Tuesday, 8th August

The Weasleys left Sunday night without much fanfare.

Although Mrs Weasley had offered to cook them all dinner, she'd been politely yet firmly rebutted - by Remus, at least, who'd seemed to understand the panicked, socially drained look on Harry's face at the mere suggestion of spending even more time with the family.

They weren't bad people by any means. The twins were great fun and Ron had loosened up a bit after a game or two of chess and had started joking around with him too. Ginny was still nervous looking and kept blushing every time they accidentally made eye contact, but at least now, Harry knew why. Mrs Wealsey - Molly - was still as boisterous as ever although he did understand that what he considered overbearing was called perfectly normal and healthy maternal care by everyone else, so he decided to just grit his teeth and bare it, for now. If she got too busybody for him, then he'd say something, but he knew she only meant the best.

Fortunately, Remus seemed to be a lot like him when it came to socialising - as little as often and for brief moments at a time was acceptable, but any more than that… Sirius, of course, was the life of the party which had not surprised Harry in the slightest. His godfather seemed to be larger than life in all aspects of his life, and whereas spending an entire day with the family of redheads had drained himself and Remus, it had only energised Sirius, and that vigour and enthusiasm had buoyanced him well into the following week.

He was starting to realise that his godfather had picked up more than one of his traits from his animagus side, and that calling him the human equivalent of an over-eager golden retriever would most certainly not be an exaggeration. Some black grim he was…

Harry had spent much of the day after the Weasleys' visit recovering in the library. Sirius had found his old French notes from almost two decades before while cleaning out his teenage self's bedroom - apparently, Remus adamantly refused to sleep in the same bed as him if it had posters of bikini-clad women sprawled across motorbikes hanging above it.

But in the clearout process, Sirius had found his old textbooks and tutor lesson plans which he gladly handed over to his godson, who was just as glad to accept them. He'd spent the entirety of yesterday deciphering the man's spindly scrawl in the library, only emerging at mealtimes at Remus's request which, admittedly, was the very least he could do given that he was living here rent-free and actually genuinely enjoyed the older man's company.

He had planned on doing much the same thing today, but when he said as much at breakfast, Sirius had over-dramatically thrown himself across the table with a groan, narrowly avoiding his own toast- and egg-laden plate.

"Don't tell me that you actually enjoy reading!"

Remus immediately shot him a scolding look. "Sirius!"

"What? I'm not cut out for reading, Moony! I can't join him if his only hobby is reading! You're the bookworm here, not me!" He turned large, mournful grey eyes back to Harry. "Please tell me that you at least play Quidditch?"

"Before or after my muggle school classes?" he replied dryly, and Sirius groaned yet again and sank further into the table, burying his face in its scratched wooden surface.

Remus let out a long-suffering sigh and took another sip of his tea. "What do you like to do, pup? Aside from reading".

Harry frowned, thought for a moment, and then shrugged. "I don't know. I never really had much time or opportunity for hobbies. What do you like to do?"

"Moony here is a master baker!" Sirius announced, sitting back up with a flourish, "His treacle tart is to die for!"

"Hence the café" Remus said somewhat awkwardly, blushing from the man's praise, "It doesn't usually turn much of a profit; we're lucky if we break even some weeks but… I don't know. I find baking to be… calming".

And with someone like Sirius Black as your partner, a little calming was exactly what was needed.

"Have you ever baked?"

"Me?" Harry exclaimed, "Merlin no! I mean, I did a lot of cooking when I was… growing up but baking? No. Never".

"Well, I find it a lot easier to do than cooking, if that'll sway you into trying it sometime" he replied, "You have to be more exact with your measurements of course, but there are usually fewer ingredients and even on my worst days I can still bake something that tastes nicer than anything I could cook".

Harry hummed noncommittally. He hadn't hated cooking every meal for the Dursleys - at least, not the cooking process itself but he'd truly despised being forced to spend so much time and energy making something that he was never allowed to eat himself. But perhaps, baking with Remus would be… different.

"I'll be making a fresh batch of muffins for the café this afternoon, if you'd like to help" the man continued, almost cautiously, "Maybe you'll find it calming too".

Just why he needed to be calmed, Harry wasn't sure, but he nodded all the same. He didn't want to risk angering the men by spending all his time in the library, and if the trade-off for peace and safety was having to mix some cake batter, then it would be a small price to pay.

"Well, if Moony gets to keep you all to himself this afternoon then I should get to have you all to myself this morning!" Sirius declared, "So how do you feel about learning some Quidditch, pup?"

Much to Harry's confusion but his godfather's absolute delight, it would appear that he was a natural at Quidditch.

After pulling two dusty old brooms out of a locked shed in the back of the dilapidated overgrown garden - and fending off more than a few feral gnomes along the way - Sirius had told him all he needed to know about flying safely in a surprisingly patient and thorough manner… or else maybe Remus had put the fear of god in him when Harry went upstairs to change.

That sounded more likely.

When his godfather showed him how to stand next to his broom, hold out his hand, and say "Up!" Harry's broom had obeyed him instantly and he couldn't deny the thrill he felt as a result.

Mounting it, he kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared; air rushed through his hair, and his robes whipped out behind him - and in a rush of fierce joy he realised he'd found something he could do without being taught - this was easy, this was wonderful.

Next to him, Sirius was staring agape, but that wide-eyed look quickly transformed into a wide grin instead as he whooped and cheered and clapped as best he could while still maintaining his grip on the broom.

"You're a natural!" he called out, positively beaming at him, "Just like James! See? It's in your blood!"

For the first time in a long while, Harry felt a rush of exhilaration that had nothing to do with books or danger. He'd never imagined himself enjoying something like this, but Sirius's infectious enthusiasm made it hard not to.

"Wanna go even higher?"

Remus's safety talk had evidently been long since forgotten.

Harry grinned. "Alright".

By lunchtime, they were both exhausted, sweating, and positively buzzing with adrenaline.

Harry had felt completely at home on a broom and he seemed to know exactly what to do instinctively. He'd shot around the garden with Sirius fast behind him, chasing semi-deflated Quaffles and trying to race each other to the fence. He was more than glad that Grimmauld Place had such a plethora of protection charms on it, or the muggles in the houses surrounding them would have undoubtedly seen what they were doing.

After trampling mud back inside the house and getting a playful swat of a wooden spoon from Remus as a result, they had both been ordered upstairs to shower and change and then return for a late lunch which Kreacher served with a flourish - along with a particularly disparaging scowl in Sirius's direction.

Harry didn't know if it was because he was still high on the adrenaline rush or because he genuinely enjoyed spending time with these people, but he couldn't remember ever having smiled so much in one day before, and when Remus asked if he still wanted to help him bake after lunch, he readily and wholeheartedly agreed.

"We'll start with something simple" Remus said, laying out various ingredients on the kitchen counter, "I think chocolate chip cookies should do the trick - they're difficult to get wrong".

"I wouldn't underestimate my ability to make things difficult" he replied wryly, "How many cookies do you need?"

Remus squinted at the book hovering in front of him. "This recipe makes six, but I'll need at least twice that. Around… fifteen or so? There should hopefully be enough space in the oven here for that much".

"Is your oven at home bigger?"

"Not by much, but it's far more modern compared to this ancient thing". As if hearing him, the stove gave an ominous clank and then creaked and Remus narrowed his eyes at it in retaliation. "You better not break down while we're here!"

"I'm sure it'll be fine" Harry said, biting back a smirk, "So, two and a half times the recipe then?"

"Yes. Oh. Wait. No, hang on". He turned back to the baking book. "That means we'll have to adjust these measurements, doesn't it? Damn. Okay, so two-thirds of a cup of flour multiplied by two and a half is… what? Two over three by two-point-five over one which is… no, wait, why don't I just multiply it by two first, and then multiply it by a half, and then add them together and I'll get-"

"Two cups" Harry interrupted, "Or about two hundred grams, give or take".

Remus blinked, surprised, and then, curious, he asked, "What about four tablespoons of unsalted butter?"

"Ten tablespoons".

"A quarter teaspoon of baking soda?"

"Five-eighths".

"Three-quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract?"

"Hmm… one point…eight-seven-five. Or, throw in just under two".

"One large egg yolk?"

That made him pause.

"One large egg yolk?" Harry's brow furrowed in confusion. "How on earth do you use two-and-a-half egg yolks?"

"We'll add three, just to be sure". Remus was giving him a… considering look. "You've got a good head for numbers, huh? I'm guessing you took some form of arithmancy at school?"

"Sort of. It's called maths in the muggle world, and it's actually compulsory for everyone to take" he explained, starting to measure out the flour, "It's also not about studying the numbers themselves for any magical or predictive properties, but about combining them in different ways to make new numbers".

The man hummed thoughtfully. "That's interesting; Hogwarts could stand to teach a bit of that. I swear, trying to calculate the ratio of knuts to sickles gives me a headache every single time".

Harry smiled, amused. To be fair, the wizarding world did have a rather… unique relationship with numbers, and it most definitely could do with some basic maths education - yet another thing to add to his "how to change the world" list.

"Alright, how about three tablespoons of granulated and brown sugar?"

"Seven-point-five" Harry replied absently, carefully adding the baking soda and butter. Splitting the eggs, he decided, would best be left to Remus.

"And one-eighth a teaspoon of salt?"

"One-third".

The man nodded and added them all to the large mixing bowl before reaching for the small packet of chocolate chips, tearing it open, and starting to pour them in.

"Woah! Wait, hang on! You didn't measure those!"

Remus paused and then gave him a very serious look.

"The first rule of baking, pup, is that you always measure chocolate chips with your heart".

Harry stared back at him for a moment before blinking once, twice, thrice, and then-

"Oh" he said, "Well, in that case… my heart says we should add the entire packet".

Remus grinned, a flash of sharp teeth and even sharper canines.

"Well, what do you know? My heart agrees".

It was only later that night, after learning to fly, after learning how to bake, after sneaking Sirius more chocolate chip cookies than he deserved behind Remus's back because of his terribly effective puppy-dog eyes, that Harry realised.

They had tricked him into having a bonding experience with them.

That was… huh. Different. Strange, perhaps. Not something that he'd ever had to deal with before but… not necessarily a bad thing either. Kind of cute, actually, when he thought about it. They wanted to bond with him, wanted to get to know him and build memories together, wanted to be a part of his life and, even more importantly, wanted him to be a part of theirs.

He couldn't deny that, no matter how different or strange or cute spending time with these strangers was… he kind of liked it.

Friday, 11th August

They established a routine over the next few days.

Harry usually spent the morning in the Black library, either going over his godfather's old French notes or cautiously pulling dust-covered books on the Dark Arts out of random shelves. His afternoons were spent flying when Sirius finally rolled out of bed before lunchtime, and in the evening he baked with Remus after he came home from working in the café.

He had offered to help him out there during the day as well, more so out of a sense of duty to offer rather than any real desire to dress up as a waiter, but the man had politely turned him down, claiming that he never had enough customers to justify extra help and Dumbledore didn't want him leaving Grimmauld Place yet since it "wasn't safe".

Harry was tempted to go for a wander down Knockturn Alley just to spite the Headmaster for that alone - but instead, he'd nodded and smiled and told Remus that he'd still be willing to help if he ever changed his mind, and then he'd returned to the library after dinner, found the Darkest textbook he could, and expanded his curses repertoire enormously.

He was planning on spending all of his time in the library today. It had been the full moon last night and based on what he'd read, Remus would likely be out for the count all day, so he made an effort to keep quiet. Sirius, for all of his playful grins and immature jokes, could be deadly serious when he had to be, so Harry knew that he'd be spending the day looking after his partner and therefore wouldn't be around to entertain him either.

It was no matter. There was going to be an Order meeting tomorrow for anyone who could make it, which meant Harry needed a nice, quiet, and peaceful day to mentally prepare for it anyway. The Black library also had the largest book collection he'd ever seen in one place before and included some extremely illegal texts that he knew Rowle would murder to get his hands on - perhaps even quite literally.

Since the Black dukedom was the most powerful, however, it also had a vast collection of Wizengamot-related texts - standing orders, legislation, select committee reports, everything. It was far more information than Rowle had ever been able to give him, and Harry was more than happy to spend hours pouring over it all.

Harry still had his own dukedoms to think of, after all. Just because he wasn't able to use the titles for another few years, or planning on making them public knowledge anytime soon, didn't mean that he couldn't learn how to use them yet. Had he been raised in the wizarding world - like he should have been - then he'd have been brought up with certain etiquette and manners and taught politics from a young age. He absolutely despised that he was now forced to play catch up, but it was either that or staying in the muggle world, and that simply wasn't an option.

Currently, Harry was sprawled out across a Victorian wingback armchair reading a book so old he tried not to think about it lest he became too scared to touch it. It seemed to be some sort of precursor to Hogwarts: A History - a very pre-precursor - that gave more information about the Hogwarts founders than he had read anywhere else.

It supported the Dark Arts history book Rowle had given him - namely, that Salazar Slytherin wasn't the villain he was usually painted out to be. Instead, he was… cautious. He recognized that muggle-borns posed a risk during a time when muggles were burning witches at the stake, seeing them as a threat rather than less worthy.

Those who were "unworthy to study magic" didn't equate to "muggle-borns" after all.

Harry had already read quite a bit about Slytherin's original goals to protect magical children from muggles. He was appropriately and understandably concerned about the school's safety and, in Harry's opinion at least, those who were "unworthy" meant those who wished Hogwarts harm. Statistically, that was going to be muggle-borns due to their connection to the non-magical world which was why he hadn't wanted them in his school. But was wanting to save wizarding kind such a terrible thing?

Slytherin had taken the approach of eliminating the threat before it became one, which meant excluding muggle-borns from Hogwarts completely - a view that the other founders hadn't shared. It was an impossible decision for him to make but, in his mind, it was the only viable option. By not introducing muggle-born children into the magical world, they would be safe. It would mean generations of witches and wizards not learning of their birthright, but Slytherin had felt that the cost would be worth it.

Harry… wasn't so sure.

He couldn't possibly imagine living his life without knowing why he could do the strange things he did. If he hadn't met Rowle, if he hadn't found out that he was a wizard, then he would've spent his life believing everything that the Durlseys had said about him - that he was a freak, worthless, unlovable. He adamantly refused to cut muggle-borns out of the wizarding world entirely, but the other extreme would mean tearing them away from their loving muggle parents at the first hint of magic - which was just another cruelty in a different form.

But perhaps… perhaps some sort of compromise could be reached? An in-between solution where the family of the muggle-borns left the wizarding world too? Muggle parents who genuinely loved their magical child would surely have little reason to stay in the muggle world if their kid's entire future was in the wizarding world, right? They could probably even get jobs that didn't require magic or maybe even teach wizards and witches about the muggle world since that information seemed to be sorely lacking.

And besides, those parents who refused to change probably weren't going to be very supportive of their magical child anyway so those children should be given the chance to have a better life with a magical family who loved every part of them - the sort of family that Harry wished he'd had. The sort of family that… maybe… he now could have?

That was a thought for another time.

Fast forward a thousand years or so, and present-day bigots were taking what little they knew of Slytherin's story and twisting it until they could "justify" their want of genocide. It frustrated Harry to no end that people genuinely believed that Salazar had been evil. If he had truly been such a horrible person, then why on earth would three "good" witches and wizards have decided to build a school for children with him?! Why did nobody else ever realise this?! They hadn't fallen out because Slytherin demanded the death of all muggle-borns and muggles; they'd had a simple disagreement about the future of Hogwarts and had parted ways peacefully. Did that sound like something a supposedly genocidal supervillain would do?!

He shook his head in disgust and flicked back through the book until he found the paragraph that had caught his eye earlier on. The author of the book had spoken of a secret chamber that Slytherin had built before leaving the castle. Harry recalled the newspapers Rowle had brought him a few years ago, as well as its title.

'THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED' - SHOULD HOGWARTS BE CLOSED?

At the time, he'd been so annoyed that no one had connected Slytherin's chamber with Lord Slytherin that he hadn't given much thought to the chamber itself. The attacks had stopped after a handful of petrified students, a ghost, and a cat but the perpetrator had never been caught. He remembered Lockhart taking credit of course - and remembered the article revealing his position as Ilvermony's new DADA position a few months later.

But as for the chamber itself…

This book claimed that it hadn't been built to purge the school of all who were unworthy; it had been built to protect the students of Hogwarts. The book also said that this was uncorroborated information, however, and that no such chamber had ever been found. It theorised that this did not necessarily mean the room didn't exist; rather it suggested that Salazar had placed protective measures to hide the chamber from anyone but himself.

And there, scrawled on the margin in black ink and underlined twice, was the question "Paserseltongue?"

Harry stared at it for a moment, wondering which of Sirius's ancestors had made the connection because- yeah, actually, that would make perfectly good sense. The other founders didn't believe in Slytherin's fears and could have potentially destroyed the chamber if they'd found it - not out of malice, but simply because they wouldn't see the need for it. So what better way to protect your secret panic room than by making the entrance accessible only to your own descendants? Slytherin undoubtedly hoped he would never have to use it, so there was no advantage to making knowledge of the chamber public.

Harry recalled the final Prophet article about the chamber being opened. Not only had they never found out who had been attacking students, but they'd also never figured out what had been attacking students. What was it that they'd called it? Slytherin's monster? Harry didn't know of any creature that used petrification as its defence, so that route was a dead end. But as for Slytherin's monster…

Well. If there truly was a monster in Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets, then common sense would dictate that it had to be a snake, right? He wouldn't have gone to all that trouble of building a secret panic room accessible only by those who spoke Parseltongue and then just… thrown in whatever creature he could find. There had to be some level of communication between them or else what was stopping the monster from killing the students it was there to protect instead of just killing those attacking them?

No. It had to be a snake. A dragon wouldn't have lived this long, and he doubted any reptile would've either. But it would have to be a bloody massive snake, wouldn't it? Something large enough and powerful enough to survive over a thousand years, far larger than a boomslang or an ashwinder - something like a runespoor, perhaps, or a horned serpent, or maybe even-

Oh.

Harry could have kicked himself.

Leaping out of the leather chair, he left the book on the desk as he strode towards the Dark Creatures section at the back of the library. Quickly scanning the titles, he finally found the one he was looking for - Most Macabre Monstrosities - and yanked it out, flipping to the index and then flipping back through the book until he finally saw-

Of the many fearsome beasts and monsters that roam our land, there is none more curious or more deadly than the Basilisk, known also as the King of Serpents. This snake, which may reach gigantic size, and live many hundreds of years, is born from a chicken's egg, hatched beneath a toad. Its methods of killing are most wondrous, for aside from its deadly and venomous fangs, the Basilisk has a murderous stare, and all who are fixed with the beam of its eye shall suffer instant death.

Provided, of course, that the person in question met that murderous stare head-on. An indirect look, on the other hand…

Salazar Slytherin had put an XXXXX-rated deadly untameable basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry had to hand it to the man - he really knew how to go out in style.

It explained everything. How the creature had been able to get around the school - no doubt through the pipes - without anyone seeing him. How whoever had been controlling it was able to control it since it understood parseltongue. Why the attacks had stopped as, once the perpetrator stopped commanding the basilisk, it would've returned to its hibernation and not given a second thought to the castle's students.

Hogwarts had a pet basilisk.

Harry stared at the sketch of the creature on the page in front of him and wondered if going to Hogwarts was, perhaps, not such a bad idea after all…

Saturday, 12th August

It was Harry's first Order meeting and to say he was nervous would be putting it mildly.

The fact that he even was nervous at all irritated him beyond belief because, really, what was there to be nervous of? He'd already met Dumbledore and the Weasleys; everyone else was inconsequential. The fact that this was going to be his first time in a room full of witches and wizards who knew him as the Boy Who Lived meant nothing. The fact that he was about to meet the closest thing to friends that Sirius and Remus had also meant nothing. Why did he want to impress them? Why was he even thinking of impressing people in the first place? They all thought him an uneducated orphan; why did he need to prove otherwise?

Based on what Sirius had said, they were expecting a good half of the Order to show up and there were more than a few names that were unfamiliar to him - Dedalus Diggle, Mundungus Fletcher, Elphias Doge. Others, such as Shaklebolt and Jones pinged something in the back of his mind, but aside from Dumbledore, the Weasleys, and Severus Snape, he wasn't sure what to expect from anyone.

He went downstairs twenty minutes early, no longer able to distract himself from his restless nerves. In the kitchen, Remus pressed a cup of tea into his hands with a knowing smile and Harry was happy that he was looking a lot better this afternoon than he had been last night. He was very clearly exhausted, but there were no new scars visible at least and Sirius had quietly told him this morning that that was always considered a win.

Sirius himself was thrown in a chair at the kitchen table, somehow managing to make his long sprawling limbs look graceful rather than awkward and Harry yet again marvelled at his godfather's ability to be both the epitome and antithesis of the perfect pure-blooded lord.

"The Weasleys should be here any minute" he said, kicking out the chair next to him for Harry to sit down on, "Molly owled earlier on; she wants to introduce you to Arthur before the meeting starts. Bill, their eldest, couldn't get the day off from Gringotts apparently".

"Does she know that I will also be at the meeting?"

Sirius made a face - the same face he always made when someone reminded him that Dumbledore had pushed for Harry to join the Order despite his age.

"Not yet. If you think I'm bad, just wait until you see her reaction! She's absolutely furious at the twins occasionally sitting in, but since they're of age now she can't exactly stop them. Once she hears about you, however…"

He trailed off somewhat ominously and Harry wondered if, perhaps, Molly Weasley was one of the incredibly few people capable of out-arguing Albus Dumbledore.

There was a sudden whoosh of green flames and the woman in question stepped out of the fireplace. Sirius immediately straightened up and gave him a quick, somewhat panicked look as if to say "I'm not telling her, you do it!" before plastering on a wide grin and turning to her.

"Molly! And Arthur! And Forge and Gred, naturally, and- Ron? What are you doing here?"

"Thanks for the warm greeting, mate" the redhead replied, grinning wryly as he brushed soot off his robes.

"He's here to keep Harry entertained of course!" Molly said, "You can hardly expect the poor boy to occupy himself while the meeting is on, and Ron would've been home alone too - Ginny's spending the night with the Lovegoods and Percy's working late again - so of course we brought him! It'll do the boys good to spend some time together before they go to Hogwarts, after all!"

There was an abrupt, heavy silence.

Sirius gave Harry a wide-eyed look that clearly said "Don't make me tell her" but when he shot him a glare right back which meant "You're the adult here, not me!" he turned to Remus instead who rather conveniently chose that exact moment to yawn loudly and look incredibly worn down from the full moon yesterday night which left it up to Sirius to turn back to Molly Weasley who was now after narrowing her eyes and putting her hands on her hips and from behind her, the twins were slowly but surely backing away as if she were a volcano about to erupt.

"Sirius Black, what are you not telling me?"

"Nothing!"

"Sirius Orion Black-"

"It was Dumbledore's idea!" he blurted, "It wasn't mine, I swear! In fact I was initially very much against it and- and Remus can back me up on that because I complained about it for hours afterwards so you know that it wasn't my decision to make and-"

"SIRIUS ORION-"

"Harry's joining the meeting".

Another tense silence.

Harry took that time to study the stranger in the room. Arthur Weasley, the Earl of Hampshire, was a thin, bespectacled man with just as red hair as the rest of his family but also with green eyes that didn't match any of the other Weasleys he had met yet. He wondered if all of their kids had red hair, and also where Ron had gotten his blue eyes from since both Ginny and the twins had their mother's warm shade of brown.

"Are you telling me" Molly started, her voice a deadly whisper, "that Albus Dumbledore has agreed to let a fifteen-year-old boy sit in on a highly secretive meeting that involves the discussion of topics that no child should ever have to discuss?!"

"... It was actually his idea".

"It was what?!"

Harry felt a gentle nudge against his arm and he quickly jerked around only to find Fred nodding towards the kitchen door where George and Ron had already retreated. He quickly and quietly followed them, leaving his half-full cup of tea on the table.

"Once she starts, she'll be yelling for a while" Ron explained, silently closing the door behind them but not before Harry caught the very betrayed look his godfather sent him, Molly still red-faced and shouting in front of him.

"Best to get out while we still can" Fred finished, leading the way up the rickety stairs to the ground floor, "But hey, what was Sirius saying about you joining the Order?"

"Not joining" he corrected, "Just sitting in on a few meetings from time to time. Dumbledore thinks I need to be aware of the dangers my return will cause, or some other such rot".

He rolled his eyes in exasperation and behind him, George snorted.

"Let's see how well that reasoning holds up under Mum's glare. She still throws a fit every time we want to get involved, and we turned seventeen back in April!"

Harry winced as the muffled yet very, very audible voice of Molly Weasley rose in pitch. "You're not official members then?"

"Merlin no!" Fred exclaimed, "Just between you and us, mate, we don't think Lord Slytherin is that bad a guy. Our parents are convinced he's You-Know-Who because Dumbledore told them so, and Ginny is too, although I don't know why exactly but-"

"-the point is, he hasn't exactly done anything evil yet so why bother getting involved?" George finished, "Nah, there's far too much paperwork and politics included in properly joining the Order, and we'd much rather focus our efforts on creating products for our future joke shop".

"A joke shop?"

"Yeah, you know, for pranks and sweets that make you faint and those extendable ears we showed you last week. We've been taking mail orders for our products back home but Mum's already caught us with them once and she was livid-"

"-so now we're just stocking up and selling our stuff at Hogwarts until we can afford to open a proper store and make a business out of it".

"Oi!"

The trio came to an abrupt stop at Ron's exclamation and followed his gaze to the empty section of the wall where Walburga Black's painting had once hung.

"When the bloody hell did she come down?!"

"Oh". Harry suddenly felt rather embarrassed. "Uh… a few days ago?"

"How?!" he burst out, turning to him, "Merlin, everyone's been trying to get rid of her for months! Sirius eventually decided that it just couldn't be done so we tried sealing her curtains permanently shut instead - not that it worked for very long. How'd he finally do it?"

He willed his face not to flush as he replied. "He didn't. It was, uh… It was me. I removed her".

"You did what?!"

"I… tripped, coming downstairs" he explained, deciding to stick to the same story as before, "I reached out to try and steady myself and… well… accidentally cast something that sort of blew her straight off the wall".

Now the twins were staring at him too, and now they were looking at each other, and now they were turning back to him and-

"Wicked!"

Ron was still frowning. "Accidental magic? But you're fifteen! I haven't done accidental magic since I was seven and these two muppets transfigured my teddy bear into a spider!"

Fred grinned. "Hey, I'd forgotten about that!"

George pretended to wipe away a tear. "Ah, the good ole' days".

"Are you sure it was accidental magic?" Ron asked, ignoring his brothers.

"Yep. Tripped. Fell. And boom - no Walburga" he replied breezily.

Thankfully, before he could ask any more questions, Molly's shouting abruptly stopped. Someone else must have arrived then.

"Well, sounds like the storm's over" George said cheerfully, "Care to face the aftermath?"

They turned back to the stairs and Harry swallowed thickly. His nerves, which had been bubbling away under the surface, suddenly flared back to life. He had faced far worse than this, of course, but somehow the thought of sitting in on an Order meeting was terrifying.

Sensing his hesitation, Fred clapped him on the back. "You'll be fine, mate. It's just a bunch of old folks talking about boring stuff".

"Yeah" George added with a wink, "And if it gets too dull, you can always just 'trip' again and liven things up".

"Right…" he muttered, running a hand through his hair as they reached the kitchen door and the faint sound of voices, now more subdued, reached them. Harry squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and braced himself.

And then, he reached out and pushed open the door.