In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 252: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

LUCY:

"Wait, stop talking, your mum's coming," I hissed to Ron, who was in the middle of telling Harry about what Fred and George had done to the ghoul — and where the extra bed in Ginny's room had gone.

"I can't believe she still won't leave us alone," he groaned.

I snorted my agreement. Any time Mrs. Weasley suspected that the four of us were alone, she conveniently found a reason to interrupt us and send each of us to opposite ends of the house, as if she'd be able to stop us from leaving if she kept us separated. I appreciated the concern, really I did, but it'd been next to impossible to do any kind of planning. She'd started her interventions even before Harry had arrived — I hadn't found myself alone in a room with Ron and Hermione since the night of the Order meeting, after which we'd had our argument over who would take the fall if a fall needed to be taken. (I'd been scolded by Ron and Hermione individually after the Seven Potters incident, though, until I assured both that my quite-literal fall was far from intentional.)

Mrs. Weasley hurried over to us, laundry basket on her hip. "Oh, good, you've fed the chickens. We'd better shut them away again before the men arrive tomorrow to put up the tent for the wedding. Millamant's Magic Marquees... they're very good, Bill's escorting them. You'd better stay inside while they're here, Harry. I must say it does complicate organizing a wedding, having all these security spells around the place."

Harry winced. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be silly, dear! I didn't mean — well, your safety's much more important!" Mrs. Weasley switched the laundry basket to her other hip. "Actually, I've been wanting to ask you how you want to celebrate your birthday, Harry. Seventeen, after all, it's an important day — "

"I don't want a fuss. Really, Mrs. Weasley, just a normal dinner would be fine, it's the day before the wedding," Harry said.

"Oh, well, if you're sure, dear," Mrs. Weasley said uncertainly. "I'll invite Remus and Tonks, shall I? And how about Hagrid?"

Harry nodded. "That'd be great, but please don't go to loads of trouble."

"Not at all, not at all, it's no trouble," Mrs. Weasley assured him. She stared at him for a long moment, looking sad, then looked at the other three of us, the same half-resigned and half-pleading sadness that everyone except Ginny had been directing our way ever since the Order meeting where we shared our plan. After a couple of seconds, she walked to the washing line and started casting the spells to get the laundry to hang itself.

I wasn't sure if the fact that they'd all be even more worried about us if they knew the specifics of what we planned to do made me feel better or worse about it all.

"Anyway," Ron whispered, "I'll show you the ghoul later so you can see for yourself, but once we've left, the ghoul's going to come and live down in my room. I think he's really looking forward to it — well, it's hard to tell, because all he can do is moan and drool — but he nods a lot when you mention it. Anyway, he's going to be me with spattergroit. The twins tried to make it look like dragon pox at first, but they thought spattergroit would be more convincing. Good, eh?"

Harry just blinked, confused.

"Look," Ron said. "When we don't turn up at Hogwarts again, everyone's going to think we must be with you, right? Which means the Death Eaters will go straight for our families to see if they've got information on where you are."

"But hopefully it'll look like I've gone away with Mum and Dad," Hermione said. I'd explained everything about her parents to Harry already in the diary. "A lot of Muggle-borns are talking about going into hiding at the moment."