The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|121| Broken Lupin

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 could not see.

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

"I don't think so," I said.

Hermione, though she looked frightened, said "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," said Hermione, "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."

The presence of the Death Eaters outside increased the ominous mood inside number twelve. We 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, as all light was sucked from the drawing room yet again.

"Sorry, sorry!" said Ron, 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!"

"SHUT UP!" I shouted at them. They both stopped their bickering as I stood up and left the room, tired of hearing them. Harry had left prior to their argument to see if Kreacher had come back because that would be more than likely where he'd reappear.

I decided to take my daily stroll throughout the entire house. Halfway down the flight of stairs into the hall, however, I heard a tap on the front door, then metallic clicks and the grinding of the chain.

Every nerve in my body seemed to tauten: I pulled out my wand, moved into the shadows beside the decapitated elf heads, and waited. The door opened: I saw a glimpse of the lamplit square outside, 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, "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 gray cloud it left behind.

I pointed my wand into the middle of it.

"Don't move!"

I had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black: At the sound of my yell, the curtains hiding her flew open and she began to scream, "Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house —"

Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind me, wands pointing, like mine, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below. Harry came up the stairs from the basement kitchen with his wand raised as well.

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

"Oh, thank goodness," said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell. Ron and Harry too lowered their wand, but I did not.