Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Harry Potter and the Slytherin Spy

Christine Morgan

Chapter Seven - Night of the Knife

The sharp thing skidded off Harry's shoulderblade, snagged in his robes, was wrenched loose from the murderous grasp that held it, and clattered to the floorboards at his feet.

Even as this was happening, Harry got his wand in his right hand and with his left reached clumsily up and over, trying to catch hold of whatever it was that clung to his back with the feverish intensity of a rabid monkey.

Jane darted around, wand out, trying for a clear shot. But Harry was flailing about so much that she evidently didn't dare risk a Stunning spell for fear of getting him instead.

Harry stepped on the object that had clattered to the floor, lost his balance, and fell heavily to his knees. As he did, he felt the lively weight on his back flip up and over, pulling his robes up and over as well. Harry's head was enveloped in black cloth.

The weight sprang off his back. He heard, as he fought his way free of his entanglement, the thump and skitter of it leaping from one table to the next.

"Stupefy!" Jane called, then made a wordless cry of frustration. Missed.

Yanking his robes off, gritting his teeth against the long line of pain down his shoulder, Harry finally saw what had wounded him. It caught the dull glow of the banked fire and glimmered, red on silver.

A knife. A dagger. Old and ornate, with a blade that made a serpentine curve and a point splashed even redder with Harry's blood. The tarnished handle was set with dark jewels. At the crosspiece was an oval impression of a family crest, and letters too small to read in the dim light.

Jane tried another Stunning spell, and the bright magical blast lit up the letters enough to show Harry what he had already guessed.

Toujours Pur.

The cheese knife, thrown, whickered nastily through the air. Jane yipped and ducked. It went over her head to strike with a quivering thunk in the wall, just below a tacked-up front page from the Daily Prophet. The Death Eaters in the photo shook their fists.

"So he's got a girlfriend, he does, the nasty orphan, the son-of-a-Mudblood, meeting girls in the middle of the night and he'll get one of them in trouble and then where will it end?"

The voice, a harsh and waspish mutter, came from the table laden with bread and cheese. Making his way to his feet, Harry saw a small figure standing amid the blasted-open loaf that must have caught Jane's spell.

It hadn't been Crookshanks scurrying in the rafters at all. Though the figure was roughly the size of Hermione's stocky cat, it was upright on two bowed legs. Humanoid, hunched, shrunken. Loose and grimy skin wrinkled over its knobby body. Its oversized head appeared even bigger because of large batlike ears and a prominent nose.

For clothing, it wore just a scrap of a rag knotted about its midsection like a loincloth. Strings of hair straggled across its patchy scalp, and its bulbous, yellow-rimmed eyes shifted from Harry to Jane to Harry again.

"Kreacher!" gasped Harry.

The demented house-elf glanced shiftily around, as if for a new weapon, but only bread and cheese were within reach. He muttered again, low but perfectly audible.

"Oh, my Mistress, my Mistress, how she would weep and tear her hair to see what her line has come to, her fortune, her home, left to this abomination."

"What is it?" Jane came up beside Harry. "A ... a goblin?"

"A house-elf," Harry said grimly. "A poor excuse for one."

"As if he would know, the vile brat." Kreacher acted as if he spoke only to himself, as if oblivious to the fact that they could hear him. "Poor Kreacher, all his life, loyal and diligent, and how is he thanked?"

"I've never seen one," Jane said. "But ... aren't house-elves supposed to be helpful? Why'd it try to kill you? Are you all right?"

"I'll mend," Harry said, looking down at the dagger emblazoned with the crest of the most ancient and noble house of Black. It occurred to him that Kreacher might have dipped the blade in something deadly, in which case he might drop dead from poison at any moment despite the relative insignificance of the wound.

"... turning his back on his family and consorting with blood-traitors," Kreacher, still acting oblivious, went on. "Filling my Mistress' house with them, oh, bad enough, bad enough. Throwing out family heirlooms like so much rubbish, spitting his mother's eye, the unworthy and ungrateful whelp ..."

"He stabbed you."

"He's deranged," Harry said.

"What do we do?"

"Kreacher!" Harry said again, this time in a commanding tone.

The house-elf flinched and looked up at him with hateful suspicion. "It speaks to Kreacher, it does, it calls him by name and acts as if it can order Kreacher about, this boy, this Muggle-loving boy ... and there it still is, the scar, the deformity, hideous on his face."

"What are you doing here?" Harry demanded. "Who sent you? Was it Narcissa? Bellatrix?"

"He dares, oh, he dares pollute their names with his vile flapping tongue. It should be torn out by the roots and slapped across his ugly Mudblood-born face."

"Answer me!"

"Shouting at Kreacher, acting the mighty lord, as if he thinks Kreacher must obey him. And the girl, this girl, what of her, Kreacher does not know her but she must be a blood-traitor like the rest of them, like the red-haired imps and half-bloods and werewolves who trespass in Mistress' house."

"It's my house now," Harry said. "Sirius left it to me."

Kreacher acted as if these words had been a dousing of scalding-hot water. "The wretched imperious boy, saying such things to Kreacher! It is lies, all of it, lies! He will never own the House of Black!"

"He left it to me," Harry said, feeling furious and reckless.

If Hermione was here, she'd berate him for speaking so harshly to a house-elf, even an insane house-elf who'd just tried to kill him. Even Dumbledore had said that Sirius' treatment of Kreacher was partly to blame for Kreacher's betrayal ... that if Sirius had been kinder to the elf, he might still be alive. Easily said, and perhaps Hermione did have a point about the oppression of house-elves in general, but this one was a monster.

"If he thinks, the foolish ugly boy-child, if he thinks that he will ever be master of that house, he is surely mad," Kreacher said in a loud aside to nobody.

"Sirius should have given you clothes a long time ago," Harry said. "Don't expect that I won't."

"Kreacher would rather have clothes!" the elf spat with sudden venom, addressing Harry with uncharacteristic directness. "Kreacher would never permit his head to hang severed in the halls of Black with his ancestors, not if Harry Potter dwells there!"

"Eew," Jane, still beside Harry, said softly.

"I wouldn't have your head on my wall," Harry said.

"But Harry Potter shall not dwell there," Kreacher said. "Kreacher will destroy the house first ... or better yet, Kreacher will destroy Harry Potter!"

With that, with a wave of his shriveled arms, the air was full of flying chunks of bread and cheese. The wooden doors behind the long oaken bar burst open and a hailstorm of mugs and glasses erupted toward Harry and Jane.

"Look out!" Harry spun her away, both of them trying to shield their faces and heads from the poltergeist whirlwind of crockery.

The ale taps opened, pouring foamy amber-gold torrents. A smoked ham, hanging from the ceiling in a net bag, ripped free and came after Harry like a Bludger in a Quidditch game.

He fired a Stunning spell, but Kreacher somehow deflected it ... or possibly wasn't affected. Dobby, another house-elf of Harry's acquaintance - one who had nearly gotten him killed several times but usually with the best of intentions - had demonstrated a superhuman resilience to physical punishment. Stunning spells had worked on Mr. Crouch's house-elf, Winky, but Winky had taken half a dozen of them from some of the Ministry's top peacekeepers.

"This is crazy," Jane said, as they took cover behind an overturned table.

"Welcome to my world."

The table shot straight up as if someone had lit a stick of dynamite under it, leaving them exposed.

Drawers were yanked past their stops by the unseen force of Kreacher's magic, and cutlery joined the melee. None of the knives were as long or brutally sharp as the dagger or the cheese knife, but the tines of the forks jabbed like the stings of enraged bees.

"Diverto!" Jane shouted, waving her wand in a wide semi-circle in front of them. An oncoming wave of dishware veered away from them, skimming past on all sides with inches to spare but not touching them.

"Nice one," Harry said, and then grunted as the smoked ham blindsided him. It wasn't as hard, or moving as fast, as a Bludger, but he still saw stars.

"Never! Never!" shrieked Kreacher over the cacophony of smashing glass and pottery. "Kreacher will never bow to Harry Potter. The House of Black will never be his! It will go to its rightful master, and Kreacher will serve him well and see that the ancient glory is restored, oh, Mistress will be so pleased!"

"Ah!" Jane clapped a hand to her face, where her cheek had been sliced open by a bit of broken bottle.

"Together," Harry said. "One, two, three!"

"Stupefy!" they chorused. Red beams shot from their wands, but Kreacher, with the sprightliness of a leprechaun, hopped over them.

The elf gestured, and the heavy pot of simmering lamb stew wobbled as it began to rise from the hook that held it over the fire.

"All right ... Reducto!" Harry aimed not at the elf, but at the table upon which the elf was capering.

It exploded into wood splinters and dust. Kreacher was knocked up and backward, cursing blisteringly. The dive-bombing dishes and utensils rained down. The platter the bread had been on was flipped high like a tiddlywink. Before it hit the floor, Harry scrambled into the mess, searching for Kreacher.

He saw a small, bare foot with black toenails so overgrown that they curled under the bottoms of the toes, and snatched at it. But even as he did, Kreacher writhed in his grip and dug his fingers into Harry's throat. The house-elf's tiny hands were like metal clamps.

"Horrible to touch him," Kreacher wheezed, his rancid breath spewing into Harry's face. "But it must be endured, it must be done. It is only for a moment and then he will be dead, he will be dead and all will be set right!"

"Let go of him!" Jane swung the wooden box she'd been carrying. Its corner met Kreacher's skull with a sound like someone taking a hammer to a coconut. Inside the box, glass broke with a brittle clink.

Kreacher grunted. For an unbearable moment, his literal stranglehold on Harry tightened. Then his eyes rolled up to whites, which weren't white but the runny yellow of rotten eggs, and his grip slackened. He went limp.

With a hoarse croak, Harry rubbed his neck and tried to swallow. He looked at Jane. She stood over them, breathing fast, covered in breadcrumbs, blood smeared from the cut on her cheek. Something dripped from the seam of the box she held, and at first he thought she must have caved in Kreacher's head. But the stuff running from the box was greenish and clear, a leak from whatever had broken.

The noisy ruckus had not gone unnoticed. Harry heard slamming doors and running footsteps from all over the Leaky Cauldron. He wasn't looking forward to having to explain this, especially because he didn't really know what had happened. Kreacher had tried to kill him, yes ... but why? How? On whose authority? Not even Kreacher, despicable sneak-thief though he was, would take violent action on his own.

Still rubbing his throat, Harry let Jane help him up. He touched her cheek, near the cut.

"You're hurt," he rasped.

"I'll ... I'll mend," she said. "But what ... what was all that?"

"I don't know." Harry stooped to pick up the dagger, and turned it over thoughtfully in his hands. "Maybe he can tell us when he's calmed down. If he calms down."

Kreacher moaned. One eyelid fluttered. Then, with astonishing quickness, he came around.

"Hey!" Harry said. "No! Don't let him -"

With a whip-snap of noise, Kreacher Disapparated. Harry ground his teeth angrily. He didn't think he really would have gotten any answers out of Kreacher, but now he wouldn't even have the chance to try. And any second, the Weasleys were going to rush in here, and the owner of the Leaky Cauldron, and Hermione, and a dozen strangers, and all of them would want to know what had happened. What he was doing down here, in his pajamas, with Jane ... and with a knife-scrawl down his back.

"He's gone," Jane said.

"Yeah. But I know where. Come on."

"What? Where are we ... what?"

Holding her by the arm, wand and dagger in his other hand, Harry propelled Jane out of the common room and into the entry hall. Here was an unlit fireplace, roomy enough to roast a whole ox, with cast-iron sculptures of chimeras holding a log so immense that only Hagrid could have lifted it. They stepped in, only having to duck their heads slightly.

"Light it," Harry said, reaching up on the mantle for a handful of Floo Powder from a ceramic urn shaped like a squatting troll.

Jane spared him a dubious eyebrow, but didn't argue. She lit the fire, orange flames dancing along the top of the log.

"Number Twelve Grimmauld Place," Harry said, and threw the powder.

Cool green fire blazed around them, whirling them. Harry heard Jane's startled exclamation, felt her cling tight to his arm. She must not have ever traveled by Floo Powder before, and of course she wouldn't have had much opportunity, not while spending her non-Hogwarts time at the parsonage. In her way, she was more Muggle-raised than he was. He wondered how she had survived in Slytherin, given the way most of that House felt about Muggles.

He didn't have time to think about it, because they arrived in a puff of soot in the dark and silent kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Harry got out, switching the dagger to his other hand, ready for Kreacher to leap at him. It was probably a mistake, coming here. On the house-elf's own home territory, who knew what traps he might have set or what other weapons might be at his disposal?

Jane, with the wooden box under one arm and her wand out, followed him. "If you don't mind me asking -" she whispered.

"This was my godfather's house," Harry replied. "He left it to me."

"Sirius Black was your godfather?"

"That's right. And yes, he did spend twelve years in Azkaban, but he was wrongfully condemned. He never betrayed my parents, never murdered anyone. A Death-Eater killed him a few months ago. His cousin. Bellatrix Lestrange."

Jane closed her eyes for a moment, bowed her head. "I'm sorry. I know what that can be like."

"Was it true?"

"What?"

"That Death-Eaters killed your mother?"

"Not in the same way. She ... she hanged herself."

"Was it the Imperius Curse?" Harry asked, remembering when Barty Crouch Jr., masquerading as Moody, had cast it on him. The feeling of total helplessness had been, in its way, almost as bad as the agony of the Cruciatus Curse. Maybe, if he hadn't been able to fight off the effects, it would have been worse. Pain, he could deal with.

Her face twisted into a horrible look of anguish. "I ... I don't know if we should talk about this now, Harry. I don't know if I can talk about it."

"Right. Sorry. And this isn't the best place. Kreacher's probably lurking around."

"Does anyone live here?" she asked.

"Professor Lupin said that someone was staying here. The new teacher."

And, looking around, Harry did see signs that someone must have been in the kitchen recently. Someone besides Kreacher, because the room was clean, and a few dishes had been neatly left to dry in a dish drainer beside the sink. The room smelled not of mold and madness, which he would have expected if only Kreacher had been in residence these past weeks, but of warmed milk and fresh-baked banana bread and some elusive, fruity scent.

No elf-thrown missiles came pelting out of the shadows. Harry tried to think of all the various hiding places and other haunts used by Kreacher. He had to admit that he didn't know what other changes might have taken place since he was last in this house. That had been Christmas time, not counting when he'd stuck his head from Umbridge's office into this very fireplace.

While he'd been at school, Sirius had continued maintaining the house as a headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix. He'd kept Buckbeak upstairs, and presumably carried on with the efforts to clean up and rid the rooms of the many assorted leftovers from the days of the Black family.

Were the heads of Kreacher's house-elf predecessors still hanging in the hall? Was the banshee-wailing portrait of Sirius' mother still poised to unleash her fury at a knock on the door or a pull at the bell? Was the tapestry still there, the one that showed generations of Blacks stretching back into the Middle Ages?

What about Lupin? He had come here instead of accompanying the rest of them to Diagon Alley. Presumably, to meet with this new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher ... maybe to arrange that teacher's travel to Hogwarts. Lupin himself had gone via the Hogwarts Express, the first and thus far only time Harry had seen an adult passenger on the train.

Somehow, raising his voice to hail anyone in the household would feel even ruder than his unannounced intrusion into the kitchen. The silence was library-thick, tomb-thick. Not even a rustle to reveal which way Kreacher might have gone.

"Harry?" whispered Jane. "What are we doing here?"

"I want to find out what Kreacher's up to. I know he's hated me ... he hates everyone, as far as I know, but he's never tried to kill me before. Is it just because he doesn't want me inheriting this house? And, by extension, him?" Harry gave a shudder.

"Fair enough. But why am I here?"

"Oh." He ran a hand through his hair, only then noticing that it was sticking up in wilder corkscrews than usual. This reminded him again that he was in his pajamas, which were torn and bloodstained.

Jane's smile this time was different than it had ever been before. It dimpled at the corners. "Or do you make a habit of whisking girls off on strange midnight adventures?"

"Not hardly," Harry said, suppressing a laugh.

"I guess this means you must trust me a little," she said. "Slytherin or no."

"I guess it does."

"But you should probably have someone look at your back," Jane went on. "That knife cut isn't just a scratch."

"At least it's not poisoned."

At this, she paled and stared at him. "Why ... why do you say that?"

"Because, knowing Kreacher, I'd be dead by now if it was," Harry said. "Come on. We'll check his bolt-hole. He's got a hideaway upstairs, where he keeps all his mementos. Probably, that's where he had this knife."

Jane nodded, though she was still pale and uncertain.

Seeking to reassure her, Harry added, "Don't worry. I'm not going to stab him. I might be tempted, but ..."

"But what?"

"Wouldn't be right, somehow. Wouldn't be very fair."

"That's a Gryffindor for you," she said, almost in a low-and-aside mutter of her own. "I don't know how fair I'd fight with someone who just tried to murder me."

Both of them on alert, they proceeded by wandlight through the kitchen toward the front of the house. Harry warned her about the portrait of Mrs. Black, but when they reached the hall, they saw that it was indeed gone. There was a lighter spot on the wall where it had been, and around the edges were scorch marks attesting to whatever spells had finally overpowered her Sticking Charm.

The row of house-elf heads was gone, too, to Harry's relief. They had given him the creeps even by daylight when the house was full of friends. Seeing them in the dead of night, tip-toeing along and unsure whether there was anyone else here at all, would have been too much.

In fact, it seemed that the house was in quite good keeping and repair. The walls were still paneled in dark wood, and many of the remaining furnishings were of a heavy, medieval style with prevalent clawed feet, snake and bat motifs, leering gargoyles and an unsettling way of seeming to move stealthily when glimpsed from the corner of one's eye.

But new pieces of furniture had been added, among them homey and comfortable chairs that looked like a person could risk sitting in them without fear of the cushions closing like some great crushed-velvet maw, tables that did not look like guillotines in disguise, paintings that showed pleasant meadow and forest scenes instead of brooding storm-swept castles on high craggy bluffs or writhing serpents.

At the foot of the front staircase, Harry and Jane paused. A faint light came from above them, and an equally faint murmur that might have been voices in conversation.

"Look," Jane said, poking her lit wand tip at a few specks of cheese caught in the nap of the blood-red carpet runner down the center of the staircase.

"He must've gone this way, then," Harry said.

The first step creaked beneath him like the rusty hinges of a haunted house door. He froze, waiting with breathless expectation for the voices above him to stop, for more lights to flare, for there to be discovery. But there weren't any of those things. With Jane following, he ascended.

Partway down the hall, a door stood ajar. Harry recognized it as leading to an informal sitting room. He also recognized one of the voices as belonging to Lupin. The other was that of a woman, and did not sound familiar.

Closer now, he could make out words.

" - repay all this kindness," the woman was saying.

"Don't worry, Gwenna," Lupin replied. "You'll more than earn your keep at Hogwarts."

"That's good of you to say, Remus, but they must not have gotten many good applicants for the job, if my credentials were acceptable."

"Other applicants? What other applicants?"

"Oh, it's like that, is it? I see."

Dispensing with the quiet creeping along, Harry walked boldly to the door and pushed it wider. Lupin and the woman turned, Lupin half-rising from his chair and both of them looking moderately alarmed. Then Lupin's worn face relaxed into a smile.

"Harry?"

The woman, who had not moved from her chair but who had placed her hand on the wand that rested on the side table, now did rise. "This is him? The Potter boy?"

"This is him," Lupin said. "Harry, what a surprise ... come in." His gaze took in Harry's condition, and sharpened. "What's happened? You're hurt."

Harry, meanwhile, stared at the woman that Lupin had called Gwenna. His throat, mostly recovered from Kreacher's efforts at throttling him, felt dry. Here he was, disheveled in torn pajamas, covered in crumbs, his hair like a fright wig, bleeding ...

She was tall, this Gwenna, and even more shapely than Madame Rosmerta, the innkeeper at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. A summer-weight sleeveless robe of spun golden cloth, woven with patterns of violet flowers and emerald-green leaves, flatteringly hugged her figure. Waves of jet-black hair fell soft and loose around her shoulders, and her tan was as golden as her gown.

The exotic cast to her features, and a barely-discernible accent, told him that she was foreign-born. The way she held herself, regal as any queen, told him she was a person of far more importance than just some run-of-the-mill Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

Around her neck, Gwenna wore a necklace, winking with reflected fire from a diamond set in the center of a many-rayed gold sunburst. More jewels flashed on her fingers.

Lupin came over to Harry, his brow furrowed with concern. "What's this? You're bleeding. And ... Miss Kirkallen, is that you?"

"Hello, Professor Lupin," Jane said, smiling awkwardly.

The two adults had been sitting in wing-back chairs, in the buttery glow from an amber-shaded lamp. A tea pot, two cups, and a sugar bowl sat on a wooden tea tray, along with a small plate of sliced banana bread and shallow dishes of mandarin oranges sprinkled with shreds of toasted coconut.

On a low table between them was a stack of textbooks with titles like Advanced Protective Charms, Curses and Countercurses, Spells of Safeguarding and Active Magical Defense. Beside the books were rolls of parchment upon which were written notes and lesson plans.

"I'm all right," Harry said. "It was ... where's Kreacher? Do you know?"

"Haven't seen him all evening." Lupin frowned. "Are you telling me that Kreacher is responsible for this?"

Harry handed him the dagger. "He tried to bury this in my back, threw a bunch of crockery at us, then half-choked me before escaping. We think he came here."

"Let me see," Gwenna said. "I have some knowledge of healing." In a swish of silken robes, she moved behind him and he felt the gentle touch of her fingers as she examined the wound. "A shallow cut, clean. He shouldn't need to go to hospital."

"Kreacher attacked you?" Lupin asked, shaking his head. "I wouldn't have thought him capable of anything so direct."

"Me either, but he did," Harry said. "Do you have any idea what set him off?"

"I'm afraid that I might," Lupin said heavily.

"It had something to do with Sirius leaving everything to me, I think," Harry said. "He was going on about how he'd see me dead before letting me be master of this house."

"I'll try to find him. Oh, but first ... some introductions are probably in order. Harry Potter, this is Gwenna Golden. Professor Golden. Your new Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor, as of tomorrow."

"I have heard much about you, Harry Potter," Gwenna said, with a touch of something sorrowful in her tone. She clasped his hand briefly, squeezed it.

"And this is Jane Kirkallen, another student." If Lupin was shocked to see Jane here, he hid it well. "Miss Kirkallen, it seems you've taken some lumps as well."

Jane covered the scratch on her cheek. "It's nothing, Professor. A cut from some broken glass."

"She helped me fight off Kreacher," Harry said.

"Do Arthur and Molly know where you are?" asked Lupin.

A guilty knot cinched tighter in Harry's gut. "Not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

"No. No, they don't. We left the Leaky Cauldron in a hurry, before anyone else came downstairs to investigate the commotion."

As impolite as it felt to sit there with his shirt off while someone who was not only a new teacher, but a complete stranger and beautiful woman of obvious importance tended to him, Harry did so at Lupin's urging. Gwenna laved the crusts of drying blood from his back and performed a Coagulating Charm to stop the bleeding, then did the same for Jane.

While this was going on, Harry related in greater detail the events of the night. He left out how he had seen Jane coming from the direction of Knockturn Alley, making it seem like he had gone downstairs for some other reason and Jane walked in during the struggle with Kreacher.

"He's got to be around here somewhere," Lupin said. "You know of course how unusual it is for a house-elf to leave the house to which it is bound, unless specifically ordered to do so. But then, Kreacher is an unusual house-elf."

"So you believe that he would want to kill Harry, to keep Harry from taking over this house?" Jane asked. "What would happen then? To the house, and to Kreacher?"

Lupin took a long, slow breath and glanced at Gwenna.

"What?" Harry asked, catching the significance, if not the meaning, of that look.

"I'm afraid that it is my fault this Kreacher tried to do away with you," Gwenna said. "Ever since I came here ..."

"Perhaps you should start at the beginning," interrupted Lupin.

"Somebody please let me know what's going on," Harry said. "Why are you here? I can see why Dumbledore might want to hide away a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, since Voldemort -"

Amazingly, nobody flinched. Lupin had never shied from saying the name, and perhaps Gwenna Golden, being a foreigner, didn't share the instinctive fearful aversion of most of the witches and wizards in England. But even Jane, though her eyes did widen a little, took it in stride.

"--might want to get rid of you," Harry continued. "Seen as how it's Dumbledore who opposes him, and most of Dumbledore's supporters would still be students at Hogwarts, it would make sense to try and leave us as under-prepared as possible. So it makes sense that you'd be here, where the Death Eaters couldn't eliminate you before school started. But what should that have to do with me and Kreacher?"

At that moment, a door to an adjoining bedroom swung open to admit a small figure. Harry and Jane grabbed for their wands.

"No!" Lupin reached out with both hands and swatted their arms down.

It wasn't Kreacher in the doorway, yawning and rubbing his eyes. It was a toddler in fuzzy blue sleepers, dragging a blanket and carrying a stuffed toy doggy.

Gwenna went to the child, lifting him into her arms. She turned to face Harry.

"Because of him," she said. "Here is why Kreacher would kill you, Harry Potter. Because of my son ... Arcturus Black."

**