Breakfast in the morning was a much brighter affair. By now I had heard many different theories about what had happened that night but none of them were close to the truth. Percy however was contributing a lot in the uproar (quite contrary to his usual habit) and had much to say on the subject of Sirius's escape.

"If I manage to get into the Ministry, I'll have a lot of proposals to make about Magical Law Enforcement! An escape such as this straight from the hands of the Ministry is sure to raise questions and I would indeed..."

I interrupted him and spoke in my sweetest and most polite voice, "Percy, can I ask you of a little favor?"

He paused in his rant and looked at me questioningly as if I was just going to ask him to pass the beans or something, "sure. What do you want?"

"Shut up, please," I remarked as sweetly as I could and gave him a nice smile. Then ignoring the hard look he had sent my way, I focused all my attention to my soup while Fred and George tried hard to stifle their laughter in the background.

The best part of the day was seeing the Dementors glide away unhappily because of course after all that happened, Dumbledore let the Ministry know that he would no longer give the Azkaban Guards permission to stay around school grounds as they had endangered life of a student, Harry of course.

We were all packed up and ready to go in next to no time. Soon we were all taken to Hogsmeade station by those horseless carriages we had traveled in at the beginning of the year and there at the station the scarlet express was waiting for us all to board.

I got a compartment with Angelina and Katie. Truth be told I was more than just relieved to be going back home. Merlin knows I needed Mom's delicious food helpings at the moment due to all the troubles we had gone through at school this year.

Of course the two of them were very interested in hearing my point of view of what actually happened. I had decided to give them a believable version of the story excluding the whole Snape scenario.

Little had I known that soon afterwards they would jump on to the topic of my secret love life.

"About that love interest of yours...?" Angelina remarked playfully.

"Of course, we never really got to hear the end of it that day. Where is he now though?"

"He's a convicted murderer on the loose," I remarked carelessly.

"Nice joke," both of them added sarcastically.

No really. You have no idea at all.

"Come on, Kat, don't be all suspenseful," Katie spoke, "we're too intrigued now to let it go that easily."

"I don't know where he is," and yeah that is the truth.

I really should never have answered their questions that day at the Three Broomsticks. And I was more than just relieved when we finally reached King's Cross and it was time for us to say our goodbyes.

I found the rest of the Weasleys at the platform and together we made our way to Mom and Dad. It was quite easy to spot them because all we had to do was look for red hair. And that makes me think that it would have been even easier to spot us as we might have looked like a whole clump of red heads bobbing up and down.

Mom engulfed all of us in a giant hug soon as she saw us. She must definitely have heard of the events at school and would probably be wondering why it all affected her kids more than anyone else.

If you ask me, then there's a simple answer. And the answer is that us Weasleys are closer to the Chosen One than the other kids and since Harry has a trait of attracting trouble, we all get affected by it too.

Is that what the Muggles call the Boomerang effect?

No seriously, I don't think I would like to get started on that now.

Like before, we used Floo Network as a method of transportation and in next to no time we were back at the Burrow. Safe and sound.

Merlin, I did miss the Burrow a lot. Especially my bedroom. Thinking of bedrooms I guess I'll have to go check up on it in case the ghoul has reclaimed its quarters in the attic.

Let's just hope that's not the case.

***