[Part 3] "Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix" by Rowling J.K.

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CHAPTER V. THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

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"Your — ?”

“My dear old mum, yeah,” said Sirius.

“We’ve been trying to get her down for a month but we think she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of the canvas.

Let’s get downstairs, quick, before they all wake up again.”

“But what’s a portrait of your mother doing here?” Harry asked, bewildered, as they went through the door from the hall and led the way down a flight of narrow stone steps, the others just behind them.

“Hasn’t anyone told you? This was my parents’ house,” said Sirius.

“But I’m the last Black left, so it’s mine now.

I offered it to Dumbledore for headquarters — about the only useful thing I’ve been able to do.”

Harry, who had expected a better welcome, noted how hard and bitter Sirius’s voice sounded.

He followed his godfather to the bottom of the stairs and through a door leading into the basement kitchen.

It was scarcely less gloomy than the hall above, a cavernous room with rough stone walls.

Most of the light was coming from a large fire at the far end of the room.

A haze of pipe smoke hung in the air like battle fumes, through which loomed the menacing shapes of heavy iron pots and pans hanging from the dark ceiling.

Many chairs had been crammed into the room for the meeting and a long wooden table stood in the middle of the room, littered with rolls of parchment, goblets, empty wine bottles, and a heap of what appeared to be rags.

Mr. Weasley and his eldest son, Bill, were talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table.

Mrs. Weasley cleared her throat.

Her husband, a thin, balding, red-haired man, who wore horn-rimmed glasses, looked around and jumped to his feet.

“Harry!” Mr. Weasley said, hurrying forward to greet him and shaking his hand vigorously.

“Good to see you!”

Over his shoulder Harry saw Bill, who still wore his long hair in a ponytail, hastily rolling up the lengths of parchment left on the table.

“Journey all right, Harry?” Bill called, trying to gather up twelve scrolls at once.

“Mad-Eye didn’t make you come via Greenland, then?”

“He tried,” said Tonks, striding over to help Bill and immediately sending a candle toppling onto the last piece of parchment.

“Oh no — sorry —”

“Here, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, sounding exasperated, and she repaired the parchment with a wave of her wand.

In the flash of light caused by Mrs. Weasley’s charm, Harry caught a glimpse of what looked like the plan of a building.

Mrs. Weasley had seen him looking.

She snatched the plan off the table and stuffed it into Bill’s heavily laden arms.

“This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings,” she snapped before sweeping off toward an ancient dresser from which she started unloading dinner plates.

Bill took out his wand, muttered “Evanesco!” and the scrolls vanished.

“Sit down, Harry,” said Sirius.

“You’ve met Mundungus, haven’t you?”

The thing Harry had taken to be a pile of rags gave a prolonged, grunting snore and then jerked awake.

“Some’n say m’ name?” Mundungus mumbled sleepily.

“I ’gree with Sirius . . .”

He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.

Ginny giggled.

“The meeting’s over, Dung,” said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table.

“Harry’s arrived.”

“Eh?” said Mundungus, peering balefully at Harry through his matted ginger hair.

“Blimey, so ’e ’as.

Yeah . . . you all right, ’arry?”

“Yeah,” said Harry.

Mundungus fumbled nervously in his pockets, still staring at Harry, and pulled out a grimy black pipe.

He stuck it in his mouth, ignited the end of it with his wand, and took a deep pull on it.

Great billowing clouds of greenish smoke obscured him in seconds.

“Owe you a ’pology,” grunted a voice from the middle of the smelly cloud.

“For the last time, Mundungus,” called Mrs. Weasley, “will you please not smoke that thing in the kitchen, especially not when we’re about to eat!”

“Ah,” said Mundungus.

“Right.

Sorry, Molly.”

The cloud of smoke vanished as Mundungus stowed his pipe back in his pocket, but an acrid smell of burning socks lingered.

“And if you want dinner before midnight I’ll need a hand,” Mrs. Weasley said to the room at large.

“No, you can stay where you are, Harry dear, you’ve had a long journey —”

“What can I do, Molly?” said Tonks enthusiastically, bounding forward.

Mrs. Weasley hesitated, looking apprehensive.

“Er — no, it’s all right, Tonks, you have a rest too, you’ve done enough today —”

“No, no, I want to help!” said Tonks brightly, knocking over a chair as she hurried toward the dresser from which Ginny was collecting cutlery.

Soon a series of heavy knives were chopping meat and vegetables of their own accord, supervised by Mr. Weasley, while Mrs. Weasley stirred a cauldron dangling over the fire and the others took out plates, more goblets, and food from the pantry.

Harry was left at the table with Sirius and Mundungus, who was still blinking mournfully at him.

“Seen old Figgy since?” he asked.

“No,” said Harry, “I haven’t seen anyone.”

“See, I wouldn’t ’ave left,” said Mundungus, leaning forward, a pleading note in his voice, “but I ’ad a business opportunity —”

Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry’s legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius’s lap and curled up.

Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry.

“Had a good summer so far?”

“No, it’s been lousy,” said Harry.

For the first time, something like a grin flitted across Sirius’s face.

“Don’t know what you’re complaining about, myself.”

“What?” said Harry incredulously.

“Personally, I’d have welcomed a dementor attack.

A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely.

You think you’ve had it bad, at least you’ve been able to get out and about, stretch your legs, get into a few fights. . . .

I’ve been stuck inside for a month.”

“How come?” asked Harry, frowning.

“Because the Ministry of Magic’s still after me, and Voldemort will know all about me being an Animagus by now, Wormtail will have told him, so my big disguise is useless.

There’s not much I can do for the Order of the Phoenix . . . or so Dumbledore feels.”

There was something about the slightly flattened tone of voice in which Sirius uttered Dumbledore’s name that told Harry that Sirius was not very happy with the headmaster either.

Harry felt a sudden upsurge of affection for his godfather.

“At least you’ve known what’s been going on,” he said bracingly.

“Oh yeah,” said Sirius sarcastically.

“Listening to Snape’s reports, having to take all his snide hints that he’s out there risking his life while I’m sat on my backside here having a nice comfortable time . . . asking me how the cleaning’s going —”

“What cleaning?” asked Harry.

“Trying to make this place fit for human habitation,” said Sirius, waving a hand around the dismal kitchen.

“No one’s lived here for ten years, not since my dear mother died, unless you count her old house-elf, and he’s gone round the twist, hasn’t cleaned anything in ages —”

“Sirius?” said Mundungus, who did not appear to have paid any attention to this conversation, but had been minutely examining an empty goblet.

“This solid silver, mate?”

“Yes,” said Sirius, surveying it with distaste.

“Finest fifteenth-century goblin-wrought silver, embossed with the Black family crest.”

“That’d come off, though,” muttered Mundungus, polishing it with his cuff.

“Fred — George — NO, JUST CARRY THEM!” Mrs. Weasley shrieked.

Harry, Sirius, and Mundungus looked around and, a split second later, dived away from the table.

Fred and George had bewitched a large cauldron of stew, an iron flagon of butterbeer, and a heavy wooden breadboard, complete with knife, to hurtle through the air toward them.

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The stew skidded the length of the table and came to a halt just before the end, leaving a long black burn on the wooden surface.

The flagon of butterbeer fell with a crash, spilling its contents everywhere, and the bread knife slipped off the board and landed, point down and quivering ominously, exactly where Sirius’s right hand had been seconds before.

“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” screamed Mrs. Weasley.

“THERE WAS NO NEED — I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS — JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON’T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!”

“We were just trying to save a bit of time!” said Fred, hurrying forward and wrenching the bread knife out of the table.

“Sorry Sirius, mate — didn’t mean to —”

Harry and Sirius were both laughing.

Mundungus, who had toppled backward off his chair, was swearing as he got to his feet.

Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness.

“Boys,” Mr. Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, “your mother’s right, you’re supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you’ve come of age —”

“— none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!” Mrs. Weasley raged at the twins, slamming a fresh flagon of butterbeer onto the table and spilling almost as much again.

“Bill didn’t feel the need to Apparate every few feet!

Charlie didn’t Charm everything he met!

Percy —”

She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden.

“Let’s eat,” said Bill quickly.

“It looks wonderful, Molly,” said Lupin, ladling stew onto a plate for her and handing it across the table.

For a few minutes there was silence but for the chink of plates and cutlery and the scraping of chairs as everyone settled down to their food.

Then Mrs. Weasley turned to Sirius and said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, there’s something trapped in that writing desk in the drawing room, it keeps rattling and shaking.

Of course, it could just be a boggart, but I thought we ought to ask Alastor to have a look at it before we let it out.”

“Whatever you like,” said Sirius indifferently.

“The curtains in there are full of doxies too,” Mrs. Weasley went on.

“I thought we might try and tackle them tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it,” said Sirius.

Harry heard the sarcasm in his voice, but he was not sure that anyone else did.

Opposite Harry, Tonks was entertaining Hermione and Ginny by transforming her nose between mouthfuls.

Screwing up her eyes each time with the same pained expression she had worn back in Harry’s bedroom, her nose swelled to a beaklike protuberance like Snape’s, shrank to something resembling a button mushroom, and then sprouted a great deal of hair from each nostril.

Apparently this was a regular mealtime entertainment, because after a while Hermione and Ginny started requesting their favorite noses.

“Do that one like a pig snout, Tonks . . .”

Tonks obliged, and Harry, looking up, had the fleeting impression that a female Dudley was grinning at him from across the table.

Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Lupin were having an intense discussion about goblins.

“They’re not giving anything away yet,” said Bill.

“I still can’t work out whether they believe he’s back or not.

’Course, they might prefer not to take sides at all.

Keep out of it.”

“I’m sure they’d never go over to You-Know-Who,” said Mr. Weasley, shaking his head.

“They’ve suffered losses too.

Remember that goblin family he murdered last time, somewhere near Nottingham?”

“I think it depends what they’re offered,” said Lupin.

“And I’m not talking about gold; if they’re offered freedoms we’ve been denying them for centuries they’re going to be tempted.

Have you still not had any luck with Ragnok, Bill?”

“He’s feeling pretty anti-wizard at the moment,” said Bill.

“He hasn’t stopped raging about the Bagman business, he reckons the Ministry did a cover-up, those goblins never got their gold from him, you know —”

A gale of laughter from the middle of the table drowned the rest of Bill’s words.

Fred, George, Ron, and Mundungus were rolling around in their seats.

“. . . and then,” choked Mundungus, tears running down his face, “and then, if you’ll believe it, ’e says to me, ’e says, ‘’ere, Dung, where didja get all them toads from?

’Cos some son of a Bludger’s gone and nicked all mine!’

And I says, ‘Nicked all your toads, Will, what next?

So you’ll be wanting some more, then?’

And if you’ll believe me, lads, the gormless gargoyle buys all ’is own toads back orf me for twice what ’e paid in the first place —”

“I don’t think we need to hear any more of your business dealings, thank you very much, Mundungus,” said Mrs. Weasley sharply, as Ron slumped forward onto the table, howling with laughter.

“Beg pardon, Molly,” said Mundungus at once, wiping his eyes and winking at Harry.

“But, you know, Will nicked ’em orf Warty Harris in the first place so I wasn’t really doing nothing wrong —”

“I don’t know where you learned about right and wrong, Mundungus, but you seem to have missed a few crucial lessons,” said Mrs. Weasley coldly.

Fred and George buried their faces in their goblets of butterbeer; George was hiccuping.

For some reason, Mrs. Weasley threw a very nasty look at Sirius before getting to her feet and going to fetch a large rhubarb crumble for pudding.

Harry looked round at his godfather.

“Molly doesn’t approve of Mundungus,” said Sirius in an undertone.

“How come he’s in the Order?” Harry said very quietly.

“He’s useful,” Sirius muttered.

“Knows all the crooks — well, he would, seeing as he’s one himself.

But he’s also very loyal to Dumbledore, who helped him out of a tight spot once.

It pays to have someone like Dung around, he hears things we don’t.

But Molly thinks inviting him to stay for dinner is going too far.

She hasn’t forgiven him for slipping off duty when he was supposed to be tailing you.”

Three helpings of rhubarb crumble and custard later and the waistband on Harry’s jeans was feeling uncomfortably tight (which was saying something, as the jeans had once been Dudley’s).

He lay down his spoon in a lull in the general conversation.

Mr. Weasley was leaning back in his chair, looking replete and relaxed, Tonks was yawning widely, her nose now back to normal, and Ginny, who had lured Crookshanks out from under the dresser, was sitting cross-legged on the floor, rolling butterbeer corks for him to chase.

“Nearly time for bed, I think,” said Mrs. Weasley on a yawn.

“Not just yet, Molly,” said Sirius, pushing away his empty plate and turning to look at Harry.

“You know, I’m surprised at you.

I thought the first thing you’d do when you got here would be to start asking questions about Voldemort.”

The atmosphere in the room changed with the rapidity Harry associated with the arrival of dementors.

Where seconds before it had been sleepily relaxed, it was now alert, even tense.

A frisson had gone around the table at the mention of Voldemort’s name.

Lupin, who had been about to take a sip of wine, lowered his goblet slowly, looking wary.

“I did!” said Harry indignantly.

“I asked Ron and Hermione but they said we’re not allowed in the Order, so —”

“And they’re quite right,” said Mrs. Weasley.

“You’re too young.”

She was sitting bolt upright in her chair, her fists clenched upon its arms, every trace of drowsiness gone.

“Since when did someone have to be in the Order of the Phoenix to ask questions?” asked Sirius.

“Harry’s been trapped in that Muggle house for a month.

He’s got the right to know what’s been happen —”

“Hang on!” interrupted George loudly.

“How come Harry gets his questions answered?” said Fred angrily.

“We’ve been trying to get stuff out of you for a month and you haven’t told us a single stinking thing!” said George.

“‘You’re too young, you’re not in the Order,’” said Fred, in a high-pitched voice that sounded uncannily like his mother’s.

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“Harry’s not even of age!”

“It’s not my fault you haven’t been told what the Order’s doing,” said Sirius calmly.

“That’s your parents’ decision.

Harry, on the other hand —”

“It’s not down to you to decide what’s good for Harry!” said Mrs. Weasley sharply.

Her normally kindly face looked dangerous.

“You haven’t forgotten what Dumbledore said, I suppose?”

“Which bit?” Sirius asked politely, but with an air as though readying himself for a fight.

“The bit about not telling Harry more than he needs to know,” said Mrs. Weasley, placing a heavy emphasis on the last three words.

Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George’s heads turned from Sirius to Mrs. Weasley as though following a tennis rally.

Ginny was kneeling amid a pile of abandoned butterbeer corks, watching the conversation with her mouth slightly open.

Lupin’s eyes were fixed on Sirius.

“I don’t intend to tell him more than he needs to know, Molly,” said Sirius.

“But as he was the one who saw Voldemort come back” (again, there was a collective shudder around the table at the name), “he has more right than most to —”

“He’s not a member of the Order of the Phoenix!” said Mrs. Weasley.

“He’s only fifteen and —”

“— and he’s dealt with as much as most in the Order,” said Sirius, “and more than some —”

“No one’s denying what he’s done!” said Mrs. Weasley, her voice rising, her fists trembling on the arms of her chair.

“But he’s still —”

“He’s not a child!” said Sirius impatiently.

“He’s not an adult either!” said Mrs. Weasley, the color rising in her cheeks.

“He’s not James, Sirius!”

“I’m perfectly clear who he is, thanks, Molly,” said Sirius coldly.

“I’m not sure you are!” said Mrs. Weasley.

“Sometimes, the way you talk about him, it’s as though you think you’ve got your best friend back!”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Harry.

“What’s wrong, Harry, is that you are not your father, however much you might look like him!” said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes still boring into Sirius.

“You are still at school and adults responsible for you should not forget it!”

“Meaning I’m an irresponsible godfather?” demanded Sirius, his voice rising.

“Meaning you’ve been known to act rashly, Sirius, which is why Dumbledore keeps reminding you to stay at home and —”

“We’ll leave my instructions from Dumbledore out of this, if you please!” said Sirius loudly.

“Arthur!” said Mrs. Weasley, rounding on her husband.

“Arthur, back me up!”

Mr. Weasley did not speak at once.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them slowly on his robes, not looking at his wife.

Only when he had replaced them carefully on his nose did he say, “Dumbledore knows the position has changed, Molly. He accepts that Harry will have to be filled in to a certain extent now that he is staying at headquarters —”

“Yes, but there’s a difference between that and inviting him to ask whatever he likes!”

“Personally,” said Lupin quietly, looking away from Sirius at last, as Mrs. Weasley turned quickly to him, hopeful that finally she was about to get an ally, “I think it better that Harry gets the facts — not all the facts, Molly, but the general picture — from us, rather than a garbled version from . . . others.”

His expression was mild, but Harry felt sure that Lupin, at least, knew that some Extendable Ears had survived Mrs. Weasley’s purge.

“Well,” said Mrs. Weasley, breathing deeply and looking around the table for support that did not come, “well . . . I can see I’m going to be overruled. I’ll just say this: Dumbledore must have had his reasons for not wanting Harry to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got Harry’s best interests at heart —”

“He’s not your son,” said Sirius quietly.

“He’s as good as,” said Mrs. Weasley fiercely. “Who else has he got?”

“He’s got me!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Weasley, her lip curling. “The thing is, it’s been rather difficult for you to look after him while you’ve been locked up in Azkaban, hasn’t it?”

Sirius started to rise from his chair.

“Molly, you’re not the only person at this table who cares about Harry,” said Lupin sharply. “Sirius, sit down.”

Mrs. Weasley’s lower lip was trembling.

Sirius sank slowly back into his chair, his face white.

“I think Harry ought to be allowed a say in this,” Lupin continued. “He’s old enough to decide for himself.”

“I want to know what’s been going on,” Harry said at once.

He did not look at Mrs. Weasley.

He had been touched by what she had said about his being as good as a son, but he was also impatient at her mollycoddling. . . . Sirius was right, he was not a child.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Weasley, her voice cracking. “Ginny — Ron — Hermione — Fred — George — I want you out of this kitchen, now.”

There was instant uproar.

“We’re of age!” Fred and George bellowed together.

“If Harry’s allowed, why can’t I?” shouted Ron.

“Mum, I want to!” wailed Ginny.

“NO!” shouted Mrs. Weasley, standing up, her eyes overbright. “I absolutely forbid —”

“Molly, you can’t stop Fred and George,” said Mr. Weasley wearily. “They are of age —”

“They’re still at school —”

“But they’re legally adults now,” said Mr. Weasley in the same tired voice.

Mrs. Weasley was now scarlet in the face.

“I — oh, all right then, Fred and George can stay, but Ron —”

“Harry’ll tell me and Hermione everything you say anyway!” said Ron hotly. “Won’t — won’t you?” he added uncertainly, meeting Harry’s eyes.

For a split second, Harry considered telling Ron that he wouldn’t tell him a single word, that he could try a taste of being kept in the dark and see how he liked it.

But the nasty impulse vanished as they looked at each other.

“’Course I will,” Harry said.

Ron and Hermione beamed.

“Fine!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “Fine! Ginny — BED!”

Ginny did not go quietly.

They could hear her raging and storming at her mother all the way up the stairs, and when she reached the hall Mrs. Black’s earsplitting shrieks were added to the din.

Lupin hurried off to the portrait to restore calm.

It was only after he had returned, closing the kitchen door behind him and taking his seat at the table again, that Sirius spoke.

“Okay, Harry . . . what do you want to know?”

Harry took a deep breath and asked the question that had been obsessing him for a month.

“Where’s Voldemort? What’s he doing? I’ve been trying to watch the Muggle news,” he said, ignoring the renewed shudders and winces at the name, “and there hasn’t been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything —”

“That’s because there haven’t been any suspicious deaths yet,” said Sirius, “not as far as we know, anyway. . . . And we know quite a lot.”

“More than he thinks we do anyway,” said Lupin.

“How come he’s stopped killing people?” Harry asked.

He knew that Voldemort had murdered more than once in the last year alone.

“Because he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself at the moment,” said Sirius. “It would be dangerous for him. His comeback didn’t come off quite the way he wanted it to, you see. He messed it up.”

“Or rather, you messed it up for him,” said Lupin with a satisfied smile.

“How?” Harry asked perplexedly.

“You weren’t supposed to survive!” said Sirius. “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,” said Lupin. “And you made sure Dumbledore knew at once.”

“How has that helped?” Harry asked.

“Are you kidding?” said Bill incredulously. “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,” said Sirius.

“So what’s the Order been doing?” said Harry, looking around at them all.

“Working as hard as we can to make sure Voldemort can’t carry out his plans,” said Sirius.

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“How d’you know what his plans are?” Harry asked quickly.

“Dumbledore’s got a shrewd idea,” said Lupin, “and Dumbledore’s shrewd ideas normally turn out to be accurate.”

“So what does Dumbledore reckon he’s planning?”

“Well, firstly, he wants to build up his army again,” said Sirius. “In the old days he had huge numbers at his command; witches and wizards he’d bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures. You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they’ll be just one group he’s after. He’s certainly not going to try and take on the Ministry of Magic with only a dozen Death Eaters.”

“So you’re trying to stop him getting more followers?”

“We’re doing our best,” said Lupin.

“How?”

“Well, the main thing is to try and convince as many people as possible that You-Know-Who really has returned, to put them on their guard,” said Bill. “It’s proving tricky, though.”

“Why?”

“Because of the Ministry’s attitude,” said Tonks. “You saw Cornelius Fudge after You-Know-Who came back, Harry. Well, he hasn’t shifted his position at all. He’s absolutely refusing to believe it’s happened.”

“But why?” said Harry desperately. “Why’s he being so stupid? If Dumbledore —”

“Ah, well, you’ve put your finger on the problem,” said Mr. Weasley with a wry smile. “Dumbledore.”

“Fudge is frightened of him, you see,” said Tonks sadly.

“Frightened of Dumbledore?” said Harry incredulously.

“Frightened of what he’s up to,” said Mr. Weasley. “You see, Fudge thinks Dumbledore’s plotting to overthrow him. He thinks Dumbledore wants to be Minister of Magic.”

“But Dumbledore doesn’t want —”

“Of course he doesn’t,” said Mr. Weasley. “He’s never wanted the Minister’s job, even though a lot of people wanted him to take it when Millicent Bagnold retired. Fudge came to power instead, but he’s never quite forgotten how much popular support Dumbledore had, even though Dumbledore never applied for the job.”

“Deep down, Fudge knows Dumbledore’s much cleverer than he is, a much more powerful wizard, and in the early days of his Ministry he was forever asking Dumbledore for help and advice,” said Lupin. “But it seems that he’s become fond of power now, and much more confident. He loves being Minister of Magic, and he’s managed to convince himself that he’s the clever one and Dumbledore’s simply stirring up trouble for the sake of it.”

“How can he think that?” said Harry angrily. “How can he think Dumbledore would just make it all up — that I’d make it all up?”

“Because accepting that Voldemort’s back would mean trouble like the Ministry hasn’t had to cope with for nearly fourteen years,” said Sirius bitterly. “Fudge just can’t bring himself to face it. It’s so much more comfortable to convince himself Dumbledore’s lying to destabilize him.”

“You see the problem,” said Lupin. “While the Ministry insists there is nothing to fear from Voldemort, it’s hard to convince people he’s back, especially as they really don’t want to believe it in the first place. What’s more, the Ministry’s leaning heavily on the Daily Prophet not to report any of what they’re calling Dumbledore’s rumor-mongering, so most of the Wizarding community are completely unaware anything’s happened, and that makes them easy targets for the Death Eaters if they’re using the Imperius Curse.”

“But you’re telling people, aren’t you?” said Harry, looking around at Mr. Weasley, Sirius, Bill, Mundungus, Lupin, and Tonks.

“You’re letting people know he’s back?”

They all smiled humorlessly.

“Well, as everyone thinks I’m a mad mass murderer and the Ministry’s put a ten-thousand-Galleon price on my head, I can hardly stroll up the street and start handing out leaflets, can I?” said Sirius restlessly.

“And I’m not a very popular dinner guest with most of the community,” said Lupin.

“It’s an occupational hazard of being a werewolf.”

“Tonks and Arthur would lose their jobs at the Ministry if they started shooting their mouths off,” said Sirius, “and it’s very important for us to have spies inside the Ministry, because you can bet Voldemort will have them.”

“We’ve managed to convince a couple of people, though,” said Mr. Weasley.

“Tonks here, for one — she’s too young to have been in the Order of the Phoenix last time, and having Aurors on our side is a huge advantage — Kingsley Shacklebolt’s been a real asset too.”

“He’s in charge of the hunt for Sirius, so he’s been feeding the Ministry information that Sirius is in Tibet.”

“But if none of you’s putting the news out that Voldemort’s back —” Harry began.

“Who said none of us was putting the news out?” said Sirius.

“Why d’you think Dumbledore’s in such trouble?”

“What d’you mean?” Harry asked.

“They’re trying to discredit him,” said Lupin.

“Didn’t you see the Daily Prophet last week? They reported that he’d been voted out of the Chairmanship of the International Confederation of Wizards because he’s getting old and losing his grip, but it’s not true, he was voted out by Ministry wizards after he made a speech announcing Voldemort’s return.”

“They’ve demoted him from Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot — that’s the Wizard High Court — and they’re talking about taking away his Order of Merlin, First Class, too.”

“But Dumbledore says he doesn’t care what they do as long as they don’t take him off the Chocolate Frog cards,” said Bill, grinning.

“It’s no laughing matter,” said Mr. Weasley shortly.

“If he carries on defying the Ministry like this, he could end up in Azkaban and the last thing we want is Dumbledore locked up.”

“While You-Know-Who knows Dumbledore’s out there and wise to what he’s up to, he’s going to go cautiously for a while.”

“If Dumbledore’s out of the way — well, You-Know-Who will have a clear field.”

“But if Voldemort’s trying to recruit more Death Eaters, it’s bound to get out that he’s come back, isn’t it?” asked Harry desperately.

“Voldemort doesn’t march up to people’s houses and bang on their front doors, Harry,” said Sirius.

“He tricks, jinxes, and blackmails them.”

“He’s well-practiced at operating in secrecy.”

“In any case, gathering followers is only one thing he’s interested in, he’s got other plans too, plans he can put into operation very quietly indeed, and he’s concentrating on them at the moment.”

“What’s he after apart from followers?” Harry asked swiftly.

He thought he saw Sirius and Lupin exchange the most fleeting of looks before Sirius said, “Stuff he can only get by stealth.”

When Harry continued to look puzzled, Sirius said, “Like a weapon.”

“Something he didn’t have last time.”

“When he was powerful before?”

“Yes.”

“Like what kind of weapon?” said Harry.

“Something worse than the Avada Kedavra — ?”

“That’s enough.”

Mrs. Weasley spoke from the shadows beside the door.

Harry had not noticed her return from taking Ginny upstairs.

Her arms were crossed and she looked furious.

“I want you in bed, now. All of you,” she added, looking around at Fred, George, Ron, and Hermione.

“You can’t boss us —” Fred began.

“Watch me,” snarled Mrs. Weasley.

She was trembling slightly as she looked at Sirius.

“You’ve given Harry plenty of information.”

“Any more and you might just as well induct him into the Order straightaway.”

“Why not?” said Harry quickly.

“I’ll join, I want to join, I want to fight —”

“No.”

It was not Mrs. Weasley who spoke this time, but Lupin.

“The Order is comprised only of overage wizards,” he said.

“Wizards who have left school,” he added, as Fred and George opened their mouths.

“There are dangers involved of which you can have no idea, any of you . . . I think Molly’s right, Sirius.”

“We’ve said enough.”

Sirius half-shrugged but did not argue.

Mrs. Weasley beckoned imperiously to her sons and Hermione.

One by one they stood up and Harry, recognizing defeat, followed suit.

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CHAPTER VI. THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK

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Mrs. Weasley followed them upstairs looking grim.

“I want you all to go straight to bed, no talking,” she said as they reached the first landing.

“We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“I expect Ginny’s asleep,” she added to Hermione, “so try not to wake her up.”

“Asleep, yeah, right,” said Fred in an undertone, after Hermione bade them good night and they were climbing to the next floor.

“If Ginny’s not lying awake waiting for Hermione to tell her everything they said downstairs, then I’m a flobberworm...”

“All right, Ron, Harry,” said Mrs. Weasley on the second landing, pointing them into their bedroom.

“Off to bed with you.”

“’Night,” Harry and Ron said to the twins.

“Sleep tight,” said Fred, winking.

Mrs. Weasley closed the door behind Harry with a sharp snap.

The bedroom looked, if anything, even danker and gloomier than it had on first sight.

The blank picture on the wall was now breathing very slowly and deeply, as though its invisible occupant was asleep.

Harry put on his pajamas, took off his glasses, and climbed into his chilly bed while Ron threw Owl Treats up on top of the wardrobe to pacify Hedwig and Pigwidgeon, who were clattering around and rustling their wings restlessly.

“We can’t let them out to hunt every night,” Ron explained as he pulled on his maroon pajamas.

“Dumbledore doesn’t want too many owls swooping around the square, thinks it’ll look suspicious.”

“Oh yeah... I forgot...” He crossed to the door and bolted it.

“What’re you doing that for?”

“Kreacher,” said Ron as he turned off the light.

“First night I was here he came wandering in at three in the morning.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to wake up and find him prowling around your room.”

“Anyway...” He got into his bed, settled down under the covers, then turned to look at Harry in the darkness.

Harry could see his outline by the moonlight filtering in through the grimy window.

“What d’you reckon?”

Harry didn’t need to ask what Ron meant.

“Well, they didn’t tell us much we couldn’t have guessed, did they?” he said, thinking of all that had been said downstairs.

“I mean, all they’ve really said is that the Order’s trying to stop people joining Vol —”

There was a sharp intake of breath from Ron.

“— demort,” said Harry firmly.

“When are you going to start using his name?”

Sirius and Lupin do.”

Ron ignored this last comment.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

“We already knew nearly everything they told us, from using the Extendable Ears.”

“The only new bit was —”

Crack.

“OUCH!”

“Keep your voice down, Ron, or Mum’ll be back up here.”

“You two just Apparated on my knees!”

“Yeah, well, it’s harder in the dark —”

Harry saw the blurred outlines of Fred and George leaping down from Ron’s bed.

There was a groan of bedsprings and Harry’s mattress descended a few inches as George sat down near his feet.

“So, got there yet?” said George eagerly.

“The weapon Sirius mentioned?” said Harry.

“Let slip, more like,” said Fred with relish, now sitting next to Ron.

“We didn’t hear about that on the old Extendables, did we?”

“What d’you reckon it is?” said Harry.

“Could be anything,” said Fred.

“But there can’t be anything worse than the Avada Kedavra curse, can there?” said Ron.

“What’s worse than death?”

“Maybe it’s something that can kill loads of people at once,” suggested George.

“Maybe it’s some particularly painful way of killing people,” said Ron fearfully.

“He’s got the Cruciatus Curse for causing pain,” said Harry.

“He doesn’t need anything more efficient than that.”

There was a pause and Harry knew that the others, like him, were wondering what horrors this weapon could perpetrate.

“So who d’you think’s got it now?” asked George.

“I hope it’s our side,” said Ron, sounding slightly nervous.

“If it is, Dumbledore’s probably keeping it,” said Fred.

“Where?” said Ron quickly.

“Hogwarts?”

“Bet it is!” said George.

“That’s where he hid the Sorcerer’s Stone!”

“A weapon’s going to be a lot bigger than the Stone, though!” said Ron.

“Not necessarily,” said Fred.

“Yeah, size is no guarantee of power,” said George.

“Look at Ginny.”

“What d’you mean?” said Harry.

“You’ve never been on the receiving end of one of her Bat-Bogey Hexes, have you?”

“Shhh!” said Fred, half-rising from the bed.

“Listen!”

They fell silent.

Footsteps were coming up the stairs again.

“Mum,” said George, and without further ado there was a loud crack and Harry felt the weight vanish from the end of his bed.

A few seconds later and they heard the floorboard creak outside their door; Mrs. Weasley was plainly listening to see whether they were talking or not.

Hedwig and Pigwidgeon hooted dolefully.

The floorboard creaked again and they heard her heading upstairs to check on Fred and George.

“She doesn’t trust us at all, you know,” said Ron regretfully.

Harry was sure he would not be able to fall asleep; the evening had been so packed with things to think about that he fully expected to lie awake for hours mulling it all over.

He wanted to continue talking to Ron, but Mrs. Weasley was now creaking back downstairs again, and once she had gone he distinctly heard others making their way upstairs.

In fact, many-legged creatures were cantering softly up and down outside the bedroom door, and Hagrid, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, was saying, “Beauties, aren’t they, eh, Harry? We’ll be studyin’ weapons this term...”

And Harry saw that the creatures had cannons for heads and were wheeling to face him.

He ducked.

The next thing he knew, he was curled in a warm ball under his bedclothes, and George’s loud voice was filling the room.

“Mum says get up, your breakfast is in the kitchen and then she needs you in the drawing room, there are loads more doxies than she thought and she’s found a nest of dead puffskeins under the sofa.”

Half an hour later, Harry and Ron, who had dressed and breakfasted quickly, entered the drawing room, a long, high-ceilinged room on the first floor with olive-green walls covered in dirty tapestries.

The carpet exhaled little clouds of dust every time someone put their foot on it and the long, moss-green velvet curtains were buzzing as though swarming with invisible bees.

It was around these that Mrs. Weasley, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George were grouped, all looking rather peculiar, as they had tied cloths over their noses and mouths.

Each of them was also holding a large bottle of black liquid with a nozzle at the end.

“Cover your faces and take a spray,” Mrs. Weasley said to Harry and Ron the moment she saw them, pointing to two more bottles of black liquid standing on a spindle-legged table.

“It’s Doxycide.”

“I’ve never seen an infestation this bad — what that house-elf’s been doing for the last ten years —”

Hermione’s face was half concealed by a tea towel but Harry distinctly saw her throw a reproachful look at Mrs. Weasley at these words.

“Kreacher’s really old, he probably couldn’t manage —”

“You’d be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione,” said Sirius, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be dead rats.

“I’ve just been feeding Buckbeak,” he added, in reply to Harry’s inquiring look.

“I keep him upstairs in my mother’s bedroom.”

“Anyway... this writing desk...” He dropped the bag of rats onto an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which, Harry now noticed for the first time, was shaking slightly.

“Well, Molly, I’m pretty sure this is a boggart,” said Sirius, peering through the keyhole.

“But perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shifty at it before we let it out — knowing my mother it could be something much worse.”

“Right you are, Sirius,” said Mrs. Weasley.

They were both speaking in carefully light, polite voices that told Harry quite plainly that neither had forgotten their disagreement of the night before.

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A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails that had been triggered the previous night by Tonks knocking over the umbrella stand.

“I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!” said Sirius exasperatedly, hurrying back out of the room.

They heard him thundering down the stairs as Mrs. Black’s screeches echoed up through the house once more: “Stains of dishonor, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth...”

“Close the door, please, Harry,” said Mrs. Weasley.

Harry took as much time as he dared to close the drawing room door; he wanted to listen to what was going on downstairs.

Sirius had obviously managed to shut the curtains over his mother’s portrait because she had stopped screaming.

He heard Sirius walking down the hall, then the clattering of the chain on the front door, and then a deep voice he recognized as Kingsley Shacklebolt’s saying, “Hestia’s just relieved me, so she’s got Moody’s cloak now, thought I’d leave a report for Dumbledore . . .”

Feeling Mrs. Weasley’s eyes on the back of his head, Harry regretfully closed the drawing room door and rejoined the doxy party.

Mrs. Weasley was bending over to check the page on doxies in Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests, which was lying open on the sofa.

“Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because doxies bite and their teeth are poisonous. I’ve got a bottle of antidote here, but I’d rather nobody needed it.”

She straightened up, positioned herself squarely in front of the curtains, and beckoned them all forward.

“When I say the word, start spraying immediately,” she said. “They’ll come flying out at us, I expect, but it says on the sprays one good squirt will paralyze them. When they’re immobilized, just throw them in this bucket.”

She stepped carefully out of their line of fire and raised her own spray.

“All right — squirt!”

Harry had been spraying only a few seconds when a fully grown doxy came soaring out of a fold in the material, shiny beetlelike wings whirring, tiny needle-sharp teeth bared, its fairylike body covered with thick black hair and its four tiny fists clenched with fury.

Harry caught it full in the face with a blast of Doxycide; it froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud thunk, onto the worn carpet below.

Harry picked it up and threw it in the bucket.

“Fred, what are you doing?” said Mrs. Weasley sharply. “Spray that at once and throw it away!”

Harry looked around.

Fred was holding a struggling doxy between his forefinger and thumb.

“Right-o,” Fred said brightly, spraying the doxy quickly in the face so that it fainted, but the moment Mrs. Weasley’s back was turned he pocketed it with a wink.

“We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snackboxes,” George told Harry under his breath.

Deftly spraying two doxies at once as they soared straight for his nose, Harry moved closer to George and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “What are Skiving Snackboxes?”

“Range of sweets to make you ill,” George whispered, keeping a wary eye on Mrs. Weasley’s back. “Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. Fred and I have been developing them this summer. They’re double-ended, color-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastilles, you throw up. Moment you’ve been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half —”

“‘— which restores you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom.’ That’s what we’re putting in the adverts, anyway,” whispered Fred, who had edged over out of Mrs. Weasley’s line of vision and was now sweeping a few stray doxies from the floor and adding them to his pocket.

“But they still need a bit of work. At the moment our testers are having a bit of trouble stopping puking long enough to swallow the purple end.”

“Testers?”

“Us,” said Fred. “We take it in turns. George did the Fainting Fancies — we both tried the Nosebleed Nougat —”

“Mum thought we’d been dueling,” said George.

“Joke shop still on, then?” Harry muttered, pretending to be adjusting the nozzle on his spray.

“Well, we haven’t had a chance to get premises yet,” said Fred, dropping his voice even lower as Mrs. Weasley mopped her brow with her scarf before returning to the attack, “so we’re running it as a mail-order service at the moment. We put advertisements in the Daily Prophet last week.”

“All thanks to you, mate,” said George. “But don’t worry . . . Mum hasn’t got a clue. She won’t read the Daily Prophet anymore, ’cause of it telling lies about you and Dumbledore.”

Harry grinned.

He had forced the Weasley twins to take the thousand-Galleon prize money he had won in the Triwizard Tournament to help them realize their ambition to open a joke shop, but he was still glad to know that his part in furthering their plans was unknown to Mrs. Weasley, who did not think that running a joke shop was a suitable career for two of her sons.

The de-doxying of the curtains took most of the morning.

It was past midday when Mrs. Weasley finally removed her protective scarf, sank into a sagging armchair, and sprang up again with a cry of disgust, having sat on the bag of dead rats.

The curtains were no longer buzzing; they hung limp and damp from the intensive spraying; unconscious doxies lay crammed in the bucket at the foot of them beside a bowl of their black eggs, at which Crookshanks was now sniffing and Fred and George were shooting covetous looks.

“I think we’ll tackle those after lunch.”

Mrs. Weasley pointed at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece.

They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages Harry could not understand and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what Harry was quite sure was blood.

The clanging doorbell rang again.

Everyone looked at Mrs. Weasley.

“Stay here,” she said firmly, snatching up the bag of rats as Mrs. Black’s screeches started up again from down below.

“I’ll bring up some sandwiches.”

She left the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

At once, everyone dashed over to the window to look down onto the doorstep.

They could see the top of an unkempt gingery head and a stack of precariously balanced cauldrons.

“Mundungus!” said Hermione.

“What’s he brought all those cauldrons for?”

“Probably looking for a safe place to keep them,” said Harry. “Isn’t that what he was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing me? Picking up dodgy cauldrons?”

“Yeah, you’re right!” said Fred, as the front door opened; Mundungus heaved his cauldrons through it and disappeared from view.

“Blimey, Mum won’t like that . . .”

He and George crossed to the door and stood beside it, listening intently.

Mrs. Black’s screaming had stopped again.

“Mundungus is talking to Sirius and Kingsley,” Fred muttered, frowning with concentration. “Can’t hear properly . . . d’you reckon we can risk the Extendable Ears?”

“Might be worth it,” said George.

“I could sneak upstairs and get a pair —”

But at that precise moment there was an explosion of sound from downstairs that rendered Extendable Ears quite unnecessary.

All of them could hear exactly what Mrs. Weasley was shouting at the top of her voice.

“WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS!”

“I love hearing Mum shouting at someone else,” said Fred, with a satisfied smile on his face as he opened the door an inch or so to allow Mrs. Weasley’s voice to permeate the room better.

“It makes such a nice change.”

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“— COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE, AS IF WE HAVEN’T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING STOLEN CAULDRONS INTO THE HOUSE —”

“The idiots are letting her get into her stride,” said George, shaking his head.

“You’ve got to head her off early, otherwise she builds up a head of steam and goes on for hours. And she’s been dying to have a go at Mundungus ever since he sneaked off when he was supposed to be following you, Harry — and there goes Sirius’s mum again —”

Mrs. Weasley’s voice was lost amid fresh shrieks and screams from the portraits in the hall.

George made to shut the door to drown the noise, but before he could do so, a house-elf edged into the room.

Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked.

It looked very old.

Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it and though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, batlike ears.

Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery gray, and its fleshy nose was large and rather snoutlike.

The elf took absolutely no notice of Harry and the rest.

Acting as though it could not see them, it shuffled hunchbacked, slowly and doggedly, toward the far end of the room, muttering under its breath all the while in a hoarse, deep voice like a bullfrog’s, “. . . Smells like a drain and a criminal to boot, but she’s no better, nasty old blood traitor with her brats messing up my Mistress’s house, oh my poor Mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they’ve let in her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh the shame of it, Mudbloods and werewolves and traitors and thieves, poor old Kreacher, what can he do . . .”

“Hello, Kreacher,” said Fred very loudly, closing the door with a snap.

The house-elf froze in his tracks, stopped muttering, and then gave a very pronounced and very unconvincing start of surprise.

“Kreacher did not see Young Master,” he said, turning around and bowing to Fred.

Still facing the carpet, he added, perfectly audibly, “Nasty little brat of a blood traitor it is.”

“Sorry?” said George. “Didn’t catch that last bit.”

“Kreacher said nothing,” said the elf, with a second bow to George, adding in a clear undertone, “and there’s its twin, unnatural little beasts they are.”

Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

The elf straightened up, eyeing them all very malevolently, and apparently convinced that they could not hear him as he continued to mutter.

“. . . and there’s the Mudblood, standing there bold as brass, oh if my Mistress knew, oh how she’d cry, and there’s a new boy, Kreacher doesn’t know his name, what is he doing here, Kreacher doesn’t know . . .”

“This is Harry, Kreacher,” said Hermione tentatively. “Harry Potter.”

Kreacher’s pale eyes widened and he muttered faster and more furiously than ever.

“The Mudblood is talking to Kreacher as though she is my friend, if Kreacher’s Mistress saw him in such company, oh what would she say —”

“Don’t call her a Mudblood!” said Ron and Ginny together, very angrily.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hermione whispered, “he’s not in his right mind, he doesn’t know what he’s —”

“Don’t kid yourself, Hermione, he knows exactly what he’s saying,” said Fred, eyeing Kreacher with great dislike.

Kreacher was still muttering, his eyes on Harry.

“Is it true? Is it Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, that’s that boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it —”

“Don’t we all, Kreacher?” said Fred.

“What do you want anyway?” George asked.

Kreacher’s huge eyes darted onto George.

“Kreacher is cleaning,” he said evasively.

“A likely story,” said a voice behind Harry.

Sirius had come back; he was glowering at the elf from the doorway. The noise in the hall had abated; perhaps Mrs. Weasley and Mundungus had moved their argument down into the kitchen. At the sight of Sirius, Kreacher flung himself into a ridiculously low bow that flattened his snoutlike nose on the floor.

“Stand up straight,” said Sirius impatiently. “Now, what are you up to?”

“Kreacher is cleaning,” the elf repeated. “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black —”

“— and it’s getting blacker every day, it’s filthy,” said Sirius.

“Master always liked his little joke,” said Kreacher, bowing again, and continuing in an undertone, “Master was a nasty ungrateful swine who broke his mother’s heart —”

“My mother didn’t have a heart, Kreacher,” Sirius snapped. “She kept herself alive out of pure spite.”

Kreacher bowed again and said, “Whatever Master says,” then muttered furiously, “Master is not fit to wipe slime from his mother’s boots, oh my poor Mistress, what would she say if she saw Kreacher serving him, how she hated him, what a disappointment he was —”

“I asked you what you were up to,” said Sirius coldly. “Every time you show up pretending to be cleaning, you sneak something off to your room so we can’t throw it out.”

“Kreacher would never move anything from its proper place in Master’s house,” said the elf, then muttered very fast, “Mistress would never forgive Kreacher if the tapestry was thrown out, seven centuries it’s been in the family, Kreacher must save it, Kreacher will not let Master and the blood traitors and the brats destroy it —”

“I thought it might be that,” said Sirius, casting a disdainful look at the opposite wall. “She’ll have put another Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of it, I don’t doubt, but if I can get rid of it I certainly will. Now go away, Kreacher.”

It seemed that Kreacher did not dare disobey a direct order; nevertheless, the look he gave Sirius as he shuffled out past him was redolent of deepest loathing and he muttered all the way out of the room.

“— comes back from Azkaban ordering Kreacher around, oh my poor Mistress, what would she say if she saw the house now, scum living in it, her treasures thrown out, she swore he was no son of hers and he’s back, they say he’s a murderer too —”

“Keep muttering and I will be a murderer!” said Sirius irritably, and he slammed the door shut on the elf.

“Sirius, he’s not right in the head,” said Hermione pleadingly, “I don’t think he realizes we can hear him.”

“He’s been alone too long,” said Sirius, “taking mad orders from my mother’s portrait and talking to himself, but he was always a foul little —”

“If you just set him free,” said Hermione hopefully, “maybe —”

“We can’t set him free, he knows too much about the Order,” said Sirius curtly. “And anyway, the shock would kill him. You suggest to him that he leaves this house, see how he takes it.”

Sirius walked across the room, where the tapestry Kreacher had been trying to protect hung the length of the wall. Harry and the others followed.

The tapestry looked immensely old; it was faded and looked as though doxies had gnawed it in places; nevertheless, the golden thread with which it was embroidered still glinted brightly enough to show them a sprawling family tree dating back (as far as Harry could tell) to the Middle Ages. Large words at the very top of the tapestry read:

THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK

“TOUJOURS PUR”

“You’re not on here!” said Harry, after scanning the bottom of the tree.

“I used to be there,” said Sirius, pointing at a small, round, charred hole in the tapestry, rather like a cigarette burn. “My sweet old mother blasted me off after I ran away from home — Kreacher’s quite fond of muttering the story under his breath.”

“You ran away from home?”

“When I was about sixteen,” said Sirius. “I’d had enough.”

“Where did you go?” asked Harry, staring at him.

“Your dad’s place,” said Sirius. “Your grandparents were really good about it; they sort of adopted me as a second son. Yeah, I camped out at your dad’s during the school holidays, and then when I was seventeen I got a place of my own, my Uncle Alphard had left me a decent bit of gold — he’s been wiped off here too, that’s probably why — anyway, after that I looked after myself. I was always welcome at Mr. and Mrs. Potter’s for Sunday lunch, though.”

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“But . . . why did you . . . ?”

“Leave?” Sirius smiled bitterly and ran a hand through his long, unkempt hair. “Because I hated the whole lot of them: my parents, with their pureblood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal . . . my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them . . . that’s him.”

Sirius jabbed a finger at the very bottom of the tree, at the name REGULUS BLACK. A date of death (some fifteen years previously) followed the date of birth.

“He was younger than me,” said Sirius, “and a much better son, as I was constantly reminded.”

“But he died,” said Harry.

“Yeah,” said Sirius. “Stupid idiot . . . he joined the Death Eaters.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Come on, Harry, haven’t you seen enough of this house to tell what kind of wizards my family were?” said Sirius testily.

“Were — were your parents Death Eaters as well?”

“No, no, but believe me, they thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the Wizarding race, getting rid of Muggleborns and having purebloods in charge. They weren’t alone either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colors, who thought he had the right idea about things. . . . They got cold feet when they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet my parents thought Regulus was a right little hero for joining up at first.”

“Was he killed by an Auror?” Harry asked tentatively.

“Oh no,” said Sirius. “No, he was murdered by Voldemort. Or on Voldemort’s orders, more likely, I doubt Regulus was ever important enough to be killed by Voldemort in person. From what I found out after he died, he got in so far, then panicked about what he was being asked to do and tried to back out. Well, you don’t just hand in your resignation to Voldemort. It’s a lifetime of service or death.”

“Lunch,” said Mrs. Weasley’s voice.

She was holding her wand high in front of her, balancing a huge tray loaded with sandwiches and cake on its tip. She was very red in the face and still looked angry. The others moved over to her, eager for some food, but Harry remained with Sirius, who had bent closer to the tapestry.

“I haven’t looked at this for years. There’s Phineas Nigellus . . . my great-great-grandfather, see? Least popular headmaster Hogwarts ever had . . . and Araminta Meliflua . . . cousin of my mother’s . . . tried to force through a Ministry Bill to make Muggle-hunting legal . . . and dear Aunt Elladora . . . she started the family tradition of beheading house-elves when they got too old to carry tea trays . . . of course, anytime the family produced someone halfway decent they were disowned. I see Tonks isn’t on here. Maybe that’s why Kreacher won’t take orders from her — he’s supposed to do whatever anyone in the family asks him . . .”

“You and Tonks are related?” Harry asked, surprised.

“Oh yeah, her mother, Andromeda, was my favorite cousin,” said Sirius, examining the tapestry carefully. “No, Andromeda’s not on here either, look —”

He pointed to another small round burn mark between two names, Bellatrix and Narcissa.

“Andromeda’s sisters are still here because they made lovely, respectable pure-blood marriages, but Andromeda married a Muggle-born, Ted Tonks, so —”

Sirius mimed blasting the tapestry with a wand and laughed sourly. Harry, however, did not laugh; he was too busy staring at the names to the right of Andromeda’s burn mark. A double line of gold embroidery linked Narcissa Black with Lucius Malfoy, and a single vertical gold line from their names led to the name Draco.

“You’re related to the Malfoys!”

“The pure-blood families are all interrelated,” said Sirius. “If you’re only going to let your sons and daughters marry purebloods your choice is very limited, there are hardly any of us left. Molly and I are cousins by marriage and Arthur’s something like my second cousin once removed. But there’s no point looking for them on here — if ever a family was a bunch of blood traitors it’s the Weasleys.”

But Harry was now looking at the name to the left of Andromeda’s burn: Bellatrix Black, which was connected by a double line to Rodolphus Lestrange.

“Lestrange . . .” Harry said aloud. The name had stirred something in his memory; he knew it from somewhere, but for a moment he couldn’t think where, though it gave him an odd, creeping sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“They’re in Azkaban,” said Sirius shortly.

Harry looked at him curiously.

“Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus came in with Barty Crouch, Junior,” said Sirius in the same brusque voice. “Rodolphus’s brother, Rabastan, was with them too.”

And Harry remembered: He had seen Bellatrix Lestrange inside Dumbledore’s Pensieve, the strange device in which thoughts and memories could be stored: a tall dark woman with heavy-lidded eyes, who had stood at her trial and proclaimed her continuing allegiance to Lord Voldemort, her pride that she had tried to find him after his downfall and her conviction that she would one day be rewarded for her loyalty.

“You never said she was your —”

“Does it matter if she’s my cousin?” snapped Sirius. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re not my family. She’s certainly not my family. I haven’t seen her since I was your age, unless you count a glimpse of her coming in to Azkaban. D’you think I’m proud of having relatives like her?”

“Sorry,” said Harry quickly, “I didn’t mean — I was just surprised, that’s all —”

“It doesn’t matter, don’t apologize,” Sirius mumbled at once.

He turned away from the tapestry, his hands deep in his pockets.

“I don’t like being back here,” he said, staring across the drawing room. “I never thought I’d be stuck in this house again.”

Harry understood completely.

He knew how he would feel if forced, when he was grown up and thought he was free of the place forever, to return and live at number four, Privet Drive.

“It’s ideal for headquarters, of course,” Sirius said.

“My father put every security measure known to Wizard-kind on it when he lived here. It’s Unplottable, so Muggles could never come and call — as if they’d have wanted to — and now Dumbledore’s added his protection, you’d be hard put to find a safer house anywhere.

Dumbledore’s Secret-Keeper for the Order, you know — nobody can find headquarters unless he tells them personally where it is — that note Moody showed you last night, that was from Dumbledore . . .”

Sirius gave a short, barklike laugh.

“If my parents could see the use it was being put to now . . . well, my mother’s portrait should give you some idea . . .”

He scowled for a moment, then sighed.

“I wouldn’t mind if I could just get out occasionally and do something useful.

I’ve asked Dumbledore whether I can escort you to your hearing — as Snuffles, obviously — so I can give you a bit of moral support, what d’you think?”

Harry felt as though his stomach had sunk through the dusty carpet.

He had not thought about the hearing once since dinner the previous evening; in the excitement of being back with the people he liked best, of hearing everything that was going on, it had completely flown his mind.

At Sirius’s words, however, the crushing sense of dread returned to him.

He stared at Hermione and the Weasleys, all tucking into their sandwiches, and thought how he would feel if they went back to Hogwarts without him.

“Don’t worry,” Sirius said.

Harry looked up and realized that Sirius had been watching him.

“I’m sure they’re going to clear you, there’s definitely something in the International Statute of Secrecy about being allowed to use magic to save your own life.”

“But if they do expel me,” said Harry, quietly, “can I come back here and live with you?”

Sirius smiled sadly.

“We’ll see.”

“I’d feel a lot better about the hearing if I knew I didn’t have to go back to the Dursleys,” Harry pressed him.

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“They must be bad if you prefer this place,” said Sirius gloomily.

“Hurry up, you two, or there won’t be any food left,” Mrs. Weasley called.

Sirius heaved another great sigh, cast a dark look at the tapestry, and he and Harry went to join the others.

Harry tried his best not to think about the hearing while they emptied the glass cabinets that afternoon.

Fortunately for him, it was a job that required a lot of concentration, as many of the objects in there seemed very reluctant to leave their dusty shelves.

Sirius sustained a bad bite from a silver snuffbox; within seconds, his bitten hand had developed an unpleasant crusty covering like a tough brown glove.

“It’s okay,” he said, examining the hand with interest before tapping it lightly with his wand and restoring its skin to normal, “must be Wartcap powder in there.”

He threw the box aside into the sack where they were depositing the debris from the cabinets; Harry saw George wrap his own hand carefully in a cloth moments later and sneak the box into his already doxy-filled pocket.

They found an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up Harry’s arm like a spider when he picked it up, and attempted to puncture his skin; Sirius seized it and smashed it with a heavy book entitled Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy.

There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister, tinkling tune when wound, and they all found themselves becoming curiously weak and sleepy until Ginny had the sense to slam the lid shut; also a heavy locket that none of them could open, a number of ancient seals and, in a dusty box, an Order of Merlin, First Class, that had been awarded to Sirius’s grandfather for “Services to the Ministry.”

“It means he gave them a load of gold,” said Sirius contemptuously, throwing the medal into the rubbish sack.

Several times, Kreacher sidled into the room and attempted to smuggle things away under his loincloth, muttering horrible curses every time they caught him at it.

When Sirius wrested a large golden ring bearing the Black crest from his grip Kreacher actually burst into furious tears and left the room sobbing under his breath and calling Sirius names Harry had never heard before.

“It was my father’s,” said Sirius, throwing the ring into the sack.

“Kreacher wasn’t quite as devoted to him as to my mother, but I still caught him snogging a pair of my father’s old trousers last week.”

Mrs. Weasley kept them all working very hard over the next few days.

The drawing room took three days to decontaminate; finally the only undesirable things left in it were the tapestry of the Black family tree, which resisted all their attempts to remove it from the wall, and the rattling writing desk; Moody had not dropped by headquarters yet, so they could not be sure what was inside it.

They moved from the drawing room to a dining room on the ground floor where they found spiders large as saucers lurking in the dresser (Ron left the room hurriedly to make a cup of tea and did not return for an hour and a half).

The china, which bore the Black crest and motto, was all thrown unceremoniously into a sack by Sirius, and the same fate met a set of old photographs in tarnished silver frames, all of whose occupants squealed shrilly as the glass covering them smashed.

Snape might refer to their work as “cleaning,” but in Harry’s opinion they were really waging war on the house, which was putting up a very good fight, aided and abetted by Kreacher.

The house-elf kept appearing wherever they were congregated, his muttering becoming more and more offensive as he attempted to remove anything he could from the rubbish sacks.

Sirius went as far as to threaten him with clothes, but Kreacher fixed him with a watery stare and said, “Master must do as Master wishes,” before turning away and muttering very loudly, “but Master will not turn Kreacher away, no, because Kreacher knows what they are up to, oh yes, he is plotting against the Dark Lord, yes, with these Mudbloods and traitors and scum . . .”

At which Sirius, ignoring Hermione’s protests, seized Kreacher by the back of his loincloth and threw him bodily from the room.

The doorbell rang several times a day, which was the cue for Sirius’s mother to start shrieking again, and for Harry and the others to attempt to eavesdrop on the visitor, though they gleaned very little from the brief glimpses and snatches of conversation they were able to sneak before Mrs. Weasley recalled them to their tasks.

Snape flitted in and out of the house several times more, though to Harry’s relief they never came face-to-face; he also caught sight of his Transfiguration teacher, Professor McGonagall, looking very odd in a Muggle dress and coat, though she also seemed too busy to linger.

Sometimes, however, the visitors stayed to help; Tonks joined them for a memorable afternoon in which they found a murderous old ghoul lurking in an upstairs toilet, and Lupin, who was staying in the house with Sirius but who left it for long periods to do mysterious work for the Order, helped them repair a grandfather clock that had developed the unpleasant habit of shooting heavy bolts at passersby.

Mundungus redeemed himself slightly in Mrs. Weasley’s eyes by rescuing Ron from an ancient set of purple robes that had tried to strangle him when he removed them from their wardrobe.

Despite the fact that he was still sleeping badly, still having dreams about corridors and locked doors that made his scar prickle, Harry was managing to have fun for the first time all summer.

As long as he was busy he was happy; when the action abated, however, whenever he dropped his guard, or lay exhausted in bed watching blurred shadows move across the ceiling, the thought of the looming Ministry hearing returned to him.

Fear jabbed at his insides like needles as he wondered what was going to happen to him if he was expelled.

The idea was so terrible that he did not dare voice it aloud, not even to Ron and Hermione, who, though he often saw them whispering together and casting anxious looks in his direction, followed his lead in not mentioning it.

Sometimes he could not prevent his imagination showing him a faceless Ministry official who was snapping his wand in two and ordering him back to the Dursleys’ . . . but he would not go.

He was determined on that.

He would come back here to Grimmauld Place and live with Sirius.

He felt as though a brick had dropped into his stomach when Mrs. Weasley turned to him during dinner on Wednesday evening and said quietly, “I’ve ironed your best clothes for tomorrow morning, Harry, and I want you to wash your hair tonight too. A good first impression can work wonders.”

Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Ginny all stopped talking and looked over at him.

Harry nodded and tried to keep eating his chops, but his mouth had become so dry he could not chew.

“How am I getting there?” he asked Mrs. Weasley, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Arthur’s taking you to work with him,” said Mrs. Weasley gently.

Mr. Weasley smiled encouragingly at Harry across the table.

“You can wait in my office until it’s time for the hearing,” he said.

Harry looked over at Sirius, but before he could ask the question, Mrs. Weasley had answered it.

“Professor Dumbledore doesn’t think it’s a good idea for Sirius to go with you, and I must say I —”

“— think he’s quite right,” said Sirius through clenched teeth.

Mrs. Weasley pursed her lips.

“When did Dumbledore tell you that?” Harry said, staring at Sirius.

“He came last night, when you were in bed,” said Mr. Weasley.

Sirius stabbed moodily at a potato with his fork.

Harry dropped his own eyes to his plate.

The thought that Dumbledore had been in the house on the eve of his hearing and not asked to see him made him feel, if that were possible, even worse.