“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.”
Harry’s lips were cold and numb.
“So… when I asked Kreacher if Sirius was there last night…”
“The Malfoys—undoubtedly on Voldemort’s instructions—had told him he must find a way of keeping Sirius out of the way once you had seen the vision of Sirius being tortured. Then, if you decided to check whether Sirius was at home or not, Kreacher would be able to pretend he was not. Kreacher injured Buckbeak the Hippogriff yesterday, and, at the moment when you made your appearance in the fire, Sirius was upstairs tending to him.”
There seemed to be very little air in Harry’s lungs; his breathing was quick and shallow.
“And Kreacher told you all this… and laughed?” he croaked.
“He did not wish to tell me,” said Dumbledore. “But I am a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I—persuaded him—to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries.”
“And,” whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees, “and Hermione kept telling us to be nice to him—”
“She was quite right, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “I warned Sirius when we adopted twelve Grimmauld Place as our Headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us. I do not think Sirius took me very seriously, or that he ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human’s—”
“Don’t you blame—don’t you—talk—about Sirius like—” Harry’s breath was constricted, he could not get the words out properly; but the rage that had subsided briefly flared in him again: he would not let Dumbledore criticise Sirius. “Kreacher’s a lying—foul—he deserved—”
“Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “Yes, he is to be pitied. His existence has been as miserable as your friend Dobby’s. He was forced to do Sirius’s bidding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him. And whatever Kreacher’s faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher’s lot easier—”
“DON’T TALK ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!” Harry yelled.
He was on his feet again, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered…
“What about Snape?” Harry spat. “You’re not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual—”
“Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge,” said Dumbledore steadily, “but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius’s whereabouts.”
Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.
“Snape—Snape g-goaded Sirius about staying in the house—he made out Sirius was a coward—”
“Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him,” said Dumbledore.
“Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!” Harry snarled. “He threw me out of his office!”
“I am aware of it,” said Dumbledore heavily “I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence—”
“Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him—” Harry remembered Ron’s thoughts on the subject and plunged on “—how do you know he wasn’t trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my—”
“I trust Severus Snape,” said Dumbledore simply. “But I forgot—another old man’s mistake—that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father—I was wrong.”
“But that’s OK, is it?” yelled Harry, ignoring the scandalised faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. “It’s OK for Snape to hate my dad, but it’s not OK for Sirius to hate Kreacher?”
“Sirius did not hate Kreacher,” said Dumbledore. “He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike… the fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.”
“SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?” Harry yelled.
“I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it,” Dumbledore replied quietly. “Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to houseelves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated.”
“Yeah, he did hate it!” said Harry, his voice cracking, turning his back on Dumbledore and walking away. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed him as he walked, without realising what he was doing, without seeing the office at all. “You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that’s why he wanted to get out last night—”