Between Fine Lines

Twenty-four

Harry popped up in bed with a gasp, a cold sweat covering his forehead, having begun to run down his neck. He shivered, looking to the other side of the room that he and Ron occupied at Grimmauld.

"Ron," Harry whispered, listening to the redhead snore softly, "Ron," he whispered again. The redhead woke up, looking around, rubbing his eyes, "What?" he mumbled, looking at Harry through bleary, sleep-coated eyes. "I had a dream... I think... I think I know where Tom is hiding another horcrux."

Ron sat up a little straighter in bed now, pushing his hair from his face. "Are you sure Harry? Last time... well, it was a trick."

Harry was already out of bed at this point, pacing as he began to think about the dream again, making the impulsive decision to get dressed. "I'm positive, I don't think I was supposed to see this, you know? It all looked very private, like I was seeing it through somebody else's eyes-not his."

"What are you doing?" Ron questioned, watching Harry as he began to pull on a pair of jeans. "You can't just go now!" he hissed quietly. Harry paused, looking at his best friend, raising a brow. "No, but we can, together-common get up and get dressed."

"What about Hermione? Black ? Malfoy? Sirius? Remus?" Ron pushed the blanket off, but was still hesitant to put his feet to the floor. Harry shook his head, almost falling over as he went to grab his flannel shirt from the dresser, still tugging his pants on.

"No. They should all be sleeping anyway. Come on, we'll just go and check it out and be careful. First sign of danger, we'll get out of there. I promise." Harry stood, finally fully clothed, looking at his friend.

Ron sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat as he got out of the bed, busying himself around the room in getting dressed.

—--

"I wish we would've known..." Remus muttered to himself. Sirius looked up from his cup of tea at his boyfriend. The two sat quietly in the kitchen, each with a cup of hot beverage in front of them. They weren't used to having a house full of teenagers, or really any teenagers at all. Sirius had petitioned for Harry to move in with him after he was exonerated of all wrongly stated charges after the battle at the ministry of magic, but Dumbledore had insisted that Harry stay with the Dursleys, convinced that while it wasn't a thrilling situation, Harry was most protected in the house of the muggles until the trace finally was removed off of him on his seventeenth birthday. It hadn't stopped Sirius from sitting down and having a full talking to with Petunia and Vernon, though, and Harry had mentioned they were a bit more pleasant the last two years-but he was unaware of the large sum of money Sirius had given the Dursleys as a simple 'thank you' for taking care of Harry for all those years.

The irony of it all though, was that nobody was more excited to get Harry out of 4 Privet Drive than Sirius, and he had been stuck on the world's longest order mission, having left just before the end of Harry's sixth year, so he wasn't even there to bust him out over the summer. Even more ironic, he had been just as bad as Dumbledore and had dismissed Harry's letters claiming Draco was a death eater, missed out on the complete factuality of it all, and had been away when Regulus was found. Now he had all three of them to be responsible for under his roof.

As far as Sirius was concerned, he couldn't wait for this bloody war to be over-he didn't want to do any kind of Auror work ever again. He wondered if he would hold some kind of record, less than two years an Auror and already submitting for retirement post war.

"What do you mean?" Sirius questioned, picking up his cup of tea. "Do you think Dumbledore knew?" Remus replied solemnly. "Do you think he knew about all of these horcruxes when we were growing up? When we jumped at the chance to join The Order? When we were all fighting while Peter was betraying us behind our backs and James and Lily were hiding?"