Growing Up Grimmauld
It took it a long time to notice it was empty.
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place stirred slowly. Soft messages raced back and forth through the corridors, behind the doors, down into the floorboards. It creaked and swayed like a great tree. It remembered trees, although dimly.
Better, it remembered the wizards and witches who had lived here and cast spells and raced down the corridors and leaned against the walls and cooked in the kitchen.
It remembered.
And it wanted that back.
Shadows crawled along the walls like tree roots, and Grimmauld Place reached for the family tapestry that hung in one room brighter than the rest with the memory and promise of magic. It reached, and it reached, and it reached, and sparks sprang to life in its power and what passed for its mind.
Yes.
It knew, it remembered, and it felt the tie of magic that connected a child to one of its exiled sons. That son had not been the father of the child, which would have been better, but he had been the godfather.
And Grimmauld could use that tie to pull the child back to it. A child would be better. A child's magic would fill the house with liveliness and life, and a child would be easier to protect since they would not insist on venturing outside the walls so often.
Grimmauld thought and pulsed and dwelled and turned with a slowness that a mountain might have envied, and reached.