Breaking Free (Book 3 of the Lost Potter Series)

Here's the Plan

While Harry seemed to acknowledge the idea of not taking forever when visiting next door, he rarely actually practiced it in the days and weeks to follow, often spending whole days away from Draco's confined shell of a location. Though, at least this time, he returned with a good reason.

"Alright, so a lot has happened, but first and foremost I need you to read this," Harry handed over a slip of parchment with scratchy, uneven scrawl spelling out:

12 Grimmauld Place

"What is this?" Draco asked after deciphering the text.

"We got Sirius to send it, it's so that we can finally get you into headquarters." Harry briefly explained as he gathered up what little they had.

"This is the address then? By reading this I can get in?" Draco studied the paper once again, wondering why it seemed too easy.

"Because it's in his writing and he has intended to tell you the secret, it should work. Have the address memorised?" Harry asked in his whirlwind of chaos. Draco nodded and Harry grabbed the piece of parchment and casted incendio. He grabbed Draco and pulled him close under the invisibility cloak, "Good. Focus on it and I'm going to apparate us just outside so the crowd of death eaters doesn't see us. Ready?"

Draco again nodded mutely, focusing on the image of the scrawl in his mind's eye instead of the proximity to Harry as the word spun into the claustrophobic movement that is apparition. When he popped back, Harry was once again pulling him along, but this time into a building that looked more up kept but just slightly off from the rest of the houses. He barely had time to notice anything about the outside world, however, as he was fully pulled into the home.

"Severus Snape?" Droned a spectral voice as they stepped across the threshold. Within a moment, an image of Dumbledore himself was approaching them much too quickly for Draco's liking, but Harry held firmly on to him.

"I didn't kill you." Harry said to the spectre, and motioned for Draco to do the same.

"I-I did not kill you." Draco faltered slightly, but the figure exploded harmlessly just the same. Draco sighed and was about to ask Harry what the bloody hell that was, but Harry held a finger over his own mouth to signify silence and led him downstairs into the kitchen area.

Draco hadn't noticed the house elf that took the invisibility cloak from Harry, nor had he noticed the copy of the Daily Prophet rung tight in Harry's hand, now barely visible beneath the blankets he and Harry had slept with that were slung over Harry's arm. Instead, Draco struggled to quickly take in his surroundings; the house was obviously ancestral wizarding property, as shriveled house-elf heads and grand, curtained off portraits decorated the dark hall and descending staircase. With Sirius as the secret keeper, it would make sense that this is the Black residence. But Draco could've sworn that his mother had talked of growing up in an estate, not some attached building in London--

"I've brought Draco, and I've got news that no one is going to like," Harry called out once they had creaked halfway down the staircase, causing Draco to stop his rambling train of thought in exchange for accessing the new room and the people within it that Harry called out to. Hermione and Ron sat close to one another at one end of the long kitchen table, in the middle of pouring over piles of maps, notes, and other such papers but taking a break to peer up at Harry and Draco. Olivia sat near the crackling fireplace, looking small in her nest of blankets as she paused in her reading and nearby note-taking. The kitchen was nearly spotless, with copper cookery polished and a good-smelling cauldron bubbling heartily over the fire. It was then that Draco noticed the house-elf, who busied himself with stirring the cauldron before bowing to an uneasy Olivia and disappearing from sight.