The Bribe
If Kreacher could escape a lake full of Inferi, Harry was confident that the capture
of Mundungus would take a few hours at most, and he prowled the house all morning in a
state of high anticipation. However, Kreacher did not return that morning or even that
afternoon. By nightfall, Harry felt discouraged and anxious, and a supper composed
largely of moldy bread, upon which Hermione had tried a variety of unsuccessful
Transfigurations, did nothing to help.
Kreacher did not return the following day, nor the day after that. However, two
cloaked men had appeared in the square outside number twelve, and they remained there
into the night, gazing in the direction of the house that they could not see.
“Death Eaters, for sure,” said Ron, as he, Harry, and Hermione watched from the
drawing room windows. “Reckon they know we’re in here?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hermione, though she looked frightened, “or they’d have
sent Snape in after us, wouldn’t they?”
“D’you reckon he’s been in here and has his tongue tied by Moody’s curse?”
asked Ron.
“Yes,” said Hermione, “otherwise he’d have been able to tell that lot how to get in,
wouldn’t he? But they’re probably watching to see whether we turn up. They know that
Harry owns the house, after all.”
“How do they --?” began Harry.
“Wizarding wills are examined by the Ministry, remember? They’ll know Sirius
left you the place.”
The presence of the Death Eaters outside increased the ominous mood inside
number twelve. They had not heard a word form anyone beyond Grimmauld Place since
Mr. Weasley’s Patronus, and the strain was starting to tell. Restless and irritable, Ron had
developed an annoying habit of playing with the Deluminator in his pocket; This
particularly infuriated Hermione, who was whiling away the wait for Kreacher by
studying The Tales of Beedle the Bard and did not appreciate the way the lights kept
flashing on and off.
“Will you stop it!” she cried on the third evening of Kreacher’s absence, as all the
light was sucked from the drawing room yet again.
“Sorry, sorry!” said Ron, clicking the Deluminator and restoring the lights. “I
don’t know I’m doing it!”
“Well, can’t you find something useful to occupy yourself?”
“What, like reading kids’ stories?”
“Dumbledore left me this book, Ron –”
“—and he left me the Deluminator, maybe I’m supposed to use it!”
Unable to stand the bickering, Harry slipped out of the room unnoticed by either
of them. He headed downstairs toward the kitchen, which he kept visiting because he was
sure that was where Kreacher was most likely to reappear. Halfway down the flight of
stairs into the hall, however, he heard a tap on the front door, then metallic clicks and the
grinding of the chain.
Every nerve in his body seemed to tauten: He pulled out his wand, moved into the
shadows beside the decapitated elf heads, and waited. The door opened: He saw a
glimpse of the lamplit square outside, and a cloaked figure edged into the hall and closed
the door behind it. The intruder took a step forward, and Moody’s voice asked, “Severus
Snape?” Then the dust figure rose from the end of the hall and rushed him, raising its
dead hand.
“It was not I who killed you, Albus,” said a quiet voice.
The jinx broke: The dust-figure exploded again, and it was impossible to make
out the newcomer through the dense gray cloud it left behind.
Harry pointed the wand into the middle of it.
“Don’t move!”
He had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black: At the sound of his yell, the curtains
hiding her flew open and she began to scream, “Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my
house –”
Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry, wands pointing,
like his, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below.
“Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black
instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell. Ron too lowered his
wand, but Harry did not.
“Show yourself!” he called back.
Lupin moved forward into the lamplight, hands still held high in a gesture of
surrender.
“I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four
creators of the Marauder’s Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I
taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag.”
“Oh, all right,” said Harry, lowering his wand, “but I had to check, didn’t I?”
“Speaking as your ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that
you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn’t be so quick to lower your defenses.”
They ran down the stairs towards him. Wrapped in a thick black traveling cloak,
he looked exhausted, but pleased to see them.
“No sign of Severus, then?” he asked.
“No,” said Harry. “What’s going on? Is everyone okay?’
“Yes,” said Lupin, “but we’re all being watched. There are a couple of Death
Eaters in the square outside –”
“We know –”
“I
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