LITMIR.BIZ

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took the remaining armchair, choosing not to look at the Dursleys, who seemed stunned into silence.

      ‘I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment,’ Dumbledore said to Uncle Vernon, ‘but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness.’

      A third twitch of the wand and a dusty bottle and five glasses appeared in midair. The bottle tipped and poured a generous measure of honey-coloured liquid into each of the glasses, which then floated to each person in the room.

      ‘Madam Rosmerta’s finest, oak-matured mead,’ said Dumbledore, raising his glass to Harry, who caught hold of his own and sipped. He had never tasted anything like it before, but enjoyed it immensely. The Dursleys, after quick, scared looks at each other, tried to ignore their glasses completely, a difficult feat, as they were nudging them gently on the sides of their heads. Harry could not suppress a suspicion that Dumbledore was rather enjoying himself.

      ‘Well, Harry,’ said Dumbledore, turning towards him, ‘a difficulty has arisen which I hope you will be able to solve for us. By us, I mean the Order of the Phoenix. But first of all I must tell you that Sirius’s will was discovered a week ago and that he left you everything he owned.’

      Over on the sofa, Uncle Vernon’s head turned, but Harry did not look at him, nor could he think of anything to say except, ‘Oh. Right.’

      ‘This is, in the main, fairly straightforward,’ Dumbledore went on. ‘You add a reasonable amount of gold to your account at Gringotts and you inherit all of Sirius’s personal possessions. The slightly problematic part of the legacy —’

      ‘His godfather’s dead?’ said Uncle Vernon loudly from the sofa. Dumbledore and Harry both turned to look at him. The glass of mead was now knocking quite insistently on the side of Vernon’s head; he attempted to beat it away. ‘He’s dead? His godfather?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. He did not ask Harry why he had not confided in the Dursleys. ‘Our problem,’ he continued to Harry, as if there had been no interruption, ‘is that Sirius also left you number twelve, Grimmauld Place.’

      ‘He’s been left a house?’ said Uncle Vernon greedily, his small eyes narrowing, but nobody answered him.

      ‘You can keep using it as Headquarters,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t care. You can have it, I don’t really want it.’ Harry never wanted to set foot in number twelve, Grimmauld Place again if he could help it. He thought he would be haunted for ever by the memory of Sirius prowling its dark musty rooms alone, imprisoned within the place he had wanted so desperately to leave.

      ‘That is generous,’ said Dumbledore. ‘We have, however, vacated the building temporarily.’

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Well,’ said Dumbledore, ignoring the mutterings of Uncle Vernon, who was now being rapped smartly over the head by the persistent glass of mead, ‘Black family tradition decreed that the house was handed down the direct line, to the next male with the name of Black. Sirius was the very last of the line as his younger brother, Regulus, predeceased him and both were childless. While his will makes it perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has been set upon the place to ensure that it cannot be owned by anyone other than a pure-blood.’

      A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place flashed into Harry’s mind. ‘I bet there has,’ he said.

      ‘Quite,’ said Dumbledore. ‘And if such an enchantment exists, then the ownership of the house is most likely to pass to the eldest of Sirius’s living relatives, which would mean his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange.’

      Without realising what he was doing, Harry sprang to his feet; the telescope and trainers in his lap rolled across the floor. Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius’s killer, inherit his house?

      ‘No,’ he said.

      ‘Well, obviously we would prefer that she didn’t get it, either,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘The situation is fraught with complications. We do not know whether the enchantments we ourselves have placed upon it, for example, making it unplottable, will hold now that ownership has passed from Sirius’s hands. It might be that Bellatrix will arrive on the doorstep at any moment. Naturally we had to move out until such time as we have clarified the position.’

      ‘But how are you going to find out if I’m allowed to own it?’

      ‘Fortunately,’ said Dumbledore, ‘there is a simple test.’

      He placed his empty glass on a small table beside his chair, but before he could do anything else, Uncle Vernon shouted, ‘Will you get these ruddy things off us?’

      Harry looked round; all three of the Dursleys were cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses bounced up and down on their skulls, the contents flying everywhere.

      ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Dumbledore politely, and he raised his wand again. All three glasses vanished. ‘But it would have been better manners to drink it, you know.’

      It looked as though Uncle Vernon was bursting with any number of unpleasant retorts, but he merely shrank back into the cushions with Aunt Petunia and Dudley and said nothing, keeping his small piggy eyes on Dumbledore’s wand.

      ‘You see,’ Dumbledore said, turning back to Harry and again speaking as though Uncle Vernon had not uttered, ‘if you have indeed inherited the house, you have also inherited —’

      He flicked his wand for a fifth time. There was a loud crack and a house-elf appeared, with a snout for a nose, giant bat’s ears and enormous bloodshot eyes, crouching on the Dursleys’ shagpile carpet and covered in grimy rags. Aunt Petunia let out a hair-raising shriek: nothing this filthy had entered her house in living memory; Dudley drew his large bare pink feet off the floor and sat with them raised almost above his head, as though he thought the creature might run up his pyjama trousers, and Uncle Vernon bellowed, ‘What the hell is that?’

      ‘Kreacher,’ finished Dumbledore.

      ‘Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t!’ croaked the house-elf, quite as loudly as Uncle Vernon, stamping his long gnarled feet and pulling his ears. ‘Kreacher belongs to Miss Bellatrix, oh, yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won’t go to the Potter brat, Kreacher won’t, won’t, won’t —’

      ‘As you can see, Harry,’ said Dumbledore loudly, over Kreacher’s continued croaks of ‘won’t, won’t, won’t’, ‘Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your ownership.’

      ‘I don’t care,’ said Harry again, looking with disgust at the writhing, stamping house-elf. ‘I don’t want him.’

      ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t —’

      ‘You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of Bellatrix Lestrange? Bearing in mind that he has lived at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year?’

      ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, won’t —’

      Harry stared at Dumbledore. He knew that Kreacher could not be permitted to go and live with Bellatrix Lestrange, but the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the creature that had betrayed Sirius, was repugnant.

      ‘Give him an order,’ said Dumbledore. ‘If he has passed into your ownership, he will have to obey. If not, then we shall have to think of some other means of keeping him from his rightful mistress.’

      ‘Won’t, won’t, won’t, WON’T!’

      Kreacher’s voice had risen to a scream. Harry could think of nothing to say, except, ‘Kreacher, shut up!’

      It looked for a moment as though Kreacher was going to choke. He grabbed his throat, his mouth still working furiously, his eyes bulging. After a few seconds of frantic gulping, he threw himself face forwards on to the carpet (Aunt Petunia whimpered) and beat the floor with his hands and feet,

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