"Mmph—"
The sun hung high in the cloudless sky, blazing at its zenith. Piercing golden light slanted through the narrow gap between the curtains, painting pale ribbons of brightness across the brown wooden floor of the second-floor bedroom at Number Four, Privet Drive.
The diffused glow slowly brightened the dim room.
The uncomfortable glare made Harry's eyelids twitch beneath their closed lids. He rolled over in the bed with a groan and buried his face beneath the covers, seeking darkness and the continuation of blessed sleep.
But the thick, muggy summer heat that had already built up in the small, poorly ventilated room quickly drove him to pull his head back out into the open air, gasping slightly as sweat appeared on his forehead. He raised one hand to shield his sensitive eyes from the light.
The bright, clear chirping of sparrows on the eaves outside the window gradually drew his consciousness back from its hazy drift through nothingness, pulling him inch by reluctant inch toward full wakefulness despite his body's exhausted protests.
A dreamless night—or at least, if there had been dreams, they'd left no trace behind. It felt as though he had only blinked once, closed his eyes for a single moment, and time had somehow carried him directly from darkness straight into the blazing white heart of a summer's day.
It wasn't that the bedroom at the Dursleys', so long a stranger to him after nine months at Hogwarts, was particularly comfortable or sleep-inducing in any way.
It was simply that yesterday's Third Task, nearly a full day of it, from early afternoon through late evening had wrung every last drop of energy from his body and mind.
So, even though Harry had already remembered with his first conscious thought why he was back at the Dursleys' house and where he needed to go today—he couldn't convince his aching, protesting body to actually move yet.
A band of thick cloud drifted across the sky outside, temporarily dimming the fierce sunlight coming through the window. A rising breeze from somewhere carried away much of the damp, oppressive heat that had settled in the room.
'Professor Watson might already be up and awake. He could be waiting for me downstairs right now.'
The thought surfaced in his sluggish mind and finally dissolved any remaining hope of drifting peacefully back to sleep for another hour.
With a low, muffled groan saturated with exhaustion and reluctance, Harry wrenched himself free from the comfortable pull of the bed and its seductive promises of rest.
He had slept so deeply that his left eye refused to open properly at all—its lid was gummed completely shut with the crust of sleep while his right eye drooped heavily, barely managing to stay open even a crack.
The simple act of sitting up and getting vertical had consumed every last reserve of willpower and the meager energy a single night's sleep had managed to restore to his battered, tournament-worn body.
Harry sat motionless on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the light rippling and shifting across the white wall opposite him like sunlight reflecting off the gently moving surface of water.
He sat like that for a good ten minutes at least. Gradually, very gradually, the droning buzz of insects beyond the window sharpened into something clear and real in his ears.
He smacked his dry lips slowly, tasting sleep, and reached with clumsy fingers for his glasses where they lay beside the pillow on the nightstand.
When the fog finally lifted from his vision, he picked up the gold pocket watch Professor Watson had given him as a gift from the desk.
Eight forty in the morning.
Harry let out a heavy sigh that seemed to come from the very bottom of his chest, expelling all the air from his lungs.
Not terribly late by any normal standard—many people would just be waking up now—but far too late to make it to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place in time to share breakfast with Sirius, Remus, Ron, Hermione, and the others as he'd eagerly promised last night.
So the question became...
'Maybe just a little more sleep?' the thought whispered seductively in his mind.
'No point agonizing over spending another hour at the Dursleys', is there? This might be the very last time I ever have to come back here anyway. Professor Watson said so himself.'
Harry struggled to resist the thought. It was dangerously tempting.
'Professor Watson probably isn't even up yet,' he reasoned to himself, building a case. 'Setting up all those grand scenes and complex challenges for the Third Task can't have been easy work, even for someone as powerful as him. He must be exhausted too.'
Clatter!
Laziness was winning the internal battle. Harry let his body fall back onto the bed with relief.
BANG!
The moment his eyes fully closed, a tremendous crash erupted from somewhere downstairs.
'Probably just the microwave exploding,' Harry thought drowsily, not wanting to abandon sleep. 'Uncle Vernon always overheats things.'
But that lazy, comfortable guess collapsed instantly the moment a shriek of terror followed the crash.
Harry lurched upright as though electrocuted, his expression transformed in a second from sleepy and relaxed to sharp and deeply unsettled.
The commotion below was not dying down at all.
"Who are you—how dare you break into my home—!" Aunt Petunia's scream, high-pitched and desperate had barely faded when Uncle Vernon's roar thundered after it like rolling thunder.
'What's happening down there?!'
Harry's face darkened with concern and confusion. He was on his feet before he even realized he'd moved.
A noise of heavy footsteps flooded his ears from below, followed by absolute chaos—multiple voices were shouting words he couldn't make out clearly, screaming, the violent shattering of crockery and pots, the crash of chairs and tables being brutally overturned as though dozens of people had suddenly stormed into the house at once, pressing aggressively into every last corner of the ground floor.
'Something has gone wrong. This isn't normal.'
Harry knew it at once with certainty.
He had no time to change out of his thin summer pajamas or make himself presentable. He snatched his wand from where it lay on the desk beside his glasses case, didn't stop to put on shoes or slippers, and bolted from the room in bare feet.
THUD THUD THUD.
Harry thundered down the wooden staircase, his feet were slapping against the steps, taking stairs two and three at a time in his haste. He reached the ground floor in mere seconds and the moment he took in the scene before him, he froze completely.
Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had been herded roughly into a corner of the dining room like frightened animals being cornered by predators. They huddled together there, clutching each other desperately, pressed against the wall as though trying to disappear into the wallpaper itself.
Aunt Petunia's face was full of terror. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, bulging with fear as though she might faint at any moment from sheer overwhelming shock.
Uncle Vernon had lost every trace of the overbearing aggression he always reserved for Harry. He stared at the intruders with wide, horrified eyes that showed the whites all around like a spooked horse, and his whole massive body was trembling visibly from head to toe—even his moustache, so thick and maintained that it could have rivaled Professor Dumbledore's magnificent beard, was shaking.
And the intruders who'd caused this terror—
At least thirty of them had forced their way into the house, maybe more—Harry couldn't get an accurate count through the crowding bodies.
They packed the entrance hall, the porch, the kitchen, the sitting room, the dining room—every corner and crevice of the ground floor was occupied by these uniformed strangers standing at attention.
They wore identical wizarding robes. Their faces were hard, their eyes cold and unyielding, unmoved by the Dursleys' terror.
Harry scanned each face that fell within his line of sight frantically, searching desperately for anyone he recognized, anyone who might explain what was happening. Every single one was a complete stranger to him.
'Death Eaters?!' The thought flashed through his mind in that stretched, slowed second of recognition.
But he dismissed the terrifying possibility almost immediately.
In the graveyard where Voldemort had risen again, he had seen the Death Eaters who answered the summons. He had looked at some of their faces, and remembered their builds and voices. None of them matched the wizards standing before him now.
Then who were they—
Another answer leapt into his mind, and this one made his heart lurch far more violently.
"You—" The single word scraped past Harry's dry throat.
SWISH.
Every wizard in the crowded room snapped their wand toward him in a single, unified motion like a military drill, tips aimed directly at Harry's chest and head.
Harry's green eyes contracted to extremes. Goosebumps swept across every inch of his skin like a wave of ice water; even his scalp prickled painfully and went numb with the adrenaline suddenly flooding his system.
"Harry James Potter."
A voice broke the lethal silence that had fallen over the room.
A figure emerged from the kitchen, stepping through the doorway.
Harry's gaze leapt over the shoulders of the people standing between them, trying to see who was speaking.
A stocky wizard with close-cropped grey hair and a weary face that somehow lacked any hint of cleverness walked toward him. He focused on Harry with flat, cold indifference.
"Answer my question,"
"What?" Harry asked, his mind still catching up to what was happening.
"Are you Harry James Potter?" Dawlish asked again, his voice carrying an authority that filled the room.
"I am—" Harry began.
It was a pointlessly stupid question to ask in the first place. Any wizard who glanced at the distinctive lightning-bolt scar on his forehead should have known exactly who he was. The scar was famous throughout the wizarding world.
But after a moment's pause, Harry answered anyway.
The scene before him had spread a numbness from his scalp deep into his skull, until even his thoughts felt muffled and distant, like he was thinking through cotton. He couldn't think clearly. Only a single, suffocating sense of impending doom remained, pressing down on his chest.
"Good." Dawlish gave a businesslike nod of satisfaction, as though Harry had passed some test.
What he said next made Harry's stomach drop like he'd missed a step in the dark.
"Harry James Potter—you are under arrest."
"For what?!" Harry's voice broke into the air, fierce and raw with shock and outrage. "What am I being arrested for?!!"
But Dawlish didn't answer the question. He simply stared at Harry—this most famous boy in the wizarding world, this celebrity who'd survived the Killing Curse with a slow-spreading satisfaction visibly filling his chest.
"Under Ministry regulation, you are required to surrender your wand to our custody immediately," Dawlish stated in a flat, official tone.
"Once the final ruling is delivered by the Wizengamot, the full court will determine whether your wand is to be destroyed permanently or sealed and held in Ministry custody. Of course—"
Dawlish let a pause hang in the air, clearly savoring the moment, and when he continued, his voice was laced with malice, "you are also free to resist arrest if you choose. In which case, you will lose your wand here and now by force."
A wave of dizziness crashed over Harry, so intense it nearly brought him to his knees right there. His vision swam. Yet something unbreakable inside him held fast, refusing to let him fall or show weakness in front of these people.
"I want to know why I'm being arrested," Harry said through clenched teeth.
He forced the words out with enormous effort. Unable to manage anything more complicated, unable to form clear arguments or demands, he asked only the one thing that mattered most to him right now.
"That information falls outside our jurisdiction," Dawlish said flatly. "The Wizengamot will make the specific charges known to you during your official hearing."
He exchanged a glance with the two wizards on his sides, and they stepped forward toward Harry to take his wand from him.
BOOM.
At that precise instant, a violent explosion shook the entire house.
The blast hurled the wine rack dividing the sitting room from the dining room clean off the wall where it had hung for years—it flew across the room and crashed to the floor in a shower of broken glass and splintered wood.
The partition wall between the kitchen and the sitting room was blown completely open, leaving a gaping, smoking hole large enough to walk through.
Several of the intruding Aurors were flung clean off their feet by the powerful shockwave like ragdolls; the rest were knocked sideways, staggering and lurching to keep their balance as the floor shook beneath them.
Dawlish, sensing the danger in an instant lunged forward desperately.
As Harry threw his arm up instinctively to shield himself from the rising smoke and falling debris raining down around him, Dawlish wrenched the wand from Harry's hand, then pressed his own wand hard against Harry's temple.
"Let Harry go right now, you bastard!" a familiar voice roared with ferocious fury.
Through the rolling clouds of smoke and dust still filling the room, obscuring everything, Sirius Black emerged like an avenging spirit—his face was twisted with fury, his grey eyes were blazing with rage.
Then Remus appeared beside him. Then Tonks. Then Amelia. Then Mad-Eye Moody. Then Dedalus Diggle—
One after another, figures stepped out of the churning smoke—a whole company of them following in Sirius's furious trail.
The Order of the Phoenix had arrived.
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