Daylight || Harry Potter

Chapter Three

Three days flew by. I'd wake up in my new room to Jab talking to himself or Fred and George goofing around out in the hall and all of us — me, Sirius, Hermione, the Weasleys, and any members of the Order of the Phoenix who happened to be there — would have breakfast. Sometimes I'd persuade Mrs. Weasley to let Fred and George take me, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny out of the house to walk around London for a bit. If not, we helped clean the more dusty parts of the house.

During our downtime, we read or talked to each other while taking breaks from cleaning. Hermione devoted a lot of time to researching wizard laws for the disciplinary hearing that Harry had unfairly been given by the Ministry, and while she did that, the rest of us ranted about how dumb the Ministry was for not believing Dumbledore and coming up with ways to help Harry's case. Fred pointed out that I was a key witness since I had fought the Dementors with Harry and if I was convincing enough, we wouldn't need any other evidence. I pointed out that if they'd let Harry attend the trial and take Veritaserum, we wouldn't need evidence at all. We all agreed that this justice system was totally out of whack.

Talking to some of the members of the Order was pretty cool. At first I'd thought that most of them were Aurors like Tonks and Moody, but that wasn't true. There were two witches — Emmeline Vance and Hestia Jones — who worked at St. Mungos as healers whom I enjoyed talking to. I think I might've freaked them out a little when I just went up to them and started talking about bypass surgeries (this was the first time I learned that wizards don't do those) and they were understandably a bit disturbed to hear about them.

Besides Emmeline and Hestia, I really enjoyed hanging out with Tonks. She was like a cool big sister to Hermione, Ginny, and I, and we usually spent our time pranking Fred and George (which was extra fun since Tonks was a metamorphmagus) or talking about random stuff. I even found out that Tonks was related to Sirius. Apparently her mother was his cousin. I pointed out that I could claim that she was my step-cousin, and she laughed and started calling me Step-Cuz.

It was all pretty peaceful for the most part, but I couldn't help worrying about Harry.

He'd sent Hermione, Sirius, and Ron letters about the Dementor attack and demanded to know what was going on. Unfortunately, Dumbledore had given express orders to us not to tell Harry about the Order of the Phoenix. I'd tried to point out to him that keeping Harry in the dark was the exact wrong way to go about it, especially since he clearly had PTSD from what had happened during the third task. However, Dumbledore insisted that we don't tell him, and I couldn't do anything.

Literally, I couldn't do anything. Every time I tried to write to Harry to tell him where we were — every time I tried to write 12 Grimmauld Place — it seemed like my brain forgot how to write it. I just couldn't do it. Later I figured out that it was because Dumbledore had placed the same spell Harry's parents had used to hide from Voldemort — the Fidelius Charm — on Sirius' house. The only one who could write down or tell Harry the address was Dumbledore himself.

So yeah. That really sucked.

But finally, on the fourth night, we got to see him join us.

Hermione, Ron, and I were chatting in my room about Harry's hearing (I'd even prepared a speech in case I needed one), when Harry himself walked through the door. Hermione shrieked in surprise and threw herself onto Harry in a hug that almost knocked him flat.

"HARRY! Ron, Ash, he's here, Harry's here! We didn't hear you arrive! Oh, how are you? Are you all right? Have you been furious with us? I bet you have, I know our letters were useless — but we couldn't tell you anything, Dumbledore made us swear we wouldn't, oh, we've got so much to tell you, and you've got to tell us — the dementors! When we heard — and that Ministry hearing — it's just outrageous, I've looked it all up, they can't expel you, they just can't, there's provision in the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Sorcery for the use of magic in life-threatening situations —"