XXXVII. GRIMMAULD CLEANERS
19:09 ─❁────────── 19:79
◁ Ⅱ ▷
❝A brilliant blackout, a dance of the shadows
I feel the undying light inside my heart❞
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LUCIA WOKE UP THE NEXT morning incredibly surprised to find herself in her bedroom as she laid wide awake on her bed, blinking blankly whilst the sun shone through the sheer curtains of the room.
Huh?
She didn't think much of for the first few minutes, too drowsy to even care. But then it dawned on her that she certainly didn't remember getting upstairs last night... the night in which she now felt as though she had done something irrational.
Despite trusting Harry to point where she would trust him with her life, at the same time, she didn't think it was wise of her to share most of the things she tend to keep a secret from people. Sure, it was nice finally be able to be vocal about her parents and being able to sympathise with someone like her in more depth, it was still foolish of her to share something really, really, really personal.
But she could trust Harry enough that he won't speak a word about it to anyone... right?
As of this moment, all Lucia wanted was to slap herself for making a mistake...
Hoping that Harry was no snitch, Lucia decided to let it go... for now and quickly slipped into her dress and tying her rather medium-length hair into a loose ponytail on the side. It would be too much of a hassle if she were to keep it down, especially knowing that today they would be cleaning the entire Grimmauld Place. Finally.
The place really needed a major cleaning, and god forbid that this place was anything but safe.
Lucia skipped down the stairs, feeling oddly chirpy today. Perhaps it was because she actually got a good night of sleep for once, because even this doom house can't change her mood... hopefully.
Even as she walked pass the row of house-elves' heads, she couldn't catch the contagious negative energy making her as sick as it did yesterday evening.
Then again, she could also be delirious at the same time...
After half an hour or so of breakfast with the other inhabitants of the house, she followed them into the drawing room led by Mrs. Weasley who would be ordering them what to do and how to conquer this whole house.
Lucia took a moment to genuinely awe at the drawing room.
It was a long, high-ceilinged room on the first floor with olive-green walls covered in dirty tapestries that looked as though it had been there for centuries. If you were to appreciate and imagine the beauty and design of the room way before this, then you would most likely forget the horrendous state it was today... how 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.
Lucia almost vomited right there if it weren't for the cloths that Mrs. Weasley gave all of them to wear around their noses and mouths as preparation and protection from the creatures and most likely toxins that lies within the house. She also gave them all a single large bottle of black liquid with a nozzle at the end for who knows what, she didn't want to know just yet.
Soon enough, Harry and Ron entered to join them.
"Cover your faces and take a spray," Mrs. Weasley said to Harry and Ron 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 —"
Hermione had a reproachful look behind her mask. "Kreacher's really old, he probably couldn't manage —"
"You'd be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione," said Sirius, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be dead rats. "I've just been feeding Buckbeak," he added, in reply to the inquiring look Harry had. "I keep him upstairs in my mother's bedroom."
"B-Buckbeak?" Lucia stammered, shock by this information. Majority in the room turned to her, while Fred and George were busy conversing with themselves to even be aware. "As in... the hippogriff that scratched Draco Malfoy? The Buckbeak, Hagrid's hippogriff that got executed and rumoured to escape a few years ago?" she exclaimed, jittery.
Harry looked over his shoulder and for some odd reason, there was an odd trace of glimmer in her eyes that almost made him wary as to what she was thinking inside that pretty head of hers.
Sirius nodded. "The very lad," he said casually. "Harry and Hermione freed him and he contributed a lot in my escape from the Ministry back then."
Smirking, it felt as though he was silently being showered by praises from the awestruck sparkle of a look Lucia was giving him. It was feeding into his ego to the brim to the point he felt as if he was standing on a pedestal.
However all that went down the drain as he caught Harry's eyes, which held a look of judgement. Sirius casted Harry a pout, but Harry merely deepened his judgy eyes. Sirius sighed in defeat and silently cursed his godson for not letting his ego be as well-fed as it was decades ago. It's been so long too...
"Sirius," Harry voice snapped him back to reality immediately unfortunately.
He cleared his throat, "Ah yes — anyway... this writing desk..."
He dropped the bag of rats onto an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which was shaking slightly.
Lucia clamped her hand over her mouth, refraining a squeal of disgust. Oh, how she regretted ever complying with Bill and Professor McGonagall on coming here...
She should've known better than to think that the extermination process would only last a day. Figures a magical house would be much harder to clean up than normal Muggle house.
"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 was plainly obvious 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.
After reluctantly closing the door, Harry soon joined them. Mrs. Weasley bent 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!"
The moment Lucia saw the doxies soaring out of a fold in the material, she grimaced and her breakfast threatened to come out right there. She knew what doxies were from books she once read, but never seen it before. It could certainly rival those bugs she hated.
Lucia put on a brave face and glared at the bunch of doxies distastefully and began squirting her bottle of Doxycide profusely around her like her life depended on it.
Harry watched this with amusement as he sprayed his. He couldn't help but enjoy this particular act; she was panicking unlike before. But because of this, he was distracted.
Lucia, as she squirted every single doxies that soared her way, noticed a fully grown, 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 coming out of a fold in the material in front of Harry. In no way in hell would she let Harry get bitten by those pesky things.
Swiftly, she squirted her mixture of Doxycide at the doxy, catching it fully in the face; it froze in midair and fell, with a surprisingly loud thunk, onto the worn carpet below.
"Pay attention Harry!" said Lucia nervously, looking around to see whether the coast around them was clear or not. "Honestly, we're in war right now!"
Harry stared at her with a soft and gentle smile. "You are taking this way out of proportion."
She rolled her eyes. "Pick that... that thing up!" she squirmed.
"Yes, Ma'am," he teased. Harry picked it up nonchalantly, causing Lucia to let out another squeal of disgust before threw it in the bucket.
"How are you so calm picking those things up without a glove?!"
"These are nothing compared to the ones I see often back with the Dursleys," snorted Harry. It was not far from the truth, he thought. Back way before he actually got to make friends at Hogwarts, the only friends he had was the critters that lived with him.
Now that he thought about it, his social life back then was much more horrendous than now and he couldn't imagine what people would think of him if they were to hear about his 'friends' back then...
Possibly disgusted.
"I... I don't even want to know," Lucia scrunched her nose.
"Good," said Harry, nodding. Because I don't want to have the honour to explain...
Before Lucia was able to say anything else, Mrs. Weasley's voice interjected into the whole drawing room.
"Fred, what are you doing?" said Mrs. Weasley sharply. "Spray that at once and throw it away!"
The pair looked around. Fred was holding a struggling doxy between his forefinger and thumb.
"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.
"We want to experiment with doxy venom for our Skiving Snackboxes," George told the two 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?"
"I would like to know that as well," chimed in Lucia. The bashfulness from yesterday seem to dissipate as though it was never there in the first place.
However, that's what Harry first thought until he noticed how much she was fiddling around with her necklace, as though it was a way to calm herself down.
"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 duelling," said George.
To be quite honest, for all the years she had attended Hogwarts, not once did she find the twin's pranks hilarious as the others did... for a few reasons which she rather talk some other days. However, that didn't meant she couldn't appreciate the impressiveness of their inventions.
It was innovative to the point that you sometimes forget that these two are teenagers still.
"Joke shop still on, then?" Harry muttered, pretending to be adjusting the nozzle on his spray.
"Wait, you guys are finally opening your own joke shop?" Lucia asked, astonished.
Well, she shouldn't be all too surprised. She actually saw this coming.
"We planned it for years but never gotten the money for it... until last term," Lucia stared at Fred and George with a peculiar look before she turned to Harry. No doubt were they hiding something, but she wasn't going to pry if they're not comfortable in sharing.
"Then I'm sure you found a premise for it already? Surely Diagon Alley has an empty spot for it?" said Lucia.
He shook his head. "Nope, 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, "but we're running it as a mail-order service at the moment."
"I've always seen you two as businessmen rather than Ministry ones, I'm glad it's finally come to this," she chirped beamingly.
"I'm glad this day finally come too," sighed George, ruffling Lucia's hair, which she was quick to smack his hand away with a glare.
Then a sullen look pass Fred's face.
"Making these stuff is one of the only things that could make us forget about Eri and her situation these days," Lucia swore Fred muttered under his breath.
Eri? Was that another name for Erin?
Either way, the atmosphere around them dropped sullenly as silence filled the air between the four of them.
"Er, anyways," began Lucia after a long pause, "I hope your shop will do well — actually, I have no doubts that it'll do well. I'm not a fan of you both, but I see quite a potential in you guys!"
"We glad that you think so," said Fred, winking at the girl. "We put advertisements in the Daily Prophet last week."
"All thanks to you, mate," said George to Harry, causing Lucia to look at the boy beside her peculiarly. Harry averted his eyes from her blushingly. "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."
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 on the bag of dead rats. 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 Crookshanks was now sniffing 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, several tarnished silver boxes inscribed with languages that Lucia could identify as French and Latin, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what they were quite sure was blood.
The clanging doorbell rang again. Everyone looked at Mrs. Weasley.
"Stay here," she said firmly, snatching up the bag of rats as Mrs. Black's 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.
"Mundungus!" said Hermione. "What's he brought all those cauldrons for?"
"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!"
Lucia immediately flinched at the sound of the shrill tone. She still didn't understand how a woman as small as Mrs. Weasley have such powerful vocal cords...
"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 —"
"How do you guys get use to this?" Lucia asked them, already feeling exhausted from the yelling.
"Most of the times it's Fred and George that gets the yelling, Ron and I don't — actually, I've mistaken," grinned Ginny, "Ron's been notorious for cussing these days and those three prats have gotten an ear from Mum all summer,"
"Shut up, Ginny," grumbled Ron, remembering the last time his mother gotten mad at him. He didn't think he was wrong though, on contrary to what Mrs. Weasley wanted him to think.
Ginny stuck her tongue out mockingly at him, in which Ron did back at her.
"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 the group of adolescents. 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, Mudbloods 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."
Lucia leaned against Harry and whispered, "He seems a bit..."
"Rude? Impolite? Two-faced? Insane?..." Harry listed on.
She casted him a soft glare. "No, I was going to say kooky..."
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 Mudblood, 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 Harry and Lucia, Kreacher," said Hermione tentatively. "Lucia DiFiore and Harry Potter..."
Kreacher's pale eyes widened, and he muttered faster and more furiously than ever. "The Mudblood 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 Mudblood!" said Ron and Ginny together, very angrily.
"Well, that escalated quickly," mumbled Lucia, surprised by the sudden used of a derogatory term toward her.... friend? "Hermione —"
"It doesn't matter," she whispered, "he's not in his right mind, he doesn't know what he's —"
"Don't kid yourself, Hermione, he knows exactly what he's saying," said Fred, eyeing Kreacher with great dislike.
Kreacher was still muttering, his eyes on Harry as he disregard Lucia's whole existence entirely.
"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 the pair.
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.
"Stand up straight," said Sirius impatiently. "Now, what are you up to?"
Lucia frowned. She couldn't help but noticed the venomous tone that laced around Sirius' words so prominently. It was really upsetting her a bit. Kreacher may not seem to be the kindest elf she met, but it surely didn't help how the people around him was acting toward him.
She knew a thing or two being treated that way. It'll only further the feeling of resentment that you already have in your heart.
— of course, him calling Hermione a derogatory word also wasn't making the people around him feel pleasant...
"Kreacher is cleaning," the elf repeated. "Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black —"
"— and it's getting blacker every day, it's filthy," said Sirius.
"Master always liked his little joke," said Kreacher, bowing again, and continuing in an undertone, "Master was a nasty ungrateful swine who broke his mother's heart —"
"My mother didn't have a heart, Kreacher," Sirius snapped. "She kept herself alive out of pure spite."
Kreacher bowed again and said, "Whatever Master says," then muttered furiously, "Master is not fit to wipe slime from his mother's boots, oh my poor Mistress, what would she say if she saw Kreacher serving him, how she hated him, what a disappointment he was —"
"I asked you what you were up to," said Sirius coldly. "Every time you show up pretending to be cleaning, you sneak something off to your room so we can't throw it out."
"Kreacher would never move anything from its proper place in Master's house," said the elf, then muttered very fast, "Mistress would never forgive Kreacher if the tapestry was thrown out, seven centuries it's been in the family, Kreacher must save it, Kreacher will not let Master and the blood traitors and the brats destroy it —"
"I thought it might be that," said Sirius, casting a disdainful look at the opposite wall. "She'll have put another Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of it, I don't doubt, but if I can get rid of it I certainly will. Now go away, Kreacher."
It seemed that Kreacher did not dare disobey a direct order; nevertheless, the look he gave Sirius as he shuffled out past him was redolent of deepest loathing and he muttered all the way out of the room.
"— comes back from Azkaban ordering Kreacher around, oh my poor Mistress, what would she say if she saw the house now, scum living in it, her treasures thrown out, she swore he was no son of hers and he's back, they say he's a murderer too —"
"Keep muttering and I will be a murderer!" said Sirius irritably, and he slammed the door shut on the elf.
"Maybe you should've been a bit nicer to him..." said Lucia reluctantly, watching the doorway where Kreacher had left them.
"Me, nicer to him?" Sirius breathed out a scoff, "Maybe when hell freezes over."
Lucia's frown only deepens as she wheeled around and absentmindedly playing with the rag in her hands, trying her best to hide her disappointment. Hermione glanced at her by the corner of her eyes and couldn't help but feel the ends of her lips twitching in some sort of jubilant.
She was beyond puzzled: What was there to be happy about? Nevertheless, she snapped back to the topic at hand.
"Sirius, he's not right in the head," said Hermione pleadingly, "I don't think he realises we can hear him."
"I mean, saying he didn't realise that we could hear him would be false..." trailed Lucia in a mumbling way.
"He's been alone too long," said Sirius, "taking mad orders from my mother's portrait and talking to himself, but he was always a foul little —"
"If you just set him free," said Hermione hopefully, "maybe —"
"We can't set him free; he knows too much about the Order," said Sirius curtly. "And anyway, the shock would kill him. You suggest to him that he leaves this house, see how he takes it."
Sirius walked across the room, where the tapestry Kreacher had been trying to protect hung the length of the wall. Lucia and the others followed.
The tapestry looked immensely old; it was faded and looked as though doxies had gnawed it in places; nevertheless, the golden thread with which it was embroidered still glinted brightly enough to show them a sprawling family tree dating back to the Middle Ages. Large words at the very top of the tapestry read:
THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK
Below the words was another, but in another language that Lucia could tell was French. It read:
"TOUJOURS PUR"
"Always pure," she subconsciously mumbled.
All Lucia could think right there and then was: What kind of racist rubbish...
While Harry and Sirius had their godfather-godson conversation, Lucia looked around the tapestry, brushing off the burnt ones to read the ones that were not burnt off. There were so many Wizarding families that were in relations to the Black family by either marriage or being blood related.
And to Lucia, it was a bit bewildering really.
A lot of the things bewildered her, really. Like, how the people that were burnt from the tapestry were most likely disowned by their families just because they don't share the same appalling beliefs, which also weirded her out how it was the norm for these families.
But she did remember reading about it from her dad's journal.
Her opinions on it still stands though. It was just disgusting.
The Longbottoms... The Weasleys... The Malfoys... The Bulstrodes... Presumably almost all the well-known Pure-Blood families. It was a bit surprising that her dad's family were in relation with the Black —
Then again, she guessed the DiFiore family did pride on their dignity and the mere thought of having to share power with another dignified pureblooded British family probably didn't sit very well with them.
Typical.
As she looked around more, she pursed her lips. There was even a possible chance that Harry was distantly related to the Blacks through Dorea Black's marriage to Charlus Potter. Would you look at that...
Mrs. Weasley came back and kept them all working very hard over the next few days. The drawing room took three days to decontaminate; finally, the only undesirable things left in it were the tapestry of the Black family tree, which resisted all their attempts to remove it from the wall, and the rattling writing desk; Moody had not dropped by headquarters yet, so they could not be sure what was inside it.
They moved from the drawing room to a dining room on the ground floor where they found spiders large as saucers lurking in the dresser. It both fascinated and disgusted Lucia to see them being bigger than the ones she constantly sees in her room back home, but the same couldn't be said for Ron who dashed the moment Harry picked it up, unbothered by it crawling on his hands. His own excuse? That he was going to 'brew' some tea for them.
He didn't return for an hour and a half later.
The china, which bore the Black crest and motto, was all thrown unceremoniously into a sack by Sirius, and the same fate met a set of old photographs in tarnished silver frames, all whose occupants squealed shrilly as the glass covering them smashed. It was like waging war on the house the entire time they were cleaning. It also didn't help of the fact that it was putting up a very good fight too, aided and abetted by Kreacher.
The house-elf kept appearing wherever they were congregated, his muttering becoming more and more offensive as he attempted to remove anything he could from the rubbish sacks. Sirius went as far as to threaten him with clothes, but Kreacher fixed him with a watery stare and said, "Master must do as Master wishes," before turning away and muttering very loudly, "but Master will not turn Kreacher away, no, because Kreacher knows what they are up to, oh yes, he is plotting against the Dark Lord, yes, with these Mudbloods and traitors and scum..."
At which Sirius, ignoring Hermione's protests, seized Kreacher by the back of his loincloth and threw him bodily from the room.
The doorbell rang several times a day, which was the cue for Sirius's mother to start shrieking again, and for the others to attempt to eavesdrop on the visitor, though they gleaned very little from the brief glimpses and snatches of conversation they were able to sneak before Mrs. Weasley recalled them to their tasks.
Snape flitted in and out of the house several times more, though to many of their reliefs, they never came face-to-face. Their Transfiguration teacher, Professor McGonagall, looking very odd in a Muggle dress and coat, also came — though she also seemed too busy to linger.
Sometimes, however, the visitors stayed to help; Tonks joined them for a memorable afternoon in which they found a murderous old ghoul lurking in an upstairs toilet, and Lupin, who was staying in the house with Sirius but who left it for long periods to do mysterious work for the Order, helped them repair a grandfather clock that had developed the unpleasant habit of shooting heavy bolts at passersby. Mundungus redeemed himself slightly in Mrs. Weasley's eyes by rescuing Ron from an ancient set of purple robes that had tried to strangle him when he removed them from their wardrobe.
But as days past, it dawned on Lucia that Harry's hearing was nearing. And apparently, she was not the only one nervous for it; the look on the Order, Weasleys, Hermione, and of course Harry, was enough to tell her that none of them were excited for the hearing.
Lucia swore that she got so nervous to the extent of reading books about the Wizarding law.
There was no way they could expel Harry for simply defending himself from the threat of death caused by the Dementors of Azkaban — the Dementors that only listens to those in the Ministry who possessed high ranks.
After an unsettling dinner, Lucia decided not to return back to her room. Instead, she went to the Black family library, where hundreds of books were homed to. It was incredible to see the books in the bookshelf looking so imperialistic.
From then on, Lucia stuck her nose in a book, calculating the chances of them actually expelling Harry.
Which was a fifty-fifty chance.