Chapter One: The Riddle of a Diary
Harish sat miserably at the window in the sitting room. He had not been allowed to visit any of his friends all summer and hardly had been able to even see his father. Death Eaters streamed in and out of their manor every day.
The boy listened to the shouts and bangs coming from his father's study and he sighed. He crossed his arms and resting his chin on his right hand. Finally fed up with it, Harish got up and snuck quietly to the study door. There he pressed his ear up to the door, trying to hear what was going on.
"What do you mean, you still haven't found it?" Voldemort, Harish's father, asked. His voice was loud and annoyed.
"I-I'm sorry," came the voice of whichever poor Death Eater had failed to do what the Dark Lord commanded.
"It has been months. Months!I need it found!"
"Young master hasn't eatens breakfast?" Harish turned to see Dobby walk up to him. "Is young master not hungry?"
"Shhh!" he hushed the house elf. Then he pointed to the door. "Do you know what's going on in there?"
"Yes!" Dobby squeaked loudly.
"Quiet!" Harish whispered.
Dobby nodded his head quickly. "Yes," he repeated in a whisper. "Master is missing his diary."
"Diary?" Harish asked.
"Yes! It was stoled! Mr. Malfoy came by months ago and said so! Dobby was scrubbing the door frame and overheard their conversation."
"Why was it stolen?" the soon to be fourteen-year-old asked.
"Mr. Malfoy said it was stoled from his big manor. The thief was looking for its specially!"
"But why was it stolen?" Harish repeated.
Dobby opened his mouth to tell him, but began banging his head on the door post. "Bad Dobby! Bad Dobby! Mustn't tell Master's secrets!"
"Dobby quiet!" Dobby stopped and by the looks of it, he had stopped breathing. Harish sighed. "Breathe," he said, annoyed. Dobby gulped in air quickly. "Did he catch you listening?"
Dobby nodded. "Oh such a beating Dobby had never received before."
"So, did he forbid you tell anyone about this diary?"
Dobby nodded again. "Not even young master himselfs!" the elf squealed.
"You are dismissed," Harish said and Dobby disappeared with a crack.
Two weeks later found Harish in the same predicament. He still hadn't had enough time to even request to stay at a friend's house. He wrote the twins about this and they had sympathised with him. After June ended, Harish decided that he should give up and simply practice some Quidditch outside, but that day when he had grabbed his broom and ran to the back garden door, he had stopped when he saw that it was raining. And it rained the rest of the month.
It was surely the wettest July Harish had ever seen. He was stuck inside with only books and Dobby to keep him company, and Dobby was certainly the company Harish did not want. By the beginning of August, all he did was sit on the couch upside down and stare at the fire. Eventually he cracked and decided he wanted to do…something. Anything!
So he wrote a note, grabbed some floo powder, and threw it into the fire. The young wizard stepped into the tall emerald flames and cried, "The Burrow!"
Instantly he began hurtling in up the chimney, spinning like a top. Different grates flashed in front of him until he came to a halt at a rusty looking grate.
"Harish!" chimed two identical voices.
Harish stepped out of the fireplace and dusted the ashes off of his clothing. He had flooed to the living room of the Burrow, where the twins were sitting with a cauldron and a bunch of random ingredients. The windows were dark as it was night.
"What're you—"
"Doing here?" they asked.
"I got fed up with having nothing to do," he replied simply, shrugging his shoulders. "So what are you two doing?"
Fred and George Weasley, Harish's two best friends, glanced at each other before glancing at the bubbling cauldron and then back to Harish. Then the two of them grinned wickedly.
"We are working on stuff for the joke shop," Fred said.
"While everyone else is asleep," George added.
"What are you making?" Harish asked curiously, sitting down next to the two of them.
"We are experimenting—"
"With different ingredients to see what properties—"
"We could use in the future!"
"So nothing in particular at the moment, then?" Harish asked.
The other two sighed and nodded.
"So anything I can do?" the Dark Lord's son asked after a moment.
The twins shook their heads. "We were just about to—"
"Put it up anyway."
Fred scooped the potion into a flagon and carried it up to his and George's room while George grabbed the cauldron. Harish followed them and saw them put the flagon in a chest, lock it, and put the cauldron in Fred's trunk. Then, they both wheeled around and grinned at Harish.
"What d'you wanna do?" they asked in unison.
"I don't know," the pale boy shrugged. "What is there to do?"
"Well," they began before both boys began talking over each other.
"You know that car we—"
"Rode in to the train station?"
Without waiting for a reply, Fred said, "Apparently Dad's—"
"Enchanted it. We've been—"
"Flying it this summer."
"Where Mum can't see us—"
"Of course."
"Flying it?" Harish asked.
As they had been talking they had been leading him through their house and out into their dad's garage. Harish found himself looking at an old, battered, completely normal looking Ford Angela. It was a turquoise blue, but the paint had faded slightly. Harish vaguely recognised it as the car they had all ridden in last summer, as the twins had said. Fred climbed into the driver's seat while George got in the back.
"Well?" Fred asked, his hands on the wheels.
Harish hesitated a moment before grinning and sitting down in the passenger seat. As soon as he shut the door, Fred pulled a stick backwards and pushed down on a pedal that made the car drive in reverse. Harish, who rarely saw any Muggle-made items, was astonished.
"It can go backwards?" he asked with a gasp.
"Of course," George piped up from the back. "How else do you expect Muggles to get out of their drive-in ways?"
The car backed up out of the garage at an angle and Fred flicked a button that caused the lights at the front of the car to turn on. Harish watched excitedly, though he didn't show his surprise. He was supposed to be a cool fourteen-year-old after all. When the car was facing parallel to the Burrow, Fred pushed the stick forward again and the car started going forward. Then, he pulled on a lever and the car started to rise. Harish let some of his excitement show in the form of a wide grin as he watched the car rise steadily into the air.
"It took us ages to figure out how to work this thing, of course," George said as he noticed Harish's grin.
"The first time we flew at night we crashed into the fence—"
"Because we couldn't figure out how to turn the front lights on."
Harish laughed. "I bet it was pretty hard to explain to your mum what happened to the fence."
"Not really," Fred commented.
"We always blame everything on Ron." Harish snorted. "Hey, it works!"
Harish stared out the window for a moment, watching as they drove through a cloud.
"So how does this thing work?" he asked after a moment.
"Oh, it's easy once you figure it out!" George supplied happily.
"This wheel," Fred said, slapping a hand on the wheel he was turning, "Is used to steer the car. If I turn it this way—" he spun the wheel sharply to the left.
"It goes that way!" George finished as the nose of the car started pointing to the right.
"This stick is used to change gears," Fred said, moving the hand he wasn't steering with to the stick. "If I pull it back, the car goes backwards, and if I push it forward it goes forward. If I push it all the way to the top, the car won't move at all. I think the Muggles call it parking."
Harish nodded.
"This lever," George said, leaning forward and pointing at the lever Fred had pulled earlier. "Is what you pull to make the car fly. And this," he tapped a red button. Harish gasped as the car disappeared underneath him. He could tell he was still sitting on something, but he couldn't see it. "Is the Invisibility Booster."
"Neat!" Harish exclaimed as Fred hit the button again and the car reappeared.
"Now," Fred started. "About you coming here—"
"Does your father know?"
The pale boy nodded. "I left him a note. I'm sure he won't mind."
"We'll just have to stick with saying—"
"That you showed up in the middle of the night."
"It is true," Harish said.
"Yeah," the two red-heads agreed.
The sun was just beginning to streak the sky and their surroundings began to lighten as the Fred finally touched the car down on the lawn of the Burrow. He pulled the car around to the garage and parked it there. Then they got out of the car. Harish looked at the Burrow for a moment before they wheeled around.
Mrs. Weasley was marching towards them, scattering chickens, and looking somewhat like a saber-toothed tiger.
"Ah," Fred said.
"Oh, dear," George muttered.
Harish watched apprehensively as she came to a halt in front of them. Her hands were on her hips and her lips were pursed.
"So," Mrs. Weasley said.
"Morning Mum!" George said in a jaunty voice.
"Have you any idea how worried I've been?" She asked in a deadly whisper.
"We were just—"
Both of Mrs. Weasley's sons were taller than her, but they coward before her.
"Beds empty! No note! Car gone—could have crashed—out of my mind with worry—did you care? –never, as long as I've lived—you wait until your father gets home, we've never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy—"
"Perfect Percy," Fred muttered.
"YOU COULD TAKE A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" Mrs. Weasley shouted, losing all self-control she had maintained through her rant. "None of my other sons were sorted into Slytherin!"
All three Weasleys froze and Harish stood there awkwardly. It was him who had talked the twins into getting sorted there. Fred and George stood there with wide eyes, gaping a little in shock. Finally, Fred regained his composure and started shaking with anger.
"So that is what this is all about?" he asked angrily. George got over his shock as well and looked just as angry as his twin.
"Oh, no," Mrs. Weasley backtracked. "I didn't mean—"
"Mean what?" George asked. "That we—your sons—disgraced you by—"
"Being sorted into a rival house?"
"No!"
Their faces were red with anger and Mrs. Weasley looked like she was about ready to start crying. The twins marched off into the house with identical deadly expressions. Harish shot Mrs. Weasley what he hoped was an apologetic look before hurrying after them.
Breakfast that morning was a silent affair. Mrs. Weasley sniffled as she put food on everyone's plates and her eyes looked slightly puffy. The twins both stared at their plates all throughout the meal, and Harish thought about what had just happened.
He knew that it was all his fault that they had been sorted in Slytherin, so therefore his fault that there was such a rift between the twins and the rest of their family. He never did anything good, or wanted to be good, but right now he wanted to fix the situation, but had no idea how. Harish mainly wanted to fix it because he was afraid that the twins were regretting being sorted into his house. The boy feared that they would no longer want to be his friends. They had been his first and only friends for so long, that he had no idea what he would do if that happened. Harish sighed and gritted his teeth, deciding that what was done was done.
The rest of the Weasley children were quiet as well because they could sense something was wrong. They knew something had happened between their mother and their brothers. When breakfast ended, the three almost-fourth years slunk away to the twins bedroom. Once they got there, the twins started muttering darkly.
"Don't know what her problem is."
"You'd think we had killed the Minister."
"Dumb…annoying…"
"Ruins everything…"
Finally they both calmed down and looked up at Harish, who was standing there torn between looking awkward or just upset in general.
"We're not blaming you," they said to him.
Silence fell in the room thick until Harish said, "But it's all my fault. I was the one that suggested you go into Slytherin—"
"But we agreed—"
"Didn't we?"
"We don't care if the whole Wizarding World goes after us," Fred said.
"We will never regret being sorted into your house."
Harish smiled, all of his worries erased. How could he have thought that they would abandon him?
"Now I don't know about you," George said, falling on his bed. "But I'm exhausted."