Chapter 555: Harry's Resentment (Edited)

Stupefied, Harry followed the crowd to dark 12 Grimmauld Place which appeared out of nowhere.

Professor McGonagall pulled out her wand and whacked him and Fish over the head, a stream of hot stuff ran down their backs and the invisibility spell was removed from both of them.

Beside him, Professor Lupin waved his wand and lit the row of old gas lamps on the wall, a wobbly, unreal light illuminating the otherwise dark hallway, but not so bright as to make the whole hall seem a bit spooky.

It gave Harry that feeling, though, probably because of the omnipresent serpentine design, whether it was the chandelier overhead or the chandeliers on the table next to it.

And their shadows were reflected on the walls, swaying in the light as if snakes were coming to life on the walls.

Another reason was that the portraits hanging crookedly on the walls, staring silently at the people who had entered, didn't seem to welcome their group, as Harry could see from their expressions.

"Well, come on in, everyone's waiting for you." Professor Lupin said softly, nudging Harry, who was still in a daze.

Harry followed the dazed group for a couple of steps before he heard hurried footsteps behind the door at the other end of the hall and Mrs. Weasley came out with a warm smile on her face.

"Oh, Harry, it's so good to see you!" she whispered, hugging him, almost breaking his ribs, and then pulling him away a little, looking him up and down. "You look thin, you need to eat more, but I'm afraid it'll be a while before you can eat your dinner."

He turned to Professor McGonagall and the others and whispered urgently, "Just arrived, the meeting has already started."

Professor McGonagall nodded, then said just as quietly to Fish, "Fish, show Harry to his room, we'll go to the meeting first."

"Okay nya!"

?(?ΦwΦ?)?

Fish replied loudly, not caring in the least.

The others then followed Mrs. Weasley, heading for the door she had entered through, Harry wanted to follow her but was stopped by Professor McGonagall.

"Your room isn't here Harry, follow Fish."

Harry was still a bit of a coward when it came to his own dean and stopped dead in his tracks watching the group leave.

"Come with Fish, Ron and the others are in there nya."

(?ΦwΦ?)?

Fish waved a hand at Harry,

He headed for a large umbrella stand that looked like it was made from a broken troll's leg.

Harry hurried after it, asking Fish impatiently, "Where's this? What the hell is going on?"

Before Fish could answer his question, however, a high-pitched, raspy voice sounded from the next wall, "Is that my sinner son's godson?"

Harry looked up at the voice and saw the life-size portrait of a waxy, thin, black-hatted old woman looking down at him with an unkind look.

"Yes, it's Harry nya." Fish nodded and waved at the old woman in the painting: "You're still awake, Walburga."

"Hmph! How am I going to sleep when there's a bunch of people coming in and out of my house before you get back!". Mrs. Blake's attitude seemed very bad, she cursed and shouted, "That sinful son who desecrated our ancestral Blake house!"

"Fish will take Harry to his room first, I'll see you when I have time to talk nya."

?(??w??)?

Fish said with a frown as he reached up to press his cat ears to his head, and quickened his pace as he continued running forward.

Mrs. Black was getting a little hysterical every time she talked about Sirius, and Fish's sensitive ears couldn't stand her shouting.

Harry could see that he was not being well received by the old woman and ran past her at a faster pace, even as he rounded the corner he could still hear the intermittent curses coming from behind him.

"Fish, is this Sirius's house?"

Harry had already guessed, and since he had just heard the old lady at the portrait mention the Blacks, he would have been foolish not to have guessed where it was.

What he didn't understand was why she was being so hostile to her and Sirius when it was most likely Sirius' mother's portrait... Wasn't Sirius her son?

"To be precise, this is the ancestral home of the Black family nya..."

Fish knew exactly what Harry wanted to ask, so he told him all about Sirius' relationship with his family.

"... So Walburga wasn't after you, she was after Sirius, and truth be told that's rather unfortunate nya."

Fish patted Harry's shoulder reassuringly and with a kind word for Mrs. Blake.

"She supports Voldemort."

Harry frowned, one of his biggest complaints with Fish was that Fish was too friendly with purebloods and Slytherins.... Who were obviously not good people!

"The Blacks supported purebloods, they stopped supporting Voldemort when he started doing bad things, and Regulus was killed by Voldemort because of it." corrected Fish.

Fish had talked a lot with Mrs. Black, and with Professor McGonagall, and with Hermione in the meantime, and had come up with some opinions of his own on the matter. "They have some misconceptions, but they don't all have to be bad people nya... like Severus."

Harry pursed his lips, yes Fish hadn't used Snape as an example at the end, he might have been convinced, now... he could only agree with a small part of it.

"This is your room now nya." As they talked, they approached a room on the right hand side of the second floor, and Fish pointed to the door and said to Harry, "Ron lives here too."

Presumably hearing voices from outside, the door clicked open from inside and a red-haired Ron burst in.

"Harry! You're finally here!" Ron patted Harry on the shoulder and said cheerfully, "If you hadn't come, I would have been pecked to death by Hedwig, look at this...".

He held up his hands, which were covered with scars from the pecking.

Immediately after, there was a faint buzzing sound and Hedwig, white as snow, also flew out of the room and landed softly on Harry's shoulder.

"Fish will go get the others nya."

?(?)?

Fish tossed Harry towards Ron and took off.

A few minutes later, Hermione, Ginny and the twins were called by Fish and gathered in Harry and Ron's room.

"They've been staying together! And me, I've been stuck at the Dursleys' for a whole month!". Harry's frustration was strong as he shouted at Ron and the others, "I've been stuck on Privet Drive for four weeks, picking newspapers out of the garbage bin, just to find out what's going on! And you guys are here hiding comfortably."

"Actually, we're not very comfortable either," Fish said kindly, "Minerva won't even let Fish out, and she won't let him go back to playing with Shadow, so Fish has to spend his time here with Hermione and Sirius, planting flowers.... And you're there to watch TV!".

(??v?v??)

But Fish wasn't very persuasive, and Harry was even more annoyed to hear it - after all, he had no friends on Privet Drive.

The others, however, could hardly cope with the situation, and with a little persuasion and apologies, Harry was able to calm down before asking about recent events.

Fish wasn't interested in such matters, so he took Hermione to work on his plants.

It was only when the meeting downstairs was over and Mrs. Weasley called them to dinner that the two of them joined Harry and the others and went downstairs for dinner.