the traffic's bad, or something."

Ten past five…then a quarter past five…Harry was starting to feel anxious beside her now. He grimaced at her when she opened an eye to look at him, and continued to rub her arm, so she wouldn't mention it. At half past, she heard her aunt and uncle conversing in terse mutters in the living room.

"No consideration at all."

"We might have had an engagement."

"Maybe they think they'll get invited to dinner if they're late."

"Well, they most certainly won't be," said Uncle Vernon, and she heard him stand and begin pacing in the living room. She tried not to roll her eyes — that was not likely what was happening, unless the Weasleys wanted to eat a single cucumber each for dinner. And Nessa had seen Fred and George alone put away six bowls of stew each. "They'll take them and go, there'll be no hanging around. That's if they're coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don't set much store by punctuality. Either that or they drive some tinpot car that's broken d — AAAAAAAARRRRRGH!"

Nessa and Harry were on their feet in an instant. Her anxiety was quickly forgotten, replaced by concern, as the panicked, scrambling sound of the Dursleys traveled from the living room. Next moment Dudley came flying into the hall, looking terrified.

"What happened?" she and Harry asked at the same time.

But Dudley didn't seem able to speak. Hands still clamped over his buttocks, he waddled as fast as he could into the kitchen. Nessa hurried into the living room ahead of her brother. Loud bangings and scraping were coming from behind the Dursleys' boarded-up fireplace, which had a fake coal fire plugged in front of it.

"What is it?" gasped Aunt Petunia, who had backed into the wall and was staring, terrified, toward the fire. "What is it, Vernon?"

Nessa shoved past them in irritation, kneeling before the fireplace, just as voices began drifting out through the chimney.

"Ouch! Fred, no — go back, go back, there's been some kind of mistake — tell George not to — George, no, there's no room, go back quickly and tell Ron —"

"Maybe Harry and Nessa can hear us, Dad —"

"We can," Nessa said, rolling her eyes in amusement, despite her cowering relatives. Her uncle rounded on Harry behind her like an angry wolverine, hissing something at him that she couldn't hear. "Although, there's nothing I can do for you. The fireplace is blocked up."

"Damn!" said Mr. Weasley's voice. "What on earth did they want to block up the fireplace for?"

"Well, Muggles aren't exactly accustomed to travel by fire," Nessa said, as if this were obvious. She heard one of the twins snort, but Harry had kneeled beside her, and spoke before they could make some ridiculous joke.

"They've got an electric fire," he explained.

"Really?" said Mr. Weasley excitedly. Nessa thumped Harry on the head for getting Mr. Weasley excited at a time like this. "Electric, you say? With a plug? Gracious, I must see that…Let's think…ouch, Ron!"

Ron's voice now joined the others'.

"What are we doing here? Has something gone wrong?"

"Oh, no, Ron," came Fred's voice, very sarcastically. "No, this is exactly where we wanted to end up."

"Yeah, we're having the time of our lives here," said George, whose voice sounded muffled, as though he was squashed against the wall.

Nessa laughed despite herself, as Mr. Weasley said vaguely, "Boys, boys…I'm trying to think what to do…Yes…only way…Stand back, Nessa, Harry."

They retreated hastily to the sofa. Uncle Vernon, however, moved forward. Nessa opened her mouth to snap at him, but he was too concerned about his precious fire to notice the hard look she gave him.

"Wait a moment!" he bellowed at the fire. "What exactly are you going to —"

BANG.

The electric fire shot across the room as the boarded-up fireplace burst outward, causing Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, and Ron to come tumbling out onto the floor in a cloud of rubble and loose chippings. Aunt Petunia shrieked and fell backward over the coffee table; Uncle Vernon caught her before she hit the floor, and gaped, speechless, at the Weasleys all standing before him, covered in soot and dust.

Nessa was only barely able to hold back the laugh she wanted to emit at how utterly absurd and awkward the entire situation was. Instead, she made an odd high-pitched noise in the back of her throat, and covered her hand with her mouth to hide the half-gape, half-grin that was on her face. Fred and George were grinning at her as though they could tell she was barely holding it together and she looked away from them both hastily.

"That's better," panted Mr. Weasley, brushing dust from his long green robes and straightening his glasses. "Ah — you must be Nessa and Harry's aunt and uncle!"

Tall, thin, and balding, he moved toward Uncle Vernon, his hand outstretched, but Uncle Vernon backed away several paces, dragging Aunt Petunia with him. Words utterly failed Uncle Vernon. His best suit was covered in white dust, which had settled in his hair and mustache and made him look as though he had just aged thirty years.

"Er — yes — sorry about that," said Mr. Weasley, lowering his hand and looking over his shoulder at the blasted fireplace. "It's all my fault. It just didn't occur to me that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see — just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Nessa and Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking — but I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the kids back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate."

Nessa was positive that the Dursleys had not understood a word that Mr. Weasley had just said to them. They were still gaping at him, thunderstruck. Aunt Petunia staggered upright again and hid behind Uncle Vernon. The awkwardness permeated in the room as Mr. Weasley turned to the two Potter siblings, grinning widely.

"Hello, Harry, Nessa!" he said brightly. "Got your trunks ready?"

But before either of them could respond, Aunt Petunia was shrieking again, and pointing at the fireplace with a shaking finger. The fire had erupted in green flames, as tall as a human, and a moment later, Victoria was stepping out, brushing soot off the sundress she was wearing.

She paused at the sight of the Dursleys' ruined living room and grinned mischievously.

"Well, it seems I arrived not a moment to soon," she said casually, grinning wider at the gaping Dursleys in front of her.