Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (102 page)

‘And then you saw Rookwood, who worked in the Department of Mysteries before his arrest, telling Voldemort what we had known all along – that the prophecies held in the Ministry of Magic are heavily protected. Only the people to whom they refer can lift them from the shelves without suffering madness: in this case, either Voldemort himself would have to enter the Ministry of Magic, and risk revealing himself at last – or else you would have to take it for him. It became a matter of even greater urgency that you should master Occlumency.’

‘But I didn’t,’ muttered Harry. He said it aloud to try and ease the dead weight of guilt inside him: a confession must surely relieve some of the terrible pressure squeezing his heart. ‘I didn’t practise, I didn’t bother, I could’ve stopped myself having those dreams, Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he’d never have been able to show me where to go, and – Sirius wouldn’t – Sirius wouldn’t –’

Something was erupting inside Harry’s head: a need to justify himself, to explain –

‘I tried to check he’d really taken Sirius, I went to Umbridge’s office, I spoke to Kreacher in the fire and he said Sirius wasn’t there, he said he’d gone!’

‘Kreacher lied,’ said Dumbledore calmly. ‘You are not his master, he could lie to you without even needing to punish himself. Kreacher intended you to go to the Ministry of Magic.’

‘He – he sent me on purpose?’

‘Oh yes. Kreacher, I am afraid, has been serving more than one master for months.’

‘How?’ said Harry blankly. ‘He hasn’t been out of Grimmauld Place for years.’

‘Kreacher seized his opportunity shortly before Christmas,’ said Dumbledore, ‘when Sirius, apparently, shouted at him to “get out”. He took Sirius at his word, and interpreted this as an order to leave the house. He went to the only Black family member for whom he had any respect left … Black’s cousin Narcissa, sister of Bellatrix and wife of Lucius Malfoy.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Harry said. His heart was beating very fast. He felt sick. He remembered worrying about Kreacher’s odd absence over Christmas, remembered him turning up again in the attic …

‘Kreacher told me last night,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You see, when you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realised that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I should explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge’s office. Professor Snape found that Sirius was alive and safe in Grimmauld Place.

‘When, however, you did not return from your trip into the Forest with Dolores Umbridge, Professor Snape grew worried that you still believed Sirius to be a captive of Lord Voldemort’s. He alerted certain Order members at once.’

Dumbledore heaved a great sigh and continued, ‘Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin were at Headquarters when he made contact. All agreed to go to your aid at once. Professor Snape requested that Sirius remain behind, as he needed somebody to remain at Headquarters to tell me what had happened, for I was due there at any moment. In the meantime he, Professor Snape, intended to search the Forest for you.

‘But Sirius did not wish to remain behind while the others went to search for you. He delegated to Kreacher the task of telling me what had happened. And so it was that when I arrived in Grimmauld Place shortly after they had all left for the Ministry, it was the elf who told me – laughing fit to burst – where Sirius had gone.’

‘He was laughing?’ said Harry in a hollow voice.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘You see, Kreacher was not able to betray us totally. He is not Secret Keeper for the Order, he could not give the Malfoys our whereabouts, or tell them any of the Order’s confidential plans that he had been forbidden to reveal. He was bound by the enchantments of his kind, which is to say that he could not disobey a direct order from his master, Sirius. But he gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from repeating it.’

‘Like what?’ said Harry.

‘Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you,’ said Dumbledore quietly. ‘Like the fact that you were coming to regard Sirius as a mixture of father and brother. Voldemort knew already, of course, that Sirius was in the Order, and that you knew where he was – but Kreacher’s information made him realise that the one person for whom you would go to any lengths to rescue was Sirius Black.’

Harry’s lips were cold and numb.

‘So … when I asked Kreacher if Sirius was there last night …’

‘The Malfoys – undoubtedly on Voldemort’s instructions – had told him he must find a way of keeping Sirius out of the way once you had seen the vision of Sirius being tortured. Then, if you decided to check whether Sirius was at home or not, Kreacher would be able to pretend he was not. Kreacher injured Buckbeak the Hippogriff yesterday, and, at the moment when you made your appearance in the fire, Sirius was upstairs tending to him.’

There seemed to be very little air in Harry’s lungs; his breathing was quick and shallow.

‘And Kreacher told you all this … and laughed?’ he croaked.

‘He did not wish to tell me,’ said Dumbledore. ‘But I am a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I – persuaded him – to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries.’

‘And,’ whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees, ‘and Hermione kept telling us to be nice to him –’

‘She was quite right, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘I warned Sirius when we adopted twelve Grimmauld Place as our Headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us. I do not think Sirius took me very seriously, or that he ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human’s –’

‘Don’t you blame – don’t you – talk – about Sirius like –’ Harry’s breath was constricted, he could not get the words out properly; but the rage that had subsided briefly flared in him again: he would not let Dumbledore criticise Sirius. ‘Kreacher’s a lying – foul – he deserved –’

‘Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards, Harry,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Yes, he is to be pitied. His existence has been as miserable as your friend Dobby’s. He was forced to do Sirius’s bidding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him. And whatever Kreacher’s faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher’s lot easier –’

‘DON’T TALK ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!’ Harry yelled.

He was on his feet again, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered …

‘What about Snape?’ Harry spat. ‘You’re not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual –’

‘Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge,’ said Dumbledore steadily, ‘but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius’s whereabouts.’

Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.

‘Snape – Snape g – goaded Sirius about staying in the house – he made out Sirius was a coward –’

‘Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him,’ said Dumbledore.

‘Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!’ Harry snarled. ‘He threw me out of his office!’

‘I am aware of it,’ said Dumbledore heavily. ‘I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence –’

‘Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him –’ Harry remembered Ron’s thoughts on the subject and plunged on ‘– how do you know he wasn’t trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my –’

‘I trust Severus Snape,’ said Dumbledore simply. ‘But I forgot – another old man’s mistake – that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father – I was wrong.’

‘But that’s OK, is it?’ yelled Harry, ignoring the scandalised faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. ‘It’s OK for Snape to hate my dad, but it’s not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher?’

‘Sirius did not hate Kreacher,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike … the fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.’

‘SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?’ Harry yelled.

‘I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it,’ Dumbledore replied quietly. ‘Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to house-elves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated.’

‘Yeah, he did hate it!’ said Harry, his voice cracking, turning his back on Dumbledore and walking away. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed him as he walked, without realising what he was doing, without seeing the office at all. ‘You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that’s why he wanted to get out last night –’

‘I was trying to keep Sirius alive,’ said Dumbledore quietly.

‘People don’t like being locked up!’ Harry said furiously, rounding on him. ‘You did it to me all last summer –’

Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands. Harry watched him, but this uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from Dumbledore, did not soften him. On the contrary, he felt even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harry wanted to rage and storm at him.

Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.

‘It is time,’ he said, ‘for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me – to do whatever you like – when I have finished. I will not stop you.’

Harry glared at him for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited.

Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harry and said, ‘Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well – not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle’s doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years.’

He paused. Harry said nothing.

‘You might ask – and with good reason – why it had to be so. Why could some wizarding family not have taken you in? Many would have done so more than gladly, would have been honoured and delighted to raise you as a son.

‘My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but I realised. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters – and many of them are almost as terrible as he – were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to make my decision, too, with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone for ever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure, too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.

‘I knew that Voldemort’s knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.

‘But I knew, too, where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated – to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative.’

‘She doesn’t love me,’ said Harry at once. ‘She doesn’t give a damn –’

‘But she took you,’ Dumbledore cut across him. ‘She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you.’

‘I still don’t –’

‘While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years.’

‘Wait,’ said Harry. ‘Wait a moment.’

He sat up straighter in his chair, staring at Dumbledore.

‘You sent that Howler. You told her to remember – it was your voice –’

‘I thought,’ said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, ‘that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the Dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son.’

‘It did,’ said Harry quietly. ‘Well – my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she – she said I had to stay.’