The twins' letter came on Thursday, a few hours after Hedwig had left with my reply to Umbridge. It was tied to an owl so small it had to sit down on the windowsill to get its breath back.
The screening charm on the sill flickered green over it and went out. It had found nothing worse than a stain where the ink had run.
Dear Investor,
Mum found the money. Fred kept it under his pillow, which, in fairness, was a stupid place. Saturday, eleven o'clock, number 93 Diagon Alley.
Bring Hermione. Mum says it has to be someone responsible, and we don't know anyone responsible.
Your humble business partners, Gred and Forge
P.S. Bagman paid. With interest. We've framed the letter.
I could guess how the conversation in the Burrow kitchen had gone. I'd seen Mrs Weasley shout at the twins. I'd also seen a Hungarian Horntail up close, and I knew which one I'd rather face again.
On Saturday, Sirius put on his good dark-blue robes, the ones he'd bought for his hearing. I wore jeans and a T-shirt he'd bought me that had never belonged to Dudley first, which still felt like a luxury. Then he Side-Along Apparated me to the Leaky Cauldron. It felt like being pushed through a garden hose.
I could have taken us myself. But Sirius had missed thirteen years of normal godfather stuff, and apparently Side-Along Apparition was on the list. So I let him.
Hermione was already there, at a table by the window with a cup of tea and a book about goblin law.
Her dad had dropped her off on his way to the surgery. She was in jeans and a blue T-shirt, and she'd had her hair cut a bit shorter since King's Cross. It was still trying to escape in every direction.
She saw me and put the book down without marking her page.
I'd seen her in a mirror every night that week. It wasn't the same, and I hugged her for about as long as Tom the barman could stand to watch.
"You've got dust in your hair," she said, into my collar.
"Kreacher found another cupboard this morning, just before we left," I said. "I don't think anyone had opened it since about 1950."
She let go of me and tried to pick some of it out of my hair, then gave up. "Good morning, Sirius. Is the house still trying to bite people?"
"Not since Harry got to it," said Sirius. "I mostly stood behind him and said 'careful'."
Hermione held up her book. "I've been reading up. If we're witnessing a contract today, I wanted to know what actually counts."
"It's Mrs Weasley's contract," I said. "I don't think she's had a goblin look at it."
"She might not need one," said Hermione. "I'd just rather know." She put the book in her bag.
Sirius tapped the bricks in the yard behind the pub, and we went through into Diagon Alley.
Number 93 was halfway down, between a shop that sold cauldrons and one that had been selling the same twelve owl-cages since before I was born.
It had a big dusty window and a green door with the paint coming off it in strips. Fred and George were standing on the step in matching dragon-hide waistcoats, which they'd clearly bought for the occasion, grinning.
"You came," said Fred, and shook my hand. "And you brought Hermione. Brilliant. Mum said she wasn't signing anything without a witness, and we couldn't think of anyone else she'd actually believe."
"Is that why you put 'responsible' in the letter?" said Hermione.
"That was Mum's word, not ours," said George. "Come in. Mind the step, it wobbles."
Inside, it smelled of damp plaster and old sugar. Somebody had sold sweets here once.
There were still glass jars on the back shelves with nothing in them, and a long counter with a brass till that Fred patted as if it was a horse.
The landlady was a small witch with a ring of keys on her belt and a lot of opinions about the drains.
She counted the deposit out on the counter while George held the bag open. It was a hundred and fifty Galleons to keep the place empty for them until next summer.
"We wanted it open by Christmas," Fred told me quietly. "Then Mum found the bag and sat us down at the kitchen table, and she said..."
"You will both finish school," said George, in a voice so like Mrs Weasley's that the landlady looked over her shoulder.
In the books, they never sat their N.E.W.T.s. They flew out of Hogwarts on broomsticks halfway through seventh year and opened the shop anyway, with Umbridge shrieking in the Entrance Hall behind them.
This version had a contract.
Mrs Weasley arrived at quarter past eleven, out of breath, in her best hat with the flowers on it and a roll of parchment under her arm that was longer than Ron.
She hugged me first, hard enough to squeeze the air out of me.
"Harry, dear." She held me back by the shoulders. "I found a thousand Galleons under Fred's pillow, and when he told me where it came from, I very nearly sent it straight back to you."
"I didn't need it," I said.
"You're fourteen years old! You should have put it in your vault and forgotten about it until you were thirty."
The money hadn't meant much to me. I hadn't even entered the tournament; a Death Eater had done that for me. Giving the prize to the twins was the best use I could think of, and I wanted that joke shop to exist.
"I'm fifteen at the end of the month," I said.
"That is not the point." She let go of me and turned round, and found herself face to face with Sirius.
Until May, Mrs Weasley had only ever seen his face on wanted posters.
"Mr Black," she said, and then, before he could say anything, "I owe you an apology. Arthur and I believed every word the Prophet printed about you. We told the children to run if they ever saw you."
"Remus believed it too, Mrs Weasley," said Sirius, "and he'd known me since I was eleven. You don't owe me anything."
She looked him up and down. "Well. You look a great deal better than you did on those posters. Too thin, though. You're not eating properly, I can see it from here."
"Kreacher cooks quite a lot, actually," said Sirius.
"I'll send you a pie anyway," said Mrs Weasley.
She spread the parchment out on the counter and weighed the ends down with two empty sweet jars.
It was in her own neat handwriting, and it went on for some time. Fred and George leaned over it, and for once they read something all the way to the end.
The important part was at the bottom.
The shop at number 93 will not open for business until both Fred and George Weasley have finished their N.E.W.T.s.
"Hermione, dear," said Mrs Weasley. "Would you read it through? You're the witness."
Hermione read it the way she read exam questions, with one finger moving down the margin. When she got to the bottom, she stopped.
"Mrs Weasley, it says 'finished'," she said. "If they sit the exams and fail every one of them, they'll still have finished."
Fred stopped grinning. George stopped about half a second later.
Mrs Weasley took a quill out of her handbag and wrote, in small, firm letters, and passed at least three each.
"Mum, that's every subject we're still taking," said Fred.
"Then you'd better pass them," said Mrs Weasley. "You got three O.W.L.s each. I'm only asking you to do it again."
George turned to Hermione. "You're supposed to be impartial."
"I am being impartial," said Hermione. "I'm making sure it says what everyone actually means, so nobody can argue about it later." She signed her name at the bottom as witness.
The parchment gave a small hot flash where her quill touched it, the same as a Ministry form, and the ink went from black to gold.
Fred and George signed after her, one each side, and their signatures went gold too.
Mrs Weasley rolled it up and put it in her handbag, and the handbag snapped shut on it by itself.
"Right," said George, when she'd gone off down the Alley to buy wool. "Business."
He went behind the counter and came back up with a small cardboard box, tied with string. There was a number 1 painted on the lid in orange.
"We said you'd get the first thing we ever made," said Fred. "So this is the first thing out of number 93. Officially."
"We made them last week, technically," said George. "But they've been in the shop since this morning, so they count."
I opened the box. There were six custard creams inside, ordinary-looking, in a neat row.
"Canary Creams," said Fred. "Version two. Longer feathers, shorter time."
"How short?"
"About a minute," said George. "We think."
Sirius leaned over my shoulder, took one out of the box before anyone could stop him and ate it.
"Sirius..." Hermione started.
There was a soft pop.
Where Sirius had been standing, there was a large black-and-yellow canary, about the size of a Christmas turkey, looking surprised. It opened its beak. What came out was a loud, outraged cheep.
Hermione put both hands over her mouth.
The canary flapped. It got about a foot off the floor, knocked an empty jar off the counter, and came down again on the till, which rang. A cloud of yellow feathers went up into the dusty air.
"Fifty-one seconds," said Fred, checking his watch. "Fifty-two."
At a minute and four seconds there was another pop, and Sirius was sitting on the counter in a drift of feathers, with one still stuck behind his ear.
He pulled it out and looked at it. "That's a new one."
Sirius had now been two different animals, and only one of them was on purpose.
Fred wrote something on the inside of his wrist. "Longer than a minute. Feathers stick."
"Customer satisfaction?" said George.
"Very high," said Sirius. "Can I have another one? I want to see Remus's face."
Fred handed him one, and he put it in his pocket.
Afterwards we went to Florean Fortescue's. He remembered me from the summer before third year, and wouldn't let me pay.
I paid anyway, by leaving the Galleons under the napkin holder when he wasn't looking.
We sat outside under the striped umbrella. The pavement was warm, and the whole Alley smelled of hot sugar from the shop next door.
Sirius had a chocolate and raspberry thing the size of his head and ate it with his eyes closed.
"Has Umbridge written back?" Hermione asked.
"Not yet. Hedwig took it on Thursday, so she's had it two days."
Hermione frowned at her strawberry. "I can't decide if that's good or bad. If she was happy with it, I'd have thought she'd say so."
"It's the Ministry," I said. "They probably have to have a meeting about it first."
I reached across with my spoon and took a large spoonful of hers while she was thinking about it.
"Harry, that was mine."
"It's our ice cream now."
Sirius opened one eye, looked at the two of us, and shut it again.
After that, Hermione wanted to change her money before we went to Flourish and Blotts.
She'd brought forty pounds from her parents in an envelope, with her mum's handwriting on the front. For books. BOOKS, Hermione. Not just books about goblins.
So the three of us walked up to Gringotts.
The last time I'd been inside Gringotts, it had been the middle of the night, a long way below this floor, with a cup in my pocket that didn't belong to anybody in the building. The marble floor hadn't changed. The goblins at the long counter were still weighing gems and writing in ledgers, and nobody looked at us twice.
Two bank robbers, back at the scene of the crime, queuing politely.
All we needed was a detective by the door.
Hermione held my hand tightly in the queue. Her palm was damp.
"You're squeezing," I said quietly.
"Sorry." She loosened her fingers a little. "I keep thinking somebody's going to tap me on the shoulder."
Sirius had gone to a different counter to see about the Black vault. He came back with a small leather pouch and a scowl.
"There's a form," he said. "For being declared not dead. There's another one for being declared not a murderer. They're different forms."
He shoved the pouch in his pocket. "Nott's father was at that counter. So was one of the Averys. Apparently everyone's suddenly very interested in their vaults since May."
Both of them had a Mark on their arm, and in May all those Marks had gone quiet at once.
There were two people in front of us in the queue. Then one.
Then the doors at the far end of the hall opened, and Lucius Malfoy came in.
He was in black robes, with his long pale hair loose down his back, and the silver snake's head on his cane caught the light from the chandeliers as he walked. A goblin in a dark suit was already hurrying across the marble to meet him.
He saw us halfway across the hall and changed direction, without any hurry at all.
"Sirius," he said. "I'd heard you were out. Narcissa read about your hearing in the Prophet. She asked me to tell you how pleased she was."
"Did she," said Sirius. "Tell her thanks. And tell her I'm living at Grimmauld Place now, if she ever wants to come and see her aunt's portrait."
"I'm sure she'll be delighted." Lucius turned to me. "And Mr Potter. Congratulations on the tournament. Draco followed it very closely."
"I know," I said. "He was ever so loud about it."
His eyes went past me to Hermione's hand in mine, and came back to my face without anything in his expression changing at all.
"Good day," he said, and went with the goblin through the side door that led down to the carts.
Sirius watched him go.
"He walked like that when he was a prefect," he said. "Like the floor should be grateful."
The goblin at the counter cleared his throat. We were at the front of the queue.
Hermione changed her forty pounds into Galleons. An hour later, in Flourish and Blotts, she spent all of it on books about goblins.
***
For advanced chapters
P@treon : Eternal97