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The compression of apparition released Harry onto the top step of Number Twelve, and for a moment the world tilted—not from the magic, but from memory hitting him like a bludger to the chest. The black door stood before him, paint peeling in the exact same places as last summer, when Sirius had thrown it open with that bark of a laugh, pulling Harry into a hug.
Harry's hand found the doorknob before his mind caught up. Cold metal, tarnished brass that left a smell on his palm like old coins. The door opened without resistance—recognizing its new master, perhaps, or simply too tired to fight anymore.
Silence.
Not the waiting quiet of Privet Drive, where sounds hid behind doors. This was absence made audible. Harry stood in the entrance hall, his breathing too loud, his heartbeat a drum solo nobody asked for.
For one impossible second, he expected—no, needed—Sirius to emerge from the kitchen, flour in his hair from another catastrophic attempt at cooking, saying something like "Finally, Harry! I was about to send out a search party of extremely incompetent garden gnomes."
The kitchen door remained closed. The silence continued its performance.
"FILTH! BLOOD TRAITOR! SHAME OF MY FLESH!"
Mrs. Black's portrait erupted like a geyser of inherited hatred, her painted mouth stretching wider than anatomy should allow. The screaming hit Harry's ears, each word a nail being hammered into his skull.
"Silencio Perpetua." The spell slammed into the portrait. Mrs. Black's mouth continued moving, but no sound emerged—she looked like a particularly vicious fish drowning in air. Her eyes bulged with rage that would never again find voice.
Good. Let her scream herself hoarse in perfect silence. Let her spend eternity mouthing obscenities no one would hear.
The house revealed itself as Harry moved deeper—and it was clean. Not just tidy, but aggressively, obsessively clean. The floors gleamed like black mirrors. The silver serpent door handles looked freshly polished. Even the air smelled different—less mold and dark magic, more lemon and something chemical that burned the back of Harry's throat.
"Kreacher."
Kreacher appeared in the hallway, and Harry's first thought was that the elf looked smaller. Not physically—still the same withered creature with bat-like ears and bloodshot eyes—but diminished somehow, like something essential had been extracted.
"What does Master require?" The words dripped with such concentrated loathing that Harry was surprised they didn't physically burn. Kreacher's hands twisted the filthy pillowcase he wore, knuckles white with the effort of not saying more.
"Has anyone been in the house since Sirius?"
Kreacher's face showed rage, and anger, and grief. "Thief," he spat finally. "Thief came to House Black. Stealing. Taking what belongs to the Noble House."
"Who?"
"Mundungus Fletcher." Kreacher's voice turned the name into something unspeakable. "Filthy thief with his filthy hands, taking Master Regulus's things, taking the treasures, taking—" He stopped, eyes going wide with fury. "Taking the locket."
"Describe what he took."
"Silver goblets from the dining room. Mistress's jewelry box. The Black family seal." Kreacher's fingers clawed at air as if trying to grab the items back through sheer force of will. "And the locket. Heavy gold with an S in emerald stones. Master Regulus's locket that must be—" He clamped his mouth shut so hard Harry heard teeth click.
Harry for a brief moment wondered why this locket was important, but was sure it was nothing important. "Will Fletcher come back?"
Kreacher nodded. "Greedy thief always returns. Saw more treasures, made notes. Will come back for the rest."
"Then I'll be waiting." Harry studied the elf, noting the way Kreacher still wouldn't meet his eyes directly, staring instead at a point slightly past Harry's ear. "Now. Tell me exactly how you betrayed Sirius."
The elf went rigid as a corpse.
"Master Sirius told Kreacher to get out," he said through teeth clenched so tight the words barely escaped.
"He told you to get out of the kitchen," Harry corrected, his voice soft as a knife between ribs. "You knew what he meant. You chose to interpret it differently."
Kreacher's silence was answer enough.
"Continue."
"Kreacher went to his true Mistress...Mistress Narcissa. Mistress who never betrayed the Noble House of Black. Told her everything. Told her about the boy's visions."
Harry's wand hand twitched, but he kept his voice level. "And?"
"Made the plan. Kreacher's job—ensure the boy believed Master Sirius was captured. Injured. Dying." Something like pride flickered across Kreacher's face before being replaced by misery. "Kreacher played his part perfectly."
"You betrayed your own master." Harry's voice had gone very quiet. "Dobby once told me that for a house-elf, betraying their master is the ultimate sin. Worse than death. Worse than torture. The kind of thing that stains an elf's very magic."
Kreacher flinched as if struck.
"You knew exactly what you were doing. You made a conscious choice to interpret an angry dismissal as permission to commit treason." Harry moved closer, noting how Kreacher seemed to shrink with each step. "And for what? The approval of a woman who sees you as property? The validation of a dead mistress's portrait?"
Kreacher's mouth opened—to defend, to explain, to curse—but Harry wasn't finished.
"From this moment forward, you are forbidden to speak. No words, no sounds, no crying, no moaning, no noise of any kind unless I specifically order you to talk." The command fell like an executioner's axe. "You will never open your mouth again except when I directly command it. Do you understand?"
Kreacher's mouth snapped shut. He nodded, eyes bulging with the effort of containing whatever he wanted to scream.
"Go to your cupboard. Stay there. Don't leave unless I call for you." Harry turned away, dismissal clear. "And Kreacher? That silence includes talking to my mother's portrait. Or any portrait. Or yourself."
The crack of Kreacher's disapparation sounded like breaking bones.
Harry stood alone in the entrance hall of his inherited prison, surrounded by silence that now included one more ghost.
The library door recognized him before Harry even reached for the handle. The door swung inward on silent hinges.
Harry stepped inside and immediately understood why the room had been sealed. This wasn't a library, it was an armory disguised as one. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, but these weren't the carefully neutered texts of Hogwarts. The books here felt different, as if they were alive in a way.
"And who," said a soft, quite voice, "are you supposed to be?"
The portrait hung between two towering shelves, positioned to survey the entire room like a general overlooking a battlefield. The man within had the Black family cheekbones sharpened to weapons, grey eyes that belonged on a winter morning, and despite the frown across his face, Harry could tell the man was handsome, it reminded him painfully of Sirius. The nameplate read: Malysic Black, 1672-1745.
"Harry Potter." He met the portrait's gaze steadily. "Heir to the House of Black."
Malysic's painted eyebrows climbed toward his powdered wig. "Potter? That's not—" He stopped, eyes narrowing. "Explain. Now."
"Sirius Black was the last of your line. He named me his heir before dying in battle against Voldemort's forces."
The silence that followed could have suffocated a dragon. Malysic's face cycled through several shades of disbelief before settling on something between horror and disgust.
"The last? What happened to my house?" He shouted, yet despite the clear anger in his eyes, his voice remained soft and almost not that loud. "Where are the Blacks? Where is my legacy?"
"Dead, mostly." Harry moved deeper into the library, running his fingers along the spine of something that felt warm to the touch. "Bellatrix Black is married to Lestrange, and she has no children, and I don't think she cares to have any. Narcissa Black married a Malfoy, and her son is a bitch of a man just like his father. Andromeda Black married a muggle born and she was disowned from the family, so she is now Andromeda Tonks. Sirius Black was killed by Bellatrix. I don't really know what happened to Regulus Black, Sirius never told me, but he is dead too. Sirius, being the last male heir decided to make me heir of House Black," Harry explained and the man still looked suspicous.
"Why did he make you the heir?"
"I was his godson." Harry answered and the man seemed to understand now.
"Why did all of this happen? Why caused my family to turn against each other," The man asked with the same soft voice.
"Blood Purity, there is this dark wizard named Tom Riddle who is all about Blood Purity, and your house decided to follow him, well most of them, Sirius fought against him, and Andromeda Black was disowned, so she didn't care for Tom Riddle's Pure Blood nonsense, the rest of House Black died during the first war, and now the second war is about to start, and Sirius died fighting his cousin. By the way, Tom Riddle goes by the name Voldemort, but Tom is his real name," Harry explained and the man's face had gone red with anger.
"They died for blood purity?" His voice had gone very quiet. "My house, my line, ended for that nonsense?"
"Essentially."
"I spent my life building this family's power through careful alliances, strategic marriages, accumulating knowledge and influence." Malysic's painted hands clenched. "And they threw it away to follow some half-blood pretender claiming pure-blood superiority?"
Harry stopped examining a book titled Penetrating the Mind's Defenses to stare at the portrait. "You know Voldemort's a half-blood?"
"Boy, I'm a portrait, not an idiot. No pure-blood would need to prove their superiority that desperately." Malysic's expression shifted to something calculating. "You're here for knowledge, I assume? Not to catalogue my family's failures?"
"Legilimency and Occlumency, specifically."
"Ah." The portrait smiled at that. "Expecting mental intrusions? Or planning some of your own?"
"Both."
"Honest. I can work with honest." Malysic gestured with one painted hand. "Third shelf from the window, black spine with silver lettering. Mente Gladio by Tiberius Ogden. Best practical guide to mental magic written in English. Avoid the red volume next to it unless you fancy your thoughts leaking out your ears."
Harry pulled the book free, surprised by its weight—like holding condensed iron rather than paper. The cover felt oddly warm, almost alive.
"Start with the meditation exercises," Malysic advised. "Chapter three. Skip the theoretical nonsense in the beginning unless you enjoy reading about synaptic magical theory from the fifteen hundreds."
The days blurred together in a rhythm of study and practice that felt almost monastic. Wake at dawn. Physical training in the drawing room—push-ups until his arms shook, running in place until his legs burned. Cold shower. Breakfast that Kreacher prepared and left outside the library door—the elf obeying the letter of his orders. Then hours with the books, building walls in his mind brick by brick, learning to recognize the subtle pressure that preceded mental intrusion.
Tonks arrived every evening at seven, regular as clockwork and twice as welcome.
"Again," she said on the fourth night, wand raised. The library's gaslight caught the purple streaks in her hair—she'd been experimenting with colors that matched her mood, she said, though Harry suspected she just enjoyed the visual chaos.
"Legilimens."
The probe came softer this time, like fingers trailing across his thoughts rather than the battering ram Snape had favored. Harry felt it searching for weakness, seeking the cracks where memories leaked through. He imagined his mind as Grimmauld Place itself—dark, maze-like, full of rooms that led nowhere and doors that refused to open.
The probe pressed harder. Harry fed it false paths—memories of reading Hogwarts textbooks, the deeply boring experience of weeding Aunt Petunia's garden, Binns droning about goblin rebellions. Tonks's mental presence felt almost amused as she pushed past the decoys.
She was looking for something specific tonight—he could feel it in the way her search focused, narrowed. Looking for...
The kiss that almost happened in the Dursleys' garden. The way her hand felt on his arm. The smell of her hair when she'd stood too close.
Harry slammed the wall down so hard that Tonks actually stumbled backward, her wand dropping.
"That was cheating," he said, aware his face had gone red.
"That was testing your concentration." But her cheeks were pink too, and she wouldn't quite meet his eyes. "You can't just protect the memories you think are important. The embarrassing ones, the... complicated ones. Those are usually the easiest entry points."
"Because they come with strong emotions."
"Exactly." She moved closer, ostensibly to adjust his wand grip. "You've made more progress in four days than most people manage in months. Snape must have been an even worse teacher than you described."
"Snape wanted to hurt me. You want to help." Harry caught her hand before she could pull away completely. "There's a difference."
The moment stretched between them, taut as a bowstring. Tonks's eyes had gone very dark, and Harry could see his own reflection in them.
"Harry," she said softly, "we agreed—"
"I know." He released her hand but didn't step back. "Doesn't make it easier."
"No," she agreed, voice barely a whisper. "It doesn't."
Malysic's portrait coughed pointedly from his frame. "If you're quite finished with the melodrama, might I suggest returning to the actual lesson? The boy's shields are still pathetic against sustained assault."
By the ninth day, Harry could hold his mental shields against Tonks for a full minute. He could project false memories convincingly enough to misdirect casual probes. More importantly, he could feel when someone was attempting to enter his mind—a skill Snape had never bothered to teach.
"You're ready," Tonks said, settling her teaching materials back into her bag. She'd been distant tonight, maintaining professional space that felt like a wall between them. "Not for a full Legilimency assault from someone like Voldemort, but better protected than most grown wizards."
"Stay for dinner?"
"Can't. Order duty." She paused at the library door. "Harry... be careful with the other books here. Some of them—"
"I know." He gestured at a shelf where three volumes appeared to be whispering to each other. "Malysic's been very clear about which ones will kill me versus which ones will just drive me slightly mad."
"That's not really reassuring."
"It's the House of Black. Were you expecting reassuring?"
She laughed, the sound warming the room more than the fire ever could. "Wednesday, remember? You owe me that drink when the house tries to murder you."
"Bold of you to assume I'll survive until Wednesday."
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The wards shivered at 2:47 AM—a sensation like ice water down Harry's spine that jerked him from sleep. Someone had entered Grimmauld Place. Someone without permission.
Harry rolled from bed, wand already in hand, bare feet silent on the cold floor.
A floorboard creaked downstairs. Then the distinctive sound of someone trying to muffle their own movement—the peculiar shuffle-stop-shuffle of a thief who thought himself clever.
Harry smiled in the darkness. After nine days of theoretical study, finally some practical application.
He moved through his inherited house like a ghost, using every creaking board and groaning step he'd memorized over the past week. The portraits stayed silent—even Mrs. Black's frame, perhaps sensing the hunt in progress. The stairs down felt like descending into dark water, each step colder than the last.
Mundungus Fletcher stood in the entrance hall with a sack that already bulged with stolen goods, his wand providing a weak Lumos that made the shadows dance. He was examining a silver candlestick, completely unaware that death stood ten feet behind him in pajama bottoms and murderous intent.
Harry could have used any spell. Could have been sporting about it, announced himself, given the thief a chance to surrender.
Instead, he thought about Sirius. About how this piece of human garbage had been stealing from his godfather's house while Sirius's body was barely cold. About the disrespect, the greed, the sheer audacity of robbing the dead.
"Stupefy."
The spell hit Mundungus between the shoulder blades with enough force to send him flying into the wall. He hit with a wet crunch that suggested at least one broken rib, maybe two if Harry was lucky. The candlestick went flying, landing with a clang that echoed through the house like a death knell.
Harry lit his wand properly, illuminating Mundungus's unconscious form. Blood leaked from the thief's nose, and his arm bent at an angle that suggested the wall had won their brief encounter.
"Kreacher."
The elf appeared instantly, eyes bright with something that might have been anticipation. He looked at Mundungus's crumpled form and then at Harry, vibrating with suppressed excitement.
"You may speak to answer this question: do you know binding spells?"
"Yes." The word escaped Kreacher like steam from a kettle, desperate and hissing.
"Good. Bind him. Arms, legs, and make sure he can't disapparate when he wakes. Use the chains from the basement if necessary." Harry nudged Mundungus with his foot, noting with satisfaction when the man groaned. "And Kreacher? You may speak freely while handling the thief. I imagine you have some opinions about people who steal from the House of Black."
The smile that spread across Kreacher's face could have powered nightmares for weeks. When he spoke, his voice carried more animation than Harry had heard since arriving.
"Kreacher will bind the thief, oh yes. Kreacher knows exactly which chains to use. The ones that tighten when struggled against. The ones that burn when lies are told." The elf's fingers cracked as he flexed them. "Kreacher has many opinions about thieves in the Noble House of Black."
"Excellent." Harry turned toward the stairs, then paused. "Don't kill him. I need him functional enough to answer questions. But if he happens to be uncomfortable while waiting..." Harry shrugged. "Well, he should have thought of that before stealing from the dead."
Kreacher's cackle followed Harry up the stairs, a sound of pure malicious joy that would have been disturbing if Harry hadn't been thinking the exact same thing.
Tomorrow, Mundungus would answer for his theft. He'd explain who else knew about the house's contents, what he'd done with what he'd already stolen, and why he thought robbing Sirius's estate was acceptable.
And if Harry's methods of interrogation happened to lean more toward the Black family traditions than Auror protocols? Well, he was the heir of the House of Black now.
Some traditions were worth preserving.
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