LANDSLIDE, james potter [2]

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lyra watched Harry carefully, wondering what questions he was about to ask about the Dark Lord and his plans. She wasn't sure what conclusions he had come to on his own (because she knew he liked doing so without listening to anybody around him sometimes. He had once thought she was a Death Eater, after all).

"Where's Voldemort?" the young boy quickly asked, making several of the people around the table to shiver or wince. Lyra was no exception. "What's he doing? I've been trying to watch the muggle news, and there hasn't been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything."

"That's because there haven't been any funny deaths yet," Sirius was quick to respond. He almost seemed proud at how his godson seemed to be asking the right questions. "Not as far as we know, anyway... and we know quite a lot."

"More than he thinks we do, anyway," Remus added, casting a quick glance at Lyra. She had been quick to tell when she knew they were having meetings and had overheard a few things, and Snape had been feeding information about what he knew. Together, those two had given them a clearer picture than they could have hoped for.

"How come he's stopped killing people?" Harry asked, confused. He thought his whole thing as a so-called Dark Lord was to kill and torture everyone who disagreed with him, and there were quite a few people who disagreed with him.

"He doesn't need all this attention, Harry," Lyra spoke up, being the one who had met the Dark Lord the most in the room. "They're trying to discredit anyone who says he's back and people will be more inclined to believe it if nothing changes, if things stay the same. He doesn't want people to know he's back, and it's been much harder after he messed up his comeback."

"Or rather, you messed it up for him," Remus added, his chin raised proudly. There was a little James in the boy, causing messes and trouble wherever he went. Sometimes it even went in their favor.

Harry furrowed his brows. "How?"

"You weren't supposed to survive!" Sirius exclaimed quite pleasantly, looking even prouder than Remus had. "Nobody apart from his Death Eaters was supposed to know he'd come back. But you survived to bear witness."

"And the very last person he wanted alerted to his return the moment he got back was Dumbledore and you made sure Dumbledore knew at once," Remus stated, smiling brightly at his former student.

"How has that helped?" the bespectacled boy asked. Things hadn't seemed to change just because Dumbledore had known. He hadn't even seen Dumbledore since the end of the school year.

"Are you kidding?" asked Bill, looking quite incredulous. He thought what he was about to say would be common knowledge, especially for Harry. "Dumbledore was the only one You-Know-Who was ever scared of!"

"Thanks to you, Dumbledore was able to recall the Order of the Phoenix about an hour after Voldemort returned," Sirius said thankfully. He then looked at his cousin, exchanging a smile with her. "With a few new additions, of course."

Harry seemed to accept this quickly. He then looked around the table, carefully watching each and every face of those part of the secret organisation, questioning what had been going on. "So, what's the Order been doing?"

"Working as hard as we can to make sure Voldemort can't carry out his plans," the Black man responded, mostly looking happy to finally be able to tell his godson what had been going on since the last time he'd seen him.

"How'd you know what his plans are?" Harry asked, though finding himself looking Lyra's way. He knew she was a Death Eater's wife, having seen Lucius Malfoy with a Death Eater mask himself. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd gotten some good information because of it.