Dark

Chapter 40

Harry
I had been dreaming of strange creatures cantering up and down the staircase outside of my and Ron’s room. They had canons for heads and Hagrid had suddenly appeared to explain that we would be studying them this term. As they wheeled to face me I ducked down, but it was all for nothing. At that same moment, the voice of one of the Weasley twins woke me, and I found myself groggily tangled in the warm blankets atop my bed.
“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.”
It was a half hour later that Ron and I finally made it to the drawing room. It was on the first floor and as we walked over the threshold I noticed the high ceiling and olive-green walls. The room seemed to be covered in tapestries. Little clouds of dust were expelled into the air with each step we took over the old carpet. Mrs. Weasley, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George were all grouped around a set of moss-green velvet curtains, wearing cloths over their noses and mouths. Situating myself between Fred and Hermione I noticed the pecular buzz that seemed to be coming from the curatins.
“Cover your faces and take a spray,” Mrs. Weasley directed Ron and I. “It’s Doxycide. I’ve never seen an infestation this bad – what that house-elf’s been doing for the last ten years –“
Even though Hermione’s face was mostly concealed behind a rag, I noticed the reproachful look she gave Mrs. Weasley.
I hadn’t met Kreacher yet, but according to Ron he was foul.
“Kreacher’s really old, he probably couldn’t manage –“
“You’d be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to Hermione,” Sirius said as he entered the room, carrying a blood stained bag of what appeared to be dead rats. “I’ve just been feeding Buckbeak,” he added, in reply to my inquiring look. “I keep him upstairs in my mother’s bedroom. Anyway…this writing desk…”
Sirius dropped the bag to the floor and bent down to examine a cabinet in the desk. It wasn’t until now that I noticed it was shaking slightly.
“Well, Molly, I’m pretty sure this is a boggart. 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 had both been particularly polite to each other all morning. It was obvious though that neither of them had forgotten the argument that had taken place the night before. As much as my heart warmed at Mrs. Weasley’s mention of me being as good as a son to her, I still didn’t feel it was fair to keep me in the dark after everything that’s happened.
Once Sirius had left the room, we lined up before the curtains.
“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.” Mrs. Weasley pocketed a small bottle into her apron before squaring herself up to the curtains with the rest of us. “When I say the word, start spraying immediately. 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. All right – squirt!”
As we began to spray the creatures soared out from the folds of fabric. A fully grown doxy came straight toward me, its shiny beetlelike wings whirring and its needle-sharp teeth bared. I sprayed at it directly and it seem to freeze in midair before falling with a surprisingly loud thunk onto the worn carpet below.
“Fred, what are you doing?” Mrs. Weasley asked sharply. “Spray that at once and throw it away!”
I turned to see Fred holding a struggling doxy between his forefinger and thumb.
“Right-o,” he said brightly, spraying the doxy in the face. As it fainted, he pocketed the creature with a wink to me.
“We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snackboxes,” George told me under his breath.
“What are Skiving Snackboxes?” I asked.
“Range of sweets to make you ill,” George whispered, keeping a wary eye on Mrs. Weasley. “Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of 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,” Fred whispered, 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,” Fred said. “We take it in turns. George did the Fainting Fancies – we both tried the Nosebleed Nougat –“
“Mum thought we’d been dueling,” George jumped in.
“Joke shop still on, then?” I asked.
“Well, we haven’t had a chance to get premises yet,” Fred said, 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. 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.” George said. He looked over his shoulder to check that Mrs. Weasley was still preoccupied with the doxies before turning to me again, his expression more serious. “You’re sure that Eleanor doesn’t want the money though?”
“I’m sure.” I said. “I told you, I tried to give it to her but she just gave it back.”
“All right.” George said. “I’m sorry by the way…I wish we knew where she was. Mum was livid when she found out she was missing. Said she should have been sent straight to us in the first place rather than that orphanage.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I nodded at George and we returned to spraying the doxies. Once again though, all that was on my mind was Eleanor. Dumbledore had someone tailing me constantly while I was at the Dursleys, but he didn’t bother to have anyone keep an eye on Eleanor. If he’d done the same for her, then at least we’d know where she was right now. I just hoped that she wasn’t out on the streets again.
The de-doxying of the curtains took most of the morning. Once the task had finally been completed, however, Mrs. Weasley left to fix up sandwiches for lunch. It was as the rest of us were untying the rags from around our faces that a house-elf edged into the room.
The elf was only clothed with a filthy loincloth around its middle. It was very old, and its skin seemed to be several times too big for it. Though it was bald like all the other house-elves I had encountered, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, batlike ears.
He took no notice of us as he shuffled through the room and muttered under his breath, “…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,” Fred said loudly, closing the door with a snap.
The house-elf froze in his tracks and stopped muttering for a moment.
“Kreacher did not see Young Master,” he said, turning and bowing to Fred. “Nastly little brat of a blood traitor it is.”
“Sorry?” George said. “Didn’t catch that last bit.”
“Kreacher said nothing…and there’s its twin, unnatural little beasts they are.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. The elf seemed completely convinced that we couldn’t hear him muttering insults.
“…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,” Hermione said tentatively. “Harry Potter.”
“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!” Ron and Ginny said 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,” Fred said, glaring down at the elf.
After lunch, we took to cleaning out a large set of dusty cabinets filled with strange things. We came across an unpleasant-looking silver instrument, something like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scuttled up my arm like a spider when I picked it up. When it attempted to puncture my skin, Sirius smashed it with a large book. There was a musical box that emitted a faintly sinister tune when wound, and we all found ourselves growing weak and sleepy as the music played. Thankfully Ginny had the sense to slam the lid closed and quickly throw it out. There was also a heavy locket that none of us could open, a number of ancient seals, and in a dusty box was an Order of Merlin, First Class that had been awarded to Sirius’ grandfather for “Services to the Ministry.”
Several times, Kreacher snuck back into the room and attempted to carry off one of the discarded items.
For three whole days, that was how we spent our time. Getting up early to clean all day, usually followed by a dinner in which various Order members joined us. It wasn’t exactly fun to banish dangerous items and creatures from the home, but anything was better than being stuck at the Dursleys.

Sirius
The meetings were starting to simply blur together. It’s the same thing each time: the same reports, the same concerns, the same everything. Another thing that never seems to change is the news about Eleanor. She’s still missing. No one seems to be able to find her, and it’s been weeks. She could practically be anywhere by now.
I should have insisted after the tournament that I stay with Harry and Eleanor. I should have been there with them as they recovered in the hospital wing. I should have been there at Eleanor’s bedside when she woke up. I know the Order needed to come first, I know the importance of every little part that each of us plays in this thing, but I can’t help but feel that I still should have insisted. At the very least I should have made certain that Dumbledore wouldn’t allow Eleanor to go back to that orphanage. We knew she was abused there. To what real extent, we may never truly understand, but we know enough to be certain that no child should be left there if they have somewhere else to go.
I should have done something more. But I didn’t, and now she’s missing.
I looked up as the kitchen door opened, the kids began to file in, taking seats around the elongated table. As I shifted my gaze, I noticed that Tonks had already taken the seat across from me.
“Who’s out there looking for Eleanor tonight?” I asked her.
“Remus and Arthur, I believe.” Tonks answered quietly. “They’re trying a different portion of the city tonight, hoping that maybe if she’s on the streets she’ll be somewhere around there.”
I didn’t want to picture it. Eleanor, alone and hungry on the streets. I knew too well what it was like to try to survive on your own when you couldn’t trust anyone, when you couldn’t have a job, when you couldn’t have anything. How would she feed herself, how would find somewhere safe to sleep? I had to banish the questions from my mind because it was too much to think about, too painful to consider.
“You’re still looking for Eleanor then?” I turned to find Harry pulling out the chair next to me. He really did have James’ hair, jet black and always a mess. It was almost strange how much he looked like James. “Of course we are, Harry.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to reassure him without words that it would eventually be all right. The problem though, was that I didn’t feel sure of it myself.
“We’ve been looking day and night. We’ll find her soon, Harry. I’m sure of it.” Tonks said, smiling gently in Harry’s direction.
As usual, the food was good, and the company was better. We all sat around the kitchen, eating and talking, attempting to feel as normal as we could manage in such a dark time.
“I’ve been wondering…” Harry said slowly, thinking over his words carefully. “Do you think the orphanage may have kicked Eleanor out again?”
“We’re not sure.” I said. “That was the first place Dumbledore sent Order members to check for her. The staff just said that she wasn’t there and shut the doors though. They wouldn’t give any further explanation.”
“Wait, Eleanor’s been kicked out of the orphanage before?”
I looked up to find one of the twins eyeing us, his brows scrunched in confusion or concern. Possibly both.
“According to Eleanor, it’s something they do pretty often to the kids they don’t like to deal with.” Harry said quietly, trying to avoiding drawing anyone else’s attention.
Not for the first time I found myself wondering what Dumbledore could have been thinking. How could he have allowed her to go back there? How could he have done nothing to step in and place her somewhere that she would be safe? How could I have not done something more either? I felt as though I would never stop asking myself that question.

Harry
“Wait, so you and Tonks are related?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, her mother, Andromeda, was my favorite cousin.” Sirius said casually. “Andromeda’s sisters though, not so much. Bellatrix was always insane to be honest, and Narcissa married Lucius, so there you go.”
“You’re related to the Malfoys?” I said incredulously.
“The pureblood families are all interrelated.” Sirius answered. “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.”
Suddenly there was a loud bang and everyone’s head turned toward the kitchen door which had just gone flying open and crashing against the wall. Lupin was walking over the threshold, carrying someone in his arms. She was so bruised and covered in blood that I nearly couldn’t recognize her. It was the long black hair that had made me sure though. It was definitely Eleanor.
Mr. Weasley came rushing into the kitchen after Lupin and nearly shouting as called out, “Everyone get up, move away from the table!”
Mrs. Weasley had jumped up and was already beginning to usher Ginny and Ron from the room. I watched on, horrified as Mr. Weasley pushed plates and cups from the table and Lupin laid Eleanor down. I could hardly believe it was her, I didn’t want to believe that it was her. She looked completely broken, beaten nearly to death from the looks of her.
A strong hand had taken hold of my arm and was pulling me away from the table. I finally looked up to see Mrs. Weasley had swept the twins and Hermione from the room as well and she was now pulling me along with her.
“Go upstairs, Harry. We’ll take care of her.” Mrs. Weasley said quickly, pushing me from the room and quickly closing the door.
I didn’t move, I just stood there. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be hurt again.
“Harry?” Hermione’s timid voice barely broke through the sudden fogginess in my brain. “Harry, come on.”
I felt her hand in mine and allowed myself to be pulled away from the kitchen door and up the stairs. By the time I was being gently pushed down to sit on something, we were back in my and Ron’s room. I looked down to see that Hermione had led me to my bed. She had taken a seat on the other side, and Ron was across from us, situated at the end of his own bed. We all simply looked at each other, unsure of what to say.
Hermione’s eyes were watery, and Ron was fiddling anxiously with a loose string on his comforter.
“What…what do you think could have happened?” Ron asked after minutes of silence.
“It looks as though someone beat her.” Hermione said, her voice cracking.
We sat there for hours, waiting for some sort of news, but nothing came. Eventually Hermione wandered off to the room she was sharing with Ginny.
“She’ll be all right, Harry.” Ron said, as he crossed the room. “She’s strong.”
With that he flicked the light switch, and we were plunged into darkness. I tried to sleep, but it never did come.