“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 stairs 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 the room, 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 sending a candle toppling onto 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 heavily laden arms.
“This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings,” she snapped before sweeping off toward 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 and 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 in 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 can I do, Molly?” said Tonks enthusiastically, bounding forward.
Mrs. Weasley hesitated, looking apprehensive.
“Er — no, it’s all right, Tonks, you have a rest too, you’ve done enough today —”
“No, no, I want to help!” said Tonks brightly, knocking over a chair as she hurried toward the dresser from which Ginny was collecting cutlery.
Soon a series of heavy knives were chopping meat and vegetables of their own accord, supervised by Mr. Weasley, while Mrs. Weasley stirred a cauldron dangling over the fire and the others took out plates, more goblets, and food from the pantry. Harry was left at the table with Sirius and Mundungus, who was still blinking mournfully at him.
“Seen old Figgy since?” he asked.
“No,” said Harry, “I haven’t seen anyone.”
“See, I wouldn’t ’ave left,” said Mundungus, leaning forward, a pleading note in his voice, “but I ’ad a business opportunity —”
Harry felt something brush against his knees and started, but it was only Crookshanks, Hermione’s bandy-legged ginger cat, who wound himself once around Harry’s legs, purring, then jumped onto Sirius’s lap and curled up. Sirius scratched him absentmindedly behind the ears as he turned, still grim-faced, to Harry.
“Had a good summer so far?”
“No, it’s been lousy,” said Harry.
For the first time, something like a grin flitted across Sirius’s face.
“Don’t know what you’re complaining about, myself.”
“What?” said Harry incredulously.
“Personally, I’d have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely. You think you’ve had it bad, at least you’ve been able to get out and about, stretch your legs, get into a few fights. … I’ve been stuck inside for a month.”
“How come?” asked Harry, frowning.
“Because the Ministry of Magic’s still after me, and Voldemort will know all about me being an Animagus by now, Wormtail will have told him, so my big disguise is useless. There’s not much I can do for the Order of the Phoenix … or so Dumbledore feels.”
There was something about the slightly flattened tone of voice in which Sirius uttered Dumbledore’s name that told Harry that Sirius was not very happy with the headmaster either. Harry felt a sudden upsurge of affection for his godfather.
“At least you’ve known what’s been going on,” he said bracingly.
“Oh yeah,” said Sirius sarcastically. “Listening to Snape’s reports, having to take all his snide hints that he’s out there risking his life while I’m sat on my backside here having a nice comfortable time … asking me how the cleaning’s going —”
“What cleaning?” asked Harry.
“Trying to make this place fit for human habitation,” said Sirius, waving a hand around the dismal kitchen. “No one’s lived here for ten years, not since my dear mother died, unless you count her old house-elf, and he’s gone round the twist, hasn’t cleaned anything in ages —”
“Sirius?” said Mundungus, who did not appear to have paid any attention to this conversation, but had been minutely examining an empty goblet. “This solid silver, mate?”
“Yes,” said Sirius, surveying it with distaste. “Finest fifteenth-century goblin-wrought silver, embossed with the Black family crest.”
“That’d come off, though,” muttered Mundungus, polishing it with his cuff.
“Fred — George — NO, JUST CARRY THEM!” Mrs. Weasley shrieked.
Harry, Sirius, and Mundungus looked around and, a split second later, dived away from the table. Fred and George had bewitched a large cauldron of stew, an iron flagon of butterbeer, and a heavy wooden breadboard, complete with knife, to hurtle through the air toward them. The stew skidded the length of the table and came to a halt just before the end, leaving a long black burn on the wooden surface, the flagon of butterbeer fell with a crash, spilling its contents everywhere, and the bread knife slipped off the board and landed, point down and quivering ominously, exactly where Sirius’s right hand had been seconds before.
“FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!” screamed Mrs. Weasley. “THERE WAS NO NEED — I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS — JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON’T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!”
“We were just trying to save a bit of time!” said Fred, hurrying forward and wrenching the bread knife out of the table. “Sorry Sirius, mate — didn’t mean to —”
Harry and Sirius were both laughing. Mundungus, who had toppled backward off his chair, was swearing as he got to his feet. Crookshanks had given an angry hiss and shot off under the dresser, from whence his large yellow eyes glowed in the darkness.
“Boys,” Mr. Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, “your mother’s right, you’re supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you’ve come of age —”
“— none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!” Mrs. Weasley raged at the twins, slamming a fresh flagon of butterbeer onto the table and spilling almost as much again. “Bill didn’t feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn’t Charm everything he met! Percy —”
She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden.
“Let’s eat,” said Bill quickly.
“It looks wonderful, Molly,” said Lupin, ladling stew onto a plate for her and handing it across the table.
For a few minutes there was silence but for the chink of plates and cutlery and the scraping of chairs as everyone settled down to their food. Then Mrs. Weasley turned to Sirius and said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, there’s something trapped in that writing desk in the drawing room, it keeps rattling and shaking. Of course, it could just be a boggart, but I thought we ought to ask Alastor to have a look at it before we let it out.”
“Whatever you like,” said Sirius indifferently.
“The curtains in there are full of doxies too,” Mrs. Weasley went on. “I thought we might try and tackle them tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” said Sirius. Harry heard the sarcasm in his voice, but he was not sure that anyone else did.
Opposite Harry, Tonks was entertaining Hermione and Ginny by transforming her nose between mouthfuls. Screwing up her eyes each time with the same pained expression she had worn back in Harry’s bedroom, her nose swelled to a beaklike protuberance like Snape’s, shrank to something resembling a button mushroom, and then sprouted a great deal of hair from each nostril. Apparently this was a regular mealtime entertainment, because after a while Hermione and Ginny started requesting their favorite noses.
“Do that one like a pig snout, Tonks …”
Tonks obliged, and Harry, looking up, had the fleeting impression that a female Dudley was grinning at him from across the table.
Mr. Weasley, Bill, and Lupin were having an intense discussion about goblins.
“They’re not giving anything away yet,” said Bill. “I still can’t work out whether they believe he’s back or not. ’Course, they might prefer not to take sides at all. Keep out of it.”
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