when the time comes

the kitchen

Harry follows Sirius to the bottom of the steps and through a door leading into the basement kitchen.

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

Mrs Weasley clears her throat. Her husband, a thin, red-haired man who wears horn-rimmed glasses, looks around and jumps to his feet.

"Harry!" Mr Weasley says, hurrying forward to greet him, and shaking his hand vigorously. "Good to see you!"

Harry bites back a nasty retort and his face scrunches up into a sneer as he feels his arm almost getting ripped off.

Over his shoulder Harry sees Bill, who still has his long hair in a ponytail, hastily rolling up the lengths of parchment left on the table.

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

Harry smiles softly, Bill has never failed to make him laugh or to lighten up the mood around him. Fleur and him were a great match and they still are, but Viktor and Fleur are also great company and they make a great couple. Harry snaps his attention back to the situation at hand.

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

"Here, dear," says Mrs Weasley, sounding exasperated, and she repairs the parchment with a wave of her wand. In the flash of light caused by Mrs Weasley's charm Harry catches a glimpse of what looks like the plan of a building. He rolls his eyes and turns away.

Mrs Weasley saw him looking. She snatches the plan off the table and stuffs it into Bill's already overladen arms. Didn't she see that Bill is already at the verge of being overwhelmed? Harry sneers even more as he feels his bad temper coming back full force, don't blame him if someone ends up at the receiving end of his building anger. He tries to calm down, he does. Harry looks around and soon enough his eyes find what they are looking for. His dad is right there at the door, staring intently at him with those abyss-like black eyes.

"This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings," Mrs Weasley snaps, before sweeping off towards an ancient dresser from which she starts unloading dinner plates.

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

"Sit down, Harry" says Sirius curtly. "You've met Mundungus, haven't you?"

The thing Harry took to be a pile of rags gives a prolonged, grunting snore, then jerks awake.

"Some'n say m'name?" Mundungus mumbles sleepily. "I agree with Sirius. . . ." He raises a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.

Ginny giggles, while Harry rolls his eyes. He wants to be anywhere but here.

"The meeting's over, Dung," says Sirius, as they all sit down around him at the table. "Harry's arrived."

"Eh?" says Mundungus, peering bale fully at Harry through his matted ginger hair. "Blimey, so 'e 'as. Yeah . . . you all right, 'arry?"

Harry's lip draws up in a barely concealed snarl. A deep growl vibrating from his body, "If you call having to fend for yourself against a bloody Dementor, dealing with a traumatized teen, who won't stop clinging on to you, the ministry expelling you from school and now having to go to a bloody hearing, being alright, then I'm just peachy!" He seethes through his breath as that same cold rage grips his entire body. These people are all involved! They took his family away! They took him away!