“It’s an ambush.”
Friday, July 2nd
Hermione had been under no illusions that it would be a calm or good summer. With Voldemort back? It absolutely would not be.
She just hadn’t expected one of her best friends to go missing three weeks in to the summer holiday.
Grimmauld Place, Sirius’ home and the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, got darker and more grim every day that Harry remained missing. Oddly enough, Sirius did not share that growing grimness. In fact, in Hermione and Ron’s opinions, Sirius had gotten more and more cheery the further summer went on.
The twins thought that Sirius was simply heartbroken and mad, and perhaps he was, but his eyes were clear and he hummed songs when nobody was around. And Ginny said maybe Sirius didn’t give a damn about Harry, his bond broken by twelve years around dementors, but Hermione knew that Harry talked to his godfather every single day last year. Even when Harry wouldn’t talk to her, when he was withdrawn and pale and miserable, she heard him whispering in his mirror to Sirius at night. So, no, Sirius didn’t just stop caring about Harry.
Plus, Sirius was truly insufferable when he threw his tantrums. It wasn’t just seeing a grown man acting like an angry child, it was the way that he seemed to take pleasure in terrifying everyone and then skipped off to his bedroom with clear eyes and a queer smile on his lips. Hermione had grown to appreciate Sirius last year when he seemed to be holding Harry’s broken pieces together by himself, but he was wearing on her patience.
So Hermione didn’t feel too badly when she saw Sirius slip out the front door as a dog and her and Ron broke in to his bedroom.
“He’s bloody paranoid, isn’t he?” Ron panted after the two of them finally broke in to his room, putting both of their efforts and some of the twins’ more targeted items to use.
“People with things to hide usually are,” Hermione said firmly. She crinkled her nose at Sirius’ disgusting bedroom and bowed her head at the half-asleep hippogriff in the corner of the room. “Don’t break anything, but let’s tear this room apart, Ron.”
Ron cracked his knuckles and nodded with a determined set to his jaw.
Sirius might be Harry’s godfather, but he was hiding something and if it had to do with Hermione’s best friend’s safety then she would find it.
It was… it was actually rather simple.
Ron merely opened Sirius’ closet while Hermione began sifting through his bedside table and coughed.
“Hermione?”
Hermione turned around and saw Ron nudge a familiar trunk with his foot.
“That- that bastard!” Hermione swore, startling Ron. She stormed over to the closet and opened the trunk and felt her chest tighten to a painful level to see Harry’s usual mishmash assortment of belongings. His books, his parchment, his broomstick and servicing kit, uniforms and ties and his sneakscope stuffed in a sock, and—
“His wand isn’t here,” Ron said, apparently keeping track as Hermione dug. “Neither’s that mirror he carries.”
“Or his dad’s cloak,” Hermione said. As much anger as she felt at Sirius for hiding something about Harry, she also felt a crushing relief that Harry must be fine. Ever since they sent a letter off to him with the owl Sirius loaned George, Hermione had been unable to even sleep at night as she prayed to every God she could think of that Harry was alive, Harry would get their letter, Harry would come home.
But if Harry had his wand, his mirror, and his cloak- he had to be alive. He’d kept himself alive with each item individually—
Harry and his cloak, sneaking around the castle, trying to find answers to mysteries to protect himself.
Harry returning to the common room in the early hours with bloodshot and puffy eyes; withdrawn and miserable. Harry detaching himself from all the things that used to make him happy. Harry using his mirror and his connection to his godfather to keep him alive.
Harry and his wand, standing on his feet, tortured and terrified, looking Voldemort in the eyes and defiantly choosing to live.
—if Harry had those things, then he was staying alive.
“Alive then?” Ron whispered, as if speaking too loudly would burst the fragile bubble of hope Harry’s trunk brought them.
Hermione closed her eyes and wished she could see Harry’s face in more than just her memory. “Alive,” she said softly. “I- I hope.”
Being uncertain was the worst part, but if Sirius had Harry’s trunk, then he had answers.
And Hermione would rip every tooth from his mouth if he refused to give them to her now.
“Keep digging?” Ron asked tentatively. He looked around Sirius’ room and also seemed to finally take in the disgusting way Sirius kept it. “Merlin, it stinks in here.”
It truly did. It smelled like old food, mold, a musky animal odor, and a general scent of filth.
Unfortunately, Hermione had to sit on the foot of Sirius’ bed and hold one of Harry’s scarves tightly in her hand.
“We don’t need to dig,” she said. “We need to wait.”
Ron chuckled and sat beside Hermione on the bed, leaning against the bedpost and crossing his arms. “Wicked, so it’s an ambush.”
Hermione grinned, a twist of her lips more than a look of joy, and she leaned against the opposite bedpost from Ron as she twisted the scarf in her hands. She met Ron’s blue eyes and felt a fierce sort of relief at knowing he wouldn’t leave her to face Sirius alone.
“It’s an ambush,” she agreed.
They had to wait a few hours, a few hours of ignoring the sounds of Molly cleaning the house, Kreacher yelling vulgarities in the halls, and the twins calling their names. Nobody looked in Sirius’ room, half the house was terrified of him and the other half felt pity for him. It was the perfect place to wait.
And when the doorknob finally turned slowly, Hermione and Ron snapped upright to their feet, wands in hand, just as ready to fight Sirius for their friend as they’d been at the end of their third year.
Sirius bound in the room, his wand already in hand, and his eyes flicked between Hermione and Ron as he kicked the door shut behind him.
“It’s not good manners to go through people’s belongings,” he said, eyeing Harry’s scarf Hermione held.
“Yeah? Well it’s not nice to hide people’s belongings either,” Ron sneered.
Hermione adored him.
She watched Sirius carefully as Ron’s accusation struck him and saw the tick in his jaw and the look in his eyes. He wasn’t scared of their brandished wands aimed at his chest any more than he was scared of their knowledge that he knew something about Harry. He was determined- his grip on his steady wand was tight, his shoulders were squared, and Hermione hoped his determination was solely for Harry’s protection.
Sirius was actually quite terrifying when he wanted to be. Not when he was acting like a madman, but in moments when he wasn’t acting at all and Hermione realized he was rather intelligent and powerful and staring at her as if deciding the fate he would bestow on her head.
“We’re worried about him,” Hermione said softly, hoping to melt the determined look on Sirius’ face. They had a common goal, they didn’t need to be testing each other. “Please, Sirius, we just want to know he’s okay.”
Sirius flicked his wand, and it was all Hermione could do to not flinch. A buzz settled around the three of them though, a nonverbal muffling charm Hermione didn’t know.
The three of them kept their wands raised, but a small amount of tension seemed to leak out of the room with Sirius’ spell.
“A lot of people want to know where Harry is,” Sirius said slowly. “Unfortunately, nobody knows, right?”
Ron opened his mouth, but Hermione elbowed him lightly as she weighed Sirius’ words. The words themselves were a dismissal, but Hermione got the feeling they weren’t quite that.
“I said we want to know that Harry is safe,” Hermione stressed. “Others want to know where the Boy-Who-Lived is, we want to know where our best friend is.”
Ron must have picked up on Sirius’ peculiar phrasing as well because he added, “And nobody knows that his stuff is in your closet.”
Sirius’ shoulders relaxed and he lowered his wand. Ron let out a quiet breath and lowered his as well.
Hermione kept hers up though, Sirius was mad and she wasn’t certain that she trusted him.
“You know occlumency?” Sirius asked.
Ron looked toward Hermione, but she had her brow furrowed in confusion. Sirius was… was annoyingly much more intelligent than she thought. The wards, the silent spells, the knowledge of magic she didn’t know…
“No,” she finally admitted after wracking her mind for the unfamiliar term. “What is it?”
“It’s a way to keep others from plucking thoughts from your mind,” Sirius said bluntly. He leaned against his door and stuck his hands in his front trouser pockets in a casual stance. “It’s a way to keep information locked inside so that nobody untrustworthy can access it.”
“Like Snape?” Ron guessed shrewdly.
Sirius’ lips twisted mockingly and he jerked his chin. “Snivellus is one,” he said lightly.
But… Hermione squinted at Sirius as she would a tricky Arithmancy problem… but Professor Snape (Snivellus was a terrible nickname and Hermione couldn’t believe Sirius used it) wasn’t who he was thinking of, she was sure of it.
“And there’s another,” Hermione said slowly, puzzling it out as she went. “Someone else you’re hiding Harry from…” She chewed her lip for a moment while Sirius watched her with a bland face. “Not… not Professor Dumbledore?” she breathed.
It was absurd, but the almost imperceptible tightening of Sirius’ eyes told her that was exactly who Sirius meant.
“Why?” Ron blurted, bemused and incredulous. “He wants Harry safe too!”
Sirius raised a brow, his mouth kept closed and his face impassive, leaving them to puzzle it out.
Hermione slowly lowered her wand, keeping it at her side as she watched Sirius and tapped her thigh in deep thought.
“Harry asked Professor Dumbledore if he could stay with Sirius this summer,” Hermione said. Sirius didn’t react, so he clearly already knew. Ron jolted at her side though.
“Did he? When? Why did Dumbledore send him to the Dursleys then?”
“He told Harry he would be safest there,” Hermione told Ron. She saw a shadow cross Sirius’ face, causing him to look truly dangerous for an instant before she blinked and it was gone.
“Harry isn’t safe there though,” Ron said. Hermione didn’t have to look to see the scowl that was surely on his face. If anyone knew how unsafe and unhappy Harry was with his relatives, it was the brave boy who broke him out in a flying car with his brothers. “Harry didn’t tell me though…” Ron added quietly. “I would have wrote Mum, had her pester Dumbledore about it…”
Hermione finally did turn from Sirius to wrap a consoling arm around Ron’s waist and tilt her head to his shoulder.
“Harry was upset,” she said, remembering Harry’s broken look of misery when he told Hermione about his talk with Dumbledore. He hadn’t cried, Harry never cried where Hermione could see him, always comforting himself in the heartbreaking way he did, but he looked close to it that night.
“He just didn’t want you to see him like that,” Hermione reassured Ron.
Ron shrugged, nearly dislodging Hermione’s head from his shoulder, but she knew that he would be berating himself for turning his back on Harry during the brief few months that their friendship had been broken.
“Odd that a Headmaster would get to say where a kid spent his summer holiday, isn’t it?” Sirius said as casually as if he were speaking about the weather. “One of the problems of Harry not having a true guardian, I guess.“
None of the three said anything after that. Hermione watched Sirius and Sirius watched them.
The air felt thick with secrets and implications and agendas in a war that Hermione couldn’t begin to unravel.
Finally, Sirius pulled his left hand from his pocket and held out a sheet of normal lined writing paper to Ron.
“Read it now,” he ordered him. “Then I’m burning it and if you say a single word about it, I’ll obliviate you.”
Sirius’ voice was flat, perfectly serious. It was more effective than a death threat- it would be hard to kill them, easy to wipe this perplexing encounter from their minds.
Ron accepted the paper with a lightly shaking hand and he held it up so they could both read it as he unfolded it.
Guys,
I’m fine. I’m sorry.
-Harry
That was it.
“Six bloody words?!” Ron demanded. He waved the paper around angrily. “How do we even know Harry wrote this?!”
Hermione snorted weakly, her eyes tearing up at the undoubtable proof that Harry was alive.
“Because it would have been longer if it were someone impersonating him,” she said. She snatched the paper from Ron and stared hard at Harry’s signature. It was odd, because Hermione had never seen Harry’s writing done with what seemed to be a normal pencil on lined notebook paper, but that was Harry’s cramped scrawl.
And it was just like Harry to go missing and say he was ‘fine’. Voldemort was back. Harry was gone. He’d been through so much, Harry never got a break, but Harry was always ‘fine’.
Hermione despised the word.
“He’s safe?” Ron asked Sirius when Hermione took a last look at Harry’s handwriting and handed the letter back over.
Sirius held the paper by the corner of it and put his wand tip at the bottom corner, incinerating it silently once more.
“He’s safe,” Sirius said. He remained in front of the door and narrowed his eyes threateningly. “Tell me now if I need to wipe your memory or if you can keep this to yourselves.”
Ron looked over at Hermione and she saw the same confidence that she had— if Harry was alive and safe, that was good enough for now.
“We can keep a secret, you know,” Hermione sniffed. “Perhaps you forgot who helped Harry save you from the dementors, Sirius?”
Sirius’ tight expression softened slightly, he still kept his wand pointed at the two of them though. “How sure are you that you won’t slip up and tell Ginny or Molly?”
Ron scoffed, “Pretty damn sure, mate. We never accidentally told anyone about you, did we?”
Sirius smiled and stepped closer, “Excellent. I don’t suppose you’d mind making a little vow between the three of us then?”
Ron paled, but Hermione drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much when compared to Ron and Sirius.
“Tell us who is watching over Harry and I’ll take any vow you want,” she said. She’d assumed it was Sirius, but Harry used muggle supplied to write back to them and Hermione had never seen Sirius use a muggle pencil before.
Sirius waited before Ron grunted out an agreement to tell them.
“His father, and I won’t say anything else,” he said, sending Hermione and Ron both in a tailspin of shock—
James Potter was dead.
So who the hell was Harry’s father?!
“Hands together now, time for your first Unbreakable Vow, kids.”
Ten minutes later, Hermione and Ron slipped out of Sirius’ room, both too stunned over what they learned to even have the swear on their lives to worry about.
“Not here,” Hermione told him when Ron opened his mouth and looked ready to discuss it. Between the portraits, the Order members arriving for their meeting, Kreacher, and the twins, Sirius’ room was truly the only safe room to talk in and he had ushered them away right after they swore to not discuss what he told them and they discovered with anyone outside of himself and each other.
Harry being with his father was… well, it was both horrendously wild and also made perfect sense. Hermione had always just assumed that Harry looked like one of his grandparents or something since he didn’t look like photos she’d seen of James at all, and he only resembled his mum in the color and shape of his eyes.
Also, insane things always happened to Harry, and this was perhaps the best insane thing to ever happen to him and Hermione hoped very desperately that Harry was enjoying having a parent.
“It’s wicked though, right?” Ron whispered directly in Hermione’s ear as they walked, his lips tickling her earlobe and causing a furious blush to spread across her face. “Who d’you reckon it is?”
Hermione breathed slowly, willing the burn on her face to ease up, and ushered Ron in to the bedroom she shared with Ginny. She looked all over and saw that Ginny was absent, probably getting ready to eavesdrop on the meeting with the twins.
“No idea,” Hermione told Ron in a hushed tone. “Sirius said we could write again though and he’d make sure he got it, so let’s do that and then go see if we can learn anything else with the others.”
Ron smiled, his smile more genuine now that they had a true reassurance of Harry’s continuing life, and it only took them a little over fifteen minutes to pen a reply to their best friend. Once they were done and Hermione rolled it up tightly, intending to slip it to Sirius after the meeting, they snuck off to find Fred, George, and Ginny.
It had become a tradition for them to eavesdrop on meetings together. Hermione had balked at first, wary about listening to war planning, but then she realized almost all the meetings were about Harry and her morals about eavesdropping were gone.
“That’s it!” Hermione screeched, yanking Ron to a stop in the middle of the stairs they had been descending. She pulled him down so this time she could whispered directly in his ear. “All the meetings are about Harry because the war is going to put him in danger and that’s why Sirius won’t tell Professor Dumbledore where Harry is,” she said quickly, some of her words running together in her excitement at solving the puzzle. “Sirius took Harry away from all of it!”
Ron straightened up and smiled down at her; her own happiness reflected in his freckled face. “Wicked,” he said simply before ruining Hermione’s excitement, “Sirius has a set of bollocks, doesn’t he?”
“Ew.” Hermione swatted his arm and they resumed walking. “I do not want to think about that, thank you very much.”
Ron laughed, a sorely missed sound as they hadn’t had anything to laugh about the last month while they’d been worried about Harry.
“What’s so funny?” Ginny murmured as they joined them on the second floor landing. She handed over two extendable ears while Fred and George nodded at them, their own ears already in place.
“Kreacher walked in to the wall,” Ron lied baldly as he passed one of the ears Ginny offered to Hermione. “We miss anything?”
“Nah, they’re waiting on Dumbledore,” Fred whispered.
“Sit down and shut up,” George added briskly.
Hermione rolled her eyes, but slid to the floor, crossing her legs and popping the extendable ear in her own ear.
They were brilliant inventions and reminded Hermione of when she would see the neighbors kids giggle and share secrets in tin cans with strings attached. She’d always wanted to join them, but she never got invited to share secrets with those kids.
She would have kept their secrets just as she did for her friends now, if only they’d given her a chance.
The five of them sat in silence, only Ron moving as he scratched Crookshanks ears while he slept on Ron’s lap, and they listened to the light small talk happening in the dining room.
Eventually the small talk ended as there was a door opening and closing, probably Professor Dumbledore whose voice had been absent and who always used the kitchen entrance of the house.
“I have news.”
They all perked up at the familiar and commanding voice of their Headmaster.
“We have found Harry.”
Crookshanks yelped as Ron accidentally smacked him in the face in his rush to turn a horrified look to Hermione.
Oh.
Oh no.
No.
That…
That wasn’t good at all.