Daphne, seeing that everyone around had already gone off to their own business, stole a kiss, brazenly breaking it off at the most inconvenient moment. With a sly smile, she drifted away, graceful and weightless, towards the Main Tower, and I could only shake my head with a faint smile.
Straightening my robe collar and making myself as tidy as I could — short of full-blown perfectionism — I set off resolutely towards the Headmaster's office. Staircases, corridors, the climb to one of the topmost floors, and there I stood before the great alcove with the gargoyle.
"Don't know the password — I was summoned. May I pass?"
No reaction whatsoever.
"I know Fiendfyre. What would be your positive answer?"
The stone gargoyle's eyes shifted, its gaze falling on me, and, to my own surprise, I read reproach and offence in that look. A soft creak, and the gargoyle began to turn, vanishing into the alcove and opening the way to the spiral staircase, which I stepped onto at once.
Opening the Headmaster's office door, I found myself in what was, by now, a familiar place. Snape wasn't Dumbledore — an obvious observation — so, as on my last visit here, when I'd been granted access to the Restricted Section, almost nothing had changed. Minimalist, but comfortable, logical, convenient.
At the Headmaster's desk, against the backdrop of the huge stained-glass windows, sat a grim Snape in his eternal dark clothing, tapping a finger on the desktop and glaring with displeasure at Potter, seated before him. The displeasure was genuinely intense, its cause unknown. Though, if I were a Hogwarts professor with that kind of attitude towards a wayward student, I'd have incinerated Potter with a look alone, no magic required. He's a capable lad, but such a dunderhead!
"Mr Granger," Snape shifted his gaze to me for a moment and indicated, with that same glance, the other free chair opposite his desk.
"Headmaster," I nodded and took the offered seat beside Potter's chair.
Silence. Potter shifted uncertainly, almost imperceptibly, in his chair, yet looked the professor straight in the eye, with something like defiance.
"Potter," Snape all but ground out in his quiet, insinuating voice. "You have still not learnt that, given your aptitude for the mental sciences, one does not do a Legilimens the courtesy of a direct stare."
Potter immediately looked away, now fixing his gaze on a button of Snape's robes.
"In any case, you are not here for idle conversation about your lack, Potter, of both application and any ambition towards self-improvement."
Another pause, courtesy of Snape, and against the oppressive silence of the office it was beginning to grate even on me, quite apart from Potter.
"You will shortly be departing for a house familiar to you both, at an address familiar to you both. A certain someone — you can guess who, Potter — has expressed their most gracious desire to speak with you on certain matters."
Another pause.
"Grimmauld?"
"You, Potter, are simply phenomenal in your inability to hold your tongue," Snape ground out. "Is it truly beyond your meagre intellect that certain things are better left unsaid entirely?"
Potter bristled but didn't argue back.
"Excellent. At least some small measure of restraint has finally made an appearance in your harum-scarum character. Second matter. This evening, a group of wizards from the Dark Guild will arrive at Hogwarts."
"Dark wizards?!" Potter bristled, but then seemed to think better of it and reined in his ardour before Snape could start dressing him down.
"Precisely, Potter. The narrow-minded sheep in our dearest Ministry have finally grasped that they're incapable of solving the anomaly problem themselves and have turned to competent specialists. I'm informing you of this so that, while you're a guest at a certain house you know well, you might process this information properly."
A dramatic pause; the sunlight in the window dimmed, thick clouds rolling in.
"The Dark Guild is one of the oldest in the entire wizarding world. I trust you're aware the wizarding world isn't confined to England? At that house, you'll no doubt be regaled with the usual tall tales about dreadful Dark wizards, and Guild members most of all. But I dare hope you'll show good sense and, once you return, refrain from indulging rumours, refrain from displaying disgust, and — Merlin forbid — contempt."
"Why? I mean," Potter caught the impropriety of the question, "is there some consequence to it?"
"It is obvious, Mr Potter, that these wizards — powerful and respected everywhere except a couple of countries — could simply, on a whim, wash their hands of us, turn around, and leave. Purely on account of attitude. Do not confuse England's 'Dark' wizards — unhinged and inadequate as they are — with genuine professionals. These are not criminals, not murderers, but experts operating on a lawful basis. I trust you'll promote this view within your own House."
"Is that why Hector's here too?" Potter glanced my way for a moment.
"Mr Granger has no need to oversee order within his House. Unlike your deranged Gryffindor, Mr Granger's House holds no negative attitude towards Guild wizards, precisely so long as they aren't troubled by them. Unlike Gryffindor, at Hufflepuff everyone knows perfectly well what a 'guild' is, and what that entails. And those who don't will be enlightened at once. And now…"
Snape laid a simple, long metal chain on the desk before us. Not so thick as to look unwieldy, but sturdy enough to grip easily.
"This is a Portkey. You're both familiar with the concept of such objects?"
"Yes, Headmaster," I answered calmly and promptly, while Potter merely nodded.
"Activation phrase: 'lemon sherbet.' Both of you take hold of it, and when you're ready, tell me — I'll lift the Anti-Apparition wards over the office. Only after my signal are you to speak the key. I entrust this procedure to you, Mr Granger."
"Understood."
I took hold of one end of the chain, stood up, and held out the other end to Potter, who rose from his chair after me. As soon as Harry had taken hold of the chain, Snape performed a series of wand movements, accompanied by elaborate, barely-visible patterns traced by the wand's tip, and I felt the sharp drop of the Anti-Apparition wards — I'd grown so accustomed to them, being in the castle, that I'd stopped consciously registering their presence at all.
"Done."
"Lemon sherbet."
We were immediately dragged into the Portkey's whirl. The process was considerably gentler than Apparition — a professional's touch could be felt.
An instant, and we were flung out a metre above the ground. The surface rushed up fast, but I deftly focused on my actions and my magic, settling smoothly onto the ground right before the threshold of an old brick block of flats, while Potter landed rather clumsily on the pavement beside me.
"I hate Portkeys…" Potter muttered, getting up and brushing himself off.
Behind us lay the none-too-well-tended park area of Grimmauld Place; before us, an ancient door. I didn't bother casting any Notice-Me-Not charms or the like, since I could feel we were already under them — the source being the house itself. Even so, Harry and I were still outside the house's actual protective wards — merely within the concealment zone.
The door swung open at once, revealing a girl with pink hair, dressed in leather.
"Well, look who it is!" she smiled brightly, her hair shifting to some aggressively cheerful colour. "And no escort! Get in here, quick."
"Surely not Auror Tonks-Without-a-First-Name?" I smiled back and stepped over the threshold ahead of Harry, who was still fussing with his glasses and his robes.
"And if it isn't Hector Granger, thorn in the side of every blood-purity fanatic," she gave as good as she got. "How's life? Those halfwits at school still haven't given you a piece of their mind?"
"Oh, sure, like they'd dare," Potter muttered, coming into the house behind us. "Where you make your stand, that's where they'll bury you."
"Is that so?" Tonks looked surprised. "Well, don't just stand on the doorstep, come on, hurry it up."
In her usual burst of energy, she wheeled around briskly and strode into the house, evidently meaning to cross the hall and vanish off down the dark, gloomy corridor with its slightly scuffed wallpaper, peeling in places. Incidentally, I didn't much care for that sort of mess — after all, the last time I'd been here, I'd tidied things up a bit.
With a wave of my hand, I turned my school uniform and robe into a comfortable dark-blue turtleneck, my grey trousers into black ones, and my brogues into polished dress shoes. That was better. And the expanded-space bag was still right where it belonged — couldn't do without it.
A crash sounded close by, practically a couple of steps from us.
"Bloody hell and Morgana's heel!" Tonks swore. "Tch… ugh, that stupid umbrella stand! Again!"
She deftly righted the enormous stand, shaped like a troll's foot, and dropped a couple of umbrellas back into it. Harry hurried after Tonks, clearly anticipating whatever encounters lay ahead, while I walked at a considerably more measured pace, fingertips trailing along the corridor walls.
"They really have let you go to seed, haven't they?" I smirked, feeding in as much neutral energy as I could reasonably spare.
The wallpaper began cleaning itself at once, sticking back down, straightening out. Dust vanished, cobwebs melted away, the shades on the magical light fixtures stopped resembling a mass grave for hundreds of tiny midges, becoming clear and transparent, and the light from them grew steadier, brighter. The floorboards stopped creaking, settling flush against one another, smooth and polished.
"That's better…" I murmured to myself, and carried on with a smile.
In the house's small entrance hall, from which one could reach the ground-floor rooms, the sitting rooms, the kitchen or dining room, and the stairs, hung a familiar portrait — though today it was shrouded behind a heavy black curtain.
"…tramping about the place…"
A creaky, quiet voice caught my attention. Kreacher — that, I believe, was the name of the Blacks' old house-elf — was shuffling along slightly hunched, with that same hooked nose and drooping moustache. He was wringing a fairly clean rag in his hands, surveying the now more-or-less presentable house with clear displeasure.
"Mudbloods and blood-traitors… nicking the silver, nicking the books… now they've even stolen the work, they have…"
Kreacher spotted me, and his expression shifted slightly. I smiled at the sight of the elf and released as much neutral energy as I could towards him — within reason, of course.
Kreacher immediately straightened up, brightened, folded his rag over his elbow, and, looking me up and down, smirked.
"Hmph," he sniffed brazenly. "So, another self-important sort has turned up, has he."
"And I'm glad to see you alive and relatively healthy."
"If the good-for-nothing master Sirius weren't so unworthy," the elf creaked, "Kreacher would be not relatively healthy, but fully so."
"I don't suppose I could count on a nice cup of tea?"
"Kreacher will bring it," the elf nodded, and shuffled off towards the kitchen a good deal more briskly than before. "Perhaps even on time…"
His quiet, creaky voice drifted back to me, drawing a smile. At least something in this world stayed reliable.
"What are you dawdling for?" Tonks reappeared, standing at the end of another corridor leading to the sitting room. "Get in here."
"Coming."
The sitting room, just as I remembered it, was large and spacious, with a great, cumbersome old table, elegant in its own way, along with chairs, cabinets, and the other necessary trappings of a room done up in Black-family gloom and a certain grandeur.
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