'So how come I have to stay at the Dursleys' while you two get to join in everything that's going on here?' said Harry, the words tumbling over one another in a rush, his voice growing louder with every word. 'How come you two are allowed to know everything that's going on?'

'We're not!' Ron interrupted. 'Mum won't let us near the meetings, she says we're too young — '

But before he knew it, Harry was shouting.

'SO YOU HAVEN'T BEEN IN THE MEETINGS, BIG DEAL! YOU'VE STILL BEEN HERE, HAVEN'T YOU? YOU'VE STILL BEEN TOGETHER! ME, I'VE BEEN STUCK AT THE DURSLEYS' FOR A MONTH! AND I'VE HANDLED MORE THAN YOU TWO'VE EVER MANAGED AND DUMBLEDORE KNOWS IT —WHO SAVED THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE? WHO GOT RID OF RIDDLE? WHO SAVED BOTH YOUR SKINS FROM THE DEMENTORS?'

Every bitter and resentful thought Harry had had in the past month was pouring out of him: his frustration at the lack of news, the hurt that they had all been together without him, his fury at being followed and not told about it — all the feelings he was half-ashamed of finally burst their boundaries. Hedwig took fright at the noise and soared off to the top of the wardrobe again; Pigwidgeon twittered in alarm and zoomed even faster around their heads.

'WHO HAD TO GET PAST DRAGONS AND SPHINXES AND EVERY OTHER FOUL THING LAST YEAR? WHO SAW HIM COME BACK? WHO HAD TO ESCAPE FROM HIM? ME!'

Ron was standing there with his mouth half-open, clearly stunned and at a loss for anything to say, whilst Hermione looked on the verge of tears.

'BUT WHY SHOULD I KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY SHOULD ANYONE BOTHER TO TELL ME WHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING?'

'Harry, we wanted to tell you, we really did — ' Hermione began.

'CAN'T'VE WANTED TO THAT MUCH, CAN YOU, OR YOU'D HAVE SENT ME AN OWL, BUT DUMBLEDORE MADE YOU SWEAR — '

'Well, he did — '

'FOUR WEEKS I'VE BEEN STUCK IN PRIVET DRIVE, NICKING PAPERS OUT OF BINS TO TRY AND FIND OUT WHAT'S BEEN GOING ON — '

'We wanted to —

'I SUPPOSE YOU'VE BEEN HAVING A REAL LAUGH, HAVEN'T YOU, ALL HOLED UP HERE TOGETHER — '

'No, honest — '

'Harry, we're really sorry!' said Hermione desperately, her eyes now sparkling with tears. 'You're absolutely right, Harry — I'd be furious if it was me!'

Harry glared at her, still breathing deeply, then turned away from them again, pacing up and down. Hedwig hooted glumly from the top of the wardrobe. There was a long pause, broken only by the mournful creak of the floorboards below Harry's feet.

'What is this place, anyway?' he shot at Ron and Hermione.

'Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix,' said Ron at once.

'Is anyone going to bother telling me what the Order of the Phoenix — ?'

'It's a secret society,' said Hermione quickly 'Dumbledore's in charge, he founded it. It's the people who fought against You-Know-Who last time.'

'Who's in it?' said Harry coming to a halt with his hands in his pockets.

'Quite a few people — '

'We've met about twenty of them,' said Ron, 'but we think there are more.'

Harry glared at them.

'Well? ' he demanded, looking from one to the other.

'Er,' said Ron. 'Well what?'

'Voldemort! ' said Harry furiously, and both Ron and Hermione winced. 'What's happening? What's he up to? Where is he? What are we doing to stop him?'

'We've told you, the Order don't let us in on their meetings,' said Hermione nervously 'So we don't know the details — but we've got a general idea,' she added hastily, seeing the look on Harry's face.

'Fred and George have invented Extendable Ears, see,' said Ron. 'They're really useful.'

'Extendable — ?'

'Ears, yeah. Only we've had to stop using them lately because Mum found out and went berserk. Fred and George had to hide them all to stop Mum binning them. But we got a good bit of use out of them before Mum realised what was going on. We know some of the Order are following known Death Eaters, keeping tabs on them, you know — '

'Some of them are working on recruiting more people to the Order — ' said Hermione.

'And some of them are standing guard over something,' said Ron. 'They're always talking about guard duty.'

'Couldn't have been me, could it?' said Harry sarcastically.

'Oh, yeah,' said Ron, with a look of dawning comprehension.

Harry snorted. He walked around the room again, looking anywhere but at Ron and Hermione. 'So, what have you two been doing, if you're not allowed in meetings?' he demanded. 'You said you'd been busy.'

'We have,' said Hermione quickly. 'We've been decontaminating this house, it's been empty for ages and stuff's been breeding in here. We've managed to clean out the kitchen, most of the bedrooms and I think we're doing the drawing room tomo— AARGH!'

With two loud cracks, Fred and George, Ron's elder twin brothers, had materialised out of thin air in the middle of the room. Pigwidgeon twittered more wildly than ever and zoomed off to join Hedwig on top of the wardrobe.

'Stop doing that!' Hermione said weakly to the twins, who were as vividly red-haired as Ron, though stockier and slightly shorter.

'Hello, Harry' said George, beaming at him. 'We thought we heard your dulcet tones.'

'You don't want to bottle up your anger like that, Harry, let it all out,' said Fred, also beaming. 'There might be a couple of people fifty miles away who didn't hear you.'

'You two passed your Apparation tests, then?' asked Harry grumpily.

'With distinction,' said Fred, who was holding what looked like a piece of very long, flesh-coloured string.

'It would have taken you about thirty seconds longer to walk down the stairs,' said Ron.

'Time is Galleons, little brother,' said Fred. 'Anyway, Harry, you're interfering with reception. Extendable Ears,' he added in response to Harry's raised eyebrows, and held up the string which Harry now saw was trailing out on to the landing. 'We're trying to hear what's going on downstairs.'

'You want to be careful,' said Ron, staring at the Ear, 'if Mum sees one of them again . . .'

'It's worth the risk, that's a major meeting they're having,' said Fred.

The door opened and a long mane of red hair appeared.

'Oh, hello, Harry!' said Ron's younger sister, Ginny, brightly. 'I thought I heard your voice.'

Turning to Fred and George, she said, 'It's no-go with the Extendable Ears, she's gone and put an Imperturbable Charm on the kitchen door.'

'How d'you know?' said George, looking crestfallen.

'Tonks told me how to find out,' said Ginny. 'You just chuck stuff at the door and if it can't make contact the door's been Imperturbed. I've been flicking Dungbombs at it from the top of the stairs and they just soar away from it, so there's no way the Extendable Ears will be able to get under the gap.'

Fred heaved a deep sigh.

'Shame. I really fancied finding out what old Snape's been up to.'

'Snape!' said Harry quickly. 'Is he here?'

'Yeah,' said George, carefully closing the door and sitting down on one of the beds; Fred and Ginny followed. 'Giving a report. Top secret.'

'Git,' said Fred idly.

'He's on our side now,' said Hermione reprovingly.

Ron snorted. 'Doesn't stop him being a git. The way he looks at us when he sees us.'

'Bill doesn't like him, either,' said Ginny, as though that settled the matter.

Harry was not sure his anger had abated yet; but his thirst for information was now overcoming his urge to keep shouting. He sank on to the bed opposite the others.

'Is Bill here?' he asked. 'I thought he was working in Egypt?'

'He applied for a desk job so he could come home and work for the Order,' said Fred. 'He says he misses the tombs, but,' he smirked, 'there are compensations.'

'What d'you mean?'

'Remember old Fleur Delacour?' said George. 'She's got a job at Gringotts to eemprove 'er Eeenglish — '

'And Bill's been giving her a lot of private lessons,' sniggered Fred.

'Charlie's in the Order, too,' said George, 'but he's still in Romania. Dumbledore wants as many foreign wizards brought in as possible, so Charlie's trying to make contacts on his days off.'

'Couldn't Percy do that?' Harry asked. The last he had heard, the third Weasley brother was working in the Department of International Magical Co-operation at the Ministry of Magic.

At Harry's words, all the Weasleys and Hermione exchanged darkly significant looks.

'Whatever you do, don't mention Percy in front of Mum and Dad,' Ron told Harry in a tense voice.

'Why not?'

'Because every time Percy's name's mentioned, Dad breaks whatever he's holding and Mum starts crying,' Fred said.

'It's been awful,' said Ginny sadly.

'I think we're well shot of him,' said George, with an uncharacteristically ugly look on his face.

'What's happened?' Harry said.

'Percy and Dad had a row,' said Fred. 'I've never seen Dad row with anyone like that. It's normally Mum who shouts.'

'It was the first week back after term ended,' said Ron. 'We were about to come and join the Order. Percy came home and told us he'd been promoted.'

'You're kidding?' said Harry.

Though he knew perfectly well that Percy was highly ambitious, Harry's impression was that Percy had not made a great success of his first job at the Ministry of Magic. Percy had committed the fairly large oversight of failing to notice that his boss was being controlled by Lord Voldemort (not that the Ministry had believed it — they all thought Mr Crouch had gone mad).

'Yeah, we were all surprised,' said George, 'because Percy got into a load of trouble about Crouch, there was an inquiry and everything. They said Percy ought to have realised Crouch was off his rocker and informed a superior. But you know Percy, Crouch left him in charge, he wasn't going to complain.'

'So how come they promoted him?'

'That's exactly what we wondered,' said Ron, who seemed very keen to keep normal conversation going now that Harry had stopped yelling. 'He came home really pleased with himself — even more pleased than usual, if you can imagine that — and told Dad he'd been offered a position in Fudge's own office. A really good one for someone only a year out of Hogwarts: Junior Assistant to the Minister. He expected Dad to be all impressed, I think.'

'Only Dad wasn't,' said Fred grimly.

'Why not?' said Harry.

'Well, apparently Fudge has been storming round the Ministry checking that nobody's having any contact with Dumbledore,' said George.

'Dumbledore's name is mud with the Ministry these days, see,' said Fred. 'They all think he's just making trouble saying You-Know-Who's back.'

'Dad says Fudge has made it clear that anyone who's in league with Dumbledore can clear out their desks,' said George.