Snape's Guess

On the empty streets of Diagon Alley, Malfoy and Narcissa walked side by side. Neither of them was in a particularly good mood after what had just happened. They wore dark expressions the entire way, each lost in their own thoughts.

Yet they did not hurry back, seeming more willing to waste time wandering aimlessly through Diagon Alley than to go home.

Narcissa looked at her silent son, wanting to find something to say to break the awkwardness, but unable to think of anything. In the end, she glanced around and asked, "Draco, do you want some ice cream?"

"Who wants to eat that stuff?" Malfoy said impatiently.

He instinctively glanced at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour beside them, but his gaze settled on a shop with tightly shut doors and not even a signboard.

Through the clean window, he could see a neatly dressed House-elf busily arranging the shelves inside.

A neatly dressed House-elf... Malfoy could not help snorting. It was the first time he had ever seen anything so bizarre.

It felt like seeing a Troll that had not only taken a bath, but also put on a diaper. It was simply unheard of.

But the mention of bizarre House-elves immediately made him think of Dobby, who had betrayed the Malfoy family, and his already foul mood flared into even greater fury.

"What a bore. What kind of shop is this?"

"I don't know." Narcissa shook her head. "But this location should have something to do with the House of Black. I remember Mrs Black mentioning it once."

The Mrs Black Narcissa referred to was the portrait of the "Screaming Witch" at 12 Grimmauld Place, and Sirius's mother as well.

Screaming Witch was the nickname Ginny had given her, because that portrait simply could not speak normally. Whenever