The Summer of the Phoenix

Chapter 5

Making the house Apparation-proof was a tedious business indeed. Sirius and Lupin, following Dumbledore's example, drew invisible lines around the walls of one room after another with the tips of their wands, while Dumbledore performed a long and complicated incantation on each room that had been traced in this way. The work required a lot of moving furniture, climbing on chairs and crawling into dark corners on their hands and knees - and all this in a house that had been falling into a state of decay for more than ten years. Every single room was full of dust and grime and insects crawling around under the furniture, giving them bites that stung like acid until they got rid of them with a wave of their wand - which meant living with the stinging until a room was fully traced, or breaking their lines and starting anew. Some of the furnishings in the bedrooms crumbled into dust under their hands. At one point, in a particularly large room, Sirius sneezed so violently that he broke his line and had to start all over again, the intensity of his cursing now easily matching that of his sneezing. Lupin did another bedroom twice when he discovered that he had left out a curtained-off recess that he had taken for a window.

It was after lunchtime when they had finished with the attic, the third and the second floor, and moved down to the first floor. Dumbledore took care of the drawing room with the large windows that gave onto the square, while Lupin chose the small bedroom at the back of the house that Sirius had felt so uneasy about entering the night before.

He was in the process of tracing his wand around a heavy bedside cabinet that would not be moved, squatting down on his heels to make sure he got neatly around it, when a voice behind him said maliciously, "I didn't know your kind crawled on all fours between two full moons, too."

Lupin paused, but did not bother to break the contact between his wand and the wall to look around at Phineas Nigellus in his frame.

"Don't disturb me," he said evenly, and continued with his task.

"Listen, I have a very important message for Professor Dumbledore," Phineas said in a casual tone. "Don't you think he might like to hear it?"

"He might," Lupin replied. "When I've finished this. You can wait till then."

"I seem to remember that I told you before," Nigellus said smoothly, folding his arms across his chest, "that I do not take orders from werewolves."

Lupin gave the former headmaster a very dirty look over his shoulder.

"Mind your line, Remus," Nigellus sneered at him.

"Mind your manners, Phineas," said Dumbledore's voice from the open door.

Phineas Nigellus had the grace to blush, if only slightly. "I have a message for you from Minerva McGonagall," he reported in as submissive a voice as he could make it without sounding entirely unconvincing. "She'll be with you this evening to inform you personally of the situation down in Surrey. She has also spoken to a few more people, most of them former students of hers, but she will give you the names herself." The former headmaster looked rather offended at being left out of a secret.

"Excellent," Dumbledore said. "If you can catch her before she leaves, kindly remind her that none of us have had the opportunity to do any shopping today, so a small bite for dinner would be greatly appreciated."

Phineas inclined his head towards Dumbledore - the closest he would ever come to a bow - and vanished, leaving the canvas blank.

"Don't mind him, Remus," said Sirius, who had joined Dumbledore on the landing outside the door. "He's a little too convinced of his own importance, but other than that, he's not worse than the average Slytherin."

* * *

It was dark outside by the time they assembled in the hallway again. Lupin had been busy down in the basement for the last hour, while Dumbledore and Sirius between them had completed the first floor and the ground floor, which luckily consisted only of two large rooms and the hall.

"Kreacher was extremely interested in what I was doing," Lupin reported. "But I think he didn't really get it. All he realises is that this place is being taken over by the very people his mistress has taught him to despise most of all wizardkind. And he does not take it kindly."

"He wouldn't take it kindly if his life depended on it," Sirius snarled, sounding very much as if he wished that it did.

"It is very unusual for a house-elf to despise anyone of wizardkind at all," Dumbledore remarked.

"You can't expect a servant to be better than their masters," said Sirius harshly.

"That is a grave error," Dumbledore replied evenly.

"Not in this case."

There was a rather uncomfortable silence.

"It took me a while to lure him away from his cupboard under a pretext," said Lupin finally, "but I managed. Grimy place."

"Then the spell should be complete," Dumbledore said, "unless there are any secret rooms that we have overlooked."

"There are no secret rooms in this house," Sirius said. "Not with my oh so law-abiding parents. The family's riches have always been at Gringotts, and other than that the Blacks never had reason to make a secret of what sort of wizards they were. And unless you've overlooked the private bathroom off my mother's bedroom on the second floor, which is behind a door in the panelling but not exactly secret, we're done."

"Then we must try our luck," said Dumbledore, getting ready to Disapparate.

At precisely that moment, the doorbell rang. It was a sharp clanking sound, the silver bells over the door dancing wildly in the gaslight. Inevitably, a split second later, the curtains in front of the portrait flew open again, and Mrs Black's voice seemed to five times amplify the shrill ringing of the bells.

"SCUM! DISGRACE! DISTURB MY WELL EARNED REST! INFAMY!"

Lupin screwed up his face again, but Dumbledore quickly pulled the curtains closed with one hand as he passed the portrait on his way to the front door.

"That must be Minerva," he said cheerfully, and without the slightest hesitation opened the door wide.

"You're dead," the man outside said in a gruff voice.