Chapter 2
2.
Mum had bullied Dad and Charlie and Percy into coming home from work early yesterday, but that means tonight they’re all late. Mum’s still doling out fake smiles like biscuits, as if she hadn’t lost her head when Ginny had tried and failed to sneak in, as if Fred and George hadn’t had to come to her rescue and got her out of being stuck helping with dinner by volunteering Ron for the job, as if Ron’s not sitting all clammed up, barely grunting replies.
Mum’s smile does falter a bit when she’s serving pudding and Charlie and Dad pop out the floo and Dad barely pecks her on the cheek before turning to Ron. “Ron, you haven’t had any letters today, have you?”
“Letters?” Ron echoes vaguely.
“Harry Potter’s missing,” Charlie says, jaw tight and voice low, eyes tired with this isn’t my job. “Never made it home, apparently.”
Alright, maybe Mum making her stay at the table until they got home was worth it, fine. And no way Mum's gonna just turn the conversation to humiliating Ginny about her marks when Harry Potter is missing. That, above any of the stories or what Ron and the twins have said, spells him a hero.
Dad sits heavily in his chair, conjuring a handkerchief and scrubbing at his face. “I’m not really sure what’s rumor and what’s real, at this point,” he says over all their muttering. “Apparently it wasn’t reported until this morning, and they managed to keep it quiet for a few hours. Didn’t want to inspire panic, but…” He opens his eyes. Frowns. “Ron? You… don’t seem terribly concerned.”
Ron’s fork slows to a halt. “Oh, no,” he finally says. George snorts into his pudding.
“He’s probably fine, Dad,” Fred says. “I mean, Sirius Black already tried to off him once this year, and that turned out fine."
“Boys,” Mum scolds. “Don’t joke about something like that. Ron is probably very worried about his friend—that poor boy.”
“Yeah,” says Ron. “Really worried. He might be in danger.”
They all stare at him, and he tucks his head down to focus on his fork. There’s bad acting, there’s comedy, and then there’s Ron right now.
“Did you have a fight, or something?” Ginny asks. “Is that’s what’s wrong with you? Did he finally realize you’re a git?”
“Ginny!” Mum exclaims as Ron’s face twists into a sour glare.
“Harry can handle himself,” he says. “Who reported him missing, anyway? It wasn’t his family, they’re shite—”
“Ronald!”
“They are!”
The floo flares again, and out comes Percy, flustered as Ginny’s ever seen him, even more than when Penelope dumped him for two weeks last February, two arms full of papers that he drops on the table to point at Ron. “You— Where is Harry Potter?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Ron asks.
“No work at the table!” Mum exclaims at the same time.
Percy ignores her, jabbing his finger at Ron. “Potter’s family says he told them ages ago they would never see him again.”
“Isn’t that ‘classified information’, Perce?” Fred mocks.
“It’s all over the Ministry—the Minister’s only just been able to convince the editor of the Daily Prophet not to run a special edition, Mr Crouch only dismissed us for an hour to get dinner—”
“What’s this got to do with Mr Crouch?” George asks.
“Classified,” Percy says breezily. “Fess up, Ron.”
“Even if I knew,” Ron says, “which I don’t— ” That’s only moderately more convincing than his oh, no from before. “—I don’t see how it’s anyone’s business.”
“Anyone’s—business?” Percy splutters. “The Ministry’s in chaos—”
“Don’t see why.”
“Ron,” Mum says. “Maybe you don’t realize, exactly, that as there is a dangerous criminal on the loose—”
“Um, yeah, I think I got the memo about the criminals when we nearly got blown up, thanks,” Ron says.
Mom goes scarlet. Fred makes an explosive gesture with his hands, yelping when a pea shoots up off his plate and into his open mouth. Charlie's always been brill at casting spells under the table.
“Ron,” Dad says, with that touch of sternness that’s always enough to let even the densest of the boys know they’ve gotten a wee bit too close to the line. “Your mother means to say that with him being your friend and all, not to mention the unfortunate situation you found yourself in with him, you out of all of us ought to be worried about the danger Harry is in. It's no time for games. However his… family is, there are plenty of adults who can help him stay safe, which—"
“And the Ministry,” Percy cuts in imperiously, “is here to ensure that happens.”
Ron actually rolls his eyes at that. He’s gotten a lot braver, over the last year, or a lot stupider, or both. “One, Sirius Black isn’t after Harry, which was all over the papers, wasn’t it,” he says. “Two, if anyone had actually bothered to ask Harry before we got out of school, they might’ve realized he wasn’t likely to go back to the muggles if he didn’t have to.”
“So he’s doing it for the attention, then,” Percy somehow concludes, as Dad starts on something about muggle and misunderstandings. George scoffs.
“Oh, yeah,” Fred says. “Harry Potter just loves the attention.”
“That must be why he’s gone and vanished himself,” George says. “Because there’s nothing quite so satisfying as having people you’ve never met say you’re attention-seeking from around their dinner tables.”
“Especially when you’re the boy-who-hid-in-the-library-for-ninety-percent-of-the-year.”
“Or the boy-who-made-Lavender-Brown-cry-because-she-wouldn’t-leave-him-alone.”
“Or the boy-who—”
“Boys,” Dad says. “Do you know where Harry Potter is?”
“Barry who?” Fred says immediately.
“Hardly know the guy,” George agrees.
“That’s for certain,” Ron mutters.
“For pity’s sake,” Mum says, jabbing her spoon at them. “You’re old enough, all of you, to know that the boy should—”
“I’m the same age as Harry,” Ron snaps, “except Harry’s fourteen and muggle-raised, so he’s an Independent, isn’t he, so I really don’t see why the Ministry thinks it gets a say where he spends his summer!”
There’s silence for a moment, and then Dad clears his throat softly, and says, “Don’t interrupt your mother, Ron.”
“What’s an Independent?” Ginny asks before Mum can go and explode.
Percy blinks and drops down into his chair, pulling the stack of files he’d dropped closer and flipping rapidly through them.
“No work at the table!” Mum moans.
“Independence,” Dad says, “is how muggleborns are able to join magical society. They’re… legally considered adults, so able to make their own decisions about things like schooling and banking.”
And apparently don’t have to stick around their families when they’re gits, either? “Only muggleborns?” Ginny asks.
It’s Charlie who takes over, strangely enough. “Sometimes muggleborns aren’t accepted by their families, the way squibs aren’t always accepted by theirs,” he explains quietly. “And there’s not always a good way to tell who needs help getting out of a bad situation until it’s too late. So the government’s solution was to lay down groundwork for all muggleborns to be treated the same.”
“It’s a prejudiced policy,” Dad grumbles. “Makes people think muggles should be feared and rejected, rather than people who live in the same cities and country and are, are people, damn it.”
“Arthur,” Mum chides, finally summoning the plates she’s kept warm for them from the counter. “Language.”
“It’s a lazy policy, is what it is,” Charlie retorts. “The Ministry doesn’t—oh, looks great, Mum—the Ministry doesn’t want to take responsibility when things go wrong. If the kid’s an Independent, they get to say it’s not our job to take of—”
“Now you’re just being offensive,” Percy snaps, slamming his files shut. “The policy was put in place to protect muggleborns, not out of some, some blood-purist plot—”
“It’s a policy that hasn’t been updated since eighteen fifty-three,” Ron says, which is weird enough to shut even Percy up. “So it probably was blood-purist, and they haven’t changed it, have they.”
“Why do you know that?” George wants to know.
“Maybe because two of my best friends are Independents?”
“But Harry Potter isn’t muggleborn!” Ginny reminds them. “Everyone knows that—”
“Only, his shitty relatives are muggle, aren’t—”
“Ronald!”
“Whatever,” Ron says, dropping his fork onto his empty plate as he pushes to his feet. “Wherever Harry is, he’s better off on his own. The Ministry is wasting their time. If they can’t find him, there’s no way Sirius Black or whoever could, even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t.”
Percy stands up too, as Ron ignores Mum and stomps off up the stairs. “If he’s really Independent, that changes things,” Percy says, grabbing the files and beelining back towards the fireplace. “Mr Crouch will want to know—”
“Percy, your dinner,” Mum says, but Percy’s already disappearing in green floo-powder flames. Percy’s always like that. Even when he was supposed to be ‘looking after’ Ginny last Christmas (demeaning as that whole situation was), he spent more time at the Ministry in a day than he did at home in a week.
“Honestly,” Mum says, but she seems to have given up, and settles back down in her chair. She eyes Dad and Charlie. “Eat your dinners. Please.”
“Luna says Sirius Black was spotted in Sweden,” Ginny says, dragging her fork around her plate. “In disguise, of course. Her Dad’s gone to get photos.”
“Thought he was last seen in Canada?” Charlie replies through his chicken.
“Is that where Xenophilius has gone?” Mum says, closing her eyes. “Really, that man… How they have lasted this long…”
The anger roars to life in Ginny’s gut, and she slams her hands down on the table, jumping to her feet. “Don’t you talk bad about Luna’s dad!” she snaps. “Christ! Wish I was an Independent, if it meant I could get away from you!”
“Ginny!” Dad says, but that voice has never worked on her, and she’s storming up the stairs, slamming the door to her little room hard enough to shake the whole house, locking it and flinging herself down on the bed—
You should ask Ron more about his friend’s situation, Tom writes, later, once she’s given him the whole story and is all but asleep on the pages. It sounds like there’s more to his side than what the Ministry would have you told.
“Yeah,” Ginny mumbles. “If only he’d stop being such a git.”
You can be awfully clever, can’t you? I’m sure you can tolerate him long enough to get what you need.