How They Fell

Chapter Eight


Arthur and Ron arrived promptly at eleven o’clock the next day. Harry had already got rid of the electric fire so that they would be able to actually exit the fireplace and had levitated his trunk and all of his belongings down the stairs and into the living room.

He and Ron greeted each other enthusiastically and Arthur looked very pleased to see him.

“You’ve grown Harry.” Said Ron happily.

“Not as much as you!” Replied Harry exaggeratedly craning his neck up, as though Ron was a great deal taller than his six foot two inches. Both laughed as they made their way over to Harry’s trunk and started lugging it over to the fireplace.

“Ummm, Harry?”

“Yes Mr Weasley?”

“Where are your Aunt and Uncle, don’t they want to say goodbye to you? After all this will be the last summer you ever spend with them.”

Harry grimaced.

“They left the day after I turned seventeen, couldn’t cope with me doing magic.” He muttered.

“Good riddance!” Said Ron nonchalantly, and then, with a great deal more enthusiasm; “you won’t believe what has been happening in the Quidditch World Cup!”

“Couldn’t it wait until we’ve got Harry back to Grimmauld place Ron?” Asked Arthur, Ron rolled his eyes.

“Alright. Come on Harry!” He said as he reached for Harry’s trunk and his wand simultaneously. Pointing it at the fireplace he muttered, “Incendio,” creating a fire in the grate, “haven’t done the apparatus test yet, thought we’d do it together,” he explained. Harry grinned, as Ron handed him a small handful of powder and stepped into the fire, taking Harry’s trunk with him. With a cry of, “number twelve Grimmauld place,” he was gone.

Harry picked up Hedwig’s cage and his firebolt and took a brief look around the sitting room. Smiling slightly he raised his wand and muttered a spell. Words blossomed out of his wand and flowed into the wall where they began to spread out and separate, forming distinct sentences in many different colours. Different messages formed for each of his relatives. Satisfied Harry read some of the messages that were gliding over the wall in front of him, ‘Vernon, you really should stay away from the red meat, it’s not good for your blood pressure and it makes your face go even redder, not that I’m sure that’s possible.’ ‘Aunt Petunia next Christmas I’m going to get you a neck brace so that you can eavesdrop into other people’s lives without causing your neck an injury.’ ‘Dudley, stay away from the cake or you will once again be wider than you are tall!’ And ‘This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef and this little piggy had none. And this little piggy grew a tail and went weeeee weeeee weeeee all the way home.”

Harry looked contentedly at his handy work. It looked like a very colourful version of the matrix and would only fade once the Dursleys had read every single one of the messages. Harry silently thanked Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs for the inspiration.

“Well done Harry, most impressive!” Said Arthur, “now, off you go.”

Harry stepped into the fire overjoyed to be finally leaving the Dursleys. Even the rather grim prospect of Grimmauld place couldn’t dampen Harry’s spirits. He tucked in his elbows and held his belongings as the usual spinning started. Harry waited, getting dizzier and dizzier, for the floo to slow, when it did Harry stumbled forward, his foot got caught on the end of his broom and he went flying.

“Great entrance Harry.” Said one of the twins.

“Yeah, really smooth.” Replied the other.

Harry groaned from the floor trying to find his broken glasses. He was there!

* * *

Harry was still smiling as he fell into the bed beside Ron later that night.

He had been greeted warmly by everyone, Lupin, Hermione, Mrs Weasley and Ginny had had enveloped him in hugs. Mrs Weasley promptly decided that Harry was far too thin, so she proceeded to create a three coarse meal and offer Harry seconds, thirds and fourths in everything during lunch and dinner. Harry was sure that he hadn’t eaten so much for the past month as he had today.

He had spent a happy afternoon and evening talking to his friends and asking them about their holiday’s, Ron had also told him everything he could ever wish to know about the Quidditch World Cup. England had held on to the quarterfinals, getting everybody’s hopes up, before loosing spectacularly to Peru. One of the Irish Chasers had taken a Bludger to the head in the opening rounds resulting in the team going out surprisingly early in the competition. At the moment it was between Bulgaria and France, with Bulgaria as firm favourites to win.

The twins spent the afternoon teasing him and using him as a model for all of their latest merchandise. There was a pair of earrings which changed his clothes so that he was dressed like a pirate; a funny chocolate that made him hover in the air for half an hour, turning summersaults every three minuets; and a ring which the twins disturbingly announced as their greatest masterpiece yet. They promptly shoved it onto Harry’s finger, at which point his hand fell off. Harry then had to chase his hand around the room, single handed (accompanied by howls of laughter) before he could pull the ring off, at which point his hand snapped back onto his body.

It was only just before bed, that Harry had had a chance to speak to Ron and Hermione alone and broached the subject of becoming Animagi.

“Wow mate! That’s fantastic! Of course we want to become Animagi, don’t we Mione?” Replied Ron enthusiastically. Harry smiled, he had predicted Ron’s reaction perfectly as well as most of Hermione’s.

“Mmmm, are you sure this is what Lupin intended by giving you that book?” She questioned, upon receiving Harry’s affirmative she continued, “well then this should be an interesting challenge.” She said smiling, before growing more serious. “But are you going to inform the ministry of our attempts?”

Harry braced himself, he had known she would ask this and wasn’t expecting Hermione to be happy with his answer. “No.”

“Good.” She replied with a quick nod. Harry and Ron’s mouths simultaneously dropped open.

“But…But,” stammered Ron, “its illegal.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at them, “Of course it is, but only because the Ministry wants to be able to keep tabs on those that can, as well as to provide a safety net if anything goes wrong in the attempted transformation. We will be just fine when we transform and I really don’t think that Harry would want many people to know about this possibility. After all, if the ministry knows so will Voldemort, and it would be much better for Harry if he could keep it as a surprise. So close your mouths, you both look like goldfish.” However Ron and Harry had continued to look so shocked that Hermione had burst into laughter at the looks on their faces, and pretty soon they were all laughing at the situation.

‘Yes,’ Harry sighed to himself as he fell asleep, ‘it had been a very good day.’

* * *

The following days continued to be as good. They spent as much time as possible lazing around, catching up and enjoying each other’s company. Then Mrs Weasley had decided that young people need to be kept active and she began the annual effort to make Grimmauld place cheerier.

Despite every ones best efforts certain things just could not be moved, among them Mrs Black and the Black family tree. However, Ron had some how managed to wrestle the House elf heads off the wall which was a great improvement (Harry suspected him of flying past on his broomstick at break neck speed and wrestling them off) and they were all involved in painting the walls in various different colours. Harry found that the replacement of dingy grey with blues, greens, yellows and reds really helped to make the house more welcoming. He even suggested to Mrs Weasley that they should go furniture shopping when they went to Diagon Alley.

In the mean time he, Hermione and Ron fixed any broken furniture which they wanted to keep and moved the rest up to the attic. Hermione taught them both how to magically sew and had a very funny time watching them try to re-cover the dining room chairs. She honestly did not know how they kept pricking their fingers and getting the thread tied up. Needless to say Harry and Ron were both very relieved when that particular job was done.

The Apparation coarse started two weeks after Harry had arrived at Grimmauld place. To Harry’s horror they discovered that there were only four of them taking the test that week, one was Blaise Zabini, the other an attractive witch that did not go to Hogwarts, whose name was Margaretta. Ron quickly abandoned Harry to introduce himself to the witch and Harry was left to sit next to Zabini who looked amused by the situation.

Harry found the theory behind Apparation simple. You had to clearly picture the place where you wanted to be and then imagine yourself their using the appropriate spell. The spell itself was also quite easy, the difficulty came with the clear picture of yourself and the place. If it wasn’t clear enough the spell would get confused sending you to two different places at once, resulting in the caster being splinched. Harry found himself wincing along with the rest of the class when he was told stories of what some students had managed to do to themselves. For homework they were told to use a full-length mirror to build a clear mental picture of themselves on which they would be tested tomorrow.

Accordingly Harry spent most of the evening staring at himself in the mirror attempting to memorise how he looked, his green eyes blinking back at him from behind his glasses. He looked very scruffy. His hair, usually quite messy had got ridiculous over the summer. He didn’t mind his fringe so much as it fell over his forehead into his eyes, covering his scar; but the rest of the mop had grown to an unreasonable length. His clothes fit him better than they used to thanks to his recent growth spurt, but they were so worn and faded that they rather reminded him of the of old material on the dining room chairs. Harry also mentally resigned himself to having to get new glasses, it was clear that they had been broken one time too many. Even under Hermione’s Occulus Repairo they still looked as though they were about to crumble to pieces.

Harry sighed to himself hoping that all this self-scrutiny would be found acceptable by their teacher.

To Harry’s relief it was, and they spent the next morning working in pairs on the correct wand motion. Harry was surprised to find that Blaise was being nice to him, or at least abstaining from name-calling and rude gestures. By the end of the morning they had come to an uneasy truce, both being careful to be polite when correcting the others work.

In the afternoon they were told that a mental picture of themselves was not enough for the purposes of Apparation, “after all what on earth would twins do, or people who had taken Polyjuice potion?” Demanded their teacher Mr Plumpit.

It was therefore necessary to instil the mental portrait with an essence of the person in question. This was achieved by the teacher performing a spell which revealed this essence to each student. He went around every person in the class muttering ‘clueo idemere.’ When it was his turn Harry closed his eyes and saw two bands of colour, one black, one bright green, twisted around each other forming a circle. However, upon closer inspection he saw a third colour in between the black and green where the two had mixed. It was a dark rich green, shot through with sparks of gold and black so that it shone out of the rope circle.

Harry blinked, clutching the image to him in order to remember it before opening his eyes and looking up into the startled face of the teacher. ‘Bugger!’ thought Harry as the teacher stumbled back up to the desk. Clearly his essence wasn’t supposed to look like that, ‘great another abnormality, that’s just what I need!’ Harry rolled his eyes in annoyance, only to find Blaise looking at him oddly. ‘Damn, damn, damn, DAMN!’ He swore in his head.

That night their homework consisted on remembering as many places as possible as clearly as possible so that they could use them as Apparation points. Harry found that he had five, the gates of Hogwarts, the Dursleys back garden, the hallway of the Burrow, one of the official Apparation points at Diagon alley and the front entrance of Grimmauld place. However, Harry was unsure how the teacher was going to get these images out of his head so that he could judge their clarity.

The answer came the following day when Mr Plumpit marched up to Harry, raised his wand and said ‘legilimens.’ Harry felt the images he had remembered the night before come to the top of his mind. However, his training quickly took over, he immediately brought up his mental barriers and shoved hard at the surprised mind probing his. There was a sharp cry and three shocked gasps.

Harry opened his eyes nervously. Mr Plumpit was lying unconscious on the floor by his desk which he had obviously gone flying into. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, BUGGER, BUGGER, BUGGER!’ Went Harry’s subconscious as he moved forward to try to help his unconscious teacher. ‘FUCK!!!’ Swore Harry as he noticed the horrified looks on the other student’s faces.

It had taken half an hour for Mr Plumpit to recover and another half an hour to find a member of the Apparation test centre who would judge whether or not Harry’s memories were accurate enough. Every one breathed a sigh of relief when it was found that they were and the old wizard was not hurled violently across the room.

When everyone had calmed down after lunch the students were taken to several small booths where a three hundred and sixty degree picture of different Apparation sights were shown to them. They were told to memorise every one of them as clearly as possible. There was one for the Ministry of Magic, the opening of the Apparation test centre, a dark corner of Kings Cross Station and many different points for London as well as for other Wizarding communities. Homework was of course to remember every single one of these properly.

Harry went back to Grimmauld place with a headache and a very happy Ron announcing to everyone who would listen, that Harry had exploded their Apparation teacher across the class room. Hermione and Mrs Weasley had been scandalized and had turned on Lupin who quickly turned his chuckle into a light cough.

On Thursday, once the old wizard had been found again to check Harry’s homework, the students were told to work on the Apparation process. Picturing the correct scene, then seeing themselves there, then adding an image of their essence, before making the correct flicking motion with their wand and saying the spell. Harry muttered to himself darkly about ever having though that this was easy, at which point Blaise laughed companionably.

In the afternoon they were allowed to attempt Apparation for the first time. In turn each of the students were allowed to Apparate to the entrance hall of the Ministry of Magic, where they were to move out of the way and wait for the others to appear. All of them managed it perfectly and each was greeted with high fives and hugs at each destination they visited. Harry found it quite odd to find himself hugging Blaise in a small corner of muggle Bath, but in his happiness at his successful Apparation he ignored it. Harry noted that Ron looked ecstatic to be able to hug Margaretta at every possible opportunity, however Harry was careful to only greet her with a high-five. She was pretty, he supposed, but Harry had caught her eyeing him and didn’t want to suggest anything to her which would end up making Ron jealous. It had happened so many times, that Harry unintentionally, had nabbed a girl that Ron was interested in, merely by being the soding-boy-who-lived. Harry was therefore always very careful not to show any interest in those girls.

Come Friday afternoon Harry and Ron both felt that it had gone rather well all in all. The Apparation test had been challenging and their examiners rather threatening, but neither had splinched themselves once. Harry had overstepped an Apparation point by a couple of yards and Ron had gone to the wrong place because he hadn’t listened to the question properly (Margaretta had been visible through the class of the door doing her test).

The results were announced to all four of them in their classroom. They had passed! All were overjoyed and many hugs and smiles were shared as the Apparation licences were handed out. Harry was bemused to note that Blaise was really nice when Malfoy wasn’t around him, and he hoped that their new friendliness would continue on in to seventh year.

He and Ron took great joy in appearing to the front of Grimmauld place and ringing on the doorbell to be let in.

The door was opened to reveal the many Weasley’s as well as Hermione and Lupin, all looking expectantly at Harry and Ron. Unfortunately before any words could be spoken the dulcet tones of Mrs Black rang out.

“Blood traitors! Disgusting slime! How dare you pollute the house of my fathers! I shall call all of the Black families vengeance upon you! Mudbloods! Muggle associates!”

“We may be blood traitors,” cried Ron, “but we’re blood traitors who passed their Apparation tests!” Mrs Black was temporarily drowned out by cheers and congratulations as Ron and Harry were ushered into the house.

* * *

Mrs Weasley had prepared a feast to celebrate Harry and Ron’s successfully getting their Apparation licences. Tonks and Charley were also there to congratulate them, and Bill would be dropping in later.

The food was incredible and plentiful, with a mixture of Ron and Harry’s favourite meals. Everyone was having a good time and laughed merrily at Ron’s description of Mr Plumpit’s brief attempt at flight, although Hermione and Mrs Weasley continued to look stern and reproving. Many stories were told about initial Apparating mistakes; Fred and George had succeeded in Apparating each other to various points during their training, and Fred demonstrated that he could still, by Apparating George to Hogsmede. It was a very grumpy wet George who appeared at the door five minuets later glaring at Fred and promising revenge. Shortly after her test Tonks admitted that when trying to Apparate herself to the local swimming pool changing rooms, she had suddenly found herself in a strange bathroom, at which point she had tripped over her own feet and fallen on top of a strange man having a bath.

“It really was most embarrassing for the poor muggle, he must have thought I was some sort of sexually frustrated burglar. He was awfully shaken.”

Seconds of pudding were just being passed around when Bill appeared in the fireplace to be warmly greeted by all.

“Hello everyone.” Said Bill grinning widely at everyone. Harry felt his stomach plummet down to his feat, then do a strange twisty thing which brought it back up again, making it feel all fluttery. God but Bill looked good when he smiled! His white teeth accentuated his blue eyes and the movement of facial muscles emphasised his jaw and cheekbones, and that fang earring! Harry felt his mouth drop open slightly as he stared at the utterly snoggable curse breaker.

Harry suddenly became aware that he was staring, and had drowned out the last few minuets of conversation. ‘Shit what am I doing?’ Thought Harry desperately, ‘why am I staring at him? Snoggable??? SHIT, SHIT, SHIT!’ Harry then felt his face getting very warm, this was getting worse by the second!

Bill then divested himself of his coat and jumper. Harry watched, his eyes growing larger, as Bill’s movements caused his t-shirt to ride up at the bottom revealing his toned, flat, delicious stomach and, oh Merlin! …a small tattoo just next to his right hip. ‘Christ, Christ, Christ!’ Harry breathed under his breath.

“Bill!” Cried out Mrs Weasley.

“Yes Mum.”

“What is that?” Mrs Weasley’s voice had suddenly got very icy. Bill looked slightly sheepish.

“Ummm, this…it’s a tattoo mum.” He said lifting his shirt again and slightly lowering his trousers revealing a protruding hipbone and even more smooth, slightly tanned skin.

“A WHAT???”

But Bill’s reply was cut off by Harry who had propelled himself out of his seat like a Bludger being released, hit his head on the hanging light above him, then stepped backwards and fell over the bench, landing with a crash on the floor.

Ron’s head appeared over the table as Harry opened his eyes.

“You alright mate?” Harry reached up to feel his head and the two large bumps which were growing there.

Sitting up gingerly, Harry replied with an eloquent, “ummmm?” Which made Hermione snap to attention. “Of course he’s not alright Ron! He’s just hit his head. I’m going to take him upstairs and check he’s not concussed. Come on Harry!”

As Hermione half dragged Harry up the stairs towards the sitting room, Harry couldn’t help but bless his best friend.

‘Fuck!’ He mentally groaned. ‘He’d behaved like a total imbecile! Why? He liked Bill, he and Bill were friends, granted he hadn’t seen him since Fourth Year but that’s no excuse to ogle him like a particularly tasty treat. Shit, what was wrong with him? Why did he keep feeling like this? First Ed now Bill. SHIT!!! This had happened before? SHIT!!! He was gay? SHIT!!! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK …

Harry would have continued but Hermione’s timid voice interrupted him. “Ummm, Harry…what’s wrong?”

Harry turned to face Hermione, only then aware that he had been pacing up and down the room like a mad thing. He stopped pacing.

“Ummm, nothing?”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Pull the other leg Harry, that one’s got bells on it!”

There was an uncertain pause.

“Okay,” continued Hermione. “Another question, why were you staring at Bill like that?”

“You noticed!” Harry panicked. If Hermione had noticed how many others would? Fuck he was screwed!

“Of course I noticed! If you didn’t want people to notice then next time don’t draw attention to yourself by trying to crack your head on the ceiling and floor simultaneously! Honestly Harry! Why were you looking at him like that?”

“I-I-I…I,” Harry stammered then turned a pink that would have rivalled Uncle Vernon. Then gaining more control of himself, “look, Hermione, I’m really confused right now and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Would it be ok if I just went to bed? I’ve got a head ache and I need to think a few things over.” Harry’s eyes pleaded at Hermione.

“Ok Harry, I’ll tell everyone downstairs, can’t say I blame your head for hurting after hitting it like that, here.” Hermione swished her wand and muttered ‘Curatio Caput’ and the pounding in his ears decreased significantly. “But Harry,” she continued, “if you need to talk about anything then don’t worry about talking to me, ok?”

Harry nodded, hugged Hermione briefly and left.

Hermione sat thinking things through for a while, until a look of slow dawning realisation spread on her face, accompanied by the word, “Oh!”