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Harry heard Fred whisper, as he hoisted the Extendable Ear back up again.

      They heard the front door open, then close.

      ‘Snape never eats here,’ Ron told Harry quietly. ‘Thank God. C’mon.’

      ‘And don’t forget to keep your voice down in the hall, Harry,’ Hermione whispered.

      As they passed the row of house-elf heads on the wall, they saw Lupin, Mrs Weasley and Tonks at the front door, magically sealing its many locks and bolts behind those who had just left.

      ‘We’re eating down in the kitchen,’ Mrs Weasley whispered, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Harry, dear, if you’ll just tiptoe across the hall it’s through this door here —’

      CRASH.

      ‘Tonks!’ cried Mrs Weasley in exasperation, turning to look behind her.

      ‘I’m sorry!’ wailed Tonks, who was lying flat on the floor. ‘It’s that stupid umbrella stand, that’s the second time I’ve tripped over —’

      But the rest of her words were drowned by a horrible, earsplitting, blood-curdling screech.

      The moth-eaten velvet curtains Harry had passed earlier had flown apart, but there was no door behind them. For a split second, Harry thought he was looking through a window, a window behind which an old woman in a black cap was screaming and screaming as though she were being tortured – then he realised it was simply a life-size portrait, but the most realistic, and the most unpleasant, he had ever seen in his life.

      The old woman was drooling, her eyes were rolling, the yellowing skin of her face stretched taut as she screamed; and all along the hall behind them, the other portraits awoke and began to yell, too, so that Harry actually screwed up his eyes at the noise and clapped his hands over his ears.

      Lupin and Mrs Weasley darted forward and tried to tug the curtains shut over the old woman, but they would not close and she screeched louder than ever, brandishing clawed hands as though trying to tear at their faces.

      ‘Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers —’

      Tonks apologised over and over again, dragging the huge, heavy troll’s leg back off the floor; Mrs Weasley abandoned the attempt to close the curtains and hurried up and down the hall, Stunning all the other portraits with her wand; and a man with long black hair came charging out of a door facing Harry.

      ‘Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!’ he roared, seizing the curtain Mrs Weasley had abandoned.

      The old woman’s face blanched.

      ‘Yoooou!’ she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man. ‘Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!’

      ‘I said – shut – UP!’ roared the man, and with a stupendous effort he and Lupin managed to force the curtains closed again.

      The old woman’s screeches died and an echoing silence fell. Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair out of his eyes, Harry’s godfather Sirius turned to face him. ‘Hello, Harry,’ he said grimly, ‘I see you’ve met my mother.’

      – CHAPTER FIVE —

      The Order of the Phoenix

      ‘Your —?’

      ‘My dear old mum, yeah,’ said Sirius. ‘We’ve been trying to get her down for a month but we think she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of the canvas. Let’s get downstairs, quick, before they all wake up again.’

      ‘But what’s a portrait of your mother doing here?’ Harry asked, bewildered, as they went through the door from the hall and led the way down a flight of narrow stone steps, the others just behind them.

      ‘Hasn’t anyone told you? This was my parents’ house,’ said Sirius. ‘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.’

      Harry, who had expected a better welcome, noted how hard and bitter Sirius’s voice sounded. He followed his godfather to the bottom of the steps and through a door leading into the basement kitchen.

      It was scarcely less gloomy than the hall above, a cavernous room with rough stone walls. Most of the light was coming from a large fire at the far end of the room. A haze of pipe smoke hung in the air like battle fumes, through which loomed 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, empty wine bottles, and a heap of what appeared to be rags. Mr Weasley and his eldest son Bill were talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table.

      Mrs Weasley cleared her throat. Her husband, a thin, balding, red-haired man who wore horn-rimmed glasses, looked around and jumped to his feet.

      ‘Harry!’ Mr Weasley said, hurrying forward to greet him, and shaking his hand vigorously. ‘Good to see you!’

      Over his shoulder Harry saw Bill, who still wore his long hair in a ponytail, hastily rolling up the lengths of parchment 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,’ said Tonks, striding over to help Bill and immediately toppling a candle on to the last piece of parchment. ‘Oh no – sorry —’

      ‘Here, dear,’ said Mrs Weasley, sounding exasperated, and she repaired the parchment with a wave of her wand. In the flash of light caused by Mrs Weasley’s charm Harry caught a glimpse of what looked like the plan of a building.

      Mrs Weasley had seen him looking. 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 from which she started unloading dinner plates.

      Bill took out his wand, muttered, ‘Evanesco!’ and the scrolls vanished.

      ‘Sit down, Harry,’ said Sirius. ‘You’ve met Mundungus, haven’t you?’

      The thing Harry had taken to be a pile of rags gave a prolonged, grunting snore, then jerked awake.

      ‘Some’n say m’name?’ Mundungus mumbled sleepily. ‘I ’gree with Sirius …’ He raised a very grubby hand in the air as though voting, his droopy, bloodshot eyes unfocused.

      Ginny giggled.

      ‘The meeting’s over, Dung,’ said Sirius, as they all sat down around him at the table. ‘Harry’s arrived.’

      ‘Eh?’ said Mundungus, peering balefully at Harry through his matted ginger hair. ‘Blimey, so ’e ’as. Yeah … you all right, ’Arry?’

      ‘Yeah,’ said Harry.

      Mundungus fumbled nervously in his pockets, still staring at Harry, and pulled out a grimy black pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, ignited the end of it with his wand and took a deep pull on it. Great billowing clouds of greenish smoke obscured him within seconds.

      ‘Owe you a ’pology,’ grunted a voice from the middle of the smelly cloud.

      ‘For the last time, Mundungus,’ called Mrs Weasley, ‘will you please not smoke that thing in the kitchen, especially not when we’re about to eat!’

      ‘Ah,’ said Mundungus. ‘Right. Sorry, Molly.’

      The cloud of smoke vanished as Mundungus stowed his pipe back in his pocket, but an acrid smell of burning socks lingered.

      ‘And if you want dinner before midnight I’ll need a hand,’ Mrs Weasley said to the room at large. ‘No, you can stay where you are, Harry dear, you’ve had a long journey.’

      ‘What

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