Raised By Wolfstar: Slytherin Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

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Chapter Six: The Noble And Most Ancient House Of Black

Mrs Weasley followed them upstairs looking grim.

'I want you all to go straight to bed, no talking,' she said as they reached the first landing. 'We’ve got a busy day tomorrow. I expect Ginny’s asleep along with Canini,' she added to Tracey, 'so don't be to loud when you enter.'

'Asleep, yeah, right,' said Fred in an undertone after bidding Tracey goodnight, as they were climbing to the next floor. 'If the girls are not lying awake waiting for Tracey to tell them everything they said downstairs, then I’m a flobberworm...'

'All right, Ron, Harry, Theo,' said Mrs Weasley on the second landing, pointing them into their bedroom. 'Off to bed with you.'

’Night,' Harry and Ron said to the twins.

'Sleep tight,' said Fred, winking.

Mrs Weasley closed the door behind Harry with a sharp snap. The bedroom looked, if anything, even danker and gloomier than it had on first sight. The blank picture on the wall was now breathing very slowly and deeply, as though its invisible occupant was asleep. Harry put on his pajamas, took off his glasses, and climbed into his chilly cot while Theodore put his toad in its terrarium, Ron threw Owl Treats up on top of the wardrobe to pacify Hedwig and Pigwidgeon, who were clattering around and rustling their wings restlessly.

'We can’t let them out to hunt every night,' Ron explained as he pulled on his maroon pajamas. 'Dumbledore doesn’t want too many owls swooping around the square, thinks it’ll look suspicious. Hey Theodore, can you..?'

'Oh, sure. One second.'

He crossed to the door and bolted it.

'What’re you doing that for?'

'The house-elf that lives here,' said Theodore, climbing into his bed, 'he mostly prowls at night and doesn't see an occupied room as an excuse not to go in.'

'I think his name is Kreacher,' said Ron as he turned off the light. 'First night I was here he came wandering in at three in the morning. Trust me, you don’t want to wake up and find him prowling around your room. Anyway...' He got into his bed, settled down under the covers, then turned to look at Harry in the darkness. Harry could see his and Theodore's outline by the moonlight filtering in through the grimy window. 'What d’you reckon?'

Harry didn’t need to ask what Ron meant.

'Well, they didn’t tell us much we couldn’t have guessed, did they?' he said, thinking of all that had been said downstairs. 'I mean, all they’ve really said is that the Order’s trying to stop people joining Vol—'

There was a sharp intake of breath from Ron.

'—demort,' said Harry firmly. 'When are you going to start using his name? Even Sirius and Remus do.'

'It's not as easy as you make it look, Harry,' said Theodore quietly, 'but we're trying.'

'Yeah, you’re right,' said Ron, seemingly ignoring the Voldemort part of the conversation. 'We already knew nearly everything they told us, from using the Extendable Ears. The only new bit was—'

Crack.

'OUCH!'

'Keep your voice down, Ron, or Mum’ll be back up here.'

'You two just Apparated on my knees!'

'You scared as,' protested Theodore.

'Yeah, well, it’s harder in the dark—'

Harry saw the blurred outlines of Fred and George leaping down from Ron’s bed. There was a groan of bedsprings and Harry’s mattress descended a few inches as George sat down near his feet.

'So, got there yet?' said George eagerly.

'The weapon Sirius mentioned?' said Harry.

'Let slip, more like,' said Fred with relish, now sitting next to Ron.

'We didn’t hear about that on the old Extendables, did we?'

'What d’you reckon it is?' said Harry.

'Could be anything,' said Fred.

'But what Padfoot said made no sense,' said Theodore. 'There can't be anything worse than the killing curse. Can there?'

'Maybe it’s something that can kill loads of people at once,' suggested George.

'Maybe it’s some particularly painful way of killing people,' said Ron fearfully.

'He’s got the Cruciatus Curse for causing pain,' said Harry. 'He doesn’t need anything more efficient than that.'

There was a pause and Harry knew that the others, like him, were wondering what horrors this weapon could perpetrate.

'So who d’you thinks got it now?' asked George.

'If Voldemort doesn't already have it than it must somewhere on our side,' said Theodore.

'If it is, Dumbledore’s probably keeping it,' said Fred.

'Where?' said Ron quickly. 'Hogwarts?'

'Bet it is!' said George. 'That’s where he hid the Philosopher's Stone!'

'A weapon’s going to be a lot bigger than the Stone, though!' said Ron.

'Not necessarily,' said Fred.

'Yeah, size is no guarantee of power,' said George. 'Look at Ginny.'

'Or Tracey,' Theodore added.

'What d’you mean?' said Harry.

'You’ve never been on the receiving end of one of her Bat-Bogey Hexes, have you?'

'And Harry, a lot of those Jinxes Tracey taught you last year are spells sixth and even seventh year students haven't mastered.'

'Shhh!' said Fred, half-rising from Ron's bed. 'Listen!'

They fell silent. Footsteps were coming up the stairs again.

'Mum,' said George, and without further ado there was a loud crack and Harry felt the weight vanish from the end of his bed. A few seconds later and they heard the floorboard creak outside their door; Mrs Weasley was plainly listening to see whether they were talking or not.

Hedwig and Pigwidgeon hooted dolefully. The floorboard creaked again and they heard her heading upstairs to check on Fred and George.

'She doesn’t trust us at all, you know,' said Ron regretfully.

Harry was sure he would not be able to fall asleep; the evening had been so packed with things to think about that he fully expected to lie awake for hours mulling it all over. He wanted to continue talking to Theodore and Ron, but Mrs Weasley was now creaking back downstairs again, and once she had gone he distinctly heard others making their way upstairs...In fact, many-legged creatures were cantering softly up and down outside the bedroom door, and Hagrid, the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, was saying, 'Beauties, aren’ they, eh, Harry? We’ll be studyin’ weapons this term...' And Harry saw that the creatures had cannons for heads and were wheeling to face him...He ducked...

The next thing he knew, he was curled in a warm ball under his bedclothes, and George’s loud voice was filling the room.

'Mum says get up, your breakfast is in the kitchen and then she needs you in the drawing room, there are loads more doxies than she thought and she’s found a nest of dead puffskeins under the sofa.'

Half an hour later, Harry, Theodore, and Ron, who had dressed and breakfasted quickly, entered the drawing room, a long, high-ceilinged room on the first floor with olive-green walls covered in dirty tapestries. The carpet exhaled little clouds of dust every time someone put their foot on it and the long, moss-green velvet curtains were buzzing as though swarming with invisible bees. It was around these that Mrs Weasley, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and George were grouped, all looking rather peculiar, as they had tied cloths over their noses and mouths. Each of them was also holding a large bottle of black liquid with a nozzle at the end.

'Cover your faces and take a spray,' Mrs Weasley said to Harry and his group the moment she saw them, pointing to two more bottles of black liquid standing on a spindle-legged table. 'It’s Doxycide. I’ve never seen an infestation this bad—what that house-elf’s been doing for the last ten years—'

Canini’s face was half concealed by a tea towel but Harry distinctly saw her throw a reproachful look at Mrs Weasley at these words.

'You try cleaning five floors while being three feet, incredibly old, and all alone.'

'You’d be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Cani,' said Sirius, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be some kind of tool box. 'I’ve come to take a look at this writing desk...'

He put the box down, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which, Harry now noticed for the first time, was shaking slightly.

'Well, Molly, I’m pretty sure this is a boggart,' said Sirius, peering through the keyhole, 'but perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shifty at it before we let it out—knowing my mother it could be something much worse.'

'Right you are, Sirius,' said Mrs Weasley.

They were both speaking in carefully light, polite voices that told Harry quite plainly that neither had forgotten their disagreement of the night before.

A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails that had been triggered the previous night by Tonks knocking over the umbrella stand.

'I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!' said Sirius exasperatedly, hurrying back out of the room. They heard him thundering down the stairs as Mrs Black’s screeches echoed up through the house once more: 'Stains of dishonor, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth...'

'Close the door, please, Harry,' said Mrs Weasley.

Harry took as much time as he dared to close the drawing room door; he wanted to listen to what was going on downstairs. Sirius had obviously managed to shut the curtains over his mother’s portrait because she had stopped screaming. He heard Sirius walking down the hall, then the clattering of the chain on the front door, and then a deep voice he recognized as Kingsley Shacklebolt’s saying, 'Hestia’s just relieved me, so she’s got Moody’s cloak now, thought I’d leave a report for Dumbledore...'

Feeling Mrs Weasley’s eyes on the back of his head, Harry regretfully closed the drawing room door and rejoined the doxy party.

Mrs Weasley was bending over to check the page on doxies in Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests, which was lying open on the sofa.

'Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because doxies bite and their teeth are poisonous. I’ve got a bottle of antidote here, but I’d rather nobody needed it.'

She straightened up, positioned herself squarely in front of the curtains, and beckoned them all forward.

'When I say the word, start spraying immediately,' she said. 'They’ll come flying out at us, I expect, but it says on the sprays one good squirt will paralyze them. When they’re immobilized, just throw them in this bucket.'

She stepped carefully out of their line of fire and raised her own spray. 'All right—squirt!'

Harry had been spraying only a few seconds when a fully grown doxy came soaring out of a fold in the material, shiny beetlelike wings whirring, tiny needle-sharp teeth bared, its fairylike body covered with thick black hair and its four tiny fists clenched with fury. Harry caught it full in the face with a blast of Doxycide; it froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud thunk, onto the worn carpet below. Harry picked it up and threw it in the bucket.

'Fred, Theodore, what are you doing?' said Mrs Weasley sharply. 'Spray that at once and throw it away!'

Harry looked around. Fred was holding a struggling doxy between his forefinger and thumb, while Theodore had one over a vile.

'Its venom is really good for potions, and so I—' started Theodore, but Mrs Weasley gave him quite a stare. 'Er, sorry.'

'Right-o,' Fred said brightly, spraying the doxy quickly in the face so that it fainted, but the moment Mrs Weasley’s back was turned he pocketed it with a wink. Also seizing the opportunity, Theodore gave his doxy a shake and something oozed from its mouth which Theodore than caught in the vile, and tossed it in the bucket.

'We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snack-boxes,' George told Harry under his breath.

Deftly spraying two doxies at once as they soared straight for his nose, Harry moved closer to George and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, 'What are Skiving Snackboxes?'

'Range of sweets to make you ill,' George whispered, keeping a wary eye on Mrs Weasley’s back. 'Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. Fred and I have been developing them this summer. They’re double-ended, color-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastilles, you throw up. Moment you’ve been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half—'

'— which restores you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom. That’s what we’re putting in the adverts, anyway,' whispered Fred, who had edged over out of Mrs Weasley’s line of vision and was now sweeping a few stray doxies from the floor and adding them to his pocket. 'But they still need a bit of work. At the moment our testers are having a bit of trouble stopping puking long enough to swallow the purple end.'

'Testers?'

'Us,' said Fred. 'We take it in turns. George did the Fainting Fancies—we both tried the Nosebleed Nougat—'

'Mum thought we’d been dueling,' said George.

'Joke shop still on, then?' Harry muttered, pretending to be adjusting the nozzle on his spray.

'Well, we haven’t had a chance to get premises yet,' said Fred, dropping his voice even lower as Mrs Weasley mopped her brow with her scarf before returning to the attack, 'so we’re running it as a mail-order service at the moment. We put advertisements in the Daily Prophet last week.'

'All thanks to you, mate,' said George. 'But don’t worry...Mum hasn’t got a clue. She won’t read the Daily Prophet anymore, ’cause of it telling lies about you and Dumbledore.'

Harry grinned. He had forced the Weasley twins to take eight hundred of the one thousand-Galleon prize money he had won in the Triwizard Tournament to help them realize their ambition to open a joke shop, but he was still glad to know that his part in furthering their plans was unknown to Mrs Weasley, who did not think that running a joke shop was a suitable career for two of her sons.

After a couple hours Canini but her can down, 'Mrs Weasley, can I take Harry to see something real quick, I promise we'll be back soon.'

Mrs Weasley looked hesitant, but then nodded, 'Alright dear, but do be quick. We're going to need many hands to finish this room.

Excited, Canini took Harry's hand and lead him out of the room, and up to the next floor. She stopped in front of a portrait of a witch with light skin, long light brown hair, and familiar light hazel eyes. The name at the bottom read "Belvina Burke".

'When we got here this was one of the first things Sirius showed me, this is my great-great-grandmother,' she said with pride.

'Wait? You’re a Black?' Harry asked in confusion. Harry knew that Canini's birth parents were named Cicero and Eli Howling and that her father was from Italy before immigrating to Britain, and a couple years ago he learned her mother's maiden name was Burke, but besides that he didn't know anything about her heritage. The woman in the portrait didn't look much like Canini, but they did share the same eyes.

'Well, not for several generations, but this is still really cool to learn,' she said excitedly. Three years previous Canini had studied abroad in hopes to learn about her father, Harry was happy to see she was at least getting to learn about her mother's side. 'This technically makes me like, Sirius' third cousin once removed, and even Tonks' fourth cousin.'

'This is really cool Canini,' said Harry with a smile. 'I'm glad you got to find this.'

The de-doxying of the curtains took most of the morning. It was past midday when Mrs Weasley finally removed her protective scarf, sank into a sagging armchair, and sprang up again with a cry of disgust, having sat in a spare bucket of unconscious doxies. The curtains were no longer buzzing; they hung limp and damp from the intensive spraying; unconscious doxies lay crammed in the bucket at the foot of them beside a bowl of their black eggs, at which Phileas was now investigating and Fred and George were shooting covetous looks.

'I think we’ll tackle those after lunch.'

Mrs. Weasley pointed at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece. They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages Harry could not understand and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what Harry was quite sure was blood.

The clanging doorbell rang again. Everyone looked at Mrs Weasley.

'Stay here,' she said firmly, as Mrs Blacks screeches started up again from down below. 'I’ll bring up some sandwiches.'

She left the room, closing the door carefully behind her. At once, everyone dashed over to the window to look down onto the doorstep. They could see the top of an unkempt gingery head and a stack of precariously balanced cauldrons.

'Its Mundungus again,' said Tracey. 'Why does he have all those cauldrons?'

'Probably looking for a safe place to keep them,' said Harry. 'Isn’t that what he was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing me? Picking up dodgy cauldrons?'

'Yeah, you’re right!' said Fred, as the front door opened; Mundungus heaved his cauldrons through it and disappeared from view. 'Blimey, Mum won’t like that...'

He and George crossed to the door and stood beside it, listening intently. Mrs Black’s screaming had stopped again.

'Mundungus is talking to Sirius and Kingsley,' Fred muttered, frowning with concentration. 'Can’t hear properly...d’you reckon we can risk the Extendable Ears?'

'Might be worth it,' said George. 'I could sneak upstairs and get a pair—'

But at that precise moment there was an explosion of sound from downstairs that rendered Extendable Ears quite unnecessary. All of them could hear exactly what Mrs Weasley was shouting at the top of her voice.

'WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS!'

'I love hearing Mum shouting at someone else,' said Fred, with a satisfied smile on his face as he opened the door an inch or so to allow Mrs Weasley’s voice to permeate the room better. 'It makes such a nice change.'

'—COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE, AS IF WE HAVEN’T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING STOLEN CAULDRONS INTO THE HOUSE—'

'The idiots are letting her get into her stride,' said George, shaking his head. 'You’ve got to head her off early, otherwise she builds up a head of steam and goes on for hours. And she’s been dying to have a go at Mundungus ever since he sneaked off when he was supposed to be following you, Harry—and there goes Sirius’s mum again—'

Mrs Weasley’s voice was lost amid fresh shrieks and screams from the portraits in the hall. George made to shut the door to drown the noise, but before he could do so, a house-elf edged into the room.

Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked. It looked very old. Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it and though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, batlike ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery gray, and its fleshy nose was large and rather snoutlike.

The elf took absolutely no notice of Harry and the rest. Acting as though it could not see them, it shuffled hunchbacked, slowly and doggedly, toward the far end of the room, muttering under its breath all the while in a hoarse, deep voice like a bullfrog’s, '...Smells like a drain and a criminal to boot, but she’s no better, nasty old blood traitor with her brats messing up my Mistress’s house, oh my poor Mistress, if she knew, if she knew the scum they’ve let in her house, what would she say to old Kreacher, oh the shame of it, half-bloods and werewolves and traitors and thieves, poor old Kreacher, what can he do...'

'Hello, Kreacher,' said Fred very loudly, closing the door with a snap.

The house-elf froze in his tracks, stopped muttering, and then gave a very pronounced and very unconvincing start of surprise.

'Kreacher did not see Young Master,' he said, turning around and bowing to Fred. Still facing the carpet, he added, perfectly audibly, 'Nasty little brat of a blood traitor it is.'

'Sorry?' said George. 'Didn’t catch that last bit.'

'Kreacher said nothing,' said the elf, with a second bow to George, adding in a clear undertone, 'and there’s its twin, unnatural little beasts they are.'

Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not. The elf straightened up, eyeing them all very malevolently, and apparently convinced that they could not hear him as he continued to mutter.

'...and there’s the werewolf, standing there bold as brass, oh if my Mistress knew, oh how she’d cry, and there’s a new boy, Kreacher doesn’t know his name, what is he doing here, Kreacher doesn’t know...'

'This is my brother, Kreacher,' said Canini tentatively. 'Harry Potter.'

Kreacher’s pale eyes widened and he muttered faster and more furiously than ever.

'The beast is talking to Kreacher as though she is my friend, if Kreacher’s Mistress saw him in such company, oh what would she say—'

'Don’t call her a beast!' said Harry, Theodore, and Ginny together, very angrily.

'Its ok,' Canini mumbled, 'he doesn't actually mean it, its just what he was taught to say.'

'Don’t kid yourself, Canini, he knows exactly what he’s saying,' said Fred, eyeing Kreacher with great dislike.

Kreacher was still muttering, his eyes on Harry.

'Is it true? Is it Harry Potter? Kreacher can see the scar, it must be true, that’s that boy who stopped the Dark Lord, Kreacher wonders how he did it—'

'Don’t we all, Kreacher?' said Fred.

'What do you want anyway?' George asked.

Kreacher’s huge eyes darted onto George.

'Kreacher is cleaning,' he said evasively.

'A likely story,' said a voice behind Harry.

Sirius had come back; he was glowering at the elf from the doorway. The noise in the hall had abated; perhaps Mrs Weasley and Mundungus had moved their argument down into the kitchen. At the sight of Sirius, Kreacher flung himself into a ridiculously low bow that flattened his snoutlike nose on the floor.