Chapter 1,249

In fact, after a night of changes, the tightness of the nerves is more likely to make people feel tired.

But the threat of Death Eaters hangs in everyone's mind like a sharp sword, with the risk of falling at any time.

To be on the safe side, they had to spend the night huddled on the floor in the living room.

A family must be neat and orderly, and it probably follows this principle.

Early the next morning, Harry woke up from his sleeping bag on the living room floor.

The sky outside could be vaguely seen through the gaps in the thick curtains. The sky before dawn showed light aqua blue ripples, accompanied by bursts of coolness. Everything was so quiet. Only Ron and Fan Lin were heard. There was Hermione's slow, deep breathing.

Harry looked at the shadows they cast on the floor beside him.

As the only woman, naturally, the seat on the sofa was reserved for Hermione, and Fan Lin was close to her. Harry was in the middle, and Ron was on the far left.

It could be seen that Hermione had been frightened all night. Her arms were stretched out towards the floor, and her fingers were very close to Fanlin's.

Harry wondered if they slept hand in hand, and the thought made him feel particularly lonely.

This probably came from the resentment of being single. Somehow, Harry thought of Ginny.

He looked at the dark ceiling and the chandelier covered with cobwebs. Less than 4 hours ago, he stood at the entrance of the big tent in the sunshine, preparing to guide the wedding guests. Those things seemed to have happened a lifetime ago.

What happens now? He was lying on the floor, thinking about the Horcrux, which was the complex and arduous mission left to him by Dumbledore... Dumbledore... The grief that the death of the headmaster brought to him seemed to have changed somewhat compared to before. , Muriel's condemnation at the wedding seemed to have entered his mind like a bad disease, infecting his heart's reverence for the principal.

Would Dumbledore let that happen? Could it be that he was once like Dudley, sitting back and ignoring things as long as it didn't concern him? Did he really ignore his imprisoned and hidden sister?

For no reason, Harry thought of Godric's Hollow and the graves that Dumbledore had never mentioned. He also thought of the resentment that Dumbledore had not given any explanation for those mysterious objects in his will. Swelling gradually in the darkness.

Why didn't Dumbledore tell him? Why didn't he explain clearly? Did Dumbledore ever care about Harry? Or was Harry just a tool to him that needed polishing, someone he would never trust, never trust?

Harry couldn't stand it any longer and could only lie there in pain. He desperately needed something to distract himself.

So he crawled out of his sleeping bag, picked up his wand, and tiptoed out of the room. At the top of the stairs, he whispered: "Lightsing," and with the faint light from the wand, he walked up the stairs.

The third floor was where he and Ron slept last time. He glanced inside and saw that the wardrobe door was open and the quilt cover was torn off. Harry thought again of the troll's legs that fell to the ground downstairs.

Someone from the Order of the Phoenix searched this house! Is it Snape? Or Mundungus, the thief who betrayed the Order and led to Moody's death?

Sirius did not come back. For him, the Black family's ancestral home was not suitable for him to live in.

This place was too big and too empty. Since Snape's betrayal, Sirius had moved out of the ancestral home of the Black family.

Harry's eyes lingered on the portrait frame of Phineas Nigellus...he was Sirius' great-great-grandfather and the most unpopular headmaster in the history of Hogwarts.

But now there is nothing in the frame, just a muddy backdrop.

Apparently, Phineas Nigellus spent the night in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts.

It was a great place and no one could force their way into the principal's office without their recognition.

But what if it was Voldemort?

If he and Dumbledore hadn't gone out that night and stayed in the principal's office, wouldn't Dumbledore have...

Harry continued up the stairs until he reached the top floor, which had only two doors. There was a sign on the door facing him that read: "Sirius!"

Harry, who had never been to his godfather's room before, opened the door and held his wand high to allow the fluorescent light to reach a wider area.

Sirius's room was large, and you could tell that it must have been quite grand before.

There is a large bed in the room, with patterns engraved on the wooden bedside board; the high windows are covered by long velvet curtains; the chandelier is covered with a thick layer of ash, and the candle is still inserted in the candle holder, with condensation surrounding it. With drops of candle tears. The pictures on the wall and the headboard were also gray, and spider webs stretched from the chandelier to the large wooden wardrobe. As Harry walked inside, he also heard the footsteps of frightened mice.

This place has been abandoned for a long time. Sirius tried his best to get rid of the old identity of the Black family, but he must admit that this place carries the past of his godfather, as well as the naughty Sirius showed in the confrontation with the past.

The young Sirius used posters and pictures to cover up the silver-gray walls with only a few gaps exposed, because silver-gray is the representative color of Slytherin, which does not match Sirius at all.

Harry suspected that Sirius's parents had no way of dealing with the Permanent Sticking Charm, as he was certain that they would never share their eldest son's taste in decoration.

Sirius seemed to be deliberately trying to annoy his parents. There were several large Gryffindor flags in the room, the faded scarlet and gold marking him apart from the other Slytherin families.

Some pictures of Muggle motorcycles were also taped to the walls, as were several posters of Muggle girls in bikinis.

(Harry really admired Sirius's courage. He was really willful to a fault. It was a miracle that Mrs. Black didn't break his legs because of it.)

Harry recognized the Muggles because they were fixed on the painting, their faded smiles and bright eyes motionless. In stark contrast to these images is the only picture of wizards on the wall, which shows four Hogwarts students holding hands and laughing at the camera.

Harry ran over briskly and recognized his father. His messy black hair stood on the back of his head, just like Harry's, and he also wore glasses.

Standing next to his father was Sirius, somewhat casually handsome, with a slightly arrogant face, younger and happier than Harry had ever seen him before.

Pettigrew was on Sirius' right, a head shorter than him, and his round, watery little eyes shone with the excitement of being in the company of such a cool group of people.

To James' left was Lupine, who looked a little shabby in comparison, but equally beaming... They liked him and accepted him, but maybe that was just because they saw Harry seeing this photo?

He tried to peel it off the wall, but Harry couldn't get it off.

It seemed that Sirius had taken every precaution to prevent his parents from redecorating the house.

Harry looked around carefully. The sky outside began to brighten, and a beam of light illuminated the scattered pieces of paper, books, and some small objects.

It was obvious that Sirius's room had been searched by later people, and the things on the floor were basically treated as worthless. Some of the books had been roughly turned, the covers had been separated from the books, and the pages were cluttering the floor.

Harry bent down and picked up some pieces of paper, examining them carefully. He recognized that one of them had been torn from an old edition of A History of Magic (written by Bathilda Bagshot), and that the other had belonged to a motorcycle maintenance manual. The third was handwritten and crumpled.

Harry flattened it and read.

Dear Padfoot: Thank you for your birthday gift to Harry! This is his favorite one by far. At just one year old, he began to fly up on a toy broomstick, and he seemed very happy about this. You can take a look at the photos I sent with the letter. He was only two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed a cat and broke a horrible vase that Penny gave us for Christmas (no big deal).

James thought it was funny and said he would be a great Quidditch player, but we had to put all the decorations away and keep an eye on him as he flew.

We had a rather peaceful birthday tea party, just us and old Bathilda, who was always wonderfully kind to us, and she doted on Harry. It's a shame you didn't come, but the Order should come first, and Harry is too young to realize it's his birthday!

The isolation from the outside world made James feel a little lost, and although he tried hard to hide it, I could tell. Dumbledore had taken away his Invisibility Cloak, making the outing completely impossible. It would definitely cheer him up a lot if you could come and visit.

Wormtail came over last weekend. I thought he looked a little listless, too, probably because of the news about MacMillan, and I cried all night after hearing that news.

Bathilda came almost every day and often told very interesting old stories about Dumbledore. I'm not sure Dumbledore would be happy if he found out! I don’t know how much of it can be believed. In fact, those things seem too unbelievable when it comes to Dumbledore...

Harry seemed to lose feeling in his limbs.

He stood still, clutching the incredible-looking piece of paper with his nervous and slightly spasmodic fingers. The excitement like a volcanic eruption rolled in his heart, and the accompanying grief flowed throughout his body. He fell Sitting on Sirius' big bed.

He read the letter again, but didn't see any more content. So he began to think about the font for writing letters. She wrote the "g" exactly like his. Harry looked at each word, over and over again, and every time he looked at it, it felt like he was gently capturing their images and their breath through the veil.

This letter was really an incredible treasure. It made him truly feel that Lily Potter had existed in this world and lived in real life. Her warm hands had moved on this parchment, letting the ink flow on it. The paper flowed, these words, these words about him, Harry, her child.

Harry hastily wiped the tears from his eyes and read the letter again, this time focusing on its meaning. It felt like listening to a familiar voice speaking.

They once had a cat...maybe it had turned to dust like his parents in Godric's Hollow...maybe it had run away because no one came to feed it...Sirius gave him his first handful Broomstick... His parents knew Bathilda Bagshot. Was it Dumbledore who introduced him to them? Dumbledore kept his invisibility cloak... which sounds interesting...

Harry paused, thinking about what his mother had said. Why did Dumbledore take James' Invisibility Cloak? Harry clearly remembered the headmaster telling him "I don't need an invisibility cloak to be invisible" a few years ago.

Maybe the less powerful members of the Order of the Phoenix need this help. Did Dumbledore also act as an errand boy?

Harry continued to speculate... Wormtail had been here... Pettigrew, the traitor, had been "listless"? Did he realize then that this was the last time he would see James and Lily? Finally there was Bathilda, a woman who had told incredible little stories about Dumbledore... She said Dumbledore - she said what happened to Dumbledore?

There are so many things about Dumbledore that may seem unbelievable. Like getting a pitifully low score on the Transfiguration exam, or casting a spell on a goat like Aberforth...

Harry stood up and examined the floor carefully; perhaps the remaining pages of the letter were nearby.

He searched through the scraps of paper as eagerly as the previous searcher, opened drawers, shook the books vigorously, stood on a stool to reach the top of the wardrobe with his hands, crawled under the bed and the armchair. Finally, he lay on the floor and found a torn piece of paper under the chest of drawers. He took out the piece of paper and recognized that it was exactly the piece Lily had described. A boy with black hair was rushing in and out of the photo on a small broom, laughing happily, followed closely by a pair of big feet that should belong to James.

He rolled up the photo and Lily's letter and put them in his pocket, then continued looking for the next piece of paper.

Another quarter of an hour passed, and he had to admit that the rest of his mother's letter was indeed missing. Had it been lost during those sixteen years, or had it been taken by the person who searched the room? Harry read the first page of the letter again, this time looking for any clues that might be of value to the contents of the second page.

Of course the Death Eaters would not be interested in his toy broomstick... The only thing he could guess was that those things about Dumbledore had some significance.

She said Dumbledore...what did she say? (To be continued)