The Potter Twins and the Order of the Phoenix {5}

5. The Order of the Phoenix

"I wish you would return the favour" ~ All Time Low, Return the Favour 

"Your - ?"

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

"But why is there a portrait of your mother here?" I ask, bewildered, as we go through the hall, letting Sirius and Dad lead the way. 

"Didn't your Dad tell you? This my parent's house," Sirius says. "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 can't help but notice how bitter Sirius sounds, especially as I had expected a more friendly welcome from him. Regardless, we follow Dad and Sirius through the house, and into a basement kitchen. 

It is scarcely less gloomy than the hall above, a cavernous room with rough stone walls. Most of the light is coming from the large fire at the far 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 rags. Mrs Weasley and her eldest son Bill are talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table.

Mrs Weasley clears her throat. Her husband, a tall, thin, balding man looks around and jumps to his feet. 

"Harry! Haylee!" Mr Weasley says, hurrying forward to greet us. "Good to see you!"

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

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

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

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

Mrs Weasley, however, saw me 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 begins unloading dinner plates. 

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

"Sit down," Sirius prompts us. "You've met Mundungus, haven't you?"

The thing I assumed was a heap of rags gives a prolonged, grunting snore, and then jerks awake. 

"Some'n say m'name?" Mundungus mutters sleepily. "I 'gree with Sirius...." he raises a ver grubby hand into the air as though voting, his droopy eyes bloodshot and unfocused. 

Ginny giggles. 

"The meeting's over, Dung," Dad says, as we all sit down around him at the table. "Harry and Haylee's arrived..."

"Eh?" Mundungus says, peering balefully at us through his matted ginger hair. "Blimey, so they 'as. Yeah...you all right, 'Arry, 'Aylee?"

"Yeah," Harry says.