Unexpected | Bill Weasley

~46~ Moving Harry

When we arrived back at the Burrow, Remus and Tonks announced that they were getting married. The wedding was very small, and only a few of us attended it.

Then Mad-Eye told us we would move Harry to the Burrow on July 27. And so the plan was set. Mad-Eye set Disillusionment Charms on us. The group were Bill, Damon, Lucas, Finley, Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, Kingsley, Ron, Hermione, Mad-Eye, Tonks, Sirius, Remus, Hagrid, Mundungus, and me.
Bill and I, and Hermione and Kingsley took thestrals, while everyone else took brooms. Except for Hagrid. Sirius let him use his motorbike.

We flew to Harry's house, and as we all dismounted, the Disillusionment Charms lifted. Harry opened the back door and Hermione flung herself at him, Ron clapped him on the back and Hagrid said , "All righ', Harry? Ready fer the off?"

"Definitely," said Harry, beaming around at us all. "But I wasn't expecting this many of you!"

"Change of plan," growled Mad-Eye, who was holding two enormous bulging sacks, and whose magical eye was spinning from darkening sky to house to garden with dizzying rapidity. "Let's get undercover before we talk you through it."

Harry led us all to the kitchen where we all sat or leaned against the wall, laughing and chatting.

"Harry, guess what?" said Tonks from her perch on top of the washing machine, and she wiggled her left hand at him; a ring glistened there.

You got married?" Harry yelped, looking from her to Remus.

"I'm sorry you couldn't be there, Harry, it was very quiet."

"That's brilliant, congrat –"

"All right, all right, we'll have time for a cozy catch-up later," roared Moody over the hubbub, and silence fell in the kitchen. Moody dropped his sacks at his feet and turned to Harry. "As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He's made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name of your protection, to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you. Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother's charm does that already. What he's really done is to stop you getting out of here safely. "Second problem: You're underage, which means you've still got the Trace on you."

"I don't-"

"The Trace, the Trace!" said Mad-Eye impatiently. "The charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the way the Ministry finds out about underage magic! If you, or anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters. We can't wait for the Trace to break, because the moment you turn seventeen you'll lose all the protection your mother gave you. In short, Pius Thicknesse thinks he's got you cornered good and proper."

"So what are we going to do?" asked Harry.

"We're going to use the only means of transport left to us, the only ones the Trace can't detect, because we don't need to cast spells to use them: brooms, thestrals, and Sirius' motorbike."

"Now, your mother's charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or" – Moody gestured around the pristine kitchen – "you no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you're never going to live together again, correct?"

Harry nodded.

"So this time, when you leave, there'll be no going back, and the charm will break the moment you get outside its range. We're choosing to break it early, because the alternative is waiting for You-Know-Who to come and seize you the moment you turn seventeen. The one thing we've got on our side is that You-Know-Who doesn't know we're moving you tonight. We've leaked a fake trail to the Ministry: They think you're not leaving until the thirtieth. However, this is You-Know-Who we're dealing with, so we can't rely on him getting the date wrong; he's bound to have a couple of Death Eaters patrolling the skies in this general area, just in case. So, we've given a dozen different houses every protection we can throw at them. They all look like they could be the place we're going to hide you, they've all got some connection with the Order: my house, Kingsley's place, Molly's Auntie Muriel's – you get the idea."