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Kreacher’s Tale

Harry woke early next morning, wrapped in a sleeping bag on the drawing room
floor. A chink of sky was visible between the heavy curtains. It was the cool, clear blue
of watered ink, somewhere between night and dawn, and everything was quiet except for
Ron and Hermione’s slow, deep breathing. Harry glanced over at the dark shapes they
made on the floor beside him. Ron had had a fit of gallantry and insisted that Hermione
sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so that her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm
curved to the floor, her fingers inches from Ron’s. Harry wondered whether they had
fallen asleep holding hands. The idea made him feel strangely lonely.

 He looked up at the shadowy ceiling, the cobwebbed chandelier. Less than
twenty-four house ago, he had been standing in the sunlight at the entrance to the
marquee, waiting to show in wedding guests. It seemed a lifetime away. What was going
to happen now? He lay on the floor and he thought of the Horcruxes, of the daunting
complex mission Dumbledore had left him… Dumbledore…

 The grief that had possessed him since Dumbledore’s death felt different now.
The accusations he had heard from Muriel at the wedding seemed to have nested in his
brain like diseased things, infecting his memories of the wizard he had idolized. Could
Dumbledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley, content to watch
neglect and abuse as long as it did not affect him? Could he have turned his back on a
sister who was being imprisoned and hidden?

 Harry thought of Godric’s Hollow, of graves Dumbledore had never mentioned
there; he thought of mysterious objects left without explanation in Dumbledore’s will,
and resentment swelled in the darkness. Why hadn’t Dumbledore told him? Why hadn’t
he explained? Had Dumbledore actually cared about Harry at all? Or had Harry been
nothing more than a tool to be polished and honed, but not trusted, never confided in?

 Harry could not stand lying there with nothing but bitter thoughts for company.
Desperate for something to do, for distraction, he slipped out of his sleeping bad, picked
up his wand, and crept out of the room. On the landing he whispered, “Lumos,” and
started to climb the stairs by wandlight.

 On the second landing was the bedroom in which he and Ron had slept last time
they had been here; he glanced into it. The wardrobe doors stood open and the bedclothes
had been ripped back. Harry remembered the overturned troll leg downstairs. Somebody
had searched the house since the Order had left. Snape? Or perhaps Mundungus, who had
pilfered plenty from this house both before and after Sirius died? Harry’s gaze wandered
to the portrait that sometimes contained Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius’s great-great
grandfather, but it was empty, showing nothing but a stretch of muddy backdrop. Phineas
Nigellus was evidently spending the night in the headmaster’s study at Hogwarts.

 Harry continued up the stairs until he reached the topmost landing where there
were only two doors. The one facing him bore a nameplate reading Sirius. Harry had
never entered his godfather’s bedroom before. He pushed open the door, holding his
wand high to cast light as widely as possible. The room was spacious and must once have
been handsome. There was a large bed with a carved wooden headboard, a tall window
obscured by long velvet curtains and a chandelier thickly coated in dust with candle
scrubs still resting in its sockets, solid wax banging in frostlike drips. A fine film of dust
covered the pictures on the walls and the bed’s headboard; a spiders web stretched
between the chandelier and the top of the large wooden wardrobe, and as Harry moved
deeper into the room, he head a scurrying of disturbed mice.

 The teenage Sirius had plastered the walls with so many posters and pictures that
little of the wall’s silvery-gray silk was visible. Harry could only assume that Sirius’s
parents had been unable to remove the Permanent Sticking Charm that kept them on the
wall because he was sure they would not have appreciated their eldest son’s taste in
decoration. Sirius seemed to have long gone out of his way to annoy his parents. There
were several large Gryffindor banners, faded scarlet and gold just to underline his
difference from all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of Muggle
motorcycles, and also (Harry had to admire Sirius’s nerve) several posters of bikini-clad
Muggle girls. Harry could tell that they were Muggles because they remained quite
stationary within their pictures, faded smiles and glazed eyes frozen on the paper. This
was in contrast the only Wizarding photograph on the walls which was a picture of four
Hogwarts students standing arm in arm, laughing at the camera.

 With a leap of pleasure, Harry recognized his father, his untidy black hair stuck
up at the back like Harry’s, and he too wore glasses. Beside him was Sirius, carelessly
handsome, his slightly arrogant face so much younger and happier than Harry had ever
seen it alive. To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and
watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the
much-admired rebels that James and Sirius had been. On James’s left was Lupin, even
then a little shabby-looking, but he had the same air of delighted surprise at finding
himself liked and included or was it simply because Harry knew how it had been, that he
saw these things in the picture? He tried to take it from the wall; it was his now, after all,
Sirius had left him everything, but it would not budge. Sirius had taken no chances in
preventing his parents from redecorating his room.

 Harry looked around at the floor. The sky outside was growing brightest. A shaft
of light revealed bits of paper, books, and small objects scattered over the carpet.
Evidently Sirius’s bedroom had been reached too, although its contents seemed to have
been judged mostly, if not entirely, worthless. A few of the books had been shaken
roughly enough to part company with the covers and sundry pages littered the floor.

 Harry bent down, picked up a few of the pieces of paper, and examined them. He
recognized one as a part of an old edition of A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot,
and another as belonging to a motorcycle maintenance manual. The third was
handwritten and crumpled. He smoothed it out.

 Dear Padfoot,

 Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favorite by
far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased
with himself. I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet
off the ground but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent
me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course James thought it was so funny, says
he’s going to be a great Quidditch player but we’ve had to pack away all the ornaments
and make sure we don’t take our eyes off him when he gets going.

 We had a very quiet birthday tea, just us and old Bathilda who has always been
sweet to us and who dotes on Garry. We were so sorry you couldn’t come, but the
Order’s got to come first, and Harry’s not old enough to know it’s his birthday anyway!
James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell – also
Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance of little excursions. If you
could visit, it would cheer him up so much. Wormy was here last weekend. I thought he
seemed down, but that was probably the next about the McKinnons; I cried all evening
when I heard.

 Bathilda drops in most days, she’s a fascinating old thing with the most amazing
stories about Dumbledore. I’m not sure he’d be pleased if he knew! I don’t know how
much to believe, actually because it seems incredible that Dumbledore

 Harry’s extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite still, holding the
miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruptions sent
joy and grief thundering its equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat
down.

 He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done
the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her “g”s
the same way he did. He searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt
like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible
treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once
moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him,
Harry, her son.

 Impatiently brushing away the wetness in his eyes, he reread the letter, this time
concentrating on the meaning. It was like listening to a half-remembered voice.

 They had a cat… perhaps it had perished, like his parents at Godric’s Hollow… or
else fled when there was nobody left to feed it… Sirius had bought him his first
broomstick… His parents had known Bathilda Bagshot; had Dumbledore introduced
them? Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak… there was something funny there…

 Harry paused, pondering his mother’s words. Why had Dumbledore taken
James’s Invisibility Cloak? Harry distinctly remembered his headmaster telling him years
before, “I don’t need a cloak to become invisible” Perhaps some less gifted Order

member had needed its assistance, and Dumbledore had acted as a carrier? Harry passed
on…

 Wormy was here… Pettigrew, the traitor, had seemed “down” had he? Was he
aware that he was seeing James and Lily alive for the last time?

 And finally Bathilda again, who told incredible stories about Dumbledore. It
seems incredible that Dumbledore ---

 That Dumbledore what? But there were any number of things that would seem
incredible about Dumbledore; that he had once received bottom marks in a
Transfiguration test, for instance or had taken up goat charming like Aberforth…

 Harry got to his feet and scanned the floor: Perhaps the rest of the letter was here
somewhere. He seized papers, treating them in his eagerness, with as little consideration
as the original searcher, he pulled open drawers, shook out books, stood on a chair to run
his hand over the top of the wardrobe, and crawled under the bed and armchair.

 At last, lying facedown on the floor, he spotted what looked like a torn piece of
paper under the chest of drawers. When he pulled it out, it proved to be most of the
photograph that Lily had described in her letter. A black-haired baby was zooming in and
out of the picture on a tiny broom, roaring with laughter, and a pair of legs that must have
belonged to James was chasing after him. Harry tucked the photograph into his pocket
with Lily’s letter and continued to look for the second sheet.

 After another quarter of an hour, however he was forced to conclude that the rest
of his mother’s letter was gone. Had it simply been lost in the sixteen years that had
elapsed since it had been written, or had it been taken by whoever had searched the
room? Harry read the first sheet again, this time looking for clues as to what might have
made the second sheet valuable. His toy broomstick could hardly be considered
interesting to the Death Eaters… The only potentially useful thing he could see her was
possible information on Dumbledore. It seems incredible that Dumbledore – what?

 “Harry? Harry? Harry!”

“I’m here!” he called, “What’s happened?”

There was a clatter of footsteps outside the door, and Hermione burst inside.

“We woke up and didn’t know where you were!” she said breathlessly. She turned
and shouted over her shoulder, “Ron! I’ve found him”

Ron’s annoyed voice echoed distantly from several floors below.

“Good! Tell him from me he’s a git!”

“Harry don’t just disappear, please, we were terrified! Why did you come up here
anyway?” She gazed around the ransacked room. “What have you been doing?”

“Look what I’ve just found”

He held out his mother’s letter. Hermione took it out and read it while Harry
watched her. When she reached the end of the page she looked up at him.

“Oh Harry…”
“And there’s this too”

He handed her the torn photograph, and Hermione smiled at the baby zooming in
and out of sight on the toy broom.