Chapter Text
Order meetings were always or at least more often than not more boring than one would expect from a secret organization of mages dedicated to preventing the rise of the most evil wizard of the century for the second time.
Kingsley’s deep voice was the droning of a restless insect to Severus as the older wizard recited the weekly rotation order of guards on both number four, Private Drive and the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry, which the younger Order members had taken to affectionately calling Mystery Dep.
How long for had the meeting gone on already? Most likely an hour, but spiritually, a year.
He shot a glance at Mcgonagall, who was seated across and two down from him at the long rectangular sitting room table of Grimmauld Place, knowing that she was likely also looking forwards to the meeting’s end. And for once, the new school semester might be something to be grateful for, after all of this agonizing waiting and watching…If I have to spend another summer night Disillusioned on the street outside of Private Drive, staring at that damn house—
Truth be told, the worst part about Severus’ occasional shifts guarding the Dursley residence was not only the mind-numbing boredom, but the few glimpses he caught of Potter that made something incomprehensible ache in his chest.
The boy spent most of his time indoors where Severus could not see him, and when Severus did, he looked as though he had not slept properly since the last school term had ended; shadows clung to his face, where his green eyes were dull and often unfocused, and he still looked far too scrawny for a growing teenager who should not be having any meals withheld from him. Not like before.
Severus spent far too many of his waking moments thinking of Potter, thinking of his health, how his relatives were treating him, if he had gotten any of his summer schoolwork done—He knew that if Dumbledore had knowledge of his worrying, the Headmaster would urge him to ignore it, considering what he had told Severus on the last day of the semester, over a month ago.
“So Lord Voldemort has some of Harry's blood in his veins,” the aged wizard murmured, his hands clasped behind his back as he looked out upon the dark night that had fallen over the grounds of Hogwarts.
Severus joined Dumbledore at the window. The distant stars glittered coldly back at him as the silvery moon peeked coyly out from behind a heap of clouds. “Yes, it would seem so. Does that mean that the blood wards surrounding the Dursleys’ residence will not protect against him any longer?”
He almost wished that the answer would be yes, because it would mean that there would be no reason for Potter to return to the people who had locked him in a cupboard for the majority of his life, but the look in Dumbledore’s pale blue eyes said otherwise.
“I doubt that. He did not gain that blood link naturally, after all.”
“So you think that they are linked,” Severus said questioningly, “because of Potter’s visions, and how he seemed to be able to feel the Dark Lord’s emotions at the time of the most recent vision.”
“It is certainly a possibility, a very dangerous one…If Tom had affected Harry in such a way even before he was returned to full strength, he could do far more now that he has a body and all of his magic again. No, not all of his magic…Even more of it. I am afraid that he is even stronger now…He could possess Harry—peer into his mind—and if he finds evidence of your improved relationship, memories or thoughts of it…”
Dumbledore heaved a soft sigh, one which could not fully express the worry and weariness that he was surely feeling despite his mild expression. “You two have become ever closer this school year, haven’t you? A very wholesome thing…especially after those first three years…I have never regretted my choice in making you Harry's summer tutor and temporary guardian last year, but I am afraid that you have allowed it to go too far.”
Something indignant prickled under Severus’ tongue, urging him to spit out something waspish and venomous, but he managed to contain that particular instinct. “Albus, what do you mean by ‘too far’?” he asked slowly.
The Headmaster gave him a dry glance. “Do not think that I can be fooled into still believing that Harry considers you as nothing more than a Professor that he can trust slightly more than the others. I do not believe that you only think of him as your least intolerable student, either. The issue is the fact that…Let me put it this way—if old Tom can see from Harry's perspective, then what he will see of you will be most displeasing to him…His spy, treating the boy who he has been trying to murder as a son—”
“I—I do not treat him like anything close to a son, and I certainly do not act as his father,” Severus growled, though he understood Dumbledore’s main point past all of the sentimental fluff. “Fine, then—What do you want me to do? To go back to despising him in public and in private? He has already been through enough pain as of late; that would crush him.”
“Just…keep him at arm’s length in the next school term. Severus, don’t give me that look—We both know full well that you aren’t exactly affectionate—but make sure that you remain more distant from Harry until we have more information on Lord Voldemort’s possible control over him. You know how much there is at risk.”
A loud bang, one of a door being thrown open against a wall, came from the entrance hallway, and everyone in the meeting room groaned as the portrait of Black’s mother began howling again.
“Sirius, haven’t you found a way to get rid of that awful painting?” Tonks grumbled over the screeches of blood slurs and threats of bodily harm.
Black rose from his chair with a half-apologetic and half-amused shrug, pulling out his wand. “I’ll go shut her up—Just stay put, it’ll just take a minute…” He rushed out, almost colliding with a disheveled and ashen-faced Mungdungus Fletcher in the doorway.
“I thought that we had agreed to enter quietly,” Hestia Jones sighed. “Mungudungus, isn't it your still your shift? Did something happen?”
Icy anger flooded Severus as Mungdungus stumbled further into the room, breathing heavily. “What are you doing here, Fletcher? I warned you that if you skipped half of your shift on Potter’s house again because you had gone picking up stolen goods for the third time—”
The rumpled man shook his head vigorously, his teeth chattering with what seemed to be both cold and fear. “N-no, ’s not that—It’s—Dementors—on him—on Magnolia Crescent…I—can’t—fend ‘em off…”
Severus’ heart skipped a beat before plummeting out of his chest as Mungdungus’ wheezed words were met with gasps of disbelief and worry from the other Order Members, and he was out of his chair before he fully processed his own action.
“Apparate us back to Potter's location," he hissed to Mungdungus, who seemed both relieved at the backup and horrified at the thought of returning to a place with Dementors in it.
“But what about the meeting…?” Elphias Doge asked feebly, but Severus had already left through the open doorway, pulling Mungdungus along with him as he hurried out of the sitting room and into the entrance hallway, where Black was slowly easing the curtains shut over the portrait, which had fallen silent.
Black looked up in hatred-filled bewilderment as Severus yanked the front door open, shoving Mungdungus out in front of him onto the front step.
“Where’re you two going—?”
“To save your knuckle-headed Godson,” Severus snarled before slamming the door shut behind him and Mungdungus, fully aware that he had just set off Mrs. Black’s portrait again. “Now, Apparate, you blithering coward.”
———
“Expecto Patronum!” Harry shouted for what felt like the tenth time, but it came out as more of a hoarse gasp, courtesy of the strangling that Uncle Vernon had bestowed upon him earlier that evening.
Perhaps that was why his Patronus, instead of bounding forth from his wand in the form of the glowing white stag that he was so used to conjuring, sprayed out as the thin veil of mist from his third year, when he was still only able to produce an incorporeal Patronus, something barely able to keep him from succumbing to the Boggart Dementor and most definitely not enough to defeat the two very real Dementors cornering him beneath the dingy underpass of Magnolia Crescent.
It faltered, flickering slightly. It was too weak—Harry was too weak.
Drained by the nightmares that plagued him at night, almost every night, Harry had spent the entire summer so far feeling like something not even human; he actively did his best to avoid falling asleep (and woke up even more tired than before he had closed his eyes), he often forgot if he had eaten something or even what he had been doing for an entire day (not that he felt that he deserved to eat anyways), and he hadn’t heard any news from his friends about getting him out of the Dursleys’ house (or much from them in general since his birthday three weeks ago). If he wasn’t wallowing in his own wretchedness, he wasn’t feeling anything at all, which was the better of the two options.
So this is how I’ll go out, he thought faintly as the horribly familiar screams of his mother began to fill his ears, and the summer night, already turned as cold as the depths of winter, somehow became even more frigid as the Dementors pushed into his poor excuse for a Patronus, the stench of damp and decay filling the air.
Why can’t it be the killing curse…At least that snuffs you out quickly…Why does it have to be getting my soul sucked out through my mouth—
There was a sharp, ear-splitting crack—the same sound that had had Harry jolting up from the flowerbed to hit his head on the bottom of a windowsill earlier that same day—and then a bellowed, “Expecto Patronum!”
Something extremely bright, four-legged, and oddly feathery at the edges barrelled into the Dementors, sending the foul creatures away into the night from whence they came, and banishing the oppressing atmosphere of hopelessness along with them; the natural warmth of the evening came rushing back, pressing uncomfortably against Harry's skin, which was still clammy with cold.
He dropped to the ground, falling heavily against the wall and taking in gasps of air, and tried to get his spiking pulse under control, but his mother’s shrill screams still echoed in his mind, deafening him to all else and filling him with fresh panic.
No, not Harry! I'll do anything—Not Harry! Take me instead, just not—
“—Potter!” An equally familiar voice, low and baritone, was muttering somewhere close above his head, as though its owner had knelt down right in front of him. “Fletcher, when did they first approach him?”
“C-couldn’t’ve been that long ago…Second I saw—felt—‘em, I Disapparated…He’d got some Patronus up by then, so ’s not like I left him to die—I mean, get kissed—”
Snape—because it was Snape, and not some figment of Harry’s isolated and desperate imagination—hissed under his breath. “Potter, can you hear me? Did the Dementors—“
Unable to stop himself through the overwhelming relief that had broken him out of his panicked daze at the sound of the Potions master’s voice, Harry made to reach out in some blind search for consolation, to make sure that Snape was real, that he was really there…but his arm froze halfway to Snape’s.
He left me all summer, like everyone else did, to rot at the Dursleys’…
Clearly, Snape hadn’t missed his abrupt motion either; he stood up, shifting a step back as he turned to frown at a scruffy man whom he had addressed as Fletcher. “Go back and tell the others of what has happened. I will escort him back inside the wards.”
With another crack, the man Disapparated, and Snape immediately turned back to Harry, a mixture of anger, frustration, and worry in his onyx eyes.
“Potter, what in the name of Merlin are you doing out here at night? You are aware that the blood wards around your aunt and uncle's residence only extend to the boundaries of the house, and you know the danger that may await you each time you step foot out of it! Thank Godric that it was only Dementors and not Death Eaters lying in wait to capture you for the Dark Lord…”
Harry flinched back against the concrete wall of the underpass, though his shock and hurt at the harshness in Snape's tone was quickly replaced by indignation. He stood up, carelessly shoving his wand back into the pocket of his shorts as he did. He had stopped wearing his wand holster long ago, since the Dursleys kept staring at it with open hostility when he did.
“I’ve been stuck indoors being glared at from all sides every time I enter a room,” he snapped sourly. He almost didn’t care if Snape got angry at him for it. “I’d like to see you managed to survive two months in a house where every other person who lives in it hates your guts without going mad for some fresh air! I just wanted to take a walk…Who was that other wizard? Where’d he just Apparate off to?”
Snape took in a breath and released it slowly, seemingly composing himself before he replied tersely, “That was one of the people tasked with taking shifts to ensure that none of the Dark Lord’s followers make an attempt on your life, and if not for his or my own interference, you would be a soulless shell on the ground, so keep that tongue of yours in check.”
Taking shifts—?!
“So I’ve had people watching me this whole time, guarding me while not telling me a thing about it?”
“Did you expect Professor Dumbledore to depend only on your non-existent survival instincts to keep yourself safe? The Headmaster has taken extra measures to keep you alive this summer, considering what occurred at the end of the last school year.”
Harry wanted to snap back, but something small and vulnerable within him made him ask instead, “…Professor, were you one of those people?”
The Potions master looked away, a shadow falling over his pale face as he replied tonelessly, “Yes.”
More emotions that he had felt for almost three months rushed through Harry’s chest; numb disbelief, burning frustration, and a sharp sense of betrayal that cut him deeper than a dagger threatened to shut down his mind, which had been sent into a state of complete disarray.
He could’ve looked in or sent someone else to visit—Just to say hello or tell me any news or just to see if I was alright staying in that house for the rest of the months—
Slowly, brokenly, Harry whispered into the dark, “After the first two weeks, I thought that you’d show up and get me out—that anyone might come and take me away.”
Snape didn't reply to that, though his jaw was set, as though he were biting back words.
“All this time, someone could've—Was I ever going to get away from the Dursleys this summer?”
“Professor Dumbledore has deemed it the safest place for you,” Snape replied without really answering Harry's question. “Have your relatives resumed their abuse of you? Do they withhold meals from you or threaten you?” When Harry shook his head wordlessly, he continued, “Then I am going to return you to the safety of the wards, and there is nothing more to the matter.”
Harry wanted to protest, to dig in his heels or beg if he had to, because the idea of having to return to suffering in suburbia after having finally interacted with someone who didn't completely hate his guts after so long would be torture—but he knew that it would be useless; something had definitely changed in Snape since Harry last saw him. This wasn’t the in-class-at-Hogwarts Professor, that cruel and scathing mask that Snape donned whenever he interacted with Harry in public, but it also wasn’t the stern without being harsh, firm while remaining reassuring Snape that Harry had gotten to know and trust and depend on during the last summer and school semester…
Why does he seem so distant…? It’s like when he pushed me away before the first task last year. Did I do something wrong again? But I haven’t even seen him all summer, so that can't be right, can it?
His heart gave a painful ache that Harry did his best to not let show on his face as he followed Snape out onto the sidewalk towards Private Drive.
Perhaps it was only because Harry had unwisely left the safety of the wards that Snape was being so detached, and Snape would cool off and be as he used to when school started. Harry took what comfort he could from that hopeful thought as they passed under a flickering streetlamp.
“Why were you unable to cast a corporeal Patronus?” Snape asked after a while of silence.
It was a good question, one which Harry hadn't even thought to ask himself. “I—I don't know. I chose a memory that worked fine before…”
“Perhaps it is merely lack of practice.” The Potions master sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as Harry, which wasn’t reassuring at all.
I did it fine during the third task, when that Boggart showed up, but that was before…Well, maybe he's right. I haven't done any other magic for almost two months, and the Patronus isn't something you pick up again easily…My magic’s fine. I just need to practice again, and I can do that at Hogwarts.
They were at the last turn to Private Drive, right by the clump of bushes where Sirius in his dog form had spooked Harry before third-year, when Snape abruptly halted to stare hard at Harry’s neck.
“You told me that your relatives have not returned to their old habits of treating you worse than an animal,” he said slowly.
Harry realized with a jolt that his neck had likely developed a noticeable bruise from Uncle Vernon’s throttling. Defensively, he covered it with a hand, wincing slightly as the tender flesh twinged at his touch, and pulled up the neck of his shirt to hide it.
“I mean—It’s nothing like before, they haven’t swung at me or anything—I just startled my uncle because I thought I heard someone Disapparating, and he reacted…”
“Was your aunt there to witness it? Did she do anything to prevent him from attempting to strangle you?”
“Yes, and no—It’s not like she could’ve in the first place—My uncle’s probably four times her weight…” Harry faltered at the look on Snape’s face and felt that he ought to prevent the murder that Snape was obviously envisioning, even if the victim would be Uncle Vernon. “’S nothing i'm not used to— It’s not like they're beating me black and blue every day, and I’m alive, aren’t I?”
“Yes, and looking the very picture of health,” Snape snarled before he shook himself, smoothing his expression out into something less brutal. “That changes things. You are not going to be staying with them any longer. You are not going to return to them ever again.”
“Wait, what?” It sounded far too good to be true, and the speed with which Snape had switched track made him doubtful. “But you said that Professor Dumbledore had said—”
“Clearly, your relatives do not care to take heed of warnings.” Snape started walking again, much faster than before, and Harry hastily quickened his own pace to keep from lagging behind. “I made the terms of the agreement quite clear when I visited them to arrange our…deal, and they received a letter with further information at the start of the summer. They could not have forgotten either of those things. They chose to ignore them.”
“But if they won't be my legal guardians anymore, then I—I don’t have anywhere else to go, sir…”
Harry tried extremely hard not to think about Spinner’s End and the month that he had spent there, but the maudlin thoughts of longing that had budded during the last week of the school term and shrivelled during the summer burst into bloom again in his mind.
Snape’s house had plenty of wards and enchantments to keep any threats or unwanted visitors out, or at least enough that last year Dumbledore had thought it alright for Harry to stay there, if only for a few weeks, and he and Snape had co-existed in it fairly peaceably towards the end of the last summer. Why couldn’t they do it another time, even if Voldemort was back and Snape was a double-agent again? It would only be for the last week of summer…
The answer seemed pathetically obvious. Maybe he doesn’t want to bother with me like that—He’s not even actually my guardian, more of a mentor, even with all the stuff he said and did last year, but…but I thought—
“You will be taken to a safe and undisclosed location. Now, hurry up. There is no time for dawdling.”
Number four, Private Drive’s kitchen windows were still aglow with artificial light beneath the muslin curtains that shrouded them when Harry and Snape reached the front door of the house, where the Professor rapped sharply on the wood. Inside, the faint blaring of the television increased in volume for a brief moment before being muffled; the living room door had evidently been opened and shut to let Aunt Petunia through, as the footsteps that approached the front door were the soft shuffling of slippered feet, so unlike Uncle Vernon’s heavy footfalls that made the hair on the back of Harry's neck stand up each time he heard them.
Still, he was wary when Aunt Petunia opened the door without noticing Snape and frowned at Harry. “Where on earth were you? Tsk, at this point you might as well stay away all night to give us the hope that you might never return. Get in, and go to your room—”
“Yes, go to your room and pack your things, Potter,” Snape cut in, smoothly stepping into the house as Aunt Petunia stumbled backwards in horror. “I have some things to discuss with your aunt and uncle.”
“Y-You!” Aunt Petunia gasped, clutching at her chest with one hand and reaching backwards with the other, as though she hoped to find some weapon there to knock Snape out with. “What're you doing back here—? We haven’t done anything that—”
“Pack your things,” Snape hissed over her, and Harry saw his hand tighten around the handle of his wand inside of his cloak.
Harry looked from Snape, whose eye was twitching, and at his aunt, who now looked like she had just been sentenced to death by electrocution. Slowly, Harry ascended the stairs, and as soon as he reached the darkness of the unlit second floor, a quiet wave of magic washed over his heel; the downstairs entrance had been enchanted, though with which spell, he was unsure.
The muffled banging and thumping that shook the walls of the house from downstairs did give him some clue as he stuffed his textbooks, spare quills, unused rolls of parchment, and the Muggle clothes that Snape had bought him last year into his trunk. He paused, running his hands over the back of a fifth shirt that Snape had practically bullied him into picking out. That strange shopping trip seemed like a lifetime ago.
Why had Snape changed again? Was it somehow Harry’s fault, or was there some unknown factor in this new equation? He had no idea, and the unclearness of it all was killing him.
Slamming down the lid of his trunk and tying his Firebolt to it, Harry took Hedwig’s empty cage and dragged everything with him out of his room and out to the landing. At the sight of him and all of his magic mumbo-jumbo, Dudley, who had stuck his head out to see what was going on downstairs, disappeared back into his room again.
Whatever enchantment or charm Snape had cast was gone by the time Harry reached the Professor in front of the door again, and so was Aunt Petunia. The television had gone silent in the living room, not because it had been turned off but because of the silencing charm on the door; Harry could sense its thin hum.
“…What’d you discuss with them?” Harry asked cautiously, scanning the askew doormat, broken vase, and crooked hinge on the shut door to the living room, which all certainly hadn’t been as they currently were before Harry had gone upstairs.
Snape casually brushed a stray lock of hair out of his blank face before yanking open the front door again. “Nothing that they were not already forewarned about. We are going to Disapparate at the street corner.”
“You—You didn’t hurt them, did you?”
“No,” Snape replied and then paused, seeming to consider for a second before he muttered under his breath, “It will wear off…eventually.”
Harry debated pressing for more details, but everything had been moving too quickly for him to wrap his head around anything at the moment, and they were already at the corner. Snape grabbed Harry’s forearm and twisted them away.
After the horrible sensation of having all of the air sucked out of him and then forced back inside through his ears, Harry blinked open his eyes and found that Snape had Apparated them in front of a row of tall, old townhouses that sat side by side with only a few feet of patchy grass yard and worn wooden fences between them. The numbers on the two houses directly in front of them seem to have been messed up; number twelve’s place in the lineup had been skipped to be usurped by thirteen.
Snape took out a slip of very rough-on-the-edges paper and handed it to Harry. Number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London: the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix was written on it in a very familiar and elegant slanted handed.
“Read that mentally.”
Slightly confused, Harry did, and the second he finished off the word Phoenix, the huge mass of dark brick and ornate windowsills and chipped stone steps that was number twelve, Grimmuald Place, erupted from the thin gap between the neighbouring houses, which groaned and heaved to make room. It all reminded Harry of how cool magic was.
“Enter quietly, do not touch anything, and take your things to the first door on the right of the second floor,” Snape told him before tapping the door knocker, which was shaped like a coiled snake, with his wand. “You will find your friends there. I must inform the others of your arrival.”
Before Harry could ask who the others were, the door creaked open with the soft clunking of mechanical sounds muffled by magic, and Snape pushed him inside and shut the door behind them, almost catching the tail of Harry’s Firebolt in it.
The entrance hallway inside was as draped in shadows as it was in a thick layer of dust-repelling, sound-quieting, and various other safety and quality of life charms that one would expect of a child's nursery, not one of the most suspicious and probably-evil looking houses that Harry had ever seen. Ever-lasting candles, their enchantments faded from age and over-use, flickered dully along the walls, dry wax pooled around their bases and dripping down onto the hardwood floorboards that were so deep in colour that they appeared completely black, and snake motifs were everywhere; the empty chandelier hanging from the high ceiling had arms in the shape of serpents, the end of the banister was curved to appear like a fanged snake’s mouth, and there was even a glass case displaying a taxidermy snake sinking its teeth into an unfortunate frog.
Snape, who had peered into one of the many rooms leading off of the main hallway while Harry was busy staring around, made a frustrated sound. “It seems that we are late.”
“Yes, the meeting ended already, but we’ll all be having dinner together in just a bit, if you'd like to stay.” Mrs. Weasley emerged from the darkness, her eyes lighting up as she spotted Harry. “Oh—Oh, Harry! Mungdungus didn’t tell us that you’d be coming along!” She bustled over to pat his cheek and looked him over critically. “Hm…You look rather peaky. Suppose it's a good thing that Professor Snape brought you, then.”
She shot Snape a questioning look just as another figure popped out of yet another side room. “Is it really true that there were Dementors on Little Whinging? Is Harry alright? What happened—”
“Use your eyes, Black, and ask him yourself,” Snape replied, stepping to the side to reveal Sirius, Harry’s Godfather.
Sirius, looking significantly more clean-shaven and less raggedy than Harry has last seen him, unnecessarily shoulder-checked Snape as he stepped forwards and smiled broadly at Harry. “My favourite—well, only—Godson,” he said gladly before worry darkened his face. “Are you hurt at all?”
“This really isn't the best place to talk,” Mrs. Weasley interrupted apologetically, tilting her head at one of the old paintings on the wall, which seemed to have recently been plastered over with multiple layers of curtains as well as a generous amount of Spell-o-tape. “Sirius, Remus needs help with the cursed cabinet in the pantry again, and Harry, Ron and Hermione are up in Ron’s room waiting for you…”
“Yes, alright, alright…Let’s catch up over dinner. Weren’t you just leaving, Snape?”
Snape, who hadn’t made it apparent that he was going to do such a thing, looked coldly at Sirius. “For once in your life, Black, you are correct. I must inform Albus of what has happened.” He turned on his heel and had his hand on the doorknob before Harry realized that he wanted to speak.
“Wait, Professor—”
Harry’s heart dropped slightly in his chest as Snape glanced back at him with an indifferent expression, his eyes dark and unfathomable.
“…Will I see you again before school starts?” His voice had come out a lot smaller than he had meant for it to, and he could barely resist the urge to drop his gaze from Snape's, which had become piercing.
“Perhaps. I am very busy this summer.” With that short reply, Snape left, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Mrs. Weasley looked quickly from Harry to the closed door and back at Harry again. “Well, Professor Snape always comes around for meetings, and we’ve got one the evening before you’re all off to Hogwarts…You could speak with him then—”
Harry’s sense that he had just been abandoned like an unwanted pet only lasted another second before Sirius clapped him on the back and steered him towards the stairs. “I’m going to go help in the kitchen with Molly, so you take this time to get your things up to your room with Ron. Get settled in, tell them the news—We’ll have our talk later, yeah?” At Mrs. Weasley's beckoning, he smiled again and darted off after her.
Levitating his trunk, broomstick, and Hedwig's cage up the stairs after him (it was so good to be able to perform magic again, since the presence of adult mages in the house meant that he wouldn’t get in legal trouble for doing it), Harry quickly reached the second floor of the building. It was as dark and unwelcoming as the first floor, and he wondered if it looked less gloomy in the daylight.
He opened the first door on the right and his view of the warmly lit room within was immediately obscured by an ambushing Hermione. Flinching at the shock of being hugged so tightly, Harry almost lost concentration of the hovering charm on his belongings.
“Harry! We were so worried when we heard—Well, Fred and George eavesdropped—that you were attacked by Dementors! We didn’t know that you’d be taken here—Oh, how are you?” Hermione released Harry so that Ron could have a turn patting him on the back instead. “I’m sorry that all our letters were just so full of nothing, Professor Dumbledore made us swear that we wouldn’t say—”
“Let him get a word in, c’mon,” Ron chuckled, grabbing Harry's trunk for him to dump it in front of one of the twin beds in the room as Hedwig and Pigwidgeon soared over from the wardrobe in the corner to land on Harry’s arm. “Really, mate, what happened? You’re not in trouble for doing underage magic, are you?”
“I don’t think so…I haven’t gotten a letter like all the other times I’ve done it.” Harry sat down on the bed and put Hedwig’s cage on the dresser next to it.
He was so happy to see his friends again after almost the entire summer spent feeling alone and overlooked, but he also almost felt betrayed. It sank claws into his skin, picked at his heart, and gnawed at his brain until he could barely keep it all in for any longer.
There had been people watching over him, guarding the Dursleys’ house, to keep him safe without his knowledge, and perhaps if not for Snape noticing the faint bruises on his neck, he wouldn’t have ever found that information out and have been taken away from there. Sure, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hadn’t treated him as before, but their hate and disdain for him hadn't lessened in the slightest; they still glowered when Harry dared to sit down at the kitchen table with them and would watch him out of the corners of their eyes if he ever stayed in the same room as them for too long, as if he was some strange and unpredictable criminal that they had the burden of housing. The blood wards might have kept Harry safe from Voldemort, but it had already been well over the two weeks that it supposedly took for the wards to be renewed, and—Harry had never felt safe within that house, except when he had been very young and had hid in the cupboard for safety. Then the Dursleys had turned it into his prison.
He swallowed to get the sudden bitter taste that had coated his tongue out of his mouth before continuing, “There weren’t any Muggles in the area when I cast my Patronus—” Tried to, anyway, “—and I think at the time of casting, there had been someone, an adult wizard, nearby, so it couldn’t have been counted right? Then the second or third time, Snape and this guy he called Fletcher showed up…No, wait—They arrived after I’d already cast it…”
Harry frowned, petting Hedwig absent-mindedly. That can't be right...If it didn't count for the second time, then that means there was another of-age mage nearby…but who, and why?
“Wish they’d talked more about why Dementors were down in a Muggle neighbourhood before putting that anti-eavesdropping charm on the door again,” Ron grumbled, sitting down next to Harry and grabbing Pigwidgeon out of the air to pet him too. “Fred and George keep gloating about how—AAAGH!”
There had been a loud cracking noise, and the aforementioned twins appeared out of thin air right on the other bed, next to Hermione, who had jumped up at their noisy entrance. Hedwig clacked her beak disapprovingly at them from Harry’s arm where she was still perched, and Pigwidgeon had rocketed back into the air to twitter madly.
“‘Ello, Harry. We heard your very welcome arrival,” said Fred, grinning.
“I’d hate it if I’d been rescued by ol’ Snape, but you didn’t seem so unhappy to see him go,” said George.
“You two’ve passed your Apparition tests, then?” Harry asked in an attempt to change the subject. “Hold on, why can you Apparate in here? We showed up on the front step, and I had to read a slip of paper before the building popped up.”
“The building’s been made a secret using the Fidelius charm, and the Headmaster’s the secret keeper. He’s let us all in on the secret, so now Grimmauld Place recognizes us as part of the charm and allows people who’re in on it to Apparate in and out,” Hermione replied, sounding as usual—as if she had swallowed a textbook. “It’s generally impolite and startling to Apparate throughout a house, though.”
Fred and George only grinned even wider.
“Wait. Whose house is this? What’s the Order of the Phoenix? Nobody told me a thing when I’d arrived—”
“Sirius’ place. His parents’, really, but they're dead. Nasty folks, clearly.” Ron gestured at the entire room with its old-fashioned and grim looking furniture. “The Order was made—”
“Founded, Ron—”
“—Back in the first war, when You-Know-Who and his followers were everywhere. Now the Order’s back to help keep people safe—specifically you—and stop the Death Eaters from doing anything. Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, Mcgonagall, Bill, Charlie, Mum, Dad, your Uncle Edgar, and a bunch of other people that we dunno are in it, and Dumbledore’s the leader.”
“Ah, old Uncle Edgar…Still don’t know why Dumbledore trusts him.” George shook his head for effect.
“Is Percy not in the order?” Harry, having noticed that Ron hadn’t mentioned the last and most pompous of his of-age brothers, asked curiously, then wished he hadn't at how the others’ expressions soured at his words.
Hermione reached over to stroke Hedwig, frowning slightly. “Make sure not to mention him in front of anybody else—”
“Or if Mum overhears, she'll burst into tears,” Fred muttered. “Dad usually just looks like he wants to move to a different country, or his natural magic breaks whatever he’s holding.”
“Percy turned traitor a month ago,” said Ron, still scowling fiercely as Pigwidgeon head-butted his fingers, hooting shrilly. “He got promoted at the Ministry, and when Dad tried to tell him that they just wanted him as a spy on our family—y’know, since we're all blood traitors to them—Percy flipped out. Huge row, lots of tears, yelling shook the house, the whole shebang. He packed up and moved to London the next day.”
Harry’s head spun with all of the information that he had just received, and he regretted not being able to have been there with his friends since the start of this summer, when everything had happened…So why had Dumbledore decided that Harry just had to stay at the Dursleys for the entire when there was apparently a base for a secret organization kept secure and hidden by the Fidelius charm? Wasn’t Grimmauld Place safe enough for Harry, if Sirius, who was on the run from the Ministry, lived in it? Or was there another reason that the Headmaster had kept Harry away from everyone else for longer than necessary?
Then an invisible bell chimed in the room, informing them all that dinner was ready, and Harry pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he trooped downstairs to the basement level of the house with everyone else.
Dinner was a rowdy affair made entertaining by Nymphadora Tonks, an Animorphmagus who could change her physical appearance at will, and Fred and George’s usual antics, which in this instance involved setting the crowded dinner table with fake forks that were actually ladles in disguise and spoons that sprayed soup at their holders when lifted from their bowls. Sirius had Harry tell him about the Dementors, and that led to another talk about safety and self-preservation and common sense that sounded like the one Snape had given him, though much less sharp and much more well-meaning God-fatherly. Harry was glad when Ron distracted Sirius by asking him about his old motorbike.
Despite the warmth and laughter radiating throughout the busy kitchen, and the feast of beef stew, chicken cutlet, roasted cauliflower, and tomato soup that Mrs. Weasley and Lupin had co-created, Harry couldn't enjoy any of it. He had been pulled from the Dursleys’, which he had been hoping for since the blood ward renewal time had been fulfilled; he was with his dearest friends again, and they would be going back to Hogwarts together in just a week. Still, he was unhappy—Why? Why couldn't he just be grateful?
Because he’s dead, an oozing voice whispered in his ear, wrapping itself around his brain and prickling at the back of his neck. It brought to mind the imagery of dark, decaying things. Rotting leaves underfoot. The stone of a grave. Guilt and regret.
He should be where you are—with the people that loved him. How can you enjoy food when he no longer can, or fill your lungs with laughter when there’s nothing but the cold air of his coffin in his? How can you be happy when it’s your fault that he’s dead?
Harry pushed away his half-eaten plate of food. He didn't need the voice to tell him not to eat anymore; it had become a habit since the month after the incident in the maze and the graveyard. His stomach churned painfully inside of him, and he knew that there was a fair chance that everything was going to come up again if he didn't stop thinking about it.
After dinner, the Order members who had stayed after the meeting for it said their goodnights and departed together until only the Weasleys, Harry, Hermione, Sirius, and Lupin remained. Harry wanted to get Sirius in private to tell him about Snape, but Mrs. Weasley had taken one glance at the clock sitting on the kitchen mantlepiece before declaring that it was far too late for the students to be awake, and she practically drove them into their rooms without bothering to hear their protests.
“If you get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, you’ve gotta make sure to lock the door behind you once you’ve come back,” Ron told Harry after they had turned off the lights and gotten into their beds. “Sirius has an old house elf named Kreacher, and lemme tell you, you do not want to wake up at three in the morning to see his bloodshot eyes staring at you in the dark.”
“Sounds like you’ve got personal experience with him, then—If he’s that...creepy, why doesn't Sirius just fire him?” Harry asked warily.
“Can’t. He knows too many Order secrets now, and Kreacher signed some contract with ol’ Grandma Black back when house elves could be kept like slaves, so Sirius is stuck with Kreacher ’til one of them keels over.” Ron audibly shuddered beneath his blankets. “Horrible. Well, sweet dreams, mate. I hope Kreacher won't be in them…”
Harry didn’t shut his eyes even after Ron had started snoring softly. He knew that his dreams would certainly not be sweet, since all that he had had since Cedric’s murder were nightmares.