They got up and dressed. They could hear the various inhabitants of the house calling “Merry Christmas” to one another. On their way downstairs they met Hermione.

“Thanks for the book, Harry,” she said happily. “I’ve been wanting that New Theory of Numerology for ages! And that perfume’s really unusual, Ron.”

“No problem,” said Ron. “Who’s that for, anyway?” he added, nodding at the neatly wrapped present she was carrying.

“Kreacher,” said Hermione brightly.

“It had better not be clothes!” Ron warned her. “You know what Sirius said: Kreacher knows too much, we can’t set him free!”

“It isn’t clothes,” said Hermione, “although if I had my way I’d certainly give him something to wear other than that filthy old rag. No, it’s a patchwork quilt, I thought it would brighten up his bedroom.”

“What bedroom?” said Harry, dropping his voice to a whisper as they were passing the portrait of Sirius’s mother.

“Well, Sirius says it’s not so much a bedroom, more a kind of—den,” said Hermione. “Apparently he sleeps under the boiler in that cupboard off the kitchen.”

Mrs. Weasley was the only person in the basement when they arrived there. She was standing at the stove and sounded as though she had a bad head cold as she wished them “Merry Christmas,” and they all averted their eyes.

“So, is this Kreacher’s bedroom?” said Ron, strolling over to a dingy door in the corner opposite the pantry. Harry had never seen it open.

“Yes,” said Hermione, now sounding a little nervous. “Er… I think we’d better knock.”

Ron rapped on the door with his knuckles but there was no reply.

“He must be sneaking around upstairs,” he said, and without further ado pulled open the door. “Urgh!”

Harry peered inside. Most of the cupboard was taken up with a very large and old-fashioned boiler, but in the foot of space underneath the pipes Kreacher had made himself something that looked like a nest. A jumble of assorted rags and smelly 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. Here and there among the material were stale bread crusts and mouldy old bits of cheese. In a far corner glinted small objects and coins that Harry guessed Kreacher had saved, magpie-like, from Sirius’s purge of the house, 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 still the little black-and-white people inside them peered up at him haughtily, including—he felt a little jolt in his stomach—the dark, heavy-lidded woman whose trial he had witnessed in Dumbledore’s Pensieve: Bellatrix Lestrange. By the looks of it, hers was Kreacher’s favourite photograph; he had placed it to the fore of all the others and had mended the glass clumsily with Spellotape.

“I think I’ll just leave his present here,” said Hermione, laying the package neatly in the middle of the depression in the rags and blankets and closing the door quietly. “He’ll find it later, that’ll be fine.”

“Come to think of it,” said Sirius, emerging from the pantry carrying a large turkey as they closed the cupboard door, “has anyone actually seen Kreacher lately?”

“I haven’t seen him since the night we came back here,” said Harry. “You were ordering him out of the kitchen.”

“Yeah…” said Sirius, frowning. “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?” said Harry. “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,” said Sirius.

“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 afterwards, but he still managed it.”

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 my hopes up.”

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Harry awoke on Christmas morning to find a stack of presents at the foot of his bed and Ron already halfway through opening his own, rather larger, pile.	\|	Fred, George and Ron laughed; Hermione, however, looked reproachful.

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