Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

Mrs. Weasley starts to follow the kids upstairs to bed. She tells them all to go straight to bed with NO talking and that they have a very busy day set up for tomorrow. Fred says in a low voice, “Asleep, sure”. He whispers that Ginny is probably wide awake upstairs waiting for Hermione to get up there to spill it. Mrs. Weasley parts way with the boys.

As Harry gets ready for bed putting on his pajamas, Ron throws some Owl Treats up on the top of the wardrobe to appease Hedwig and Pigwidgeon (Ron’s twittering little owl). Ron explains to Harry that the owls are not allowed out at night for fear it might appear strange having owls swooping around the square. Ron approaches the door to lock it when Harry inquires “why are you doing that?” Ron gets into bed and begins to tell Harry about his first encounter with “Kreacher”. Kreacher found Ron wondering around downstairs the first night he got to the Order. The boys continue to talk.

Ron draws in a big breath when he hears Harry start to say “Volde – “. Harry asks his friend “Why don’t you start saying his real name because both Professor Lupin and Sirius use his name”. Ron sheepishly agrees and changes the subject. Ron tells Harry he knew mostly everything they learned through the Extendable Ears Fred and George invented. The next thing you know Fred and George “pop” in right on top of Ron. They immediately jump off and sit down.

The boys chat about what they think is Sirius’s comment about a weapon that would be worse than the Aveda Kedavra curse. Mrs. Weasley was quick to shut him down when mention of it tonight. George comments that perhaps it is something so powerful it could wipe out a great deal of people at once. Harry comments that he sure has some spells down very well in inflicting pain while trying to kill someone like the Cruciatus Curse he used last year. They boys all sit quietly for a few minutes pondering these comments. They wondered if there was a weapon where would it possibly be located? Would Lord Voldemort be looking for it or did Dumbledore already have it hidden some where safe.

There are suddenly some foot steps coming up the stairs. George says “It is Mum”. So the boys apparate out immediately. The owls give a little hoot and Harry and Ron heard the foot steps head “up stairs” toward Fred and George’s room. Ron comments to Harry “that she doesn’t trust us at all” with a regretful tone of voice. Harry lay quietly on his bed wondering whether or not he would be able to fall asleep. The next thing he knew he was all warm, curled up with the covers, when George’s loud voice boomed “breakfast is ready, Mum says to get UP!” He also rambles on that there are a couple of “doxies and dead puffskeins” that need disposing of in the drawing room.

After a quick breakfast Harry and Ron finally get themselves into the drawing room to help Mrs. Weasley with the “cleaning chore”. The drawing room is this large and long room with high-ceilings and tons of dirty tapestries hanging on the walls. Mrs. Weasley has them all congregate near a wall with these tapestries. She tells them to cover their faces with cloths and give the bottle of “Doxycide” a spray muttering she just “doesn’t know what that Kreacher, the house elf of the manor, had been doing for the past 10 years! Sirius chimes in that he can do things when he really wants to but he thinks there is a “boggart” behind that tapestry and not a doxie. Sirius suggests that perhaps Mad-Eye Moody (who can see nearly anything with his strange magical eye) would take a look and confirm what they are dealing with in the drawing room.

The next thing you know what happens is there is a ring at the door bell. Mrs. Weasley goes crazy because she had told the members of the Order not to do this for a very specific reason! Sirius’s mother (hanging in the portrait on the wall) screams:

“Stains of dishonor, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth . .”

Well, Sirius helped out by pulling the drapes to cover his mother’s portrait, thus bringing quiet back to the manor. They noticed that Kingsley Shackleford arrive (he was one of the wizards who helped rescue Harry from Privet Drive). Harry over hears him telling Sirius in the entry say something about how Hestia had just relieve him so he could get to finishing a report for Professor Dumbledore.
Mrs. Weasley insists the kids pay attention to the task at hand in the drawing room so Harry promptly closes the doors to the room and joins the “doxie party”. After consulting one of Gilderoy Lockhart’s books on Household Pests, that they all should take care as doxies are nasty little buggers and can bite you. Their “bites” are lethal because they have poison in their teeth. Mrs. Weasley shows them all she has a bottle of antidote in case of an accident and to spray the Doxicide when she gives the word. Doxicide is this black liquid.

Mrs. Weasley continues to instruct them that when they come flying out to start spraying immediately which should paralyze them immediately. After they are paralyzed the children were instructed to put the doxies right into a container. Mrs. Weasley gave the word “Squirt” and seconds later a fully grown shiny beetle like winged creature came flying out. It had a fairy-like body covered with thick black hair and tiny needle-sharp teeth. Harry nailed one directly putting it suspended in mid-air. It came falling down to earth with a “loud thunk”. Harry promptly disposed of it into the bucket Mrs. Weasley brought to put them in.

Another one came close to Fred and Mrs. Weasley instructed him to quickly spray the doxy because he was simply “holding the doxy in order to perform experiments”. George quietly tells Harry that they wanted to experiment with doxy venom for their Skiving Snack-boxes. In these boxes are a “Range of Sweets to Make You Ill”. Of course nothing too serious, just ill enough to get you out of class. These sweets are all different colors and do all sorts of little nasties to the persons eating them. A few will actually put the “eater” in to the hospital wing, but all you need to do is swallow half this “purple pill” and it restores the “eater” to his/her former well state.

Fred further discusses in low tones that the “tester” have been giving them a wee bit of trouble. He goes on to say they “test” these pills on themselves first. A couple that George did were Fainting Fancies and they both tried the Nosebleed Nougat. Since it appears that the twins were really putting together some inventory for the joke shop they dreamed of owning, Harry inquires if they still had plans to open the joke shop. Fred lowered his voice even further and told Harry they have not had a chance to get a physical shop and have been selling their wares through mail order. They are advertising in the Daily Prophet and they don’t worry about their Mum seeing the ads because she stopped reading the newspaper when they started telling all the bogus stories about Harry and Dumbledore.

Since Harry kind of forced George and Fred to take his winnings of a thousand galleons from the Triwizard Tournament, he was glad to know the twins took the gift seriously. Even though Mrs. Weasley does not think a “joke shop” to be a great place for her boys to make a living, Fred and George totally dedicate themselves to making this endeavor a go. They decide to keep their transactions quiet, for the time being.

The boys spent the balance of the morning de-doxying the curtains so the place would be more inhabitable. Another thing they collected were the doxies black eggs in a bowl, something Crookshanks (Hermione’s cat) starts to sniff. Mrs. Weasley interjects and points at a couple of dusty cabinets that they will work on these after lunch. The cabinets had a wide assortment of interesting objects including rusty daggers, little inscribed silver boxes that are tarnished, coiled up snake skins and claws. All of a sudden the door bell rang again. Mrs. Weasley goes to the door telling the children to stay in the drawing room under no uncertain terms. The kids bolt to the window and see a bunch of cauldrons and the head of who looks like Mundungus Fletcher. This was a curious site for sure. Fred whispers that “mum doesn’t like his business affairs” as there is something always a wee bit not above board. The boys think the Extendable Ears might come in handy, but Mrs. Weasley was heard to be screaming:

“We are not going to run a hideout for stolen merchandise!)

Oh was Mrs. Weasley mad. (Sure hope she doesn’t have a heart problem or high blood pressure because this will do it to a person! Ha!) Fred revels in the fact that someone else was getting yelled at by his Mum. It made him smile from ear to ear. She continued to scream instructions to Mundungus then was drowned out by the screams of the people in the portraits. So that is why we keep our voices down. To keep the paintings hanging up from exploding in screams and shrieks. George was about to close the door to the drawing room to close off some of the noise when a house-elf entered the room. He only had what appeared to be a “filthy rag” around him like a loincloth and was otherwise naked.

This house-elf had the usual bat-like ears, a large “snout like” nose, and eyes that were kind of bloodshot and watery gray. The elf took no notice to Harry at all. Kreacher started to mumble in a low tone: “Smells like a nasty old traitor with her brats are messing up my Mistress’s house, or my poor Mistress.” Fred tried to be friendly and said hello to Kreacher who literally stopped right in his tracks. Kreacher mumbled again some derogatory comment again to George. He also despised any Mudblood and knew there was a Mudblood in their midst. He just knows his Mistress would rather “die than have a Mudblood in her manor”. Trying to be nice, Hermione introduces Harry to Kreacher. Kreacher laments what his mistress would think of him speaking to a “Mudblood”. Hermione doesn’t mind Kreacher going on as he seems to not be quite right in the head.

Sirius comes back into the room when Kreacher was heard to say:

“Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black”

Then he went on to tell everyone he was a disappointment to his mother and how she hated him for what he stood for. Sirius just wanted to know what he was doing and a simple, “Just cleaning sir” would have done nicely. Sirius knows every time Kreacher tells people he is “cleaning” he is trying to “snitch” an item so it can not be thrown out. You see, Kreacher is very protective over the manor and its contents. He feels he must preserve it just as it “was” when his Mistress was alive. Sirius shut the door on Kreacher as he had just about enough!

Sirius did then go on to tell everyone he really isn’t too right in the head as he had been alone for so long after he had been sent away to Azkaban for a crime he did not commit. They walked to the end of the room to a tapestry that Kreacher was trying to keep from taking down. It had some lettering that was difficult to read. It was a very old tapestry showing the Black family tree going back to the Middle Ages. Harry read the top of the tapestry which read:

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black
“Toujours Pur”

Harry quickly glanced down the tree and could not locate Sirius. However, there was a whole where he should have been because his mother burned his name off when he left home at the age of 16. Sirius explained to Harry that he just had had enough of his family because of them thinking “purebloods were the elite”, especially his mother. His mother basically thought if you were a “Black” you were practically royalty. Once he left, Sirius was always welcome at the Potter home for a spot of tea or any meal for that matter. (Sirius and James were very good friends at Hogwarts!!) The Potter’s kind of adopted Sirius as he spent the balance of his school holidays with them. After school Sirius took a wee bit of money left to him by an uncle and got a place of his own.

Sirius then went on to explain how a younger brother was the favorite as he worshipped the “pureblood” theme and actually joined the Death Eaters. His parents, however, were not Death Eaters themselves, they just liked Voldemort’s idea of ridding the wizarding world of all Muggle-born or Mudblood witches and wizards. As it turned out Voldemort had Regulas Black ordered killed only because it was heard he wanted to back out. As Sirius said, “you don’t just hand in your resignation to the Dark Lord, it is a life time of service or death”.

Sirius tells Harry about the other relatives on the list including a couple of interesting names Harry wanted to know more about, two girls named Narcissa and Bellatrix. It turns out one of Sirius’s favorite cousins, Andromeda, had two (2) daughters. Harry followed these names down the tree to reveal the Narcissa is linked to Lucius Malfloy and Beatrix to Lestrange. This information took Harry about Sirius being related to his arch nemesis, DRACO MALFOY, as quite a shock. Sirius complained that the true “pure bloods” only wished to marry another pure blood. And over the years there simply just were not that many truly pure blood families around. Needless to say, these Black daughters were highly regarded as they married only other pure bloods. Harry grimaced at the thought for a minute or two.

Mrs. Weasley entered the room with a hovering tray of sandwiches and cake for lunch for everyone. She also seemed pretty perturbed the gang was not really cleaning for doxies but hunched over listening to Sirius tell the tales of the Black family. Everyone went for the sandwiches except Harry. He was more determined to learn as much as he could about the wizarding world and his godfather, Sirius. Sirius continues to tell Harry that he is even related to Tonks, another cousin. And of course the Lestranges, hmmmm, they are the ones in Azkaban prison who would rather be there than give up there master, Lord Voldemort.

Sirius tells Harry about how this Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is the best place for the Order of Phoenix because of all the special magics his father put into it when it was built. No one on the planet can find it without Dumbledore’s explicit instructions. You see it is hidden to all Muggles and the Wizarding World alike.
Harry and Sirius then share a tender moment when Sirius really listens to Harry when he tells him how bad it is like living at the Dursleys. Mrs. Weasley interrupts and tells them they better eat something before it is all gone.

The balance of the day and for a few days thereafter, Mrs. Weasley had them all “cleaning” the manor. Harry tried his best to keep his mind on his work and not on the upcoming hearing to determine whether or not he would be expelled from his beloved Hogwarts. One evening at the dinner table Mrs. Weasley tells Harry he should have his best clothes ironed and put together for the hearing. Harry asks Mrs. Weasley how is going to get there. Mrs. Weasley tells Harry that Mrs. Weasley will be escorting him to his hearing on his way to work. Sirius and Harry give each other that look saying “why can’t Sirius go” when Mrs. Weasley chimed in telling Harry that Professor Dumbledore does not think it is a good idea for Sirius to go out.

Hmmm, when did Professor Dumbledore tell this to Mrs. Weasley? She reveals that Dumbledore was at the Order just last night, thank you very much. Harry is a wee bit disturbed at the idea he would stop by and not talk to him. This information saddened him a great deal.

Editors Comments: It appears Harry is not getting the type of access to Professor Dumbledore he had in the past. It also appears that Harry is talking this information to heart too. Harry has grown to count on a friendship he feels has developed over the past few years. It was very nice to see Harry’s relationship with Sirius grow stronger.

The Order of the Phoenix.net

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Chapter Summary

Chapter Six - The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black