I love portkey, you guys are all so nice and just plain awesome! Also, I don't own Harry Potter or anyone else that you recognize. All I've got is Mina, Jim, Bob, Fate and a couple of t-shirts
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It seemed to go on for hours yet no matter how much she yelled, all Harry could think of was how happy he was to be back.
Finally Mrs. Weasley felt that her sons had been suitably lectured and she turned to Harry,
"I'm very pleased to see you, Harry, dear," she said, her voice calm and sweet, as if she had not been yelling for the past hour. "Come in and have some breakfast."
She turned and walked back into the house with Harry, Ron and the twins fast on her heels.
Harry took a deep breath as he entered the familiar walls of the Burrow. It seemed bigger to him for just a moment and he smiled ruefully as he remembered that he was smaller. He blinked and stopped for just a moment as shock over came him once he had overcome the feelings of nostalgia.
Peter Pettigrew was upstairs.
It took all of his self control not to rush up the stairs immediately but a thought struck him before he could even begin to ask Mrs. Weasley of he could put his things away.
What was he going to do? He didn't know the spell to reveal Pettigrew as an animagus and even if he did, he would get in trouble for deliberately casting a spell. And if somehow he could convince Mr. or Mrs. Weasley to cast it on Scabbers, what then? Peter Pettigrew was still considered a hero for attempting to take down Sirius and he could talk his way into remaining free easily enough. As far as he knew, Sirius was the only other person in the world who knew that Peter had been the true secret keeper. Harry growled slightly as Mrs. Weasley began to push food at him. If only he had been brought back when he was younger, then he could have `accidentally' used magic to reveal Peter.
As he tried to figure out this dilemma he missed everything the Weasleys said until a small, red haired figure in a long nightdress, appeared in the kitchen, gave a squeal and ran out again. Harry stared after where she had been and wondered why he didn't feel the same overwhelming feeling he always got when he saw her.
"My sister, Ginny," Ron explained unnecessarily in an undertone, "She's been talking about you all summer."
"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autograph, Harry." Fred joked but Mrs. Weasley caught his eye and nothing more was said between the four. Harry frowned slightly, trying to ignore how uncomfortable he felt about the idea of Ginny of all people wanting his autograph.
"Blimey, I'm tired," yawned Fred, setting down his knife and fork at last. "I think I'll go to bed and-"
"You will not," Mrs. Weasley snapped instantly. "It's your own fault you've been up all night. You're going to de-gnome the garden for me; they're getting completely out of hand again-"
"Oh, Mum" Ron began to whine but he snapped his mouth shut quickly when Mrs. Weasley turned her gaze on him.
"And both of you will be helping," she added, glaring at Ron and George. "You can go up to bed, dear," she added to Harry. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car-"
Harry took a moment to decide what to do. He wanted more than anything to go upstairs and convince the traitor to confess the truth thanks to a bit of slow torture and anything he could think of but he had no way of knowing whether or not his new ability to make things fly around and stick to things would work on a living creature and it would be a bad thing to find out when doing something as important as trying to free Sirius. Then an idea came to him and he smiled slightly.
"I'll help Ron. I've never seen a de-gnoming before." Harry lied quickly and Mrs. Weasley smiled.
"That's very sweet of you, dear, but it's dull work" she replied. "Now, let's see what Lockhart's got to say on the subject." She continued and Harry grimaced as she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. George groaned,
"Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden." Harry glared at the cover of Mrs. Weasley's copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's Guide to Household Pests.
"Oh, he is marvelous," the Weasley matriarch sighed. "He knows his household pests all right, it's a wonderful book…" Harry wondered how many people Lockhart had interviewed and subsequently oblivated to get the information for that particular book as he remembered the trouble that the self absorbed man had with creatures as small as Cornish pixies.
"Mum fancies him," Fred stage whispered.
"Don't be so ridiculous, Fred," said Mrs. Weasley, her cheeks rather pink. "All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there's a single gnome in that garden when I come to inspect."
Yawning, grumbling and plotting, the Weasleys and Harry marched into the garden which made Harry smile at the mess that had been quite a bit of trouble to clear up in time for the wedding reception. He ignored Ron's instructions about de-gnoming and soon the air was filled with the little potato head creatures. When Harry tossed them as far as he could normally he would then concentrate on the gnome and do his best to make the little creature fling even further away.
When the Weasley brothers were not paying attention, Harry would slow down the gnome's descent and through his experiments he discovered that he could not affect anything that was too far away and that when he froze a living creature with his wandless magic, it would start to suffocate. The first time he realized this, he had panicked and he had almost sworn off using these new powers completely. But as he remembered the death's of Sirius and Dumbledore, he bit back his horror at almost killing and instead concentrated on seeing how far his magic could affect the gnomes.
Then the front door slammed.
"Dad's home!" Fred announced and the four boys hurried through the garden and went back into the house. Harry grinned brightly when he saw the tired but healthy figure of Mr. Weasley who was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses off and his hand over his eyes.
"What a night," he mumbled, oblivious to those around him as he blindly searched for the teapot. "Nine raids! Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher," There was a sudden shattering of glass as one of the windows burst into pieces and all the Weasleys sat up to stare at the window while a slight blush appeared on Harry's cheeks. Mr. Weasley sighed,
"Boys, please don't experiment in the kitchen." He flicked his wand and the glass flew back together.
"Find anything Dad?" asked Fred, not bothering to declare the innocence of himself or his brother but he did send a look over at Harry. The young wizard looked away.
"All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle," yawned Mr. Weasley. "There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn't my department, through. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets but that Committee on the Experimental Charms, thank goodness…"
"Why would anyone bother making a bunch of door keys shrink?" George asked and Mr. Weasley sighed.
"Just Muggle-baiting," he replied. "Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it and of course it's next to impossible to convict anyone since the muggles will never admit that their keys keep shrinking. They just insist they keep loosing it, bless them. They'll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them in the face…" Harry raised a brow, wondering how that could be true when there was an entire department in the ministry dedicated to oblivating any muggle that got too close to the secret of the wizarding world and then he wondered if he could figure out how to enchant the Dursley's keys to shrink. That would annoy the Dursleys and if they would unshrink around someone magical then perhaps he could get to his things easier. Mr. Weasley went on, still oblivious to the new guest of the Weasley house,
"But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn't believe,"
"LIKE CARS FOR INSTANCE?" Mrs. Weasley appeared, holding a long poker, looking as if she was preparing to perform the execution of someone. Mr. Weasley's eyes jerked up and he stared guilty at his wife.
"C-cars, Molly, dear?" he asked weakly.
"Yes, Arthur, cars," Mrs. Weasley growled as she swung the poker menacingly, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was taken it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting the car so it would fly."
Mr. Weasley blinked and pulled nervously at his collar,
"Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even it, er, he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth. There's a loophole in the law, you'll find, as long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't"
"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" snarled the Weasley matriarch. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Harry arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"
"Harry?" asked Mr. Weasley blankly. "Harry who?" Harry tried not to wince as Mr. Weasley turned to stare at him, his eyes flickering in that familiar way to see that yes he did indeed have the famous scar on his forehead, before he jumped.
"Good lord, is it Harry Potter? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about,"
"Your sons flew that car to Harry's house and back last night!" screeched Mrs. Weasley. "What have you got to say about that?"
"Did you really?" Mr. Weasley asked eagerly. "Did it go alright? I, I mean," he stammered as he finally caught the outraged look on Mrs. Weasley's face, "that, that was very wrong boys, very wrong indeed…"
"Leave them to it," Ron muttered to Harry as Mrs. Weasley began to swell in indignation and anger. "Come on, I'll show you my bedroom."
They slipped out of the kitchen and made their way up to the third floor where Harry briefly caught site of Ginny staring out at them before she closed the door with a snap.
"Ginny," Ron said unnecessarily. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally." Harry nodded absently and then paused for a moment, suddenly realizing something. He could not detect that lovely, flowery fragrance that he had come to associate with Ginny and the Burrow. He frowned but pushed the matter into the back of his mind and quickly caught up to Ron.
They made it up to the fifth floor until they reached the door with peeling paint and a plaque declaring it to be Ron's room. Harry smiled as he entered the familiar orange blaze before his eyes fell on Peter, sleeping in the sunlight. He felt his anger well up and suddenly Peter squeaked as the tip of his tail burst into flame. To Ron it looked as though the sunlight had been magnified by the glass of his fish tank but Harry smirked as he realized that he had a new talent. He looked at Ron who, after dousing the flame on the rat's tail, was looking at Harry almost nervously.
"It's a bit small," Ron said quickly. "Not like that room you had with the muggles."
"Dudley's spare room? Well next to the cupboard under the stairs, it's the most convenient place in the house to imprison an underage wizard." Harry mentioned casually and inwardly he smirked as Ron's eyes widened. He went on as if he didn't realize what he had just admitted to. "This house though, it's the best I've ever been in."
Ron's ears went pink and the two boys spent the next few hours catching up on the other's activities over the summer before challenging the twins to an impromptu game of quidditch, the two players on each side playing every role they could. Ron and Harry gave a valiant effort but the twins had years of experience and seamless teamwork on their side. By the time the sun set and the game was called on account of Mrs. Weasley, the twins won 160 to 90.
That night, Harry lay in bed, staring at the ceiling for only a few minutes before he heard Ron's rumbling snores. He smiled absently but he felt no real joy. He was so close, so close to the man that ruined his chances of ever being normal and there was nothing he could do about it.
He sighed and closed his eyes tightly, attempting to block out the rest of the world so he could fall asleep but suddenly he felt strong hands grab him. A hand went over his mouth as arms picked him up and carried him out of the room despite his struggles.
"Blimey Harry, calm down." hissed a voice.
"It's just us."
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