Chasing Love

Chapter One Hundred and One - Holey

"Are you all ready?" Mad-Eye Moody asked them, "Let's go."

The massive group all nodded before apparating to Privet Drive, "Wow! It looks . . ." Fred whispered to George and Eliza, "Charming . . ."

"Yeah, I'm glad I didn't live here," Eliza replied as she looked around the small street, "It isn't the nicest, is it? No wonder he hated this place so much."

"I would hate living here!" George told the two, "Can you imagine - this place or our lovely little flat?"

Fred and Eliza laughed, "Our lovely little flat."

Soon enough, Moody opened the front door and Harry guided them through the small house and into the kitchen. They all settled on the chairs around the table and the perfectly clean work surfaces.

"Kingsley, I thought you were looking after the Muggle Prime Minister?" Harry called out to him.

"He can get along without me for one night," Kingsley replied, "You're more important."

"Harry, guess what?" Tonks said from on top of a weird looking device, she wiggled her hand at him so he could see her new ring.

"You got married?" Harry said as he looked from Tonks to Lupin.

"I'm sorry you couldn't be there, Harry, it was very quiet." Tonks told him. Eliza had been one of the few people there as she and Tonks had become good friends over the last year.

"That's brilliant, congratulations."

"All right, all right, we'll have time for a cozy catch-up later." Moody shouted over all the noise and everyone went silent, "As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He's made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name of your protection, to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you. Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother's charm does that already. What he's really done is to stop you getting out of here safely. Second problem: You're underage, which means you've still got the Trace on you."

"I don't know -"

"The Trace, the Trace," Mad-Eye said, "The charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the way the Ministry finds out about underage magic! If you, or anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters."

"We can't wait for the Trace to break, because the moment you turn seventeen you'll lose all the protection your mother gave you. In short, Pius Thicknesse thinks he's got you cornered good and proper."

"So what are we going to do?"

"We're going to use the only means of transport left to us, the only ones the Trace can't detect, because we don't need to cast spells to use them: Brooms, Thestrals, and Hagrid's motorbike. Now, your mother's charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or-" Moody pointed around the kitchen, "- you no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you're never going to live together again, correct?" Harry nodded, "So this time, when you leave, there'll be no going back, and the charm will break the moment you get outside its range. We're choosing to break it early, because the alternative is waiting for You-Know-Who to come and seize you the moment you turn seventeen. The one thing we've got on our side is that You-Know-Who doesn't know we're moving you tonight. We've leaked a fake trail to the Ministry: They think you're not leaving until the thirtieth. However, this is You-Know-Who we're dealing with, so we can't rely on him getting the date wrong; he's bound to have a couple of Death Eaters patrolling the skies in this general area, just in case. So, we've given a dozen different houses every protection we can throw at them. They all look like they could be the place we're going to hide you, they've all got some connection with the Order: my house, Kingsley's place, Molly's Auntie Muriel's . . . you get the idea."