The Other Black - Book 7

Chapter 8 - Kreacher's Tale

Aurora woke early next morning, wrapped in a sleeping bag on the drawing room floor. She'd had yet another dream, yet another name to add to her list. A chink of sky was visible between the heavy curtains. It was the cool, clear blue of watered ink, somewhere between night and dawn, and everything was quiet except for Ron, Harry, and Hermione's slow, deep breathing. Aurora glanced over at the dark shapes they made on the floor beside her. Ron had had a fit of gallantry and insisted that Hermione sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm curved to the floor, her fingers inches from Ron's. Aurora wondered whether they had fallen asleep holding hands. Harry was turned, facing away from her, and Aurora laid back on her back.

She looked up at the shadowy ceiling, the cobwebbed chandelier. Less than twenty-four house ago, she had been standing in the sunlight at the entrance to the marquee, waiting to show in wedding guests. It seemed a lifetime away. What was going to happen now? She lay on the floor and he thought of the Horcruxes, of the daunting complex mission Dumbledore had left Harry... the mission that Aurora, Ron, and Hermione had all hardly missed a beat in joining.

Aurora pushed herself out of her sleeping bag, quietly as she could, but Harry turned -- his eyes open.

"Couldn't sleep?" Aurora asked him, in a voice hardly above a whisper.

Harry shook his head. Aurora let her wand and helped Harry find his glasses. The two of them started to walk around the old house, tiptoeing upstairs to not wake their sleeping friends.

On the second landing was the bedroom in which Harry and Ron had slept last time they had been here; Aurora glanced into it. The wardrobe doors stood open and the bedclothes had been ripped back. Aurora remembered the overturned troll leg downstairs. Somebody had searched the house since the Order had left. Snape? Or perhaps Mundungus, who had pilfered plenty from this house both before and after Sirius died? Aurora's gaze wandered to the portrait that sometimes contained Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius's great-great grandfather, but it was empty, showing nothing but a stretch of muddy backdrop. Phineas Nigellus was evidently spending the night in the headmaster's study at Hogwarts. Aurora Harry continued up the stairs until they reached the topmost landing where there were only two doors. The one facing him bore a nameplate reading Sirius. Aurora had never entered her uncle's bedroom before. Harry looked at her a moment then pushed open the door, holding his wand high to cast light as widely as possible. The room was spacious and must once have been handsome. There was a large bed with a carved wooden headboard, a tall window obscured by long velvet curtains and a chandelier thickly coated in dust with candle scrubs still resting in its sockets, solid wax banging in frostlike drips. A fine film of dust covered the pictures on the walls and the bed's headboard; a spiders web stretched between the chandelier and the top of the large wooden wardrobe, and as Harry and Aurora moved deeper into the room, she heard a scurrying of disturbed mice.

The teenage Sirius had plastered the walls with so many posters and pictures that little of the wall's silvery-gray silk was visible. Aurora could only assume that Sirius's parents had been unable to remove the Permanent Sticking Charm that kept them on the wall because she was sure they would not have appreciated their eldest son's taste in decoration. Sirius seemed to have long gone out of his way to annoy his parents. There were several large Gryffindor banners, faded scarlet and gold just to underline his difference from all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of Muggle motorcycles, and also (Aurora had to admire Sirius's nerve) several posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls. Aurora could tell that they were Muggles because they remained quite stationary within their pictures, faded smiles and glazed eyes frozen on the paper. This was in contrast the only Wizarding photograph on the walls which was a picture of four Hogwarts students standing arm in arm, laughing at the camera.