Change the Future

DH 9

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 cannot see.

"Death Eaters, for sure," Ron said, as he, Harry, and Hermione watched from the drawing room windows. "Reckon they know we're in here?"

"I don't think so," Hermione said, 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 had his tongue tied by Moody's curse?" asked Ron. 

"Yes," Hermione said, "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 and Rory own 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 twelves. They had not heard a word from 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 out on the third evening of Kreacher's absence, as all light was sucked from the drawing room yet again.

"Sorry, sorry!" Ron said, 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. 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. He pulled out his wand, moved into the shadows beside the decapitated elf heads, and waited. The door opened 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, 

"Who the hell is it" Fabian asks.

"My Moony" Rory says with a smile.

"How do you know that?" Ron asks her.

"I know Moony" She says with a shrug.

"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 grey cloud it left behind. Harry pointed his 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 dishonouring 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 hill below.

"Hold your fire, it's me, Remus!"

"Knew it" Rory says smiling at Remus.

"Oh, thank goodness," Hermione said 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.