Dawn Rivera

The Order of the Phoenix

"Your -?" Harry says.

"My dear old mum, yeah," says Uncle Sirius. "We've been trying to get her down for a month but we think she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back on the canvas. Let's get downstairs, quick, before they all wake up again."

"But what's a portrait of your mother doing here?" Danny asks, looking bewildered, as we go through the door from the hall and leads all the way down a flight of narrow stone steps, the others just behind us.

"Hasn't anyone told you? This was my parents' house," says Uncle Sirius. "But I'm the last Black left, so it's mine now. I offered it to Dumbledore for Headquarters - about the only useful thing I've been able to do."

I, who expected Uncle Sirius to give Harry a better welcome, note how hard and bitter Uncle Sirius's voice sounds. I follow my uncle to the bottom of the steps and through a door leading into the basement kitchen. Someone probably did tell Danny about the house, he just wasn't listening.

It is scarcely less gloomy than the hall above, a cavernous room with rough stone walls. Most of the light is coming from a large fire at the end of the room. A haze of pipe smoke hangs in the air like battle fumes, through which looms the menacing shapes of heavy iron pots and pans hanging from the dark ceiling. Many chairs have been crammed into the room for the meeting and a long wooden table stands in the middle of them, littered with rolls of parchment, goblets, empty wine bottles, and a heap of what appears to be rags. Mr Weasley and his eldest son Bill are talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table.

Mrs Weasley clears her throat. Her husband, a thin, balding, red-haired man who wears horn-rimmed glasses, looks around and jumps to his feet.

"Harry!" Mr Weasley says, hurrying forwards to greet him, and shaking his hand vigorously. "Good to see you! And you, Dathaniel, you've finally come down!"

Over his shoulder I see Bill, who still wears his long hair in a ponytail, hastily rolling up the lengths of parchment left on the table.

"Journey all right, Harry?" Bill calls, trying to gather up twelve scrolls at once. "Mad-Eye didn't make you come via Greenland, did he?"

"He tried," says Tonks, striding over to help Bill and immediately toppling a candle onto the last piece of parchment. "Oh no - sorry -"

"Here, dear," says Mrs Weasley, sounding exasperated, and she repairs the parchment with a wave of her wand. In the flash of light caused by Mrs Weasley's charm I catch a glimpse of what looks like the plan of a building.

Mrs Weasley saw us looking. She snatches the plan off the table and stuffs it into Bill's already overladen arms.

"This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings," she snaps, before sweeping off towards an ancient dresser from which she starts unloading dinner plates.

Bill takes out his wand, mutters, "Evaneso!" and the scrolls vanish.

"Sit down, Harry," says Uncle Sirius. "You've met Mundungus, haven't you?"

The thing I took to be a pile of rags gives a prolonged, grunting snore, then jerks awake. Of course. I should have known it was him.

"Some'n say m'name?" Mundungus mumbles sleepily. "I 'gree with Sirius..." He raises a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.

Ginny and Misty giggle.

"The meeting's over, Dung," says Uncle Sirius, as we all sit around him at the table. "Harry's arrived."