The House-Whisperer

Harry stepped silently into the shadows of the room into exactly the same place he'd landed just over twenty-four hours earlier. He immediately placed a hand on the wall next to him. Thankfully, the lighting remained low, still casting deep shadows, and hiding his appearance. But there was no sound apart from the constant droning lament of the house, like wind howling through the eaves and whistling eerily through a cracked window. The volume had dropped since last night but it was still there and the low wailing was enough to send even the most constant mind over the edge of darkness. He could feel the vibration of the Manor's lament under his fingertips as he touched the wall: it was anguished, echoing, hollow, and bitterly cold. He could feel the sorrow and darkness and fear stirring in its walls. He searched far, far into the depths of the house, through fathomless seas of feelings and endless centuries of emotions. It reminded Harry of the second year at Hogwarts, when the Basilisk was whispering to him through layers and layers of pipework from the very foundations of the school. But all he found here were the whisperings of darkness and bitterness buried deep within the House of Malfoy. Too many generations had done too much harm, even Voldemort's presence was just a drop in that ocean. There was hatred too. Harry shuddered, the Manor actually agreed with Narcissa, that Draco should be punished and made to fulfil his role in its future. But he could not find even a glimmer of hope within those walls because there was no future and Harry came back to the present.

He took in his surroundings. The room still smelt of musty aftershave, damp books, and stale firewhiskey; and it was devastated. A chair was on its back, the bedside table overturned, its drawers ripped out and its contents scattered. Books were torn and thrown and strewn across the room. Stationary, toiletries, lamps, joined them. The charcoal-grey curtains were pulled down; curtain rails hung from the walls, pictures were torn down and smashed, the bedding stripped and thrown from the four-poster bed; the soft dusky-blue walls looked like they were weeping tears. Harry shuddered, he knew he could not do anything with the desolation.

He felt a ripple of awareness under his fingertips and tried to sooth the old stonework. The Manor recognised that the Stranger was back, the one who had got through the wards the previous night, the Stranger who knew how to lull its unrest. It sighed under the touch of his fingers and the lament quietened to little more than a whisper as the soul of the Manor fell into a temporary meditative state, not quite asleep, but certainly calmer and trance-like.

It was then that Harry heard the whimper from the far side of the bed.

He parted the space beside him like pulling back a curtain in the very fabric of time and space and Neville, Ron, and Gawain Robards stepped into the room. He saw Ron shiver. He knew Ron hated Slicing, it was a strange sensation, far worse than apparating. Keeping the palm of one hand on the wall at all times, he signalled to the silent three men in the direction of the whimpering. She was, he knew from the house, the only inhabitant left. She had been deserted. Even the house elves had left, no, they would not stay in a cursed house, no matter the bond to their mistress. Izzie was the lucky one, she'd been freed, she wouldn't be tortured by forsaking her contract.

The Aurors were prepared for the extraction to be difficult, if not an unknown. Harry had warned them that the Manor was protecting its last connection to the Malfoy name, protecting its future, its purpose. While she remained, it might consider there was hope. But it seemed that even the Manor recognised there were no expectations to be had anymore. They worked in utmost silence, that part was imperative. They stunned her, just in case. She certainly looked wild. She still wore the same vibrant green dress but it was torn, ripped by her own fingernails, exposing pale-white flesh and welts of red scratches. Her livid red lipstick was smeared across her cheeks, her normally neat hair was pulled out of its careful coiffured style and hung around her haunted face in wild strands and clumps. For the first time, Harry saw the similarity between her and Bellatrix.