A ruined Hogwarts - #201 - Chapter 199 The party at No. 12 Grimmauld Place

On the evening of the last day of July, Owen yawned and walked out of the laboratory. He took out a bottle of green vitality potion and took a sip.

The spicy and stimulating potion slid down his throat, with a refreshing mint-like aftertaste that made him shiver and instantly become a hundred times more energetic.

“With this potion, I no longer have to worry about staying up late.” Owen sighed, opened a piece of mint candy and held it in his mouth. “It feels really exciting to be face to face with the God of Death.”

Melete, who was licking her paws at his feet, gave him a blank look. Is this the reason why you didn’t sleep for two days?

“Owen, don’t forget that you have a birthday party to attend tonight.” Mrs. Shafiq’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs, appearing soothing and ethereal in the long corridor.

“I know, Mom.” Owen said vaguely, sucking on the candy in his mouth.

“I have prepared several sets of dresses for you. They are in your bedroom.” Mrs. Shafiq replied.

Owen responded while slowly returning to his room, taking out several sets of dresses hanging in the closet and looking at them one by one.

“Well, this suit is a bit flashy, it must be my father’s handiwork.” He said to Meletia with interest, “This suit is too solemn… Well, this one is too casual, and it will look a bit rude.” Get up, where is Nyx?”

“Meow~” Melete called lazily.

“Did he fall into the woods outside when he was learning to fly?” Owen’s voice was a little lazy and hoarse. “It’s really anxious, isn’t it? I hope it won’t be picked up by a beast in the woods… I think this It’s a good piece, what do you think?”

Melete shook her tail leisurely and nodded her chin reservedly.

Owen put on this long dark dress embroidered with silver, carefully arranged the collar and cuffs, and then took out a beautifully wrapped gift box from the cabinet next to it, which contained a very complete set of wand maintenance tools. There are also several delicate links that attach the wand to the robes to prevent it from being disarmed.

“It’s time for me to go. Be good at home.” Owen bent down and rubbed the cat’s head, then took the gift box and walked out the door.

“Meow.” Melete called softly, jumped onto Owen’s bed, and curled up into a fluffy ball on the soft pillow.

When Owen came to the living room, he found that both Shafiq and his wife were here, putting their heads together to study something. After hearing his footsteps, Mr. Shafiq turned his head and looked him up and down, and said with a smile: “He looks decent. Do you need me to take you there?”

“No need, I can get there by myself.” Owen said, walking straight to the fireplace at the other end.

“You’d better ask a house elf to come with you,” suggested Mr. Shafiq. “Go to London through the fireplace, and then have the house elf take you to Apparate there.”

Owen shook his head and smiled. He wouldn’t say that he knew how to apparate.

The reason why I went directly to 12 Grimmauld Place without Floo fans is because this is a very reckless and disrespectful behavior. What’s more, the fireplaces in private residences are basically set up to intercept the visits of strangers to prevent intruders from sneaking into the home through the Floo network. Only the fireplaces in some public places will not refuse visitors, such as the Leaky Cauldron Bar that Owen is going to.

Owen lit the fire in the fireplace, sprinkled a handful of Floo powder inside, stepped in, and arrived in distant London in the blink of an eye. A strangely dressed wizard sat in the Leaky Cauldron, noisy sounds reached his ears, and pedestrians and vehicles kept coming and going outside the door.

He cleaned up the ashes on his body, walked out of the bar, and apparated directly on a remote street corner.

Following a loud sound, Owen was already standing in a deserted alley outside King’s Cross Station. He found the location of Grimmauld Place on the map outside the station, which was not too far away.

“It’s about two kilometers from here.” Owen wrote down the route, walked to a deserted location, raised his wand, and continued to apparate.

If he wants to go to a place he has been to before, he can reach it directly by apparating. It’s just that this is his first time going to Grimmauld Place, so it will be a little more troublesome.

After Apparating several times, he walked slowly along the street, surrounded by Muggles coming and going. Walking among the office workers in suits and youthful young people, Owen felt as if he was in another world, as if he had returned to his previous life.

Looking at the birds flying home in the dusk in the sky, he exhaled slowly, slowly raised the corners of his mouth, and his mood became inexplicably light and comfortable.

After walking along the street for two minutes, Owen turned into the small square next to him, and the pedestrians around him suddenly became sparse. The grass in the center was messy and barren, and the houses on both sides were gloomy. The paint on the doors was peeling off, and the windows of some houses were broken.

Owen came to the door of No. 12 Grimmauld Place and looked up at the old house. This house has not yet been selected to become the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Although it cannot be marked on the map, it can be seen by wizards.

The house in front of me gives people a sense of ancient vicissitudes, but it is not as dirty and dilapidated as written in the original book. It has obviously been carefully cleaned and repaired.

The cleaned walls showed a dull gray-brown color, and the window glass inlaid on them was bright. The dark windows looked eerie, but a few windows revealed warm orange light.

Owen stepped onto the repaired stone steps and stood in front of the dark door. The black paint on the door is freshly painted, and there is a coiled snake-shaped door knocker on it.

There was a “crack” in the ears, and Draco appeared not far away out of thin air. He shook off the house elf next to him and strode over. The house elf bowed deeply and disapparated.

“Good evening.” Draco lazily raised his chin towards Owen. After looking around, he looked at the garbage piled outside several houses and muttered in disgust: “I really don’t understand why they want to live in Here. Look, Muggles are really sloppy, aren’t they?”

“Probably.” Owen was too lazy to talk about this topic, so he said casually, pulled the silver knocker on the door and knocked.

Just after knocking twice, there was a sound of metal hitting and chain sliding coming from the door. The door creaked open, and a burst of sandalwood-scented air freshener wafted out from the crack in the door.

Harry poked his head through the door and grinned when he saw the two of them.

“Owen, Draco, you are here!” He stood in the bright foyer, wearing a dark green robe, with a smile on his face as if he was holding a wedding, and his cheeks were red with joy.

“Come in, keep your voice down.” He said in a low voice, opened the door, welcomed the two of them in, and then closed the door again. The silver doorbell hanging on the inside of the door made a clear and loud jingle.

“Oh, crap!” Harry muttered under his breath.

Two velvet curtains hanging next to the foyer were suddenly lifted, revealing a portrait of an old lady wearing a black hat. She opened her mouth and let out a deafening, blood-curdling scream, as if she was being tortured.

“Beast! Prodigal son! The disgrace of the family, the bastard I gave birth to! How dare you bring this filthy bastard to defile my ancestor’s home!” the old lady cursed harshly.

Owen put his hands over his ears and watched with interest as Harry struggled to pull the curtains shut. Draco was so frightened that he jumped back, hit an umbrella stand made of a troll’s legs with a bang, and fell to the ground sprawled out.

A man with long black hair rushed out from a nearby door, grabbed the curtain, and yelled at the old lady in the portrait: “Shut up! You terrible old witch!”

They yelled at each other for a long time, and it took a lot of effort to close the curtain. The old lady’s scream disappeared, but everyone’s ears were still buzzing.

“Hello everyone, I’m sorry to have to put you through this.” Sirius Black panted slightly and moved the long black hair from his eyes, revealing his face that was still thin but could already see his original handsome appearance.

He looked at Owen and Draco carefully with his bright black eyes, his expression welcoming with a hint of imperceptible scrutiny, especially when he looked at Draco.

“Hello, Mr. Black.” Owen politely said he didn’t care.

Harry reached out and pulled Draco up and introduced them: “This is Sirius, my godfather. This is Owen and Draco…”

While he was talking, he pulled out a ball of cotton from his pocket and stuffed it into the doorbell, and whispered: “This doorbell is fixed here by magic. We can only stuff it with cotton, but Kreacher will always secretly put it in Take away the cotton…”

Speaking of this, his expression was extremely helpless.

“Oh, I heard my mother talk about you, the freak of the Black family…” Draco glanced at Sirius and whispered slowly, only to be stopped by Harry’s tug.

Owen blinked in amusement and saw the corner of Sirius Black’s mouth twitch. He knew that Draco didn’t mean to provoke, he just didn’t know how to speak human words.

“Okay, according to you, am I not a freak too?” Harry laughed at himself, breaking the awkward atmosphere. At this time, there was another muffled knock on the door.

He opened the door, and the person who came was Neville Longbottom, who was standing outside the door with some restraint.

“Welcome, Neville.” Harry welcomed him in warmly, and then led them upstairs, “Now that everyone is here, let’s go upstairs. Be careful, that staircase will move… “

“Are you a child of the Longbottom family?” Sirius’ expression became much gentler when facing Neville, and he spoke to him pleasantly, “Is your grandma okay?”

As the group climbed up to the second floor, a hunched-over house elf shuffled slowly towards them. This house elf was already very old, wearing only a dirty rag around his body. He was lowering his head and muttering softly in a hoarse voice like a bullfrog.

“Oh, my poor mistress, look what they have done to her house. They even want to destroy her most precious tapestry. If the mistress knows something underground, she will say something to old Kreacher What. Oh, what can poor old Kreacher do…”

“I think I asked you to stay in the kitchen, Kreacher,” Sirius said stiffly.

“Kreacher is cleaning.” Kreacher bowed, his big bloodshot eyes scanning the faces of the group of people, and his eyes widened even more when he saw Draco: “Oh, look at Kreacher Who did you find, Miss Sissy’s son! It’s great that you can come here!”

He wiped his nose with tears in his eyes and bowed deeply again, his huge nose almost flattened on the ground.

Draco twitched the corner of his mouth and took two steps back in disgust.

“I don’t mind if you follow him,” Sirius said with a straight face.

“When he came back from Azkaban, he was bossing Kreacher around. He also wanted to drive Kreacher out of the house so that he could trash the mistress’s house.” Kreacher bowed to him again, lowered his voice and continued to talk. Get up, “Kreacher will never let him succeed…”

He hunched over and slowly walked away, his hoarse voice still coming from afar: “The young master is an ungrateful and dirty son who broke his mother’s heart… Kreacher should keep Miss Sissy’s son away from people like the young master. , if he follows the young master’s bad example, Miss Sissi will be so sad…”

“Don’t take it too seriously, his mind is not normal.” Harry said quickly, sensing that the atmosphere had become awkward again.

Draco turned to glare at him, let out a slight “hum”, and turned his head to the side. Sirius was sullen and silent, Neville looked around uneasily, and Owen was laughing secretly.

They turned a corner and there was another house elf standing in front of a door, holding a tall pile in his arms. “Happy birthday, Harry Potter!” he shouted in a high-pitched voice, wincing at the sight of Draco.

“Thank you. Thank you for your hard work, Dobby.” Harry smiled.

“Dobby is here too?” Owen said casually as he watched Dobby stagger away with something in his arms.

“Well, Sirius hired Dobby.” Harry replied. “Dobby couldn’t find a job. Few people were willing to accept a house elf who needed payment. Even Dumbledore refused to let him work in Hogg. Watts works…” At this point, he seemed a little helpless.

Owen nodded understandingly. Grindelwald is a staunch wizard supremacist. Of course, it is impossible for a house elf who pursues freedom to enter Hogwarts. What if he teaches other house elves bad things?

The fact that Dobby was able to come out of him completely shows that Grindelwald’s temperament has improved a lot after decades of prison life.

“…Thanks to Dobby, we were able to clean out this old house.” Harry praised Dobby, his expression becoming a little embarrassed. Because compared to Dobby’s hard work and ability, the salary of one gold galleon per week is really too little, but Dobby is only willing to accept this much.

“Why did you decide the location of the birthday party here?” Owen raised his eyebrows.

Harry turned to look at Sirius, who was talking to Neville, and whispered: “Sirius doesn’t want too many people to know his current address, because I sometimes go to live with him for a few days – you know, although Dumbledore made me stay at the Dursleys’ house, but he didn’t forbid me from visiting – Sirius felt that the wizarding world was not safe, especially after learning that I was being targeted by the Ethereal Society.”

Owen nodded in agreement, agreeing with Sirius’ caution, the wizarding world was never that safe.

“Sirius originally planned to book a theater auditorium, invite a few bands and so on, and even wanted to invite all the students in the grade…” Harry continued, “I finally persuaded him to give up that idea. .”

“Why doesn’t he live here?” Draco interrupted.

“He doesn’t like this house. As you can see, this house doesn’t welcome him either…” Harry shrugged, looked at a man coming from the other side, and introduced to them: “This is Lai Mus Lupin, Sirius’ friend.”

“Happy birthday, Harry.” Lupine had a gentle smile on his pale face and nodded slightly to Owen, “I hope you have a good night.”

The group of people walked into the living room, which was a long, high-ceilinged room that had been carefully decorated.

Beautiful ribbons and flower vines are hung on the olive green walls, the beautifully patterned carpet changes with bright colors, crystal clear colored crystal lamps hang from the ceiling, and some sparkling flower fairies are flying around. An ancient tapestry at the other end of the room was wrapped with flower-laden vines, almost completely obscuring the sprawling family tree.

There are already many people in the room. Blaise Zabini was adjusting a humming instrument while Pansy Parkinson looked on. Ginny Weasley called her brothers over. The twins were holding a popping fake mouse and teasing their little brother with laughter.

Daphne Greengrass was sitting on the sofa with a little girl who looked similar to her, quietly enjoying the performance of the Goblin Band. Crabbe and Goyle looked at the candies and cakes on the table and drooled. Hermione stood by the wall and studied the portraits and tapestries on the wall, turning her head and waving at them happily.

In addition, several members of the Slytherin Quidditch team, several close classmates from the same grade, and even Harry’s little fan Colin Creevey were invited.

“Well, tonight is yours,” Sirius Black said with a grin. Lupine stood by the door with a calm and gentle smile on his face.

Owen placed the gift box he brought among the pile of birthday gifts and said with a smile: “Happy birthday, Harry.”

He sat on the sofa and chatted with acquaintances. Daphne ruffled the hair of the little girl next to her and introduced with a smile: “This is my sister, Astoria. She will enter school this year.”

“Sister, stop making trouble.” Astoria helplessly combed her messed up hair. She has the same golden hair and blue eyes as Daphne, but her temperament is more gentle and reserved, and her complexion is too pale.

“Hello.” Owen smiled slightly, watching the people around him twisting their bodies to the music.

Harry was busy opening birthday gifts. When he opened the gift that Sirius gave him, he couldn’t help but exclaimed.

“Wow, Firebolt!” A large group of people gathered around, looking at the broomstick with smooth and graceful lines with envy. Some people talked about it in detail: “This is the newest one, the fastest broom in the world! It can accelerate to 150 miles per hour in ten seconds!”

“This is such a luxury…” Harry said, looking at Sirius as he fondly stroked the smooth ash wood handle of the Firebolt.

After a while, Dobby pushed in a huge birthday cake more than two meters high. A group of people sang happy birthday together and then shared the cake. There were also a large number of staple food, desserts, candies and juice on the table.

The little wizards took their favorite food and after eating and drinking, the joyful atmosphere reached its peak.

There were all kinds of new and interesting things around the room, which brought a lot of laughter. Fireworks of all kinds were swishing on the ceiling, edible flowers and golden snitch-shaped candies were floating in the air, and some colorful eggs were flapping their wings and flying around.

Several people were chasing the eggs and beating them, happily collecting the gadgets that burst out of them. Blaise and Draco grabbed two rings and went up to the sky, spacewalking under the ceiling. Daphne and a group of girls gathered around to draw pictures on the enchanted paper. The drawn things jumped out of the paper as if they were alive, and circled around them happily.

The Weasley twins have been tinkering with a machine that can randomly change people’s clothes. Fred put on a brightly colored Hawaiian grass skirt, and George wore a colorful clown suit. They took the trouble to push everyone around them into the dressing machine. When Ron was put into an Indian dancer’s dress, the two of them almost laughed out loud.

Owen got into the dressing machine with great interest and slipped around, changing into an exaggerated Egyptian pharaoh costume, and then happily joined the goblin band, played a dance song on the violin, and danced with Daphne A cheerful waltz.

After playing around for a while, he stood in front of the tapestry covered by flower vines, pushed aside the vines on it, and looked at the family tree of the Black family.

“Hey Owen, want to play a game of Wizard’s Chess?” Harry called to him.

Owen thought about it and finally didn’t mention RAB to him. Forget it, he won’t be a disgrace tonight, let’s talk about it after the party is over.

“Okay.” He said.