Chirp, chirp, chirp!
Lazy golden sunlight spilled across the open windowsill on the third floor of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place coloring everything it touched with the warm honey-glow of late July mornings.
Dust specks danced in the beams like tiny golden fairies, swirling in patterns made by the faint breeze that carried the scent of summer into the stuffy bedroom.
A handful of cheeky sparrows dropped from the bright sky in a flutter of wings and wriggled with determination into Hedwig's cage hanging on the sill. The snowy owl was off hunting, as she often was during daylight hours, leaving her cage temporarily undefended.
The opportunistic birds pecked enthusiastically at the scraps of food still left inside from her last meal.
The two boys sleeping in the third-floor bedroom were thoroughly annoyed by this intrusion into their peaceful slumber.
In perfect unison, they both let out identical groans of protest. Without fully waking, they rolled over in cycle to face the wall, pulling their covers up and over their heads in a futile attempt to block out both the cheerful birdsong and the sunlight that was trying its best to drag them into consciousness.
But barely ten minutes later—just as both boys were beginning to sink back into deeper, more comfortable sleep—an urgent hammering erupted at their door.
"Harry! Ron! Get up this instant!"
The knocking outside grew even more firm. The door rattled in its frame with each impact. The two boys in bed who had been making an effort to pretend they heard nothing, could no longer maintain it.
Harry let out a groan of irritation and threw back his covers, immediately regretting the decision as cooler air rushed in to replace the warm cocoon he'd created. His sleep-tousled black hair stuck up in even more directions than usual, and his green eyes were still half-closed against the harsh intrusion of daylight.
The butterbeer bottles that had been crowding his bedside table as evidence of the late-night celebration they'd had after finally receiving confirmation that the hearing was truly behind them went crashing to the floor with a loud, jangling clatter that made both boys wince.
Ron finally hauled himself up into something approximating a sitting position, though he swayed dangerously and looked likely to topple over at any moment.
His mouth hung open in a way that would have been funny if he'd been conscious enough to care. He stared blearily at the door still rattling violently in its frame, completely disoriented, a glistening trail of drool marking the corner of his mouth where his face had been pressed into the pillow.
Click—
"Oh! Oh, good grief!"
The door swung open with force, and Hermione Granger stood framed in the doorway, her brown eyes going wide with dismay at the sight that greeted her.
The stale, complicated smell that rolled out of the bedroom in a wave nearly choked her. She pressed one hand over her mouth and nose at once. Behind her, Ginny's nose twitched with open contempt, and she made a fake gagging sound.
"Can't you two clean up once in a while?!"
Hermione's voice was muffled by her hand but still managed to convey her disappointment and exasperation.
Taking in the beer bottles scattered across the floor, the half-eaten sandwiches decomposing on various surfaces, the discarded clothing creating obstacles everywhere, the chaos that made it seem like a small tornado had passed through.
"Short memory, have you, Hermione?"
Harry yawned lazily and rolled back onto his bed.
"It's not just Ron and me who made this mess, you know. You and Ginny had a hand in it too last night, didn't you? I remember both of you here, drinking butterbeer, eating sandwiches, dropping crisp packets everywhere—"
"Oh, well—yes, that's technically true, but you two really ought to tidying it up—"
Hermione's cheeks went slightly pink at being called out, but she quickly collected herself.
"Get up, both of you. Right now. Mrs. Weasley's called us all down for breakfast, and we've got a great deal to do today!"
Harry didn't budge from his comfortable horizontal position. Ron rubbed his bleary eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to focus on Hermione's face and failed rather spectacularly.
"If you mean spending the entire day scrubbing down this whole miserable house..."
Ron's voice trailed off.
"Not scrubbing down the house, you git!"
Ginny pushed past Hermione into the room, apparently unbothered by the smell now that indignation had taken over. She glared at her brother with an expression that promised retribution if he didn't immediately comply.
"We're decorating for Harry's birthday party! We need to do the whole place up properly!"
"It's not just for Harry either, Ron."
Hermione fixed him with an equally severe look, her arms crossing over her chest.
"Mrs. Weasley wants to use it as a chance to celebrate for all three of us. The Order members have been run absolutely ragged lately with everything happening at the Ministry, but they've all promised they'll be there too!"
"I don't see what there is to celebrate, honestly," Ron muttered darkly, looking as though he'd rather be dead and buried than face another mention of this.
The thousand Galleons in fines would consume his entire Triwizard winnings. The unfairness of it still burned in his chest every time he thought about it, which was often.
"No need to rush about it, Hermione. We've got time."
Harry sprawled face-down on his bed once more, his voice muffled by the pillow, clearly having no intention of getting up anytime soon.
"My birthday's still five days away. We've got plenty of time to sort out decorations and clean up the mess. No point in doing it all now and having it get messy again before the actual party."
"But we still need to go to the Ministry this afternoon to pay the fine, Harry. Surely you haven't forgotten that appointment?"
Hermione's brown eyes held a sharp, meaningful look.
Harry, who had appeared dead to the world just moments before, suddenly jolted up as though he'd been shocked. He sprang off the bed with startling speed, fully awake now, his previous lethargy was completely abandoned.
Right—they'd arranged this days ago.
In the chaotic, tumultuous days immediately following the hearing—Sirius and the other Order members had been run absolutely ragged. They'd been managing crisis after crisis, barely sleeping, surviving on coffee and adrenaline. They'd only managed to dash off a quick, hastily scribbled letter to stop Hermione from rushing off to the Ministry immediately to pay the fine, as had been her first instinct.
It wasn't until last night—when Mr. Weasley had finally come stumbling home in the small hours of the morning, so exhausted he could barely string words together articulately—that they'd received word that things at the Ministry had calmed down enough for them to slip in quietly to pay the fine.
But Mr. Weasley had been very specific: better to go in the afternoon rather than morning. Reporters still had a persistent habit of camping outside the Ministry's visitor entrance first thing each day, hoping to catch senior officials on their way in for the day, desperately seeking any scrap of information about what was happening behind the scenes.
For now, having the three young students appear in front of the press was still diplomatically unwise.
Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge.
These two Ministry officials—the people Harry had come to despise more than almost anyone else in the wizarding world had fallen fabulously from power.
And even now, even in his dreams these past few days, Harry found it all impossibly surreal.
As the one who had been directly prosecuted, Harry had been present throughout the entire hearing. He'd sat in that terrible chair with chains waiting to bind him, had watched every revelation unfold, had seen Fudge's face crumble as his conspiracy collapsed.
Even so, there was so much that had unfolded that day which neither he nor Hermione and Ron had fully understood.
The one thing absolutely certain was that Professor Watson had done exactly as he'd promised: he had controlled the entire situation from start to finish.
And Fudge and Umbridge's downfall—their removal from power, their mysterious disappearance, the way they'd been erased from the Ministry almost overnight had almost certainly been part of Professor Watson's plan all along.
In the days since his name had been cleared, every time Harry thought of that figure standing firm before them in the courtroom—his chest swelled with overwhelming gratitude.
That gratitude reached its absolute peak when they hurried downstairs minutes later, still fumbling with their clothes, and arrived breathless in the basement kitchen for breakfast.
"No need to go to the Ministry today!"
Mrs. Weasley stood at the table in her usual grease-speckled apron. She was waving a letter at Harry, Hermione, and her children as they came tumbling through the doorway in a rush. Her round, kind face was split by a brilliant, beaming smile that made her look ten years younger.
"Bryan learned from Arthur that you three were planning to go into the Ministry today to pay the fine, so he wrote to me first thing this morning—he's already paid it on your behalf! All three thousand Galleons plus the thousand each for Ron and Hermione! Paid in full!"
'Professor Watson had paid the entire fine for all three of them?!'
The kitchen fell into sudden, absolute silence. The cheerful chatter and movement that had filled the space just seconds before vanished.
Harry, Hermione, and Ron stood frozen just inside the doorway, staring at the letter fluttering in Mrs. Weasley's hand like it was some kind of magical artifact beyond their comprehension. They were utterly dumbstruck, their minds were struggling to process what they'd just heard.
"Why?" Ron burst out, his voice was cracking slightly with emotion and confusion. "Why would he do that for us?!"
"Oh, Ron—"
Mrs. Weasley tempered her smile slightly.
"Bryan said in his letter that your... inappropriate behavior with the magical items was partly Hogwarts' responsibility, in his view. He said the school had been lacking in that specific area of your education."
"Oh!" Hermione covered her mouth with both hands. "He really is too good. Too kind. This has nothing to do with Hogwarts! The fault was entirely ours!"
"And there's more to it than that, dear!"
Mrs. Weasley looked directly at Harry now. Her voice wavered slightly with emotion.
"Bryan said specifically that you were caught by the Ministry in the first place because you were trying to do something kind—donating gifts to the orphanage where he himself grew up as a child. The law is the law, he wrote, and breaking it has consequences that must be accepted. But he said he couldn't in good conscience let you be punished for an act of pure kindness and generosity. So, he paid it himself."
Mrs. Weasley's eyes reddened, and she sniffed hard, dabbing at them with her apron.
"What a wonderful, wonderful man. Oh, I didn't even know Bryan had grown up in a Muggle orphanage—he never mentions it. I'd sooner have him as one of my own children if I could. He'd be about Bill's age, wouldn't he?"
Harry bit his lip, trying to maintain control over the sudden surge of emotion. Something pressed tight inside his chest making it hard to breathe properly.
The Ministry fine had meant nothing to him financially. Sirius had offered to pay the entire thing immediately, and Harry had refused. He had his parents' inheritance sitting in Gringotts. He could cover three thousand Galleons himself without any real hardship.
But there was absolutely no refusing what Professor Watson had done.
Nothing for it, then—they would celebrate. And they would celebrate it properly, enthusiastically, with all the joy they could muster.
"Since we don't have to waste the afternoon at the Ministry anymore—Mum!"
Ron spoke around an enormous mouthful of sausage he'd just grabbed from the serving platter.
"Can we go out this afternoon instead? Please? Now that this whole terrible business is properly finished and done with, we can't be stuck inside this gloomy house for the entire rest of the summer! We'll go mad!"
"Oh, I think that should be perfectly fine, Ron—"
Mrs. Weasley beamed at all of them.
"We'll all go to Diagon Alley together. The Hogwarts booklists haven't arrived yet, unfortunately, but I can take you lot to Madam Malkin's to get fitted for some new dress robes that actually fit properly!"
A cheer went round the breakfast table.
Harry's spirits soared higher than they had in weeks, perhaps months. The summer was nearly half gone already, and at last he was getting out of this house.
The prospect of wandering through Diagon Alley with everyone left Harry buzzing with excitement and anticipation. So much so that even the normally tedious, back-breaking work of scrubbing down Sirius's ancestral Manor that morning felt almost enjoyable.
But joy at its absolute peak is always, inevitably, the moment that precedes the fall—that universal truth has never changed.
After lunch—the entire group gathered in the entrance hall.
The Weasley children, Harry, and Hermione were all dressed and ready to go, fidgeting with anticipation, checking and rechecking that they had their money pouches, already arguing cheerfully about which shops to visit first.
Then Remus's suddenly appeared in the house drenched in sweat.
"What's happened, Remus?"
The question emerged from multiple mouths simultaneously.
Remus's eyes were wide, nearly wild with panic. His chest heaved like he'd just run a marathon.
Harry hadn't seen Remus look this frightened, in a very long time.
Harry's lips parted slightly, his cheerful smile was fading silently.
Gulp—
Remus leaned heavily against the wall, still gasping for breath. He stared at Harry, then his gaze swept across Mrs. Weasley and her children.
"Something's happened," he managed finally.
"What's happened, Remus? Tell us!"
The brightness and warmth had drained completely from Mrs. Weasley's round face, replaced by creeping dread.
"This morning—"
Remus drew another shuddering breath, forcing himself to speak coherently despite the panic threatening to choke him.
"This morning, Minister Bones held an emergency press conference at the Ministry."
He paused, gathering himself.
"Minister Bones made a formal, official announcement to the entire wizarding world: that You-Know-Who has returned and that he is actively carrying out acts of terror within Britain as we speak. She also announced that the Ministry has made the decision to completely decommission Azkaban prison and construct an entirely new wizarding prison to replace it."
'A public declaration of You-Know-Who's return?! And the complete rebuilding of the prison system?!'
The announcements were staggering in their scope and consequences. Harry felt his mind spinning, struggling to process.
But he hadn't even had time to fully recover from the shock of those two massive revelations before Remus continued.
"But neither of those things is the worst of it. Then—then Minister Bones made another announcement, this one directed specifically at the criminals who previously escaped from Azkaban during the breakout."
His voice was pitched far higher than his usual calm tones, nearly cracking with the strain.
"You know who I mean—Bellatrix Lestrange, Antonin Dolohov, Adam Vogel, Jasnah Rosier, Evan Rosier, the Carrow siblings, all of them. Every single escaped prisoner. They've been given exactly three days from this morning to turn themselves in voluntarily to Ministry custody—otherwise, every last Galleon they hold in Gringotts, every Knut, every Sickle, their entire fortunes will be seized immediately and forfeited to the Ministry."
He gulped air.
"And what's beyond all belief—the goblins sent an official representative to the press conference. And he announced publicly, in front of all those witnesses, that Gringotts has agreed to cooperate fully with the Ministry's operation!"
Boom!
It was as if a thunderclap had split the air inside every skull in the entrance hall simultaneously.
This wasn't just aggressive law enforcement. This was Professor Watson—this was Bryan Watson declaring total war. Cutting off Voldemort's financial resources, forcing the Death Eaters into impossible choices.
Was this it? Was Professor Watson preparing to have it out with Voldemort, once and for all? Was this the beginning of open war?
The silence that followed Remus's announcement was suffocating.
"Ahhh—!"
Into that terrible, oppressive silence, Harry suddenly let out a sharp, agonized cry, clapped his hands over his forehead, and crumpled to the floor.
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