𝗷𝗮𝗻𝗲, harry potter

˗ˋ 114

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN
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-: fifth year :-

── IN WHICH KREACHER DISAPPEARS

. . .

Jane, dressed in her Mrs Weasley jumper and eating from the large stockpile of fudge the lot of them (now including Ginny, too) had created, was watching the tiny model Firebolt Tonks had gifted Harry when Fred and George Apparated with a crack at the end of Harry's bed. She listened, primarly concerned, as the twins informed them not to go downstairs just yet as Mrs Weasley was upset by the fact that Percy, quite awfully, had sent back his Christmas jumper. 

Soon after, Hermione joined them and thanked them all profusely for their presents - Jane, like Harry and Ron, had recieved planners so as to help them during the upcoming exam season and in return, she had gifted the Granger with a couple of Muggle fiction novels she had purchased just before their arrival back at Grimmauld Place  - when it was discovered that Hermione had  one more present in mind that she was yet to gift another. 

And whilst Ron and Harry might believe it to be quite... futile, Jane agreed in her efforts.

"I don't know how I wasn't quite aware that Kreacher had some kind of bedroom." Jane pushed herself up from the bed, Harry's hand drifting away from her waist where it had sat for so long. Ron was pulling a face when Hermione showed Jane the present of a patchwork blanket, which was quickly imitated by Harry too - neither of them held Kreacher in particularly high regards and neither did Jane, really, but he was a house-elf and thus, included in the movement no matter whether he tended to be rude to them because they were either a Squib or muggle-born or half-blood. 

Harry frowned, more upset that Jane had left his side than the fact they were making an effort to make his Christmas happier. "What bedroom?" He repeated the words back, following after the girls in a quick scramble as they began to plod their way down the flight of stairs attached to the corridor outside. "What bedroom?" He whispered again, as they passed Mrs Black's potrait currently covered in hastily draped tinsel.

"Well, Sirius says it's not so much a bedroom, more a kind of... den," Hermione replied, as she and Jane made their way up front. "Apparently he sleeps under the boiler in that cupboard off the kitchen."

When they reached the kitchen, Mrs Weasley was the only one in there with Lupin, who Fred and George informed them that he had been comforting her as opposed to them, nowhere to be seen. Jane, however, suspected he had gone to find Sirius in his current state of joy over his new velvet robe. She turned pointedly towards the oven and sniffed as she insisted on hiding her face from them. She wished them a merry Christmas in a thick voice and, politely, they averted their eyes.

"So, this is Kreacher's bedroom?" Ron said, strolling over to a dingy door in the corner opposite the pantry which none of them had never seen open. 

"Yes." Hermione nodded. "This is the one Sirius pointed out."

"Well," Jane knelt down next to her, "I think we should at least knock... you know, in case he's in there?" Hermione nodded, and they watched as Ron reached past and rapped his knuckles on the door. 

He tried once more, then shrugged. "He must be sneaking around upstairs." He concluded, before pulling the door open. His nose wrinkled, "Ugh!"

Heads and shoulders pushed against each other as the four of them peered in. Most of the cupboard was taken upwith a very large and old-fashioned boiler, but in the foot's space underneath the pipes Kreacher had made himself something that looked like a kind of nest. A jumble of assorted rags and old blankets were piled on the floor and the small dent in the middle of it showed where Kreacher curled up to sleep every night. In a far corner glinted small objects and coins that Kreacher had saved from Sirius's purge of the house of anything reminding him of the past life within it, and he had also managed to retrieve the silver-framed family photographs that Sirius had thrown away over the summer. 

Their glass might be shattered, but when Jane peered a little further forward, the little black-and white people inside them peered haughtily up at her, including - she felt a small jump in her stomach - Bellatrix Lestrange, who she had seen in a portrait not so long before. Harry looked similiarly uneasy at the sight of it. By the looks of it, hers was Kreacher's favorite photograph; he had placed it in front of all the others and had mended the glass clumsily with tape.

Hermione had quite the unreadble expression on her face as she scanned the sight in front of her. "I think I'll just leave his present here," she said as she laid the package neatly in the middle of the depression in the ragsand blankets and closing the door quietly. "He'll find it later, that'll be fine..." 

They retreated and stood up, joints creaking as they did so. Sirius, still in purple velvet and followed closely by Remus, entered the kitchen and stood behind them, frown covering his expression. "Come to think of it," He said, as Remus split off to enter the pantry and would latr emerge with the turkey, "has anyone seen Kreacher recently?"

"I haven't seen him since the night we came back here," Jane informed him. "You were ordering him out of the kitchen." 

"Yeah..." Sirius replied, eyebrows furrowed. "You know, I think that's the last time I saw him, too. He must be hiding upstairs somewhere..." 

"He couldn't have left, could he?" Harry mentioned. "I mean, when you said 'out,' maybe he thought you meant, get out of the house?"

"No, no, house-elves can't leave unless they're given clothes, they're tied to their family's house," Sirius shook his head. Hermione pulled a face. 

"They can leave the house if they really want to," Harry contradicted him. "Dobby did, he left the Malfoys' to give me warnings two years ago. He had to punish himself afterward,but he still managed it." The stories sat new in Jane's mind from back in August when he informed her of every little detail of his past and at the mention of it, she was reminded that she still quite wanted to meet Dobby.

Sirius looked slightly disconcerted for a moment, then said, "I'll look for him later, I expect I'll find him upstairs crying his eyes out over my mother's old bloomers or something... Of course, he might have crawled into the airing cupboard and died... But I mustn't get myhopes up..."

Fred, George, and Ron laughed; Hermione, however, looked reproachful.

But Jane had the sort of sickening feeling in her stomach when she realised that Harry was almost certainly right. 

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