"It's ideal for Headquarters, of course. My father put every security measure known to wizardkind on it when he lived here. It's unplottable, so Muggles could never come and call — as if they'd ever have wanted to — and now Dumbledore's added his protection, you'd be hard put to find a safer house anywhere."
—Sirius Black
***
INTRODUCTION:
12 Grimmauld Place was the ancestral home of the Black family. In 1995, the home became the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix with the consent of Sirius Black, with Albus Dumbledore becoming Secret-Keeper. After Dumbledore's death in 1997, everyone in whom he confided the location of 12 Grimmauld Place to became a Secret-Keeper.
LOCATION:
It was located in the Borough of Islington, London, in a Muggle neighbourhood.
MUGGLE PREVENTION:
The location was protected by a Fidelius Charm. As the house was invisible to the neighbourhood residents, the local Muggles have long since accepted the mistake in numbering which landed number 13 next to number 11.
FURTHER SECURITY MEASURES:
By the time the Order of the Phoenix made number twelve, Grimmauld Place its headquarters, the house had been placed under "every security measure known to wizard-kind." Among other things, the house is Unplottable, which makes it accessible only to wizards, and had spells on the front door such that it could only be unlocked by a wizard using his or her wand. The house was also placed under a Fidelius Charm, meaning it couldn't be accessed by wizards, either, unless they were told its location by the Secret-Keeper. Albus Dumbledore was the Secret-Keeper for Grimmauld Place until his death in 1997, after which everyone who had been told the secret became a Secret-Keeper themselves.
Dumbledore's death also led Mad-Eye Moody to place additional enchantments on the house, in order to prevent Severus Snape from accessing it: he set up a Tongue-Tying Curse that sensed whether a person entering the house was Snape, and if so, bound his tongue; and a Dumbledore figure, made of dust, that approaches intruders unless they tell it that they were not the one who killed Dumbledore.
KNOWN OBJECTS:
An ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into the stopper, full of what appeared to be blood.
Boxes, made of tarnished silver and inscribed with languages Harry did not understand.
A dusty box containing Sirius's grandfather's Order of Merlin First Class.
China with the Black family crest and motto.
Rusty daggers
Family photos in silver frames.
A grandfather clock that shot heavy bolts at whomever passed by.
A spidery instrument, rather like a many-legged pair of tweezers, which scurried away and tried to puncture Harry's skin.
An unopenable locket which turned out to be Salazar Slytherin's Locket.
A music box that played a faintly sinister, tinkling tune that when wound nearly knocked everyone out.
A large and golden ring bearing the Black family crest.
An ancient set of purple robes that tried to strangle Ron when they were removed from their wardrobe.
Several ancient seals.
Mounted House-elf heads
Coiled snakeskin
A snuffbox
A nest of dead Puffskeins under a sofa
A piano, on which Hermione Granger taught Ron Weasley how to play "Für Elise".
BLACK FAMILY CREST AND MOTTO:
The family motto, which can be found on the family crest, is Toujours Pur, which means "Always Pure" in French. Many members took this phrase very seriously.
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NOTES FROM THE ADMINS:
•Grimmauld Place may be one of Rowling's play on words combining the words "grim", "old" and "place".
•The inheritance of the property by Sirius Black is almost certainly governed by the magical equivalent of the English Common Law concept of the Entailed Estate. Under this type of arrangement, the inheritance of the covered property by the designated heir ("down the direct line, to the next male with the name of 'Black'") cannot be prevented by disinheritance or any other legal means. The only way the entail breaks is if there is no living descendant who matches the conditions of the entail. When the entail breaks, the property in question can be disposed of by any legal means, including being willed to any person the current holder so chooses. This legal mechanism matches the known circumstances of the inheritance, where the property was inherited by Sirius although he was "disowned", and then could be successfully left to Harry Potter once there was no "direct line, male descendant."
•In the films, Harry's inheritance of the house is omitted.
•When a wizard approaches number twelve, Grimmauld Place who knows of its location, it appears to shove its neighbouring houses, number eleven and number thirteen, out of the way as it appears between them.
•A door at the far end of the entry hall, a set of narrow stone stairs leads to the basement, and the house's kitchen. The room had a gloomy feeling when it was occupied by the Order of the Phoenix, but when Harry later lived in the house, Kreacher cleaned the room up and made it sparkling, "almost unrecognizable" as the same room where the Order once held its meetings.
•The drawing room was at one time exquisite, with large windows overlooking the street in front of the house, a large fireplace flanked by two ornate glass-fronted cabinets, and an entire wall covered with a tapestry of the Black family tree.
•The topmost landing is probably the fourth floor (unless the house is truly enormous – remember the high ceilings on every floor), and on this floor are only two doors: one leading to Sirius's room, and the other to Regulus's. The latter was marked by a sign on the door — "Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black" — that eventually proved to be the clue Harry would need to discover the identity of R.A.B. Though Harry never entered either until he owned the house himself, he could tell that both rooms had once been beautiful, with carved wooden headboards on the beds, velvet curtains, and fine wall hangings and furniture.
•The decor in the two rooms, of course, could not have been more different: Sirius decked his room out in Gryffindor colours and banners, and posters of Muggle biker girls. In Regulus's room, slightly smaller, the decor of course highlighted his Slytherin, pure-blood heritage, with a Black family crest painted over the bed and newspaper clippings about Voldemort donning the walls.
