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Aurora Areli
HARRY SEEMED UTTERLY TAKEN aback.
"Your —?"
"My dear old mum, yeah," Sirius said. "We've been trying to get her down for a month but we think she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back off the canvas. Let's get downstairs, quick, before they all wake again."
"But what's a portrait of your mother doing here?" Harry asked, looking bewildered, as we went through the door from the hall and down a flight of narrow stone steps.
"Hasn't anyone told you? This was my parents' house," Sirius told him. "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."
I frowned at the bitterness in Sirius' voice. It was upsetting to hear, especially knowing that if he had the opportunity to do more, he would.
We followed Sirius to the bottom of the steps and through a door leading into the basement kitchen.
I liked this room far more than anywhere else in the house. Though it was still dark, it was much less so than the rest of the rooms. It was a cavernous room with rough stone walls, a fireplace at the end which supplied most of the light that shone through the haze of pipe smoke, and illuminated 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, wine bottles, and a heap of rags that I knew to be a sleeping Mundungus. Mr Weasley and Bill were quietly discussing something at the end of the table.
Mrs Weasley cleared her throat, causing her husband to look around and jump to his feet.
"Harry!" Mr Weasley said, hurrying forward to greet him, and shaking his hand vigorously. "Good to see you!"
Behind him, Bill was hastily rolling up the lengths of parchment that had been 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," Tonks said, and she tried to help Bill, only to immediately topple a candle onto the last piece of parchment. "Oh no — sorry —"
"Here, dear," Mrs Weasley said, sounding exasperated as she repaired the parchment with her wand. In the flash of light caused by her charm I caught a glimpse of what looked like the plan of a building.
Mrs Weasley had seemed to notice me looking, however, because she snatched the plan off the table and stuffed it into Bill's already overladen arms.
"This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings," she snapped, before sweeping off towards an ancient dresser to unload dinner plates.
