I hate flying.
The actual flying part is all right, I mean, the wind feels good, but the height thing is a problem. I can just hear you now, “Then why are you flying the first place?!” Do you really think I’d walk when a faster way is available?
My arms were wrapped tightly around Harry’s waist; at one point he had told me to loosen my grip before I suffocated him. I chanced a look down and immediately closed my eyes. The vomit I had tried so hard to hold back came up again, but I held it down. Now was not the time to get sick, especially when first impressions (though pointless) would later be important.
“You all right back there?” Harry asked.
I nodded into his back. I could almost feel the trees whisk by under us and then the wind seemed to change. When I tried to look again, the ground was getting closer. I sighed with relief when the Burrow came into view.
The rooms jutted out at odd angles in the form of a tall house, making it look like a blind man made it. The door of the broom shed in the yard swung back and forth in the wind. I saw a few of the gnomes in the garden grunting their way back over the fence, still a bit dizzy from the way they walked. A soft breeze blowing against the house made it creak. I smiled.
Now this is what I call home.
There was a black car in front with Ron and Ginny getting in. A slightly bald older man was glancing around, a bit jumpy, and he looked relieved when he saw Harry on his Firebolt with me on the back. When we finally landed I slid of the back of the broom and knelt to the ground.
“Sweet, sweet earth!” I cried. “How I missed you so!”
The man helped me up, a huge grin on his face. “Hello there!” he exclaimed. “I’m Arthur Weasley, and you must be Lara. Wonderful to meet you!” He grabbed my hand and shook it, pumping it up and down.
“Dad!” Ron had rolled down the window and poked his head out. “Don’t get all excited like you did with Harry, give her some space!”
I smiled as Mr. Weasley let go of my hand, looking embarrassed. “That’s alright, sir,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, get in, get in,” He shooed me towards the car, that wary look in his eyes again. As I got in, he said, “We have to get to going, the others are waiting for us at the house.”
I thought I’d be squished into the back with everyone else, including the Twins, but it turns out that, again, I was wrong. Only Ron, Ginny, and Harry were in the back”I guessed that wherever they had popped off to, it was the place we were going”and Mr. Weasley got into the front beside the driver. The inside was just like the outside, black and shiny. The seat was longer then in most cars, and I thought that it would make the car look funny. Before I could ask, Ginny said, “Ministry car.” Like that explained everything.
The car thrummed into life and we pulled out of the drive. I watched the Burrow slide away. Why couldn’t we stay there? I wanted to ask. Where could we possibly be going that could be more fun than a summer at the Burrow?
Just then, I heard a soft meowing. Spotty poked her white head out from underneath the seat. I grabbed her and held her close.
“Oh, I almost forgot about you!” I exclaimed, hugging her tight.
“You got a smart cat,” Ginny commented. “She came in here before we did.”
“I’m worried she’ll get along with Crookshanks,” I said. From what I got from the books, Crookshanks, Hermione’s longhaired ginger tom, wasn’t fixed”and neither was Spotty. A part of me was like, aw, kittens, cute! But the other part: Oh, God, here we go again…
“That mangy thing?” Ron scoffed. “They’ll be fine, as long as Spotty stays away from him.” Ginny clouted him over the head, making me laugh.
“Watch it, you two!” warned Mr. Weasley.
I turned to Harry. “You alright?” I asked. “You seem quiet.”
He just smiled at me. “Yes, I’m fine, Lara.” He continued to stare out the window until I asked,
“Will we be going to Diagon Alley? You know, to get all my school stuff?”
Mr. Weasley answered me this time. He craned his neck to look at me. “Yes, when we get the rest of the letters.”
I kept my mouth shut from then on for no reason in particular. Soon Spotty fell asleep, purring on my lap. Morning turned into noon, and when we still didn’t stop, I said, “This sure is taking a long time. Where are we going?”
Ginny leaned over Ron to whisper in my ear, “Grimmauld Place.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Where’s that?” I had never heard of a Grimmauld Place, in the books or on the Internet.
“We can’t say anything else, it’s Order stuff,” Ron mumbled.
“They’re not telling me anything, either,” Harry told me. “I guess we’re in the same boat.”
I scowled at the floor of the car. Oh, how I wish I had pencil and paper…I would have loved to draw something, just to pass the time away until we got to this “Grimmauld Place”. Where was this place, anyways? And this “Order””what the heck is that? I guess I would find out soon enough.
****************************
“She up yet?”
“Shush, she’s sleeping, Ronald!”
“Ginny, don’t bother her!”
“She’s been asleep for a long time, though. Is she still alive?”
I blinked my eyes open; the bed under me creaked as I moved. There was a single lamp lit, sitting on the bedside table. Looking around, I saw almost half the Weasleys, plus Harry and a girl with bushy brown hair. I looked down, but thankfully I was still fully clothed. I guess not even a mother had the heart to undress me.
A plump, redheaded witch at the front of the group smiled at me. “Morning, dear,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Weasley. I’m sure you’ve met everyone.” She waved her hand like she was showcasing Ginny, Ron, Fred, and George.
“Hi, guys,” I greeted them. “Um…I kinda don’t have a change of clothes…”
“That’s all right, Lara,” Mrs. Weasley said cheerfully. “Dumbledore is delivering a letter to your grandparents this morning, a trunk will be here soon full of your things. Now, scat, all of you!” She shooed the boys out, going along with them, and I raised an eyebrow. Things were moving a bit too fast for me.
Both girls sat down on the bed, the brown-haired one smiling and Ginny picking at the blanket. Hermione Granger held out her hand to me.
“Hello, I’m Hermione Granger. Ready to find out what you’ll be doing this summer?”
I raised the other eyebrow. I’m sure I looked like a complete idiot. “And what exactly is that?”
“Learning, of course,” Hermione answered. “Now, since it’s Saturday we won’t do anything, but starting Monday we’ll be starting first-year Charms--”
I held up my hand to stop her rampage of words. “What?”
With an excited wave of her hand she said, “You can’t be going to Hogwarts without having some training first.”
“We’ll be helping you,” Ginny put in. “All of us. I’ll help you with Transfiguration.”
“I’ll be Runes and History of Magic,” Hermione said, ignoring my mumbled, “Fun.” “Harry will teach you Defense, and Ron’ll teach you Charms. We’ll all help you with Potions, and we might as well forget about astronomy and herbology for a while. Goodness knows we don’t have the proper equipment for it!”
“Divination can rot in hell,” I said before anything could be said of the subject. “You walked out of it in your third year; that’s as much opinion as I need on that class, and Trelawney.” Sybill Trelawney is the divination teacher at Hogwarts; she smells of cooking sherry and stays up in her tower, pondering on the way Harry is going to die. (Courtesy of the third and fourth books in the Harry Potter series)
Hermione was about to say something else when Spotty came barreling into the room. A large ginger tom with a squashed face came running after her, meowing at the top of his lungs.
“Crookshanks!” Hermione cried, and she grabbed him by the scruff. Spotty dashed under the bed, hissing. “What were you doing?” The cat tried to fight, but eventually gave up and just sat their on the girl’s lap. I giggled.
“Nice to meet you, Crookshanks,” I said to Hermione’s cat. I got a hiss for an answer, almost like the cat could understand me.
With a resigned sigh, I said, “So…when do we start?”
****************************
Hermione needs to work on scheduling. I had thought that I would have another day to get situated (and explore the house, which I hadn’t really gotten to do) but no, we have to start classes on a Sunday. From Mrs. Weasley, I had concluded that the meeting with my grandparents hadn’t gone very well, but since they partially knew the people I was with, it was ok for me to stay. I had my trunk (didn’t realize I had one) and proper clothes. Though happy as I was at the time, they would soon find out that I don’t much care for early wake-up calls.
Around seven Sunday morning, while I was fast asleep, a loud shrieking reached my ears. I could hear something about filthy Mudbloods (Muggle-born witches and wizards) being in the house and how some man was disgracing the family. When I plucked enough courage to get out of bed and go downstairs, the screaming had stopped. I snuck down the stairs as quietly as I could, trying to see what the source of the noise was.
Having stayed in my room most of the day Saturday, I hadn’t yet gone downstairs yet. What I saw was a large room whose walls were covered in old paintings. One was behind moth-eaten black curtains, very old and in need of cleaning. There was an umbrella stand made of a large, rather hairy leg. The paint was peeling off the walls and the carpet was thin as a sheet. I looked up and saw a candelabra, which looked like a snake and was covered in cobwebs. Gas lamps were lit all over. When I made it to the bottom of the steps and took a glance back, I jumped and knocked into the covered painting, knocking the curtain down. All kinds of curses exploded in my ears.
“Filthy Mudbloods! Tainting my beautiful, wonderful house! Destroying my beloved home--”
“Would you shut up!” I yelled. I turned around as a door opened”a young man who was gaunt-looking and had a mob of messy black hair, ran out.
“Mother, please,” he mumbled, covering the painting back up. The screams got even louder. “Into the basement, now!” he hissed at me. I obeyed without a word and hurried through the door, shutting it with a loud slam behind me.
Yet another room lay before me. There was a large table in this one, surrounded by a whole lot of chairs. Rough stonewalls had no adornment, and the fireplace looked like it needed as much cleaning as the entrance. A dresser stood in one corner, near a cupboard. A smaller door led off somewhere else.
I was glad to see that most of the others were up. With a sigh of relief I sat down next to Ginny and took some bacon off a plate. A mound of rags was sitting at the far end of the table, and I wrinkled my nose at the smell of whisky that wafted off it. Harry and Ron were playing a game of Exploding Snap while eating, and Hermione (coincidentally) was going through a huge stack of thick books.
“Did you like your meeting with Mrs. Black?” commented Ginny with a smile.
“Who, the painting?” I said. That thing had a name? “I suppose so. Where’s your mom?”
“She went to the Ministry with Dad,” she said. “Didn’t give us anymore information than that.”
I looked up as a small creature in rags with bat-like ears came out of the small cupboard. Before I could ask, Ginny told me, “Ignore him. That’s Kreacher, Sirius’ house-elf. Truly horrid.” The little creature scurried out of the door.
“He isn’t horrid!” exclaimed Hermione. “He’s a house-elf who’s been in this house far too long! You know, if he was free…”
“He’d go straight to Voldemort and tell him all our secrets,” cut in Harry.
I chewed my bacon thoughtfully. A painting that screamed at you, a house-elf that didn’t pay attention to you…if this was Grimmauld Place, then I’d rather be back at the Burrow.
The black-haired man that had saved me from the screaming painting”“Mrs. Black””came tiptoeing through the door. With a deep breath he closed it softly and took a seat across from me.
“I see you’ve met my mother,” he said.
“She’s a very nice lady, Sirius,” I said sarcastically, pointing at him with my fork. I had immediately recognized the man, on the run from the Ministry for allegedly killing thirteen Muggles and one wizard with one curse. “All that yelling in my ears is doing my ear drums a whole world of good!”
Sirius Black sniffed, then smiled. “It’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand across the table, and I shook it heartily. “I’m Sirius Black.”
“Lara Winston, at your service.” I glanced at Hermione as she stood with about half the books in her arms, and assuming what she was about to do, I stood, too.
Let the torture begin.
Muggles can't be Witches! by Wand_Waver2006
Chapter Notes: Thank you KateH for being the most wodnerful beta I could ever ask for! And you readers, thank you for teh great reviews. Here's chappie two--enjoy!