“Look…” he muttered, but Ron shook his head, and Hermione said quietly, “We knew you’d be angry, Harry, we really don’t blame you, but you’ve got to understand, we did try to persuade Dumbledore—”
“Yeah, I know,” said Harry shortly.
He cast around for a topic that didn’t involve his headmaster, because the very thought of Dumbledore made Harry’s insides burn with anger again.
“Who’s Kreacher?” he asked.
“The house-elf who lives here,” said Ron. “Nutter. Never met one like him.”
Hermione frowned at Ron.
“He’s not anutter, Ron.”
“His life’s ambition is to have his head cut off and stuck up on a plaque just like his mother,” said Ron irritably. “Is that normal, Hermione?”
“Well—well, if he is a bit strange, it’s not his fault.”
Ron rolled his eyes at Harry.
“Hermione still hasn’t given up on SPEW—”
“It’s not SPEW!” said Hermione heatedly. “It’s the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. And it’s not just me, Dumbledore says we should be kind to Kreacher too.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Ron. “C’mon, I’m starving.”
He led the way out of the door and on to the landing, but before they could descend the stairs—
“Hold it!” Ron breathed, flinging out an arm to stop Harry and Hermione walking any further. “They’re still in the hall, we might be able to hear something.”
The three of them looked cautiously over the banisters. The gloomy hallway below was packed with witches and wizards, including all of Harry’s guard. They were whispering excitedly together. In the very centre of the group Harry saw the dark, greasy-haired head and prominent nose of his least favourite teacher at Hogwarts, Professor Snape. Harry leant further over the banisters. He was very interested in what Snape was doing for the Order of the Phoenix…
A thin piece of flesh-coloured string descended in front of Harry’s eyes. Looking up, he saw Ered and George on the landing above, cautiously lowering the Extendable Ear towards the dark knot of people below. A moment later, however, they all began to move towards the front door and out of sight.
“Dammit,” Harry heard Fred whisper, as he hoisted the Extendable Ear back up again.
They heard the front door open, then close.
“Snape never eats here,” Ron told Harry quietly. “Thank God. C’mon.”
“And don’t forget to keep your voice down in the hall, Harry,” Hermione whispered.
As they passed the row of house-elf heads on the wall, they saw Lupin, Mrs. Weasley and Tonks at the front door, magically sealing its many locks and bolts behind those who had just left.
“We’re eating down in the kitchen,” Mrs. Weasley whispered, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs. “Harry, dear, if you’ll just tiptoe across the hall, it’s through this door here—”
CRASH.
“Tonks!” cried Mrs. Weasley in exasperation, turning to look behind her.
“I’m sorry!” wailed Tonks, who was lying flat on the floor. “It’s that stupid umbrella stand, that’s the second time I’ve tripped over—”
But the rest of her words were drowned by a horrible, ear-splitting, blood-curdling screech.
The moth-eaten velvet curtains Harry had passed earlier had flown apart, but there was no door behind them. For a split second, Harry thought he was looking through a window, a window behind which an old woman in a black cap was screaming and screaming as though she were being tortured—then he realised it was simply a life-size portrait, but the most realistic, and the most unpleasant, he had ever seen in his life.
The old woman was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed; and all along the hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell, too, so that Harry actually screwed up his eyes at the noise and clapped his hands over his ears.
Lupin and Mrs. Weasley darted forward and tried to tug the curtains shut over the old woman, but they would not close and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though trying to tear at their faces.
“Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers—”
Tonks apologized over and over again, dragging the huge, heavy troll’s leg back off the floor; Mrs. Weasley abandoned the attempt to close the curtains and hurried up and down the hall, stunning all the other portraits with her wand; and a man with long black hair came charging out of a door facing Harry.
“Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!” he roared, seizing the curtain Mrs. Weasley had abandoned.
The old woman’s face blanched.
“Yoooou!” she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man. “Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!”
“I said—shut—UP!” roared the man, and with a stupendous effort he and Lupin managed to force the curtains closed again.
The old woman’s screeches died and an echoing silence fell. Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes, Harry’s godfather Sirius turned to face him.
“Hello, Harry,” he said grimly, “I see you’ve met my mother.”
5. THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
“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 steps 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 them, 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 toppling a candle on to 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.