Facing Danger
Chapter 43: Memories and Muggleborns (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
Author Notes:
Letha caught up with Harry outside the second floor toilet. "Explain," she said without preamble.
Harry thought of trying to lie, but Letha's face was set in the preternatural calm she only wore when she was playing Quidditch or so angry she didn't dare show it. Fibbing would get Mrs. Weasley's stay-in-the-house order amplified to stay-in-your-room-and-do-nothing-but-homework, and he liked himself sane.
"It all started when Bernie and Echo and Cissus were spying on Kreacher," he said. "They heard him say something about Regulus Black's death being his fault, and told Padfoot because he's Kreacher's Master. Padfoot tried asking him about it, but Kreacher freaked out and started yelling that he'd been ordered never to tell the family and he wouldn't tell such an awful Master anything anyway. So since I'm not technically family, Padfoot waited until Kreacher calmed down, then had me ask him instead."
"I take it you got results."
Harry nodded. "Do you remember last summer when Luna said there was something strange about this big old locket we found while we were cleaning up?"
"Is that the one Albus came and took away? The one you said looked like Voldemort, and felt like the diary that possessed Percy and Ginny?"
"Yeah, that one. It turns out it was Voldemort's, and he used Kreacher to test its hiding place. Kreacher was supposed to die after the testing was over, but Regulus had told him to come home when Voldemort was done with him, and he got here before the Inferi got him."
"Inferi?" Letha shook her head. "Never mind. Keep going."
"Regulus was really angry about it," Harry said, condensing Kreacher's rambling narrative on the fly rather than reporting it as close to word-for-word as he could, the way he had for his godfather. "He liked Kreacher as much as Padfoot didn't, so he decided he wasn't going to let Voldemort get away with it. He had Kreacher take him back there, and he, Regulus, tripped the spell on the hiding place, and the Inferi did kill him. But Kreacher got back here with the locket, and under Regulus' orders to never tell the family what he'd done."
"Mm-hmm." Letha nodded slowly. "And you told Sirius this how long ago?"
Harry checked his watch. "About an hour."
"Long enough." She started to turn away, then stopped and let out a breath that had a little laugh in its end. "Quite an interesting family you ended up with," she said, giving him a brief, tight hug.
"There's good interesting and bad interesting in families," said Harry, hugging back. "And we're good interesting. Now if you want to talk about bad families..." He pitched his words to carry down the hall, where Draco had just come into view.
"Really want to lose a duel today, do you?" Draco snapped his wrist, popping his wand into his hand. Harry did the same.
"Don't break anything," said Letha, heading for the stairs. "Including each other."
I'm not planning to. Harry sized up the opposition, feeling himself being measured in return. On the other hand, Fred did just teach me that spell to flip your enemy upside down and turn all his hair into springs...
Aletha took the stairs two at a time, less to get away from the spellfire beginning below her than to get to her bedroom above. She could already hear the vague sounds of crashes and growls coming from it, which meant either Sirius was making so much noise he was overwhelming the Silencing Charms or he hadn't cast them properly.
He never could concentrate properly on his magic when he was angry. Severus used to provoke him before exams just to try to make him fail...
She tried the door. As she'd expected, it was locked. As she had half-expected, a simple Alohomora did nothing. A more complex Full Unlocking charm, though, did the trick, and she keyed up her Beater's reflexes and stepped into the room.
Padfoot the dog tore two more mouthfuls of cloth out of the duvet he was disemboweling before he looked up and noticed her. Aletha had time to close the door behind herself, reset the Silencer her entry had nullified, and take a seat on the floor beside him. "Feeling better?" she asked, indicating the shattered furniture and shredded fabric that covered the room, along with the fresh gouges in the walls.
Sirius retransformed and glared at her. "Get out."
"This is my bedroom too."
"Well, it's my goddamn house!"
"In which you have given a number of people guest-rights," Aletha pointed out. "And you're disturbing them, and our cubs, with this little display. If you're so angry you can't control yourself, I'll be glad to go out to the Den with you. There's no one there, so you can rant and rave and smash things all you like."
"I'll go." Sirius thrust his hands against the floor and got to his feet. "You're not coming."
"Orders," said Aletha with a calm she was far from feeling. "No one goes out alone."
Sirius spat an oath. "Fine, then, come if you're so damn worried. Stupid witch, thinks I can't take care of myself..." The last word was cut off by the loud crack of his Disapparition.
He must be upset. Usually he barely makes a sound doing that. Aletha stood up and spun in place herself, concentrating on the Den's music room. A brief constriction, and she was there, just in time to duck as a book hurtled past her head. Sirius growled something that might have been charitably interpreted as an apology before returning his attention to the bookshelf he was denuding of its contents.
Aletha retreated to the cover of a wing chair and watched as her husband transformed a room which had been left as neat as Danger's orders and the cubs' sweat could make it into a fair replica of a battleground. The only things he left in their places were the heavier pieces of furniture, such as the couch and her piano, and even they came in for a few savage kicks. Finally Sirius knelt in the center of the room, panting. A fist slammed into the carpet, once, twice, again, and on the third blow he screamed, a sound raw with anger and pain and disbelief.
Then he crumpled, and Aletha was beside him in a heartbeat, drawing him unresisting into her arms. He clung to her as he once had when she awakened him from nightmares of Azkaban, burying his face against her breasts and sobbing with the harsh, broken sounds of a man whose tears did not come easily. She hummed under her breath and stroked his hair, his shoulders, his back, pushing her own fears away. Sirius needed her now. That was all she could allow to matter.
"Tell me," she said when the worst was past. "I only got the quick version from Harry. Something about Voldemort, and Inferi..."
Sirius shuddered, but sat up and fished in his pocket for a handkerchief. Aletha swallowed a snicker and handed him hers, with which he managed to make himself halfway presentable. "It starts with that locket," he said hoarsely, tucking the cloth away when she motioned for him to keep it. "You remember, from last summer?"
"We got that far, yes."
"I guess it was more important to Lord Snaky-Pants than anybody ever knew." Sirius tried for a smile and got only a shaky grimace. "Even he would only set up a lake full of Inferi and a potion that sounds like it was brewed with dementor spit to guard something really important..."
He explained further, and despite herself, Aletha was impressed by the interlocking cunning of the plan. Even if an intruder made it to the island and forced himself to fight through all the memories and visions of horrors to finish the potion, he would then have to drink from the lake, and the Inferi would drag him under to drown and become one of them, increasing the locket's protection by recruiting its erstwhile thief.
Or that's how it was supposed to work. In theory. Like most theories, in practice it hit a snag.
A snag named Regulus Black.
"No one ever knew what happened to him," Sirius said, looking out through the glass of the back door with unseeing eyes. "I always assumed..." His voice choked off, and he had to stop and get his breath back before he could go on. "I always assumed he'd lost his nerve. Backed out of a raid or froze up in front of an Auror. I never thought... he's a hero, dammit, and all this time I've been thinking about him like..."
"I know." Aletha kissed the side of his forehead. "But that isn't the only reason you're upset by this, is it?"
A half-hearted growl rumbled in Sirius' throat. "Do you have to do that?"
"We're in the middle of a war. I don't want you emotionally paralyzed in the middle of the next battle you have to fight. Now, what else is bothering you about this?"
"You mean there has to be something besides finding out my little brother is an animated corpse at the bottom of a lake guarding an evil artifact for the bastard we're fighting against?"
Aletha let her cheek rest against Sirius' and considered the matter. "Yes," she said finally. "Let's have it."
"I... I don't know, Letha, it doesn't even make sense in my head..."
"Silly Sirius." Aletha laughed aloud. "Emotions don't make sense. They just are." She sobered. "If you don't tell me, I'm going to have to start asking questions."
"Merlin's wand, no! Not questions!" He pretended to cower in fear. "All right. I'll try. But it doesn't want to go into words."
"The complicated ones usually don't." She stroked his hand, willing some of her own strength into him. "Take your time. I'm here."
Sirius took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Kreacher," he said on the last wisps of it. "It's Kreacher."
"That he lived and Regulus died?" Aletha prompted when several moments passed with nothing more.
"No. Yes. Well, sort of." Sirius snorted a brief, bitter laugh. "Covers all the hoops, doesn't it? What I mean is, yes, I'm angry that he's alive and Regulus isn't. But that's not the real reason. The real reason is..." He scuffed a heel back and forth against the carpet. "You've met Kreacher. He's a nasty little waste of space. He insults you and Danger, he insults Remus, he insults the cubs and me and everyone else he meets. He won't do the work around the house himself, but I had to order him to get out of the way and let Dobby and Winky do it. I even caught him one day trying to brainwash Echo and Cissus into his own freakish philosophy. And that is what Regulus thought was worth giving up his life for."
"I think you need to add three words to that sentence," Aletha murmured, feeling her muscles tense as they might if she were about to tickle a sleeping dragon.
"Three words?" Sirius sounded uncomprehending. "What three words?"
"These three." Aletha drew a deep breath of her own and hoped she was doing the right thing. "And that—and not you—is what Regulus thought was worth giving up his life for."
"Me?" Sirius gaped at her. "This has nothing to do with—"
"Bullshit," Aletha cut him off. "I remember why you left home even if you don't."
"I left home because my parents were a couple of damn bigots who thought Voldemort was doing good work!"
"That's the big reason, the overall reason. I'm talking about the twig that broke the broomstick's handle. You were trying to stop Regulus from going out to a Junior Death Eater meeting, and you thought you might actually be getting through to him when your mother burst in and started screaming at you, telling you to stop corrupting her one good son. It turned into a huge three-cornered argument, and you ended up grabbing your things and stamping off to the Potters'."
Sirius spent several seconds looking at her. "You remember my life better than I do."
"You've spent twenty years trying to forget that scene. I haven't."
"Point. But what does it have to do with anything?"
Aletha sighed. "Is it so hard for you to admit you loved your brother?" she asked softly. "And that you're angry and a little bitter because he didn't seem to love you back?"
"Didn't seem to?" Sirius scoffed. "He couldn't have cared less about me! I'm just fooling myself into thinking he was listening to me that day. Probably he got tired of my 'moralizing' and signaled for dearest Mumsie to get me off his back." He shook his head irritably. "I almost wish I'd never found out about this. He didn't want anyone to know, so maybe we shouldn't have asked..."
"He didn't want anyone to know because he was afraid Voldemort might find out someone had taken his pretty necklace," Aletha corrected. "And someday, after this war is over, we'll find that cavern and do what's right, for Regulus and for everyone else whose bodies are there. Right now, you need to listen to me." She poked a finger against his temple until he turned to face her. "Regulus wasn't a Gryffindor. He may not have had the courage to go against your mother openly. But when it came down to the hard decision, when he had to make up his mind about right and wrong, he didn't make any mistakes then. And some of that, without a doubt, was because he had your example in front of him. For today, that's going to have to be enough."
Sirius laid his head against her shoulder. "I'd hate you if you weren't so damn right."
"Why not hate me because I'm right? It's more traditional."
"Since when have I been traditional?"
"True enough." Aletha kissed the top of his head, treasuring the scent of his hair and the possessive strength of his arm around her waist. "We should get back before Danger sees what you did to our room."
"She knows I always clean up after myself when I get like this."
"Has that ever stopped her from scolding you for it?"
Sirius blanched. "Let's go." He started to get up, then stopped, looking ruefully at the destruction which surrounded them. "After I fix all this."
"I'll help," Aletha said, drawing her wand. "If only to make certain you're too deeply in debt to me to be able to say no tonight, when I ask you to..." She whispered a few words into his ear.
Sirius blinked. "Why would I say no to that? It sounds like a great idea."
"Who was that I remember giving me grief about how long it takes to get ready the first time we tried it?"
"Yeah, but I didn't know how much fun it was then. Now I do."
Trading quips to make each other laugh, blush, or both, the Blacks went to work.
"Just treat me like a trainee," Frank Longbottom said. "It's what I am, isn't it?"
"Well, yeah... but you're my dad!"
"Your mum was your teacher all year, and you got used to that."
"That's different," Neville protested, then laughed at the whining tone in his own voice. "Okay, I'll try. Welcome to the artillery, Trainee Longbottom."
"Thank you, sir," said Frank, deadpan.
Neville kept his own face straight with an effort and pointed at the item lying on the table beside them. "This is a DA-standard personal potion piece. It is not yours yet because you don't know how to use it. Once you know how to use it, and you've practiced with it until I say you're good enough, then it will be yours. When I say it's yours, I mean you keep it with you. You don't put it away in a drawer and forget about it. You don't play around with it where people can see you, either. It may look like a toy, but it is not a toy. It is a weapon and a tool, just like your wand, and you will treat it like your wand. Do you understand?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"You're not helping," Neville said out one side of his mouth, trying to keep his laughter under control.
"I'm sorry." Frank dropped a hand onto his son's shoulder. "I shouldn't tease, but you do sound a lot like some of the basic trainers I've had. And been, for that matter. I take it that's a prepared speech?"
"I freeze up in front of people unless I know exactly what I'm going to say. Or unless I have a... a person to be, I guess. When I'm working with the artillery, I don't have to be just me—actually, I can't be. I'm their leader, and I always have to know what I'm doing." Neville grinned ruefully. "Even when I don't."
"I suspect there are stories there." Frank chuckled under his breath. "But we'll get to that later. How does this thing work?"
"It's based on a Muggle water pistol, but we changed it some." Neville picked up the potion piece from the table, being careful to keep the muzzle pointed down the range which was more used to Aurors' spells than blasts of potion. "It has three chambers where most water pistols only have one, and where you have to pump them up multiple times to get good distance, this runs on a rechargeable spell." He put his left hand on top of the chambers, curled his right around the grip, and pulled with the one as he pushed with the other. The chambers moved towards him, then snapped back into place, and a faint whine filled the air. "Armed piece."
Frank nodded in approval of the warning call, then stepped back to watch as Neville took a square-shouldered stance in front of one of the spell targets. "You grip with both hands and bring it up to ready," the boy said, doing so. "Aim, by seeing what you want to hit marked by the crosshairs. And..." His finger slid inside the trigger guard and squeezed. "Fire."
Downrange, one of the targets developed a large splotch of crimson near its center ring.
"Good shooting," Frank said. "You'll be turning Death Eaters red in no time." He grinned at Neville's unamused look. "I know, I know, this one is loaded with dye so I can learn how to work it without destroying the range. What's your usual load?"
"Depends on who's taking it." Neville performed the arming action in reverse, causing the whining noise to stop. "Safed piece." Laying the potion piece back on the table, he drew his own. "Mine has a pretty standard mix. Different potion in each chamber, with a color-coded selector up top near the aiming ring to tell you what you're shooting." He spun the chambers so Frank could see. "Blue is for Shrinking Solution, which is my favorite out of the non-lethal stopping potions our research team picked out. I like it because getting turned into a baby won't kill anybody, even by accident, but they won't be chasing me anymore."
"Very sensible, and good for use on obstacles too. What else do you have available?"
Neville rubbed a finger along the top of the chamber, thinking. "Purple is Swelling Solution, because they can't run after us if their legs or arms are weighing them down. Orange is the potion equivalent of a Hair-Thickening Jinx. And pink..." Naming the color seemed to have influenced his face. "Which is a short-term Love Potion."
Frank burst out laughing.
"It's mostly girls who carry that one," Neville added. "That's part of the reason we made it short-term, so it would wear off quickly enough that they can't use it to play jokes. One girl tried anyway and we had to have her leave the DA."
"I think I remember hearing about that from your mum. Bit of an ugly episode, wasn't it?"
"A bit." Neville shuddered. "Anyway. There's also white, which is a basic healing potion that the medics carry, and a few specialty mixes we label with stripes, but those are mostly for use outside battle. Those first four are the best varieties we've found for fighting with." He rotated the chambers, bringing up a different color. "Yellow is absolutely standard. Everyone who carries a potion piece has it in at least one chamber, and some of them have it in all three. It's a knockout potion, based on Dreamless Sleep, but modified—don't ask me how, I just shoot it—so that it works whether it hits somebody on the skin or the vapor gets breathed. They have to wear masks when they brew it."
"That's what the Moon girl used to take out our rearguard in the exercise, isn't it?" At Neville's nod, Frank went on. "How did she keep from going down herself?"
"We have antidotes for all of the potions we use. With the grenades like Selena used, she took one before she went out. For the pieces, we have a safety patch." Neville changed his hold on the piece to reveal a green swath across the back of the grip, where he couldn't avoid touching it when he fired. "It changes at the same time as the chambers, so you always have the right antidote for the potion you're shooting. Even if it drips onto you, you won't be affected."
"That's clever. How did you come up with all these ideas?"
Neville grinned. "Mostly by having problems and figuring out ways to deal with them. We didn't start with this design, and I don't know if it's the last one we'll have. It's just the best one we've come up with yet."
"But a good and workable best." Frank spun a finger in a circle, indicating that Neville should rotate the chambers one more time. "What's the red potion?"
"Red is... not for use on human targets." Neville looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Maybe I should just show you."
"Please do." Frank stepped back again, giving Neville the same clear zone he would have given a fellow Auror who was practicing his spellcasting.
"Selecting red," Neville murmured, turning the selector on his piece one click to the right. "Arming now." The contrary-motion action that made the piece ready to shoot, done so swiftly that Frank blinked in surprise. "Armed piece. Ready." He took his stance again and brought the piece up. "Aim." His finger went to the trigger. "Fire."
For one instant, the red-splotched target developed a wet stain on the other side of its center ring. Then, with a poisonous hiss, the wetness began to steam, and a gaping hole appeared where it had been. Five seconds after Neville had fired, half the target had been eaten away.
"I don't know what they make it from," Neville said, lowering his piece. "But they call it Semi-Universal Solvent. Safed piece," he added, disarming the weapon. "Most of the DA doesn't even know it exists, except as something we're trying and failing to make."
"Very, very wise." Frank looked again at, and through, the target. "How do you keep it from destroying your piece while you shoot?"
"We treat them with the same antidotes the safety patch uses." Neville snapped the yellow chamber back into place and holstered the piece. "All of them, even the ones which won't use the solvent."
"How do you know which ones those are? You could learn to trust any of the DA to that extent at some point."
"But some of these don't belong to the DA, not directly. Or they're not being used by the DA, would be a better way to put it." Neville shook his head. "I'm not making any sense, even to me."
"No, you're not. Start over and use small words."
"How small? Can I get as big as 'Muggleborn'?"
Frank chuckled. "If you have to."
"I do have to, because that's who a bunch of DA members are. Even more of them are half-blood. So they have Muggle relatives, people like Seamus' dad or Amanda Smythe's parents, who'll be in danger from Death Eaters and can't fight back." Neville patted the dye-loaded potion piece affectionately. "Or that's what we hope the Death Eaters will think."
Frank closed his eyes for a second. "You gave magical artifacts to Muggles."
"No, we gave Muggle artifacts to Muggles," Neville corrected. "They're classified as Muggle toys, slightly improved with magic—the arming spell and the safety patches are the only magical parts—so that's legal as long as they're given by magical relations or friends. Which they were. And the only potions we passed out for them are the knockout potion and the healing potion, which aren't dangerous, so that's not illegal either."
"Why am I suddenly being reminded you're in league with Arthur Weasley's youngest children?"
Neville attempted to look innocent. It would have worked better if he hadn't also been trying to suppress laughter.
"I could make all sorts of cracks about creating monsters, but I won't." Frank laid his hand across his son's for a moment. "I will say something I don't think I say enough. I'm proud of you, Neville. I've never been anything else, but seeing how much you've learned and grown, hearing about everything you're a part of, makes me even more so."
"Thanks, Dad." Neville squeezed his father's hand in reply, then let go. "So do you want to learn how to shoot?"
"Yes, I do." Frank picked up the potion piece, fumbling with it a bit. "How do you hold this thing anyway?"
"Here, it's like this." Neville rearranged his father's hands around the grip. "Use your off hand first, and then your wand hand over that, with your finger outside the trigger guard until you're pointing the muzzle at something you're sure you want to shoot at..."
Sirius leaned against a table in the Leaky Cauldron, flicking a finger back and forth along the edge of his shopping list. Bit of a pain to do the shopping for the cubs this way, but they violated Marauders' Rule Number One. They got caught. So we're supporting Molly's little prohibition even when she's lifted it for her own bunch. He glanced at Ginny, giggling in a corner with Luna and Danger, and Ron, who was finger-combing soot out of his hair even as he stepped aside to let Neville out of the fireplace behind him. Probably give them their release next week for Harry's birthday. Or we could move it up to Draco's—they really have been good...
The bell over the door jingled, and Sirius let his hand drift to his wand's hilt unobtrusively. It wasn't likely attacking Death Eaters would announce themselves that way, but Aurors didn't live to retirement by dealing with things that were likely.
"See, I told you there was a door there!" The voice was young, feminine, and triumphant. The person attached to it reminded Sirius emphatically of Meghan, though this little girl's skin was several tones lighter than his daughter's and her dark hair was long and straight instead of elaborately braided. She wore Muggle clothing, as did the young woman behind her, who, though not unattractive, had thoroughly forgettable features. Currently, those features were twisted into a look of mingled bewilderment and fear Sirius had seen before.
He caught Remus' attention. Going to help those two, he signaled, indicating the woman and the girl. Catch up with you later.
Remus nodded assent, and Sirius threaded between the tables to confront the pair. "Are you looking for something, ladies?" he asked, though the glint of green ink on the folded parchment the girl was clutching told him what was going on. Muggleborn witch, here to get her school supplies, with a mother or an aunt or something similar...
"Yes!" the girl blurted. "We're looking for Die-gone Alley!"
"Diagon Alley? It's out the back, I can let you through if you like."
"You can? Oh, thank you!" The girl bounced on her toes. "See, Miss Meade? I knew somebody would help us!"
"All right, Annette, that's enough." The woman smiled at Sirius. "Thank you from me as well. I'd have felt silly going up and down the street asking people if they knew where to find an alley full of magic shops."
"No need for that," Sirius said, holding the back door open for them. "But you do need a wand to get through, so I'm glad I came over."
"A real magic wand? Do you have one?" Annette peered eagerly at Sirius. "Are you a wizard like I'm a witch? Will you show me some real magic?"
"Only if you say the magic word," Sirius mock-scolded.
Annette folded her hands at her waistline and looked demure. "Pleeeeease."
Sirius drew his wand. "Well, since you asked nicely." He made a few unnecessary passes around her head, then thought Orchideous! and caught the bouquet that flew from the tip. "For you, madame," he said with a bow, handing the flowers to the girl.
"Ooooooh." Annette cradled her flowers in her arms, gazing at them rapturously. Sirius traded amused glances with Miss Meade as he tapped his wand against the proper brick to open the wall.
"Please tell me they'll teach her a little restraint at this school," the woman murmured to him with half her attention, the other half focused on the slowly forming archway. "She's enough of a holy terror at the Home as it is—we were grateful to have some explanation for all the things she can do, even if it is magic, but I was still the only one willing to come along with her, in case..."
"In case this was some huge, insane practical joke?" Sirius finished, slotting the last mental pieces into place. Muggleborn orphan witch—we need to get something in place for that, if one of these kids gets the wrong influences it could be a disaster...
"No such luck, I'm afraid," he said aloud. "For it being a joke, I mean. They will teach her some restraint, though mostly along the lines of gruesome stories and examples of 'this is what happens if you misuse magic'. It's not all unicorns and rainbows, you know."
"It never is." Miss Meade tapped Annette on the shoulder, waking the girl from her daze. "But then no one ever promised life would be a rose garden." She glanced again at Annette's flowers and smiled. "Though I suppose for some of us it's closer than for others."
Sirius chuckled, but her words had stirred up once again the memory that Aletha had invoked at the Den, the memory of the last time he'd seen his brother. No one ever promised either of our lives would be a rose garden, not even with magic. It might actually have made things worse for us, because we expected it to do everything and it couldn't...
Half-willingly, he saw once more the thin and strained face so like his own, the pale hand frozen on the doorknob, and his lips moved silently, repeating the first words of that useless conversation.
"Where are you going?"
"What business is it of yours?" Regulus snapped back.
He held onto his temper. Shouting would only make things worse. "I'm your brother."
"That doesn't make you my keeper."
"I'm trying to stop you from doing something you'll regret."
Regulus looked away. "It's too late for that," he said indistinctly, then turned back a sneering face. "And who are you to say what I'll regret?"
"Believe it or not, you don't know everything."
"Neither do you!"
"I didn't say I did. But I do know you're going the wrong way." Through the hostility, he sensed indecision, fear, a desperate desire for a way out, and pressed forward. "No matter what you think has happened, it isn't too late to turn around. Let me help you..."
"Only he didn't need my help," Sirius muttered, cutting off the flow of memories before his mother could come bursting in with her usual shrill screams. "Not to do the right thing, not in the end."
No, he needed Kreacher's help. And Letha was right—that really burns me. I wanted so much to save him, to teach him about the good stuff in life and double-team Mummy Dearest with him and do all the things we never got a chance to do because purebloods were supposed to be above all human feeling. And instead my only link to him is a sulky house-elf who hates me for living when he died. Well, guess what, Kreacher? I hate me for living when he died too. So we're even there.
"Whatever you're thinking about, stop," said Danger from just beneath his left ear, startling him into a small jump. "This is supposed to be a nice day out with your wife and your friends, and instead you've got a worry line the size of your wand across your forehead."
"Sorry. I'll behave myself." Sirius gave his wayward thoughts a mental shake and stepped through the archway, nodding to the Longbottoms, who were holding rearguard positions. "Do you think we should have brought the cubs?"
"No, it'll do them good to miss an outing. Bring it home to them that they're really not supposed to go cavorting around without us." Danger chuckled. "Who knows? One of these days, they might even listen."
"Percy! Penny! Hi!" Ginny charged down the aisle of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes and bestowed a crashing hug on her older brother, then waved an enthusiastic greeting to his dark-haired girlfriend. "Mum finally let us out of the house, she was being so unfair about it—"
"I hardly think she was being unfair," Percy said, nodding a hello to Ron as he followed Ginny into the store. "That was quite a risk, going out at night."
"Not as much as it could have been," Penelope pointed out, looking up from the diagram she was showing to Crystal, who perched on a stool behind the counter. "They were within wards, and an adult wizard and witch were with them at all times. Two wizards, when George arrived—hello, George," she added as the named twin materialized from the back room.
"In other words, it was just like it is now," said Crystal, grinning. "Did you two do the singing?"
Ginny raised her hand. "I did Jasmine's part," she said. "Our friend Draco did Aladdin's, he's not here but you'll meet him some other time. I'm Ginny, by the way, this is Ron, but you probably knew that already."
"I had a fair guess," Crystal admitted. "Since I think I've met all the rest of your family by now. Immediate family, anyway, I'm sure you've got cousins all over the place."
"You're not kidding," said Ron, propping himself against the end of a shelf. "And it's only going to get worse. Weasleys have always had lots of kids, but Mum and Dad take it to extremes, and when we all get married and start popping them out, I don't know how we're going to keep them all straight..."
"Don't you mean when Hermione starts popping them out?" George grinned as Ron's cheeks reddened. "Works every time."
"Oh, stop it." Crystal slapped him on the shoulder. "Like you were never embarrassed over a girl."
"Not like that, I wasn't..."
"Ooh, look at this place!" a girl's voice echoed in from the street, cutting George off from whatever else he was about to say. "I want to go in here!"
"Not right now, Annette," a woman's answered with a sound of waning patience. "We have to get your books and your supplies first, and then if there's anything left we can see about things like joke shops."
Percy and Penelope exchanged a look, and a pair of gold coins appeared in Percy's hand. Penny took them, added one from her own pocket, and hurried towards the front of the store, forestalling George with a raised hand. "We do maintain a fund here for the hopeful pranksters of tomorrow," she said, stepping into the doorway of the shop to hold out the coins to the girl. "Anything you don't spend, you can keep for later."
The girl reached up for the money with a hopeful smile, the woman beside her opened her mouth to protest—
A thundercrack of Apparitions sounded up the street, and people began to scream over the sound of shouted spells and wild laughter. Ginny had just time to see Penelope shove the other woman to the ground and pull the girl into the scant protection of her own body before Percy snatched her up and threw her bodily over the counter, Ron following an instant later under his own power. "Stay down!" the older Weasley shouted, and ran for the door, George half a step behind him. "Penny! Penny!"
Ginny started to peer around the corner of the counter, but Crystal yanked her back just in time as a spell shattered one of the front windows and toppled a shelf into the space where her head had been. Then three more shelves fell, one of them scattering fireworks over Ron's hastily erected Shield Spell, and after that Ginny was too busy helping him maintain the Shield against the constant rain of lit fireworks and berserk merchandise to have more than two thoughts.
The Death Eaters are attacking.
We're all going to die.
Author Notes:
Well, maybe not all of them, but there are people who are going to die, and other people who are going to have a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. I did warn you I was going to write a sixth year with plot... let me know if you approve of the way it's starting to shape up.
Bad Things continue next chapter, and don't let up for several thereafter. Be warned.