"Yeah, mate, heads up, a lot of people don't believe he's come back," a familiar redhead added in as he walked into the room with a large smile.
"Harry!" A head of bushy brown hair flew past Ron and tackled Harry into a hug.
The dementor sighed in disappointment. He'd hoped to ease his way into being around people in his new form. With Ron and Hermione, and probably the rest of the Weasleys in the house, someone was bound to discover that something wasn't quite right with him. He figured he was expected to act excited to see his friends though, so he tried his best to summon up an excited look and to push his anxieties down. "Hey 'Mione," Harry finally said with a fake smile.
"We've been so worried about you!" She exclaimed and looked him over for injuries, which wasn't usually out of the realm of possibility after a summer with Dudley. "You look good…healthier than I remember, especially at the end of a summer."
Harry shrugged. He'd never been good about taking care of himself, but he was excellent at taking care of his pets…Harry-suit included. It helped that his relatives were so afraid of him by the end of the summer that they didn't say anything when he took food from the kitchen like they usually would have. "What's the ministry saying about Voldy's return?"
"Nothing, or well…that he hasn't returned," Ron said with a tentative look like Harry might blow up at him in anger.
Harry's eyes widened and he shook his head. "Well…that's stupid," was the only thing he said before looking around the room. "Er, is there a place I can put my trunk? I'd hate for someone to trip over it out here in the middle of the room."
Sirius hefted the trunk up as Ron and Hermione stared at Harry in confusion at his lack of outburst. "Follow me, pup, you're bunking in with Ron. We have a bit of a full house at the moment."
After dropping the trunk at the foot of a bed in a room with two twin beds, a small cupboard, and a portrait of a severe-looking wizard, Sirius gave Harry one more hug before leaving him to settle in. "Watch what you touch, pup. We're still finding some cursed objects around," Sirius warned on his way out before he was replaced in the doorway by Ron and Hermione.
"Harry, it doesn't bother you that the ministry doesn't believe you?" Hermione asked while Harry opened his trunk and rummaged around for an old Weasley jumper to add another layer to stave away the cold.
"Course it does, Mione," Harry said as he pulled out the jumper and tugged it on over the long-sleeved shirt he was already wearing. It really did bother him, but he was a dementor now. The way he saw it, there wasn't much more Voldemort could do to him. If he killed the Harry-suit, then Dementor-Harry could just suck out his soul. At that thought, Harry shuddered. He really, really didn't want to ever do that. He'd never be welcomed into wizarding society again and would probably be exiled to Azkaban. His new plan was to stay as far away from the war and conflict as possible to avoid the one-way ticket to Azkaban he knew would eventually come in his future. He remembered from DADA that dementors couldn't be killed but being forced to live in Azkaban for however long he'd live as a dementor seemed worse than death. He couldn't exactly explain that to his friends though.
"Well, the way I see it, I'm only fifteen," Harry said slowly, weighing what he could tell his friends. "I told the ministry and Dumbledore everything that happened, and I've stopped Voldemort from coming back about three times now. It was going to happen eventually with that record. I've done my part, and it's their job now." More like a job for the humans, he added on at the end in his mind.
Ron looked at him like he'd gone crazy while Hermione had a look on her face that Harry would imagine a proud parent would look like. Ron shook his head. "So, you're not going to be mad when we get chased out of the kitchen for the Order meetings we aren't allowed to attend?" He asked with a disbelieving look in his eyes.
And be around more people who could figure out he was a dementor…nope. "Nah, it's not like they're going to send teenagers out on missions anyway," Harry grinned and clapped a hand on Ron's shoulder. "Now, Ron, it's dinner time. Is your mum here or are we going to be subjected to what someone who was a prisoner for twelve years can cook?"
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