The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix Part Three

LXXVII: Kreacher's Master

Grimmauld Place was a small square tucked away - out of sight and mostly out of mind. Fourteen houses situated around a small square. The square was dismal and quiet, grey and not the sort of place that many people enjoyed spending much time. It wasn't maintained very well so that the grassy areas were overgrown and the small pond in the center was murky with pond scum, the kind of pond only big bullfrogs enjoy. There were a few scraggly trees, black jaggedy edged things that sliced through pale grey skies and held ravens that cawed out depressing tones.

Every now and then, odd people would be in the square, walking about and they would come to the gates of the square and stand, leaning against the stone gateway and stare into the alley between Number 11 and Number 13 with a funny expression.

"Real estate sales people, I reckon," said Jeffrey Stewart, the man who had owned Number 8 for as long as could be remembered. "I expect they're trying to puzzle out where Number 12 is at. Well ain't we all," the man laughed. There had never been a Number 12 Grimmauld Place that any of the occupants of Numbers 1 through 11, or 13 and 14 could recall. "Fascinates the kids - my grandson loves tellin' fantastical tales about the invisible house just there, in between, but it's just an alley way," Mr. Stewart would tell anyone who asked. "Always been an alley way and nothin' more."

But Number 12 Grimmauld Place did exist.

Invisible to Muggles, Number 12 was even greyer and more dismaler than the square that it overlooked. Dark grey from foundation to peak, the house had black shutters and looked a bit as though it were in disrepair these days. Once, long ago, the house at Number 12 Grimmauld Place had been in the best of repairs, but the occupant who lived there now did not care much about the appearance of the facade of the house.

"Keeps everyone out, out of Master and Mistresses things," the old house elf murmured, "The nasty look of the place keeps them all out, Kreacher doesn't like visitors..."

Which was good, for Kreacher never got any.

In fifteen years the elf had only had two visitors. Well... technically only one was a visitor. The other was technically a return - a homecoming, of sorts - though it was a most unexpected one.

The first had come on 28 March, 1979. The second had come, 2 November, 1981.

Everyday, Kreacher got up and did precisely the same thing.

A small gold alarm clock he set each night would ring and he would crawl out from his cupboard and stretch his little grey limbs in the kitchen, flap his ears a few times as he uncurled his gnarly spine, and would proceed to cook a breakfast that only he would eat. He would set a table that nobody would sit at, set a place with all the proper settings - including the tiny oyster forks that he would skew slightly, an old habit formed years ago by to entertain two giggling boys that had once occupied the bench seats. Kreacher would sit on the floor by the hearth and eat his breakfast then, out of a wooden bowl with an old bent up spoon that had been assigned as his own. When he'd finished, he would go and clear the untouched table, click his fingers and set all the dishes to washing themselves, despite never being dirtied, and they would fly to the cupboard shiny and fresh.

Next, Kreacher would go and dust the portrait of his Mistress in the hall. Standing on a precariously piled load of furniture and climbing up until he was balanced on the arms of a coatrack, he would dust off the top of the frame while the occupant pointed out all the places where he had missed a spot, her voice snippety and cold. Kreacher tried a couple times during the earlier days to hold a conversation with the portrait, but Mistress had never been interested in speaking more than was necessary to the elf, and even in her portrait form the most she would do is bark out a command or two or accuse Kreacher of allowing the place to become filthy, despite the elve's continuous work to clean the house.