Spending the summer at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was, without question, the finest holiday Harry had ever known in his entire life.
The month he'd spent at the Weasleys' Burrow during the Quidditch World Cup the previous summer had been wonderful, of course—magical in ways he'd never experienced before.
But that had been Ron's home, his family's ancestral cottage, and no matter how genuinely welcome the Weasleys had made him feel, how warmly Mrs. Weasley had embraced him, there had always been a faint undercurrent of being a guest in someone else's house. A visitor, however beloved.
Here at Grimmauld Place, there was none of that uncomfortable feeling. This was his godfather Sirius's ancestral home, the house of the ancient and noble House of Black. And he belonged here.
After a few anxious, unsettled days of adjustment to the new rhythm, life began to find its pattern and settle into comfortable routine.
Each morning, Harry rose a little earlier than Ron, Hermione, and the other young people staying in the house, and made his way down the creaking wooden stairs to the basement kitchen to help Mrs. Weasley with breakfast preparations.
With so many people under one roof—nearly a dozen at times—preparing three substantial meals a day was considerably more work than she could comfortably manage alone, and Harry was one of the very few people in the house who could offer genuine, practical help rather than getting underfoot or making more mess.
Despite the leisurely pace that was supposed to characterize the summer holidays, breakfast was always eaten in a rush at Grimmauld Place. Remus and Amelia never stayed at the long table until the end of the meal. They were the busiest of everyone in the house, constantly coming and going, and more often than not, breakfast was the only time Harry saw either of them all day before they disappeared to handle business.
Sirius, too, couldn't spend long stretches at home anymore. Even on weekends, when most people rested, he was never able to stay for more than a few hours before rushing off again.
When Harry pressed him on it one morning, asking where he went all the time, something hesitant and uncertain flickered through Sirius's grey eyes.
"I'm running an errand, Harry. Bryan assigned it to me specifically," Sirius said, choosing his words carefully.
"What sort of errand?" Harry asked immediately, leaning forward with interest.
All the children gathered around the breakfast table leaned in as well, eager to hear about Order business—but Mrs. Weasley gave a pointed, warning cough from where she stood at the stove, and whatever uncertainty had lingered in Sirius's eyes disappeared instantly. He avoided Harry's searching gaze with effort.
"Just some dull surveillance work, nothing exciting. Tedious, but someone has to do it, and apparently that someone is me."
When Harry pressed further to ask who exactly he was tailing and why, Sirius refused to say another word on the subject stubbornly.
"The grown-ups have all learned to keep secrets now!" Ron grumbled as they trudged upstairs after breakfast, clearly put out by this development.
"I miss the old Sirius from before. He used to tell us things, used to treat us like we could handle the truth."
"It's Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson who told them all to keep quiet around us," a voice said from behind them.
It was Ginny's voice that came from somewhere further down on the stairs. Everyone turned at once in surprise, not having realized she was following them.
She was wearing a pale sage-green camisole nightgown, light and cool for the summer heat. From Harry's vantage point a few steps above her on the narrow staircase, the soft pale blush of skin at her neckline was visible where the nightgown's neckline dipped.
He gave his head a small but forceful shake, physically scattering the heat that had surged suddenly and unexpectedly through him at the sight, and asked quickly to cover his reaction—
"How do you know that, Ginny?"
"Oh—" Ginny began, her voice was slightly breathless.
The brief flash of something intense that had appeared in Harry's green eyes had not escaped her notice. Her cheeks warmed with a flush of color. She kept her voice deliberately soft and slow to maintain control.
"I ran into Tonks in the middle of the night a few days ago on my way to the bathroom. I asked her what the Order had been up to, what they were all doing, and she didn't want to say anything at first—but after I pushed a bit and promised not to tell, she told me that Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson had both specifically instructed the Order members not to let us young people know too much about Order business."
"Professor Dumbledore and Professor Watson both said that?" Hermione asked, biting her lip.
She thought back to the 'contempt' Professor Watson had shown her on her second day in the house when she'd announced her newspaper investigation plan, and a small flame of indignation kindled in her brown eyes.
"Did Tonks say anything else, Ginny?"
"Not much more than that," Ginny said, glancing at Harry once, quickly, then drawing a slow breath to cool the rising color from her face.
"Oh—she did mention that the Order is holding a full meeting in a few days. This Friday evening, I think she said. Snape is coming all the way from Hogwarts to give some sort of report about something."
"Tonks is absolutely brilliant," Ron said with feeling and genuine admiration.
"At least she's willing to tell us something useful. The rest of the Order acts like we don't even exist, like we're furniture."
They continued their climb up the stairs to the third floor in thoughtful silence.
Mornings at Grimmauld Place were mostly spent crowded in Harry and Ron's shared bedroom.
Hermione had sourced newspapers and journals from every publication she could possibly find across London—three full months' worth of print from dozens of papers—and the towering stacks of them had long since overflowed from beneath the beds and now occupied much of the available floor space.
Harry had never known there were so many different newspapers in London alone. It was, by any measure, dull and exhausting work to read through them all.
Most of the Muggle papers ran nothing but political gossip or celebrity news—endless speculation about politicians' affairs and actors' divorces—or advertisements thinly dressed up as articles, or information so utterly useless it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.
You could read through dozens of issues and find only a single scrap of actual crime-related content, and even then, usually nothing more significant than a minor burglary or a stolen car.
Everyone understood it was necessary work that had to be done. That didn't make it any less mentally draining. Within a few days of starting, even Harry had lost most of his initial motivation—all except Hermione and Ginny, who somehow managed to maintain their focus as keenly as when they'd first started, reading every article with careful attention.
Occasionally they came across a reported murder in the papers. Whenever they did, everyone gathered around and argued heatedly over whether it might possibly be the Muggle killing the Ministry had announced—but the conclusion was always ultimately disappointing.
"I didn't leave Hogwarts even once the entire school year!" Harry protested.
He pushed the Financial Times aside with frustration—it had run a sensationalist story about a Muggle businessman who'd jumped from a building—and raked a hand through his constantly untidy black hair, exasperated.
"Fudge scared me half to death over absolutely nothing. There's no murder anywhere that could possibly have anything to do with me."
"Technically, you did leave Hogwarts once during the year," Ron pointed out. That observation got everyone's attention. He shrugged at their stares. "Remember? Christmas holiday. We all came here to Grimmauld Place to spend it with Remus and Sirius—and we visited, er…"
A sharp, warning look from Hermione made Ron shut his mouth immediately. Best not to go around telling people carelessly where Professor Watson had grown up.
"Right, so I left Hogwarts once for Christmas—but I can't have killed anyone with Sirius and Remus standing right there the whole time, can I?" Harry said.
"Nobody here thinks you actually killed a Muggle, Harry," Hermione said patiently.
She let out a heavy sigh of frustration at having to explain this again. "We've been over this multiple times. The most likely explanation is that the Ministry linked some existing Muggle death to you through means we haven't thought of yet—or that they simply fabricated one and pinned it on you."
Harry pressed his lips together and said nothing more on the subject. Even he had to admit that for the Ministry to announce so loudly and publicly to the entire wizarding world that he had killed someone, they must have had something concrete in hand—something that looked, at least superficially, like real evidence.
RUSTLE—RUSTLE—
They turned back to the endless stacks of papers with resigned determination.
Afternoons at Grimmauld Place were generally given over to tackling their summer homework—which, here, was an entirely different experience from doing it at the Dursleys' house on Privet Drive.
At Privet Drive, homework had been an exercise in constant paranoia and stress.
Harry had been forced to keep everything hidden from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, to work by torchlight under his duvet in the small hours of the night, with absolutely no one to ask when he got stuck on a problem. The moment any of his magical homework was discovered, it would be in the rubbish bin within thirty seconds, probably torn to pieces first.
Here at Grimmauld Place, they could spread their textbooks and parchment across the table without a second thought. Hermione was firm about letting Harry and Ron work through problems on their own first—she refused to simply give them answers—but when they were truly stuck and had exhausted their own efforts, she would help guide them to the solution.
And Sirius, for all his well-deserved reputation as Hogwarts' most notorious troublemaker and prankster, had in fact been an outstanding student in his day, and was more than glad to lend a hand.
The stretch of time before dinner belonged to pure leisure and relaxation.
Wizard chess, and an ancient set of Gobstones that had been dug out from somewhere deep in the house's storage. Fred and George also made regular appearances, eager to share their latest inventions—though one had to be extremely careful around the twins, since they had a habit of bringing things specifically designed to be tested on whoever happened to be nearby.
After dinner each evening, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place transformed entirely into an Order of the Phoenix command post and headquarters. Witches and wizards they knew from school—and many more they didn't recognize—came and went at all hours, exchanging intelligence reports, holding brief meetings in corners, then disappearing again into the night on mysterious errands.
Late one evening, on his way downstairs to the kitchen to find something to eat before bed, Harry passed the half-open kitchen door and caught sight of his Transfiguration professor speaking to Mrs. Weasley at the table.
Professor McGonagall looked utterly exhausted, her face was wrinkled with fatigue. When she noticed Harry hovering in the doorway, her eyes widened briefly in surprise—and then she gave him a smile, small and warm, touched with something like sympathy and a quiet, sorrowful fondness.
They exchanged a few words about his summer and his hearing. Then Professor McGonagall Disapparated, and Mrs. Weasley, mindful that more Order visitors were likely on their way, pressed a bit of leftover food into Harry's hands and shooed him firmly back upstairs to his room.
"I just saw Professor McGonagall downstairs," Harry said as he came back into the bedroom.
Ron was already half-asleep in his bed. He mumbled without bothering to open his eyes, his voice was filled with drowsiness. "Is she here to give us extra Transfiguration homework?"
"Who knows," Harry said with a shrug and climbed into his own bed. He closed his eyes against the darkness of the room.
Darkness settled over him.
And from within that darkness, something began to surface in his mind—an unfamiliar corridor he'd never seen before, and a black door.
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