Hermione’s face was half concealed by a tea towel but Harry distinctly saw her throw a reproachful look at Mrs. Weasley.
“Kreacher’s really old, he probably couldn’t manage—”
“You’d be surprised what Kreacher can manage when he wants to, Hermione,” said Sirius, who had just entered the room carrying a bloodstained bag of what appeared to be dead rats. “I’ve just been feeding Buckbeak,” he added, in reply to Harry’s enquiring look. “I keep him upstairs in my mother’s bedroom. Anyway… this writing desk…”
He dropped the bag of rals into an armchair, then bent over to examine the locked cabinet which, Harry now noticed for the first time, was shaking slightly.
“Well, Molly, I’m pretty sure this is a Boggart,” said Sirius, peering through the keyhole, “but perhaps we ought to let Mad-Eye have a shifty at it before we let it out—knowing my mother, it could be something much worse.”
“Right you are, Sirius,” said Mrs. Weasley.
They were both speaking in carefully light, polite voices that told Harry quite plainly that neither had forgotten their disagreement of the night before.
A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, followed at once by the cacophony of screams and wails that had been triggered the previous night by Tonks knocking over the umbrella stand.
“I keep telling them not to ring the doorbell!” said Sirius exasperatedly, hurrying out of the room. They heard him thundering down the stairs as Mrs. Black’s screeches echoed up through the house once more:
“Stains of dishonour, filthy half-breeds, blood traitors, children of filth—”
“Close the door, please, Harry,” said Mrs. Weasley.
Harry took as much time as he dared to close the drawing-room door; he wanted to listen to what was going on downstairs. Sirius had obviously managed to shut the curtains over his mother’s portrait because she had stopped screaming. He heard Sirius walking down the hall, then the clattering of the chain on the front door, and then a deep voice he recognised as Kingsley Shacklebolt’s saying, “Hestia’s just relieved me, so she’s got Moody’s Cloak now, thought I’d leave a report for Dumbledore…”
Feeling Mrs. Weasley’s eyes on the back of his head, Harry regretfully closed the drawing-room door and rejoined the Doxy party.
Mrs. Weasley was bending over to check the page on Doxys in Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests, which was lying open on the sofa.
“Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because Doxys bite and their teeth are poisonous. I’ve got a bottle of antidote here, but I’d rather nobody needed it.”