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Harry looked around; all three of the Dursleys were cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses bounced up and down on their skulls, their contents flying everywhere.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Dumbledore politely, and he raised his wand again. -All three glasses vanished. "But it would have been better manners to drink it, you know." It looked as though Uncle Vernon was bursting with any number of unpleasant retorts, but he merely shrank back into the cushions with Aunt Petunia and Dudley and said nothing, keeping his small piggy eyes on Dumbledore's wand.
"You see," Dumbledore said, turning back to Harry and again speaking as though Uncle Vernon had not uttered, "if you have indeed inherited the house, you have also inherited —" He flicked his wand for a fifth time. There was a loud crack, and a house-elf appeared, with a snout for a nose, giant bat's ears, and enormous bloodshot eyes, crouching on the Dursleys' shag carpet and covered in grimy rags. Aunt Petunia let out a hair-raising shriek; nothing this filthy had entered her house in living memory. Dudley drew his large, bare, pink feet off the floor and sat with them raised almost above his head, as though he thought the creature might run up his pajama trousers, and Uncle Vernon bellowed, "What the hell is that." "Kreacher," finished Dumbledore.
"Kreacher wont, Kreacher won't, Kreacher wont!" croaked the house-elf, quite as loudly as Uncle Vernon, stamping his long, gnarled feet and pulling his ears. "K readier belongs to Miss Bellatrix, oh yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won't go to the Potter brat, Kreacher won't, won't, wont —" "As you can see, Harry," said Dumbledore loudly, over Kreacher's continued croaks of "wont, won't, won't," "Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your ownership." "I don't care," said Harry again, looking with disgust at the writhing, stamping house-elf. "I don't want him." "Won't, won’t, won't, won't —" "You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of Bellatrix Lestrange. Bearing in mind that he has lived at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year." "Won't, won't, won’t, won't —" Harry stared at Dumbledore. He knew that Kreacher could not be permitted to go and live with Bellatrix Lestrange, but the idea of owning him, of having responsibility for the creature that had betrayed Sirius, was repugnant.
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