Professor Potter

Some places just weren't right for humans to live in. The Gaunt shack was one of these.

It gave Harry shivers all down his spine, imagining that pathetic family carving out a living in this hunk of wood, wrapped up in the dark shadows of a forest. It felt like a grave, and he had to imagine that anyone who once called it home had simply been waiting to die.

Now, of course, there was another reason for its foreboding feeling. Harry had a very good intuition. It only made sense, given all the experience he had accumulated. That intuition was screaming in his ears that he was in danger.

Harry reached out, snapping the top half off of a long blade of grass before he climbed the steps. Each wood board shook under his weight. When he stood in front of the door, he paused.

He prodded the brass door handle with the blade of grass he had plucked. In seconds, he was holding half as much grass. The whole top part of the plant had withered and disintegrated. If Harry had used his hand, it would have met the same fate.

Humming quietly to himself, he turned to the window. This time he raised his wand, and with it, he conjured a single housefly.

The buzzing insect flew closer. It landed on the glass. There was a fizzing sound and an orange flash, and two miniscule wings fluttered onto the porch, nothing else.

"It seems the easy entrances are off the table," Harry said. "What a shame."

He stepped down back off the porch. A moment later, he shot into the air, rising above the shack so that he was looking down at its wooden roof.

There were no holes, even looking from above. Harry couldn't help wondering if Voldemort himself repaired it when he returned to hide one seventh of his soul. The image made him chuckle— the dark lord turning his mighty wand toward his most important task yet, housework.

Still in a good mood, Harry reduced roughly a third of the roof to splinters with a blasting curse. He lowered himself through the gap, controlling the descent and touching down on the debris he had created.

It was stifling inside, even with the bit of fresh air leaking in from the entrance he created. The air was stale, and thick with a layer of dust was visible in the air wherever one looked. It gave Harry a headache.

He blinked. Since when did dust give him a headache? His intuition roared at him, and in seconds he had a conjured cloth wrapped around his mouth. 

He was certain now. What was in the air wasn't dust, it only looked like it. Whatever it was had to be some kind of poison. It was designed to be inhaled before one realized anything was wrong. Harry didn't know what would happen to someone then, and he had no plans on finding out.

Airborne poison was a clever trick against a wizard. There were not many counters most wizards could come up with if they had to keep their mouth closed. But this was not Harry's first adventure.

He jerked his wand, and even without vocalizing an incantation, he found it easy to summon a great burst of wind. He shut his eyes as the fake dust spun around him, traveling up through the gap ceiling. Only when he was certain all of it had been jettisoned did he vanish the cloth that had protected his mouth.

His headache faded as quick as it began, and Harry sighed with relief.

For this part, he was going to cheat slightly. Everything else had been quick thinking, but now he knew exactly where his prize was hidden, simply because he had watched Voldemort check the spot years into a future that hadn't yet happened.

As Harry approached the loose board that shielded the ring, the board approached him first.

It reared up like a viper, striking at his ankle with rusted nails for fangs. Harry was quicker. With the reflexes of a Seeker who everyone said could have gone professional, he banished the wood into the wall hard enough to snap it in two. The pieces clattered down, the animation charm on them broken, and Harry spotted purple drops dripping off of the nails. It really had been like a snake; its fangs even had poison.

He stooped, plucking a golden box out of a hole in the floor.

He could open it. He should open it, really. Whatever was important enough for Lord Voldemort to select as a Horcrux would be more than worth his time. If it was a piece of jewelry, he should try it on! When would he get another chance to—

"Would you shut up?" Harry said.

The urge to try on whatever was inside the box remained, but it became muted. As far as compulsion charms went, this one was brutally strong. But Harry had been able to throw off the Imperius since his school days. Unlike Albus Dumbledore, he had no deep-lying guilt about those who had passed on before him. Half of the people Harry lost were alive again at the moment! With nothing to latch onto, the compulsion charm was forced to quiet down, although it refused to stop.

The rest of the defenses had been flashy, but they were only intended to be dangerous enough to make someone feel like they won once they got to this box. Harry knew from experience that this was the real trap. He flicked the box open, revealing a golden ring inside with a dark stone fitted into it. The compulsion roared back, and Harry stamped it down just as fast.

"I've been looking for you," he said pleasantly. 

Reaching down, he opened a bag affixed to his belt. Inside was a selection of quills and a few thin books that he'd been reading in preparation for the school year. Harry tossed the ring inside and shut the bag. The compulsion charm screamed at him as he did, but when the ring disappeared from sight, the annoying magic disappeared along with it.

"Sorry Albus, but I think I'm going to be keeping this one to myself," Harry said. He checked his watch and whistled. "I've got to go!"

Speaking of the Headmaster, that was who he was about to see. And not just him. Tonight was Harry's first meeting with the Order of the Phoenix.

Was it wrong for him to be a bit excited?

O-O-O

This isn't Grimmauld Place, Harry thought as he walked along a sandy path up to the quirky house in front of him.

In many ways, it looked like what a Muggle would draw if they imagined a wizard's house. There was one tall spire in the middle, rising high above the bulbous domes that made up the rest of the roof— there were three of them, each at different heights, and two even looked to contain multiple floors. There were lots of windows. The entire house was painted white with the exception of the roof, which was made from tan shingles.

It was certainly nicer than Grimmauld Place, but Harry couldn't fight down a pang in his heart at the thought of the Order operating out of somewhere else. It just felt wrong, even if it was an upgrade.

After taking in the house, Harry spent the rest of the walk to the front door looking at the garden on both sides of him. It was far more interesting, in his opinion. Herbology was far from his best subject, and even he could tell that this collection of plants would occupy Professor Sprout's attention for days on end if she ever visited. The flowers were all sprouting, every stalk looked thick and healthy, and the bushes were pruned to perfection. It made Harry want to wander off and find a place to sit.

Alas, he was here for business, so he climbed the front steps — far sturdier than the ones at the Gaunt Shack — and greeted the man standing at the door.

"Evening," Harry said.

The man there was ancient and wrinkled, with very little hair left atop his head. He peered at Harry past a very prominent nose.

"I'm Harry Potter. Dumbledore invited me."

The man's face lit up.

"Harry!" he said. "Right, Harry! Dumbledore mentioned someone by that name. I'm Elphias Doge. Go in! I'm just watching the door."

Doge was the same age as Dumbledore, and one of his oldest friends (or fans, considering who you asked). Harry never had a personal problem with the man, so he gave him a smile as he passed by.

The inside of the home was as peculiar as the exterior— possibly more so. The decorations seemed to have two themes which were permanently butting heads. On one hand you had taxidermied animals, all charmed to look almost alive. Then you had photos of a boy at a variety of ages. In the most modern-looking ones, he had sharp features and hair that was just long enough to curl at the ends.

Harry stopped to stare at one such portrait. The boy inside the frame stared back at him, raising his chin as he met Harry's eyes. It was a wonder, really, what a different upbringing had done to Neville Longbottom. He had less baby fat on his cheeks, looking far fitter than Harry had ever seen him as a teen. There on his right cheek was a permanent scar. Narrower at the top than the bottom, the scar looked remarkably like a blade, one permanently poised to stab Neville's eye, never striking.

Hearing voices down the hall, Harry forced himself to move on.

Ducking the entire front half of a buffalo mounted on the wall, Harry stepped out into a dining room even larger than the one at Grimmauld Place. The arched ceiling had plenty of windows, allowing in lots of natural light. The voices of over twenty people mixed as they talked to those around them, rendering each individual conversation unintelligible. Harry noted the way three tables had been pushed together, two turned at perpendicular angles, giving the entire formation the rough shape of an upside-down U. 

"Over here! Over here!" 

Waving caught Harry's attention as a voice rose above the rest, jarring Harry out of staring at the variety of faces, some of which were fresh out of the grave to him. And speaking of the dead living again…

The man waving to him had long hair and a sculpted beard, but it was all done to look distinctly wild. He was handsome and grinning, and the sight of him formed a lump in Harry's throat.

Harry approached Sirius Black, sitting with Remus Lupin at his side, and took the empty chair Sirius was directing him to.

"Look Remus!" Sirius said. "It's the fake James!"

"Sirius," Remus said tiredly. He was very practiced at it, showing how many years of experience he had rebuking his friend.

"That's my name," Sirius said. He jerked a thumb behind him. "His name is Harry, apparently. Isn't that strange?"

"If you've got a problem with it, you'll have to take it up with my parents," Harry said.

"And where are they," Sirius asked.

"Dead," Harry said matter-of-factly. 

"Huh." Sirius blinked. "That would make it difficult to complain to them."

"Seems like it," Remus said.

"Maybe I could try anyway," Sirius said. "I used to argue with my mom, and honestly a corpse would probably be more willing to hear me out than she was."

Harry was trying very hard not to smile. There were times when he dreamed of being able to talk to his godfather like he was now. It felt different when they were the same age, but it also felt completely the same in some deep way.

Although he couldn't help but notice how this Sirius differed from the one Harry remembered. This Sirius lacked a certain haunted look in his eyes. His cheeks were fuller than Harry ever remembered seeing, and his personality lacked a certain edge that had developed — or at least been honed — inside Azkaban's walls.

Sirius and Lupin traded a look. All of a sudden, Sirius leaned toward Harry.

"I'm only going to say this once," Sirius muttered, his voice only audible to the two of them. "You seem decent, so I'm not accusing you of anything. But if I find out you picked that name for a specific reason… and all tjos turns out to be some kind of elaborate prank… I'll make sure that James is the least of your worries."

That answers that, Harry thought. Azkaban hadn't given Sirius his edge, merely sharpened it. He meant his threat, Harry decided. And why wouldn't he? It was his murdered godson that Harry would be imitating, if he had been imitating anyone at all.

"I'll keep that in mind, Sir!" Harry said, leaning abruptly away.

Sirius straightened, his smile returning. Harry noticed Remus still peering at him. In some ways, the werewolf was the most perceptive out of the Marauders. Harry's reaction hadn't fooled him as easily as it had Sirius. But he said nothing, and a moment later Dumbledore entered the room.

Elphias Doge followed him, taking a seat on the same side of the room as Harry and the two Marauders. In addition to him, two others entered alongside Dumbledore. One was James Potter, and instead of coming over to Sirius like Harry expected, he sat down in the seat directly to Dumbledore's left. 

The other was the owner of this house. Augusta Longbottom wore robes so well-tailored they wouldn't have looked out of place on a Malfoy, although her taxidermied-vulture hat certainly would have. She sat to Dumbledore's right, crossing her hands in her lap.

"Welcome!" Dumbledore said. "It's good to see all of you here!"

His voice naturally quieted the table, all side conversations stopping. Harry looked around. Nearly everyone he remembered was present, from Severus Snape to Minerva McGonagall, who gave Harry a terse nod when he looked her way. Only a couple of the younger members Harry remembered weren't present, namely Nymphadora Tonks and the younger members of the Weasley clan.

"We have some new faces among us," Dumbledore said. "Everyone, make sure you introduce yourselves at some point. You never know how important something as simple as knowing a name could prove, when the time comes."

Augusta sniffed, giving Dumbledore a look.

"I am being reminded that we are here for a reason," Dumbledore said. "Everyone, I thank you, once again, for choosing to be here. We are entering a time when the choices we make will be the difference between life and death, and I do not mean just for us. War is coming. And today, we are here to plan our first moves."

A man raised his hand, clearing his throat. He was quite short, wearing a top hat that sat low on his head. Dedalus Diggle was his name. Harry remembered him as one of the most exuberant of the Order in his support of the boy who lived.

"Yes, Dedalus?" Dumbledore asked.

"I don't mean to interrupt," Dedalus said, "but I've looked around the table, and it seems we're missing someone. Surely the boy who lived has been invited, hasn't he?"

Harry waited for Augusta Longbottom to object like Molly Weasley always had when it was Harry and his friends in Neville's position. But she only looked at Dumbledore, tilting her head.

"Neville is a wonderful young boy, but he is still that: a boy," said Dumbledore. "He should not be forced to fight this war. When he is older, if there is still a need, I am sure he will step forward."

Dedalus lowered his hand and went quiet, but he didn't look thrilled with that answer. There were others around the table that looked the same, although Harry did spot Molly Weasley beaming at Dumbledore's choice.

"Now," Dumbledore said, "If there are no more interruptions?" He looked around. "Perfect. The phase we are entering is arguably the most important of the entire war. While the Ministry refuses to face reality, we must avoid their attention… and indeed, at times, operate in spite of antagonism from those who should be our allies. The enemy is moving in the shadows. Our goal now is to find out which shadows, and understand exactly what direction."

Harry listened raptly as Dumbledore outlined his plans. The opening moves to the second war were discussions he hadn't been privy to the last time around, being a student about to start his fifth year. It was fascinating. And frankly, Harry had no complaints about Dumbledore's approach.

Those with any position inside the Ministry were to focus on solidifying their sway. They would never be able to bend Fudge's ear; these weren't the Malfoys with infinite funds to throw around. But Aurors were to aim to become Senior Aurors. Clerks were to aim for promotion, or at least win over their coworkers. The more people that the Order had inside of the Ministry, the more likely their other members would be tipped off if someone like Umbridge was due to come knocking.

Most of the Order was to look into gathering allies. They were still recruiting, as shown by the presence of new members. Soon, Tonks would be inducted, and the Weasley twins a few months after that. There were likely others Harry didn't know personally. More allies was never a bad thing— as long as they could be trusted.

Which left the final missions. Dumbledore did not got into details yet, but he said this:

"The most important missions — for which we will only be sending a select few — will be the most dangerous. They will do reconnaissance on areas and families known for suspicious activity. Through them, we will get a clearer plan of the way Voldemort's forces are moving. The importance of this work cannot be overstated."

Just as Harry expected the meeting to begin winding up, Augusta Longbottom cleared her throat.

"Do you not think, Dumbledore, that you have just said a lot of nothing?" she asked.

There were a couple of gasps, one of which Harry was certain had come from Molly Weasley. He glanced at Remus and Sirius and found them frowning, but not half as severely as James Potter was.

"To answer truthfully, no I do not Augusta," Dumbledore said. "But I am curious what gave you such an impression."

Augusta leaned forward, tilting the vulture on her head so that it looked like it had mistaken the table for carrion.

"Voldemort is back!" she said, causing some to flinch at the name, as well as the volume she used to say it. "My grandson dueled him when he returned… And he survived! You can talk about reconnaissance and surveillance all you like, but this is the time to strike!"

"Sure it is," said James Potter. "If you'd like to see every last person here reduced to a gory corpse."

"You're just a coward," Augusta told him. "Neville has sent the Dark Lord reeling. If we capitalize, we can pick off his followers like flies."

"And end up in Azkaban for it," Sirius said. "Have you forgotten? The Ministry is pretending he's dead and gone. They already pardoned the Death Eaters that are running around. Even if we kill someone like Malfoy, it will just make the Ministry send Aurors after us."

"Sirius is quite right," Dumbledore said. "We must avoid fighting the Ministry. If not, the Dark Lord will not miss his chance while we are busy with each other, and there will be no stopping him then."

"I don't know," said Dedalus Diggle. "Isn't Augusta right? You brought us here talking about fighting a war. Now you're telling us to sneak around. You've got to see why we're disappointed."

Harry shook his head. One seat over, he heard Remus mutter, "What kind of fool is disappointed not to be fighting?"

"I agree!" said a woman Harry didn't recognize, with blond hair a nose ring. "We've got to fight! If we're scared to, they'll walk all over us!"

"Your points have been heard," Dumbledore said. "I'll make note of them. But there will be no change to the plans for the moment. If this disagreement is still ongoing, we can discuss it at the next meeting."

Harry noticed at least five people look straight at Augusta Longbottom, not Dumbledore, and only nod their agreement when Augusta herself did.

Harry studied Neville's grandmother. In his time she hadn't even been a proper member of the order. Clearly, this was one of the things Neville's new status had changed. Harry wasn't sure that it was for the better.

"Harry," Sirius said when members began to rise as the meeting was dismissed. "What do you say we go for a drink sometime? There's no better way to get to know someone than that."

"Sorry," Harry said dryly, "but I'm not that easy to get into bed."

Sirius barked a laugh while Remus snorted.

"I'm not trying to sleep with you," Sirius said. "But it seems like I'll be fighting beside you, which is honestly similar in a lot of ways."

"You know, I'll take you up on that drink." Harry checked his watch. "Not today, though. I've got somewhere to be, I'm afraid."

"Oh, you professors!" Sirius said. "Always running around, teaching this and assigning homework for that!"

Harry just smiled.

It wasn't Hogwarts work he had planned. But he wasn't interested in explaining what he was really up to, so he kept his mouth shut and silently excused himself.

When he reached the lawn, Harry looked back at the Longbottom House. He imagined Neville growing up here, and wondered how different his friend's upbringing must have been, with his own wand and much more confidence. He was curious how his old friend turned out…

But he would discover that when school started. For tonight, Harry merely turned on the spot, Apparating away.