Four days after all of this, Gillian's life changed dramatically.
Gillian hadn’t been herself since that night. She grew increasingly distant and she hardly ever slept; she kept having terrifying dreams of the graveyard. She didn't know how to stop them. Every night she would start somewhere new in the dream and see just a little bit more than she had the night before.
She hardly ever left her room. Where previously she would leave the house all day, and only come back late at night to sleep, she would now hide away upstairs, too scared to go outside. She didn't trust shadows.
The biggest change in Gill, though, was her obsession with Harry Potter. He invaded her every thought and her dreams every night. He seemed to have strolled into her life, stomping all the way and leaving deep prints behind, and had then walked out again, with no explanation.
But it was four days later that Gillian left the house again. It was late, but her parents let her go, happy to see her leaving her room again. She didn't know why she left on this night. She just knew that if she stayed in that room any longer she would drown in her own thoughts. She didn't pay attention to where she was going, but she still found herself in front of the Dursleys' house. It made sense to her that she should come here, though she didn't mean to. The house did contain the person who had been unknowingly consuming all the waking and sleeping hours of her life. Gillian was standing outside the house, considering the door, when she heard a sudden crash from inside, followed by people talking. Many people. The streetlights suddenly flickered on, and she saw several people silhouetted through the window. They were all wearing robes and one or two had large pointed hats.
Gillian snuck into the garden and sat under a large Hydrangea bush, listening to the people through the open window.
"He'll be upstairs," said a male voice, "I'll go and fetch him."
"Right you are," said a second, eager voice.
But Gillian heard no footsteps. The first voice muttered something quietly, and there was a sound of a door opening upstairs. She had to see what was going on. She stood up, crouching, still, and peeked through the window. No less than nine people were standing in the kitchen at the bottom of some stairs. They were all wearing long robes, mostly black, and were wearing what appeared to be wizard hats. She might have found this funny in any other situation, but they all seemed too serious to be funny. She looked up the stairs and saw that a heavily bolted, drag chained, and otherwise locked door had been thrown open. Standing in the frame, illuminated by the lights of the street that seemed to pour onto him like a spotlight, was Harry Potter… and he was holding a—
"Lower your wand, boy, before you take someone's eye out," said a low, growling sort of voice.
"Professor Moody?" said Harry, uneasily.
"I don't know much about 'Professor', never got round to much teaching, did I? Get down here, we want to see you properly."
Gillian watched Harry in wonder as his wand (her heart leapt at the word) lowered slightly, but he didn’t move. "It's all right, Harry. We've come to take you away."
She watched Harry relax and lower his wand. He seemed to recognize this voice. "P-Professor Lupin? Is that you?"
"Why are we all standing in the dark?" said a woman's voice. Gillian turned to look at her, interestedly. "Lumos."
Gillian almost cried out in surprise. This woman was also holding a wand, and when she had said the word the tip had lit brightly, lighting up the whole room. Gill could see the whole scene clearly now. At the head was a graying man, with very tattered robes, but an inviting smile. There was a tall black man, bald and with an earring, looking curiously up the steps. One short man, with an eager expression, who looked like some sort of terrier, waiting for a treat; a black-haired woman, with a pink face; a semi-tall, square-jawed man; an old, silvery-haired man another woman in emerald green. It was an eclectic arrangement of people, but they all—every one of them—were staring at Harry.
The woman with the lit wand had purple, spiky hair, dark eyes, and very pale skin. But she wasn't even the most shocking. The person Gillian now recognized as the gruff voice addressed as 'Moody' was short with long hair and a very scarred face. But, even more unsettling, were his eyes. One was small and brown while the other was large and shockingly blue, whizzing around in his head.
Gillian gasped, and ducked down under the bush again, pressing herself as flat to the ground as she could manage. That eye made her nervous. She would have to settle for listening now. "Oooh, he looks just like I thought he would," said a woman. "Wotcher, Harry!"
"Yeah, I see what you mean. Remus. He looks exactly like James," a booming voice said.
"Except for the eyes," said a woman. "Lily's eyes."
"Are you quite sure it's him, Lupin? It'd be a nice lookout if we bring back some Death Eater impersonating him," said the scarred man. "We ought to ask him something only the real Potter would know. Unless anyone brought any Veritaserum?" (This confused Gillian, because she had seen Harry, and he was quite obviously himself. Also, what was a Death Eater? And Veritaserum? She strained her ears even harder.)
"Harry, what form does your Patronus take?" asked the tattered man.
"A stag," she heard Harry answer.
Gillian had to hold back another gasp. A stag! She had seen a stag in the alleyway when she had fainted! That's what a Patronus was! That stag, it was something that he had made! She felt her heartbeat escalate.
"That's him, Mad-Eye."
She heard footsteps down the stairs, then, suddenly, "Don't put your wand there, boy! What if it ignited? Better wizards than you have lost buttocks, you know!" said the gruff voice.
"Who d'you know who's lost a buttock?"
"Never you mind, you just keep your wand out of your back pocket! Elementary wand safety, nobody bothers about it anymore... And I saw that."
"How are you?" asked the one called Remus.
"F-fine..." answered Harry. "I'm--you're really lucky the Dursleys are out..."
"Lucky, ha! It was me that lured them out of the way. Sent a letter by Muggle post telling them they'd been shortlisted for the All-England Best-Kept Suburban Lawn Competition. They're heading off to the prize-giving right now... Or they think they are," laughed the woman with purple hair.
Gillian wasn't too caught up in it all to notice the word 'Muggle' with interest.
Harry asked, "We're leaving, aren't we? Soon?"
"Almost at once," said Professor Lupin, "we're just waiting for the all-clear."
"Where are we going? The Burrow?"
"Too risky. We've set up headquarters somewhere undetectable. It's taken a while... This is Alastor Moody, Harry."
"Yeah, I know."
"And this is Nymphadora--"
"Don't call me Nymphadora, Remus. It's Tonks."
"--Nymphadora Tonks, who prefers to be known by her surname only."
"So would you if your fool mother had called you 'Nymphadora'," muttered Tonks. Gillian silently agreed.
"And this is Kingsley Shacklebolt---Elphias Doge---Dedalus Diggle--"
"We've met before!"
"--Emmeline Vance---Sturgis Podmore---and Hestia Jones. A surprising number of people volunteered to come and get you," finished Remus amusedly.
"Yeah, well, the more the better," said the scarred man.
"We're just waiting for the signal to tell us it's safe to set off," said Lupin. "We've got about fifteen minutes."
Gillian tried to stop her heart from beating so fast. Despite her fascination, she still knew that she shouldn’t be there. It was too risky to stay there for the next fifteen minutes. They seemed to be trying to conduct themselves secretly, and something told her that they all had wands that could do more than light up or burn off someone's buttocks. And, in any case, she decided that she was rather attached to hers, thank you very much.
Gill crept quietly out of the bush and around the corner of the house. She couldn’t hear them, anymore, but she hoped to catch a glimpse of them when they left. She waited for about ten minutes before they all came outside, one by one, each of them carrying...broomsticks. She could see them from where she stood, but she was confident that they wouldn't see here unless they knew where to look.
"Clear night. Could've done with a bit more cloud cover. Right you-" Moody spat, turning to...nothing it appeared at first. But when Gillian looked closer, she saw a strange flickering glimmer in the air—and Harry's outline. She gaped at him. He looked like his insides had been turned invisible but his outline was still there. "--we're going to be flying in close formation. Tonks'll be right in front of you, keep close to her tail. Lupin'll be covering you from below. I'm going to be behind you. The rest'll be circling us. We don't break ranks for anything, got me? If one of us gets killed--"
"Is that likely?" asked Harry.
Gillian looked on. Killed? Who would want to kill them? And flying? They really could fly on brooms? Gillian's excitement was almost too much. Despite the last ominous comment, she wanted to jump out from her hiding place, run forward, and beg them to take her with them.
"--the others keep flying, don't stop, don't break ranks. If they take out all of us and you survive, Harry, the rear guard are standing to take over; keep flying east and they'll join you."
Gillian could hardly believe it. Harry was obviously either very important or in extreme danger. Or both. She couldn't believe that somebody like this had been living so close to her, and she never knew…St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys, they had told her! She was lost in marveled thought, when, suddenly, she saw red sparks fly up into the air overhead. "Mount your brooms, that's the first signal!" yelled Lupin.
Gillian peeked around the corner of the house and saw them all swing one leg over their brooms; the pink-haired woman with some difficulty as Harry's trunk was attached to the bottom. Green sparks. "Second signal, let's go!"
And with extraordinary speed, they shot into the air. They were some hundred feet ahead in no time. Gillian ran out from behind the house, and stared in amazement as they began racing off. Gillian thought she could see one of them turn their heads, and a blue flash, not unlike Moody's eye, but she couldn't be sure. All she knew was that they suddenly veered off to the left and were out of sight.
In Muggle World by Daedalus Plum
Chapter Notes: All the dialogue in this chapter is quoted out of J.K. Rowling's 5th book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix". I had no hand in writing it, the words do not belong to me, nor do i claim to have any hold over them.
With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy just how hard it was to right this incredibly canonical chapter!