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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.”

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1. A chill that had nothing to do with the iced champagne was stealing through Harry’s chest.
2. A hand had appeared amongst the flames, groping as though to catch hold of something; a stubby, short-fingered hand covered in ugly old-fashioned rings.
3. A vivid image of the shrieking, spitting portrait of Sirius’s mother that hung in the hall of number twelve, Grimmauld Place flashed into Harry’s mind. “I bet there has,” he said.
4. A whistling in Harry’s ear told him the Bludger had just missed him again; he turned right over and sped in the opposite direction.
5. After a few minutes’ progress up the dark tunnel, a distant sound of slowly shifting rock reached Harry’s ears.
6. And Harry’s feet left the floor to fall, seconds later, back onto the rug in front of Dumbledore’s desk.
7. And something vast, green, and glittering erupted from the patch of darkness Harry’s eyes had been struggling to penetrate; it flew up over the treetops and into the sky.
8. And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside his head.
9. And to Harry’s horror, a voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from Quirrell himself.
10. And to Harry’s horror, she withdrew from her pocket the list of names that had been pinned upon the Room of Requirement’s wall and handed it to Fudge.
11. And to Harry’s horror, Slughorn threw out an arm and seemed to scoop Snape out of thin air toward them.
12. And when the creature spoke, it used Harry’s mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move.

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