As the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix—the resistance organization led by Dumbledore, and perhaps the only one actively opposing Voldemort—Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was undeniably a very busy place these dangerous summer days.
In the days Harry had been staying there, he'd seen many different faces pass through, both familiar and unfamiliar, all hurrying about their urgent business.
Some of them, upon encountering the famous Harry Potter, would eagerly come forward to chat, offering a few words of reassurance and encouragement about his upcoming hearing at the Ministry.
Harry was equally happy to talk a little longer with these key members of the resistance against Voldemort but whenever he asked with curiosity what they were actually working on, these same friendly witches and wizards would promptly seal their lips and offer him nothing but a warm but frustratingly vague smile before changing the subject or making excuses to leave.
Even those closest to him—Sirius, and the others would always steer the conversation away whenever Order business came up, careful about not letting them learn too much.
On Friday evening, when the Order was due to hold a serious full meeting downstairs in the kitchen to discuss important matters, Mrs. Weasley didn't even let them come down for dinner as they usually did at the long table. She simply carried their meals up to them on trays.
BANG!
"You wouldn't guard things this tightly against the Death Eaters themselves!"
Ron's furious shout rang out as Mrs. Weasley closed the door behind her, her face remained completely unmoved by his passionate protests about fair treatment.
"Give it up, Ron. You're wasting your breath and she can't hear you anyway," Harry said tiredly.
He sat slumped at the desk by the window, watching the sun and the moon hanging together near the horizon outside—that strange, fleeting hour of transition when both celestial bodies occupied the sky at once, one setting in fire and one rising in silver. His face was blank and expressionless as he spoke, his mind was elsewhere.
"If Sirius himself won't agree to let us attend the Order's secret meetings, I'm not counting on anyone else having a sudden change of heart about it."
Ron sniffed indignantly, his ears were red with frustration. He dropped his plate onto the nightstand between the two beds with a loud clatter that made the silverware jump, and threw himself backwards onto the mattress like a tragedy victim.
A moment later, without any warning, Ron let out a howl of pure frustration that echoed in the small room. He pulled the blanket over his head completely and rolled back and forth across the bed like a child having a tantrum.
Hermione was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the bed, reading through yet another newspaper with focus—she had by now turned the tedious habit of scanning them for any clues about Harry's supposed Muggle victim into something closer to casual entertainment.
At Ron's dramatic howling display, she lifted her head with her composure intact. She pushed a strand of bushy brown hair from her face with one hand, and the reddish-gold light of dusk fell across her profile through the window, casting her face in a maturity and quiet seriousness that neither Harry nor Ron quite possessed yet.
"Finally cracked completely, have you, Weasley?" she asked mildly, not looking up from her paper.
WHOMP!
Ron shot upright on the bed with impressive speed and wailed with genuine desperation,
"Fine, so they won't let us into their precious secret meetings but surely they can at least let us go outside! Even just to walk circles around that miserable square out there like prisoners getting exercise in the yard. We can't possibly spend the entire summer locked inside this gloomy house like we're in Azkaban waiting for Dementors!"
"I'm sorry. It's because of me,"
Harry surfaced from a fog of tangled thoughts that had been consuming him for days. His mind still felt distant and disconnected from reality; his words were drifting out of him without much conscious intention or emotional weight behind them.
"You know it's not your fault, Harry. Don't take all the blame on yourself," Hermione said firmly.
She shot Ron a brief, reproachful look over the top of her newspaper for his insensitivity before turning back to Harry with calm concern evident in her brown eyes.
"The danger isn't only directed at you specifically, even if you're the primary target. The situation right now is genuinely difficult for every member—"
She stopped mid-sentence abruptly, her voice was trailing off.
Hermione narrowed her eyes and studied Harry's face with sudden intensity and focus.
Harry's mind had already braced itself for Hermione's forthcoming lecture about not blaming himself for things beyond his control, so the sudden silence struck an odd note—a small dissonance that pulled him back from his dark reverie.
He noticed her scrutinizing gaze and felt a small jolt of unease at her concerned expression.
"What is it, Hermione? Why are you staring at me like that?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing in particular…" she said slowly, still watching him with faint suspicion and concern mixed together in her gaze.
"It's just… you seem unusually preoccupied lately, Harry."
Ron, who had been drooping with his eyes half-shut and his whole manner suggesting imminent unconsciousness from sheer boredom, rolled his eyes at that observation.
"You're stating the obvious, Hermione. Of course he's preoccupied—we all are."
Hermione didn't bother responding to his jab. She simply raised an eyebrow at Harry expectantly, waiting for him to explain. Harry pressed his lips together, turning something over in his mind and debating whether to share what had been troubling his sleep.
"Well, the thing is—"
After a brief hesitation, Harry decided to tell them everything: the vivid corridor that had been appearing in his dreams these past several nights, always the exact same corridor with the same details, and the mysterious black door waiting at its far end that he could never quite reach no matter how fast he ran.
He had no reason to keep secrets from Hermione and Ron, his two best friends.
CREAK—
At that very moment, before he could elaborate further on the disturbing dreams, the bedroom door was pushed open quietly.
Ginny slipped inside quickly, slightly out of breath from climbing the stairs at speed. She swept her gaze around the room, took in the fact that none of the three were doing anything in particular except moping and talking, and let a curve of mischief settle at the corner of her mouth as a plan formed.
"If anyone's looking for a bit of fun instead of sulking about being excluded, come with me right now," she announced mysteriously.
"What've you got in mind?" Ron eyed his younger sister with open skepticism and suspicion.
"If this is another round of being free test subjects for Fred and George's dangerous and potentially disfiguring experiments—"
Harry broke off too, turning to look at Ginny properly for the first time.
It occurred to him, as it had a few times lately, that Ginny had taken to wearing that light grey-green slip dress of hers rather often—the sleeveless one with the gauzy trim on the straps.
"Oh, it does involve Fred and George," Ginny admitted readily, grinning with excitement that made her eyes bright.
"But this time, I genuinely think they've invented something remarkable and actually useful for once. If I hadn't caught them sneaking around suspiciously in the kitchen earlier being all secretive, they'd have kept it all to themselves and never told anyone what they'd made!"
Ginny's air of mystery and her obvious enthusiasm was enough to hook all three of them immediately. They scrambled to their feet with renewed energy and hurried after her up the narrow, creaking stairs to the fourth floor where Fred and George's room was located.
The iron nameplate on Fred and George's door had been replaced recently with one that now read in bold, official-looking letters: SERIOUS STUDYING IN PROGRESS. DO NOT DISTURB UNDER PENALTY OF HEXING.
This drew two small laughs of amusement from Hermione.
"Who goes there! State your business!"
When Ginny gave two sharp knocks in quick succession on the door, a voice came from within the room—impossible to tell whether it was Fred or George speaking since they sounded identical.
"It's me, you idiots!" Ginny called back in a low, urgent tone. "I've brought them! Open up!"
The door swung open a few seconds later.
Harry peered past the threshold curiously into the darkness. The darkness inside was completely disorienting—the sun had fully sunk below the horizon by now, and Fred and George hadn't lit a single lamp or candle in the room.
What's more, the heavy curtains had been drawn completely shut, blocking out the pale moonlight and the faint orange glow of the street lamps outside on Grimmauld Place.
"What are you two up to in here? Some kind of dark ritual?" Ron frowned at whichever twin had opened the door—he genuinely couldn't tell them apart in this light.
"And why no lights at all? Trying to save on candles?"
"Oh, a bit of atmosphere is absolutely essential for this kind of thing, my monumentally dim and unimaginative little brother," the twin replied in a tone that suggested nothing could be more self-evident or obvious to anyone with half a brain.
As Harry stepped carefully into the room, his foot caught unexpectedly on something hard lying on the floor. He stumbled forward with a gasp and was steadied by Ginny's hand grabbing his arm quickly.
"Oh, sorry—careful—" she breathed, her grip tight.
For one brief instant that seemed to stretch, something soft pressed against him and the scent of her hair reached him clearly—something floral and clean like summer flowers—and a rush of warmth flooded through Harry's entire body before he caught himself and straightened up reflexively.
"Mm—"
The darkness mercifully hid the deep flush rising rapidly in Ginny's cheeks. Her voice came out as just a whisper barely audible even in the quiet room.
The floor was cluttered with scattered objects everywhere—presumably various prototypes and failed experiments from the twins' ongoing workshop operations developing joke products.
Harry picked his way carefully forward through the obstacle course, guided by the thin sliver of light leaking in through the door before it closed behind them, and made out George's silhouette sitting on the bed with his back to them, fiddling intently with something small in his hands.
CLICK—
Fred shut the door firmly behind everyone. The room plunged into complete and total darkness for a moment—but he immediately drew out his wand with a motion, murmuring "Lumos", and its tip emitted a glow fainter than even candlelight, just barely enough to see shadowy outlines by.
"If it weren't for our remarkably observant and clever little sister here, you wouldn't have had the chance to witness this groundbreaking, epoch-defining product so soon!" Fred announced proudly, gesturing at Ginny.
Ron's lip was curling up, ready with a sarcastic retort about their exaggerations, when George on the bed sat up straight suddenly, pressed something small and flesh-colored into his ear carefully, and declared with obvious satisfaction: "Done! Perfect fit! Works beautifully!"
Ginny and Fred both tumbled onto the bed beside him eagerly without hesitation, each pinching a small flesh-colored object from the blankets and pressing it into their own ears with visible excitement and anticipation.
"Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to introduce our finest creation to date—the Extendable Ear, Surveillance Edition!"
George grinned broadly in the dim wandlight, his face was full of pride and accomplishment.
"Originally we were going to call it simply the Extendable Ear. We'd nearly finished a first working version back in fifth year. But Professor Watson's surveillance Omnioculars gave us a few brilliant ideas about improvements. After a long and grueling improvement process with many failures and minor explosions, the final version is complete at last."
"And in tribute to Professor Watson for the inspiration," Fred chimed in, practically vibrating with excitement and pride in their accomplishment, "we borrowed the naming convention directly from his invention! Hence: Surveillance Edition!"
In the dimness, Harry, Hermione, and Ron exchanged meaningful glances of sudden understanding.
'Surveillance Omnioculars… surveillance ears…'
Then, as if struck by the same thought at the exact same instant, all three lunged desperately for George's bed.
Harry grabbed the first soft, squishy little flesh-colored thing his fingers found in the bedding and shoved it into his ear without hesitation or second thought. What came through first was the chiming and clatter of cutlery and plates scraping.
"Bryan isn't coming to the meeting tonight?" said a voice Harry didn't immediately recognize.
"That's Bill!" Ron whispered excitedly, his eyes wide with realization.
"He's in the Order too? I didn't know Bill was—"
Several people, Harry included, shot Ron a fierce glare and held fingers urgently to their lips. Be quiet and listen or you'll miss everything.
The sound coming through the surveillance ear was accompanied by a faint hiss of static—not perfectly crystal clear, but entirely intelligible if you concentrated and filtered out the background noise.
"He sent word earlier that he'd be a little late tonight," another voice answered. Harry recognized it immediately: Mrs. Weasley.
"And what about Snivellus? He's supposed to be delivering his report today, isn't he?" Sirius\s voice carried an unmistakable edge of contempt and loathing for Professor Snape.
"I hope he has something genuinely useful to say for once, or he's not welcome to set foot in my house."
BANG—
A soft, muffled crack that could only mean one thing.
"Your house?" The cold, cutting voice of Snape fell into Harry's ear, laced with disdain and mockery.
"That is rather at odds with certain things I've heard, Black. From what I understand—this house now belongs to Bryan."
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