OK, a few things to say:

1) sorry it has been AGES since I last updated, this is partly because I've been really busy with work and partly because the site hasn't been working for me for a while! :(

2) THANK YOU for being so patient! I feel like this story has got a bit rubbish lately, but I think that's just cos I've been really busy with work. But there is some really good stuff to come: Lots more Sirius, and Tonks will come into it more soon as it's not long until the Order rebands. Also, it's about time Remus got a new job.

Chapter 36

Sirius and I stood looking up at the drainpipe that snaked down from the roof and between number 11 and number 13 of Grimmauld Place. Through a window of number 11 I could see a young muggle woman, her eyes fixed to a television set. All the lights of number 13 were off so I guessed the muggles inside were all asleep. Between these two houses was nothing. Nothing but the drainpipe that is. There was no sign that there might be another house hidden there somewhere.

"What do we do?" Sirius asked me after we had stood in the cold staring silently at the row of terraced houses for a good fifteen minutes.

"I don't know. I thought you would know." I said with a vague shrug.

"Why would I know?" Sirius said holding out his hands to emphasise his lack of responsibility.

"Well because..." I struggled, "you said you were the rightful owner. You were Regulus' next of kin so the house should be yours."

"Yeah, but you were the one who said that the rightful owner should be able to access the house. You were the one who made that connection." Sirius argued back. I opened my mouth and pointed a finger at him, but no arguments sprung to mind. Sirius was right, I was the one who thought that the reason the house was hidden was because it was waiting to be claimed; just because Sirius was that rightful owner didn't mean he knew what he had to do to make the house reveal itself. I closed my mouth and let my hand drop back to my side.

"Is that it? Do you not have any ideas? You said you read up on curses and my family and stuff, you must be able to think of something." Sirius said putting his hands into his tattered robes.

"I'm slightly annoyed that you were banking on me to come up with everything." I said with my eyes narrowed. Sirius threw his hands back into the air and shrugged.

"I was busy! I was on the run...looking after my godson..."

"Maybe there is an incantation." I interrupted gesturing back to the drainpipe where number 12 would be. "Maybe you have to ask the house to reveal itself."

"Alright..." Sirius said also turning to look at the drainpipe. He cleared his throat. "Noble and most ancient house of Black – Sirius Orion Black, the man who owns your vile precinct, has come to claim you." He said loudly and disdainfully. Nothing happened.

"Maybe since my family disowned me, the house doesn't recognise me as a family member." Sirius suggested looking rather irritated.

"No, it has to." I said, "the house is connected to you via very deep magic, that a simple disowning wouldn't cancel out. You still have Black blood in you, and it's blood the house is connected to."

"Maybe you should try being less sarcastic." I added in as neutral a voice as I could manage.

"Less sarcastic? It's a bloody house." Sirius professed his cheeks going slightly red with anger. He clearly hated just being near number 12, and asking him to speak to that house politely was like asking Voldemort to make Dumbledore a cup of tea. Sirius gave a grumpy sigh and tried again.

"Noble and most ancient house of Black, Sirius the 3rd, the heir to the Black fortune or whatever, has come to claim you – so, reveal yourself!" Sirius shouted at the drain pipe. Again nothing happened.

"That wasn't much better."

"What do you want from me Moony? Do you want me to curtsey? To get on my knees? To kiss the bloody drain pipe?" Sirius ranted.

"Alright alright..." I said holding up a hand to calm him down. "Maybe we should try some spells." I added hopefully. Sirius rolled his eyes but got out his wand. We tried every vaguely relevant spell we could think of, revealing charms, opening charms, unlocking charms, battering hexes, blasting curses, moving spells. Any muggle watching us would think we were absolutely barmy, shouting latinate words at nothing while waving sticks about. The most we achieved however was to blast a hole in the drainpipe causing sludgy brown water to rain down on us.

"Nice." Sirius hissed as he wiped his wet hair out of his face.

"Oh dear." I contributed.

"Right. I've had enough of this. NUMBER TWELVE!" Sirius shouted at the top of his voice while he walked around in a small circle and held both of his arms out, looking just like a shakespearian hero in the middle of an angry pre-battle speech. "Whether you like it or not you execrable edifice I own you! Here that? You are mine! So show yourself, unless you want to remain uninhabited for the rest of eternity!"

Silence followed, and I thought that perhaps we would just have to give up, but then there was a deep grumble followed by a low creaking sound. Sirius and I exchanged questioning looks. Then the drain pipe shuddered and split in two. The two halves moved away from each other and morphed into two twin drainpipes which continued to move apart. Between them dull grey bricks, tall sash windows, rusted wrought iron railings and an imposing front door materialised with cracks and creaks. Sirius and I both stared at number twelve. I glanced at Sirius to examine his expression. He looked like someone who was looking at a murder victim: a mixture of horror, fear and disgust. He sighed and I looked back at the house.

"See?" Sirius said, his voice deliberately nonchalant.

"See what?"

"Just gotta show it who's boss." Sirius concluded and he strode towards his ancestral home. I shrugged and followed. We stood outside the large front door, which had no handle, or key-hole, or letter box, or anything that would reveal it as a door apart from a silver doorbell in the shape of a twisted serpent. Sirius tried to open the front door with a spell but the house again just ignored him. Sirius groaned and rang the doorbell.

"Who do you think is going to answer?" I asked slightly incredulously.

"Dunno. Kreacher?"

"Who?"

"The house elf." Sirius admitted like he was confessing some regretful past sin. "I don't know if he'll be there. Actually he's probably dead." Suddenly the serpent on the doorbell wriggled. Its carved silver body twisted and Sirius took a step back in shock. Tiny little black eyes appeared on the snake's head then it opened its mouth and hissed.

"Sirius Orion Black?" The snake asked in a deep male voice that I recognised and which made me shiver. It was the voice of Sirius' father, the voice that reminded me of the devil.

"Yes." Sirius said.

"Confirmation by blood is required." The snake said before opening its mouth wide and sticking out a long thin silver tongue. Sirius looked at me with a slightly abhorrent expression.

"Does that mean what I think I means?" I asked him and he shrugged.

"Sounds exactly like the sort of loathsome ritual a Black would dream up." Sirius commented with a twisted mirthless smile. I pulled a face but didn't say anything, because it did sound exactly like the sort of loathsome ritual a Black would dream up. Sirius took out his wand and pointed it at his outstretched index finger.

"Secare." He said and a small cut appeared on his finger from which a bead of blood swelled. Sirius then held his finger over the snake's tongue and shook his bloodied finger so that a drop fell on it's silver surface. The snake pulled its tongue back into its mouth and Sirius healed his finger. The snake considered Sirius's blood offering for a few minutes then it raised its head to the level of Sirius' eyes and in Orion Black's sinister voice it said:

"Very well, Sirius, the house is yours. But although you own this house don't expect it to be welcoming."

The silver snake then twisted itself around back the doorbell, its black eyes vanished and it became inanimate once more. Then the door began to fade and soon it had completely vanished revealed the long narrow hallway beyond. I could not see the end of this hall way as no light came from it. The meagre light that filtered through the fog from the streetlights illuminated a small part of the tiled floor (at least I think it was tiled, there was at least an inch of dust carpeted over the top of it) and sections of the silk-lined walls, but other than that the corridor was a tunnel into pitch darkness. I could tell that Sirius was just as apprehensive as I was but we both stepped inside. The door reappeared behind us and shut us in darkness.

"Lumos." We both said at the same time. Sirius waved his wand over the oil lamps that lined the hallway lighting them, and under their dull glow we saw that the house was dusty, damaged and dilapidating but apart from some ominous creaking, there was nothing obviously dangerous about the place.

"Doesn't look that bad so far." I remarked casually.

"We're only in the hall. There's a whole house to go." Sirius said pessimistically as he glanced at the paintings of surly witches and wizards mounted on horses or dressed in armour and red velvet cloaks. I fingered the rips and holes in the silk wallpaper as I passed, and noticed a few shining pearlescent eggs nested in some of them. As soon as I recognised the eggs I withdrew my fingers sharply and was careful not to touch them.

"You've got Pogrebin eggs in the wallpaper!" I told Sirius with some surprise. Pogrebins were nasty little creatures that look like furry rocks when they hatch. They follow people around and fill them with hopelessness and apathy until that person just lies down and waits to die at which point the Pogrebin sneaks up and slowly eats them. They were most dangerous when they hatched of course, but their eggs can give you instant and serious frostbite if you touch them. Pogrebins were usually only found in Russia and other cold Eurasian countries, so I was surprised to find them here – and so many!

"We should collect them, we'd make a bloody fortune!" I suggested thinking of my overdue mortgage payments.

"Collect them?" Sirius remarked as if I were mad, "We should burn the bloody things." I opened my mouth to argue then promptly shut it again as I was about to walk into a spider's web and didn't want to get spider's silk in my mouth. Sirius had turned a corner a little way ahead so I wiped away the cobweb and caught up with him.

Sirius was standing in the small but grand entrance all at the end of the hallway. There were two doors leading off the entrance hall, one on the north wall one on the south; a flight of stairs with a mahogany banister lead to the upper floors towards the east, and on the north wall was an ageing mirror above a wooden side table with claws for feet. Next to the side table was an incredibly ugly troll's foot that had been fashioned into an umbrella stand. I stood next to this grotesque piece of furniture while Sirius gazed up at the crystal chandelier. Cobwebs and what looked like bat droppings hung from the tear-shaped crystals.

Adorning the walls were portraits of Sirius' family, the most prominent of which was a life-size portrait of Walburga Black. The hateful woman was asleep, just like all the other portraits. With a curled lip Sirius approached his mother's portrait and examined her aged face. She looked about 40 in the picture, but Walburga always looked older than she actually was so she was probably only 30 when the picture was painted. Walburga Black was a strange looking woman. There was nothing particularly unattractive about her when you considered her features apart from the expressions she formed with them and the vileness of her character. Her face was long with sharp cheekbones and a slightly masculine jaw, she had very dark narrow eyes, and dark but quite full lips. Together all those features did not make an unattractive woman, but her permanent scowl served to emphasise every crease in her skin; and the amount of hatred and anger that poured out of her eyes transformed her into someone you would only ever look at it you were paid to.

"Hello mummy." Sirius said sarcastically to the portrait. Suddenly her eyes snapped open. Sirius jumped back and swore loudly. Walburga's nostrils faired and her permanent scowl became even more pronounced.

"How dare you return?" She hissed in a menacing whisper.

"It's my house." Sirius said eventually with a petulant shrug.

"This house belonged to my forefathers, this house belonged to Phineas Nigellus Black;" Walburga spat becoming more red-faced and hysterical by the second, "it has only belonged to the strongest, most noble men with uninfected minds! None of those traits can be applied to you, you treacherous, dirty, ungrateful swine!" Sirius glanced and me with raised eyebrows and jerked his thumb at his mother, as if to see 'check out the mad old bat'. I gave a nervous grin: even though it was just a portrait she still scared me. Walburga snapped her heard towards me and I jumped slightly which made Sirius chuckle.

"And you brought that with you! That monster!" I flinched – I couldn't help it. "Filthy half-breed animal!" She screamed at me and I grimaced.

"Yeah I did!" Sirius said, "And we're going to spread our modern, liberal ideas all over this place!" Sirius exclaimed loudly obviously beginning to get fed up with his mother's ranting.

"You wont!" Walburga glared her eyes seeming to burn with hatred. "On my own grave I swear you will leave this house a shattered phantom of the pathetic weak man you are now or die here tonight."

"Shut up! What can you do? You're a painting!" Sirius spat shaking his head at his mad mother, who at once started screaming again.

"What's down there? Is that the kitchen?" I asked, ignoring Walburga's angry shouting and pointing to the stone steps to my right.

"Yeah, we should check it out – see what its tea-making capabilities are." Sirius said, but behind him his mother had stood up in her portrait and walked towards her son. She reached towards the frame with one hand and, to my horror, her painted hand pushed right through the canvas of the portrait! Her ghostly pale fingers wrapped around the golden frame. I grabbed my wand and pointed it at her, but I had no idea what spell to cast, I had never seen anything like this. Sirius noticed my alarm and turned back around. He swore again and pulled out his wand as his dead mother stepped out her own portrait.

"What the hell is going on?" Sirius exclaimed jumping back from this matriarchal apparition so that he was next to me.

"I've no idea. She must be a ghost – she's dead." I said as the woman approached us. She didn't not look like a ghost, she was not as transparent as ghosts were, but nor did she look like flesh and blood: there was not enough colour in her skin and when she moved the boundaries of her body blurred and became like smoke as if that was what she were made of.

"Confringo!" Sirius yelled. A jet of red light shot from his wand, flew straight through his mother's body and hit the wall on the other side causing a large hole to appear there.

"Expulso!" I tried, my spell having much the same effect as Sirius'. Walburga smiled a horrible sinister smile at our failed magic and reached one boney hand towards Sirius. Sirius ducked out of her way and dodged around her. I too stepped back as Walburga swiped her hand through the air in anger. Suddenly other portraits were waking up and coming out out of their portraits. Smokey witches and wizards were falling out of paintings and convening in the entrance hall. I ducked out of their way and avoided their grasping hands, but it wasn't me they were after. In fact they ignored me completely and instead surrounded Sirius.

"Depulso! Deletrius!" Sirius yelled, but his spells had no effects.

"Did you father not warn you, Sirius, that this house would not welcome you?" Walburga screamed at her son as she grabbed his wand arm tightly. Sirius shook his arm and tried to pull it from Walburga's grip, but to no avail. Another phantom grabbed his other arm and a third wrapped her arm around his neck.

"Finite Incanatem!" I yelled swiping my wand at them. "Finite! Finite!" I yelled again, now swiping at the phantoms with my arms as I fought to get near Sirius who was struggling to get them away from him. My hands went right through the figures and the smoke they were made of felt icy cold, not unlike when you accidentally touch a ghost. I heard the clatter of Sirius wand as he dropped it on the tiled floor I could not see what was happening as Sirius was now mostly obscured by the smokey figures. In desperation I jumped right through one of the ghosts and saw that Sirius was being viciously pulled into the very wall! Half of Sirius's body was already embedded in the wall like the wall was a vertical pit of quicksand. Both of Sirius' arms had disappeared so that I couldn't grab his hand to pull him out. Instead I grabbed his shoulder and tried to pull against the ghosts of his family that were still pushing and pulling Sirius into the wall.

"Aaah! Don't let them take me!" Sirius yelled at me as he struggled to pull himself out of the wall.

"I wont I wont!" I yelled back dropping my wand and using both hands to pull Sirius by the shoulders. He came slightly towards me and suddenly Sirius managed to free one of his arms and he reached towards me. I grabbed his arm with both hands and pulled as hard as I could. But the opposite side of Sirius' body had been sucked into the wall almost completely. The ghosts too seems to have disappeared into the wall, though I could still see a pair of smokey hands around Sirius' neck, pulling his head towards the wall. Sirius' legs had also been sucked away.

"Hell I don't want to have been killed by a wall!" Sirius, whose face was red and sweating, screamed with a strange frightened amusement. I pulled on his arm as hard as I could, but the force that was pulling him into the wall was much stronger than I was. Sirius neck disappeared, then his jaw began to sink into the wall. "Shit shit!" Sirius yelled but the next second his mouth had sunk and all that was left was his frightened eyes and the arm I was still tugging. I gasped as his head slipped away. He obviously hadn't been crushed or suffocated though because his hand was still gripping my arm painfully tightly. I put my feet against the bottom of the wall and pushed against the skirting board as I continued to pull. But Sirius' arm was disappearing quickly. Soon I only had his hand to hang on to, but it slipped out of my own and I had to watch his fingers sink into the wall. Then he was gone.

"SIRIUS!" I shouted feeling the silk lined walls with my hands. "SIRIUS!" But there was no sign of him. The house was completely silent and the wall bore no traces that a fully grown man had just been pulled into it by an army of dead witches and wizards. I stood in the ancient house of Black and felt panic and terror thunder through me. I had let the house take him. I picked up my wand and held it tightly in my right hand. I had to get him back.

DUN DUN DUN...

NB: Sacare is not a cannon spell, but it almost is, it's latin for 'cut' and is the imperative from of seco which is part of Snape's sectumsempra spell (Latin is cool). The other spells in this chapter are all from the books. Pogrebins are from the books too (fantastic beasts I think), so I take no credit for them.