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Number 12 Grimmauld Place

     The following are excerpts taken from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.

 “They were standing outside number eleven; he looked to the left and saw number ten; to the right, however, was number thirteen.”
     “But where’s—?”
    “Think about what you’ve just memorized,” said Lupin quietly.
    Harry thought, and no sooner had he reached the part about number twelve, Grimmauld Place, than a battered door emerged out of nowhere between numbers eleven and thirteen, followed swiftly by dirty walls and grimy windows. It was as though an extra house had inflated, pushing those on either side out of its way. Harry gaped at it. The stereo in number eleven thudded on. Apparently the Muggles inside hadn’t even felt anything.
    “Come on, hurry,” growled Moody, prodding Harry in the back.
    Harry walked up the worn stone steps, staring at the newly materialized door. Its black paint was shabby and scratched. The silver door knocked was in the form of a twisted serpent.  There was no keyhole or letterbox.
    Lupin pulled out his wand and tapped the door once. Harry heard many loud metallic clicks and what sounded like the clatter of a chain. The door creaked open.
    “Get in quick, Harry,” Lupin whispered. “But don’t go far inside and don’t touch anything.”
    Harry stepped over the threshold into the almost total darkness of the hall. He could smell damp, dust, and a sweetish, rotting smell; the place had the feeling of a derelict building. He looked over his shoulder and saw the others filing in behind him, Lupin and Tonks carrying his trunk and Hedwig’s cage. Moody was standing on the top step and releasing the balls of light the Put-Outer had stolen from the street lamps; they flew back into their bulbs and the square beyond glowed momentarily with orange light before Moody limped inside and closed the front door, so the darkness in the hall became complete.
    “Here—”
    He rapped Harry hard over the head with his wand; Harry felt as though something hot was trickling down his back this time and knew that the Disillusionment Charm must have lifted.
    “Now stay still, everyone, while I give us a bit of light in here,” Moody whispered.
    The others’ hushed voices were giving Harry and odd feeling of foreboding; it was as though they had just entered the house of a dying person. He heard a soft hissing noise and then old-fashioned gas lamps sputtered into life all along the walls, casting a flickering insubstantial light over the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a long, gloomy hallway, where a cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and age-blackened portraits hung crooked on the walls. Harry heard something scuttling behind the baseboard. Both the chandelier and the candelabra on a rickety table nearby were shaped like serpents.

-     -     -

“I’ll explain later, I’ve got to hurry, I’m supposed to be at the meeting—I’ll just show you where you’re sleeping.”
    Pressing her finger to her lips, she led him on tiptoes past a pair of long, moth-eaten curtains, behind which Harry supposed there must be another door, and after skirting a large umbrella that looked as though it had been made from a severed troll’s leg, they started up the dark staircase, passing a row of shrunken heads mounted on plaques on the wall. A closer looked showed Harry that the heads belonged to house-elves. All of them had the same rather snoutlike nose.
    Harry’s bewilderment deepened with every step he took. What on earth were they doing in a house that looked as though it belonged to the Darkest of wizards?”

Kreacher’s Bedroom
“Harry peered inside. Most of the cupboard was taken up with a very large and old-fashioned boiler, but in the foot’s space underneath the pipes Kreacher had made himself something that looked like a nest. A jumble of assorted rags and smelly old blankets were piled on the floor and the small dent in the middle of it showed where Kreacher curled up to sleep every night. Here and there among the material were stale bread crusts and moldy old bits of cheese. In a small corner glinted small objects and coins that Harry guessed Kreacher had saved, magpielike, from Sirius’s purge of the house, and he had also managed to retrieve the silver-framed family photographs that Sirius had thrown away over the summer.”