The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|120| Kreacher

The Slytherin colors of emerald and silver were everywhere, draping the bed, the walls, and the windows. The Black family crest was painstakingly painted over the bed, along with its motto, Toujours Pur. Beneath this was a collection of yellow newspaper cuttings, all stuck together to make a ragged collage. I crossed the room to examine them.

"They're all about Voldemort," I said. "Regulus seems to have been a fan for a few years before he joined the Death Eaters..."

A little puff of dust rose from the bedcovers as I sat down to read the clippings. Harry was looking around at the pictures on the walls.

"He played Seeker," said Harry.

"What?" said Hermione vaguely; she was looking over my shoulder immersed in Voldemort's press clippings.

"He's sitting in the middle of the front row, that's where the Seeker— Never mind," said Harry. I looked up from the clippings to see Harry looking annoyed. I frowned a little, I hadn't meant to ignore him. Ron was on his hands and knees, searching under the wardrobe, not listening to Harry either. The drawers' contents had been turned over recently, the dust disturbed, but there was nothing of value there: Old quills, outof-date textbooks that bore evidence of being roughly handled, a recently smashed ink bottle, its sticky residue covering the contents of the drawer.

"There's an easier way," said Hermione, as Harry wiped his inky fingers on his jeans. She raised her wand and said, "Accio Locket!"

Nothing happened. Ron, who had been searching the folds of the faded curtains, looked disappointed.

"Is that it, then? It's not here?"

"Oh, it could still be here, but under counter-enchantments," I said. "Charms to prevent it being summoned magically, you know."

"Like Voldemort put on the stone basin in the cave," said Harry.

"How are we supposed to find it then?" asked Ron.

"We search manually," said Hermione.

"That's a good idea," said Ron, rolling his eyes, and he resumed his examination of the curtains.

We combed every inch of the room for more than an hour, but were forced, finally, to conclude that the locket was not there.

The sun had risen now; its light dazzled them even through the grimy landing windows.

"It could be somewhere else in the house, though," said Hermione in a rallying tone as we walked back downstairs: As Harry, Ron, and I had become more discouraged, she seemed to have become more determined. "Whether he'd managed to destroy it or not, he'd want to keep it hidden from Voldemort, wouldn't he? Remember all those awful things we had to get rid of when we were here last time? That clock that shot bolts at everyone and those old robes that tried to strangle Ron; Regulus might have put them there to protect the locket's hiding place, even though we didn't realize it at... at..."

Harry, Ron, and I looked at her. She was standing with one foot in midair, with the dumbstruck look of one who had just been Obliviated; her eyes had even drifted out of focus.

"...at the time," she finished in a whisper.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"There was a locket."

"What?" said Harry and Ron together.

"In the cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody could open it. And we..."

I felt as though a brick had slid down through my chest into my stomach. I remembered: I had even handled the thing as we passed it around, each trying in turn to prise it open. It had been tossed into a sack of rubbish, along with the snuffbox of Wartcap powder and the music box that had made everyone sleepy...