Grimmauld Place
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Number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London is the address of a fictitious townhouse in the Harry Potter books. It is the ancestral home of the Black family, an ancient, pureblood line of (traditionally malevolent) wizards. It first appears in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
"Grimmauld Place" is a pun on "grim old place".
Number 12 eventually passed into the hands of Sirius Black, the "white sheep" of the Black Family and its last heir. The house fell into disrepair while Sirius was incarcerated in Azkaban prison for thirteen years. When he later returned to the old family home, it was a gloomy and unpleasant dwelling teeming with dust, decay and various dangerous magical objects, pests, and hexes.
At that time, Number 12 housed an hysterical enchanted portrait of Sirius Black's mother who had a deep-seated hatred for non-Purebloods, an ancient and deeply mad house-elf named Kreacher who heartily seconded this opinion, and a portrait of Phineas Nigellus, a scion of the Black family and former headmaster of Hogwarts. There were other portraits of dead Blacks, who, along with Sirius's deranged mother, issued mad orders to the mentally unstable house elf.
There were many security measures in place at Number 12. For example, in order to disguise the house from muggles and other interlopers, it was enchanted to appear small and modest, although in reality it is a large manor house with opulent (if decaying) interiors. It is as secure as any magical dwelling can be, and can accommodate hundreds of people. For this reason, it was chosen as the headquarters of the reorganized Order of the Phoenix. Thereafter, its location was further hidden through the use of the Fidelius Charm with Albus Dumbledore as the Secret Keeper. As revealed by J. K. Rowling on her website on February 21 2006:
- "When a Secret-Keeper dies, their secret dies with them, or, to put it another way, the status of their secret will remain as it was at the moment of their death. Everybody in whom they confided will continue to know the hidden information, but nobody else."Template:Ref
Thus, no one whom Dumbledore did not invite inside will be able to enter. The house is now forever safe and hidden, even from the last Black descendants on the distaff side.
Dumbledore used the portrait of Phineas Nigellus that was displayed in the house for communication with the Order of the Phoenix, as a second, linked portrait of Nigellus was hung in the headmaster's office at Hogwarts.
Harry inherited the house at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince after the death of Sirius at the hands of his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange. Dumbledore had removed the Order of the Phoenix until he could be sure that Harry really owned it. The spells put in place by Sirius' family might have ensured that their home could only pass to family members or to pureblood wizards, in which case it would have belonged to Sirius' closest living relative (and his murderer): Bellatrix Lestrange. Dumbledore tested Harry's ownership of the house by having Harry give orders to Kreacher, the house-elf servant, reasoning that if Harry had truly inherited Kreacher that would indicate that he had truly inherited the house as well. Kreacher did follow Harry's orders, however reluctantly, so it was clear that Harry did in fact own Number 12, Grimmauld Place.
Current fan speculation is that an unopenable locket, found during the cleanup of the house in book 5, once belonged to Salazar Slytherin, and may be one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
It appears that the wizarding world's established pureblood families favor stately mansions. The Malfoys have an old family manor in Wiltshire, and the wealthy pureblood witch Hepzibah Smith (a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff) lived in a similar dwelling.
See also
References
fr:12 Square Grimmaurd it:Grimmauld Place nl:Grimboudplein 12 no:Grimolds plass 12 th:กริมโมลด์เพลซ