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Chapter 17

Harry

Two months ago, he had told Kingsley about the box that he and Draco had found.

About the pictures on the floor, and the effort it took to open it, how Hermione thought they deserved a chance to look at if before the ministry took it away About the journal inside, the maps, the notes, the letters between Mad-Eye and Dumbledore. How despite everything they went through, it seemed like it still might not be over.

Kingsley had sifted through all of it, the expression on his face never changing. Harry wanted to ask what he was thinking but bit down on his lip instead, hard enough that he knew there would be a mark left behind. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “So?”

Kingsley didn’t answer right away, just reached up and fiddled with the gold hoop earring he always wore. Harry tried to tell himself that was a sign of a leader who thinks before he speaks rather than a nervous tick. “Might be nothing.”

“But it might be something.” Harry didn’t want it to be anything, because this, those names staring up at him and the people Mad-Eye had said they killed, those were still his responsibility, his fight.

“It might be,” Kingsley snaps the leather journal he was leafing through shut, and shoved it all into his desk drawer, like he was putting away meddlesome paperwork. “Just let me deal with it.”

“But—”

“Potter.” He was the kind of man who inspires confidence, and Kingsley is able to stop any protests with only a few words and a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let me handle it. I’ll let you know if I turn anything up. But until then?” He’s ushering Harry out of the office, and Harry could imagine him locking the door behind him, opening that drawer back up, and combing through it, because they both knew that even though people called Mad-Eye crazy, he knew a threat when he saw one. “Don’t tell anyone.”

That was two months ago, and Harry had tricked himself into thinking that maybe it wasn’t a real problem, that the fight was actually over.

He thought that, but now he’s having an Order meeting in his kitchen.

He really thought that this part of his life was done and over with, but apparently not, because here he was, calling for quiet in his own house with the remnants of the Order and Dumbledore’s Army staring back at him.

Dumbledore’s Army, he thinks, in those few seconds between being a friend and becoming a leader again, looking at them all gathered here like some sorry class reunion. What a sorry bunch we make.

In the end, it is Ginny that gets all of their attention, standing up on a chair and whistling. She stumbles on the way back down, and there are snickers, but it stops as soon as he stands.

Once before, he had stood in front of a crowded room and told them that they were going to look for something, not knowing that he was commanding them all to go to war, to fight for him, to die for him. Now, he has learned, and knows exactly what it means when he asks for their help.

“Mad-Eye left us a job to do.” He had decided on absolute honesty, because Dumbledore had always been caught up in a web of lies and half truths, and Harry didn’t not want to be that kind of leader. “We—Draco, Hermione, Ron and I—found a journal up in the attic, telling us about the people he suspects that were still out there, hiding, biding their time. Ones that might not have been supporters of Voldemort, but who were just waiting to ride the tide of his defeat to their own power, like he did with Grindewald.”

There’s a noticeable flinch when he said Voldemort’s name, but he ignores it, and moves to the blank wall instead, rolling down the spreadsheet that Draco had spent last night painstakingly creating. It listed the names and locations of suspects, their crimes, what they might be planning to do. Wizarding terrorists, hate crimes waiting to happen. “Kingsley came to me last night, which is why I asked you all here.” He felt nervous, more than he ever had before, because it was one thing to ask them to fight when they are young and think that war brings glory, but it is another when they have felt the truth of it. “These are the most credible threats.”

“And what’s that got to do with us?” George called out from the back of the group, his voice tight and angry. Harry tried not to flinch at the tone of his words—this was not an easy situation, and ever since the loss of his ear and the absence of Fred to hide behind, George hasn’t done well in crowds of people. The anger, he reminded himself, wasn’t directed at him. “The ministry can’t handle it?”