Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling
brought to you by Dark Miasma
Special Thanks to the DSB release
The
dedication
of this book
is split
seven ways
to Neil,
to Jessica,
to David,
to Kenzie,
to Di,
to Anne,
and to you,
if you have
stuck
with Harry
until the
very
end.
i
9 A Place to Hide 160
10 Kreacher’s Tale 176
11 The Bribe 201
12 Magic is Might 223
13 The Muggle-born Registration Commission 246
14 The Thief 268
15 The Goblin’s Revenge 284
16 Godric’s Hollow 311
17 Bathilda’s Secret 330
18 The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore 350
19 The Silver Doe 363
20 Xenophilius Lovegood 388
21 The Tale of the Three Brothers 405
22 The Deathly Hallows 424
23 Malfoy Manor 446
24 The Wandmaker 477
25 Shell Cottage 502
26 Gringotts 519
iii
Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the hemorrhage that none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.
But there is a cure in the house,
and not outside it, no;
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, your blissful powers underground—
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.
Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in
one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and
live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see
face to face: and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the
comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their
friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because
immortal.
William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude
v
Chapter 1
The Dark Lord
Ascending
T
he two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart
in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood
quite still, wands directed at each other’s chests; then,
recognizing each other, they stowed their wands be-
neath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direc-
tion.
“News?” asked the taller of the two.
“The best,” replied Severus Snape.
The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing bram-
bles, on the right by a high, nearty manicured hedge. The men’s
long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched.
“Thought I might be late,” said Yaxley, his blunt features slid-
ing in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging tress broke
the moonlight. “It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope
he will be satisfied. You should confident that your reception will
1
Chapter 1
be good?”
Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into
a wide driveway that led o↵ the lane. The high hedge curved with
them, running o↵ into the distance beyond the pair of impressive
wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither of them broke
step: In silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and
passed straight through, as though the dark metal were smoke.
The yew hedges mu✏ed the sound of the men’s footsteps. There
was a rustle somewhere to their right; Yaxley drew his wand again,
pointing it over his companion’s head, but the source of the noise
proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock, strutting
majestically along the top of the hedge.
“He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks . . . ” Yaxley
thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort.
A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end
of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond-paned down-
stairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge a
fountain was playing. Gravel c rackled b e neath their feet as Snape
and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which swung inward at
their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.
The hallway was large, dimly light, and sumptuously decorated,
with a magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes
of the pale-faced portraits on the walls followed Snape and Yaxley
as they strode past. The two men halted at a heavy wooden door
leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat,
then Snape turned the bronze handle.
The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and
ornate table. The room’s usual furniture had been pushed care-
lessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire
2
The Dark Lord Ascending
beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded
mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the thresh-
old. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they were
drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene; an apparently
unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table, re-
volving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected
in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below.
He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every
minute or so.
“Yaxley, Snap e,” said a high, clear voice from the head of the
table. “You are very nearly late.”
The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that
it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more
than his silhouette. As they drew nearer, however, this face shone
through the gloom , hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils and
gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that
he seemed to emit a pearly glow.
“Severus, here,” said Voldemort, indicating the s eat on his im-
mediate right. “Yaxley—beside Dolohov.”
The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around
the table followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke
first.
“So?”
“My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry
Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at night-
fall.”
The interest around the table sharpened palpably; Some sti↵-
ened, others fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.
“Saturday . . . at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes
3
Chapter 1
fastened upon Snape’s black ones with such intensity that some of
the watchers looked away, apparently fearful that they themselves
would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Snape, however,
looked calmly back into Voldemort’s face and, after a moment or
two. Voldemort’s lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.
“Good. Very good. And this information comes—”
“—from the source we discussed,” said Snape.
“My Lord.”
Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Volde-
mort and Snape. All faces turned to him.
“My Lord, I have heard di↵erently,”
Yaxley waited but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on,
“Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until
the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen.”
Snape was smiling,
“My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail;
this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed
upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time; he is known to be
susceptible.”
“I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain,” said
Yaxley.
“If he has be en Confunded, naturally he is certain,” s aid Snape.
“I assure you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in
the protection of Harry Potter. The Order believes that we have
infiltrated the Ministry.”
“The Order’s got one thing right, then, eh?” said a squat man
sitting a short distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that
was echoed here and there along the table.
Voldemort did not laugh. His gaze had wandered upward to
4
The Dark Lord Ascending
the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in
thought.
“My Lord,” Yaxley went on, “Dawlish believes an entire party
of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy—”
Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley s ubsided at
once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.
“Where are they going to hide the boy next?”
“At the home of one of the Order,” said Snape. “The place,
according to the source, has been given every protection that the
Order and Ministry together could provide. I think that there is
little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of
course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might
give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the en-
chantments to break through the rest.”
“Well, Yaxley?” Voldemort called down the table, the firelight
glinting strangely in his red eyes. “Will the Ministry have fallen
by next Saturday?”
Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.
“My Lord, I have good new s on that score. I have—with dif-
ficulty, and after great e↵ort—succeeded in placing an Imperius
Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.” Many of those sitting around Yax-
ley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov, a man with a long,
twisted face, clapped him on the back.
“It is a start,” said Voldemort. “But Thicknesse is only one
man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act.
One failed attempt on the Minister’s life will set me back a long
way.”
“Yes—my Lord, that is true—but you know, as Head of the
Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular
5
Chapter 1
contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the Heads
of all the other Ministry departments. I will, I think, be easy now
that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to
subjugate the others, and then they can all work together to bring
Scrimgeour down.”
“As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he
has converted the rest,” said Voldemort. “At any rate, it remains
unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next Saturday. If we
cannot touch the boy at his destination, the it must be done while
he travels.”
“We are at an advantage there, my Lord,” said Yaxley, who
seemed determined to receive some portion of approval. “We now
have several people planted within the Department of Magical
Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shall
know immediately.”
“He will not do either,” said Snape. “The order is eschewing any
form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry;
they mistrust everything to do with the place.”
“All the better,” said Voldemort. “He will have to move in the
open. Easier to take, by far.”
Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he
went on, “I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too
many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them
have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors
than to his triumphs.”
The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehen-
sively, each of them, by his or her expression, afraid that they
might be blamed for Harry Potter’s continued existence. Volde-
mort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any
6
The Dark Lord Ascending
of them, still addressing the unconscious body above him.
“I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and
chance, those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know
better now. I understand those things that I did not understand
before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be.”
At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail
sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of
those at the table looked downward, startled, for the sound had
seemed to issue from below their feet.
“Wormtail,” said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet,
thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving
body above, “have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner
quiet?”
“Yes, m–my Lord,” gasped a small man halfway down the table,
who had been sitting so low in his chair that it had appeared, at
first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and
scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious
gleam of silver.
“As I was saying,” continued Voldemort, looking again at the
tense faces of his followers, “I understand better now. I shall need,
for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill
Potter.”
The faces around his displayed nothing but shock; he might
have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.
“No volunteers?” said Voldemort. “Let’s see . . . Lucius, I see
no reason for you to have a wand anymore.”
Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy
in the firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowe d. When he
spoke, his voice was hoarse.
7
Chapter 1
“My Lord?”
“Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand.”
“I . . . ”
Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight
ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down
her back, but beneath the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his
wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes, withdrew
a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in from
of his red eyes, examining it closely.
“What is it?”
“Elm, my Lord,” whispered Malfoy.
“And the core?”
“Dragon—dragon heartstring.”
“Good,” said Voldemort. He drew out his own wand and com-
pared the lengths. Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement;
for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expected to receive Volde-
mort’s want in exchange for his own. The gesture was not missed
by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.
“Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?”
Some of the throng sniggered.
“I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for
you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem less than
happy of late . . . What is it about my presence in your home that
displeases you, Lucius?”
“Nothing—nothing, my Lord!”
“Such lies, Lucius . . . ”
The soft voice seems to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had
stopped moving. One or two of the wizards barely repressed a
shudder as the hissing grew louder; something heavy could be heard
8
The Dark Lord Ascending
sliding across the floor beneath the table.
The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort’s chair.
It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort’s
shoulders; its neck the thickness of a man’s thigh; its e yes, with
their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort stroked the
creature absently with long thin fingers, still looking at Lucius
Malfoy.
“Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my
return, my rise to power, not the very thing they professed to desire
for so many years?”
“Of course, my Lord,” said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as
he wiped sweat from his upper lip. “We did des ire it—we do.”
To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, sti↵ nod, her eyes
averted from Voldemort and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco,
who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead, glanced quickly
at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eye contact.
“My Lord,” said a dark woman halfway down the table, her
voice constricted with emotion, “it is an honor to have you here,
in our family’s house. There can be no higher pleasure.”
She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark
hair and heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor;
where Narcissa sat rigid and impassive, Bellatrix leaned toward
Voldemort, for mere words could not demonstrate her longer for
closeness.
“No higher pleasure,” repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a
little to one side as he considered Bellatrix. “That means a great
deal, Bellatrix, from you,”
Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.
“My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!”
9
Chapter 1
“No higher pleasure . . . even compared with the happy event
that, I hear, has taken place in your family this week?”
She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.
“I don’t know what you mean, my Lord.”
“I’m talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And your, Lucius and
Narcissa. She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You
must be so proud.”
There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the table.
Many leaned forward to exchange gleeful looks, a few thumped the
table with their fists. The great snake, disliking the disturbance,
opened its mouth and hissed angrily, but the Death Eaters did
not hear it, so jubilant were they at Bellatrix and the Malfoys’
humiliation. Bellatrix’s face, so recently flushed with happiness,
had turned an ugly, blotchy red.
“She is no niece of ours, my Lord,” she cried over the outpouring
of mirth. “We—Narcissa and I—have never set eyes on our sister
since she married the Mudblood. This brat has nothing to do with
either of us, nor any beast she marries.”
“What say you, Draco?” as ked Voldemort, and though his voice
was quiet, it carried c learly through the catcalls and jeers. “Will
you babysit the cubs?”
The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his
father, who was staring down into his own lap, then caught his
mother’s eye. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, then re-
sumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.
“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake.
“Enough.”
And the laughter died at once.
“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over
10
The Dark Lord Ascending
time,” he said as Bellatrix gazed at him, breathless and imploring.
“You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut
away those parts that threaten the health of the rest.”
“Yes, my Lord,” whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with
tears of gratitude again. “At the first chance!”
“You shall have it,” said Voldemort. “And in your family, so
in the world . . . we shall cut away the canker that infects us until
only those of the true blood remain . . . ”
Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy’s wand, pointed it directly at
the slowly revolving figure susp ended over the table, and gave it
a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to
struggle against invisible bonds.
“Do you recognize our guest, Severus?” asked Voldemort.
Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death
Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had
been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face
the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice. “Se-
verus! Help me!”
“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the snake’s snout
with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that
the woman had woken, he seems unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her class es,” said Voldemort.
“For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by
Charity Burbage, who until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry.”
There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A
broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.
“Yes . . . Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and
11
Chapter 1
wizards all about Muggles . . . how they are not so di↵erent from
us . . . ”
One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage
revolved to face Snape again.
“Severus . . . please . . . please . . . ”
“Silence,” said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy’s
wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. “Not content with
corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last
week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mud-
bloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she s ays, must accept
those thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling
of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable
circumstance . . . She would have use all mate with Muggles . . . or,
no doubt, werewolves . . . ”
Nobody laughed this time; There was no mistaking the anger
and contempt in Voldemort’s voice. For the third time, Charity
Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes
into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she
turned slowly away from his again.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room.
Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which
trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in
their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.
“Dinner, Nagini,” said Voldemort softly, and the great snake
swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.
12
Chapter 2
In Memoriam
H
arry was bleeding. Clutching his right hand in his left
and sweating under his breath, he shouldered open his
bedroom door. There was a crunch of breaking china.
He had trodden on a cup of cold tea that had been
sitting on the floor outside his bedroom door.
“What the—?”
He looked around, the landing of numbe r four, Privet Drive,
was deserted. Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley’s idea of a clever
booby trap. Keeping his bleeding hand elevated, Harry scraped
the fragments of cup together with the other hand and threw them
into the already crammed bin just visible inside his bedroom door.
Then he tramped across to the bathroom to run his finger under
the tap.
It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief that he still
had four days left of being unable to perform magic . . . but he had
to admit to himself that this jagged cut in his finger would have
defeated him. He had never learned how to repair wounds, and
now he came to think of it—particularly in light of his immediate
13
Chapter 2
plans—it seemed a serious flaw in his magical education. Making a
mental note to ask Hermione how it was done, he used a large wad
of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as he could, before
returning to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.
Harry had spent the morning completely emptying his school
trunk for the first time since he had packed it six years ago. At the
start of the intervening school years, he had m erely skimmed o↵
the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated
them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom—old quills,
desiccated bee tle eyes, single socks that no longer fit. Minutes pre-
viously, Harry had plunged his hand into this mulch, experienced a
stabbing pain in the fourth finger of his right hand, and withdrawn
it to see a lot of blood. He now proceeded a little more cautiously.
Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the
bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly be-
tween SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and POTTER STINKS,a
cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which
a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden, he finally discovered the
sharp edge that had done the damage. He recognized it at once. It
was a two- inch-long fragment of the enchanted mirror that his dead
godfather, Sirius, had given him. Harry laid it aside and felt cau-
tiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing more remained
of his godfather’s last gift except powdered glass, which clung to
the deepest layer of debris like glittering grit.
Harry sat up and examined the jagged piece on which he had cut
himself, seeing nothing but his own bright green eye reflected back
at him. Then he placed the fragment on top of that morning’s
Daily Prophet, which lay unread on the bed, and attempted to
stem the sudden upsurge of bitter memories, the stabs of regret
14
In Memoriam
and of longing the discovery of the broken mirror had occasioned,
by attacking the rest of the rubbish in the trunk.
It took another hour to empty it c ompletely, throw away the
useless items, and sort the remainder in piles according to whether
or not he would need them from now on. His school and Quidditch
robes, cauldron, parchment, quills, and most of his textbooks were
piled in a corner, to be left behind. He wondered what his aunt and
uncle would do with them; burn them in the dead of night, proba-
bly, as if they were the evidence of some dreadful crime. His Mug-
gle c lothing, Invisibility Cloak, potion-making kit, certain books,
the photograph album Hagrid had once given him, a stack of let-
ters, and his wand had been repacked into an old rucksack. In
a front pocket were the Marauder’s Map and the locket with the
note signed R.A.B. inside it. The locket was accorded this place
on honor not because it was valuable—in all usual senses it was
worthless—but because of what it had cost to attain it.
This left a sizable stack of newspapers s itting on his desk beside
his snowy owl, Hedwig: one for each of the days Harry had spent
at Privet Drive this summer.
He got up o↵ the floor, stretched, and moved across to his desk.
Hedwig made no movement as he began to flick through the news-
papers, throwing them into the rubbish pile one by one. The owl as
asleep, or else faking: she was angry with Harry about the limited
amount of time she was allowed out of her cage at the moment.
As he neared the bottom of the pile of newspapers, Harry slowed
down, searching for one particular issue that he knew had arrived
shortly after he had returned to Privet Drive for the summer; he re-
membered that there had been a small mention on the front about
the resignation of Charity Burbage, the Muggle Studies teacher at
15
Chapter 2
Hogwarts. At last he found it. Turning to page ten, he sank into
his desk chair and reread the article he had been looking for.
ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBERED
by Elphias Doge
I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our
first day at Hogwarts. Our mutual attraction was
undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt our-
selves to be outsiders. I had contracted dragon pox
shortly before arriving at school, and while I was
no longer contagious, my pockmarked visage and
greenish hue did not encourage many to approach
me. For his part, Albus had arrived at Hogwarts
under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a
year previously, his father, Percival, had been con-
victed of a savage and well-publicized attack upon
three young Muggles.
Albus never attempted to deny that his father
(who was to die in Azkaban) had committed this
crime; on the contrary, when I plucked up courage
to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father
to be guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refused to
speak of the sad business, though many attempted
to make him do so. Some, indeed, were disposed to
praise his father’s action and assumed that Albus
too was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been
more mistaken. As anybody who knew Albus would
attest, he never re vealed the remotest anti-Muggle
tendency. Indeed, his determined support for Mug-
16
In Memoriam
gle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent
years.
In a matter of months, however, Albus’s own
fame had begun to eclipse that of his father. By
the end of his first year he would never again be
known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing
more or less than the most brilliant student ever
seen at the school. Those of us who were privileged
to be his friends benefited from his example, not to
mention his help and encouragement, with which he
was always generous. He confessed to me in later life
that he knew even then that his greatest pleasure
lay in teaching.
He not only won every prize of note that the
school o↵ered, he was soon in regular correspon-
dence with the most notable magical names of the
day, including Nicolas Flamel, the celebrated al-
chemist; Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian; and
Adalbert Wa✏ing, the magical theoretician. Sev-
eral of his papers found their way into learned pub-
lications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges
in Charming, and The Practical P otioneer. Dum-
bledore’s future career seemed likely to be meteoric,
and the only question that remained was when he
would become Minister of Magic. Though it was of-
ten predicted in later years that he was on the point
of taking the job, however, he never had Ministerial
ambitions.
Three years after we had started at Hogwarts,
17
Chapter 2
Albus’s brother, Ab erforth, arrived at school. They
were not alike; Aberforth was never bookish and,
unlike Albus, preferred to settle arguments by duel-
ing rather than through reasoned discussion. How-
ever, it is quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that
the brothers were not friends. They rubbed along
as comfortably as two such di↵erent boys could do.
In fairness to Aberforth, it must be admitted that
living in Albus’s shadow cannot have been an al-
together comfortable experience. Being continually
outshone was an occupational hazard of being his
friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable
as a brother.
When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to
take the then-traditional tour of the world together,
visiting and observing foreign wiz ards, before pur-
suing our separate careers. However, tragedy in-
tervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus’s
mother, Kendra, died, leaving Albus the head, and
sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my de-
parture long enough to pay my respects at Kendra’s
funeral, then left for what was now to be a soli-
tary journey. With a younger brother and sister to
care for, and little gold left to them, there could no
longer be any question of Albus accompanying me.
That was the period of our lives when we had
least contact. I wrote to Albus, describing, per-
haps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from
narrow escapes from chimeras in Greece to the ex-
18
In Memoriam
periments of Egyptian alchemists. His letters told
me little of his day-to-day life, which I guessed to
be frustratingly dull for such a brilliant wiz ard. Im-
mersed in my own experiences, it was with horror
that I heard, toward the end of my year’s travels,
that yet another tragedy had struck the Dumble-
dores: the death of his sister, Ariana.
Though Ariana had been in poor health for a
long time, the blow, coming so soon after the loss
of their mother, had a profound e↵ect on both of
her brothers. All those closest to Albus-and I count
myself one of that lucky numb er-agree that Ariana’s
death, and Albus’s feeling of personal responsibility
for it (though of course, he was guiltless), left their
mark upon him forevermore.
I returned home to find a young man who had
experienced a much older person’s su↵ering. Al-
bus was more reserved than before, and much less
lighthearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ar-
iana had led, not to a renewed closeness between
Albus and Aberforth, but to an estrangement. (In
time this would lift-in later years they reestablished,
if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial
one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of
Ariana from then on, and his friends learned not to
mention them.
Other quills will describe the triumphs of the fol-
lowing years. Dumbledore’s innumerable contribu-
tions to the state of Wizarding knowledge, including
19
Chapter 2
his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood,
will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom
he displayed in the many judgments he made while
Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. They say, still,
that no Wizarding duel ever matched that between
Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who
witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe
they felt as they watched these two extraordinary
wizards do battle. Dumbledore’s triumph, and its
consequences for the Wizarding world, are consid-
ered a turning point in magical history to match the
introduction of the International Statute of Secrecy
or the downfall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; he
could find something to value in anyone, however
apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe
that his early losses endowed him with great hu-
manity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship
more than I can say, but my loss is as nothing com-
pared to the Wizarding world’s. That he was the
most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts
headmasters cannot be in question. He died as he
lived, working always for the greater good and, to
his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a
small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day
that I met him.
Harry finished reading but continued to gaze at the picture ac-
companying the obituary. Dumbledore was wearing his familiar,
kindly sm ile, but as he peered over the top of his half-moon specta-
20
In Memoriam
cles, he gave the impression, even in newsprint, of betraying Harry,
whose sadness mingled with a sense of humiliation.
He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since
reading this obituary he had been forced to recognize that he had
barely known him at all. Never one had he imagined Dumble-
dore’s childhood or youth; it was as though he had sprung into
being as Harry had known him, venerable and silver-haired and
old. The idea of a teenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like trying
to imagine a stupid Hermione or a friendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.
He had never thought to ask Dumbledore about his past. No
doubt it would have felt strange, impertinent even, but after all, it
had been common knowledge that Dumbledore had taken part in
that legendary duel with Grindelwald, and Harry had not thought
to ask Dumbledore what that had been like, nor about any of his
other famous achievements. No, they had always discussed Harry,
Harry’s past, Harry’s future, Harry’s plans . . . and it seemed to
Harry now, despite the fact that his future was so dangerous and
so uncertain, that he had missed irreplaceable opportunities when
he had failed to ask Dumbledore more about himself, even though
the only personal question he had ever asked his headmaster was
also the only on he suspected that Dumbledore had not answered
honestly:
“What do you see when you look in the mirror? ”
“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”
After se veral minutes’ thought, Harry tore the obituary out of
the Prophet, folded it carefully, and tucked it inside the first volume
of Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts.
Then he threw the res t of the newspaper into the rubbish pile and
turned to face the room. It was much tidier. The only things left
21
Chapter 2
out of place were today’s Daily Prophet, still lying on the bed, and
on top of it, the piece of broken mirror.
Harry moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment o↵ to-
day’s Daily Prophet, still lying on the bed, and on top of it, the
piece of broken mirror.
Harry moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment o↵ to-
day’s Prophet, and unfolded the newspaper. He had merely glanced
at the headline when he had taken the rolled-up paper from the
delivery owl early that morning and thrown it aside, after noth-
ing that it said nothing about Voldemort. Harry was sure that
the Ministry was leaning on the Prophet to suppress news about
Voldemort. It was only now, therefore, that he saw what he had
missed.
Across the bottom half of the front page a smaller headline was
set over a picture of Dumbledore striding along looking harried:
DUMBLEDORE — THE TRUTH AT LAST?
Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed
genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard
of his generation. Stripping away the popular im-
age of serene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita Skeeter
reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth,
the lifelong feuds, and the guilty secrets that Dum-
bledore carried to his grave. WHY was the man
tipped to be Minister of Magic content to remain a
mere headmaster? WHAT was the real purpose of
the secret organization known as the Order of the
Phoenix? HOW did Dumbledore really meet his
end?
22
In Memoriam
The answers to these and many more questions
are explored in the explosive new biography, The
Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, by Rita Skeeter,
exclusively interviewed by Betty Braithwaite, page
13, inside.
Harry ripped open the paper and found page thirteen. The
article was topped with a picture showing another familiar face:
a woman wearing jeweled glasses with elaborately curled blonde
hair, her teeth bared in what was clearly suppos ed to be a winning
smile, wiggling her fingers up at him. Doing his best to ignore this
nauseating image, Harry read on.
In person, Rita Skeeter is much warmer and
softer than her famously ferocious quill-portraits
might suggest. Greeting me in the hallway of her
cozy home, she leads me straight into the kitchen
for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes
without saying, a steaming vat of freshest gossip.
“Well, of course, Dumbledore is a biographer’s
dream,” says Skeeter. “Such a long, full life. I’m
sure my book w ill be the first of very, very many.”
Skeeter was certainly quick o↵ the mark. Her
nine-hundred-page book was completed a mere four
weeks after Dumbledore’s mysterious death in June.
I ask her how she managed this s uperfast feat.
“Oh, when you’ve been a journalist as long as
I have , working to a deadline is second nature. I
knew that the Wizarding world as clamoring for the
full story and I wanted to be the first to meet that
need.”
23
Chapter 2
I mentioned the recent, widely publicized re-
marks of Elphias Doge, Special Advisor to the Wiz-
engamot and longstanding friend of Albus Dumble-
dore’s, that “Skeeter’s book contains less fact than
a Chocolate frog card.”
Skeeter throws back her head and laughs.
“Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him
a few years back ab out merpeople rights, bless him.
Completely gaga, seemed to think we were sitting
at the bottom of Lake Windermere, kept telling m e
to watch out for trout.”
And yet Elphias Doge’s accusations of inaccu-
racy have been echoed in many places. Does Skeeter
really feel that four short weeks have been enough
to gain a full picture of Dumbledore’s long and ex-
traordinary life?
“Oh, my dear,” beams Skeeter, rapping me af-
fectionately across the knuckles, “you know as well
as I do how much information can be generated by
a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word
‘no,’ and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People
were queuing to dish the dirt on Dumbledore any-
way. Not everyone thought he was so wonderful,
you know—he trod on an awful lot of important
toes. But old Dodgy Doge can get o↵ his high hip-
pogri↵, because I’ve had acces s to a source most
journalists would swap their wands for, one who has
never spoken in public before and who was close to
Dumbledore during the most turbulent and disturb-
24
In Memoriam
ing phase of his youth.”
The advance publicity of Skeeter’s biography has
certainly suggested that there will be shocks in store
for those who believe Dumbledore to have led a
blameless life. What were the biggest surprises she
uncovered, I ask?
“Now, com e o↵ it, Betty, I’m not giving away all
the highlights before anybody’s bought the book!”
laughs Skeeter. “But I can promise that any-
body who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his
beard is in for a rude awakening! Let’s just say
that nobody hearing him rage against You-Know-
Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the
Dark Arts himself in his youth! And for a wizard
who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he
wasn’t exactly broad-minded when he was younger!
Yes, Albus Dumbledore had an extremely murky
past, not to mention that very fishy family, which
he worked so hard to keep hushed up.”
I ask w hether Skeeter is referring to Dumble-
dore’s brother, Aberforth, whose conviction by the
Wizengamot for misuse of magic caused a minor
scandal fifteen years ago.
“Oh, Abe rforth is just the tip of the dung heap.”
laughs Skeeter. “No, no, I’m talking about much
worse than a brother with a fondness for fiddling
about with goats, worse even than the Muggle-
maiming father—Dumbledore couldn’t keep either
of them quiet anyway, they were both charged by
25
Chapter 2
the Wizengamot. No, it’s the mother and the sister
that intrigued me, and a little digging uncovered a
positive nest of nastiness—but, as I say, you’ll have
to wait for chapters nine to twelve for full details.
All I can say now is, it’s no wonder Dumbledore
never talked about how his nose got broken.”
Family skeletons notwithstanding, doe s Skeeter
deny the brilliance that led to Dumbledore’s many
magical discoveries?
“He had brains,” she concedes, “although many
now question whether he could really take full credit
for all of his supposed achievements. As I reveal in
chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had al-
ready discovered eight uses of dragon’s blood when
Dumbledore ‘borrowed’ his papers.”
But the importance of some of Dumbledore’s
achievements cannot, I venture, be denied. What
of his famous defeat of Grindelwald?
“Oh, now, I’m glad you mentioned Grindel-
wald,” says Skeeter with a tantalizing smile. “I’m
afraid those who go dewy eyed over Dumbledore’s
spectacular victory must brace themselves for a
bombshell—or perhaps a Dungbomb. very dirty
business indeed. All I’ll say is, don’t be so sure that
there really was the spectacular duel of legend. Af-
ter they’ve read my book, people may be forced to
conclude that Grindelwald simply conjured a white
handkerchief from the end of his wand and came
quietly!”
26
In Memoriam
Skeeter refuses to give any more away on this
intriguing subject, so we turn instead to the rela-
tionship that will undoubtedly fascinate her readers
more than any other.
“Oh yes,” says Skeeter, nodding briskly, “I de-
vote an entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumble-
dore relationship. It’s been called unhealthy, even
sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my
book for the whole story, but there is no question
that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Pot-
ter from the word go. Whether that was really in
the boy’s best interests—well, we’ll see. It’s cer-
tainly an open secret that Potter has had a most
troubled adolescence.”
I ask whether Skeeter is still in touch with Harry
Potter, whom she so famously interviewed last year:
a breakthrough piece in which Potter spoke exclu-
sively of his conviction that You-Know-Who had
returned.
“Oh, yes, we’ve developed a close bond,” says
Skeeter. “Poor Potter has few real friends, and we
met at one of the most testing moments of his life—
the Triwizard Tournament. I am probably one of
the only pe ople alive who can say that they know
the real Harry Potter.”
Which leads us neatly to the many rumors s till
circulating about Dumbledore’s final hours. Does
Skeeter believe that Potter was there when Dum-
bledore died?
27
Chapter 2
“Well, I don’t wan to say too much—it’s all in
the book—but the eyewitnesses inside Hogwarts
castle saw Potter running away from the scene
moments after Dumbledore fell, jumped, or was
pushed. Potter later gave evidence against Sever-
us Snape, a man against whom he has a notorious
grudge. Is everything as it seems? That is for the
Wizarding community to decide—once they’ve read
my book.”
On that intriguing note, I take my leave. there
can b e no doubt that Skeeter has quilled an instant
bestseller, Dumbledore’s legions of admirers, mean-
while, may well be trembling at what is soon to
emerge about their hero.
Harry reached the bottom of the article, but continued to stare
blankly at the page. Revulsion and fury rose in him like vomit;
he balled up the newspaper and threw it, with all his force, at the
wall, where it joined the rest of the rubbish heaped around his
overflowing bin.
He began to stride blindly around the room, opening empty
drawers and picking up books only to replace them on the same
piles, barely conscious of what he was doing, as random phrases
from Rita’s article echoed in his head: An entire chapter to
the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship . . . It’s been called un-
healthy, even sinister . . . He dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in
his youth . . . I’ve had access to a source most journalists would
swap their wands for . . .
“Lies!” Harry bellowed, and though the window he saw the
next-door neighbor, who had paused to restart his lawn mower,
28
In Memoriam
look up nervously.
Harry sat down hard on the bed. The broken bit of mirror
danced away from him; he picked it up and turned it over in his
fingers, thinking, thinking of Dumbledore and the lies with which
Rita Skeeter was defaming him. . . .
A flash of brightest blue. Harry froze, his cut finger slipping on
the jagged edge of the mirror again. He had imagined it, he must
have done. He glanced over his shoulder, but the wall was a sickly
peach color of Aunt Petunia’s choosing: There was nothing blue
there for the mirror to reflect. He pee red into the mirror fragment
again, and saw nothing but his own bright green eye looking back
at him.
He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it,
because he had been thinking of his dead headmaster. If anything
was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore
would never pierce him again.
29
Chapter 3
The Dursleys Departing
T
he sound of the front door slamming echoed up the
stair and a voice yelled, “Oi, You!” Sixteen years of
being addressed thus left Harry in no doubt whom his
uncle was calling; nevertheless, he did not immediately
respond. He was still gazing at the mirror fragment in which, for
a split second, he had thought he say Dumbledore’s eye. It was
not until his uncle bellowed, “BOY!” that Harry got slowly to his
feet and headed for the be droom door, pausing to add the piece of
broken mirror to the rucksack filled with things he would be taking
with him.
“You took your time!” roared Vernon Dursley when Harry ap-
peared at the top of the stairs. “Get down here, I want a word!”
Harry strolled downstairs, his hands dee p in his jeans pockets.
When he reached the living room he found all three Dursleys. They
were dressed for traveling: Uncle Vernon in a fawn zip-up jacket,
Aunt Petunia in a neat salmon-colored coat, and Dudly, Harry’s
large, blond, muscular cousin, in his leather jacket.
30
The Dursleys Departing
“Yes?” asked Harry.
“Sit down!” said Uncle Vernon. Harry raised his eyebrows.
“Please!” added Uncle Vernon, wincing slightly as though the word
was sharp in his throat.
Harry sat. He though he knew what was coming. His uncle
began to pace up and down, Aunt Petunia and Dudley following
his movements with anxious expressions. Finally, his large purple
face crumpled with concentration, Uncle Vernon stopped in front
of Harry and spoke.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said.
“What a surprise,” said Harry.
“Don’t you talk in that tone—” began Aunt Petunia in a shrill
voice, but Vern Dursley waved her down.
“It’s all a lot of claptrap,” said Uncle Vernon, glaring at Harry
with piggy little eyes. “I’ve decided I don’t believe a word of it.
We’re staying put, we’re not going anywhere.”
Harry looked up at his uncle and felt a mixture of exasperation
and amusement. Vernon Dursley had been changing his mind every
twenty-four hours for the past four weeks, packing and unpacking
ad repacking the car with every change of heart. Harry’s favorite
moment had been the one when Uncle Vernon, unaware that Dud-
ley had added his dumbbells to his case since the last time it had
been unpacked, had attempted to hoist it back into the boot and
collapsed with roars of pain and much swearing.
“According to you,” Vernon Dursley said now, resuming his
pacing up and down the living room, “we—Petunia, Dudley, and
I—are in danger. From—from—”
“Some of ‘my lot,’ right,” said Harry.
“Well, I don’t believe it,” repeated Uncle Vernon, coming to a
31
Chapter 3
halt in front of Harry again. “I was awake half the night thinking
it’s over, and I believe it’s a plot to get the house.”
“The house?” repeated Harry. “What house?”
“This house!” shrieked Uncle Vernon, the vein in his forehead
starting to pulse. “Our house! House prices are skyrocketing
around here! You want us out of the way and then you’re go-
ing to do a bit of hoc us-pocus and before we know it the deeds will
be in your name and—”
“Are you out of your m ind?” demanded Harry. “A plot to get
this house? Are you actually as stupid as you look?”
“Don’t you dare—!” squealed Aunt Petunia, but again, Ver-
non waved her down: Slights on his personal appearance were, it
seemed, as nothing to the danger he has spotted.
“Just in case you’ve forgotten,” said Harry, “I’ve already got a
house, my godfather left me one. So why would I want this one?
All the happy memories?”
There was silence. Harry thought he had rather impressed his
uncle with this argument.
“You claim,” said Uncle Vernon, starting to pace yet again,
“that this Lord Thing—”
“—Voldemort,” said Harry impatiently, “and we’ve been
through this about a hundred times already. This isn’t a claim,
it’s fact, Dumbledore told you last year, and Kingsley and Mr.
Weasley—”
Vernon Dursley hunched his shoulders angrily, and Harry
guessed that his uncle was attempting to ward of recollections of
the unannounced visit, a few days into Harry’s summer holidays,
of two fully grown wizards. The arrival on the doorstep of Kingsley
Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley had come as a most unpleasant
32
The Dursleys Departing
shock to the Dursleys. Harry had to admit, however, that as Mr.
Weasley had once demolished half of the living room, his reappear-
ance could not have been expected to delight Uncle Vernon.
“—Kingsley and Mr. Weasley explained it all as well,” Harry
pressed on remorselessly. “Once I’m seventeen, the protective
charm that keeps me safe will break, and that exposes you as well
as me. The Order is sure Voldemort will target you, whether to
torture you to try and find out where I am, or because he thinks
by holding you hostage I’d come and try to rescue you.”
Uncle Vernon’s and Harry’s eyes met. Harry was sure that
in that instant they were both wondering the same thing. Then
Uncle Vernon walked on and Harry resumed, “You’ve got to go into
hiding and the Order wants to help. You’re being o↵ ered serious
protection, the best there is.”
Uncle Vernon said nothing, but continued to pace up and down.
Outside the sun hung low over the privet hedges. The next-door
neighbor’s lawn mower stalled again.
“I thought there was a Ministry of Magic?” asked Vernon Durs-
ley abruptly.
“There is,” said Harry, surprised.
“Well, then, why can’t they protect us? It seems to me that, as
innocent victims, guilty of nothing more than harboring a marked
man, we ought to qualify for government protection!”
Harry laughed; he could not stop himself. It was so typical of
his uncle to put his hopes in the establishment, even within this
world that he despised and mistrusted.
“You heard what Mr. Weasley and Kingsley said,” Harry
replied. “We think the Ministry has been infiltrated.”
Uncle Vernon stroke to the fireplace and back, breathing so
33
Chapter 3
heavily that his great black mustache tippled, his face still purple
with concentration.
“All right,” he said, stopping in front of Harry yet again. “All
right, let’s say, for the sake of argument, we accept this protection.
I still don’t see why we can’t have that Kingsley bloke.”
Harry managed not to roll his eyes, but with difficulty. This
question has also been addressed half a dozen times.
“As I’ve told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “Kingsley is
protecting the Mug—I m ean, your Prime Minister.”
“Exactly—he’s the best!” said Uncle Vernon, pointing at the
blank television screen. The Dursleys had spotted Kingsley on the
news, walking along discreetly behind the Muggle Prime Minister
as he visited a hospital. This, and the fact that Kingsley had
mastered the knack of dressing like a Muggle, not to mention a
certain reassuring something in his slow, deep voice, had caused
the Dursleys to take to Kingsley in a way that they had certainly
not done with any other wizard, although it was true that they
had never seen him with his earring in.
“Well, he’s taken,” said Harry. “But Hestia Jones and Dedalus
Diggle are more than up to the job—”
“If we’d even seen CVs . . . ” began Uncle Vernon, but Harry
lost patience. Getting to his feet, he advanced on his uncle, now
pointing at the TV set himself.
“These accidents aren’t accidents—the crashes and explosions
and derailments and whatever else has happened since we last
watched the new. People are disappearing and dying and he’s
behind it—Voldemort. I’ve told you this over and over again, he
kills Muggles for fun. Even the fogs—they’re caused by dementors,
and if you can’t remember what they are, ask your son!”
34
The Dursleys Departing
Dudley’s hands jerked upward to cover his mouth. With his
parents’ and Harry’s eyes upon him, he slowly lowered them again
and asked, “There are . . . more of them?”
“More?” laughed Harry. “More than the two that attacked
us, you mean? Of course there are, there are hundreds, maybe
thousands by this time, see ing as they feed of fear and despair—”
“All right, all right,” blustered Vernon Dursley. “You’ve made
your point—”
“I hope so,” said Harry, “because once I’m seventeen, all
of them—Death Eaters, dementors, maybe even Inferi—which
means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark Wizard—will be able
to find you and will certainly attack you. And if you remember
the last time you tried to outrun wizards, I think you’ll agree you
need help.”
There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid
smashing something down a wooden front door seemed to rever-
berate through the intervening years. Aunt Petunia was looking
at Uncle Vernon; Dudley was staring at Harry. Finally Uncle Ver-
non blurted out, “But what about my work? What about Dudley’s
school? I don’t suppose those things matter to a bunch of layabout
wizards—”
“Don’t you understand?” shouted Harry. “They will torture
and kill you like they did my parents! ”
“Dad,” said Dudley in a loud voice, “Dad—I’m going with these
Order people.”
“Dudley,” said Harry, “for the first time in your life, you’re
talking sense.”
He knew that the battle was won. If Dudley was frightened
enough to accept the Order’s help, his parents would accompany
35
Chapter 3
him: There could be no question of being separated from their
Duddykins. Harry glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.
“They’ll be here in about five minutes,” he said, and when
none of the Dursleys replied, he left the room. The prospect of
parting—probably forever—from his aunt, uncle, and cousin was
one that he was able to contemplate quite cheerfully, but there was
nevertheless a certain awkwardness in the air. What did you say
to one another at the end of sixteen years’ solid dislike?
Back in his bedroom, Harry fiddled aimlessly with his rucksack,
then poked a couple of own nuts through the bars of Hedwig’s cage.
They fell with dull thuds to the bottom, where she ignored them.
“We’re leaving soon, really soon,” Harry told her. “And then
you’ll be able to fly again.”
The doorbell rang. Harry hesitated, then headed back out of
his room and downstairs. It was too much to expect Hestia and
Dedalus to cope with the Dursleys on their own.
“Harry Potter!” squeaked an excited voice, the moment Harry
had opened the door, a small man in a mauve top hat was sweeping
him a deep bow. “An honor, as ever!”
“Thanks, Dedalus,” said Harry, bestowing a small and embar-
rassed smile upon the dark-haired Hestia. “It’s really good of
you to do this . . . They’re through here, my aunt and uncle and
cousin . . . ”
“Good day to you, Harry Potter’s relatives!” said Dedalus hap-
pily, striding into the living room. The Dursleys did not look at all
happy to be addressed thus; Harry half expected another change
of mind. Dudley shrank nearer to his mother at the sight of the
witch and wizard.
“I see you are packed and ready. Excellent! The plan, as Harry
36
The Dursleys Departing
has told you, is a simple one,” said Dedalus, pulling an immense
pocket watch out of his waistcoat and examining it. “We shall
be leaving before Harry does. Due to the danger of using magic
in your house—Harry being s till underage, it could provide the
Ministry with an excuse to arrest him—we shall be driving, say,
ten miles or so, before Disapparating to the safe location we have
picked out for you. You know how to drive, I take it?” he asked
Uncle Vernon politely.
“Know how to—? Of course I ruddy well know how to drive!”
spluttered Uncle Vernon.
“Very clever of you, sir, very clever. I personally would be
utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs,” said Dedalus.
He was clearly under the impression that he was flattering Vernon
Dursley, who was visibly losing confidence in the plan with every
word Dedalus spoke.
“Can’t even drive,” he muttered under his breath, his mus-
tache rippling indignantly, but fortunately neither Dedalus or Hes-
tia seemed to hear him.
“You, Harry,” Dedalus continued, “will wait here for your
guard. There has been a little change in the arrangements—”
“What d’you mean?” said Harry at once. “I thought Mad-Eye
was going to come and take me by Side-Along-Apparition?”
“Can’t do it,” said Hestia tersely. “Mad-Eye will explain.”
The Dursleys, who had listened to all of this with looks of utter
incomprehension on their faces, jumped as a loud voice screeched,
“Hurry up! ” Harry looked all around the room before realizing
that the voice had issued from Dedalus’s po cket watch.
“Quite right, we’re operating to a very tight schedule,” said
Dedalus, nodding at his watch and tucking it back into his waist-
37
Chapter 3
coat. “We are attempting to time your departure from the house
with your family’s Disapparition, Harry: thus, the charm breaks
as the moment you all head for safety.” He turned to the Dursleys.
“Well, are we all packed and ready to go?”
None of them answered him. Uncle Vernon was still staring,
appalled, at the bulge in Dedalus’s waistcoat pocket.
“Perhaps we should wait outside in the hall, Dedalus,” mur-
mured Hestia. She clearly felt that it would be tactless for them
to remain in the room while Harry and the Dursleys exchanged
loving, possibly tearful farewells.
“There’s no need,” Harry muttered, but Uncle Vernon made
any further explanation unnecessary by saying loudly,
“Well, this is goo d-bye, then, boy.”
He swung his right arm upward to shake Harry’s hand, but at
the last moment seemed unable to face it, and mere ly closed his fist
and began swinging it backward and forward like a metronome.
“Ready, Diddy?” asked Aunt Petunia, fussily checking the clasp
of her handbag so as to avoid looking at Harry altogether.
Dudley did not answer, but stood there with his mouth slightly
ajar, reminding Harry a little of the giant, Grawp.
“Come along, then,” said Uncle Vernon.
He had already reached the living room door when Dudley
mumbled, “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, popkin?” asked Aunt Petunia,
looking up at her son.
Dudley raised a large, hamlike hand to point at Harry.
“Why isn’t he coming with us?”
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia froze where they stood, staring
at Dudley as though he had just expressed a desire to become a
38
The Dursleys Departing
ballerina.
“What?” said Uncle Vernon loudly.
“Why isn’t he coming too?” asked Dudley.
“Well, he—he doesn’t want to,” said Uncle Vernon, turning to
glare at Harry and asking, “You don’t want to, do you?”
“Not in the slightest,” said Harry.
“There you are,” Uncle Vernon told Dudley. “Now come on,
we’re o↵.”
He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open,
but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt
Petunia stopped too.
“What now?” barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the door-
way.
It seems that Dudley was struggling with concepts too diffi-
cult to put into words. After se ver moments of apparently painful
internal struggle he said, “But where’s he going to go?”
Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was
clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the
silence.
“But . . . surely you know where your nephew is going?” she
asked, looking bewildered.
“Certainly we know,” said Vernon Dursley. “He’s o↵ with some
of your lot, isn’t he? Right, Dudley, let’s get in the car, you heard
the man, we’re in a hurry,”
Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but
Dudley did not follow.
“O↵ with some of our lot?”
Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before.
Witches and wizards seems stunned that his closest living relatives
39
Chapter 3
took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter.
“It’s fine,” Harry assured her. “It doesn’t matter, honestly.”
“Doesn’t matter?” repeated Hestia, her voice rising ominously.
“Don’t these people realize what you’ve been through? What dan-
gers you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the
anti-Voldemort movement?”
“Er—no, they don’t,” said Harry. “They think I’m a waste of
space actually, but I’m used to—”
“I don’t think you’re a waste of space.”
If Harry had not seen Dudley’s lips move, he might not have
believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds
before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken
for one thing. Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and
astonished himself.
“Well . . . er . . . thanks, Dudley.”
Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts to o unwieldy
for expression before mumbling, “You saved my life.”
“Not really,” said Harry. “It was your soul the dementor would
have taken . . . ”
He lo oked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no
contact during this s umme r or last, as Harry had come back to
Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now
dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he
had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at
all. Although rather touched, he was nevertheless quite relieved
that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his
feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley
subsided into scarlet-faced silence.
Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an ap-
40
The Dursleys Departing
proving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward
and embraced Dudley rather than Harry.
“S–so sweet, Dudders . . . ” she sobbed into his massive chest.
“S–such a lovely b–boy . . . s–saying thank you . . . ”
“But he hasn’t said thank you at all!” said Hestia indignantly.
“He only said he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space!”
“Yeah, but coming from Dudley that’s like ‘I love you,’” said
Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petu-
nia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from
a burning building.
“Are we going or not?” roared Uncle Vernon, reappearing yet
again at the living room door. “I though we were on a tight sched-
ule!”
“Yes—yes, we are,” said Dedalus Diggle, who had been watch-
ing these exchanges with an air of bemusement and now seemed to
pull himself together. “We really must be o↵, Harry—”
He tripped forward and wrung Harry’s hand with both of his
own.
“—good luck. I hope we meet again. The hopes of the Wiz-
arding world rest upon your shoulders.”
“Oh,” said Harry. “right. Thanks.”
“Farewell, Harry,” said Hestia, also clasping his hand. “Our
thoughts go with you.”
“I hope everything’s okay,” said Harry with a glance toward
Aunt Petunia and Dudley.
“Oh, I’m sure we shall end up the best of chums,” said Diggle
lightly, waving his hat as he left the room. Hestia followed him.
Dudley gently released himself from his mother’s clutches and
walked toward Harry, who had to repress an urge to threaten him
41
Chapter 3
with magic. Then Dudley held out his large, pink hand.
“Blimey, Dudley,” said Harry over Aunt Petunia’s renewed sobs.
“did the dementors blow a di↵erent personality into you?”
“Dunno,” muttered Dudley. “See you, Harry.”
“Yeah . . . ” said Harry, taking Dudley’s hand and shaking it.
“Maybe. Take care, Big D.”
Dudley nearly smiled, then lumbered from the room. Harry
heard his heavy footfalls on the graveled drive, and then a car
door slammed.
Aunt Petunia, whose face had been buried in her handkerchief,
looked around at the sound. She did not seem to have expected to
find herself alone with Harry. Hastily stowing her wet handkerchief
into her pocket, she said, “Well—good-bye,” and marched toward
the door without looking at him.
“Good-bye,” said Harry.
She stopped and looked back. For a moment Harry had the
strangest feeling that she wanted to say something to him. She
gave him an odd, tremulous look and seemed to teeter on the edge
of speech, but then, with a little jerk of her head, she bustled out
of the room after her husband and son.
42
Chapter 4
The Seven Potters
H
arry ran back upstairs to his bedroom, arriving at the
window just in time to see the Dursleys’ cat swinging
out of the drive and o↵ up the road. Dedalus’s top
hat was visible between Aunt Petunia and Dudley in
the backseat. The car turned right at the end of Privet Drive, its
windows burned scarlet for a moment in the now setting sun, and
then it was gone.
Harry picked up Hedwig’s cage, his Fireb olt, and his rucksack,
gave his unnaturally tidy bedroom one last sweeping look, and
then made his ungainly way back downstairs to the hall, where he
deposited cage, broomstick, and bag near the foot of the stairs.
The light was fading rapidly now, the hall full of shadows in the
evening light. It felt most strange to stand here in the silence
and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time.
Long ago, when he had been left alone while the Dursleys went
out to enjoy themselves, the hours of solitude had been a rare
treat: Pausing only to sneak something tasty from the fridge, he
had rushed upstairs to play on Dudley’s computer, or put on the
43
Chapter 4
television and flicked through the channels to his heart’s content.
It gave him an odd, empty feeling to remember those times; it was
like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost.
“Don’t you want to take a last look at the place?” he asked Hed-
wig, who was still sulking, with her head under her wing. “We’ll
never be here again. Don’t you want to reme mber all the good
times? I mean, look at this doormat. What memories . . . Dudley
puked on it after I saved him from the dementors. . . . Turns out
he was grateful after all, can you believe it? . . . And last summer,
Dumbledore walked through that front door. . . .”
Harry lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment and Hedwig
did nothing to help him retrieve it, but continued to sit with her
head under her wing. Harry turned his back on the front door.
“And under here, Hedwig”—Harry pulled open a door under
the stairs—“is where I used to sleep; You never knew me then—
Blimey, it’s small, I’d forgotten. . . .”
Harry looked around at the stacked shoes and umbrellas, re-
membering how he used to wake every morning looking up at the
underside of the staircase, which was more often than not adorned
with a spider or two. Those had been the days before he had known
anything about his true identity; before he had found out how
his parents had died or why such strange things often happened
around him. But Harry could still remember the dreams that had
dogged him, even in those days: confused dreams involving flashes
of green light and once—Uncle Vernon had nearly crashed the car
when Harry had recounted it—a flying motorbike . . .
There was a sudden, deafening roar from somewhere nearby.
Harry straightened up with a jerk and smacked the top of his head
on the low door frame. Pausing only to employ a few of Uncle
44
The Seven Potters
Vernon’s choicest swear words, he staggered back into the kitchen,
clutching his head and staring out of the window into the back
garden.
The darkness see med to be rippling, the air itself quivering.
Then, one by one, figures began to pop into sight as their Dis-
illusionment Charms lifted. Dominating the scene was Hagrid,
wearing a helmet and goggles and sitting astride an enormous mo-
torbike with a black sidecar attached. All around him other people
were dismounting from brooms and, in two cases, skeletal, black
winged horses.
Wrenching open the back door, Harry hurtled into their midst.
There was a general cry of greeting as Hermione flung her arms
around him, Ron clapped him on the back, and Hagrid said, “All
righ’, Harry? Ready fer the o↵?”
“Definitely,” said Harry, beaming around at them all. “But I
wasn’t expecting this many of you!”
“Change of plan,” growled Mad-Eye, who was holding two enor-
mous, bulging sacks, and whose magical eye was spinning from
darkening sky to house to garden with dizzying rapidity. “Let’s
get undercover before we talk you through it.”
Harry led them all back into the kitchen where, laughing and
chattering, they settled on chairs, sat themselves upon Aunt Petu-
nia’s gleaming work surfaces, or leaned up against her spotles s
appliances: Ron, long and lanky; Hermione, her bushy hair tied
back in a long plait; Fred and George, grinning identically; Bill,
badly scarred and long-haired; Mr. Weasley, kind-faced, balding,
his spectacles a little awry; Mad-Eye, battle-worn, one-legged, his
bright blue magical eye whizzing in its socket; Tonks, whose short
hair was her favorite shade of bright pink; Lupin, grayer, more
45
Chapter 4
lined; Fleur, slender and beautiful, with her long silvery blonde
hair; Kingsley, taller and broad-shouldered; Hagrid, with his wild
hair and beard, standing hunchbacked to avoid hitting his head on
the ceiling; and Mundungus Fletcher, small, dirty, and hangdog,
with his droopy bloodhound’s eyes and matted hair. Harry’s heart
seemed to expand and glow at the sight: He felt incredibly fond of
all of them, even Mundungus, whom he had tried to strangle the
last time they had met.
“Kingsley, I thought you were looking after the Muggle Prime
Minister?” he called across the room.
“He can get along without me for one night,” said Kingsley.
“You’re more important.”
“Harry, guess what?” said Tonks from her perch on top of the
washing machine, and she wiggled her left hand at him; a ring
glittered there.
“You got married?” Harry yelped, looking from her to Lupin.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t be there, Harry, it was very quiet.”
“That’s brilliant, congrat—”
“All right, all right, we’ll have time for a cozy catch-up later,”
roared Moody over the hubbub, and silence fell in the kitchen.
Moody dropped his sacks at his feet and turned to Harry, “As
Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thick-
nesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He’s made it
an imprisonable o↵ense to connect this house to the Floo Network,
place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name
of your protection to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you.
Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother’s charm does that al-
ready. What he’s really done is to stop you from getting out of
here safely.
46
The Seven Potters
“Second problem. You’re underage, which means you’ve still
got the Trace on you.”
“I don’t—”
“The Trace, the Trace!” said Mad-Eye impatiently. “The
charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the
way the Ministry finds out out about underage magic! If you, or
anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse
is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters.
“We can’t wait for the Trace to break, because the moment you
turn seventeen you’ll lose all the protection your mother gave you.
In short: Pius Thicknesse thinks he’s got you cornered good and
proper.”
Harry could not help but agree with the unknown Thicknesse.
“So what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to use the only means of transport left to us, the
only ones the Trace can’t detect, because we don’t need to cast
spells to use them: brooms, thestrals, and Hagrid’s motorbike.”
Harry could see flaws in this plan; however, he held his tongue
to give Mad-Eye the chance to address them.
“Now, your mother’s charm will only break under two condi-
tions: when you come of age, or”—Moody gestured around the
pristine kitchen—“you no longer call this place home. You and
your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the
full understanding that you’re never going to live together again,
correct?”
Harry nodded.
“So this time, when you leave, there’ll be no going back, and
the charm will break the moment you get outside its range. We’ve
choosing to break it early, because the alternative is waiting for
47
Chapter 4
You-Know-Who to come and seize you the moment you turn sev-
enteen.
“The one thing we’ve got on our side is that You-Know-who
doesn’t know we’re moving you tonight. We’ve leaked a fake trail
to the Ministry: They think you’re not leaving until the thirtieth.
However, this is You-Know-Who we’re dealing with, so we can’t
just rely on him getting the date wrong; he’s bound to have a
couple Death Eaters patrolling the skies in this general area, just
in case. So we’ve given a doze n di↵erent houses every protection
we can throw at them. They all look like they could be the place
we’re going to hide you, they’ve all got some connection with the
Order: my house, Kingsley’s place, Molly auntie Muriel’s—you get
the idea.”
“Yeah,” said Harry, not entirely truthfully, because he could
still spot a gaping hole in the plan.
“You’ll be going to Tonks’s parents. Once you’re within the
boundaries of the protective enchantments we’ve put on their house
you’ll be able to use a Portkey to the Burrow. Any questions?”
“Er—yes,” said Harry. “Maybe they won’t know which of the
twelve secure houses I’m heading for at first, but won’t it be sort
of obvious once”—he performed a quick headcount—“fourteen of
us fly o↵ towards Tonks’s parents’?”
“Ah,” said Moody. “I forgot to mention the key point. Fourteen
of us won’t be flying to Tonks’s parents. There will be seven Harry
Potters moving through the skies tonight, each of them with a
companion, each pair heading for a di↵erent safe house.”
From inside his cloak Moody now withdrew a flask of what
looked like mud. There was no need for him to say another word;
Harry understood the rest of the plan immediately.
48
The Seven Potters
“No!” he said loudly, his voice ringing through the kitchen.
“No way!”
“I told them you’d take it like this,” said Hermione with a hint
of complacency.
“If you think I’m going to let six people risk their lives—!”
“—be cause it’s the first time for all of us,” said Ron.
“This is di↵erent, pretending to be me—”
“Well, none of us really fancy it, Harry,” s aid Fred earnestly.
“Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky,
sccrawny gits forever.”
Harry did not smile.
“You can’t do it if I don’t cooperate, you need me to give you
some hair.”
“Well, that’s that plan scuppered,” said George. “Obviously
there’s no chance at all of us getting a bit of your hair unless you
cooperate.”
“Yeah, thirteen of us against one bloke who’s not allowed to use
magic: we’ve got no chance,” said Fred.
“Funny,” said Harry, “really amusing.”
“If it has to come to force, then it will,” growled Moody, his
magical eye now quivering a little in its socket as he glared at
Harry.
“Everyone here’s overage, Potter, and they’re all prepared to
take the risk.”
Mundungus shrugged and grimaced; the magical eye swerved
sideways to glare at him out of the side of Moody’s head.
“Let’s have no more arguments. Time’s wearing on. I want a
few of your hairs, boy, now.”
“But this is mad, there’s no need—”
49
Chapter 4
“No need!” snarled Moody, “With You-Know-Who out there
and half the Ministry on his side? Potter, if we’re lucky he’ll have
swallowed the fake bait and he’ll be planning to ambush you on
the thirtieth, but he’d be mad not to have a Death Eater or two
keeping an eye out, it’s what I’d do. They might not be able to
get at you or this house while your mother’s charm holds, but it’s
about to break and they know the rough position of the place.
Our only chance is to use decoys. Even You-Know-Who can’t split
himself into seven.”
Harry caught Hermione’s eye and looked away at once.
“So, Potter—some of your hair, if you please.”
Harry glanced at Ron, who grimaced at him in a just-do-it sort
of way.
“Now!” barked Moody.
With all of their eyes on him, Harry reached up to the top of
his head, grabbed a hank of hair, and pulled.
“Good,” said Moody, limping forward as he pulled the stopper
out of the flask of potion. “Straight in here, if you please.”
Harry dropped the hair into the mudlike liquid. The moment
it made contact with its surface, the potion began to froth and
smoke, then, all at once, it turned a cle ar, bright gold.
“Ooh, you look much tastier than Crabbe and Goyle, Harry,”
said Hermione, before catching sight of Ron’s raised eyebrows,
blushing slightly, and saying, “Oh, you now what I mean—Goyle’s
potion looked like bogies.”
“Right then, fake Potters line up over here, please.” said
Moody.
Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Fleur lined up in front of
Aunt Petunia’s gleaming sink.
50
The Seven Potters
“We’re one short,” said Lupin.
“Here,” said Hagrid gru✏y, and he lifted Mundungus by the
scru↵ of the neck and dropped him down beside Fleur, who wrin-
kled her nose pointedly and moved along to stand between Fred
and George instead.
“I’ve told yer, I’d sooner be a protector,” said Mundungus.
“Shut it,” growled Moody. “As I’ve already told you, you spine-
less worm, any Death Eaters we run into will be aiming to cap-
ture Potter, not kill him. Dumbledore always said You-Know-who
would want to finish Potter in person. It’ll be the protectors who
have got the most to worry about, the Death Eaters’ll want to kill
them.”
Mundungus did not look particularly reassured, but Moody was
already pulling half a dozen eggcup-sized glasses from inside his
cloak, which he handed out, before pouring a little Polyjuice Potion
into each one.
“Altogether, then . . . ”
Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Fleur, and Mundungus drank.
All of them gasped and grimaced as the potion hit their throats.
At once, their features began to bubble and distort like hot wax.
Hermione and Mundungus were shooting upward; Ron, Fred, and
George were shrinking; their hair was darkening, Hermione’s and
Fleur’s appearing to shoot backward into their s kulls.
Moody, quite unconcerned, was now loosening the ties of the
large sacks he had brought with him. When he straightened up
again, there were six Harry Potters gasping and panting in front
of him.
Fred and George turned to each other and said together,
“Wow—we’re identical!”
51
Chapter 4
“I dunno, though. I think I’m still bette r looking,” said Fred,
examining his reflection in the kettle.
“Bah,” said Fleur, checking herself in the microwave door, “Bill,
don’t look at me—I’m ’ideous.”
“Those whose clothes are a bit roomy, I’ve got smaller here,”
said Moody, indicating the first sack, “and vice versa. Don’t forget
the glasses, there’s six pairs in the side p ocket. And when you’re
dressed, there’s luggage in the other sack.”
The real Harry thought this might just be the most bizarre thing
he had ever seen, and he had seen some extremely odd things. He
watched as his six doppelgangers rummaged in the sacks, pulling
out sets of clothes, putting on glasses, and stuffing their own things
away. He felt like asking them to show a little more respec t for his
privacy as they all began stripping o↵ with impunity, clearly more
at ease with displaying his body than they would have with their
own.
“I knew Ginny was lying about that that tattoo,” said Ron,
looking down at his bare chest.
“Harry, your eyesight really is awful,” said Hermione, as she
put on glasses.
Once dressed, the fake Harrys took rucksacks and owl cages,
each containing a stu↵ed snowy owl, from the second sack.
“Good,” said Moo dy, as at last the seven dressed, bespectacled,
and luggage-laden Harrys faced him. “The pairs will be as follows:
Mundungus will be traveling with me, by broom—”
“Why’m I with you?” grunted the Harry nearest the back door.
“Because you’re the one that needs watching,” growled Moo dy,
and sure enough, his magical eye did not waver from Mundungus
as he continued. “Arthur and Fred—”
52
The Seven Potters
“I’m George,” said the twin at whom Moody was pointing,
“Can’t you even tell us apart when we’re Harry?”
“Sorry, George—”
“I’m only yanking your wand. I’m Fred really—”
“Enough messing around!!” snarled Moody. “The other one—
George or Fred or whoever you are—you’re with Remus. Miss
Delacour—”
“I’m taking Fleur on a thestral,” said Bill. “She’s not that fond
of brooms.”
Fleur walked over to stand beside him, giving him a soppy,
slavish look that Harry hoped with all his heart would never appear
on his face again.
“Miss Granger with Kingsley, again by thestral—”
Hermione looked reassured as she answered Kingsley’s smile;
Harry knew that Hermione too lacked confidence on a broomstick.
“Which leaves you and me, Ron!” said Tonks brightly, knocking
over a mug tree as she waved at him.
Ron did not look quite as pleased as Hermione.
“An’ you’re with me, Harry. That all right?” said Hagrid,
looking a little anxious. “We’ll be on the bike, brooms an’ thestrals
can’t take me weight, see. Not a lot o’ room on the seat with me
on it, though, so you’ll be in the s idecar.”
“That’s great,” said Harry, not altogether truthfully.
“We think the Death Eaters will expect you to be on a broom,”
said Moody, who seemed to guess how Harry was feeling. “Snape ’s
had plenty of time to tell them everything about you he’s never
mentioned before, so if we do run into any Death Eaters, we’re
betting they’ll choose one of the Potters who look at home on a
broomstick. All right then,” he went on, tying up the sack with the
53
Chapter 4
fake Potters’ clothes in it and leading the way back to the door,
“I make it three minutes until we’re supposed to leave. No point
locking the back door, it won’t keep the Death Eaters out when
they come looking. Come on . . . ”
Harry hurried to gather his rucksack, Firebolt, and Hedwig’s
cage and followed the ground to the dark back garden.
On every side broomsticks were leaping into hands. Hermione
had already been helped up onto a great black thestral by Kingsley,
Fleur onto the other by Bill. Hagrid was standing ready beside the
motorbike, goggles on.
“Is this it? Is this Sirius’s bike?”
“The very same,” said Hagrid, beaming down at Harry. “An’
the last time yeh was on it, Harry, I could fit yeh in one hand!”
Harry could not help but feel a little humiliated as he got into
the sidecar. It placed him several feet below everybody else: Ron
smirked at the sight of him sitting there like a child in a bumper
car. Harry stu↵ed his rucksack and broomstick down by his feet
and rammed Hedwig’s cage between his knees. It was extremely
uncomfortable.
“Arthur’s done a bit o’ tinkerin’,” said Hagrid, quite oblivious
to Harry’s discomfort. He settled himself astride the motorcycle,
which creaked slightly and sank inches into the ground. “It’s got
a few tricks up its hindquarters now. Tha’ one was my idea.”
He pointed a thick finger at a purple button near the speedome-
ter.
“Please be careful, Hagrid,” s aid Mr. Weasley, who was stand-
ing beside them, holding his broomstick. “I’m still not sure this
was advisable and it’s certainly only to be used in emergencies.”
“All right then,” said Moody. “Everyone re ady, please. I want
54
The Seven Potters
us all to leave at exac tly the same time or the whole point of the
diversion’s lost.”
Everybody mounted their brooms .
“Hold tight now, Ron,” said Tonks, and Harry saw Ron throw
a furtive, guilty look at Lupin before placing his hands on either
side of her waist. Hagrid kicked the motorbike into life. It roared
like a dragon, and the sidecar began to vibrate.
“Good luck, everyone,” shouted Moody, “See you all in
about an hour at the Burrow. On the count of three.
One . . . two . . . THREE.”
There was a great roar from the motorbike, and Harry felt the
sidecar give a nasty lurch. He was rising through the air fast, his
eyes water slightly, hair whipped back o↵ his face. Around him
brooms were soaring upward too, the long black tail of a threstral
flicked past. His legs, jammed into the sidecar by Hedwig’s cage
and his rucksack, were already sore and starting to go numb. So
great was his discomfort that he almost forgot to take a last glimpse
of number four, Privet Drive, by the time he looked over the edge
of the sidecar he could no longer tell which one it was. Higher and
higher they climbed into the sky—
And then, out of nowhere, out of nothing, they were surrounded.
At least thirty hooded figures, suspended in midair, formed a
vast circle in the midst of which the Order members had risen,
oblivious—
Screams, a blaze of green light on every side: Hagrid gave a yell
and the motorbike rolled over. Harry lost any sense of where they
were. Streetlights above him, yells around him, he was clinging
to the sidecar for dear life. Hedwig’s cage, the Firebolt, and his
rucksack slipped from beneath his knees.
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Chapter 4
“No—HEDWIG!”
The broomstick spun to earth, but he just managed to seize
the s trap of his rucksack and the top of the cage as the motorbike
swung the right way up again. A second’s relief, and then another
burst of green light. The owl screeched and fell to the floor of the
cage.
“No—NO!”
The motorbike zoomed forward; Harry glimpsed hooded Death
Eaters scattering as Hagrid blasted through their circle.
“Hedwig—Hedwig —”
But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of
her cage. He could not take it in in, and his terror for the others
was paramount. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a mass of
people moving, flares of green light, two pairs of people on broom s
soaring o↵ into the distance, but he could not tell who they were—
“Hagrid, we’ve got to go back, we’ve got to go back!” he yelled
over the thunderous roar of the engine, pulling out his wand, ram-
ming Hedwig’s cage into the floor, refusing to believe that she was
dead. “Hagrid, TURN AROUND!”
“My job’s ter get you there safe, Harry!” bellowed Hagrid, and
he opened the throttle.
“Stop—STOP!” Harry shouted, but he looked back again as
two jets of green light flew past his left year: Four Death Eaters
had broken away from the circle and were pursuing them, aiming
for Hagrid’s broad back. Hagrid swerved but the Death Eaters
were keeping up with the bike, more curses shot after them, and
Harry had to sink low into the sidecar to avoid them. Wriggling
around he cried, “Stupefy!” and a red bolt of light shot from his
own wand, cleaving a gap between the four pursuing Death Eaters
56
The Seven Potters
as they scattered to avoid it.
“Hold on, Harry, this’ll do it for ’em!” roared Hagrid, and Harry
looked up just in time to see Hagrid slamming a thick finger into
a green button near the fuel gauge.
A wall, a solid brick wall, erupted out of the exhaust pipe.
Craning his neck, Harry saw it expand into being in midair. Three
of the Death Eaters swerved and avoided it, but the fourth was not
so lucky; He vanished from view and then dropped like a b oulder
from behind it, his broomstick broken into pieces. One of his fel-
lows slowed up to save him, but they and the airborne wall were
swallowed by darkness as Hagrid leaned low over the handlebars
and sped up.
More Killing Curses flew past Harry’s head from the two re-
maining Death Eaters’ wands; they were aiming for Hagrid. Harry
responded with further Stunning Spells: Red and green collided
in midair in a shower of multicolored s parks, and Harry thought
wildly of fireworks, and the Muggles below who would have no idea
what was happening—
“Here we go again, Harry, hold on!” yelled Hagrid, and he
jabbed at a second button. This time a great net burst from the
bike’s exhaust, but the Death Eaters were ready for it. Not only did
they swerve to avoid it, but the com panion who had slowed to save
their unconscious friend had caught up. He bloomed suddenly out
of the darkness and now three of them were pursuing the motorbike,
all shooting curses after it.
“This’ll do it, Harry, hold on tight!” yelled Hagrid, and Harry
saw him slam his whole hand onto the purple button beside the
speedometer.
With an unmistakable bellowing roar, dragon fire burst from
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Chapter 4
the exhaust, white-hot and blue, and the motorbike shot forward
like a bullet with a sound of wrenching metal. Harry saw the Death
Eaters swerve out of sight to avoid the deadly trail of flame, and
at the same time felt the sidecar sway ominously: Its metal con-
nections to the bike had splintered with the force of ac ce leration.
“It’s all righ’, Harry!” bellowed Hagrid, now thrown flat onto
his back by the surge of sp e ed; nobody was steering now, and the
sidecar was starting to twist violently in the bike’s slipstream.
“I’m on it, Harry, don’ worry!” Hagrid yelled, and from inside
his jacket pocket he pulled his flowery pink umbrella. “Hagrid! No!
Let me!”
“REPARO!”
There was a deafening bang and the sidecar broke away from
the bike completely. Harry sped forward, propelled by the impetus
of the bike’s flight, then the sidecar began to lose height—
In desperation Harry pointed his wand at the sidecar and
shouted “Wingardium Leviosa!”
The sidecar rose like a cork, unsteerable but at least still air-
borne. He had but a split second’s relief, however, as more curses
streaked past him: The three Death Eaters were closing in.
“I’m comin’, Harry!” Hagrid yelled from out of the darkness,
but Harry could feel the sidecar beginning to sink again: Crouching
as low as he could, he pointed at the middle of the oncoming figures
and yelled, “Impedimenta!”
The jinx hit the middle Death Eater in the chest; For a moment
the man was absurdly spread-eagled in midair as though he had hit
an invisible barrier: One of his fellows almost collided with him—
Then the sidecar began to fall in earnest, and the remaining
Death Eater shot a curse so close to Harry that he had to duck
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The Seven Potters
below the rim of the car, knocking out a tooth on the edge of his
seat—
“I’m comin’, Harry, I’m comin’ !”
A huge hand seized the back of Harry’s robe s and hoisted him
out of the plummeting sidecar; Harry pulled his rucksack with him
as he dragged himself onto the motorbike’s seat and found himself
back-to-back with Hagrid. As they soared upward, away from the
two remaining Death Eaters, Harry spat blood out of his mouth,
pointed his wand at the falling sidecar, and yelled, “Confringo! ”
He knew a dreadful, gut-wrenching pang for Hedwig as it ex-
ploded; the Death Eater nearest it was blasted o↵ his broom and
fell from sight; his companion fell back and vanished.
“Harry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” moaned Hagrid, “I shouldn’ta
tried ter repair it myself—yeh’ve got no room—”
“It’s not a problem, just keep flying!” Harry shouted back,
as two more Death Eaters emerged out of the darkness, drawing
closer.
As the curses came shooting across the intervening space again,
Hagrid swerved and zigzagge d. Harry knew that Hagrid did not
dare use the dragon-fire button again, with Harry seated so in-
securely. Harry sent Stunning Spell after Stunning Spell back at
their pursuers, barely holding them o↵. He shot another blocking
jinx at them: The closest Death Eater swerved to avoid it and
his hood slipped, and by the red light of his next Stunning Spell,
Harry saw the strangely blank face of Stanley Shunpike—Stan—
“Expelliarmus! ” Harry yelled.
“That’s him, it’s him, it’s the real one!”
The hooded Death Eater’s shout reached Harry even above the
thunder of the motorbike’s engine. Next m oment, both pursuers
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Chapter 4
had fallen back and disappeared from view.
“Harry, what’s happened?” bellowed Hagrid, “Where’ve they
gone?”
“I don’t know!”
But Harry was afraid: The hooded Death Eater had shouted
“It’s the real one!”; how had he known? He gazed around at the
apparently empty darkness and felt its menace. Where were they?
He clamored around on the seat to face forward and seized hold
of the back of Hagrid’s jacket.
“Hagrid, do the dragon-fire thing again, let’s get out of here!”
“Hold on tight, then, Harry!”
There was a deafening, sc reeching roar again and the white-blue
fire shot from the exhaust: Harry felt himself slipping backward o↵
what little of the seat he had, Hagrid flung backward upon him,
barely maintaining his grip on the handlebars—
“I think we’ve lost ’em Harry, I think we’ve done it!!” yelled
Hagrid.
But Harry was not convinced; Fear lapped at him as he looked
left and right for pursuers he was sue would come. . . . Why had they
fallen back? One of them had sitll had a wand. . . . It’s him . . . it’s
the real one. . . . They had said it right after he had tried to Disarm
Stan. . . .
“We’re nearly there, Harry, we’ve nearly made it!” shouted
Hagrid.
Harry felt the bike drop a little, though the lights down on the
ground still seemed remote as stars.
Then the scar on his forehead burned like fire: as a Death Eater
appeared on either side of the bike, two Killing Curses missed Harry
by millimeters, cast from behind—
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The Seven Potters
And then Harry saw him. Voldemort was flying like smoke on
the wind, without broomstick or thestral to hold him, his snake-
like face gleaming out of the blackness, his white fingers raising his
wand again—
Hagrid let out a bellow of fear and steered the motorbike into a
vertical dive. Clinging on for dear life, Harry sent Stunning Spells
flying at random into the whirling night. He saw a body fly past
him and knew he had hit one of them, but he heard a bang and
saw sparks from the engine; the motorbike spiraled through the
air, completely out of control—
Green jets of light shot past them again. Harry had no idea
which way was up, which down: His scar was still burning; he
expected to die at any second. A hooded figure on a broomstick
was feet from him, he saw it raise its arm—
“NO!”
With a shout of fury Hagrid launched himself o↵ the bike at the
Death Eater; to his horror, Harry saw both Hagrid and the Death
Eater falling out of sight, their combined weight too much for the
broomstick—
Barely gripping the plummeting bike with his knees, Harry
heard Voldemort scream, “Mine!!”
It was over: He could not see or hear where Voldemort was; he
glimpsed another Death Eater swooping out of the way and heard,
“Avada —”
As the pain from Harry’s scar forced his eyes shut, his wand
acted of its own accord. He felt it drag his hand around like some
great magnet, saw a spurt of golden fire through his half-closed
eyelids, heard a crack and a scream of fury. The remaining Death
Eater yelled; Voldemort screamed, “No!”; Somehow, Harry found
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Chapter 4
his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button. He punched it with
his wand-free hand and the bike shot more flames into the air,
hurtling straight toward the ground.
“Hagrid!” Harry called, holding on to the bike for dear life.
“Hagrid—Accio Hagrid!”
The motorbike spe d up, sucked towards the e arth. Face level
with the handlebars, Harry could see nothing but distant lights
growing nearer and nearer. He was going to crash and there was
nothing he could do about it. Behind him came another scream,
“Your wand, Selwyn, give me your wand!”
He felt Voldemort before he saw him. Looking sideways, he
stared into the red eyes and was sure they would be the last thing
he ever saw: Voldemort preparing to curse him once more—
And then Voldemort vanished. Harry looked down and saw
Hagrid spread-eagled on the ground below him. He pulled hard at
the handlebars to avoid hitting him, groped for the brake, but with
an earsplitting, ground trembling crash, he smashed into a muddy
pond.
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Chapter 5
Fallen Warrior
H
agrid?”
Harry struggled to raise himself out of the debris of
metal and leather that surrounded him: his hands sank
into inches of muddy water as he tried to stand. He
could not understand where Voldemort had gone and expected him
to swoop out of the darkness at any moment. Something hot and
wet was trickling down his chin and from his forehead. He crawled
out of the pond and stumbled toward the great dark mass on the
ground that was Hagrid.
“Hagrid? Hagrid. Talk to me—”
But the dark mass did not stir.
“Who’s there? Is it Potter? Are you Harry Potter?”
Harry did not recognize the man’s voice. Then a woman
shouted, “They’ve crashed, Ted! Crashed in the garden!”
Harry’s head was swimming.
“Hagrid.” he repeate d stupidly, and his knees buckled.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back on what felt
like c ushions, with a burning sensation in his ribs and right arm.
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Chapter 5
His missing tooth had been regrown. The scar on his forehead was
still throbbing.
“Hagrid?”
He opened his eyes and saw that he was lying on a sofa in an
unfamiliar, lamplit sitting room. His rucksack lay on the floor a
short distance away, wed and muddy. A fair-haired, big-be llied
man was watching Harry anxiously.
“Hagrid’s fine, son,” said the man, “the wife’s seeing to him
now. How are you feeling? Anything else broken? I’ve fixed your
ribs, your tooth, and your arm. I’m Ted, by the way, Ted Tonks—
Dora’s father.”
Harry sat up too quickly: Lights popped in front of his eyes and
he felt sick and giddy.
“Voldemort—”
“Easy, now,” said Ted Tonks, placing a hand on Harry’s shoul-
der and pushing him back against the cushions. “That was a nasty
crash you just had. What happened, anyway? Something go wrong
with the bike? Arthur Weasley overstretch himself again, him and
his Muggle contraptions?”
“No,” said Harry, as his scar pulsed like an open wound. “Death
Eaters, loads of them—we were chased—”
“Death eaters?” said Ted sharply. “What d’you mean, Death
Eaters? I thought they didn’t know you were being moved tonight,
I thought—”
“They knew,” said Harry.
Ted Tonks looked up at the ceiling as though he could see
through to the sky above.
Well, we know our protective charms hold, then, don’t we?
They shouldn’t be able to get within a hundred yards of the place
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Fallen Warrior
in any direction.”
Now Harry understood why Voldemort had vanished: it had
been at the p oint when the motorbike crossed the barrier of the
Order’s charms. He only hoped they would continue to work: He
imagined Voldemort, a hundred yards above them as they sp oke,
looking for a way to penetrate what Harry visualized as a great
transparent bubble.
He swung his legs o↵ the sofa; he needed to see Hagrid with
his own eyes before he would believe that he was alive. He had
barely stood up, however, when a door opened and Hagrid squeezed
through it, his face covered in mud and blood, limping a little but
miraculously alive.
“Harry!” Knocking over two delicate tables and an aspidistra,
he covered the floor between them in two strides and pulled Harry
into a hug that nearly cracked his newly repaired ribs. “Blimey,
Harry, how did yeh get out o’ that? I thought we were both goners.”
“Yeah, me too. I can’t believe—”
Harry broke o↵. He had just noticed the woman who had en-
tered the room behind Hagrid.
“You!” he shouted, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, but
it was empty.
“Your wand’s here, son,” said Ted, tapping it on Harry’s arm.
“It fell tight beside you, I picke d it up. And that’s my wife you’re
shouting at.”
“Oh, I’m—I’m s orry.”
As shed moved forward into the room, Mrs. Tonks’s resem-
blance to her sister Bellatrix became much less pronounced. Her
hair was a light, soft brown and her eyes were wider and kinder.
Nevertheless, she looked a little haughty after Harry’s exclamation.
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Chapter 5
“What happened to our daughter?” she asked. “Hagrid said
you were ambushed; where is Nymphadora?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry. “We don’t know what happened to
anyone else.”
She and Ted exchanged looks. A mixture of fear and guilt
gripped Harry at the s ight of their expressions; if any of the other
had died, it was his fault, all his fault. He had consented to the
plan, given them his hair. . . .
“The Portkey,” he said, remembering all of a sudden. “We’ve
got to get back to the Burrow and find out—then we’ll be able to
send word, or—or Tonks will, once she’s—”
“Dora’ll be okay,’Dromeda,” said Ted. “She knows her stu↵,
she’s been in plenty of tight spots with the Aurors. The Portkey’s
through here,” he added to Harry. “It’s supposed to leave in three
minutes, if you want to take it.”
“Yeah, we do,” s aid Harry. He seized his rucksack, swung it
onto his shoulders. “I—”
He looked at Mrs. Tonks, wanting to apologize for the state of
fear in which he left her and for which eh felt so terribly respon-
sible, but no words occurred to him that did not seem hollow and
insincere.
“I’ll tell Tonks—Dora—to send word, when she . . . Thanks for
patching us up, thanks for everything. I—”
He was glad to leave the room and follow Ted Tonks along
a short hallway and into a bedroom. Hagrid came after them,
bending low to avoid hitting his head on the door lintel.
“There you go, son. That’s the Portkey.”
Mr. Tonks was pointing to a small, silver-backed hairbrush
lying on the dressing table.
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Fallen Warrior
“Thanks,” said Harry, reaching out to place a finger on it, ready
to leave.
“Wait a moment,” said Hagrid, looking around. “Harry, where’s
Hedwig?”
“She . . . she got hit,” said Harry.
The realization crashed over him: He felt ashamed of himself as
the tears stung his eyes. The owl had bee his companion, his one
great link with the magical world whenever he had bee n forced to
return to the Dursleys.
Hagrid reached out a great hand and patted him painfully on
the shoulder.
“Never mind,” he said gru✏y. “Never mind. She had a great
old life—”
“Hagrid!” s aid Ted Tonks warningly, as the hairbrush glowed
bright blue, and Hagrid only just got his forefinger to it in time.
With a jerk be hind the navel as though an invisible hook and
line had dragged him forward, Harry was pulled into nothingness,
spinning uncontrollably, his finger glued to the Portkey as he and
Hagrid hurtled away from Mr. Tonks. Seconds later Harry’s feet
slammed into hard ground and he fell onto his hands and knees
in the yard of the Burrow. He heard screams. Throwing aside
the no longer glowing hairbrush, Harry stood up, swaying slightly,
and saw Mrs. Weasley and Ginny running down the steps by the
back door as Hagrid, who had also collapsed on landing, clambered
laboriously to his feet.
“Harry? You are the real Harry? What happened? Where are
the others?” cried Mrs. Weasley.
“What d’you mean? Isn’t anyone els e back?” Harry panted.
The answer was clearly etched in Mrs. Weasley’s pale face.
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Chapter 5
“The Death Eaters were waiting for us,” Harry told her. “We
were surrounded the moment we took o↵—they knew it was
tonight—I don’t know what happened to anyone else, four of them
chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort
caught up with us—”
He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the pleas for
her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her
sons, but—
“Thank goodness you’re all right,” she said, pulling him into a
hug he did not feel he deserved.
“Haven’t go’ any brandy, have yeh, Molly?” asked Hagrid a
little shakily. “Fer medicinal purposes?”
She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back
towards the crooked house, Harry knew that she wanted to hide
her face. He turned to Ginny and she answered his unspoken plea
for information at once.
“Ron and Tonks should have been back first, but they missed
their Portkey, it cam e back without them.” she said, pointing at
a rusty oil can lying on the ground nearby. “And that one,” she
pointed at an ancient sneaker, “should have been Dad and Fred’s,
they were supposed to be se cond. You and Hagrid were third and,”
she checked her watch, “if they made it, George and Lupin ought
to be back in about a minute.”
Mrs. Weasley reappeared carrying a bottle of brandy, which
she handed to Hagrid. He uncorked it and drank it straight down
in one.
“Mum!” shouted Ginny, pointing to a spot several feet away.
A blue light had appeared in the darkness; It grew larger
and brighter, and Lupin and George appeared, spinning and then
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Fallen Warrior
falling. Harry knew immediately that there was something wrong:
Lupin was supporting George, who was unconscious and whose face
was covered in blood.
Harry ran forward and seized George’s legs. Together, he and
Lupin carried George into the house and through the kitchen to the
sitting room, where they laid him on the sofa. As the lamplight fell
across George’s head, Ginny gasped and Harry’s stomach lurched;
One of George’s ears was missing. The side of his head and neck
was drenched in wet, shockingly scarlet blood.
No sooner had Mrs. Weasley bent over her son than Lupin
grabbed Harry by the upper arm and dragged him, none too gently,
back into the kitchen, where Hagrid was still attempting to ease
his bulk through the back door.
“Oi!” said Hagrid indignantly. “Le’ go of him! Le’ go of Harry!”
Lupin ignored him.
“What creature sat in the corner the first time that Harry Potter
visited my office at Hogwarts?” he said, giving Harry a small shake.
“Answer me!”
“A—a grindylow in a tank, wasn’t it?”
Lupin released Harry and fell back against a kitchen cupboard.
“Wha’ was that’ about?” roared Hagrid.
“I’m sorry Harry, but I had to check” said Lupin tersely. “We ’ve
been betrayed. Voldemort knew that you were being moved tonight
and the only people who could have told him were directly involved
in the plan. You might have been an impostor.”
“So why aren’ you checkin’ me?” panted Hagrid, still struggling
with the door.
“You’re half-giant,” said Lupin, looking up at Hagrid. “The
Polyjuice Potion is designed for human use only.”
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Chapter 5
“None of the Order would have told Voldemort we were moving
tonight,” said Harry. The idea was dreadful to him, he could not
believe it of any of them. “Voldemort only caught up with me
toward the end, he didn’t know which one I was in the beginning.
If he’d been in on the plan he’d have known from the start I was
the one with Hagrid.”
“Voldemort caught up with you?” said Lupin sharply. “What
happened? How did you es cape?”
Harry explained briefly how the Death Eaters pursuing them
had seemed to recognize him as the true Harry, how they had aban-
doned the chase, how they must have summoned Voldemort, who
had appeared just before he and Hagrid had reached the sanctuary
of Tonks’s parents.
“They recognized you? But how? What had you done?”
“I . . . ” Harry tried to remember; the whole journey se eme d like
a blur of panic and confusion. “I saw Stan Shunpike. . . . You know,
the bloke who was the conductor on the Knight Bus? And I tried
to Disarm him instead of—well, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,
does he? He must be Imperiused!”
Lupin looked aghast.
“Harry, the time for Disarming is past! These people are trying
to capture and kill you! At least Stun if you aren’t prepared to
kill!”
“We were hundreds of feet up! Stan’s not himself and if I
stunned him and he’d fallen, he’d have died the same as if I’d
used Avada Kedavra!! Expelliarmus saved me from Voldemort two
years ago,” Harry added defiantly. Lupin was reminding him of
the sneering Hu✏epu↵ Zacharias Smith, who had jeered at Harry
for wanting to teach Dumbledore’s Army how to Disarm.
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Fallen Warrior
“Yes, Harry,” said Lupin with painful restraint, “and a great
number of Death Eaters witnessed that happening! Forgive me,
but it was a very unusual move then, under imminent threat of
death. Repeating it tonight in front of Death Eaters who either
witnessed or heard about the first occasion was close to suicidal!”
“So you think I should have killed Stan Shunpike?” said Harry
angrily.
“Of course not,” said Lupin, “but the Death Eaters—frankly,
most people!—would have expected you to attack back! Expelliar-
mus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it
is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!”
Lupin was making Harry feel idiotic, and yet there was still a
grain of defiance inside him.
“I won’t blast people out of my way just because they’re there.”
said Harry. “That’s Voldemort’s job.”
Lupin’s retort was last; Finally succeeding in squeezing through
the door, Hagrid staggered to a chair and sat down: it collapsed
beneath him. Ignoring his mingled oaths and apologies, Harry
addressed Lupin again.
“Will George be okay?”
All Lupin’s frustration with Harry seemed to drain away at the
question.
“I think so, although there’s no chance of replacing his ear, not
when it’s been cursed o↵—
There was a scu✏ing from outside. Lupin dived for the back
door; Harry leapt over Hagrid’s legs and sprinted into the yard.
Two figures had appe ared in the yard, and as Harry ran toward
them he realized they were Hermione, now returning to her normal
appearance, and Kingsley, both clutching a bent coat hanger. Her-
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Chapter 5
mione flung herself into Harry’s arms, but Kingsley showed no
pleasure at the sight of any of them. Over Hermione’s shoulder
Harry saw him raise his wand and point it at Lupin’s chest.
“The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us!”
“Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him,” said Lupin c almly.
Kingsley turned his wand on Harry, but Lupin said, “It’s him,
I’ve checked!”
“All right, all right!” said Kingsley, stowing his wand back
beneath his cloak. “But somebody betrayed us! They knew, they
knew it was tonight!”
“So it seems,” replied Lupin, “but apparently they did not re-
alize that there would be seven Harrys.”
“Small comfort!” snarled Kingsley. “Who else is back?”
“Only Harry, Hagrid, George, and me.”
Hermione stifled a little moan behind her hand.
“What happened to you?” Lupin asked Kingsley.
“Followed by five, injured two, might’ve killed one,” Kingsley
reeled o↵, “and we saw You-Know-Who as well, he joined the chase
halfway through but vanished pretty quickly. Remus, he can—”
“Fly,” supplied Harry. “I saw him too, he came after Hagrid
and me.”
“So that’s why he left, to follow you!” said Kingsley. “I couldn’t
understand why he’d vanished. But what made him change tar-
gets?”
“Harry behaved a little too kindly to Stan Shunpike,” said
Lupin.
“Stan?” repeated Hermione. “But I thought he was in Azka-
ban?”
Kingsley let out a mirthless laugh.
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Fallen Warrior
“Hermione, there’s obviously been a mass breakout which the
Ministry has hushed up. Traver’s hood fell o↵ when I cursed him,
he’s supposed to be inside too. But what happened to you, Remus?
Where’s George?”
“He lost an ear,” said Lupin.
“Lost an—?” repeated Hermione in a high voice.
“Snape’s work,” said Lupin.
“Snape? ” shouted Harry, “You didn’t say—”
“He lost his hood during the chase. Sectumsempra was always
a speciality of Snape’s. I wish I could say I’d paid him back in
kind, but it was all I could do to keep George on the broom after
he was injured, he was loosing so much blood.”
Silence fell between the four of them as they looked up at
the sky. There was no sign of movement; the stars stared back,
unblinking, indi↵erent, unobscured by flying friends. Where was
Ron? Where were Fred and Mr. Weasley? Where were Bill, Fleur,
Tonks, Mad-Eye, and Mundungus?
“Harry, give us a hand!” called Hagrid hoarsely from the door,
in which he was stuck again. Glad of something to do, Harry pulled
him free, then headed through the empty kitchen and back into the
sitting room, where Mrs. Weasley had staunched his bleeding now,
and by the lamplight Harry saw a clean, gaping hole where George’s
ear had been.
“How is he?”
Mrs. Weasley looked around and said, “I can’t make it grow
back, not when it’s been removed by Dark Magic. But it could
have been so much worse . . . He’s alive.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “Thank God.”
“Did I hear someone else in the yard?” Ginny asked.
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Chapter 5
“Hermione and Kingsley,” said Harry.
“Thank goodness,” Ginny whispered. They looked at each
other. Harry wanted to hug her, hold on to her; he did not even
care much that Mrs. Weasley was there, but before he could act
on the impulse there was a great crash from the kitchen.
“I’ll prove who I am, Kingsley, after I’ve seen my son, now back
o↵ if you know what’s good for you!”
Harry had never heard Mr. Weasley shout like that before. He
burst into the living room, his bald patch gleaming with sweat, his
spectacles askew, Fred right behind him, both pale but uninjured.
“Arthur!” sobbed Mrs. Weasley. “Oh thank goodness!”
“How is?”
Mr. Weasley dropped to his knees beside George. For the first
time since Harry had known him, Fred seemed to be lost for words.
He gaped over the back of the sofa at his twin’s wound as if he could
not believe what he was se eing.
Perhaps roused by the sound of Fred and their father’s arrival,
George stirred.
“How do you feel, Georgie?” whispered Mrs. Weasley.
George’s fingers groped at the side of his head.
“Saintlike” he murmured.
“What’s wrong with him?” croaked Fred, looking terrified: “Is
his mind a↵ected?”
“Saintlike,” repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up
at his brother. “You see . . . I’m holy. Holey. Fred: geddit?”
Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Color flooded Fred’s
pale face.
“Pathetic,” he told George. “Pathetic! With the whole wide
world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?”
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“Ah well,” said George, grinning at his tear-soaked mother.
“You’ll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum.”
He looked around.
“Hi, Harry—you are Harry, right?”
“Yeah, I am,” said Harry, moving closer to the sofa.
“Well, at least we got you back okay,” said George, “Why aren’t
Ron and Bill huddled round my sickbed?”
“They’re not back yet, George,” said Mrs. Weasley. George’s
grin faded. Harry glanced at Ginny and motioned her to accom-
pany him back outside. As they walked through the kitchen she
said in a low voice,
“Ron and Tonks should be back by now. They didn’t have a
long journey; Auntie Muriel’s not that far from here.”
Harry said nothing. He had been trying to keep fear at bay ever
since reaching the Burrow, but now it enveloped him, seeming to
crawl over his skin, throbbing in his chest, clogging his throat. As
they walked down the back steps into the dark yard, Ginny took
his hand.
Kingsley was striding backward and forward, glancing up at the
sky every time he turned. Harry was reminded of Uncle Vernon
pacing the living room a m illion years ago. Hagrid, Hermione, and
Lupin stood shoulder to shoulder, gaz ing upward in silence. None
of them looked around when Harry and Ginny joined their silent
vigil.
The minutes stretched into what might as well have b e en years.
The slightest breath of wind made them all jump and turn toward
the whispering bush or tree in the hope that one of the missing
Order members might leap unscathed from its leaves—
And then a broom materialized directly above them and
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streaked toward the ground—
“It’s them!” screame d Hermione.
Tonks landed in a long skid that sent earth and pebbles every-
where.
“Remus!” Tonks cried as she staggered o↵ the broom into
Lupin’s arms. His face was set and white: He seemed unable to
speak. Ron tripped dazedly toward Harry and Hermione.
“You’re okay,” he mumbled, before Hermione flew at him and
hugged him tightly.
“I thought—I thought—”
“’M all right,” said Ron, patting her on the back. “’M fine.”
“Ron was great,” said Tonks warmly, relinquishing her hold on
Lupin. “Wonderful. Stunned one of the Death Eaters, straight to
the head, and when you’re aiming at a moving target from a flying
broom—”
“You did?” said Hermione, gazing up at Ron with her arms
still around his neck.
“Always the tone of surprise,” he said a little grumpily, breaking
free. “Are we the last back?”
“No,” said Ginny, “we’re still waiting for Bill and Fleur and
Mad-Eye and Mundungus. I’m going to tell Mum and Dad you’re
okay, Ron—”
She ran back inside.
“So what kept you? What happened?” Lupin sounded almost
angry at Tonks.
“Bellatrix,” said Tonks. “She wants me quite as much as she
wants Harry, Remus, she tried very hard to kill me. I just wish
I’d got her, I owe Bellatrix. But we definitely injured Rodol-
phus. . . . Then we got to Ron’s Auntie Muriel’s and we’d missed
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our Portkey and she was fussing over us—”
A muscle was jumping in Lupin’s jaw. He nodded, but seemed
unable to say anything else.
“So what happened to you lot?” Tonks asked, turning to Harry,
Hermione, and Kingsley.
They recounted the stories of their own journeys, but all the
time the continued absence of Bill, Fleur, Mad-eye, and Mundun-
gus seemed to lie upon them like a frost, its icy bite harder and
harder to ignore.
“I’m going to have to get back to Downing Street, I should have
been there an hour ago,” said Kingsley finally, after a last sweeping
gaze at the sky. “Let me know when they’re back.”
Lupin nodded. With a wave to the others, Kingsley walked
away into the darkness toward the gate. Harry thought he heard
the faintest pop as Kingsley Disapparated just beyond the Burrow’s
boundaries.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley came racing down the back steps, Ginny
behind them. Both parents hugged Ron before turning to Lupin
and Tonks.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Weasley, “for our sons.”
“Don’t be silly, Molly,” said Tonks at once.
“How’s George?” asked Lupin.
“What’s wrong with him?” piped up Ron.
“He’s lost—”
But the end of Mrs. Weasley’s sentence was drowned in a gen-
eral outcry: A thestral had just s oared into sight and landed a few
feet from them. Bill and Fleur slid from its back, windswept but
unhurt.
“Bill! Thank God, thank God—”
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Mrs. Weasley ran forward, but the hug Bill bestowed upon her
was perfunctory. Looking directly at his father, he said, “Mad-
Eye’s dead.”
Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Harry felt as though something
inside him was falling, falling through the earth, leaving him for-
ever.
“We saw it,” said Bill; Fleur nodded, tear tracks glittering on
her cheeks in the light from the kitchen window. “It happened just
after we broke out of the circle: Mad-Eye and Dung were close by
us, they were heading north too, Voldemort—he can fly—went
straight for them. Dung panicked, I heard him cry out, Mad-Eye
tried to stop him, but he Disapparated. Voldemort’s curse hit Mad-
Eye full in the face, he fell backward o↵ his broom and—there was
nothing we could do, nothing, we had half a dozen of them on our
own tail—”
Bill’s voice broke.
“Of course you couldn’t have done anything,” said Lupin.
They all stood looking at each other. Harry could not quite
comprehend it. Mad-Eye’s dead; it could not be . . . Mad-Eye, so
tough, so brave, the consummate survivor . . .
At last it seemed to dawn on everyone, though nobody said
it, that there was no point waiting in the yard anymore, and in
silence they followed Mr. and Mrs. Weasley back into the Burrow,
and into the living room, where Fred and George were laughing
together.
“What’s wrong?” said Fred, scanning their faced as they en-
tered. “What happened? Who’s—?”
“Mad-Eye,” said Mr. Weasley. “Dead.”
The twins’ grins turned to grimaces of shock. Nobody seemed
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to know what to do. Tonks was crying silently into a handkerchief;
She had been close to Mad-Eye, Harry knew, his favorite and his
prot´eg´e at the Ministry of Magic. Hagrid, who had sat down on
the floor in the corner where he had most space, was dabbing at
his eyes with his tablecloth-sized handkerchief.
Bill walked over to the sideboard and pulled out a bottle of
firewhisky and some glasses.
“Here,” he said, and with a wave of his wand he sent twelve
full classes soaring through the room to each of them, holding the
thirteenth aloft. “Mad-Eye,”
“Mad-Eye,” they all said, and drank.
“Mad-Eye,” echoed Hagrid, a little late, with a hiccup.
The firewhisky seared Harry’s throat. It seemed to burn feel-
ing back into him, dispelling the numbness and sense of unreality,
filling him with something that was like courage.
“So Mundungus disappeared?” said Lupin, who had drained
his own glass in one.
The atmosphere changed at once. Everybody looked tense,
watching Lupin, both wanting him to go on, it seemed to Harry,
and slightly afraid of what they might hear.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Bill. “and I wondered that
too, one the way back here, because they seemed to be expecting us,
didn’t they? But Mundungus can’t have betrayed us. They didn’t
know there would be seven Harrys, that confused them the moment
we appeared, and in case you’ve forgotten, it was Mundungus who
suggested that little bit of skullduggery. Why wouldn’t he have told
them the essential point? I think Dung panicked, it’s as simple as
that. He didn’t want to come in the first place, but Mad-Eye made
him, and You-Know-Who went straight for them. It was enough
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to make anyone panic.”
“You-Know-Who acted exactly as Mad-Eye expected him to,”
sni↵ed Tonks, “Mad-Eye said he’s expect the real Harry to be with
the toughest, most skilled Aurors. He chased Mad-Eye first, and
when Mundungus gave them away he switched to Kingsley. . . .”
“Yes, and zat eez all very good,” snapped Fleur, “but still eet
does not explain ’ow zey knew we were moving ’Arry tonight, does
it? Somebody must ’ave been careless. Somebody let slip ze date
to an outsider. It is ze only explanation for zeim knowing ze date
but not ze ’ole plan.”
She glared around at them all, tear tracks still etched on her
beautiful face, silently daring any of them to contradict her. No-
body did. The dnly sound to break the silence was that of Hagrid
hiccuping from behind his handkerchief. Harry glanced at Hagrid,
who had just risked his own life to save Harry’s—Hagrid, whom
he loved, whom he trusted, who had once been tricked into giving
Voldemort crucial information in exchange for a dragon’s egg. . . .
“No,” Harry said out loud, and they all looked at him, surprised.
The firewhisky seemed to have amplified his voice. “I mean . . . if
somebody made a mistake,” Harry went on, “and let something
slip, I know they didn’t mean to do it. It’s not their fault,” he
repeated, again a little louder than he would usually have spoken.
“We’ve got to trust each other. I trust all of you, I don’t think
anyone in this room would ever sell me to Voldemort.”
More silence followed his words. They were all looking at him;
Harry felt a little hot again and drank some more firewhisky for
something to do. As he drank, he thought of Mad-eye. Mad-Eye
had always been scathing ab out Dumbledore’s willingness to trust
people.
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“Well said, Harry,” said Fred unexpectedly.
“Yeah, ’ear, ’e ar,” said George, with half a glance at Fred, the
corner of whose mouth twitched.
Lupin was wearing an odd expression as he looked at Harry. It
was close to pitying.
“You think I’m a fool?” demanded Harry.
“No, I think you’re like James,” said Lupin, “who would have
regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends.”
Harry knew what Lupin was getting at: that his father had
been betrayed by his friend, Peter Pettigrew. He felt irrationally
angry. He wanted to argue, but Lupin had turned away from him,
set down his glass upon a side table, and addressed Bill, “There’s
work to do, I can ask Kingsley whether—”
“No,” said Bill at once, “I’ll do it, I’ll come.”
“Where are you going?” said Tonks and Fleur together.
“Mad-Eye’s body,” said Lupin. “We need to recover it.”
“Can’t it—?” began Mrs. Weasley with an appealing look at
Bill.
“Wait?” said Bill. “Not unless you’d rather the Death Eaters
took it?”
Nobody spoke. Lupin and Bill said good bye and left.
The rest of them now dropped into chairs, all except Harry, who
remained standing. The suddenness and completeness of death was
with them like a presence.
“I’ve got to go to,” said Harry.
Ten pairs of startled eyes looked at him.
“Don’t be silly, Harry,” said Mrs. Weasley, “What are you
talking about?”
“I can’t stay here.”
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He rubbed his forehead; it was prickling again. It had not hurt
like this for more than a year.
“You’re all in danger while I’m here. I don’t want—”
“But don’t be so silly!” said Mrs. Weasley. “The whole point of
tonight was to get you here safely, and thank goodness it worked.
And Fleur’s agreed to get married here rather than in France, and
we’ve arranged everything so that we can all stay together and look
after you—”
She did not understand; she was making him feel worse, not
better.
“If Voldemort finds out I’m here—”
“But why should he?” asked Mrs. Weasley.
“There are a dozen places you might be now, Harry,” said Mr.
Weasley. “He’s got no way of knowing which safe house you’re in.”
“It’s not me I’m worried for!” said Harry.
“We know that,” said Mr. Weasley quietly. “but it would make
our e↵orts tonight seem rather pointless if you left.”
‘Yer not goin’ anywhere,” growled Hagrid. “Blimey, Harry, after
all we wen’ through ter get you here?”
“Yeah, what about my bleeding ear?” said George, hoisting
himself upon his cushions.
“I know that—”
“Mad—Eye wouldn’t want—”
“I KNOW!” Harry bellowed.
He felt beleaguered and blackmailed. Did they think he did not
know what they had done for him, didn’t they understand that
it was for precisely that reason that he wanted to go now, before
they had to su↵er any more on his b ehalf? There was a long and
awkward silence in which his scar continued to prickle and throb,
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and which was broken at last by Mrs. Weasley.
“Where’s Hedwig, Harry?” she said coaxingly. “We can put
her up with Pigwidgeon and giver her something to eat.”
His insides clenched like a fist. He could not tell her the truth.
He drank the last of his firewhisky to avoid answering.
“Wait till it gets out yeh did it again, Harry,” said Hagrid.
“Escaped him, fought him o↵ when he was right on top of yeh!”
“It wasn’t me,” said Harry flatly. “It was my wand. My wand
acted of its own accord.”
After a few moments, Hermione said gently, “But that’s impos-
sible, Harry. You mean that you did magic without meaning to,
you reacted instinctively.”
“No,” said Harry. “The bike was falling. I couldn’t have told
you where Voldemort was, but my wand spun in my hand and
found him and shot a spell at him, and it wasn’t even a s pell I
recognized. I’ve never made gold flames appear before.”
“Often,” said Mr. Weasley, “when you’re in a pressured situa-
tion you can often produce magic you’ve never dreamed of. Small
children often find, before they’re trained—”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Harry, through gritted teeth. His car
was burning. He felt angry and frustrated; he hated the idea that
they were all imagining him to have power to match Voldemort’s.
No one said anything. He knew that they did not believe him.
Now that he came to think of it, he had never heard of a wand
performing magic on its own before.
His scar seared with pain; it was all he could do not to moan
aloud. Mutter about fresh air, he set his glass down and left the
room.
As he crossed the dark yard, the great skeletal thestral looked
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Chapter 5
up, rustled its enormous batlike wings, then resumed its grazing.
Harry stopped at the gate into the garden, staring out at its over-
grown plants, rubbing his pounding forehead and thinking of Dum-
bledore.
Dumbledore would have believed him, he knew it. Dumbledore
would have known how and why Harry’s wand had acted indepen-
dently, because Dumbledore always had the answers; he had known
about wands, had explained to Harry the strange connection that
existed between his wand and Voldemort’s. . . . But Dumbledore,
like Mad-Eye, like Sirius, like his parents, like his poor owl, all
were gone where Harry could never talk to them again. He felt a
burning in his throat that had nothing to do with firewhisky. . . .
And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he
clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside
his head.
“You told me the problem would be solved by using another’s
wand!”
And into his m ind burst the vision of an emaciated old man
lying in rags upon a stone floor, screaming, a horrible, drawn-out
scream, a scream of unendurable agony. . . .
“No! No! I beg you, I be g you. . . .”
“You lied to Lord Voldemort, Ollivander!”
“I did not. . . . I swear I did not. . . .”
“You sought to help Potter, to help him escape me!”
“I swear I did not. . . . I believed a di↵erent wand would
work. . . .”
“Explain, then, what happened. Lucius’s wand is destroyed!”
“I cannot understand. . . . The connection . . . exists only . . . be-
tween your two wands. . . .”
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“Lies!”
“Please. . . . I beg you. . . .”
And Harry saw the white hand raise its wand and felt Volde-
mort’s surge of vicious anger, saw the frail old man on the floor
writhe in agony—
“Harry?”
It was over as quickly as it had come : Harry stoo d shaking in
the darkness, clutching the gate into the garden, his heart racing,
his scar still tingling. It was several moments before he realized
that Ron and Hermione were at his side.
“Harry, come back in the house,” Hermione whispered. “You
aren’t still thinking of leaving?”
“Yeah, you’ve got to stay, mate,” said Ron, thumping Harry on
the back.
“Are you all right?” Hermione asked, close enough now to look
into Harry’s face. “You look awful!”
“Well,” said Harry shakily, “I probably look better than Olli-
vander. . . .”
When he had finished telling them what he had seen, Ron looked
appalled, but Hermione downright terrified.
“But it was supposed to have stopped! Your scar—it wasn’t
supposed to do this anymore! You mustn’t let that connection
open up again—Dumbledore wanted you to close your mind!”
When he did not reply, she gripped his arm.
“Harry, he’s taking over the Ministry and the newspapers and
half the Wizarding world! Don’t let him inside your head too!”
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Chapter 6
The Ghoul in Pajamas
T
he shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in
the days that followed; Harry kept expecting to see
him stumping in through the back door like the other
Order members, who passed in and out to relay news.
Harry felt that nothing but action would assuage his feelings of
guilt and grief and that he ought to set out on his mission to find
and destroy Horcruxes as soon as possible.
“Well, you can’t do anything about the”—Ron mouthed the
word Horcruxes —“till you’re seventeen. You’ve still got the Trace
on you. And we can plan here as well as anywhere, can’t we? Or,”
he dropped his voice to a whisper, “d’you reckon you already know
where the You-Know-Whats are?”
“No,” Harry admitted.
“I think Hermione’s been doing a bit of research,” said Ron.
“She said she was saving it for when you got here.”
They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr. Weasley and Bill
had just left for work. Mrs. Weasley had gone upstairs to wake
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The Ghoul in Pajamas
Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had drifted o↵ to take a bath.
“The Trace’ll break on the thirty-first,” said Harry. “That
means I only need to stay here four days. Then I can—”
“Five days,” Ron corrected him firmly. “We’ve got to stay for
the wedding. They’ll kill us if we miss it.”
Harry understood “they” to mean Fleur and Mrs. Weasley.
“It’s one extra day,” said Ron, when Harry looked mutinous.
“Don’t they realize how important—?”
“’Course they don’t,” said Ron. “They haven’t got a clue. And
now you mention it, I want to talk to you about that.”
Ron glanced toward the door into the hall to check that Mrs.
Weasley was not returning yet, then leaned in c loser to Harry.
“Mum’s been trying to get it out of Hermione and me. What
we’re o↵ to do. She’ll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and
Lupin’ve both asked us as well, but when we said Dumbledore
told you not to tell anyone except us, they dropped it. Not Mum,
though. She’s determined.”
Ron’s prediction came true within hours. Shortly before lunch,
Mrs. Weasley detached Harry from the others by asking him to
help identify a lone man’s sock that she thought might’ve come out
of his rucksack. Once she had him cornered in the tiny scullery o↵
the kitchen, she started.
“Ron and Hermione seem to think that the three of you are
dropping out of Hogwarts,” she began in a light, casual tone.
“Oh,” said Harry. “Well, yeah. We are.”
The mangle turned of its own accord in a corner, wringing out
what looked like one of Mr. Weasley’s vests.
“May I ask why you are abandoning your education?” said Mrs.
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Chapter 6
Weasley.
“Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stu↵ to do,” mumbled Harry.
“Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.”
“What sort of ‘stu↵’?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t—”
“Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know and
I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!” said Mrs. Weasley.
Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced
himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they
were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not
help.
“Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley.
I’m sorry, Ron and Hermione don’t have to come, it’s their choice—
”
“I don’t see that you have to go either!” she snapped, dropping
all pretense now. “You’re barely of age, any of you! It’s utter
nonsense, if Dumbledore needed work doing, he had the whole
Order at his command! Harry, you must have misunderstood him.
Probably he was telling you something he wanted done, and you
took it to mean that he wanted you —”
“I didn’t misunderstand,” said Harry flatly. “It’s got to be me.”
He handed her back the single stock he was supposed to be
identifying, which was patterned with golden bulrushes.
“And that’s not mine, I don’t support Puddlemere United.”
“Oh, of course not,” said Mrs. Weasley with a sudden and
rather unnerving return to her casual tone. “I should have real-
ized. Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here, you won’t mind
helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will
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The Ghoul in Pajamas
you? There’s still so much to do.”
“No—I—of course not,” said Harry, disconcerted by this sud-
den change of subject.
“Sweet of you,” she replied, and she smiled as she left the
scullery.
From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley keep Harry, Ron, and Her-
mione so busy with preparations for the wedding that they hardly
had any time to think. The kindest explanation of this behavior
would have been that Mrs. Weasley wanted to distract them all
from thoughts of Mad-Eye and the terrors of their recent journey.
After two days of nonstop cutlery cleaning, of color-matching fa-
vors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming the garden and helping
Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canap´es, however, Harry started
to suspect her of a di↵erent motive. All the jobs she handed out
seems to keep him, Ron, and Hermione away from one another;
he had not had a chance to speak to the two of them alone since
the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing
Ollivander.
“I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting
together and planning, she’ll be able to delay your leaving,” Ginny
told Harry in an undertone, as they laid the table for dinner on
the third night of his stay.
“And then what does she think’s going to happen?” Harry mut-
tered. “Someone else might kill o↵ Voldemort while she’s holding
us here making vol-au-vents?”
He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.
“So it’s true?” She s aid, “That’s what you’re trying to do?”
“I—not—I was joking,” said Harry evasively.
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They stared at each other, and there was something more than
shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry b ec ame aware that
this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their
stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was
sure she was remembering them too. Both of them jumped as the
door opened, and Mr. Weasley, Kingsley, and Bill walked in.
They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now,
because the Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place
as the headquarters. Mr. Weasley had explained that after the
death of Dumbledore, their Secret-Keeper, each of the people to
whom Dumbledore had confided Grimmauld Place’s location had
become a Secret People in turn.
“And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the
power of the Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities
for the Death Eaters to get the secret out of somebody. We can’t
expect it to hold much longer.”
“But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address
by now?” asked Harry.
“Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case
he turns up there again. We hope they’ll b e strong enough both
to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about
the place, but we can’t be sure. It would have been insane to keep
using the place as headquarters now that its protection has b e com e
so shaky.”
The kitchen was so crowded that evening was difficult to ma-
neuver knives and forks. Harry found himself crammed beside
Ginny; the unsaid things that had just passed between them made
him wish they had been separated by a few more people. He was
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The Ghoul in Pajamas
trying to hard to avoid brushing her arm he could barely cut his
chicken.
“No news about Mad-Eye?” Harry asked Bill.
“Nothing,” replied Bill.
They had not been able to hold a funeral for Moody, because
Bill and Lupin had failed to recover his body. It had been difficult
to know where he might have fallen, given the darkness and the
confusion of the battle.
“The Daily Prophet hasn’t said a word about him dying or
about finding the body,” Bill went on. “But that doesn’t mean
much. It’s keeping a lot quiet these days.”
“And they still haven’t called a hearing about all the underage
magic I used es caping the Death Eaters?” Harry called across the
table to Mr. Weasley, who shook his head.
“Because they know I had no choice or because they don’t want
me to tell the world Voldemort attacked me?” “The latter, I think.
Scrimgeour doesn’t want to admit that You-Know-Who is as pow-
erful as he is, nor that Azkaban’s seen a mass breakout.”
“Yeah, why tell the public the truth?” said Harry, clenching his
knife so tightly that the faint scars on the back of his right hand
stood out, white against his skin: I must not tell lies.
“Isn’t anyone at the Ministry prepared to stand up to him?”
asked Ron angrily.
“Of course, Ron, but people are terrified.” Mr. Weasley replied,
“terrified that they will be next to disappear, their children the
next to be attacked! There are nasty rumors going around; I for
one don’t believe the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts re-
signed. She hasn’t been seen for weeks now. Meanwhile Scrim-
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Chapter 6
geour remains shut up in his office all day. I just hope he’s working
on a plan. There was a pause in which Mrs. Weasley magicked her
empty plates onto the work surface and served apple tart.
“We must decide ’ow you will be disguised,’Arry,” said Fleur,
once everyone had pudding. “For ze wedding,” she added, when he
looked confused. “Of course, none of our guests are De ath Eaters,
but we cannot guarantee zat zey will not let som ething slip after
zey ’ave ’ad champagne.”
From this, Harry gathered that she still s uspected Hagrid.
“Yes, good point,” said Mrs. Weasle y from the top of the table,
where she sat, spectacles perched on the end of her nose, scanning
an immense list of jobs that she had scribbled on a very long piec e
of parchment. “Now, Ron, have you cleaned out your room yet?”
“Why?” exclaimed Ron, slamming his spoon down and glaring
at his mother. “Why does my room have to be cleaned out? Harry
and I are both fine with it the way it is!”
“We are holding your brother’s wedding here in a few days’
time, young man—”
“And are they getting married in my bedroom?” asked Ron
furiously. “No! So why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left—”
“Don’t you talk to your mother like that,” said Mr. Weasley
firmly, “And do as you’re told.”
Ron scowled at both his parents, then picked up his spoon and
attacked the last few mouthfuls of his apple tart.
“I can help, some of it’s my mess.” Harry told Ron, but Mrs.
Weasley cut across him.
“No, Harry, dear, I’d much rather you helped Arthur muck out
the chickens, and Hermione, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d change
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the sheets for Monsieur and Madame Delacour, you know they’re
arriving at eleven tomorrow morning.”
But as it turned out, there was very little to do for the chickens,
“There’s no need to, er, mention it to Molly,” Mr. Weasley told
Harry, blocking his access to the c oop, “but, er, Ted Tonks sent me
most of what was left of Sirius’s bike, and, er, I’m hiding—that’s
to s ay, keeping—it in here. Fantastic stu↵! There’s an exhaust
gaskin, as I believe it’s called, the most magnificent battery, and
it’ll be a great opportunity to find out how brakes work. I’m going
to try and put it all back together again when Molly’s not—I mean,
when I’ve got time.”
When they returned to the house, Mrs. Weasley was nowhere
to be seen, so Harry slipped upstairs to Ron’s attic bedroom.
“I’m doing it, I’m doing—! Oh, it’s you,” said Ron in relief, as
Harry entered the room. Ron lay back down on the bed, which he
had evidently just vacated. The room was just as messy as it had
been all week; the only change was that Hermione was now sitting
in the far corner, her flu↵y ginger cat, Crookshanks, at her feet,
sorting books, some of which Harry recognized as his own, into two
enormous piles.
“Hi, Harry,” she said, as he sat down on his camp be d.
“And how did you manage to get away?”
“Oh, Ron’s mum forgot that she asked Ginny and me to change
the sheets yesterday,” said Hermione. She threw Numerology and
Grammatica onto one pile and Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts onto
the other.
“We were just talking about Mad-Eye,” Ron told Harry. “I
reckon he might have survived.”
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“But Bill saw him hit by the Killing Curse,” said Harry.
“Yeah, but Bill was under attack too,” said Ron. “How can he
be sure what he saw?”
“Even if the Killing curse missed, Mad Eye still fell about a
thousand feet,” said Hermione, now weighing Quidditch Teams of
Britain and Ireland in her hand.
“He could have used a Shield Charm—”
“Fleur said his wand was blasted out of his hand,” said Harry.
“Well, all right, if you want him to be dead,” said Ron grumpily,
punching his pillow into a more comfortable shape.
“Of course we don’t want him to be dead!” said Hermione,
looking shocked. “It’s dreadful that he’s dead! But we’re being
realistic!”
For the first time, Harry imagined Mad—Eye’s body, broken
as Dumbledore’s had been, yet with that one eye still whizzing in
its socket. He felt a stab of revulsion mixed with a bizarre desire
to laugh.
“The Death Eaters probably tidied up after themselves, that’s
why no one’s found him,” said Ron wisely.
“Yeah,” said Harry. “Like Barty Crouch, turned into a bone
and buried in Hagrid’s front garden. They probably transfigured
Moody and stu↵ed him—”
“Don’t!” squealed Hermione. Startled, Harry looked over just
in time to see her burst into tears over her copy of Spellman’s
Syllabary.
“Oh no,” said Harry, struggling to get up from the old camp
bed. “Hermione, I wasn’t trying to upset—”
But with a great creaking of rusty b e dsprings, Ron bounded o↵
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the bed and got there first. One arm around Hermione, he fished
in his jeans pocket and withdrew a revolting-looking handkerchief
that he had used to clean out the over earlier. Hastily pulling out
his wand, he pointed it at the rag and said, “Tergeo.”
The wand siphoned o↵ most of the grease. Looking rather
pleased with himself, Ron handed the slightly smoking handker-
chief to Hermione.
“Oh . . . thanks, Ron. . . . I’m sorry. . . .” She blew her nose and
hiccuped. “It’s just so awf-ful, isn’t it? R–right after Dumble-
dore . . . I j–just n–never imagined Mad-Eye dying, somehow, he
seemed so tough!”
“Yeah, I know,” said Ron, giving her a squeeze. “But you know
what he’d say to us if he was here? ”
“’C–constant vigilance,’” said Hermione, mopping her eyes.
“That’s right,” said Ron, nodding. “He’d tell us to learn from
what happened to him. And what I’ve learned is not to trust that
cowardly little squit, Mundungus.”
Hermione gave a shaky laugh and leaned forward to pick up
two more books. A second later, Ron had snatched his arm back
from around her shoulders; she had dropped The Monster Book of
Monsters on his foot. The book had broken free from its restraining
belt and snapped viciously at Ron’s ankle.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Hermione cried as Harry w renched the
book from Ron’s leg and retied it shut.
“What are you doing with all those books anyway?” Ron asked,
limping back to his bed.
“Just trying to decide which ones to take with us,” said Her-
mione. “When we’re looking for the Horcruxes.”
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“Oh, of course,” said Ron, clapping a hand to his forehead. “I
forgot we’ll be hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library.”
“Ha ha,” said Hermione, looking down at Spellman’s Syllabary.
“I wonder . . . will we need to translate runes? It’s possible. . . . I
think we’d better take it, to be safe.”
She dropped the syllabary onto the larger of the two piles and
picked up Hogwarts, A History.
“Listen,” said Harry.
He had sat up straight. Ron and Hermione looked at him with
similar mixtures of resignation and defiance.
“I know you said after Dumbledore’s funeral that you wanted
to come with me,” Harry began.
“Here he goes,” Ron said to Hermione, rolling his eyes.
“As we knew he would,” she sighed, turning back to the books.
“You know, I think I will take Hogwarts, A History. Even if we’re
not going back there, I don’t think I’d feel right if I didn’t have it
with—”
“Listen!” said Harry again.
“No, Harry, you listen,” said Hermione. “We’re coming with
you. That was decided months ago—years, really.”
“But—”
“Shut up,” Ron advised him.
“—are you sure you’ve thought this through?” Harry persisted.
“Let’s see,” said Hermione, slamming Travels with Trolls onto
the discarded pile with a rather fierce look. “I’ve been packing for
days, so we’re ready to leave at a moment’s notice, which for your
information has included doing some pretty difficult magic, not
to mention smuggling Mad-Eye’s whole stock of Polyjuice Potion
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right under Ron’s mum’s nose.
“I’ve also modified my parents’ memories so that they’re con-
vinced that they’re really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and
that their life’s ambition is to move to Australia, which they have
now done. That’s to make it more difficult for Voldemort to track
them down and interrogate them about me—or you, because un-
fortunately, I’ve told them quite a bit about you.
“Assuming I survive our hunt for the Horcruxes, I’ll find Mum
and Dad and lift the enchantment. If I don’t—well, I think I’ve
cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy. Wendell
and Monica Wilkins don’t know that they’ve got a daughter, you
see.”
Hermione’s eyes were swimming with tears again. Ron got back
o↵ the bed, put his arms around her once more, and frowned at
Harry as though reproaching him for lack of tact. Harry could not
think of anything to say, not least because it was highly unusual
for Ron to be teaching anyone else tact.
“I—Hermione, I’m sorry—I didn’t—”
“Didn’t realize that Ron and I know perfectly well what might
happen if we come with you? Well, we do. Ron, show Harry what
you’ve done.”
“Nah, he’s just eaten,” said Ron.
“Go on, he needs to know!”
“Oh, all right. Harry, come here.”
For the second time Ron withdrew his arm from around Her-
mione and stumped over to the door.
“C’mon.”
“Why?” Harry asked, following Ron out of the room onto the
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tiny landing.
“Descendo,” muttered Ron, pointing his wand at the low ceiling.
A hatch opened right over their heads and a ladder slid down to
their feet. A horrible, half-sucking, half, moaning sound came out
of the square hole, along with an unpleasant smell like open drains.
“That’s your ghoul, isn’t it?” asked Harry, who had never actu-
ally met the creature that sometimes disrupted the nightly silence.
“Yeah, it is,” said Ron, climbing the ladder. “Come and have
a look at him.”
Harry followed Ron up the few short steps into the tiny attic
space. His head and shoulders were in the room before he caught
sight of the creature curled up a few feet from him, fast asleep in
the gloom with its large mouth wide open.
“But it . . . it looks . . . do ghouls normally wear pajamas?”
“No,” said Ron. “Nor have they usually got red hair or that
number of pustules.”
Harry contemplated the thing, slightly revolted. It was human
in shape and size, and was wearing what, now that Harry’s eyes
became used to the darkness, was clearly an old pair of Ron’s
pajamas. He was also sure that ghouls were generally rather slimy
and bald, rather than distinctly hairy and covered in angry purple
blisters.
“He’s me, see?” said Ron.
“No,” said Harry. “I don’t.”
“I’ll explain it back in my room, the smell’s getting to me,” said
Ron. They climbed back down the ladder, which Ron returned to
the ceiling, and rejoined Hermione, who was still sorting books.
“Once we’ve left, the ghoul’s going to come and live down here
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in my room,” said Ron. “I think he’s really looking forward to it—
well, it’s hard to tell, because all he can do is moan and drool—but
he nods a lot when you mention it. Anyway, he’s going to be me
with spattergroit. Good, eh?”
Harry merely looked his confusion.
“It is!” said Ron, clearly frustrated that Harry had not grasped
the brilliance of the plan. “Look, when we three don’t turn up at
Hogwarts again, everyone’s going to think Hermione and I must be
with you, right? Which means the Death Eaters will go straight
for our families to see if they’ve got information on where you are.”
“But hopefully it’ll look like I’ve gone away with Mum and Dad;
a lot of Muggle—borns are talking about going into hiding at the
moment,” said Hermione.
“We can’t hide my whole family, it’ll look too fishy and they
can’t all leave their jobs,” said Ron. “So we’re going to put out the
story that I’m seriously ill with spattergroit, which is why I can’t
go back to school. If anyone comes calling to investigate, Mum
or dad can show then the ghoul in my bed, covered in pustules.
Spattergroit’s really contagious, so they’re not going to want to
go near him. It won’t matter that he can’t say anything, either,
because apparently you can’t once the fungus has spread to your
uvula.”
“And your mum and dad are in on this plan?” asked Harry.
“Dad is. He helped Fred and George transform the ghoul.
Mum . . . well, you’ve seen what she’s like. She won’t accept we’re
going till we’ve gone.”
There was silence in the room, broken only by gentle thuds
as Hermione continued to throw books into one pile or the other.
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Ron sat watching her, and Harry looked from one to the other.
The measures they had taken to protect their families made him
realize, more than anything else could have done, that they really
were going to come with him and that they knew exactly how dan-
gerous that would be. He wanted to tell them what that meant to
him, but he simply could not find words important enough.
Through the silence came the mu✏ed sounds of Mrs. Weasley
shouting from four floors below.
“Ginny’s probably left a speck of dust on a poxy napkin ring,”
said Ron. “I dunno why the Delacours have got to come two days
before the weddings.”
“Fleur’s sister’s a bridesmaid, she needs to be here for the re-
hearsal, and she’s too young to come on her own,” said Hermione,
as she pored indecisively over Break with a Banshee.
“Well, guests aren’t going to help Mum’s stress levels,” said
Ron.
“What we really need to decide,” said Hermione, tossing De-
fensive Magical Theory into the bin without a second glance and
picking up An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, “is where
we’re going after we leave here. I know you said you wanted
to go to Godric’s Hollow first, Harry, and I understand why,
but . . . well . . . shouldn’t we make the Horcruxes our priority?”
“If we knew where any of the Horcruxes were, I’d agree with
you,” said Harry, who did not believe that Hermione really under-
stood his desire to Godric’s Hollow. His parents grave s were only
part of the attraction: He had a strong, though inexplicable, feeling
that the place held answers for him. Perhaps it was simply because
it was there that he had survived Voldemort’s Killing Curse; now
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that he was facing the challenge of repeating the feat, Harry was
drawn to the place where it happened, wanting to understand.
“Don’t you think there’s a possibility that Voldemort’s keeping
a watch on Godric’s Hollow?” Hermione asked. “He might expect
you to go back and visit your parents’ graves once you’re free to
go wherever you like?”
This had not occurred to Harry. While he struggled to find a
counterargument, Ron spoke up, evidently following his own train
of thought.
“This R.A.B. person,” he said, “You know, the one who stole
the real locket?”
Hermione nodded.
“He said in his note that he was going to destroy it, didn’t he?”
Harry dragged his rucksack toward him and pulled out the fake
Horcrux in which R.A.B.’s note was still folded.
“‘I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon
as I can,’ ” Harry read out.
“Well, what if he did finish it o↵?” said Ron.
“Or she.” interposed Hermione.
“Whichever,” said Ron, “it’d be one less for us to do!”
“Yes, but we’re still going to have to try and trace the real
locket, aren’t we?” said Hermione, “to find out whether or not it’s
destroyed.”
“And once we get hold of it, how do you destroy a Horcrux?”
asked Ron.
“Well,” said Hermione, “I’ve been researching that.”
“How?” asked Harry. “I didn’t think there were any books on
Horcruxes in the library?”
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“There weren’t,” said Hermione, who had turned pink. “Dum-
bledore removed them all, but he—he didn’t destroy them.”
Ron sat up straight, wide-eyed.
“It—it wasn’t stealing!” said Hermione, looking from Harry to
Ron with a kind of desperation. “They were still library books,
even if Dumbledore had taken them o↵ the shelves. Anyway, if he
really didn’t want anyone to get at them, I’m sure he would have
made it much harder to—”
“Get to the point!” said Ron.
“Well . . . it was easy,” said Hermione in a small voice. “I
just did a Summoning Charm. You know—Accio. And . . . they
zoomed out of Dumbledore’s study window right into the girls’
dormitory.”
“But when did you do this?” Harry asked, regarding Hermione
with a mixture of admiration and incredulity.
“Just after his—Dumbledore’s—funeral,” said Hermione in an
even smaller voice. “Right after we agreed we’d leave school and
go and look for the Horcruxes. When I went back upstairs to get
my things it—it just occurred to me that the more we knew about
them, the better it would be . . . and I was alone in there . . . so I
tried . . . and it worked. They flew straight in through the open
window and I—I packed them.”
She swallowed and then said imploringly, “I can’t believe Dum-
bledore would have been angry, it’s not as though we’re going to
use the information to make a Horcrux, is it?”
“Can you hear us complaining?” said Ron. “Where are these
books anyway?”
Hermione rummaged for a moment and then extracted from
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the pile a large volume, bound in faded black leather. She looked
a little nauseated and held it as gingerly as if it were something
recently dead.
“This is the one that gives explicit instructions on how to make
a Horcrux. Secrets of the Darkest Art —it’s a horrible book, really
awful, full of evil magic. I wonder when Dumbledore removed it
from the library. . . . If he didn’t do it until he was headmaster, I
bet Voldemort got all the instruction he needed from here.”
“Why did he have to ask Slughorn how to make a Horcrux,
then, if he’d already read that?” as ked Ron.
“He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen
if you split your soul into seven,” said Harry. “Dumbledore was
sure Riddle already knew how to make a Horcrux but the time he
asked Slughorn about them. I think you’re right, Hermione, that
could easily have been where he got the information.”
“And the more I’ve read about them,” said Hermione, “the
more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually
made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of
your soul by ripping it, and that’s just by making one Horcrux!”
Harry remembered what Dumbledore had said about Voldemort
moving beyond “usual evil.”
“Isn’t there any way of putting yourself back together?” Ron
asked.
“Yes,” said Hermione with a hollow smile, “but it would be
excruciatingly painful.”
“Why? How do you do it?” asked Harry.
“Remorse,” said Hermione. “You’ve got to really feel what
you’ve done. There’s a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can
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destroy you. I can’t see Voldemort attempting it some how, can
you?”
“No,” said Ron, before Harry could answer. “So does it say
how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?”
“Yes,” said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if exam-
ining rotting entrails. “because it warns Dark wizards how strong
they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I’ve
read, what Harry did to Riddle’s diary was one of the really fool-
proof ways of destroying a Horcrux.”
“What, stabbing it with a basilisk fang?” asked Harry.
“Oh well, lucky we’ve got such a large supply of basilisk fangs,
then,” said Ron. “I was wondering what we were going to do with
them.”
“It doesn’t have to be a basilisk fang,” said Hermione patiently.
“It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can’t repair
itself. Basilisk venom only has one antidote, and it’s incredibly
rare—”
“—phoenix tears,” said Harry, nodding.
“Exactly,” said Hermione, “Our problem is that the are very
few substances as destructive as basilisk venom, and they’re all
dangerous to carry around with you. That’s a problem we’re going
to have to solve though, because ripping, smashing, or crushing a
Horcrux won’t do the trick. You’ve got to put it beyond magical
repair.”
“But even if we wreck the thing it lives in,” said Ron, “Why
can’t the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?”
“Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being.”
Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Her-
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mione hurried on, “Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron,
and ran you through with it, I wouldn’t damage your soul at all.”
“Which would be a real comfort to me, I’m sure,” said Ron.
Harry laughed.
“It should be, actually! But my point is that whatever happens
to your body, your soul will s urvive untouched,” said Hermione.
“But it’s the other way round with a Horcrux. The fragment of
soul inside it depends on its container, its enchanted body, for
survival, It can’t exist without it.”
“That diary sort of died when I stabbed it,” said Harry, remem-
bering ink pouring like blood from the punctured pages, and the
screams of the piece of Voldemort’s soul as it vanished.
“And once the diary was properly destroyed, the bit of soul
trapped in it could no longer exist. Ginny tried to get rid of the
diary before you did, flushing it away, but obviously it came back
good as new.”
“Hang on,” said Ron, frowning. “The bit of soul in that diary
was possessing Ginny, wasn’t it? How does that work, then?”
“While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul in-
side it can flit in and out of s ome one if they get too close to the
object. I don’t mean holding it for long, it’s nothing to do with
touching it,” she added before Ron could speak. “I m ean close
emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary, she made
herself incredibly vulnerable. You’re in trouble if you get too fond
of or dependent on the Horcrux.”
“I wonder how Dumbledore destroyed the ring?” said Harry.
“Why didn’t I ask him? I never really . . . ”
His voice tailed away: He was thinking of all the things he
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should have asked Dumbledore, and of how, since the headmaster
had died, it seemed to Harry that he had wasted so many oppor-
tunities when Dumbledore had b e en alive, to find out more . . . to
find out everything. . . .
The silence was shattered as the bedroom door flew open w ith a
wall-shaking crash. Hermione shrieked and dropped Secrets of the
Darkest Art. Crookshanks streaked under the bed, hissing indig-
nantly; Ron jumped o↵ the bed, skidded on a discarded Chocolate
Frog wrapper, and smacked his head on the opposite wall; and
Harry instinctively dived for his wand before realizing that he was
looking up at Mrs. Weasley, whose hair was disheveled and whose
face was contorted with rage.
“I’m so sorry to break up this cozy little gathering,” she said,
her voice trembling. “I’m sure you all need your rest . . . but there
are wedding presents s tacked in my room that need sorting out and
I was under the impression that you had agreed to help.”
“Oh yes,” said Hermione, looking terrified as she leapt on her
feet, sending books flying in every direction, “we will . . . we’re
sorry . . . ”
With an anguished look at Harry and Ron, Hermione, hurried
out of the room after Mrs. Weasley.
“It’s like being a house-elf,” complained Ron in an undertone,
still massaging his head as he and Harry followed. “Except without
the job satisfaction. The sooner this wedding’s over, the happier
I’ll be.”
“Yeah,” said Harry, “then we’ll have nothing to do except find
Horcruxes. . . . It’ll be like a holiday, won’t it?”
Ron started to laugh, but at the sight of the enormous pile
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of wedding presents waiting for them in Mrs. Weasley’s room,
stopped quite abruptly.
The Delacours arrived the following morning at eleven o’clock.
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were feeling quite res entful to-
ward Fleur’s family by this time, and it was with ill grace that
Ron stumped back upstairs to put on matching socks, and Harry
attempted to flatten his hair. Once they had all been deemed
smart enough, they trooped out into the sunny backyard to await
the visitors.
Harry had never seen the place looking so tidy. The rusty caul-
drons and old Wellington boots that usually littered the steps by
the back door were gone, replaced by two new Flutterby bushes
standing either side of the door in large pots, though there was no
breeze, the leaves waved lazily, giving an attractive rippling e↵ect.
The chickens had been shut away, the yard had been swept, and the
nearby garden had been pruned, plucked, and generally spruced up,
although Harry, who liked it in its overgrown state, thought that
it looked rather forlorn without its usually contingent of capering
gnomes.
He had lost track of how many se curity enhancements had been
placed upon the Burrow by both the Order and the Ministry; all
he knew was that it was no longer possible for anybody to travel
by magic directly into the place. Mr. Weasley had therefore gone
to meet the Delac ours on top of a nearby hill, where they were
to arrive by Portkey. The first sound of their approach was an
unusually high-pitched laugh, which turned out to be coming from
Mr. Weasley, who appeared at the gate moments later, laden with
luggage and leading a beautiful blonde woman in long, leaf-green
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robes, who could only be Fleur’s mother.
“Maman!” cried Fleur, rushing forward to embrace her.
“Papa!”
Monsieur Delacour was nowhere near as attractive as his wife;
he was a head shorter and extremely plump, with a little, pointed
black beard. However, he looked good-natured. B ouncing toward
Mrs. Weasley on high-heeled b oots, he kissed her twice on each
cheek, leaving her flustered.
“You ’ave been to much trouble,” he said in a deep voice. “Fleur
tells us you ’ave been working very ’ard.”
“Oh, it’s been nothing, nothing” trilled Mrs. Weasley. “No
trouble at all.”
Ron relieved his feelings by aiming a kick at a gnome who was
peering out from behind one of the new Flutterby bushes.
“Dear lady!” said Monsieur Delacour, still holding Mrs.
Weasley’s hand between his two plump ones and beaming. “We
are most honored at the approaching union of our two families! Let
me present my wife, Apolline.”
Madame Delacour glided forward and stooped to kiss Mrs.
Weasley too. “Enchant´ee,” she said. “Your ’usband ’as been telling
us such amusing stories!”
Mr. Weasley gave a maniacal laugh; Mrs. Weasley threw him
a look, upon which he becam e immediately silent and assumed an
expression appropriate to the sickbed of a close friend.
“And, of course, you ’ave met my leetle daughter, Gabrielle!”
said Monsieur Delacour. Gabrielle was Fleur in miniature; eleven
years old, with waist—length hair of pure, silvery blonde, she gave
Mrs. Weasley a dazzling smile and hugged her, then threw Harry
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a glowing look, batting her eyelashes. Ginny cleared her throat
loudly.
“Well, come in, do!” s aid Mrs. Weasley brightly, and she ush-
ered the Delacours into the house, with many “No, please!”s and
“After you!”s and “Not at all!”s.
The Delacours, as it soon transpired, were helpful, pleasant
guests. They were pleased with everything and keen to assist with
the preparations for the wedding. Monsieur Delacour pronounced
everything from the seating plan to the bridesmaids’ shows “Char-
mant!” Madame Delacour was m ost accomplished at household
spells and had the oven properly cleaned in a trice; Gabrielle fol-
lowed her elder sister around, trying to assist in any way she could
and jabbering away in rapid French.
On the downside, the Burrow was not built to accommodate so
many people. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were now sleeping in the sit-
ting room, having s houted down Monsieur and Madame Delac our’s
protests and insisted they take their bedroom. Gabrielle was sleep-
ing with Fleur in Percy’s old room, and Bill would be sharing with
Charlie, his best man, once Charlie arrived from Romania. Op-
portunities to make plans together became virtually nonexistent,
and it was in desperation that Harry, Ron, and Hermione took to
volunteering to feed the chickens just to es cape the overcrowded
house.
“But she still won’t leave us alone!” snarled Ron, as their sec-
ond attempt at a meeting in the yard was foiled by the appearance
of Mrs. Weasley carrying a large basket of laundry in her arms.
“Oh, good, you’ve fed the chickens,” she called as she ap-
proached them. “We’d better shut them away again before the
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men arrive tomorrow . . . to put up the tent for the wedding,”
she explained, pausing to lean against the henhouse. She looked
exhausted. “Millamant’s Magic Marquees . . . they’re very good.
Bill’s escorting them. . . . You’d better stay inside while they’re here,
Harry. I must say it does complicate organizing a wedding, having
all these security spells around the place.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harry humbly.
“Oh, don’t be silly, dear!” said Mrs. Weasley at once. “I didn’t
mean—well, your safety’s much more important! Actually, I’ve
been wanting to ask you how you want to celebrate your birthday,
Harry. Seventeen, after all, it’s an important day. . . .”
“I don’t want a fuss,” said Harry quickly, envisaging the ad-
dition strain this would put on them all. “Really, Mrs. Weasley,
just a normal dinner would be fine. . . . It’s the day before the wed-
ding. . . .”
“Oh, well, if you’re sure, dear. I’ll invite Remus and Tonks,
shall I? And how about Hagrid?”
“That’d b e great,” s aid Harry. “But please don’t go to loads of
trouble.”
“Not at all, not at all . . . It’s no trouble. . . .” She looked at
him, a long, searching look, then smiled a little sadly, straightened
up, and walked away. Harry watched as she waved her wand near
the washing line, and the damp clothes rose into the air to hang
themselves up, and suddenly he felt a great wave of remorse for
the inconvenience and the pain he was giving her.
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The Will of Albus
Dumbledore
H
e was walking along a mountain road in the cool blue
light of dawn. Far below, swathed in mist, was the
shadow of a small town. Was the man he sought down
there, the man he needed so badly he could think
of little else, the man who held the answer, the answer to his
problem . . . ?
“Oi, wake up,”
Harry op e ned his eyes. He was lying again on the camp bed in
Ron’s dingy attic room. The sun had not yet risen and the room
was still shadowy. Pigwidgeon was asleep with his head under his
tiny wing. The scar on Harry’s forehead was prickling.
“You were muttering in your sleep.”
“Was I?”
“Yeah. ‘Gregorovitch.’ You kept saying ‘Gregorovitch.’”
Harry was not wearing his glasses; Ron’s face appeared slightly
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blurred.
“Who’s Gregorovitch?”
“I dunno, do I? You were the one saying it.”
Harry rubbed his forehead, thinking. He had a vague idea he
had heard the name before, but he could not think where.
“I think Voldemort’s looking for him.”
“Poor bloke,” said Ron fervently.
Harry s at up, still rubbing his scar, now wide awake. He tried
to remember exactly what he had seen in the dream, but all that
came back was a mountainous horizon and the outline of the little
village cradled in a deep valley.
“I think he’s abroad.”
“Who, Gregorovitch?”
“Voldemort. I think he’s somewhere abroad, looking for Gre-
gorovitch. It didn’t look like anywhere in Britain.”
“You reckon you were seeing into his mind again?”
Ron sounded worried.
“Do me a favor and don’t tell Hermione,” said Harry. “Al-
though how she expects me to stop seeing stu↵ in my slee p . . . ”
He gazed up at little Pigwidgeon’s cage, thinking . . . Why was
the name “Gregorovitch” familiar?
“I think,” he said slowly, “he’s got something to do with Quid-
ditch. There’s some connection, but I can’t—I can’t think what it
is.”
“Quidditch?” said Ron. “Sure you’re not thinking of Gorgov-
itch?”
“Who?”
“Dragomir Gorgovitch, Chaser, transferred to the Chudley Can-
nons for a record fee two years ago. Record holder for mos t Qua✏e
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drops in a season.”
“No,” said Harry, “I’m definitely not think of Gorgovitch.”
“I try not to either,” said Ron. “Well, happy birthday anyway.”
“Wow—that’s right, I forgot! I’m seventeen.”
Harry seized the wand lying beside his camp bed, pointed it at
the cluttered desk where he had left his glasses, and said “Accio
Glasses!” Although they were only around a foot away, there was
something immensely satisfying about seeing them zoom toward
him, or at least until they poked him in the eye.
“Slick,” snorted Ron.
Reveling in the removal of his Trace, Harry sent Ron’s pos-
sessions flying around the room, causing Pigwidgeon to wake up
flutter excitedly around his cage. Harry also tried tying the laces
of his trainers by magic (the resultant knot took several minutes to
untie by hand) and, purely for the pleasure of it, turned the orange
robes on Ron’s Chudley Cannons posters right blue.
“I’d do your fly by hand, though,” Ron advised Harry, snig-
gering when Harry immediately checked it. “Here’s your present.
Unwrap it up here, it’s not for my mother’s eyes.”
“A book?” said Harry as he took the rectangular parcel. “Bit
of a departure from tradition, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t your average book,” said Ron. “It’s pure gold:
Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything
you need to know about girls. If only I’d had this last year I’d
have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I wouldn’t
have known how to get going with . . . Well, Fred and George gave
me a copy, and I’ve learned a lot. You’d be surprised, it’s not all
about wandwork, either.”
When they arrived in the kitchen they found a pile of prese nts
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waiting on the table. Bill and Monsieur Delacour were finishing
their breakfasts, while Mrs. Weasley stood chatting to them over
the frying pan.
“Arthur told me to wish you a happy seventeenth, Harry,” said
Mrs. Weasley, beaming at him. “He had to leave early for work,
but he’ll be back for dinner. That’s our present on top.”
Harry sat down, took the square parcel she had indicated, and
unwrapped it. Inside was a watch very like the one Mr. and Mrs.
Weasley had given Ron for his seventeenth; it was gold, with stars
circling around the face instead of hands.
“It’s traditional to give a wizard a watch when he comes of age.”
said Mrs. Weasley, watching him anxiously from beside the corner.
“I’m afraid that one isn’t new like Ron’s, it was actually my brother
Fabian’s and he wasn’t terribly careful with his possessions, it’s a
bit dented on the back, but—”
The rest of her speech was lost; Harry had got up and hugged
her. He tried to put a lot of unsaid things into the hug and perhaps
she understood them, because she patted his check clumsily when
he released her, then waved her wand in a slightly random way,
causing half a pack of bacon out of the frying pan onto the floor.
“Happy birthday, Harry!” said Hermione, hurrying into the
kitchen and adding her own present to the top of the pile. “It’s
not much, but I hope you like it. What did you get him?” she
added to Ron, who seemed not to hear her.”
“Come on, then, open Hermione’s!” said Ron.
She had bought him a new Sneakoscope. The other packages
contained an enchanted razor from Bill and Fleur. (“Ah yes, zis will
give you ze smoothest shave you will eve ’ave,” Monsieur Delacour
assured him, “but you must tell it clearly what you want . . . ozzer-
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wise you might find you ’ave a leetle less hair zan you would
like. . . .”), chocolates from the Delacours, and an enormous box
of the latest Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes merchandise from Fred
and George.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione did not linger at the table, as the
arrival of Madame Delacour, Fleur, and Gabrielle made the kitchen
uncomfortably crowded.
“I’ll pack these for you,” Hermione said brightly, taking Harry’s
presents out of his arms as the three of them headed back upstairs.
“I’m nearly done, I’m just waiting for the rest of your underpants
to come out of the wash, Ron—”
Ron’s splutter was interrupted by the opening of a door on the
first-floor landing.
“Harry, will you come in here a moment?”
It was Ginny, Ron came to an abrupt halt, but Hermione took
him by the elbow rugged him on up the stairs. Feeling nervous,
Harry followed Ginny into her room.
He had never be en inside it before. It was small, but bright.
There was a large poster of the Wizarding band the Weird Sisters
on one wall and a picture of Gwenog Jones, Captain of the all-witch
Quidditch team the Holyhead Harpies, on the other. A desk stood
facing the open window, which looked out over the orchard where
he and Ginny had once played two-a-side Quidditch with Ron and
Hermione, and which now housed a large, pearly white marquee.
The golden flag on top was level with Ginny’s window.
Ginny looked up into Harry’s face, took a deep breath, and said,
“Happy seventeenth.”
“Yeah . . . thanks.”
She was looking at him steadily; he, however, found it difficult
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to look back at her; it was like gazing into a brilliant light.
“Nice view,” he said feebly, pointing toward the window.
She ignored this. He could not blame her,
“I couldn’t think what to get you,” she said.
“You didn’t have to get me anything.” She disregarded this
too.
“I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because
you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.”
He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful; that was
one of the many wonderful things about Ginny, she was rarely
weepy. He had sometimes thought that having six brother must
have toughened her up.
She took a step closer to him.
“So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember
me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re o↵ doing
whatever you’re doing.”
“I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the
ground, to be honest.”
“There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,” she whispered,
and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before,
and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion better
than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny,
the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-
smelling hair—
The door banged open behind them and they jumped apart.
“Oh,” said Ron pointedly. “Sorry.”
“Ron!” Hermione was just behind him, slightly out of breath.
There was a strained silence, then Ginny said in a flat little voice,
“Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry.”
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Ron’s ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry
wanted to slam the door in their faces, but it felt as though a
cold drain had entered the room when the door appeared, and his
shining moment had popped like a soap bubble. All the reasons
for ending his relationship with Ginny, for staying well away from
her, seeme d to have slunk inside the room with Ron, and all happy
forgetfulness was gone.
He looked at Ginny wanting to say something, though he hardly
knew what, but she had turned her back on him. He thought that
she might have succumbed, for once, to tears. He could not do
anything to comfort her in front of Ron.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, and followed the other two out of
the bedroom.
Ron marched downstairs, through the still-crowded kitchen and
into the yard, and Harry kept pace with him all the way, Hermione
trotting along behind them looking scared.
Once he reached the seclusion of the freshly mow lawn, Ron
rounded on Harry.
“You ditched her. What are you doing now, messing her
around?”
“I’m not messing her around,” said Harry, as Hermione caught
up with them.
“Ron—”
But Ron held up a hand to silence her.
“She was really cut up when you ended it—”
“So was I. You know why I stopped it, and it wasn’t because I
wanted to.”
“Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get
her hopes up again—”
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“She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not ex-
pecting us to—to end up married, or—”
“As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny
in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger.
In one spiraling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was
free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but
Voldemort ahead.
“If you keep groping her every chance you get—”
“It won’t happen again,” said Harry harshly. The day was
cloudless, but he felt as though the sun had gone in. “Okay?”
Ron looked half resentful, half sheepish; he rocked backward
and forward on his feet for a moment, then said, “Right then, well,
that’s . . . yeah.”
Ginny did not seek another one-to-one meeting with Harry for
the rest of the day, nor by any look or gesture did she show that
they had shared more than p olite conversation in her room. Nev-
ertheless, Charlie’s arrival came as a relief to Harry. It provided
a distraction, watching Mrs. Weasley force Charlie into a chair,
raise her wand threateningly, and announce that he was about to
get a proper haircut.
As Harry’s birthday dinner would have stretched the Burrow’s
kitchen to breaking point even before the arrival of Charlie, Lupin,
Tonks, and Hagrid, several tables were placed end to end in the
garden. Fred and George bewitched a number of purple lanterns,
all emblazoned with a large number 17, to hang in m idair over the
guests. Thanks to Mrs. Weasley’s ministrations, George’s wound
was neat and clean, but Harry was not yet used to the dark hole
in the side of his head, despite the twins’ many jokes about it.
Hermione made purple and gold streamers erupt from the end
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of her wand and drape themse lves artistically over the trees and
bushes.
“Nice,” said Ron, as with one final flourish of her wand, Her-
mione turned the leaves on the crabapple tree to gold. “You’ve
really got an eye for that sort of thing.”
“Thank you, Ron!” said Hermione, looking both pleased and a
little confused. Harry turned away, smiling to himself. He had a
funny notion that he would find a chapter on compliments when he
found time to peruse his copy of Twelve Fail-Safe ways to Charm
Witches; he caught Ginny’s eye and grinned at her before remem-
bering his promise to Ron and hurriedly striking up a conversation
with Monsieur Delacour.
“Out of the way, out of the way!” sang Mrs. Weasley, coming
through the gate with what appeared to be a giant, beach-ball-
sized Snitch floating in front of her. Seconds later Harry realized
that it was his birthday cake, which Mrs. Weasley was suspending
with her wand, rather than risk carrying it over the uneven ground.
When the cake had finally landed in the middle of the table, Harry
said,
“That looks amazing, Mrs. Weasley.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, dear.” she said fondly. Over her shoulder,
Ron gave Harry the thumbs-up and mouthed, Good one.
By seven o’clock all the guests had arrived, led into the house by
Fred and George, who had waited for them at the end of the lane.
Hagrid had honored the occasion by wearing his best, and horrible,
hairy brow suit. Although Lupin smiled as he shook Harry’s hand,
Harry thought he looked rather unhappy. It was all very odd;
Tonks, beside him, looked simply radiant.
“Happy birthday, Harry,” she said, hugging him tightly.
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“Seventeen, eh!” said Hagrid as he accepted a bucket-sized
glass of wine from Fred. “Six years ter the day we met, Harry,
d’yeh remember it?”
“Vaguely,” said Harry, grinning up at him. “Didn’t you smash
down the front door, give Dudley a pig’s tail, and tell me I was a
wizard?’
“I forge’ the details,” Hagrid Chortled. “All righ’, Ron, Her-
mione?”
“We’re fine,” said Hermione. “How are you?”
“Ar, not bad. Bin busy, we got some newborn unicorns. I’ll
show yeh when yeh get back—” Harry avoided Ron’s and Her-
mione’s gazes and Hagrid rummaged in his pocket. “Here, Harry—
couldn’ think what ter get yeh, but then I remembere d this.” He
pulled out a s mall, slightly furry drawstring pouch with a long
string, evidently intended to be worn around the neck. “Mokeskin.
Hide anythin’ in there an’ no one but the owner can get it out.
They’re rare, them.”
“Hagrid, thanks!”
“S’nothin’,” said Hagrid with a wave of a dustbin-lid-sized hand,
“An’ there’s Charlie! Always liked him—hey! C harlie!”
Charlie approached, running his hand slightly ruefully over his
new, brutally short haircut. He was shorter than Ron, thickset,
with a number of burns and scratches up his muscly arms.
“Hi, Hagrid, how’s it going?”
“Bin meanin’ ter write fer ages. How’s Norbert doin’”
“Norbert?” Charlie laughed. “The Norwegian Ridgeback? We
call her Norberta now.”
“Wha—Norbert’s a girl?”
“Oh yeah,” said Charlie.
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“How can you tell?” asked Hermione
“They’re a lot more vicious.” said Charlie. He looked over his
shoulder and dropp e d his voice. “Wish Dad would hurry up and
get here. Mum’s ge tting edgy.”
They all looked over at Mrs. Weasley. She was trying to talk
to Madame Delacour while glancing repeatedly at the gate.
“I think we’d better start without Arthur,” she called to the
garden at large after a moment or two. “He must have been held
up at—oh!”
They all saw it at the same time: a streak of light that came
flying across the yard and onto the table, where it resolved itself
into a bright silver weasel, which stood on its hind legs and spoke
with Mr. Weasley’s voice.
“Minister of Magic coming with me.”
The Patronus dissolved into thin air, leaving Fleur’s family
peering in astonishment where it had vanished.
“We shouldn’t be here,” said Lupin at once. “Harry—I’m
sorry—I’ll explain another time—”
He seized Tonks’s wrist and pulled her away; the reached the
fence, climbed over it, and vanished from sight. Mrs. Weasley
looked bewildered.
“The Minister—but why—? I don’t understand—”
But there was no time to discuss the matter; a second later, Mr.
Weasley had appeared out of thin air at the gate, accompanied by
Rufus Scrimgeour, instantly recognizable by his mane of grizzled
hair.
The two newcomers marched across the yard toward the garden
and the lantern-lit table, where everybody sat in silence, watching
them draw closer. As Scrimgeour came within range of the lantern
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light, Harry saw that he looked much older than the last time they
had met, scraggy and grim.
“Sorry to intrude,” said Scrimgeour, as he limped to a halt
before the table. “Especially as I can see that I am gate crashing
a party.”
His eyes lingered for a moment on the giant Snitch cake.
“Many happy returns.”
“Thanks,” said Harry.
“I require a private word with you,” Scrimgeour went on. “Also
with Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Hermione Granger.”
“Us?” said Ron, sounding surprised, “Why us?”
“I shall tell you that when we are somewhere more private,”
said Scrimgeour. “Is there such a place?” he demanded of Mr.
Weasley.
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Weasley, who looked nervous. “The,
er, sitting room, why don’t you use that?”
“You can lead the way,” Scrimgeour said to Ron. “There will
be no need for you to accompany us, Arthur.”
Harry saw Mr. Weasley exchange a worried look with Mrs.
Weasley as he, Ron, and Hermione stood up. As they led the
way back to the house in silence, Harry knew that the other two
were thinking the same as he was: Scrimgeour must, somehow,
have learned that the three of them were planning to drop out of
Hogwarts.
Scrimgeour did not spe ak as they all passed through the messy
kitchen and into the Burrow’s sitting room. Although the garden
had been full of soft golden evening light, it was already dark in
here. Harry flicked his wand at the oil lam ps as he entered and they
illuminated the shabby but cozy room. Scrimgeour sat himself in
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the sagging armchair that Mr. Weasley normally occupied, leaving
Harry, Ron, and Hermione to squeeze side by side onto the sofa.
Once they had done so, Scrimgeour spoke,
“I have some questions for the three of your and I think it will
be best if we do it individually. If you two“—he p ointed at Harry
and Hermione—” can wait upstairs, I will start with Ronald.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Harry, while Hermione nod-
ded vigorously. “You can speak to us together, or not at all.”
Scrimgeour gave Harry a cold, appraising look. Harry had
the impression that the minister was wondering it was worthwhile
opening hostilities this early.
“Very well then, together,” he said, shrugging. He cleared his
throat. “I am here, as I’m sure you know, because of Albus Dum-
bledore’s will.”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at one another.
“A surprise, apparently? You were not aware the that Dumble-
dore had left you anything?”
“A—all of us?” said Ron. “Me and Hermione too?”
“Yes, all of—”
But Harry interrupted.
“Dumbledore died over a month ago. Why has it taken this
long to give us what he left us?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Hermione, before Scrimgeour could
answer. “They wanted to examine whatever he’s left us. You had
no right to do that!” she said, and her voice trembled slightly.
“I had every right,” said Scrimgeour dismissively. “The De-
cree for Justifiable Confiscation gives the Ministry the power to
confiscate the contents of a will—”
“That law was created to stop wizards passing on Dark ar-
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tifacts,” said Hermione, “and the Ministry is supposed to have
evidence that the deceased’s possessions are illegal before seizing
them! Are you telling me that you thought Dumbledore was trying
to pass us something cursed?”
“Are you planning to follow a career in Magical Law, Miss
Granger?” asked Scrimgeour.
“No, I’m not,” retorted Hermione. “I’m hoping to do some
good in the world!”
Ron laughed, Scrimgeour’s eyes flickered toward him and away
again as Harry spoke.
“So why have you decided to let us have our things now? Can’t
you think of a pretext to keep them?”
“No, it’ll be because the thirty-one days are up,” said Hermione
at once. “They can’t keep the objects longer than that unless they
can prove they’re dangerous. Right?”
“Would you say you were close to Dumbledore, Ronald?” asked
Scrimgeour, ignoring Hermione. Ron looked startled.
“Me? No—not really . . . It was always Harry who . . . ”
Ron looked around at Harry and Hermione to see Hermione
giving him a stop—talking—now! sort of look, but the damage
was done: Scrimgeour looked as though he had heard exactly what
he had expe cted, and wanted, to hear. He swooped like a bird of
prey upon Ron’s answer.
“If you were not very close to Dumbledore, how do you ac-
count for the fact that he remembered you in his will? He
made exc eptionally few personal bequests. The vast majority of
his possessions—his private library, his magical instruments, and
other personal e↵ects—were left to Hogwarts. Why do you think
you were singled out?”
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“I . . . dunno,” said Ron, “I . . . when I say we weren’t close . . . I
mean, I think he liked me. . . .”
“You’re being modest, Ron,” said Hermione. “Dumbledore was
very fond of you.”
This was stretching the truth to breaking points as far as Harry
knew, Ron and Dumbledore had never been alone together, and
direct contact between them had been negligible. However, Scrim-
geour did not seem to be listening. He put his hand inside his cloak
and drew out a drawstring pouch much larger than the one Hagrid
had given Harry. From it, he removed a scroll of parchment which
he unrolled and read aloud.
“‘The Last Will and Testament of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian
Dumbledore’ . . . Yes, here we are. . . .’To Ronald Bilius Weasley, I
leave my Deluminator, in the hope that he will remember me w hen
he uses it.’”
Scrimgeour took something from the bag an object that Harry
had seen b e fore. It looked something like a silver cigarette lighter,
but it had, he knew, the power to suck all light from a place, and
restore it, with a simple click. Scrimgeour leaned forward and
passed the Deluminator to Ron, who took it and turned it over in
his fingers, looking stunned.
“That is a valuable object,” said Scrimgeour, watching Ron. “It
may even be unique. Certainly it is of Dumbledore’s own design.
Why would he have left you an item so rare?”
Ron shook his head, looking bewildered.
“Dumbledore must have taught thousands of students,” Scrim-
geour persevered. “Yet the only one he remembered in his w ill are
you three. Why is that? To what use did he think you would put
his Deluminator, Mr. Weasley?”
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“Put out lights, I s’pose,” mumbled Ron. “What else could I
do with it?”
Evidently Scrimgeour had no suggestions. After squinting at
Ron for a moment or two, he turned back to Dumbledore’s will.
“‘To Miss Hermione Jean Granger, I leave my copy of The
Tales of Beedle the Bard, in the hope that she will find it enter-
taining and instructive.’”
Scrimgeour now pulled out of the bag a small book that looked
as ancient as the copy of Secrets of the Darkest Arts upstairs. Its
binding was stained and peeling in places. Hermione took it from
Scrimgeour without a word. She held the book in her lap and gazed
at it. Harry saw that the title was in runes; he had never learned
to read them. As he looked, a tear splashed onto the embossed
symbols.
“Why do you think Dumbledore left you that book, Miss
Granger?” asked Scrimgeour
“He . . . he knew I liked books,” said Hermione in a thick voice,
mopping her eyes with her sleeve.
“But why that particular book?”
“I don’t know. He must have thought I’d enjoy it.”
“Did you ever discuss codes, or any means of passing secret
messages, with Dumbledore?”
“No, I didn’t,” said He rmione, still wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
“And if the Ministry still hasn’t found any hidden codes in this
book in thirty-one days, I doubt that I will.”
She suppressed a sob. They were wedged together so tightly
that Ron had difficultly extracting his arm to put it around Her-
mione’s shoulders. Scrimgeour turned back to the will.
“‘To Harry James Potter,’” he read, and Harry’s insides con-
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tracted with a sudden excitement, “‘I leave the Snitch he caught in
his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a reminder o f the rewards
of perseverance and skill.’”
As Scrimgeour pulled out the tiny, walnut-sized golden ball,
its silver wings fluttered rather feebly, and Harry could not help
feeling definite sense of anticlimax.
“Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?” asked Scrim-
geour.
“No idea,” said Harry. “For the reasons you just read out, I
suppose . . . to remind me what you can get if you . . . persevere
and whatever it was.”
“You think this is a mere symbolic keepsake, then?”
“I suppose so,” said Harry. “What else could it be?”
“I’m asking the questions,” said Scrimgeour, shifting his chair
a little closer to the sofa. Dusk was really falling outside now;
the marquee beyond the windows towered ghostly white over the
hedge.
“I notice that your birthday cake is in the shape of a Snitch,”
Scrimgeour said to Harry. “Why is that?”
Hermione laughed derisively.
“Oh, it can’t be a reference to the fact that Harry’s a great
Seeker, that’s way to o obvious,” she said. “There must be a secret
message from Dumbledore hidden in the icing!”
“I don’t think there’s anything hidden in the icing,” said Scrim-
geour, “but a Snitch would be a very good hiding place for a small
object. You know why, I’m sure?”
Harry shrugged. Hermione, however, answered: Harry thought
that answering questions correctly was such a deeply ingrained
habit she could not suppress the urge.
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“Because Snitches have flesh memories,” she said.
“What?” said Harry and Ron together; both considered Her-
mione’s Quidditch knowledge negligible.
“Correct,” said Scrimgeour. “A Snitch is not touched by bare
skin before it is released, not even by the maker, who wears gloves.
It carries an enchantment by w hich it can identify the first hu-
man to lay hands upon it, in the case of disputed capture. This
Snitch”—he held up the tiny golden ball—“will remember your
touch, Potter. It occurs to me that Dumbledore, who had prodi-
gious magical skill, whatever his other faults, might have enchanted
this Snitch so that it will open only for you.”
Harry’s heart was beating rather fast. He was sure that Scrim-
geour was right. How could he avoid taking the Snitch with his
bare hand in front of the Minister?
“You don’t say anything,” said Scrimgeour. “Perhaps you al-
ready know what the Snitch contains?”
“No,” said Harry, still wondering how he could appear to touch
the Snitch without really doing so. If only he knew Legilimency, re-
ally knew it, and could read Hermione’s mind; he could practically
hear her brain whirring beside him.
“Take it,” said Scrimgeour quietly.
Harry met the minister’s yellow eyes and knew he had no option
but to obey. He held out his hand, and Scrimgeour leaned forward
again and placed the Snitch, slowly and deliberately, into Harry’s
palm. Nothing happened. As Harry’s fingers closed around the
Snitch, its tired wings fluttered and were still. Scrimgeour, Ron,
and Hermione continued to gaze avidly at the now partially con-
cealed ball, as if still hoping it might transform in some way.
“That was dramatic,” said Harry coolly. Both Ron and Her-
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The Will of Albus Dumbledore
mione laughed.
“That’s all, then, is it?” asked Hermione, making to prise her-
self o↵ the sofa.
“Not quite,” s aid Scrimgeour, who looked bad tempered now,
“Dumbledore left you a second bequest, Potter.”
“What is it?” asked Harry, excitement rekindling.
Scrimgeour did not bother to read from the will this time.
“The sword of Godric Gryffindor,” he said.
Hermione and Ron both sti↵ened. Harry looked around for a
sign of the ruby-encrusted hilt, but Scrimgeour did not pull the
sword from the leather pouch, which in any case looked much too
small to contain it.
“So where is it?” Harry asked suspiciously.
“Unfortunately,” said Scrimgeour, “that sword was not Dum-
bledore’s to give away. T he sword of Godric Gryffindor is an im-
portant historical artifact, and as such, belongs—”
“It belongs to Harry!” said Hermione hotly. “It chose him, he
was the one who found it, it came to him out of the Sorting Hat—”
“According to reliable historical sources, the sword may present
itself to any worthy Gryffindor,” said Scrimgeour. “That does not
make it the exclusive property of Mr. Potter, whatever Dumble-
dore may have decided.” Scrimgeour scratched his badly shaven
cheek, scrutinizing Harry. “Why do you think—?”
“—Dumbledore wanted to give me the sword?” said Harry,
struggling to keep his temper. “Maybe he thought it would look
nice on my wall.”
“This is not a joke, Potter!” growled Scrimgeour. “Was
it because Dumbledore believed that only the sword of Godric
Gryffindor could defeat the Heir of Slytherin? Did he wish to give
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you that sword, Potter, because he believed, as do many, that you
are the one destined to destroy He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?”
“Interesting theory,” said Harry. “Has anyone ever tried stick-
ing a sword in Voldemort? Maybe the Ministry should put some
people onto that, instead of wasting their time stripping down De-
luminators or cove ring up breakouts from Azkaban. So this is what
you’ve been doing, Minister, shut up in your offic e, trying to break
open a Snitch? People are dying—I was nearly one of them—
Voldemort chased me across three countries, he killed Mad-Eye
Moody, but there’s been no word about any of that from the Min-
istry, has there? And you still expect us to cooperate with you!”
“You go too far!” shouted Scrimgeour, standing up; Harry
jumped to his feet too. Scrimgeour limped toward Harry and
jabbed him hard in the chest with the point of his wand: It singed
a hole in Harry’s T-shirt like a lit cigarette.
“Oi!” said Ron, jumping up and raising his own wand, but
Harry said,
“No! D’you want to give him an excuse to arrest us?”
“Remembered you’re not at school, have you?” said Scrim-
geour, breathing hard into Harry’s face. “Remembered that I am
not Dumbledore, who forgave your insolence and insubordination?
You may wear that scar like a c rown, Potter, but it is not up to a
seventeen-year-old boy to tell me how to do my job! It’s time you
learned some respect!”
“It’s time you earned it.” said Harry.
The floor trembled; there was a sound of running footsteps,
then the door to the sitting room burst open and Mr. and Mrs.
Weasley ran in.
“We—we thought we heard—” began Mr. Weasley, looking
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The Will of Albus Dumbledore
thoroughly alarmed at the sight of Harry and the Minister virtually
nose to nose.
“—raised voices,” panted Mrs. Weasley.
Scrimgeour took a couple of steps back from Harry, glancing at
the hole he had made in Harry’s T-shirt. He seemed to regret his
loss of temper.
“It—it was nothing,” he growled. “I . . . regret your attitude,”
he said, looking Harry full in the face once more. “You seem to
think that the Ministry does not desire what you—what Dumble-
dore—desired. We ought to be working together.”
“I don’t like your methods, Minister,” said Harry. “Remem-
ber?”
For the second time, he raised his right fist and displayed to
Scrimgeour the scars that still showed white on the back of it,
spelling I must not tell lies. Scrimgeour’s expression hardened.
He turned away without another word and limped from the room.
Mrs. Weasley hurried after him; Harry heard her stop at the back
door. After a minute or so she called, “He’s gone!”
“What did he want?” Mr. Weasley asked, looking around at
Harry, Ron, and Hermione as Mrs. Weasley came hurrying back
to them.
“To give us w hat Dumbledore left us,” said Harry. “They’ve
only just released the contents of his will.”
Outside in the garden, over the dinner tables, the three objects
Scrimgeour had given them were passe d from hand to hand. Ev-
eryone exclaimed over the Deluminator and The Tales of Beedle
the Bard and lamented the fact that Scrimgeour had refused to
pass on the sword, but none of them could o↵er any suggestion as
to why Dumbledore would have left Harry an old Snitch. As Mr.
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Chapter 7
Weasley examined the Deluminator for the third or fourth time,
Mrs. Weasley said tentatively, “Harry, dear, everyone’s awfully
hungry, we didn’t like to start without you. . . . Shall I serve dinner
now?”
They all ate rather hurriedly and then, after a hasty chorus of
“Happy Birthday” and much gulping of cake, the party broke up.
Hagrid, who was invited to the wedding the following day, but was
far too bulky to sleep in the overstretched Burrow, left to set up a
tent for himself in a neighboring field.
“Meet us upstairs,” Harry whispered to Hermione, while they
helped Mrs. Weasley restore the garden to its normal state. “After
everyone’s gone to bed.”
Up in the attic room , Ron examined his Deluminator, and Harry
filled Hagrid’s mokeskin purse, not with gold, but with those items
he most prized, apparently worthless though some of them were:
the Marauder’s Map, the shard of Sirius’s enchanted mirror, and
R.A.B.’s locket. He pulled the strings tight and slipped the purse
around his neck, then sat holding the old Snitch and watching its
wings flutter feebly. At last, Hermione tapped on the door and
tiptoed inside.
“Mu✏iato,” she whispe red, waving her hand in the direction of
the stairs.
“Thought you didn’t approve of that spell?” s aid Ron.
“Times change,” said Hermione. “Now, show us that Delumi-
nator.”
Ron obliged at once. Holding it up in front of him, he clicked
it. The solitary lamp they had lit went out at once.
“The thing is,” whispered He rmione through the dark, “we
could have achieved that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder.”
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The Will of Albus Dumbledore
There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flew
back to the ceiling and illuminated them all once m ore.
“Still, it’s cool,” said Ron, a little defensively. “And from what
they said, Dumbledore invented it himself!”
“I know, but surely he wouldn’t have singled you out in his will
just to help us turn out the lights!”
“D’you think he knew the Ministry would confiscate his will
and examine everything he’d left us?” asked Harry.
“Definitely,” said Hermione. “He couldn’t tell us in the will why
he was leaving us these things, but that still doesn’t explain . . . ”
“ . . . why he couldn’t have given us a hint when he was alive?”
asked Ron.
“Well, exactly,” said Hermione, now flicking through the The
Tales of Beedle the Bard. “If these things are important enough
to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you’d think he’d
have let us know why . . . unless he thought it was obvious?”
“Thought wrong, then, didn’t he?” said Ron. “I always said he
was mental. Brilliant and everything, but cracked. Leaving Harry
an old Snitch—what the hell was that about?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Hermione. “When Scrimgeour made you
take it, Harry, I was so sure that s ome thing was going to happen!”
“Yeah, well,” said Harry, his pulse quickening as he raised the
Snitch in his fingers. “I wasn’t going to try too hard in front of
Scrimgeour, was I?”
“What do you mean?” asked Hermione.
“The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match?” said
Harry. “Don’t you remember?”
Hermione looked simply bemused. Ron, however, gasped,
pointing frantically from Harry to the Snitch and back again until
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Chapter 7
he found his voice.
“That was the one you nearly swallowed!”
“Exactly,” said Harry, and with his heart beating fast, he
pressed his mouth to the Snitch.
It did not open. Frustration and bitter disappointment welled
up inside him: He lowered the golden sphere, but then Hermione
cried out.
“Writing! There’s writing on it, quick, look!”
He nearly dropped the Snitch in surprise and excitement. Her-
mione was quite right. Engraved upon the smooth golden sur-
face, where seconds before there had been nothing, were five words
written in the thin, slanting handwriting that Harry recognized as
Dumbledore’s:
I open at the close.
He had barely read them when the words vanished again.
“‘I open at the close . . . ’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hermione and Ron shook their heads, looking back.
“I open at the close . . . at the close . . . I open at the close . . . ”
But no matter how often they repeated the words, with many
di↵erent inflections, they were unable to wring any more meaning
from them.
“And the sword,” said Ron finally, when they had at last aban-
doned their attempts to divine meaning in the Snitch’s inscription.
“Why did he want Harry to have the sword?”
“And why couldn’t he just have told me?” Harry said quietly.
“I was there it was right there on the wall of his office during all
our talks las t year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn’t he just
give it to me then?
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The Will of Albus Dumbledore
He felt as though he were sitting in an examination with a
question he ought to have been able to answer in front of him, his
brain slow and unresponsive. Was there something he had missed
in the long talks with Dumbledore last year? Ought he to know
what it all meant? Had Dumbledore expected him to understand?
“And as for this book” said Hermione, “The Tales of Beedle the
Bard . . . I’ve never even heard of them.”
“You’ve never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?” said
Ron incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not.” said Hermione in surprise. “Do you know them,
then?”
“Well, of course I do!”
Harry looked up, diverted. The circumstance of Ron having
read a book that Hermione had not was unprecedented. Ron, how-
ever, looked bemused by their surprise.
“Oh come on! All the old kids’ stories are supposed to be Bee-
dle’s, aren’t they? ‘The Fountain of Fair Fortune’ . . . ‘The Wiz-
ard and the Hopping Pot’ . . . ‘Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling
Stump’ . . . ”
“Excuse me?” said Hermione, giggling. “What was that last
one?”
“Come o↵ it!” said Ron, looking in disbelief from Harry to
Hermione. “You must’ve heard of Bubbitty Rabbitty—”
“Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Mug-
gles!” said Hermione. “We didn’t hear stories like that when
we were little, we heard ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ and
‘Cinderella’—”
“What’s that, an illness?” asked Ron.
“So these are children’s stories?” asked Hermione, bending
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Chapter 7
again over the runes.
“Yeah,” said Ron uncertainly, “I mean, that’s just what you
hear, you know, that all these old stories came from Beedle. I
dunno what they’re like in the original versions.
“But I wonder why Dumbledore thought I should read them?”
Something creaked downstairs.
“Probably just Charlie, now Mum’s asleep, sneaking o↵ to re-
grow his hair,” said Ron nervously.
“All the same, we should get to bed,” whispered Hermione. “It
wouldn’t do to oversleep tomorrow.’
“No,” agreed R on. “A brutal triple murder by the bridegroom ’s
mother might put a bit of a damper of the wedding. I’ll ge t the
lights.”
And he clicked the Deluminator once more as Hermione left the
room.
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Chapter 8
The Wedding
T
hree o’clock on the following afternoon found Harry,
Ron, Fred, and George standing outside the great white
marquee in the orchard, awaiting the arrival of the wed-
ding guests. Harry had taken a large dose of Polyjuice
Potion and was now the double of a redheaded Muggle boy from
the local village, Ottery St. Catchpole, from whom Fred had stolen
hairs using a Summoning Charm. The plan was to introduce Harry
as “Cousin Barny” and trust to the great number of Weasley rela-
tives to camouflage him.
All four of them were clutching seating plans, so that they could
help show people to the right seats. A host of white-robed waiters
had arrived an hour earlier, along with a golden jacketed band,
and all of these wizards were currently sitting a short distance
away under a tree. Harry could see a blue haze of pipe sm oke
issuing from the spot.
Behind Harry, the entrance to the marquee revealed rows and
rows of fragile golden hairs set on e ither side of a long purple carpet.
The supporting poles are e ntwined with white and gold flow-
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Chapter 8
ers. Fred and George had fastened an enormous bunch of golden
balloons over the exact point where Bill and Fleur would shortly
become husband and wife. Outside, butterflies and bees were hov-
ering lazily over the grass and hedgerow. Harry was rather uncom-
fortable. The Muggle boy whose appearance he was a↵ecting was
slightly fatter than him, and his dress robes felt hot and tight in
the full glare of a summer’s day.
“When I get married,” said Fred, tugging at the collar of his
own robes, “I won’t be bothering with any of this nonsense. You
can all wear what you like, and I’ll put a full Body Bind Curse on
Mum until it’s all over.”
“She wasn’t too bad this morning, considering,” said George.
“Cried a bit about Percy not being here, but who wants him? Oh
blimey, brace yourselves—here they come, look.”
Brightly colored figures were appearing, one by one, out of
nowhere at the distant boundary of the yard. Within minutes
a procession had formed, which began to snake its way up through
the garden toward the marquee. Exotic flowers and bewitched
birds fluttered on the witches’ hats, while precious gems glittered
from man of the wizards’ c ravats; a hum of excited chatter grew
louder and louder, drowning the sound of the bees as the crowd
approached the tent.
“Excellent, I think I see a few veela cousins,” said George, cran-
ing his neck for a better lo ok. “They’ll need help understanding
our English customs, I’ll look after them. . . .”
“Not so fast, Your Holeyness,” said Fred, and darting past
the gaggle of middle-aged witches heading the procession, he said,
“Here—permettez-moi to assiter vous,” to a pair of pretty French
girls, who giggled and allowed him to escort them inside. George
was left to deal with the middle-aged witches and Ron took charge
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The Wedding
of Mr. Weasley’s old Ministry colleague Perkins, while a rather
deaf old couple fell to Harry’s lot.
“Wotcher,” said a familiar voice as he came out of the marquee
again and found Tonks and Lupin at the front of the queue. She
had turned blonde for the occasion. “Arthur told us you were the
one with the curly hair. Sorry about last night,” she added in a
whisper as Harry led them up the aisle. “The Ministry’s being very
anti-werewolf at the moment and we thought our presence might
not do you any favors.”
“It’s fine, I understand.” said Harry, speaking m ore to Lupin
than Tonks. Lupin gave him a swift smile, but as they turned
away, Harry saw Lupin’s face fall again into lines of misery. He
did not understand it, but there was no time to dwell on the mat-
ter: Hagrid was causing a certain amount of disruption. Having
misunderstood Fred’s directions he had sat himself, not upon the
magically enlarged and reinforced seat set aside for him in the back
row, but on five seats that now resembled a large pile of golden
matchsticks.
While Mr. Weasley repaired the damage and Hagrid shouted
apologies to anybody who would listen, Harry hurried back to the
entrance to find Ron face-to-face with a most eccentric-looking
wizard. Slightly cross-eyed, with shoulder-length white hair the
texture of candyfloss, he wore a cap whose tassel dangled in front
of his nose and rob es of an eye-watering shade of egg-yolk yellow.
An odd symbol, rather like a triangular eye, glistened from a golden
chain around his neck.
“Xenophilius Lovegood,” he said, extending a hand to Harry,
“my daughter and I live just over the hill, so kind of the good
Weasleys to invite us. But I think you know my Luna?” he added
to Ron.
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“Yes,” said Ron. “Isn’t she with you?”
“She lingered in that charming little garden to say hello to the
gnomes, such a glorious infestation! How few wizards realize just
how much we can learn from the wise little gnomes—or, to give
them their correct name, the Gernumbli gardensi.”
“Ours do know a lot of excellent swear words,” said Ron, “but
I think Fred and George taught them those.”
He led a party of warlocks into the marquee as Luna rushed up.
“Hello, Harry!” she said.
“Er—my name’s Barny,” said Harry, flummoxed.
“Oh, have you changed that too?” she asked brightly.
“How did you know—?”
“Oh, just your expression,” she said.
Like her father, Luna was wearing bright yellow robes, which she
had accessorized with a large sunflower in her hair. Once you got
over the brightness of it all, the general e↵ect was quite pleasant.
At least there were no radishes dangling from her ears.
Xenophilius, who was deep in conversation with an acquain-
tance, had missed the exchange between Luna and Harry. Bidding
the wizards farewell, he turned to his daughter, who held up her
finger and said, “Daddy, look—one of the gnomes actually bit me!”
“How wonderful! Gnome saliva is enormously beneficial!” said
Mr. Lovegood, seizing Luna’s outstretched finger and examining
the bleeding puncture marks. “Luna, my love, if you should feel
any burgeoning talent today—perhaps an unexpected urge to sing
opera or to declaim in Mermish—do not repress it! You may have
been gifted by the Gernumblies!”
Ron, passing them in the opposite direction, let out a loud snort.
“Ron can laugh,” said Luna serenely as Harry led her and Xeno-
philius toward their seats, “bu my father has done a lot of res earch
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The Wedding
on Gernumbli magic.”
“Really?” said Harry, who had long since decided not to chal-
lenge Luna or her father’s peculiar views. “Are you sure you don’t
want to put anything on that bite, though?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” said Luna, sucking her finger in a dreamy fashion
and looking Harry up and down. “You look smart. I told Daddy
most people would probably wear dress robes, but he believes you
ought to wear sun colors to a wedding, for luck, you know.”
As s he drifted o↵ after her father, Ron reappeared with an
elderly witch clutching her arm. Her beaky nose, red-trimmed
eyes, and feathery pink hat gave her the look of a bad-tempered
flamingo.
“ . . . and you hair’s much too long, Ronald, for a moment I
thought you were Ginevra. Merlin’s beard, what is Xenophilius
Lovegood wearing? He looks like an omelet. And who are you?”
she barked at Harry.
“Oh yeah, Auntie Muriel, this is our cousin Barny.”
“Another Weasley? You breed like gnomes. Isn’t Harry Potter
here? I was hoping to meet him. I thought he was a friend of
yours, Ronald, or have you merely been boasting?”
“No—he couldn’t come—”
“Hmm. Made an excuse, did he? Not as gormless as he looks
in press photographs, then. I’ve just been instructing the bride
on how best to wear my tiara.” she shouted at Harry. “Goblin-
made, you know, and been in my family for centuries. She’s a
good-looking girl, but still—French. Well, well, find me a good
seat, Ronald, I am a hundred and seven and I ought not to be on
my feet too long.”
Ron gave Harry a meaningful look as he passed and did not
reappear for some time. When next they met at the entrance,
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Chapter 8
Harry had shown a dozen more people to their places. The marquee
was nearly full now, and for the first time there was no queue
outside.
“Nightmare, Muriel is,” said Ron, mopping his forehead on his
sleeve. “She used to come for Christmas every year, then, thank
God, she took o↵ense because Fred and George set o↵ a Dungb omb
under her chair at dinner. Dad always says s he’ll have written
them out of her will—like they care, they’re going to end up richer
than anyone in the family, rate they’re going. . . . Wow,” he added,
blinking rather rapidly as Hermione came hurrying toward them.
“You look great!”
“Always the tone of surprise,” said Hermione, though she
smiled. She was wearing a floaty, lilac-colored dress with match-
ing high heels; her hair was sleek and shiny. “Your Great—Aunt
Muriel doesn’t agree, I just met her upstairs while she was giving
Fleur the tiara. She says, ‘Oh dear, is this the Muggle-born?’ and
then, ‘Bad posture and skinny ankles.’”
“Don’t take it personally, she’s rude to everyone,” said Ron.
“Talking about Muriel?” inquired George, reemerging from the
marquee with Fred. “Yeah, she’ just told me my ears are lopsided.
Old bat. I wish old Uncle Bilius was still with us, though; he was
a right laugh at weddings.”
“Wasn’t he the one who saw a Grim and died twe nty-four hours
later?” asked Hermione.
“Well, yeah, he went a bit odd toward the end,” conceded
George.
“But before he went loopy he was the life and soul of the party.”
said Fred. “He used to down an entire bottle of firewhisky, then run
onto the dance floor, hoist up his rob es , and start pulling bunches
of flowers out of his—”
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“Yes, he sounds a real charmer,” said Hermione, while Harry
roared with laughter.
“Never married, for some reason,” said Ron.
“You amaze me,” said He rmione.
They were all laughing so much that none of them noticed the
latecomer, a dark-haired young man with a large, curved nose and
thick black eyebrows, until he held out his invitation to Ron and
said, with his eyes on Hermione, “You look vunderful.”
“Viktor!” she shrieked, and dropped her small beaded bag,
which made a loud thump quite disproportionate with its size. As
she scrambled, blushing, to pick it up, she said, “I didn’t know you
were—goodness—it’s lovely to see—how are you again?”
Ron’s ears had turned bright red again. After glancing at
Krum’s invitation as if he did not believe a word of it, he said,
much too loudly, “How come you’re here?”
“Fleur invited me,” said Krum, eyebrows raised.
Harry, who had no grudge against Krum, shook hands; then,
feeling that it would be prudent to remove Krum from Ron’s vicin-
ity, o↵ered to show him his seat.
“You friend is not pleased to see me,” said Krum as he entered
the now packed marquee. “Or is he a relative?” he added with a
glance at Harry’s red curly hair.
“Cousin,” Harry muttered, but Krum was not really listening.
His appearance was causing a stir, particularly amongst the veela
cousins: He was, after all, a famous Quidditch player. While people
were still craning their necks to get a good look at him, Ron, Her-
mione, Fred, and George came hurrying down the aisle.
“Time to sit down,” Fred told Harry, “or we’re going to get run
over by the bride.”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione took their seats in the second row
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behind Fred and George. Hermione looked rather pink and Ron’s
ears were still scarlet. After a few moments he muttered to Harry,
“Did you see he’s grown a stupid little beard?”
Harry gave a noncommittal grunt.
A sense of jittery anticipation had filled the warm tent, the
general murmuring broken by occasional spurts of excited laughter.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley strolled up the aisle, smiling and waving at
relatives: Mrs. Weasley was wearing a brand-new set of amethyst-
colored robes with a matching hat.
A moment later Bill and Charlie stood up at the front of the
marquee, both wearing dress robes, with large white roses in their
buttonholes; Fred wolf-whistled and there was an outbreak of gig-
gling from the veela cousins. Then the c rowd fell silent as music
swelled from what seemed to be the golden balloons.
“Ooooh!” said Hermione, swivelling around in her seat to look
at the entrance.
A gre at collective sigh issued from the assembled witches and
wizards as Monsieur Delacour and Fleur came walking up the aisle,
Fleur gliding, Monsieur Delacour bouncing and beaming. Fleur
was wearing a very simple white dresses and seemed to be emitting
a strong, silvery glow. While her radiance usually dimmed everyone
else by comparison, today it be autified everyone it fell upon. Ginny
and Gabrielle, both wearing golden dresses, looked even prettier
than usual, and once Fleur had reached him, Bill did not look as
though he had ever met Fenrir Greyback.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a slightly singsong voice, and with
a slight s hock, Harry saw the same small, tufty-haired wizard who
had presided at Dumbledore’s funeral, now standing in front of bill
and Fleur. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of
two faithful souls . . . ”
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The Wedding
“Yes, my tiara sets o↵ the whole thing nicely,” said auntie
Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. “But I must say, Ginevra’s
dress is far too low cut.”
Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly
faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the
marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts
of the school grounds. They se em ed so long ago; they had always
seemed to o good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining
hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-
shaped scar on his forehead. . . .
“Do you, William Arthur, take Fleur Isabelle. . . . ?”
In the front row, Mrs. Weasley and Madame Delacour were
both sobbing quietly into scraps of lace. Trumpetlike sounds from
the back of the marquee told everyone that Hagrid had taken out
one of his own tablecloth-sized handkerchiefs. Hermione turned
and beamed at Harry; her eyes too were full of tears.
“ . . . then I declare you bonded for life.”
The tufty-haired wizard waved his wand high over the heads of
Bill and Fleur and a shower of silver stars fell upon them, spiraling
around their now entwined figures. As Fred and George led a round
of applause, the golden balloons overhead burst: B irds of paradise
and tiny golden bells flew and floated out of them, adding their
songs and chimes to the din.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” called the tuft-haired wizard. “If you
would please stand up!”
They all did so, Auntie Muriel grumbling audibly; he waved his
wand again. The se ats on which they had been sitting rose grace-
fully into the air as the canvas walls of the marquee vanished, so
that they stood beneath a canopy supported by golden poles, with
a glorious view of the sunlit orchard and surrounding countryside.
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Next, a pool of molten gold spread from the center of the tent to
form a gleaming dance floor; the hovering chairs groped themselves
around small white-clothed tables, which all floated gracefully back
to earth around it, and the golden-jacketed hand trooped toward
a podium.
“Smooth,” said Ron approvingly as the waiters popp ed up on
all sides, some bearing silver trays of pumpkin juice, butterb ee r,
and firewhisky, other tottering piles of tarts and sandwiches.
“We should go and congratulate them!” said Hermione, stand-
ing on tiptoe to see the place where bill and Fleur had vanished
amid a crowd of well-wishers.
“We’ll have time later,” shrugged Ron, snatching three butter-
beers from a passing tray and handing one to Harry. “Hermione,
cop hold, let’s grab a table. . . . Not there! Nowhere near Muriel—”
Ron led the way across the empty dance floor, glancing left and
right as he went: Harry felt sure that he was keeping an eye out
for Krum. By the time they had reached the other side of the
Marquee, most of the tables were occupied: The emptiest was the
one where Luna sat alone.
“All right if we join you?” asked Ron.
“Oh yes,” she said happily. “Daddy’s just gone to give Bill and
Fleur our present.”
“What is it, a lifetime’s supply of Gurdyroots?” asked Ron.
Hermione aimed a kick at him under the table, but caught Harry
instead. Eyes watering in pain, Harry lost track of the conversation
for a few moments.
The band had begun to play. Bill and Fleur took to the dance
floor first, to great applause; after a while, Mr. Weasley led
Madame Delacour onto the floor, followed by Mrs. Weasley and
Fleur’s father.
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“I like this song,” said Luna, swaying in time to the waltzlike
tune, and a few seconds later she stood up and glided onto the
dance floor, where she revolved on the spot, quite alone, eyes closed
and waving her arms.
“She’s great, isn’t she?” said Ron admiringly. “Always good
value.”
But the smile vanished from his face at once: Viktor Krum had
dropped into Luna’s vacant seat. Hermione looked pleasurably
flustered, but this time Krum had not come to compliment her.
With a scowl on his face he said, “Who is that man in the yellow?”
“That’s Xenophilius Lovegood, he’s the father of a friend of
ours,” said Ron. His pugnacious tone indicated that they were
not about to laugh at Xenophilius, despite the clear provocation.
“Come and dance,” he added abruptly to Hermione.
She looked taken aback, but pleased too, and got up. They
vanished together into the growing throng on the dance floor.
“Ah, they are together now?” asked Krum, momentarily dis-
tracted.
“Er—sort of,” said Harry.
“Who are you?” Krum asked.
“Barny Weasley.”
They shook hands.
“You, Barny—you know this man Lovegood vell?”
“No, I only met him today. Why?”
Krum glowered over the top of his drink, watching Xenophilius,
who was chatting to several warlocks on the other side of the dance
floor.
“Because,” said Krum, “if he was not a guest of Fleur’s, I would
duel him here and now, for vearing that filthy sign upon his chest.”
“Sign?” said Harry, looking at Xenophilius too. The strange
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triangular eye was gleaming on his chest. “Why? What’s wrong
with it?”
“Grindelvald. That is Grindelvald’s s ign.”
“Grindelwald . . . the Dark wizard Dumbledore defeated?”
“Exactly.”
Krum’s jaw muscles worke d as if he were chewing, then he says,
“Grindelvald killed many people, my grandfather, for instance. Of
course, he vos never poverful in this country, they said he feared
Dumbledore—and rightly, seeing how he vos finished. But this”—
he pointed a finger a Xenophilius—“this is his symbol, recognized
it at vunce: Grindelvald carved it into a vall at Durmstrang ver he
vos a pupil there. Some idiots copied it into their books and clothes,
thinking to shock, make themselves impressive—until those of us
who had lost family members to Grindelvald taught them better.”
Krum cracked his knuckles menacingly and glowered at Xeno-
philius. Harry felt perplexed. It s eem ed incredibly unlikely that
Luna’s father was a supporter of the Dark Arts, and nobody else in
the tent seemed to have recognized the triangular, runelike shape.
“Are you—er—quite sure it’s Grindelwald’s—?”
“I am not mistaken,” said Krum coldly. “I valked past that sign
for several years, I know it vell.”
“Well, there’s a chance,” said Harry, “that Xe nophilius doesn’t
actually know what the symbol means. The Lovego ods are
quite . . . unusual. He could easily have picked it up somewhere
and think it’s a cross section of the head of a Crumple-Horned
Snorkack or something.”
“The cross section of a vot?”
“Well, I don’t know what they are, but apparently he and his
daughter go on holiday looking for them. . . .”
Harry felt he was doing a bad job explaining Luna and her
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father.
“That’s her,” he said, pointing at Luna, who was still dancing
alone, waving her arms around her head like someone attempting
to beat o↵ midges.
“Vy is she doing that?” asked Krum.
“Probably trying to get rid of a Wrackspurt,” said Harry, who
recognized the symptoms.
Krum did not seem to know whether or not Harry was making
fun of him. He drew his wand from inside his robes and tapped it
menacingly on his thigh; sparks flew out of the end.
“Gregorovitch!” said Harry loudly, and Krum started, but
Harry was too excited to care; the memory came back to him at
the sight of Krum’s wand: Ollivander taking it and examining it
carefully before the Triwizard Tournament.
“Vot about him?” asked Krum suspiciously.
“He’s a wandmaker!”
“I know that,” said Krum.
“He made your wand! That’s why I thought—Quidditch—”
Krum was looking more and more suspicious.
“How do you know Gregorovitch made my vand?”
“I . . . I read it somewhere, I think,” said Harry. “In a—a fan
magazine,” he improvised wildly and Krum looked mollified.
“I had not realized I ever discussed my vand with fans,” he said.
“So . . . er . . . where is Gregorovitch these days?”
Krum looked puzzled.
“He retired several years ago. I vos one of the last to purchase
a Gregorovitch vand. They are the best—although I know, of
course, that you Britons set much store by Ollivander.”
Harry did not answer. He pretended to watch the dancers, like
Krum, but he was thinking hard. So Voldemort was looking for a
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celebrated wandmaker, and Harry did not have to search far for a
reason: It was surely because of what Harry’s wand had done on the
night that Voldemort had pursued him across the skies. The holly
and phoenix feather had conquered the borrowed wand, something
that Ollivander had not anticipated or understood. Would Gre-
gorovitch know better? Was he truly more skilled than Ollivander,
did he know secrets of wands that Ollivander did not?
“This girl is very nice-looking,” Krum said, recalling Harry to
his surroundings. Krum was pointing at Ginny, who had just joined
Luna. “She is also a relative of yours?”
“Yeah,” said Harry, suddenly irritated, “and she’s seeing some-
one. Jealous type. Big bloke. You wouldn’t want to cross him.”
Krum grunted.
“Vot,” he said, draining his goblet and getting to his feet again,
“is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the
good-looking girls are taken?”
And he strode o↵, leaving Harry to take a sandwich from a
passing waiter and make his way around the edge of the crowded
dance floor. He wanted to find Ron, to tell him about Gregorovitch,
but he was dancing with Hermione out in the middle of the floor.
Harry leaned up against one of the golden pillars and watched
Ginny, who was now dancing with Fred and George’s friend Lee
Jordan, trying not to feel res entful about the promise he had given
Ron.
He had never been to a wedding before, so he could not judge
how Wizarding celebrations di↵ered from Muggle ones, though he
was pretty sure that the latter would not involve a wedding cake
topped with two model phoenixes that took flight when the cake
was cut, or bottles of champagne that floated unsupported through
the crowd. As the evening drew in, and moths began to swoop
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under the canopy, now lit with floating golden lanterns, the revelry
became more and more uncontained. Freda and George had long
since disappeared into the darkness with a pair of Fleur’s cousins;
Charlie, Hagrid, and a squat wizard in a purple porkpie hat were
singing ‘Odo the Hero” in a corner.
Wandering through the crowd so as not to escape a drunken
uncle of Ron’s who seemed unsure whether or not Harry was his
son, Harry spotted an old wizard sitting alone at a table. His cloud
of white hair made him look rather like an aged dandelion clock as
was topped by a moth-eaten fez. He was vaguely familiar: Racking
his brains, Harry suddenly realized that this was Elphias Doge, the
member of the Order of the Phoenix and the writer of Dumbledore’
obituary.
Harry approached him.
“May I sit down?”
“Of course, of course,” said Doge; he had a rather high-pitched,
wheezy voice.
Harry leaned in.
“Mr. Doge, I’m Harry Potter.”
Doge gasped.
“My dear boy! Arthur told me you were here, disguised. . . . I
am so glad, so honored!”
In a flutter a nervous pleasure Doge poured Harry a goblet of
champagne.
“I’ve thought of writing to you,” he whispered, “after Dumble-
dore . . . the s hock . . . and for you, I am sure . . . ”
Doge’s tiny eyes filled with sudden tears.
“I saw the obituary you wrote for the Daily Prophet,” said
Harry. “I didn’t realize you knew Professor Dumbledore so well.”
“As well as anyone,” said Doge, dabbing his eyes with a napkin.
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“Certainly I knew him longest, if you don’t count Ab e rforth—and
somehow, people never do seem to count Aberforth.”
“Speaking of the Daily Prophet . . . I don’t know whether you
saw, Mr. Doge—?”
“Oh, please call me Elphias, dear boy.”
“Elphias, I don’t know whether you saw the interview Rita
Skeeter gave about Dumbledore?”
Doge’s face flooded with angry color.
“Oh yes, Harry, I saw it. That woman, or vulture might be a
more accurate term, positively pestered me to talk to her. I am
ashamed to say that I became rather rude, called her an interfering
trout, which resulted, as you may have seen, in aspersions cast upon
my sanity.”
“Well, in that interview.” Harry went on, “Rita Skeeter hinted
that Professor Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts when he
was young.”
“Don’t believe a word of it!” said Do dge at once. “Not a word,
Harry! Let nothing tarnish your memories of Albus Dumbledore!
Harry looked into Doge’s earnest, pained face and felt, not reas-
sured, but frustrated. Did Doge really think it was that easy, that
Harry could simply choose not to believe? Didn’t Doge understand
Harry’s need to be sure, to know everything?
Perhaps Doge suspected Harry’s feelings, for he looked con-
cerned and hurried on, “Harry, Rita Skeeter is a dreadful—”
But he was interrupted by a shrill cackle.
“Rita Skeeter? Oh, I love her, always read her!”
Harry and Doge looked up to see Auntie Muriel standing there,
the plumes dancing on her hat, a goblet of champagne in her hand.
“She’s written a book about Dumbledore, you know!”
“Hello, Muriel,” said Doge. “Yes, we were just discussing—”
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“You there! Give me your chair, I’m a hundred a seven!”
Another redheaded Weasley cousin jumped o↵ his seat, look-
ing alarmed, and Auntie Muriel swung around it with surpris-
ing strength and plopped herself down upon it between Doge and
Harry.
“Hello again, Barry, or whatever your name is,” she said to
Harry. “Now, what were you saying about Rita Skeeter, Elphias?
You know, she’s written a biography of Dumbledore? I can’t wait
to re ad it, I must remember to place an order at Flourish and
Blotts!”
Doge looked sti↵ and solemn at this, but Auntie Muriel drained
her goblet and clicked her bony fingers at a passing waiter for a
replacement. She took another large gulp of champagne, belched,
and then said, “There’s no need to look like a pair of stu↵ed frogs!
Before he came so respected and respectable and all that tosh,
there were some mighty funny rumors about Albus!”
“Ill—informed sniping,” said Doge, turning radish-colored
again.
“You would say that, Elphias,” cackled Auntie Muriel. “I no-
ticed how you skated over the sticky patches in that obituary of
yours!”
“I’m sorry you think so,” said Doge, more coldly still. “I assure
you I was writing from the heart.”
“Oh, we all know you worshipped Dumbledore; I daresay you’ll
still think he was a saint even if it does turn out that he did away
with his Squib sister!”
“Muriel!” exclaimed Doge.
A chill that had nothing to do with the iced champagne was
stealing through Harry’s chest.
“What do you mean?” he asked Muriel. “Who said his sister
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was a Squib? I thought she was ill?”
“Thought wrong, then, didn’t you, Barry!” said Auntie Muriel,
looking delighted at the e↵ect she had produced. “Anyway, how
could you expect to know anything about it! It all happened years
and years b efore you were even thought of, my dear, and the truth
is that those of us who were alive then never knew what really
happened. That’s why I can’t wait to find out what Skeeter’s
unearthed! Dumbledore kept that sister of his quiet for a long
time!”
“Untrue!” wheezed Doge, “Absolutely untrue!”
“He never told me his sister was a Squib,” said Harry, without
thinking, still cold inside.
“And why on earth would he tell you?” screeched Muriel, sway-
ing a little in her seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry.
“The reason Albus never spoke about Ariana,” began Elphias
in a voice sti↵ with emotion, “is, I should have thought, quite clear.
He was so devastated by her death—“
“Why did nobody ever see her, Elphias?” squawked Muriel,
“Why did half of us never even know she existed, until they carried
the coffin out of the house and held a funeral for her? Where was
saintly Albus while Ariana was locked in the cellar? O↵ being
brilliant at Hogwarts, and never mind what was going on in his
own house!”
“What d’you mean, locked in the cellar?” asked Harry. “What
is this?”
Doge looked wretched. Auntie Muriel cackled again and an-
swered Harry.
“Dumbledore’s mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrify-
ing. Muggle-born, though I heard she pretended otherwise—“
“She never pretended anything of the sort! Kendra was a fine
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woman,” whisp ered Doge miserably, but Auntie Muriel ignored
him.
“—proud and very domineering, the sort of witch who would
have been mortified to produce a Squib—“
“Ariana was not a Squib!” wheezed Doge.
“So you say, Elphias, but explain, then, why she never attended
Hogwarts!” said Auntie Muriel. She turned back to Harry. “In our
day, Squibs were often hushed up, thought to take it to the extreme
of actually im prisoning a little girl in the house and pretending she
didn’t exist—–“
“I tell you, that’s not what happened!” said Doge, but Auntie
Muriel steamrollered on, still addressing Harry.
Squibs were usually shipped o↵ to Muggle schools and encour-
aged to integrate into the Muggle community . . . much kinder than
trying to find them a place in the Wizarding world, where they
must always be second class, but naturally Kendra Dumbledore
wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her daughter go to a Muggle
school—–“
“Ariana was delicate!” said Doge desperately. “Her health was
always too poor to permit her—“
“—to permit her to leave the house?” cackled Muriel. “And
yet she was never taken to St. Mungo’s and no Healer was ever
summoned to see her!” “Really, Muriel, how can you possibly know
whether—“
“For your information, Elphias, my cousin Lancelot was a
Healer at St. Mungo’s at the time, and he told my family in
strictest confidence that Ariana had never be en see n there. All
most suspicious, Lancelot thought!”
Doge looked to be on the verge of tears. Auntie Muriel, who
seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, snapped her fingers for more
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champagne. Numbly Harry thought of how the Dursleys had once
shut him up, locked him away, kept him out of sight, all for the
crime of being a wizard. Had Dumbledore’s sister su↵ered the same
fate in reverse: imprisoned for her lack of magic? Had Dumbledore
truly left her to her fate while he went o↵ to Hogwarts to prove
himself brilliant and talented?
“Now, if Kendra hadn’t died first,” Muriel resumed, “I’d have
said that it was she who finished o↵ Ariana—“
“How can you, Muriel!” groaned Doge. “A mother kill her own
daughter? Think what you’re saying!”
“If the mother in question was capable of imprisoning her
daughter for years on end, why not?” shrugged Auntie Muriel.
“But as I say, it doesn’t fit, because Kendra died before Ariana—
of what, nobody ever seemed sure—“
“Yes, Ariana might have made a desperate bid for freedom and
killed Kendra in the struggle,” said Auntie Muriel thoughtfully.
“Shake your head all you like, Elphias. You were at Ariana’s fu-
neral, were you not?”
“Yes I was,” said Doge, through trembling lips, “and a
more desperately sad occasion I cannot remember. Albus was
heartbroken—“
“His heart wasn’t the only thing. Didn’t Aberforth break Albus’
nose halfway through the service?”
If Doge had looked horrified before this, it was nothing to how
he looked now. Muriel might have stabbed him. She cackled loudly
and took another swig of champagne, which dribbled down her
chin.
“How do you—?” croaked Doge.
“My mother was friendly with old Bathilda Bagshot,” said Aun-
tie Muriel happily. “Bathilda described the whole thing to mother
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while I was listening at the door. A coffin-side brawl! The way
Bathilda told it, Aberforth shouted that it was all Albus’ fault
that Ariana was dead and then punched him in the face. Accord-
ing to Bathilda, Albus did not even defend himself, and that’s odd
enough in itself. Albus could have destroyed Aberforth in a duel
with both hands tied behind his back.
Muriel swigged yet more champagne. The recitation of those
old scandals seemed to elate her as much as they horrified Doge.
Harry did not know what to think, what to believe. He wanted
the truth and yet all Doge did was sit there and bleat feebly that
Ariana had been ill. Harry could hardly believe that Dumbledore
would not have intervened if such cruelty was happening inside his
own house, and yet there was undoubtedly something odd about
the story.
“And I’ll tell you something else,” Muriel said, hiccuping
slightly as she lowered her goblet. “I think Bathilda has spilled
the beans to Rita Skeeter. All those hints in Skeeter’s interview
about an important source close to the Dumbledores—goodness
knows she was there all through the Ariana business, and it would
fit!”
“Bathilda, would never talk to Rita Skeeter!” whispered Doge.
“Bathilda Bagshot?” Harry said. “The author of A History of
Magic?”
The name was printed on the front of one of Harry’s textbooks,
though admittedly not one of the ones he had read more attentively.
“Yes,” said Doge, clutching at Harry’s question like a drowning
man at a life heir. “A most gifted magical historian and an old
friend of Albus’s.”
“Quite gaga these days, I’ve heard,” said Auntie Muriel cheer-
fully.
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“If that is so, it is even more dishonorable for Skeeter to have
taken advantage of her,” said Doge, “and no reliance can be placed
on anything Bathilda may have said!”
“Oh, there are ways of bringing back memories, and I’m sure
Rita Skeeter knows them all,” said Auntie Muriel “But e ven if
Bathilda’s completely cucko o, I’m sure she’d still have old pho-
tographs, maybe even letters. She knew the Dumbledores for
years. . . . Well worth a trip to Godric’s Hollow, I’d have thought.”
Harry, who had been taking a sip of butterbeer, choked. Doge
banged him on the back as Harry coughed, looking at Auntie Muriel
through streaming eyes. Once he had control of his voice again, he
asked, “Bathilda Bagshot lives in Godric’s Hollow?”
“Oh yes, she’s been there forever! The Dumbledores moved
there after Percival was imprisoned, and she was their neighbor.”
“The Dumbledores lived in Godric’s Hollow?”
“Yes, Barry, that’s what I just said,” said Auntie Muriel testily.
Harry felt drained, empty. Never once, in six years, had Dum-
bledore told Harry that they had both lived and lost loved ones
in Godric’s Hollow. Why? Were Lily and James buried close to
Dumbledore’s mother and sister? Had Dumbledore visited their
graves, perhaps walked past Lily’s and James’s to do so? And he
had never once told Harry . . . never bothered to say . . .
And why it was so important, Harry could not explain even to
himself, yet he felt it had been tantamount to a lie not to tell him
that they had this place and these experiences in common. He
stared ahead of him, barely noticing what was going on around
him, and did not realize that Hermione had appeared out of the
crowd until she drew up a chair beside him.
“I simply can’t dance anymore,” she panted, slipping of one of
her shoes and rubbing the sole of her foot. “Ron’s gone looking to
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find more butterbeers. It’s a bit odd. I’ve just seen Viktor storming
away from Luna’s father, it looked like they’d been arguing—” She
dropped her voice, staring at him. “Harry, are you okay?”
Harry did not know where to begin, but it did not matter,
at that moment, something large and silver came falling through
the canopy over the dance floor. Graceful and gleaming, the lynx
landed lightly in the middle of the astonished dancers. Heads
turned, as those nearest it froze absurdly in mid-dance. Then the
Patronus’s mouth opened wide and it spoke in the loud, deep, slow
voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt.
“The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are com-
ing.”
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A Place to Hide
E
verything seemed fuzzy, slow. Harry and Hermione
jumped to their feet and drew their wands. Many peo-
ple were only just realizing that something strange had
happened; heads were still turning toward the silver
cat as it vanished. Silence spread outward in cold ripples from the
place where the Patronus had landed. Then somebody screamed.
Harry and Hermione threw themselves into the panicking crowd.
Guests were sprinting in all directions; many were Disapparating;
the protective enchantments around the Burrow had broken.
“Ron!” Hermione cried. “Ron, where are you?”
As they pushed their way across the dance floor, Harry saw
cloaked and masked figures appearing in the crowd; then he saw
Lupin and Tonks, their wands raised, and heard both of them
shout, “Protego!”, a cry that was echoed on all sides—
“Ron! Ron!” Hermione called, half sobbing as she and Harry
were bu↵ered by terrified guests: Harry seized her hand to make
sure they weren’t separated as a streak of light whizzed over their
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heads, whether a protective charm or something more sinister he
did not know—
And then Ron was there. He caught hold of Hermione’s free
arm, and Harry felt her turn on the spot; sight and sound were
extinguished as darkness pressed in upon him; all he could feel was
Hermione’s hand as he was squeezed through space and time, away
from the Burrow, away from the descending Death Eaters, away,
perhaps, from Voldemort himself. . . .
“Where are we?” said Ron’s voice.
Harry opened his eyes. For a mome nt he thought they had not
left the wedding after all: They still seemed to be s urrounded by
people.
“Tottenham Court Road,” panted Hermione. “Walk, just walk,
we need to find somewhere for you to change.”
Harry did as she asked. They half walked, half ran up the wide
dark street thronged with late-night revelers and lined with closed
shops, stars twinkling above them. A double-decker bus rumbled
by and a group of merry pub-goers ogled them as they passed;
Harry and Ron were still wearing dress robe s.
“Hermione, we haven’t got anything to change into,” Ron told
her, as a young woman burst into raucous giggles at the sight of
him.
“Why didn’t I make sure I had the Invisibility Cloak with me?”
said Harry, inwardly cursing his own stupidity. “All last year I
kept it on me and—“
“It’s okay, I’ve got the Cloak, I’ve got clothes for both of you,”
said Hermione, “Just try and act naturally until—this will do.”
She led them down a side street, then into the shelter of a shadowy
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alleyway.
“When you say you’ve got the Cloak, and clothes . . . ” said
Harry, frowning at Hermione, who was carrying nothing except
her small beaded handbag, in which she was now rummaging.
“Yes, they’re here,” said Hermione, and to Harry and Ron’s
utter astonishment, she pulled out a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt,
some maroon socks, and finally the silvery Invisibility Cloak.
“How the ruddy hell—?”
“Undetectable Extension Charm,” said Hermione. “Tricky, but
I think I’ve done it okay; anyway, I managed to fit everything we
need in here.” She gave the fragile-looking bag a little shake and
it echoed like a c argo hold as a number of heavy objects rolled
around inside it. “Oh, damn, that’ll be the books,” she said,
peering into it, “and I had them all stacked by subject. . . . Oh
well. . . . Harry, you’d better take the Invisibility Cloak. Ron, hurry
up and change. . . .”
“When did you do all this?” Harry asked as Ron stripped o↵
his robes.
“I told you at the Burrow, I’ve had the essentials packed for
days, you know, in case we needed to make a quick getaway. I
packed your rucksack this morning, Harry, after you changed, and
put it in here. . . . I just had a feeling. . . .”
“You’re amazing, you are,” said Ron, handing her his bundled-
up robes.
“Thank you,” said Hermione, managing a small smile as she
pushed the robes into the bag. “Please, Harry, get that Cloak on!”
Harry threw his Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders and
pulled it up over his head, vanishing from sight. He was only
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just beginning to appreciate what had happened.
“The others—everybody at the wedding—“
“We can’t worry about that now,” whispered Hermione. “It’s
you they’re after, Harry, and we’ll just put everyone in even more
danger by going back.”
“She’s right,” said Ron, who seemed to know that Harry was
about to argue, e ven if he could not see his face . “Most of the
Order was there, they’ll lo ok after everyone.” Harry nodded, then
remembered that they could not see him, and said, “Yeah.” But
he thought of Ginny, and fear bubbled like acid in his stomach.
“Come on, I think we ought to keep moving,” said Hermione.
They moved back up the side street and onto the main road
again, where a group of men on the opposite side was singing and
weaving across the pavement.
“Just as a matter of interest, why Tottenham Court Road?”
Ron asked Hermione.
“I’ve no idea, it just popped into my head, but I’m sure we’re
safer out in the Muggle world, it’s not where they’ll expect us to
be.”
“True,” said Ron, looking around, “but don’t you feel a bit—
exposed?”
“Where else is there?” asked Hermione, cringing as the me n on
the other side of the road started wolf-whistling at her. “We can
hardly book rooms at the Leaky Cauldron, can we? And Grim-
mauld Place is out if Snape can get in there. . . . I suppose we could
try my parents’ home, though I think there’s a chance they might
check there. . . . Oh, I wish they’d shut up!”
“All right, darling?” the drunkest of the me n on the other
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pavement was yelling. “Fancy a drink? Ditch ginger and come and
have a pint!”
“Let’s sit down somewhere,” Hermione said hastily as Ron
opened his mouth to shout back across the road. “Look, this will
do, in here!”
It was a small and shabby all-night caf´e. A light layer of grease
lay on all the Formica-topped tables, but it was at least empty.
Harry slipped into a booth first and Ron sat next to him opposite
Hermione, who had her back to the entrance and did not like it:
She glanced over her shoulder so frequently she appeared to have a
twitch. Harry did not like being stationary; walking had given the
illusion that they had a goal. Beneath the Cloak he could feel the
last vestiges of Polyjuice leaving him, his hands returning to their
usual length and shape. He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and
put them on again.
After a minute or two, Ron said, “You know, we’re not far from
the Leaky Cauldron here, it’s only in Charing Cross—“
“Ron, we can’t!” said Hermione at once.
“Not to stay there, but to find out what’s going on!”
“We know what’s going on! Voldemort’s taken over the Min-
istry, what else do we need to know?”
“Okay, okay, it was just an idea!”
They relapsed into a prickly silence. The gum-chewing waitress
shu✏ed over and Hermione ordered two cappuccinos: As Harry
was invisible, it would have looked odd to order him one. A pair of
burly workmen entered the caf´e and squeezed into the next bo oth.
Hermione dropped her voice to a whisper.
“I say we find a quiet place to Disapparate and head for the
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countryside. Once we’re there, we could send a message to the
Order.”
“Can you do that talking Patronus thing, then?” asked Ron.
“I’ve been practicing and I think so,” said Hermione.
“Well, as long as it doesn’t get them into trouble, though they
might’ve been arrested already. God, that’s revolting,” Ron added
after one sip of the foamy, grayish co↵ee. The waitress had heard;
she shot Ron a nasty look as she shu✏ed o↵ to take the new cus-
tomers’ orders. The larger of the two workmen, who was blond
and quite huge, now that Harry came to look at him, waved her
away. She stared, a↵ronted.
“Let’s get going, then, I don’t want to drink this muck,” said
Ron. “Hermione, have you got Muggle money to pay for this?”
“Yes, I took out all my Building Society savings before I came
to the Burrow. I’ll bet all the change is at the bottom,” sighed
Hermione, reaching for her beaded bag.
The two workmen made identical movements, and Harry mir-
rored them without conscious thought: All three of them drew
their wands. Ron, a few seconds late in realizing what was go-
ing on, lunged across the table, pushing Hermione sideways onto
her bench. The force of the Death Eaters’ spells shattered the
tiled wall where Ron’s head had just been, as Harry, still invisible,
yelled, “Stupefy! ”
The great blond Death Eater was hit in the face by a jet of
red light: He slump e d sideways, unconscious. His companion, un-
able to see who had cast the spell, fired another at Ron: Shining
black ropes flew from his wand-tip and bound Ron head to foot—
the waitress screamed and ran for the door—Harry sent another
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Stunning Spell at the Death Eater with the twisted face who had
tied up Ron, but the spell missed, rebounded on the window, and
hit the waitress, who collapsed in front of the door.
“Expulso!” bellowed the Death Eater, and the table behind
which Harry was standing blew up: The force of the explosion
slammed him into the wall and he felt his wand leave his hand as
the Cloak slipped o↵ him.
“Petrificus Totalus! ” screamed Hermione from out of sight, and
the Death Eater fell forward like a statue to land with a crunch-
ing thud on the mess of broken china, table, and co↵ee. Hermione
crawled out from underneath the bench, shaking bits of glass ash-
tray out of her hair and trembling all over.
“D–diffindo,” she said, pointing her wand at Ron, who roared
in pain as she slashed open the knee of his jeans, leaving a deep
cut. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Ron, my hand’s shaking! Diffindo! ”
The severed ropes fell away. Ron got to his feet, shaking his
arms to regain feeling in them. Harry picked up his wand and
climbed over all the debris to where the large blond Death Eater
was sprawled across the bench.
“I should’ve recognized him, he was there the night Dumble-
dore died,” he said. He turned over the darker Death Eater with
his foot; the man’s eyes moved rapidly between Harry, Ron and
Hermione.
“That’s Dolohov,” said Ron. “I recognize him from the old
wanted posters. I think the big one’s Thorfinn Rowle.”
“Never mind what they’re called!” said Hermione a little hys-
terically. “How did they find us? What are we going to do?”
Somehow her panic seemed to clear Harry’s head.
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“Lock the door,” he told her, “and Ron, turn out the lights.”
He lo oked down at the paralyzed Dolohov, thinking fast as the
lock clicked and Ron used the Deluminator to plunge the caf´e into
darkness. Harry could hear the men who had jeered at Hermione
earlier, yelling at another girl in the distance.
“What are we going to do with them?” Ron whispered to Harry
through the dark; then, even more quietly, “Kill them? They’d kill
us. They had a good go just now.”
Hermione shuddered and took a step backward. Harry s hook
his head.
“We just need to wipe their memories,” said Harry. “It’s better
like that, it’ll throw them o↵ the scent. If we killed them it’d be
obvious we were here.”
“You’re the boss,” said Ron, sounding profoundly relieved.
“But I’ve never down a Memory Charm.”
“Nor have I,” said Hermione, “but I know the theory.”
She took a deep, calming breath, then pointed her wand at
Dolohov’s forehead and said, “Obliviate.”
At once, Dolohov’s eyes became unfocused and dreamy.
“Brilliant!” said Harry, clapping her on the back. “Take care
of the other one and the waitress while Ron and I clear up.”
“Clear up?” said Ron, looking around at the partly destroyed
caf´e. “Why?”
“Don’t you think they might wonder what’s happened if they
wake up and find themselves in a place that looks like it’s just been
bombed?”
“Oh right, yeah . . . ”
Ron struggled for a moment before managing to extract his
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wand from his pocket.
“It’s no wonder I can’t get it out, Hermione, you packed my old
jeans, they’re tight.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” hissed Hermione, and as she dragged the
waitress out of sight of the windows, Harry heard her mutter a
suggestion as to where Ron could stick his wand instead.
Once the caf´e was restored to its previous condition, they
heaved the Death Eaters back into their booth and propped them
up facing each other.
“But how did they find us?” Hermione asked, looking from one
inert man to the other. “How did they know where we were?”
She turned to Harry.
“You—you don’t think you’ve still got your Trace on you, do
you, Harry?”
“He can’t have,” said Ron. “The Trace breaks at seventee n,
that’s Wizarding law, you can’t put it on an adult.”
“As far as you know,” said Hermione. “What if the Death
Eaters have found a way to put it on a seventeen-year-old?”
“But Harry hasn’t b e en near a Death Eater in the last twenty-
four hours. Who’s supposed to have put a Trace back on him?”
Hermione did not reply. Harry felt contaminated, tainted: Was
that really how the Death Eaters had found them?
“If I can’t use magic, and you can’t use magic near me, without
us giving away our position—” he began.
“We’re not splitting up!” said Hermione firmly.
“We need a safe place to hide,” said Ron. “Give us time to
think things through.”
“Grimmauld Place,” said Harry.
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The other two gaped.
“Don’t be silly, Harry, Snape can get in there!”
“Ron’s dad said they’ve put up jinxes against him—and even
if they haven’t worked,” he pressed on as Hermione began to argue
“so what? I swear, I’d like nothing better than to meet Snape!”
“But—“
“Hermione, where else is there? It’s the best chance we’ve got.
Snape’s only one Death Eater. If I’ve still got the Trace on me,
we’ll have whole crowds of them on us wherever else we go.”
She could not argue, though she looked as if she would have liked
to. While she unlocked the caf´e door, Ron clicked the Deluminator
to release the caf´e’s light. Then, on Harry’s count of three, they
reversed the spells up on their three victims, and before the waitress
or either of the Death Eaters c ould do more than stir sleepily,
Harry, Ron and Hermione had turned on the spot and vanished
into the compressing darkness once more.
Seconds later Harry’s lungs expanded gratefully and he opened
his eyes: They were now standing in the middle of a familiar small
and shabby square. Tall, dilapidated houses looked down on them
from every side. Number twelve was visible to them, for they had
been told of its existence by Dumbledore, its Secret-Keeper, and
they rushed toward it, checking every few yards that they were not
being followed or observed. They raced up the stone steps, and
Harry tapped the front door once with his wand. They heard a
series of metallic clicks and the clatter of a chain, then the door
swung open with a creak and they hurried over the threshold.
As Harry closed the door behind them, the old-fashioned gas
lamps sprang into life, casting flickering light along the length of
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the hallway. It looked just as Harry rem embe red it: ee rie, cob-
webbed, the outlines of the house-elf heads on the wall throwing
odd shadows up the staircase. Long dark curtains concealed the
portrait of Sirius’s mother. The only thing that was out of place
was the troll’s leg umbrella stand, which was lying on its side as if
Tonks had just knocked it over again.
“I think somebody’s been in here,” Hermione whispered, point-
ing toward it.
“That could’ve happened as the Order left,” Ron murmured
back.
“So where are these jinxes they put up against Snape?” Harry
asked.
“Maybe they’re only activated if he shows up?” suggested Ron.
Yet they remained close together on the doormat, backs against
the door, scared to move farther into the house.
“Well, we can’t stay here forever,” said Harry, and he took a
step forward.
“Severus Snape?”
Mad-Eye Moody’s voice whispered out of the darkness, making
all three of them jump back in fright. “We’re not Snape!” croaked
Harry, before something whooshed over him like cold air and his
tongue curled backward on itself, making it impos sible to speak.
Before he had time to feel inside his mouth, however, his tongue
had unraveled again.
The other two seemed to have experienced the same unpleasant
sensation. Ron was making retching noises; Hermione stammered,
“That m–must have b–been the T–Tongue-Tying Curse Mad-Eye
set up for Snape!”
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Gingerly Harry took another step forward. Something shifted
in the shadows at the end of the hall, and before any of them
could say another word, a figure had risen up out of the carpet,
tall, dust-colored, and terrible; Hermione screamed and so did Mrs.
Black, her curtains flying open; the gray figure was gliding toward
them, faster and faster, its waist-length hair and beard streaming
behind it, its face sunken, fleshless, with empty e ye sockets: Hor-
ribly familiar, dreadfully altered, it raised a wasted arm, pointing
at Harry.
“No!” Harry shouted, and though he had raised his wand no
spell occurred to him. “No! It wasn’t us! We didn’t kill you—“
On the word kill, the figure exploded in a great cloud of dust:
Coughing, his eyes watering, Harry looked around to see Hermione
crouched on the floor by the door with her arms over her head, and
Ron, who was shaking from head to foot, patting her clumsily on
the shoulder and saying, “It’s all r–right. . . . It’s g–gone. . . .” Dust
swirled around Harry like mist, catching the blue gaslight, as Mrs.
Black continued to scream.
“Mudbloods, filth, stains of dishonor, taint of shame on the
house of my fathers—“
“SHUT UP!” Harry bellowed, directing his wand at her, and
with a bang and a burst of red sparks, the curtains swung shut
again, silencing her.
“That . . . that was . . . ” Hermione whimpered, as Ron helped
her to her feet.
“Yeah,” said Harry, “but it wasn’t really him, was it? Just
something to scare Snape.”
Had it worked, Harry wondered, or had Snape already blasted
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the horror-figure aside as casually as he had killed the real Dum-
bledore? Nerves still tingling, he led the other two up the hall,
half-expecting some new terror to reveal itself, but nothing moved
except for a mouse skittering along the skirting board.
“Before we go any farther, I think we’d better check,” whispered
Hermione, and she raised her wand and said, “Homenum revelio.”
Nothing happened.
“Well, you’ve just had a big shock,” said Ron kindly. “What
was that supposed to do?”
“It did what I meant it to do!” said Hermione rather crossly.
“That was a spell to reveal human presence, and there’s nobody
here except us!”
“And old Dusty,” said Ron, glancing at the patch of carpet from
which the corpse-figure had risen.
“Let’s go up,” said Hermione with a frightened look at the same
spot, and she led the way up the creaking stairs to the drawing
room on the first floor. Hermione waved her wand to ignite the old
gas lamps, then, shivering slightly in the drafty room, she perched
on the sofa, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Ron crossed to
the window and moved the heavy velvet curtains aside an inch.
“Can’t see anyone out there,” he rep orted. “And you’d think,
if Harry still had a Trace on him, they’d have followed us here. I
know they can’t get in the house, but—what’s up, Harry?”
Harry had given a cry of pain: His scar had burned against as
something flashed across his mind like a bright light on water. He
saw a large shadow and felt a fury that was not his own pound
through his body, violent and brief as an electric shock.
“What did you s ee ?” Ron asked, advancing on Harry. “Did
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you see him at my place?”
“No, I just felt anger—he’s really angry—“
“But that could be at the Burrow,” said Ron loudly. “What
else? Didn’t you see anything? Was he cursing someone?”
“No, I just felt anger—I couldn’t tell—“
Harry felt badgered, confused, and Hermione did not help as
she said in a frightened voice, “Your scar, again? But what’s going
on? I thought that connection had close d!”
“It did, for a while,” muttered Harry; his scar was still painful,
which made it hard to concentrate. “I–I think it’s started opening
again whenever he loses control, that’s how it used to—“
“But then you’ve got to close your mind!” said Hermione shrilly.
“Harry, Dumbledore didn’t want you to use that connection, he
wanted you to shut it down, that’s why you were supposed to use
Occlumency! Otherwise Voldemort c an plant false images in your
mind, remember—“
“Yeah, I do rem ember, thanks,” said Harry through gritted
teeth; he did not need Hermione to tell him that Voldemort had
once used this selfsame connection between them to lead him into
a trap, nor that it had resulted in Sirius’s death. He wished that he
had not told them what he had seen and felt; it made Voldemort
more threatening, as though he were pressing against the window
of the room, and still the pain in his scar was building and he
fought it: It was like resisting the urge to be sick.
He turned his back on Ron and Hermione, pretending to ex-
amine the old tapestry of the Black family tree on the wall. Then
Hermione shrieked: Harry drew his wand again and spun around
to see a s ilver Patronus soar through the drawing room window
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and land upon the floor in front of them, where it solidified into
the weasel that spoke with the voice of Ron’s father. “Family safe,
do not reply, we are being watched.”
The Patronus dissolved into nothingness. Ron let out a noise
between a whimper and a groan and dropped onto the sofa: Her-
mione joined him, gripping his arm. “They’re all right, they’re all
right!” she whispered, and Ron half laughed and hugged her.
“Harry,” he said over Hermione’s shoulder, “I—“
“It’s not a problem,” said Harry, sickened by the pain in his
head. “It’s your family, ’course you were worried. I’d feel the same
way.” He thought of Ginny. “I do feel the same way.”
The pain in his scar was reaching a peak, burning as it had
back in the garden of the Burrow. Faintly he heard Hermione say
“I don’t want to be on my own. Could we use the sleeping bags
I’ve brought and camp in here tonight?”
He heard Ron agree. He could not fight the pain much longer.
He had to succumb.
“Bathroom,” he muttered, and he left the room as fast as he
could without running. He barely made it: Bolting the door be-
hind him with trembling hands, he grasped his pounding head and
fell to the floor, then in an explosion of agony, he felt the rage that
did not belong to him possess his soul, saw a long room lit only
by firelight, and the giant blond Death Eater on the floor, scream-
ing and writhing, and a slighter figure standing over him, wand
outstretched, while Harry spoke in a high, cold, me rciless voice.
“More, Rowle, or shall we end it and feed you to Nagini? Lord
Voldemort is not sure that he will forgive this time. . . . You called
me back for this, to tell me that Harry Potter has escaped again?
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Draco, give Rowle another taste of our displeasure. . . . Do it, or feel
my wrath yourself!”
A log fell in the fire: Flames reared, their light darting across a
terrified, pointed white face—with a sense of emerging from deep
water, Harry drew heaving breaths and opened his eyes.
He was spread-eagled on the cold black marble floor, his nose
inches from one of the silver serpent tails that supported the large
bathtub. He sat up. Malfoy’s gaunt, petrified face seemed burned
on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen,
by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort.
There was a sharp rap on the door, and Harry jumped as Her-
mione’s voice rang out.
“Harry, do you want your toothbrush? I’ve got it here.”
“Yeah, great, thanks,” he said, fighting to keep his voice casual
as he stood up to let her in.
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Kreacher’s Tale
H
arry woke early next morning, wrapp ed in a sleeping
bag on the drawing room floor. A chink of sky was
visible between the heavy curtains. It was the cool,
clear blue of watered ink, somewhere between night
and dawn, and everything was quiet except for Ron and Hermione’s
slow, deep breathing. Harry glanced over at the dark shapes they
made on the floor beside him. Ron had had a fit of gallantry
and insisted that Hermione sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so
that her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm curved to the
floor, her fingers inches from Ron’s. Harry wondered whether they
had fallen asleep holding hands. The idea made him feel strangely
lonely.
He looked up at the shadowy ceiling, the cobwebbed chandelier.
Less than twenty—four hours ago, he had been standing in the
sunlight at the entrance to the marquee, waiting to show in wedding
guests. It seemed a lifetime away. What was going to happen now?
He lay on the floor and he thought of the Horcruxes, of the daunting
complex mission Dumbledore had left him. . . . Dumbledore . . .
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Kreacher’s Tale
The grief that had possessed him since Dumbledore’s death felt
di↵erent now. The accusations he had heard from Muriel at the
wedding seemed to have nested in his brain like diseased things,
infecting his memories of the wizard he had idolized. Could Dum-
bledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley,
content to watch neglect and abuse as long as it did not a↵ect
him? Could he have turned his back on a sister who was being
imprisoned and hidden?
Harry thought of Godric’s Hollow, of graves Dumbledore had
never mentioned there; he thought of mysterious objects left with-
out explanation in Dumbledore’s will, and resentment swelled in
the darkness. Why hadn’t Dumbledore told him? Why hadn’t he
explained? Had Dumbledore actually cared about Harry at all?
Or had Harry been nothing more than a to ol to be polished and
honed, but not trusted, never confided in?
Harry could not stand lying there with nothing but bitter
thoughts for c ompany. Desperate for something to do, for dis-
traction, he slipped out of his sleeping bad, picked up his wand,
and crept out of the room. On the landing he whispered, “Lumos,”
and started to climb the stairs by wandlight.
On the second landing was the bedroom in which he and Ron
had s lept last time they had been here; he glanced into it. The
wardrobe doors stood open and the bedclothes had been ripped
back. Harry remembered the overturned troll leg downstairs.
Somebody had s earched the house since the Order had left. Snape?
Or perhaps Mundungus, who had pilfered plenty from this house
both before and after Sirius died? Harry’s gaze wandered to the
portrait that sometimes contained Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius’s
great-great-grandfather, but it was empty, showing nothing but a
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stretch of muddy backdrop. Phineas Nigellus was evidently spend-
ing the night in the headmaster’s study at Hogwarts.
Harry continued up the stairs until he reached the topmost land-
ing where there were only two doors. The one facing him bore a
nameplate reading Sirius. Harry had never entered his godfather’s
bedroom before. He pushed open the door, holding his wand high
to cast light as widely as possible. The room was spacious and
must once have been handsome. There was a large bed with a
carved wooden headboard, a tall window obscured by long velvet
curtains and a chandelier thickly coated in dust with candle scrubs
still resting in its sockets, solid wax banging in frostlike drips. A
fine film of dust covered the pictures on the walls and the bed’s
headboard; a spiders web stretched between the chandelier and the
top of the large wooden wardrobe, and as Harry moved deeper into
the room, he head a scurrying of disturbed mice.
The teenage Sirius had plastered the walls with so many posters
and pictures that little of the walls silvery-gray silk was visible.
Harry could only assume that Sirius’s parents had been unable to
remove the Permanent Sticking Charm that kept them on the wall
because he was sure they would not have appreciated their eldest
son’s taste in decoration. Sirius seemed to have lone gone out of
his way to annoy his parents. There were several large Gryffindor
banners, faded scarlet and hold just to underline his di↵erence from
all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of
Muggle motorcycles , and also (Harry had to admire Sirius’s nerve)
several posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls. Harry could tell that
they were Muggles because they remained quite stationary within
their pictures, faded smiles and glazed eyes frozen on the paper.
This was in contrast the only Wizarding photograph on the walls
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Kreacher’s Tale
which was a picture of four Hogwarts students standing arm in
arm, laughing at the camera.
With a leap of pleasure, Harry recognized his father, his untidy
black hair stuck up at the back like Harry’s, and he too wore glasse s.
Beside him was Sirius, carelessly handsome, his slightly arrogant
face so much younger and happier than Harry had ever seen it
alive. To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter,
plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in
this coolest of gangs, with the much-admired rebels that James
and Sirius had been. On James’s left was Lupin, even then a little
shabby-looking, but he had the same air of delighted surprise at
finding himself liked and included or was it simply because Harry
knew how it had been, that he saw these things in the picture? He
tried to take it from the wall; it was his now, after all, Sirius had
left him everything, but it would not budge. Sirius had taken no
chances in preventing his parents from redecorating his room.
Harry looked around at the floor. The sky outside was grow-
ing brighter: A shaft of light revealed bits of paper, books, and
small objects scattered over the carpet. Evidently Sirius’s bed-
room had been searched too, although its contents see me d to have
been judged mostly, if not entirely, worthless. A few of the books
had been shaken roughly enough to part com pany with the covers
and sundry pages littered the floor.
Harry bent down, picked up a few of the pieces of paper, and
examined them. He recognized one as a part of an old edition of A
History of Magic, by Barhilda Bagshot, and another as belonging
to a motorcycle maintenance manual. The third was handwritten
and crumpled. He smoothed it out.
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Dear Padfoot, Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday
present! It was h is favorite by far. One year old and
already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so
pleased with himself. I’m enclosing a picture so you can
see. You know it only rises about two feet o↵ the ground
but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase
Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of
course James thought it was so funny, says he’s going to be
a great Quidditch player, but we’ve had to pack away all
the ornaments and make sure we don’t take our eyes o↵
him when he gets going.
We had a very quiet birthday tea, just us and old Bathilda
who has always been sweet to us and who dotes on Harry.
We were so sorry you couldn’t come, but the Order’s got to
come first, and Harry’s not old enough to know it’s his
birthday anyway! James is getting a bit frustrated shut up
here, he tries not to show it but I can tell—also
Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance
of little excursions. If you could visit, it would cheer him
up so much. Wormy was here last weekend. I thought he
seemed down, but that was probably the next about the
McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard.
Bathilda drops in most days, she’s a fascinating old thing
with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore. I’m not
sure he’d be pleased if he knew! I don’t know how much to
believe, actually because it seems incredible that
Dumbledore
Harry’s extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite
still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while
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Kreacher’s Tale
inside him a kind of quiet eruptions sent joy and grief thundering
its equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat
down.
He read the letter again, but could not take in any more mean-
ing than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring
at the handwriting itself. She had made her “g”s the same way
he did. He searched through the letter for every one of them, and
each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil.
The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had
lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this
parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about
him, Harry, her son. Impatiently brushing away the wetness in his
eyes, he reread the letter, this time concentrating on the meaning.
It was like listening to a half-remembered voice.
They had a cat . . . perhaps it had perished, like his parents
at Godric’s Hollow . . . or else fled when there was nobody left to
feed it . . . Sirius had bought him his first broomstick . . . His par-
ents had known Bathilda Bagshot; had Dumbledore introduced
them? Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak . . . there was
something funny there . . . Harry paused, pondering his mother’s
words. Why had Dumbledore taken James’s Invisibility Cloak?
Harry distinctly remembered his headmaster telling him years be-
fore, “I don’t need a cloak to become invisible” Perhaps some less
gifted Order member had needed its assistance, and Dumbledore
had acted as a carrier? Harry passed on. . . .
Wormy was here . . . Pettigrew, the traitor, had seemed “down”
had he? Was he aware that he was seeing James and Lily alive for
the last time?
And finally Bathilda again, who told incredible stories about
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Dumbledore. It seems incredible that Dumbledore —
That Dumbledore what? But there were any number of things
that would seem incredible about Dumbledore; that he had once
received bottom marks in a Transfiguration test, for instance or
had taken up goat charming like Aberforth. . . .
Harry got to his feet and scanned the floor: Perhaps the rest of
the letter was here somewhere. He seized papers, treating them in
his eagerness, with as little consideration as the original searcher,
he pulled open drawers, shook out books, stood on a chair to run
his hand over the top of the wardrobe, and crawled under the bed
and armchair.
At last, lying facedown on the floor, he spotted what looked
like a torn piece of paper under the chest of drawers. When he
pulled it out, it proved to be most of the photograph that Lily had
described in her letter. A black-haired baby was zooming in and
out of the picture on a tiny broom, roaring with laughter, and a
pair of legs that must have belonged to James was chasing after
him. Harry tucked the photograph into his pocket with Lily’s letter
and continued to look for the second sheet.
After another quarter of an hour, however he was forced to
conclude that the rest of his mother’s letter was gone. Had it
simply been lost in the sixteen years that had elapsed since it had
been written, or had it bee n taken by whoe ver had searched the
room? Harry read the first sheet again, this time looking for clues
as to what might have made the second sheet valuable. His toy
broomstick could hardly be considered interesting to the Death
Eaters . . . The only potentially useful thing he could see her was
possible information on Dumbledore. It seems incredible that Dum-
bledore —what?
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“Harry? Harry? Harry! ”
“I’m here!” he c alled, “What’s happened?”
There was a clatter of footsteps outside the door, and Hermione
burst inside.
“We woke up and didn’t know where you were!” she said breath-
lessly. She turned and shouted over her shoulder, “Ron! I’ve found
him”
Ron’s annoyed voice echoe d distantly from several floors b elow.
“Good! Tell him from me he’s a git!”
“Harry don’t just disappear, please, we were terrified! Why did
you come up here anyway?” She gazed around the ransacked room.
“What have you been doing?”
“Look what I’ve just found”
He held out his mother’s letter. Hermione took it out and read
it while Harry watched her. When she reached the end of the page
she looked up at him.
“Oh Harry . . . ”
“And there’s this too.”
He handed her the torn photograph, and Hermione smiled at
the baby zooming in and out of sight on the toy broom.
“I’ve been looking for the rest of the letter,” Harry said, “but
it’s not here”
Hermione glanced around.
“Did you make all this mess, or was some of it done when you
got here?”
“Someone had searched before me,” said Harry.
“I thought so. Every room I looked into on the way up had
been disturbed. What were they after, do you think?”
“Information on the Order, if it was Snape”
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“But you’d think he’d already have all he needed. I mean was
in the Order, wasn’t he?”
“Well then,” said Harry, keen to discuss his theory, “what about
information on Dumbledore? The s econd page of the letter, for
instance. You know this Bathilda my mum mentions, you know
who she is?”
“Who?”
“Bathilda Bagshot, the author of—“
“A History of Magic,” said Hermione, looking interested. “So
your parents knew her? She was an incredible magic historian.”
“And she’s still alive,” said Harry, “and she lives in Godric’s
Hollow. Ron’s Auntie Muriel was talking about her at the wedding.
She knew Dumbledore’s family too. Be pretty interesting to talk
to, wouldn’t she?”
There was a little too much understanding in the smile Her-
mione gave him for Harry’s liking. He took back the letter and the
photograph and tucked them inside the pouch around his neck, so
as not to have to look at her and give himself away.
“I understand why you’d love to talk to her about, and Dumble-
dore too,” said Hermione. “But that wouldn’t really help us in our
search for the Horc ruxes, would it?” Harry did not answer, and she
rushed on, “Harry, I know you really want to go to Godric’s Hollow,
but I’m scared. I’m scared at how easily those Death Eaters found
us yesterday. It just makes me feel more than e ver that we ought
to avoid the place where your parents are buried, I’m sure they’d
be expecting you to visit it.”
“It’s not just that,” Harry said, still avoiding looking at her,
“Muriel s aid stu↵ about Dumbledore at the wedding. I want to
know the truth. . . .”
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He told Hermione everything that Muriel had told him. When
he had finished, Hermione said, “Of course, I can see why that’s
upset you, Harry—“
“I’m not upset,” he lied, “I’d just like to know whether or not
it’s true or—“
“Harry do you really think you’ll get the truth from a malicious
old woman like Muriel, or from Rita Skeeter? How can you believe
them? You knew Dumbledore!”
“I thought I did,” he muttered.
“But you know how much truth there was in everything Rita
wrote about you! Doge is right, how c an you let these people
tarnish your memories of Dumbledore?”
He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt.
There it was again: Choose what to believe. He wanted the truth.
Why was everybody so determined that he should not get it?
“Shall we go down to the kitchen?” Hermione suggested after
a little pause. “Find some thing for breakfast?”
He agreed, but grudgingly, and followed her out onto the landing
and past the s ec ond door that led o↵ it. There were deep scratch
marks in the paintwork below a small sign that he had not noticed
in the dark. He passed at the top of the stairs to read it. It was a
porapous little sign, neatly lettered by hand the sort of thing that
Percy Weasley might have stuck on his bedroom door.
Do Not Enter
Without the Express Permission of
Regulus Arcturus Black
Excitement trickled through Harry, but he was not immediately
sure why. He read the sign again. Hermione was already a flight
of stairs below him.
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“Hermione,” he said, and he was surprised that his voice was
so calm. “Come back up here.”
“What’s the matter?”
“R.A.B. I think I’ve found him.”
There was a gasp, and then Hermione ran back up the stairs.
“In your mum’s letter? But I didn’t see—“
Harry shook his head, pointing at Regulus’s sign. She read it,
then clutched Harry’s arm so tightly that he winced.
“Sirius’s brother?” she whispered.
“He was a Death Eater,” said Harry. “Sirius told me about
him, he joined up when he was really young and then got cold feet
and tried to leave—so they killed him.”
“That fits!” gasped Hermione. “If he was a Death Eater he
had access to Voldemort, and if he became disenchanted, then he
would have wanted to bring Voldemort down!”
She released Harry, leaned over the banister, and screamed,
“Ron! RON! Get up here, quick!”
Ron appeared, panting, a minute later, his wand ready in his
hand.
“What’s up? If it’s massive spiders again I want breakfast be-
fore I—“
He frowned at the sign on Regulus’s door, in which Hermione
was silently pointing.
“What? That was Sirius’s brother, wasn’t it? Re gulus
Arcturus . . . Regulus . . . R.A.B.! The locket—you don’t reckon—
?”
“Let’s find out,” said Harry. He pushed the door: It was locked.
Hermione pointed her wand at the handle and said, “Alohamora.”
There was a click, and the door swung open.
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They moved over the threshold together, gazing around. Reg-
ulus’s bedroom was slightly smaller than Sirius’s, though it had
the same sense of former grandeur. Whereas Sirius had sought to
advertise his diffidence from the rest of the family, Regulus had
striven to emphasize the opposite. The Slytherin colors of emerald
and silver were everywhere, draping the bead, the walls, and the
windows. The Black family crest was painstakingly painted over
the bed, along with its motto, Toujours Pur. Beneath this was a
collection of yellow newspaper cuttings, all stuck together to make
a ragged collage. Hermione crossed the room to examine them.
“They’re all about Voldemort,” she said. “Regulus seems
to have been a fan for a few years before he joined the Death
Eaters . . . ”
A little pu↵ of dust rose from the bedcovers as she sat down
to read the clippings. Harry, meanwhile, had noticed another pho-
tograph: a Hogwarts Quidditch team was smiling and waving out
of the frame. He moved closer and saw the snakes emblazoned
on their chests: Slytherins. Regulus was instantly recognizable as
the boy sitting in the middle of the front row: He had the same
dark hair and slightly haughty look of his brother, though he was
smaller, slighter, and rather less handsome than Sirius had been.
“He played Seeker,” said Harry.
“What?” said He rmione vaguely; she was still immersed in
Voldemort’s press clippings.
“He’s sitting in the middle of the front row, that’s where the
Seeker . . . Never mind,” said Harry, realizing that nobody was lis-
tening. Ron was on his hands and knees, searching under the
wardrobe. Harry looked around the room for likely hiding places
and approached the desk. Yet again, someb ody had searched be-
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fore them. The drawers’ contents had been turned over recently,
the dust disturbed, but there was nothing of value there: old quills,
out-of-date textbo oks that bore evidence of b e ing roughly handled,
a recently smashed ink bottle, its sticky residue covering the con-
tents of the drawer.
“There’s an easier way,” said Hermione, as Harry wiped his inky
fingers on his jeans. She raised her wand and said, “Accio Locket! ”
Nothing happened. Ron, who had bee n searching the folds of
the faded curtains, looked disappointed.
“Is that it, then? I t’s not here?”
“Oh, it could still be here, but under counter-enchantments,”
said Hermione. “Charms to prevent it from being summoned mag-
ically, you know.”
“Like Voldemort put on the stone basin in the c ave,” said Harry,
remembering how he had been unable to Summon the fake locket.
“How are we supposed to find it then?” asked Ron.
“We search manually,” said Hermione.
“That’s a go od idea,” said Ron, rolling his eyes, and he resumed
his examination of the curtains.
They combed every inch of the room for more than an hour,
but were forced, finally, to conclude that the locket was not there.
The sun had risen now; its light dazzled them even through the
grimy landing windows.
“It could be somewhere e lse in the house, though,” said Her-
mione in a rallying tone as they walked back downstairs. As Harry
and Ron had become more discouraged, she seemed to have become
more determined. “Whether he’d manage to destroy it or not, he’d
want to keep it hidden from Voldemort, wouldn’t he? Remember
all those awful things we had to get rid of when we were here last
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time? That clock that shot bolts at everyone and those old robes
that tried to strangle Ron; Regulus might have put them there to
protect the locket’s hiding place, even though we didn’t realize it
at . . . at . . . “
Harry and Ron looked at her. She was standing with one foot
in midair, with the dumbstruck look of one who had just been
Obliviated: her eyes had even drifted out of focus.
“ . . . at the time,” she finished in a whisper.
“Something wrong?” asked Ron.
“There was a locket.”
“What?” said Harry and Ron together.
“In the cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody could open it.
And we . . . we . . . “
Harry felt as though a brick had slid down through his chest
into his stomach. He remembered. He had even handled the thing
as they passed it around, e ach trying in turn to pry it open. It
had been tossed into a sack of rubbish, along with the snu↵box
of Wartcap powder and the music box that had made everyone
sleepy . . . ”
“Kreacher nicked loads of things back from us,” said Harry. It
was the only chance, the only slender hope left to them, and he
was going to cling to it until forced to let go. “He had a whole
stash of stu↵ in his cupboard in the kitchen. C’mon.”
He ran down the stairs taking two steps at a time, the other
two thundering along in his wake. They made s o much noise that
they woke the portrait of Sirius’s mother as they passed through
the hall.
“Filth! Mudbloods! Scum! ” she screamed after them as they
dashed down into the basement kitchen and slammed the door
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behind them. Harry ran the length of the room, skidded to a halt
at the door of Kreacher’s cupboard, and wrenched it open. There
was the nest of dirty old blankets in which the house-elf had once
slept, but they were not longer glittering with the trinkets Kreacher
had salvaged. The only thing there was an old copy of Nature’s
Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. Refusing to believe his eyes,
Harry snatched up the blankets and shook them. A dead mouse
fell out and rolled dismally across the floor. Ron groaned as he
threw himself into a kitchen chair; Hermione closed her eyes.
“It’s not over yet,” said Harry, and he raised his voice and
called, “Kreacher! ”
There was a loud c rack and the house elf that Harry had so
reluctantly inherited from Sirius appeared out of nowhere in front
of the cold and empty fireplace: tiny, half human-sized, his pale
skin hanging o↵ him in folds, white hair sprouting copiously from
his batlike ears. He was still wearing the filthy rag in which they
had first met him, and the contemptuous look he bent upon Harry
showed that his attitude to his change of ownership had altered no
more than his outfit.
“Master,” croaked Kreacher in his bullfrog’s voice, and he
bowed low; muttering to his knees, “back in my Mistress’s old
house with the blood-traitor Weasley and the Mudblood—“
“I forbid you to call anyone ’blood traitor’ or ’Mudblood,’”
growled Harry. He would have found Kreacher, with his snoutlike
nose and bloodshot eyes, a distinctively unlovable object even if
the elf had not betrayed Sirius to Voldemort.
“I’ve got a question for you,” said Harry, his heart beating
rather fast as he looked down at the elf, “and I order you to answer
it truthfully. Understand?”
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“Yes, Master,” said Kreacher, bowing low again. Harry saw his
lips moving soundlessly, undoubtedly framing the insults he was
now forbidden to utter.
“Two years ago,” said Harry, his heart now hammering against
his ribs, “there was a big gold locket in the drawing room upstairs.
We threw it out. Did you steal it back?”
There was a moment’s silence, during which Kreacher straight-
ened up to look Harry full in the face. Then he said, “Yes.”
“Where is it now?” asked Harry jubilantly as Ron and Her-
mione looked gleeful. Kreacher closed his eyes as though he could
not bear to see their reactions to his next word.
“Gone.”
“Gone?” echoed Harry, elation floating out of him, “What do
you mean, it’s gone?”
The elf shivered. He swayed.
“Kreacher,” said Harry fiercely, “I order you—“
“Mundungus Fletcher,” croaked the elf, his eyes still tight shut.
“Mundungus Fletcher s tole it all; Miss Bella’s and Miss Cissy’s
pictures, my Mistress’s gloves, the Order of Merlin, First Class,
the goblets with the family crest, and—and—“
Kreacher was gulping for air: His hollow chest was rising and
falling rapidly, then his eyes flew open and he uttered a bloodcur-
dling scream.
“—and the locket, Master Regulus’s locket. Kreacher did wrong,
Kreacher failed in his orders! ”
Harry reacted instinctively: As Kreacher lunged for the poker
standing in the grate, he launched himself upon the elf, flattening
him. Hermione’s scream mingled with Kreacher’s but Harry bel-
lowed louder than both of them: “Kreacher, I order you to stay
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still!”
He felt the elf freeze and released him. Kreacher lay flat on the
cold stone floor, tears gushing from his sagging eyes.
“Harry, let him up!” Hermione whispered.
“So he can beat himself up with the poker?” snorted Harry,
kneeling beside the elf. “I don’t think so. Right. Kreacher, I
want the truth: How do you know Mundungus Fletcher stole the
locket?”
“Kreacher saw him!” gasped the elf as tears poured over his
snout and into his mouth full of graying teeth. “Kreacher saw him
coming out of Kreacher’s cupboard with his hands full of Kreacher’s
treasures. Kreacher told the sneak thief to stop, but Mundungus
Fletcher laughed and r-ran. . . . “
“You called the locket ’Master Regulus’s,’” said Harry. “Why?
Where did it come from? What did Regulus have to do with it?
Kreacher, sit up and tell me everything you know about that locket,
and everything Regulus had to do with it!”
The elf sat up, curled into a ball, placed his wet face between
his knees, and began to rock backward and forward. When he
spoke, his voice was mu✏ed but quite distinct in the silent, echoing
kitchen.
“Master Sirius ran away, good riddance, for he was a bad boy
and broke my Mistress’s heart with his lawless ways. But Master
Regulus had proper order; he knew what was due to the name of
Black and the dignity of his pure blood. For years he talked of
the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding
to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns . . . and when he was
sixteen years old, Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord. So proud,
so proud, so happy to serve . . .
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Kreacher’s Tale
And one day, a year after he joined, Master Regulus came
down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked
Kreacher. And Master Regulus said . . . he said . . . ”
The old elf rocked faster than ever.
“ . . . he said that the Dark Lord required an elf.”
“Voldemort needed an elf?” Harry repeated, looking around at
Ron and Hermione, who looked just as puzzled as he did.
“Oh yes,” moaned Kreacher. “And Master Regulus had vol-
unteered Kreacher. It was an honor, said Master Regulus, an
honor for him and for Kreacher, who must be sure to do whatever
the Dark Lord ordered him to do . . . and then to c–come home.”
Kreacher rocked still faster, his breath coming in sobs.
“So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord did not
tell Kreacher what they were to do, but took Kreacher with him
to a cave beside the se a. And beyond the cave was a cavern, and
in the cavern was a great black lake . . . “
The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stood up. Kreacher’s
croaking voice seemed to come to him from across the dark wa-
ter. He saw what had happened as clearly as though he had been
present.
“ . . . There was a boat . . . ”
Of course there had been a boat; Harry knew the boat, ghostly
green and tiny, bewitched so as to carry one wizard and one victim
toward the island in the center. This, then, was how Voldemort
had tested the defenses surrounding the Horcrux, by borrowing a
disposable creature, a house-elf . . .
“There was a b-basin full of potion on the island. The D–Dark
Lord made Kreacher drink it. . . .”
The elf quaked from head to foot.
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“Kreacher drank, and as he drank he saw terrible
things . . . Kreacher’s insides burned . . . Kreacher cried for Mas-
ter Regulus to save him, he cried for his Mistress Black, but
the Dark Lord only laughed . . . He made Kreacher drink all the
potion . . . He dropped a locket into the empty basin . . . He filled
it with more potion.”
“And then the Dark Lord sailed away, leaving Kreacher on the
island . . . “
Harry could see it happening. He watched Voldemort’s white,
snakelike face vanishing into darkness, those red eyes fixed piti-
lessly on the thrashing elf whose death would occur within minutes,
whenever he succumbed to the desperate thirst that the burning
poison caused its victim . . . But here, Harry’s imagination could
go no further, for he could not see how Kreacher had escaped.
“Kreacher needed water, he crawled to the island’s edge and he
drank from the black lake . . . and hands, dead hands, came out of
the water and dragged Kreacher under the surface . . . “
“How did you get away?” Harry asked, and he was not surprised
to hear himself whispering.
Kreacher raised his ugly head and looked Harry with his great,
bloodshot eyes. “Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back,” he
said.
“I know—but how did you escape the Inferi?”
Kreacher did not seem to understand.
“Master Regulus told Kreacher to come back,” he repeated.
“I know, but—“
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it, Harry?” said Ron. “He Disappa-
rated!”
“But . . . you couldn’t Apparate in and out of that cave,” said
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Harry, “otherwise Dumbledore—“
“Elf magic isn’t like wizard’s magic, is it?” said Ron, “I mean,
they can Apparate and Disapparate in and out of Hogwarts when
we can’t.”
There was a silence as Harry digested this. How could Volde-
mort have made such a mistake? But even as he thought this,
Hermione spoke, and her voice was icy.
“Of course, Voldemort would have considered the ways of house-
elves far beneath his notice . . . It would never have occurred to him
that they might have magic that he didn’t.”
“The house-elf’s highest law is his Master’s bidding,” intoned
Kreacher. “Kreacher was told to come home, so Kreacher cam e
home. . . . “
“Well, then, you did what you were told, didn’t you?” said
Hermione kindly. “You didn’t disobey orders at all!”
Kreacher shook his head, rocking as fast as ever.
“So what happened when you got back?” Harry asked. “What
did Regulus say when you told him what happened?”
“Master Regulus was very worried, very worried,” croaked
Kreacher. “Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and not
to leave the house. And then . . . it was a little while later . . . Mas-
ter Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard one night, and
Master Regulus was strange, not as he usually was, disturbed in
his mind, Kreacher could tell . . . and he asked Kreacher to take
him to the cave, the cave where Kreacher had gone with the Dark
Lord. . . . “
And so they had set o↵. Harry could visualize them quite
clearly, the frightened old elf and the thin, dark Seeker who had
so resembled Sirius. . . . Kreacher knew how to open the concealed
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entrance to the underground cavern, knew how to raise the tiny
boat; this time it was his beloved Regulus who sailed with him to
the island with its basin of poison. . . .
“And he made you drink the poison?” said Harry, disgusted.
But Kreacher shook his head and wept. Hermione’s hands leapt
to her mouth: She se eme d to have understood something.
“M—Master Regulus took from his pocket a locket like the one
the Dark Lord had,” said Kreacher, tears pouring down either side
of his snoutlike nose. “And he told Kreacher to take it and, when
the basin was empty, to switch the lockets . . . ”
Kreacher’s sobs came in great rasps now; Harry had to concen-
trate hard to understand him.
“And he order—Kreacher to leave—without him. And he told
Kreacher—to go home—and never to tell my Mistress—what he
had done—but to destroy—the first locket. And he drank—all the
potion—and Kreacher swapped the lockets—and watched . . . as
Master Regulus . . . was dragged beneath the water . . . and . . . “
“Oh, Kreacher!” wailed Hermione, who was crying. She
dropped to her knees beside the elf and tried to hug him. At
once he was on his feet, cringing away from her, quite obviously
repulsed.
“The Mudblood touched Kreacher, he will not allow it, what
would his Mistress say?”
“I told you not to call her ’Mudblood’!” snarled Harry, but
the elf was already punishing himself. He fell to the ground and
banged his forehead on the floor
“Stop him—stop him!” Hermione cried. “Oh, don’t you see
now how sick it is, the way they’ve got to obey?”
“Kreacher—stop, stop!” shouted Harry.
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The elf lay on the floor, panting and shivering, green mucus
glistening around his snot, a bruise already blooming on his pallid
forehead where he had struck himself, his eyes swollen and blood-
shot and swimming in tears. Harry had never seen anything so
pitiful.
“So you brought the locket home,” he said relentlessly, for he
was determined to know the full story. “And you tried to destroy
it?”
“Nothing Kreacher did made any mark upon it,” moaned the
elf. “Kreacher tried everything, everything he knew, but nothing,
nothing would work. . . . So many powerful spe lls upon the casing,
Kreacher was sure the way to destroy it was to get inside it, but it
would not open . . . Kreacher punished himself, he tried again, he
punished himself, he tried again. Kreacher failed to obey orders,
Kreacher could not destroy the locket! And his mistress was mad
with grief, because Master Regulus had disappeared and Kreacher
could not te ll her what had happe ned, no, because Master Regulus
had f–f–forbidden him to tell any of the f–f–family what happened
in the c-cave . . . ”
Kreacher began to sob so hard that there were no more coher-
ent words. Tears flowed down Hermione’s cheeks as she watched
Kreacher, but she did not dare touch him again. Even Ron, who
was no fan of Kreacher’s, looked troubled. Harry sat back on his
heels and shook his head, trying to clear it.
“I don’t understand you, Kreacher,” he said finally. “Voldemort
tried to kill you, Regulus died to bring Voldemort down, but you
were still happy to betray Sirius to Voldemort? You were happy to
go to Narcissa and Bellatrix, and pass information to Voldemort
through them . . . “
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“Harry, Kreacher doesn’t think like that,” said Hermione, wip-
ing her eyes on the back of her hand. “He’s a slave; house-elves
are used to bad, e ven brutal treatment; what Voldemort did to
Kreacher wasn’t that far out of the common way. What do wizard
wars mean to an elf like Kreacher? He’s loyal to people who are
kind to him, and Mrs. Black must have b een, and Regulus cer-
tainly was, so he served them willingly and parroted their beliefs.
I know what you’re going to say,” she went on as Harry began to
protest, “that Regulus changed his mind . . . but he doesn’t seem
to have explained that to Kreacher, does he?” And I think I know
why. Kreacher and Regulus’s family were all safest if they kept to
the old pure-blood line. Regulus was trying to protect them all.”
“Sirius—“
“Sirius was horrible to Kreacher, Harry, and it’s no good looking
like that, you know it’s true. Kreacher had been alone for such
a long time when Sirius came to live here, and he was probably
starving for a bit of a↵ ec tion. I’m sure ‘Miss Cissy’ and ‘Miss
Bella’ were perfectly lovely to Kreacher when he turned up, so he
did them a favor and told them everything they wanted to know.
I’ve said all along that wizards would pay for how they treat house-
elves. Well, Voldemort did . . . and so did Sirius.”
Harry had no retort. As he watched Kreacher sobbing on the
floor, he remembered what Dumbledore had said to him, mere
hours after Sirius’s death: I do not think Sirius ever saw Kreacher
as a being with feelings as acute as a human’s. . . .
“Kreacher,” said Harry after a while, “when you feel up to it,
er. . . . please sit up.”
It was several minutes before Kreacher hiccuped himself into
silence. Then he pushed himself into a sitting position again, rub-
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bing his knuckles into his eyes like a small child.
“Kreacher, I am going to ask you to do something,” said Harry.
He glanced at Hermione for assistance. He wanted to give the order
kindly, but at the same time, he could not pretend that it was not
an order. However, the change in his tone seemed to have gained
her approval: She smiled encouragingly.
“Kreacher, I want you, please, to go and find Mundungus
Fletcher. We need to find out where the locket—where Master
Regulus’s locket is. It’s really important. We want to finish the
work Master Regulus started, we want to—er—ensure that he
didn’t die in vain.”
Kreacher dropped his fists and looked up at Harry.
“Find Mundungus Fletcher?” he croaked.
“And bring him here, to Grimmauld Place,” said Harry. “Do
you think you could do that for us?”
As Kreacher nodded and got to his feet, Harry had a sudden
inspiration. He pulled out Hagrid’s purse and to ok out the fake
Horcrux, the substitute locket in which Regulus had placed the
note to Voldemort.
“Kreacher, I’d, er, like you to have this,” he said, pressing the
locket into the elf’s hand. “This be longed to Regulus and I’m sure
he’d want you to have it as a token of gratitude for what you—“
“Overkill, mate,” said Ron as the elf took one look at the locket,
let out a howl of shock and misery, and threw himself back onto
the ground.
It took them nearly half an hour to calm down Kreacher, who
was so overcome to be presented with a Black family heirloom for
his very own that he was too weak at the knees to stand properly.
When finally he was able to totter a few steps they all accompanied
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him to his cupboard, watched him tuck up the locket safely in his
dirty blankets, and assured him that they would make its protec-
tion their first priority while he was away. He then made two low
bows to Harry and Ron, and even gave a funny little spasm in Her-
mione’s direction that might have been an attempt at a respectful
salute, before Disapparating with the usual loud crack.
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The Bribe
I
f Kreacher could escape a lake full of Inferi, Harry was confi-
dent that the capture of Mundungus would take a few hours
at most, and he prowled the house all morning in a state
of high anticipation. However, Kreacher did not return that
morning or even that afternoon. By nightfall, Harry felt discour-
aged and anxious, and a s upper composed largely of moldy bread,
upon which Hermione had tried a variety of unsuccessful Transfig-
urations, did nothing to help.
Kreacher did not return the following day, nor the day after
that. However, two cloaked men had appeared in the square out-
side number twelve, and they remained there into the night, gazing
in the direction of the house that they cannot see.
“Death Eaters, for sure,” said Ron, as he, Harry, and Hermione
watched from the drawing room windows. “Reckon they know
we’re in here?”
“I don’t think so,” said Hermione, though she looked frightened,
“or they’d have sent Snape in after us, wouldn’t they?”
“D’you reckon he’s been in here and had his tongue tied by
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Moody’s curse?” asked Ron.
“Yes,” said Hermione, “otherwise he’d have been able to tell
that lot how to get in, wouldn’t he? But they’re probably watching
to see whether we turn up. They know that Harry owns the house,
after all.”
“How do they—?” began Harry.
“Wizarding wills are examined by the Ministry, remember?
They’ll know Sirius left you the place.”
The presence of the Death Eaters outside increased the ominous
mood inside number twelves. They had not heard a word from
anyone beyond Grimmauld Place since Mr. Weasley’s Patronus,
and the strain was starting to tell. Restless and irritable, Ron had
developed an annoying habit of playing with the Deluminator in
his pocket. This particularly infuriated Hermione, who was whiling
away the wait for Kreacher by studying The Tales of Beedle the
Bard and did not appreciate the way the lights kept flashing on
and o↵.
“Will you stop it!” she cried out on the third evening of
Kreacher’s absence, as all light was sucked from the drawing room
yet again.
“Sorry, sorry!” said Ron, clicking the Deluminator and restor-
ing the lights. “I don’t know I’m doing it!”
“Well, can’t you find something useful to occupy yourself?”
“What, like reading kids’ stories?”
“Dumbledore left me this book, Ron—”
“—and he left me the Deluminator, maybe I’m supposed to use
it!”
Unable to stand the bickering, Harry slipped out of the room
unnoticed by either of them. He headed downstairs toward the
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kitchen, which he kept visiting because he was sure that was where
Kreacher was most likely to reappear. Halfway down the flight of
stairs into the hall, however, he heard a tap on the front door, then
metallic clicks and the grinding of the chain.
Every nerve in his body seemed to tauten: He pulled out his
wand, moved into the shadows b e side the decapitated elf heads,
and waited. T he door ope ned: He saw a glimpse of the lamplit
square outside, and a cloaked figure edged into the hall and closed
the door behind it. The intruder took a step forward, and Moody’s
voice asked, “Severus Snape?” Then the dust figure rose from the
end of the hall, and rushed him, raising its dead hand.
“It was not I who killed you, Albus,” said a quiet voice.
The jinx broke: The dust-figure exploded again, and it was
impossible to make out the newcomer through the dense gray cloud
it left behind.
Harry pointed his wand into the middle of it.
“Don’t move!”
He had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black. At the sound of
his yell, the curtains hiding her flew open and she began to scream,
“Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house—”
Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry,
wands pointing, like his, at the unknown man now standing with
his arms raised in the hill below.
“Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Hermione weakly, pointing her
wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished
shut again and silence fell. Ron too lowered his wand, but Harry
did not.
“Show yourself!” he called back.
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Lupin moved forward into the lamplight, hands still held high
in a gesture of surrender.
“I am Re mus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as
Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder’s Map, married
to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to
produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag.”
“Oh, all right.” said Harry, lowering his wand, “but I had to
check, didn’t I?”
“Speaking as your ex- Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I
quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn’t
be quite so quick to lower your defenses.”
They ran down the stairs toward him. Wrapped I a thick black
traveling cloak, he looked exhausted, but pleased to se e them.
“No sign of Severus then?” he asked.
“No,” said Harry, “What’s going on? Is everyone okay?”
“Yes,” said Lupin, “but we’re all being watched. There are a
couple of Death Eaters in the square outside—”
“We know—”
“I had to Apparate very precisely onto the top step outside the
front door to be sure that they would not see me. They can’t
know you’re in here or I’m sure they’d have more people out there;
they’re staking out everywhere that’s got any connection with you,
Harry. Let’s go downstairs, there’s a lot to tell you, and I want to
know what’s happened after you left the Burrow.”
They descended into the kitchen, where Hermione pointed her
wand at the gate. A fire sprang up instantly. It gave the illusion of
coziness to the stark stone walls and glistened o↵ the long wooden
table. Lupin pulled a few butterbeers from beneath his traveling
cloak and they sat down.
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“I’d have been here three days ago but I needed to shake o↵ the
Death Eater tailing me,” said Lupin. “So, you came straight here
after the wedding?”
“No,” said Harry, “only after we ran into a couple of Death
Eaters in a caf´e on Tottenham Court Road.”
Lupin slopped most of his butterbeer down his front.
“What?”
They explained what had happened; when they had finished,
Lupin looked aghast.
“But how did they find you so quickly? It’s impossible to track
anyone who Apparates, unless you grab hold of them as they dis-
appear.”
“And it doesn’t seem likely they were just strolling down Tot-
tenham Court Road at the time, does it?” said Harry.
“We wondered,” said Hermione tentatively, “whether Harry
could still have the Trace on him?”
“Impossible,” said Lupin. Ron looked smug, and Harry felt
hugely relieved. “Apart from anything els e, they’d know for sure
Harry was here if he still had the Trace on him, wouldn’t they?
But I can’t see how they could have tracked you to Tottenham
Court Road, that’s worrying, really worrying.”
He lo oked disturbed, but as far as Harry was concerned, that
question could wait.
“Tell us what happe ned after we left, we haven’t heard a thing
since Ron’s dad told us the family were safe.”
“Well, Kingsley saved us,” said Lupin. “Thanks to his warning
most of the wedding guests were able to Disapparate before they
arrived.”
“Were they Death Eaters or Ministry people?” interjected Her-
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mione.
“A mixture; but to all intents and purposes they’re the same
thing now,” said Lupin. “There were about a dozen of them, but
they didn’t know you were there, Harry. Arthur heard a rumor that
they tried to torture your whereabouts out of Scrimgeour before
they killed him; if it’s true, he didn’t give you away.”
Harry looked at Ron and Hermione; their expressions reflected
the mingled shock and gratitude he felt. He had never liked Scrim-
geour much, but if what Lupin said was true, the man’s final act
had been to try to protect Harry.
“The Death Eaters searched the Burrow from top to bottom,”
Lupin went on. “They found the ghoul, but didn’t want to get to
close—and then they interrogated those of us who remained for
hours. They were trying to get information on you, Harry, but
of course nobody apart from the Order knew that you had b een
there.
“At the same time that they were smashing up the wed-
ding, more Death Eaters were forcing their way into every Order-
connected house in the country. No deaths,” he added quickly,
forstalling the question, “but they were rough. They burned down
Dedalus Diggle’s house, but as you know he wasn’t there, and they
used the Cruciatus Curse on Tonks’s family. Again, trying to find
out where you went after you visited them. They’re all right—
shaken, obviously, but otherwise okay.”
“The Death Eaters got through all those protective charms?”
Harry asked, remembering how e↵ective those had been on the
night he had crashed in Tonks’s parents’ garden.
“What you’ve got to realize, Harry, is that the Death Eaters
have got the full might of the Ministry on their side now,” said
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The Bribe
Lupin. “They’ve got the power to perform brutal spells without
fear of identification or arrest. They managed to penetrate every
defensive spell we’d cast against them, and once inside, they were
completely open about why they’d come.”
“And are they bothering an excuse for torturing Harry’s where-
abouts out of people?” asked Hermione, an edge to her voice.
“Well,” said Lupin. He hesitated, then pulled out a folded copy
of the Daily Prophet.
“Here,” he said, pushing it across the table to Harry, “you’ll
know sooner or later anyway. That’s their pretext for going after
you.”
Harry smoothed out the paper. A huge photograph of his own
face filled the front page. He read the headline over it:
WANTED FOR QUESTIONING ABOUT
THE DEATH OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
Ron and Hermione gave roars of outrage, but Harry said noth-
ing. He pushed the newspaper away; he did not want to read any
more: He knew what it would say. Nobody but those who had
been on top of the tower when Dumbledore died knew who had re-
ally killed him and, as Rita Skeeter had already told the wizarding
world, Harry had been seen running from the place moments after
Dumbledore had fallen.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Lupin said.
“So Death Eaters have taken over the Daily Prophet too?”
asked Hermione furiously.
Lupin nodded.
“But surely people realize what’s going on?”
“The coup has been smooth and virtually silent,” said Lupin.
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“The official version of Scrimgeour’s murder is that he resigned;
he has been replaced by Pius Thicknesse, who is under the Imperius
Curse.”
“Why didn’t Voldemort declare himself Minister of Magic?”
asked Ron.
Lupin laughed.
“He doesn’t need to, Ron. E↵ec tively he is the Minister, but
why should he sit behind a desk at the Ministry? His puppet,
Thicknesse, is taking care of everyday business, leaving Voldemort
free to extend his power beyond the ministry.
“Naturally many people have deduced what has happened:
There has been such a dramatic change in Ministry policy in the
last few days, and many are whispering that Voldemort must be
behind it. However, that is not the point: They whisper. They
daren’t confide in each other, not knowing whom to trust; they
are scared to speak out, in case their suspicions are true and their
families are targeted. Yes, Voldemort is playing a very clever game.
Declaring himself might have provoked open rebellion: Remaining
masked has created confusion, uncertainty, and fear.”
“And this dramatic change in Ministry policy,” said Harry, “in-
volves warning the Wizarding world against me instead of Volde-
mort?”
“That’s certainly part of it,” said Lupin, “and it is a master-
stroke. Now that Dumbledore is dead, you—the Boy Who Lived—
were sure to be the symbol and rallying point for any resistance
to Voldemort. But by suggesting that you had a hand in the old
hero’s death, Voldemort has not only set a price upon your head,
but sown doubt and fear amongst many who would have defended
you.
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“Meanwhile, the Ministry has started moving against Muggle-
borns.”
Lupin pointed at the Daily Prophet.
“Look at page two.”
Hermione turned the pages with much the same expression of
distaste she had worn when handling Secrets of the Darkest Art.
“‘Muggle-born Register,’” she read aloud, “‘The Ministry of
Magic is undertaking a survey of so-called “Muggle-borns,” the bet-
ter to understand how they came to possess magical secrets.
“‘Recent research undertaken by the Department of Mysteries
reveals that magic can only be passed from person to person when
Wizards reproduce. Where no proven Wizarding ancestry exists,
therefore, the so-called Muggle-born is likely to have obtained mag-
ical power by theft or force.
“‘The Ministry is determined to root out such usurpers of magi-
cal power, and to this end has issued an invitation to every so-called
Muggle-born to present themselves for interview by the newly ap-
pointed Muggle-born Registration Commission.’”
“People won’t let this happen,” said Ron.
“It is happening, Ron,’; said Lupin. “Muggle-borns are being
rounded up as we speak.”
“But how are they supposed to have ‘stolen’ magic?” said Ron.
“It’s mental, if you could steal magic there wouldn’t be any Squibs,
would there?”
“I know,” said Lupin. “Nevertheless, unless you can prove that
you have at least one close Wizarding relative, you are now deemed
to have obtained your magical power illegally and must su↵er the
punishment.”
Ron glanced at Hermione, then said, “What if purebloods and
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half-bloods swear a Muggle-born’s part of their family? I’ll tell
everyone Hermione’s my cousin—”
Hermione covered Ron’s hand with hers and squeezed it.
“Thank you, Ron, but I couldn’t let you—”
“You won’t have a choice,” said Ron fierce ly, gripping her hand
back. “I’ll teach you my family tree so you can answer questions
on it.”
Hermione gave a shaky laugh.
“Ron, as we’re on the run with Harry Potter, the most wanted
person in the c ountry, I don’t think it matters. If I was going back
to school it would be di↵erent. What’s Voldemort planning for
Hogwarts?” she asked Lupin.
“Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wiz-
ard,” he replied. “That was announced yesterday. It’s a change,
because it was never obligatory before. Of course, nearly every
witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but
their parents had the right to teach them at home or send them
abroad if they preferred. This way, Voldemort will have the whole
Wizarding population under his eye from a young age. And it’s
also another way of weeding out Muggle-borns, be cause students
must be given Blood Status—me aning that they have proven to
the ministry that they are of wizard descent—before they are al-
lowed to attend.”
Harry felt sickened and angry: At this moment, excited eleven-
year-olds would be poring over stacks of newly purchased spell-
books, unaware that they would never see Hogwarts, perhaps never
see their families again either.
“It’s . . . it’s . . . ” he muttered, struggling to find words that did
justice to the horror of his thoughts, but Lupin said quietly,
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“I know.”
Lupin hesitated.
“I’ll understand if you can’t confirm this, Harry, but the Order
is under the impression that Dumbledore left you a mission.”
“He did,” Harry replied, “and Ron and Hermione are in on it
and they’re coming with me.”
“Can you confide in me what the mission is?”
Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick
but graying hair, and wished that he could return a di↵erent an-
swer.
“I can’t, Remus, I ’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I
don’t think I can.”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Lupin, looking disappointed.
“But I ought still be of some use to you. You know what I am and
what I can do. I could come with you to provide protection. There
would be no need to tell m e exactly what you were up to.”
Harry hesitated. It was a very tempting o↵er, though how they
would be able to keep their mission secret from Lupin if he were
with them all the time he could not imagine.
Hermione, however, looked puzzled.
“But what about Tonks?” she asked.
“What about her?” said Lupin.
“Well,” said Hermione, frowning, “you’re married: How does
she feel about you going away with us?”
“Tonks will be perfectly safe.” said Lupin. “She’ll be at her
parents’ house.”
There was something strange in Lupin’s tone; it was almost
cold. There was also something odd in the idea of Tonks remaining
hidden at her parents house; she was, after all, a member of the
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Order and, as far as Harry knew, was likely to want to be in the
thick of the action.
“Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all
right . . . you know . . . between you and—”
“Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly.
Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward
and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing
himself to admit something unpleasant. “Tonks is going to have a
baby.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione.
“Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically.
“Congratulations,” said Harry.
Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then
said, “So . . . do you accept my o↵er? Will three become four? I
cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he ap-
pointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all.
And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many
of us have never encountered or imagined.”
Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry.
“Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at
her parents’ house and come away with us?”
“She’ll be pe rfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said
Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indi↵erence. “Harry,
I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.”
“Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father
would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own
kid, actually.”
Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen
might have dropp ed te n degrees. Ron stared around the room as
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though he had been bidden to me morize it, while Hermione’s eyes
swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin.
“You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last.
“Explain, then,” said Harry.
Lupin swallowed.
“I–I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against
my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.”
“I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the
kid and run o↵ with us?”
Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled backward, and he
glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever,
the shadow of the wolf upon his human face.
“Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my un-
born child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an
outcast!”
Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned.
“You have only seen me amongst the Order, or under Dum-
bledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of
the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of
my a✏iction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve
done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, when
parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the
child—the child—”
Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite
deranged.
“My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced
of it—how can I forgive myself when I knowingly risked passing on
my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle,
it is not like me, then it will be better o↵, a hundred times so,
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without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!”
“Remus!” whispered Hermione, tears in her eyes. “Don’t say
that—how could any child be ashamed of you?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Hermione,” said Harry. “I’d be pretty
ashamed of him.”
Harry did not know where his rage was coming from, but it had
propelled him to his feet too. Lupin looked as though Harry had
hit him.
“If the new regime thinks Muggle-borns are bad,” Harry said,
“what will they do to a half-werewolf whose father’s in the Order?
My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon
he’d tell you to abandon your kid to go on an adventure with us?”
“How—how dare you?” said Lupin. “This is not about a desire
for—for danger of personal glory—how dare you suggest such a—
”
“I think you’re feeling a bit of a daredevil.” Harry said, “You
fancy stepping into Sirius’s shoe—”
“Harry, no!” Hermione begged him, but he continued to glare
into Lupin’s livid face.
“I’d never have believed this,” Harry said. “The man who
taught me to fight dementors—a coward.”
Lupin drew his wand so fast that Harry had barely reached for
his own; there was a loud bang and he felt himself flying backward
as if punched; as he slammed into the kitchen wall and slid to the
floor, he glimpsed the tail of Lupin’s cloak disappearing around the
door.
“Remus, Remus, come back!” Hermione cried, but Lupin did
not respond. A moment later they heard the front door slam.
“Harry!” wailed Hermione. “How could you?”
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“It was easy,” said Harry. He stood up; he could feel a lump
swelling where his head had hit the wall. He was still so full of
anger he was shaking.
“Don’t look at me like that!” he snapped at Hermione.
“Don’t you start on her!” snarked Ron.
“No—no—we mustn’t fight!” said Hermione, launching herself
between them.
“You shouldn’t have said that stu↵ to Lupin,” Ron told Harry.
“He had it coming to him,” said Harry. Broken images were
racing each other through his mind: Sirius falling through the veil;
Dumbledore suspended, broken, in midair; a flash of green light
and his mother’s voice, begging for me rcy . . .
“Parents,” said Harry, “shouldn’t leave their kids unless—un-
less they’ve got to.”
“Harry—” said Hermione, stretching out a consoling hand, but
he shrugged it o↵ and walked away, his eyes on the fire Hermione
had conjured. He had once spoken to Lupin out of that fireplace,
seeking reassurance about James, and Lupin had consoled him.
Now Lupin’s tortured white face seemed to swim in the air before
him. He felt a sickening surge of remorse. Neither Ron nor Her-
mione spoke, but Harry felt sure that they were looking at each
other behind his back, communicating silently.
He turned around and caught them turning hurriedly away from
each other.
“I know I shouldn’t have called him a coward.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” said Ron at once.
“But he’s acting like one.”
“All the same . . . ” said Hermione.
“I know,” said Harry. “but if it makes him go back to Tonks,
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it’ll be worth it, won’t it?”
He could not keep the plea out of his voice. Hermione looked
sympathetic, Ron uncertain. Harry looked down at his feet, think-
ing of his father. Would James have backed Harry in what he had
said to Lupin, or would he have been angry at how his son had
treated his old friend?
The silent kitchen seemed to hum with the shock of the re-
cent scene and with Ron and Hermione’s unspoken reproaches.
The Daily Prophet Lupin had brought was s till lying on the table,
Harry’s own face staring up at the ceiling from the front page. He
walked over to it and sat down, opened the paper at random, and
pretended to read. He could not take in the words, his mind was
still full of the encounter with Lupin. He was sure that Ron and
Hermione had resumed their silent communications on the other
side of the Prophet. He turned a page loudly, and Dumbledore’s
name leapt out at him. It was a moment or two before he took
in the meaning of the photograph, which showed a family group.
Beneath the photograph were the words: The Dumbledore family,
left to right: Albus; Percival, holding newborn Ariana; Kendra;
and Aberforth.
His attention caught, Harry examined the picture more care-
fully. Dumbledore’s father, Percival, was a good-looking man with
eyes that seemed to twinkle even in this faded old photograph.
The baby, Ariana, was little longer than a loaf of bread and no
more distinctive-looking. The mother, Kendra, had jet black hair
pulled into a high bun. Her face had a carved quality about it.
Harry thought of photos of Native Americans he’d see as he stud-
ied her dark eyes, high cheekbones, and straight nose, formally
composed above a high-necked silk gown. Albus and Aberforth
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wore matching lacy collared jackets and had identical, shoulder-
length hairstyles. Albus looked several years older, but otherwise
the two boys looked very alike, for this was before Albus’s nose
had been broken and before he started wearing glasses.
Thinking that it could hardly make him feel any worse than he
already did, Harry began to read:
Proud and haughty, Kendra Dumbledore could not
bear to remain in Mould-on-the-Wold after her hus-
band Percival’s well-publicized arrest and impris-
onment in Azkaban. She therefore decided to up-
root the family and relocate to Godric’s Hollow,
the village that was later to gain fame as the scene
of Harry Potter’s strange esc ape from You-Know-
Who.
Like Mould-on-the-Wold, Godric’s Hollow was
home to a number of Wizarding families, but as
Kendra knew none of them, she would be spared the
curiosity about her husband’s crime she had faced
in her former village. By repeatedly rebuffing the
friendly advances of her new Wizarding neighbors,
she soon e nsured that her family was left well alone.
“Slammed the door in my face when I went
around to welcome her with a batch of homemade
Cauldron Cakes,” says Bathilda Bagshot. “The first
year they were there I only ever saw the two boys.
Wouldn’t have known there was a daughter if I
hadn’t been picking Plangentines by moonlight the
winter after they moved in, and saw Kendra leading
Ariana out into the back garden. Walked her round
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the lawn once , keeping a firm grip on her, then took
her back inside. Didn’t know what to make of it.”
It seems that Kendra thought the move to Go-
dric’s Hollow was the perfect opportunity to hide
Ariana once and for all, something she had prob-
ably been planning for years. The timing was sig-
nificant. Ariana was barely seven years old when
she vanished from sight, and seven is the age by
which most experts agree that magic will have re-
vealed itself, if present. Nobody now alive remem-
bers Ariana ever demonstrating even the slightest
sign of magical ability. It seems clear, therefore,
that Kendra made a decis ion to hide her daugh-
ter’s existence rather than su↵er the shame of ad-
mitting that she had produced a Squib. Moving
away from the friends and neighbors who knew Ar-
iana would, of course, make imprisoning her all the
easier. The tiny number of people w ho henceforth
knew of Ariana’s existence could be counted upon
to keep the secret, including her two brothers, who
deflected awkward questions with the answer their
mother had taught them: “My sister is too frail for
school.”
Next week: Albus Dumbledore at H ogwarts—the
Prizes and the Pretense.
Harry had been wrong: What he had read had indeed made him
worse. He looked back at the photograph of the apparently happy
family. Was it true? How could he find out? He wanted to go to
Godric’s Hollow, even if Bathilda was in no fit state to talk to him;
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The Bribe
he wanted to visit the place where he and Dumbledore had both
lost loved ones. He was in the process of lowering the newspaper, to
ask Ron’s and Hermione’s opinions, when a deafening crack echoed
around the kitchen.
For the first time in three days Harry had forgotten all about
Kreacher. His immediate thought was that Lupin had burst back
into the room, and for a split second, he did not take in the mass
of struggling limbs that had appeared out of thin air right beside
his chair. He hurried to his feat as Kreacher disentangled himself
and, bowing low to Harry, croaked, “Kreacher has returned with
the thief Mundungus Fletcher, Master.”
Mundungus scrambled up and pulled out his wand; Hermione,
however, was too quick for him.
“Expelliarmus!”
Mundungus’s wand soared into the air, and Hermione caught
it. Wild-eyed, Mundungus dived for the stairs: Ron rugby–tackled
him, and Mundungus hit the stone floor with a mu✏ed crunch.
“What?” he bellowed, writhing in his attempts to free himself
from Ron’s grip. “Wha’ve I done? Setting a bleedin’ ’ouse-elf on
me, what are you playing at, wha’ve I done, lemme go, lemme go,
or—”
“You’re not in much of a position to make threats,” said Harry.
He threw aside the newspaper, crossed the kitchen in a few strides,
and dropped to his knees beside Mundungus, who stopped strug-
gling and looked terrified. Ron got up, panting, and watched
as Harry pointed his wand deliberately at Mundungus’s nose.
Mundungus stank of stale sweat and tobacco smoke. His hair was
matted and his robes stained.
“Kreacher apologizes for the delay in bringing the thief, Mas-
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Chapter 11
ter,” croaked the elf. “Fletcher knows how to avoid capture, has
many hidey-holes and accomplices. Nevertheless, Kreacher cor-
nered the thief in the end.”
“You’ve done really well, Kreacher,” said Harry, and the e lf
bowed low.
“Right, we’ve got a few questions for you,” Harry told Mundun-
gus, who shouted at once.
“I panicked, okay? I never wanted to come along, no o↵ense,
mate, but I never volunteered to die for you, an’ that was bleedin’
You-Know-Who come flying at me, anyone woulda got outta there,
I said all along I didn’t wanna do it—”
“For your information, none of the rest of us Disapparated,”
said Hermione.
“Well, you’re a bunch of bleedin’ ’eroes then, aren’t you, but I
never pretended I was up for killing myself—”
“We’re not interested in why you ran out on Mad-eye,” said
Harry, moving his wand a little closer to Mundungus’s baggy,
bloodshot eyes. “We already knew you were an unreliable bit of
scum.”
“Well then, why the ’ell am I being ’unted down by ’ouse-elves?
Or is this about them goblet again? I ain’t got none of ’em left, or
you could ’ave ’em—”
“It’s not about the goblets either, although you’re getting
warmer,” said Harry. “Shut up and listen.”
It felt wonderful to have something to do, someone of whom he
could demand some small portion of truth. Harry’s wand was now
so close to the bridge of Mundungus’s nose that Mundungus had
gone cross-eyed trying to keep it in view.
“When you cleaned out his house of anything valuable,” Harry
220
The Bribe
began, but Mundungus interrupted him again.
“Sirius never cared about any of the junk—”
There was the sound of pattering feet, a blaze of shining copper,
an echoing clang, and a shriek of agony; Kreacher had taken a run
at Mundungus and hit him over the head with a saucepan.
“Call ’im o↵, call ’im o↵, ’e should be locked up!” screamed
Mundungus, cowering as Kreacher raised the heavy-bottomed pan
again.
“Kreacher, no!” shouted Harry.
Kreacher’s thin arms trembled with the weight of the pan, still
held aloft.
“Perhaps just one more, Master Harry, for luck?”
Ron laughed.
“We need him conscious, Kreacher, but if he needs persuading,
you can do the honors,” said Harry.
“Thank you very much, Master,” said Kreacher with a bow,
and he retreated a short distance, his great pale eyes still fixed
upon Mundungus with loathing.
“When you stripped this house of all the valuables you could
find,” Harry began again, “you took a bunch of stu↵ from the
kitchen cupboard. There was a locket there.” Harry’s mouth was
suddenly dry. He could sense Ron and Hermione’s tensions and
excitement too. “What did you do with it?”
“Why?” asked Mundungus, “Is it valuable?”
“You’ve still got it!” cried Hermione.
“No, he hasn’t,” said Ron shrewdly. “He’s wondering whether
he should have asked more money for it.”
“More?” said Mundungus, “that wouldn’t have been effing
difficult . . . bleedin’ gave it away, di’n’ I? No choice.”
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Chapter 11
“What do you mean?”
“I was selling in Diagon Alley, and she come up to me and asks
if I’ve got a license for trading in magical artifacts. Bleedin’ snoop.
She was gonna fine me, but she took a fancy to the locket an’ told
me she’d take it and let me o↵ this time, and to fink meself lucky.”
“Who was this woman?” asked Harry.
“I dunno, some Ministry hag.”
Mundungus considered for a moment, brow wrinkled.
“Little woman. Bow on top of her head.”
He frowned, then added, “Looked like a toad.”
Harry dropped his wand: It hit Mundungus on the nose and
shot red sparks into his eyebrows, which ignited.
“Aguamenti!” sc reame d Hermione, and a jet of water streamed
from her wand, engulfing a spluttering and choking Mundungus.
Harry looked up and saw his own shock reflected in Ron’s and
Hermione’s faces. The scars on the back of his right hand seemed
to be tingling again.
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Chapter 12
Magic is Might
A
s August wore on, the square of unkempt grass in the
middle of Grimmauld Place shriveled in the sun until
it was brittle and brown. The inhabitants of number
twelves were never seen by anybody in the surround-
ing houses, and nor was the number twelve itself. The Muggles
who lived in Grimmauld Place had long since accepted the amus-
ing mistake in the numbering that had caused number eleven to
sit beside number thirteen.
And yet the square was now attracting a trickle of visitors who
seemed to find the anomaly most intriguing. Barely a day passed
without one or two people arriving in Grimmauld Place with no
other purpose, or so it seemed, than to lean against the railing
facing numbers eleven and thirteen, watching the join between the
two houses. The lurkers were never the same two days running,
although they all seemed to share a dislike for normal clothing.
Most of the Londoners who passed them were used to eccentric
dressers and took little notice, though occasionally one of them
might glance back, wondering w hy anyone would wear such long
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Chapter 12
cloaks in the heat.
The watchers seemed to be gleaning little satisfaction from their
vigil. Occasionally one of them started forward excitedly, as if they
had seen something interesting at last, only to fall back looking
disappointed.
On the first day of September there were more people lurking in
the square than ever be fore. Half a dozen men in long cloaks stoo d
silent and watchful, gazing as ever at houses eleven and thirteen,
but the thing for which they were waiting still appeared elusive. As
evening drew in, bringing with it an unexpected gust of chilly rain,
for the first time in weeks, there occurred one of those inexplicable
moments when they appeared to have seen something interesting.
The man with the twisted face pointed and his closest companion,
a podgy pallid man, started forward, but a moment later they had
relaxed into their previous state of inactivity, looking frustrated
and disappointed.
Meanwhile, inside number twelve, Harry had just entered the
hall. He had nearly lost his balance as he Apparated onto the
top step just outside the front door, and thought that the Death
Eaters might have caught a glimpse of his momentarily exposed
elbow. Shutting the front door carefully behind him, he pulled o↵
the Invisibility Cloak, draped it over his arm, and hurried along
the gloomy hallway toward the door that led to the basement, a
stolen copy of the Daily Prophet clutched in his hand.
The usual low whisper of “Severus Snape” greeted him, the chill
wind swept him, and his tongue rolled up for a mome nt.
“I didn’t kill you,” he said, once it had unrolled, then held his
breath as the dusty jinx-figure exploded. He waited until he was
halfway down the stairs into the kitchen, out of earshot of Mrs.
Black and clear of the dust cloud, before calling, “I’ve got news,
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Magic is Might
and you won’t like it.”
The kitchen was almost unrecognizable. Every surface now
shone; coppe r pots and pans had been burnished to a rosy glow;
the wooden tabletop gleamed; the goblets and plates already laid
for dinner glinted in the light from a merrily blazing fire, on which
a cauldron was simmering. Nothing in the room, however, was
more dramatically di↵erent than the house-elf who now came hur-
rying toward Harry, dressed in a snowy-white towel, his ear hair as
clean and flu↵y as c otton wool, Regulus’s locket bouncing on his
thin chest.
“Shoes o↵, if you please, Master Harry, and hands washed be-
fore dinner,” croaked Kreacher, seizing the Invisibility Cloak and
slouching o↵ to hang it on a hook on the wall, beside a number of
old-fashioned robes that had been freshly laundered.
“What’s happened?” Ron asked apprehensively. He and Her-
mione had been poring over a sheaf of scribbled notes and hand,
drawn maps that littered the end of the long kitchen table, but now
they watched Harry as he strode toward them and threw down the
newspaper on top of their scattered parchment.
A large picture of a familiar, hook-nosed, black-haired man
stared up at them all, beneath a headline that read:
SEVERUS SNAPE CONFIRMED
AS HOGWARTS HEADMASTER
“No!” said Ron and Hermione loudly.
Hermione was quickest; she s natched up the newspaper and
began to read the accompanying story out loud.
“‘Severus Snape, long-standing Potions master at Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was today appointed head-
master in the most important of several staffing changes at the
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Chapter 12
ancient school. Following the resignation of the previous Muggle
Studies teacher, Alecto Carrows w ill will take over the post while
her brother, Amycus, fills the position of Defense Against the Dark
Arts professor.
“‘I welcome the opportunity to uphold our finest Wizarding tra-
ditions and values—’ Like com mitting murder and cutting o↵ peo-
ple’s ears , I suppose! Snape, headmaster! Snape in Dumbledore’s
study—Merlin’s pants!” she shrieked, making both Harry and
Ron jump. She leapt up from the table and hurtled from the room
shouting as she went, “I’ll be back in a minute!”
“‘Merlin’s pants’?” repeated Ron, looking amused. “She must
be upset.” He pulled the newspaper toward him and perused the
article about Snape.
“The other teachers won’t stand for this. McGonagall and
Flitwick and Sprout all know the truth, they know how Dumble-
dore died. They won’t accept Snape as headmaster. And who are
these Carrows?”
“Death Eaters,” said Harry. “There are pictures of them inside.
They were at the top o↵ the tower when Snape killed Dumbledore,
so it’s all friends together. And,” Harry went on bitterly, drawing
up a chair, “I can’t see that the other teachers have got any choice
but to stay. If the Ministry and Voldemort are behind Snape it’ll
be a choice between s taying and teaching, or a nice few years in
Azkaban—and that’s if they’re lucky. I reckon they’ll stay to try
and protect the students.”
Kreacher came bustling to the table with a large tureen in his
hands, and ladled out soup into pristine bowls, whistling between
his teeth as he did so.
“Thanks, Kreacher,” said Harry, flipping over the Prophet so
as not to have to look at Snape’s face. “Well, at least we know
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Magic is Might
exactly where Snape is now.”
He began to spoon soup into his mouth. The quality of
Kreacher’s cooking had improved dramatically ever since he had
been given Regulus’s locket: Today’s French onion was as good as
Harry had ever tasted.
“There are still a load of Death Eaters watching the house,”
he told Ron as he ate, “more than usual. It’s like they’re hoping
we’ll march out carrying our school trunks and head o↵ for the
Hogwarts Express.”
Ron glanced at his watch.
“I’ve been thinking about that all day. It left nearly six hours
ago. Weird, not being on it, isn’t it?”
In his mind’s eye Harry seemed to see the scarlet steam engine
as he and Ron had once followed it by air, shimmering between
fields and hills, a rippling scarlet caterpillar. He was sure Ginny,
Neville, and Luna were sitting together at this moment, perhaps
wondering where he, Ron, and Hermione were, or debating how
best to undermine Snape’s new regime.
“They nearly saw me coming back in just now,” Harry said. “I
landed badly on the top step, and the Cloak slipped.”
“I do that every time. Oh, here she is,” Ron added, cran-
ing around in his seat to watch Hermione reentering the kitchen.
“And what in the name of Merlin’s most baggy Y Fronts was that
about?”
“I remembered this,” Hermione panted.
She was carrying a large, framed picture, which she now lowered
to the floor before seizing her small, beaded bag from the kitchen
sideboard. Opening it, she proceeded to force the painting inside,
and despite the fact that it was patently too large to fit inside the
tiny bag, within a few seconds it had vanished, like so much else,
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Chapter 12
into the bag’s capricious depths.
“Phineas Nigellus,” Hermione explained as she threw the bag
onto the kitchen table with the usual sonorous, clanking crash.
“Sorry?” said Ron, but Harry understood. The painted image
of Phineas Nigellus Black was able to flit be tween his portrait in
Grimmauld Place and the one that hung in the headmaster’s of-
fice at Hogwarts: the circular tower-top room where Snape was no
doubt sitting right now, in triumphant possession of Dumbledore’s
collection of delicate, silver magical instruments, the stone Pen-
sieve, the Sorting Hat and, unless it had been moved elsewhere,
the sword of Gryffindor.
“Snape could send Phineas Nigellus to look inside this house for
him,” Hermione explained to Ron as he resumed her seat. “But let
him try now, all Phineas Nigellus will b e able to see is the inside
of my handbag.”
“Good thinking!” said Ron, looking impressed.
“Thank you,” smiled Hermione, pulling her soup toward her.
“So, Harry, what else happe ned today?”
“Nothing,” said Harry. “Watched the Ministry entrance for
seven house. No sign of her. Saw you dad, though, Ron. He looks
fine.”
Ron nodded his appreciation of this news. They had agreed that
it was far too dangerous to try and communicate with Mr. Weasley
while he walked in and out of the Ministry, bec ause he was always
surrounded by other Ministry workers. It was, however, reassuring
to catch these glimpses of him, even if he did look very strained
and anxious.
“Dad always told us most Ministry people use the Floo Network
to get to work,” Ron said. “That’s why we haven’t seen Umbridge,
she’d never walk, she’d think she’s too important.”
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Magic is Might
“And what about that funny old witch and that little wizard
in the navy robes?” Hermione asked.
“Oh yeah, the bloke from Magical Maintenance,” said Ron.
“How do you know he works for Magical Maintenance?” Her-
mione asked, her soup spoon suspended in midair.
“Dad said everyone from Magical Maintenance wears navy blue
robes.”
“But you never told us that!”
Hermione dropped her spoon and pulled toward her the sheaf
of notes and maps that s he and Ron had been examining when
Harry had entered the kitchen.
“There’s nothing in here about navy blue robes, nothing!” she
said, flipping feverishly through the pages.
“Well, does it really matter?”
“Ron, it all matters! If we’re going to get into the Ministry and
not give ourselves away when they’re bound to be on the lookout
for intruders, every little detail matters! We’ve been over and over
this, I mean, what’s the point of all these reconnaissance trips if
you aren’t even bothering to tell us—”
“Blimey, Hermione, I forget one little thing—”
“You do realize, don’t you, that there’s probably no more dan-
gerous place in the whole world for us to be right now than the
Ministry of—”
“I think we should do it tomorrow,” said Harry.
Hermione stopped dead, her jaw hanging; Ron choked a little
over his soup.
“Tomorrow?” repeated Hermione. “You aren’t serious, Harry?’
“I am,” said Harry. “I don’t think we’re going to be much better
prepared than we are now even if we skulk around the Ministry
entrance for another month. The longer we put it o↵, the farther
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Chapter 12
away that locket could be. There’s already a good chance Umbridge
has chucked it away; the thing doesn’t open.”
“Unless,” said Ron, “she’s found a way of ope ning it and she’s
now possessed,”
“Wouldn’t make any di↵erence to her, sh e was so evil in the
first place,” Harry shrugged.
Hermione was biting her lip, deep in thought.
“We know everything important,” Harry went on, addressing
Hermione. “We know they’ve stopped Apparition in and out of
the Ministry. We know only the most senior Ministry membe rs are
allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network now, because
Ron heard those two Unspeakables c omplaining about it. And
we know roughly where Umbridge’s office is, because of what you
heard that bearded bloke saying to his mate—”
“‘I’ll be up on level one, Dolores wants to see me,’” Hermione
recited immediately.
“Exactly,” said Harry. “And we know you get in using those
funny coins, or tokens, or whatever they are because I saw that
witch borrowing one from her friend—”
“But we haven’t got any!”
“If the plan works, we will have,” Harry continued c almly.
“I don’t know, Harry, I don’t know. . . . There are an awful lot
of things that could go wrong, so much relies on chance. . . .”
“That’ll be true even if we spend another three months prepar-
ing,” said Harry. “It’s time to act.”
He could tell from Ron’s and Hermione’s faces that they were
scared, he was not particularly confident himself, and yet he was
sure the time had come to put their plan into operation.
They had spent the previous four weeks taking it in turns to
don the Invisibility Cloak and spy on the official entrance to the
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Magic is Might
Ministry, which Ron, thanks to Mr. Weasley, had known since
childhood. They had tailed Ministry workers on their way in,
eavesdropped on their conversations, and learned by careful ob-
servation which of them could be relied on upon to appear, alone,
at the same time every day. Occasionally there had been a chance
to sneak a Daily Prophet out of somebody’s briefcase. Slowly they
had built up the sketchy maps and notes now stacked in front of
Hermione.
“All right,” said Ron slowly, “let’s say we go for it tomor-
row. . . . I think it should just be me and Harry.”
“Oh, don’t start that again!” sighed Hermione. “I thought we’d
settled this.”
“It’s one thing hanging around the entrances under the Cloak,
but this is di↵erent, Hermione.” Ron jabbed a finger at a copy of
the Daily Prophet dared ten days previously. “You’re on the list
of Muggle-borns who didn’t present themselves for interrogation!”
“And you’re supposed to be dying of spattergroit at the Burrow!
If anyone shouldn’t go, it’s Harry, he’s got a ten-thousand-Galleon
price on his head—”
“Fine, I’ll stay here,” said Harry. “Let me know if you ever
defeat Voldemort, won’t you?”
As Ron and Hermione laughed, pain shot through the scar on
Harry’s forehead. His hand jumped to it: He saw Hermione’s eyes
narrow; and he tried to pass o↵ the movement by brushing his hair
out of his eyes.
“Well, if all three of us go we’ll have to Disapparate separately,”
Ron was saying. “We can’t all fit under the Cloak anymore.”
Harry’s scar was becoming more and more painful. He stood
up. At once, Kreacher hurried forward.
“Master has not finished his soup, would Master prefer the s a-
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Chapter 12
vory stew, or else the treacle tart to which Master is so partial?”
“Thanks, Kreacher, but I’ll be back in a minute—er—bath-
room.”
Aware that Hermione was watching him suspiciously, Harry
hurried up the stairs to the hall and then to the first landing,
where he dashed into the bathroom and bolted the door again.
Grunting with pain, he slumped over the black basin with its taps
in the form of open-mouthed serpents and closed his eyes. . . .
He was gliding along a twilit street. The buildings on either
side of him had high, timbered gables; they looked like gingerbread
houses.
He approached one of them, then saw the whiteness of his own
long-fingered hand against the door. He felt a mounting excite-
ment. . . .
The door opened: A laughing woman stoo d there. Her face fell
as she looked into Harry’s face, humor gone, terror replacing it. . . .
“Gregorovitch?” said a high, cold voice.
She shook her head: She was trying to close the door. A white
hand held it steady, prevented her shutting him out. . . .
“I want Gregorovitch.”
“Er wohnt hier nicht mehr! ” she cried, shaking her head. “He
no live here! He no live here! I know him not!”
Abandoning the attempt to close the door, she began to back
away down the dark hall, and Harry followed gliding toward her,
and his long-fingered hand had drawn his wand.
“Where is he?”
“Das welfs ich nicht! He move! I know not, I know not!”
He raised the wand. She screamed. Two young children came
running into the hall. She tried to shield them with her arms.
There was a flash of green light—
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Magic is Might
“Harry! HARRY!”
He opened his eyes; he had sunk to the floor. Hermione was
pounding on the door again.
“Harry, open up!”
He had shouted out, he knew it. He got up and unbolted the
door; Hermione toppled inside at once, regained her balance, and
looked around suspiciously. Ron was right behind her, looking
unnerved as he pointed his wand into the corners of the chilly
bathroom.
“What were you doing?” asked Hermione sternly.
“What d’you think I was doing?” asked Harry with feeble
bravado.
“You were yelling your head o↵?” said Ron.
“Oh yeah . . . I must’ve dozed o↵ or—”
“Harry, please don’t insult our intelligence,” said Hermione,
taking deep breaths. “We know your scar hurt downstairs, and
you’re white as a sheet.”
Harry sat down on the edge of the bath.
“Fine, I’ve just seen Voldemort murdering a woman. By now
he’s probably killed her whole family. And he didn’t need to. It
was Cedric all over again, they were just there. . . .”
“Harry, you aren’t supp os ed to let this happen anymore!” Her-
mione cried, her voice echoing through the bathroom. “Dumble-
dore wanted you to use Occlumency! He thought the connection
was dangerous—Voldemort can use it, Harry! What good is it to
watch him kill and torture, how can it help?”
“Because it means I know what he’s doing,” said Harry.
“So you’re not even going to try to shut him out?”
“Hermione, I can’t. You know I’m lousy at Occlumency, I never
got the hang of it.”
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Chapter 12
“You never really tried!” she said hotly. “I don’t get it, Harry—
do you like having this special connection or relationship or what—
whatever—”
She faltered under the look he gave her as he stood up.
“Like it?” he said quietly. “Would you like it?”
“I—no—I’m sorry, Harry, I didn’t mean—”
“I hate it, I hate the fact that he can get inside me, that I have
to watch him when he’s most dangerous. But I’m going to use it.”
“Dumbledore—”
“Forget Dumbledore. This is my choice, nobody else’s. I want
to know why he’s after Gregorovitch.”
“Who?”
“He’s a foreign wandmaker,” said Harry. “He made Krum’s
wand and Krum reckons he’s brilliant.”
“But according to you,” said Ron, “Voldemort’s got Ollivander
locked up somewhere. If he’s already got a wandmaker, what does
he need another one for?”
“Maybe he agrees with Krum, maybe he thinks Gregorovitch
is better . . . or else he thinks Gregorovitch will be able to explain
what my wand did when he was chasing me, because Ollivander
didn’t know.”
Harry glanced into the cracked, dusty mirror and saw Ron and
Hermione exchanging skeptical looks be hind his back.
“Harry, you keep talking about what your wand did,” said Her-
mione, “but you made it happen! Why are you so determined not
to take responsibility for your own power?”
“Because I know it wasn’t me! And so does Voldemort, Her-
mione! We both know what really happened!”
They glared at each other; Harry knew that he had not con-
vinced Hermione and that she was marshaling counterarguments,
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Magic is Might
against both his theory on his wand and the fact that he was per-
mitting himself to see into Voldemort’s mind. To his relief, Ron
intervened.
“Drop it,” he advised her. “It’s up to him. And if we’re going
to the ministry tomorrow, don’t you reckon we should go over the
plan?”
Reluctantly, as the other two could tell, Hermione let the matter
rest, though Harry was quite sure she would attack again at the
first opportunity. In the meantime, they returned to the basement
kitchen, where Kreacher served them all stew and treac le tart.
They did not get to bed until late that night, after spending
hours going over and over their plan until they could recite it, word
perfect, to each other. Harry, who was now sleeping in Sirius’s
room, lay in bed with his wandlight trained on the old photograph
of his father, Sirius, Lupin, and Pettigrew, and muttered the plan
to himself for another ten minutes. As he extinguished his wand,
however, he was thinking not of Polyjuice Potion, Puking Pastilles,
or the navy blue robes of Magical Maintenance; he thought of Gre-
gorovitch the wandmaker, and how long he could hope to remain
hidden while Voldemort sought him so determinedly.
Dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste.
“You look terrible,” was Ron’s greeting as he entered the room
to wake Harry.
“Not for long,” said Harry, yawning.
They found Hermione downstairs in the kitchen. She was being
served co↵ee and hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly
manic expression that Harry associated with exam review.
“Robes,” she said under her breath, acknowledging her pres-
ence with a nervous nod and continuing to poke around in
her beaded bag, “Polyjuice potion . . . Invisibility Cloak . . . Decoy
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Chapter 12
Detonators . . . You should each take a c ouple just in case. . . . Puk-
ing Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Extendable Ears . . . ”
They gulped down their breakfast, then set o↵ upstairs,
Kreacher bowing them out and promising to have a steak-and-
kidney pie ready for them when they returned.
“Bless him,” said Ron fondly, “and when you think I used to
fantasize about cutting o↵ his head and s ticking it on the wall.”
They made their way onto the front step with immense caution.
They could see a couple of pu↵y-eyed Death Eaters watching the
house from across the misty square.
Hermione disapparated with Ron first, then came back for
Harry.
After the usual brief spell of darkness and near su↵ocation,
Harry found himself in the tiny alleyway where the first phase of
their plan was scheduled to take place. It was as yet deserted,
except for a couple of large bins; the first ministry workers did not
usually appear here until at least eight o’clock.
“Right then,” said Hermione, checking her watch. “She ought
to be here in about five minutes. When I’ve Stunned her—”
“Hermione, we know,” said Ron sternly. “And I thought we
were supposed to open the door before she got here?”
Hermione squealed.
“I nearly forgot! Stand back—”
She pointed her wand at the padlocked and heavily graffitied
fire door beside them, which burst open with a crash. The dark
corridor behind it led, as they knew from their careful scouting
trips, into an empty theater. Hermione pulled the door back toward
her, to make it look as though it was still closed.
“And now,” she said, turning back to face the other two in the
alley way, “we put on the Cloak again—”
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Magic is Might
“—and we wait,” Ron finished, throwing it over Hermione’s
head like a blanket over a birdcage and rolling his eyes at Harry.
Little more than a minute later, there was a tiny pop and a
little Ministry witch with flyaway gray hair Apparated feet from
them, blinking a little in the sudden brightness: the sun had just
come out from behind a cloud. She barely had time to enjoy the
unexpected warmth, however, before Hermione’s silent Stunning
Spell hit her in the chest and she toppled over.
“Nicely done, Hermione,” said Ron, emerging from behind a bin
beside the theate r door as Harry took o↵ the Invisibility Cloak.
Together they carried the little witch into the dark passageway
that led backstage. He rmione plucked a few hairs from the witch’s
head and added them to a flask of muddy Polyjuice Potion she had
taken from the beaded bag. Ron was rummaging through the little
witch’s handbag.
“She’s Mafalda Hopkirk,” he said, reading a small card that
identified their victim as an assistant in the Improper Use of Magic
Office. “You’d better take this, Hermione, and here are the to-
kens,”
He passed her several small golden coins, all embossed with the
letters M.O.M., which he had taken from the witch’s purse.
Hermione drank the Polyjuice Potion, which was now a pleasant
heliotrope color, and within seconds stood before them, the double
of Mafalda Hopkirk. As she rem oved Mafalda’s spectacles and put
them on, Harry checked his watch.
“Were running late, Mr. Magical Maintenance will be here any
second.”
They hurried to close the door on the real Mafalda; Harry and
Ron threw the Invisibility Cloak over themselves but Hermione
remained in view, waiting. Seconds later there was another pop,
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Chapter 12
and a small, ferrety-looking wizard appe ared before them.
“Oh, hello, Mafalda.”
“Hello!” said He rmione in a quavery voice. “How are you to-
day?”
“Not so good, actually,” replied the little wizard, who looked
thoroughly downcast.
As Hermione and the wizard headed for the main road, Harry
and Ron crept along behind them.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re under the heather,” said Hermione,
talking firmly over the little wizard as he tried to expound upon
his problems; it was essential to stop him from reaching the street.
“Here, have a sweet.”
“Eh? Oh, no thanks—”
“I insist!” said Hermione aggressively, shaking the bag of
pastilles I his face. Looking rather alarmed, the little wizard took
one.
The e↵ect was instantaneous. The moment the pastille touched
his tongue, the little wizard started vomiting so hard that he did
not even notice as Hermione yanked a handful of hairs from the
top of his head.
“Oh dear!” she said, as he splattered the alley with sick. “Per-
haps you’d better take the day o↵!”
“No—no!” He choked and retched, trying to continue on his
way despite being unable to walk straight. “I must—today—must
go—”
“But that’s just silly!” said Hermione, alarmed. “You can’t go
to work in this state—I think you ought to go to St. Mungo’s and
get them to sort you out!”
The wizard had collapsed, heaving, onto all fours, still trying
to crawl toward the main street.
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Magic is Might
“You simply can’t go to work like this!” cried Hermione.
At last he seemed to accept the truth of her words. Using a
repulsed Hermione to claw his away back into a standing positions,
he turned on the spot and vanished, leaving nothing behind but the
bag Ron had snatched from his hand as he went and some flying
chunks of vomit.
“Urgh,” said Hermione, holding up the skirts of her robe to
avoid the puddles of sick. “It would have made much less mess to
Stun him too.”
“Yeah,” said Ron, emerging from under the cloak holding the
wizard’s bag, “but I still think a whole pile of unconscious bodies
would have drawn more attention. Keen on his job, though, isn’t
he? Chuck us the hair and the potion, then.”
Within two minutes, Ron stood before them, as small and fer-
rety as the sick wizard, and wearing the navy blue robes that had
been folded in his bag.
“Weird he wasn’t wearing them today, wasn’t it, seeing how
much he wanted to go? Anyway, I’m Reg Cattermole, according
to the label in the back.”
“Now wait here,” Hermione told Harry, who was still under the
Invisibility Cloak, “and we’ll be back with some hairs for you.”
He had to wait ten minutes, but it seemed much longer to Harry,
skulking alone in the sick-splattered alleyway beside the door con-
cealing the Stunned Mafalda. Finally Ron and Hermione reap-
peared.
“We don’t know who he is,” Hermione said, passing Harry sev-
eral curly black hairs, “but he’s gone home with a dreadful nose-
bleed! Here, he’s pretty tall, you’ll need bigger robes. . . .”
She pulled out a set of the old robes Kreacher had laundered
for them, and Harry retired to take the potion and change.
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Once the painful transformation was complete he was more than
six feet tall, and from what he could tell from his well-muscled
arms, powerfully built. He also had a beard. Stowing the Invisi-
bility Cloak and his glasses inside his new robes, he rejoined the
other two.
“Blimey, that’s scary,” said Ron, looking up at Harry, who now
towered over them.
“Take one of Mafalda’s tokens,” Hermione told Harry, “and let’s
go, it’s nearly nine.”
They stepped out of the alleyway together. Fifty yards along
the crowded pavement there were spiked black railings flanking two
flights of steps, one labeled Gent lemen, the other Ladies.
“See you in a moment, then,” said Hermione nervously, and
she tottered o↵ down the steps to Ladies. Harry and Ron joined
a number of oddly dressed men descending into what appeared to
be an ordinary underground public toilet, tiled in grimy black and
white.
“Morning, Reg!” called another wizard in navy blue robes as
he let himself into a cubicle by inserting his golden token into a
slot in the door. “Blooming pain in the bum, this, eh? Forcing us
all to get to work this way! Who are they expecting to turn up,
Harry Potter?”
The wizard roared with laughter at his own wit. Ron gave a
forced chuckle.
“Yeah,” he said, “stupid, isn’t it?”
And he and Harry let themselves into adjoining cubicles.
To Harry’s left and right came the s ound of flushing. He
crouched down and peered through the gap at the bottom of the
cubicle, just in time to see a pair of booted feet climbing into the
toilet next door. He looked left and saw Ron blinking at him.
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Magic is Might
“We have to flush ourselves in?” he whispered.
“Looks like it,” Harry whispered back; he voice came out deep
and gravelly.
They both stood up. Feeling exceptionally foolish, Harry clam-
bered into the toilet.
He knew at once that he had done the right thing; though
he appeared to be standing in water, his shoes, feet, and robes
remained quite dry. He reached up, pulled the chain, and next
moment had zoomed down a short chute, emerging out a fireplace
into the Ministry of Magic.
He got up clumsily; there was a lot more of his b ody than he
was accustomed to. The great Atrium seemed darker than Harry
remembered it. Previously a golden fountain had filled the center of
the hall, casting shimmering spots of light over the polished wooden
floor and walls. Now a gigantic statue of black stone dominated the
scene. It was rather frightening, this was sculpture of a witch and
a wizard sitting on ornately carved thrones, looking down at the
Ministry workers toppling out of fireplaces below them. Engraved
in foot-high letters at the base of the statue were the words magic
is might.
Harry received a heavy blow on the back of the legs: Another
wizard had just flown out of the fireplace behind him.
“Out of the way, can’t y—oh, sorry, Runcorn!”
Clearly frightened, the balding wizard hurried away. Appar-
ently the man whom Harry was impersonating, Runcorn, was in-
timidating.
“Psst!” said a voice, and he looked around to see a wispy little
witch and the ferrety wizard from Magical Maintenance gesturing
to him from over beside the s tatue. Harry hastened to join them.
“You got in all right, then?” Hermione whispered to Harry.
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Chapter 12
“No, he’s still stuck in the bog,” said Ron.
“Oh, very funny . . . It’s horrible, isn’t it?” she said to Harry,
who was staring up at the statue. “Have you seen what they’re
sitting on?”
Harry looked more closely and realized that what he had though
were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved
human: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women, and
children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed
together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.
“Muggles,” whispered Hermione. “In their rightful place. Come
on, let’s get going.”
They joined the stream of witches and wizards moving toward
the golden gates at the end of the hall looking around as surrepti-
tiously as possible, but there was no sign of the distinctive figure
of Dolores Umbridge. They pass ed through the gates and into a
smaller hall, where queues were forming in front of twenty golden
grilles housing as many lifts. They had barely joined the nearest
one when a voice said, “Cattermole!”
They looked around: Harry’s stomach turned over. One of the
Death Eaters who had witnessed Dumbledore’s death was striding
toward them. The Ministry workers beside them fell silent, their
eyes downcast. Harry could feel fear rippling through them. The
man’s scowling, slightly brutish face was somehow at odds with his
magnificent, sweeping robes, which were embroidered with much
gold thread. Someone in the crowd around the lifts called syco-
phantically, “Morning, Yaxley!” Yaxley ignored them.
“I requested somebody from Magical Maintenance to sort out
my office, Cattermole. It’s still raining in there.”
Ron looked around as though hoping somebody else would in-
tervene, but nobody spoke.
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Magic is Might
“Raining . . . in your office? That’s—that’s not good, is it?”
Ron gave a nervous laugh. Yaxley’s eyes widened.
“You think it’s funny, Cattermole, do you?”
A pair of witches broke away from the queue for the list and
bustled o↵.
“No,” said Ron, “no, of course—”
“You realize that I am on my way downstairs to interrogate
your wife, Cattermole. In fact, I’m quite surprised you’re not down
there holding her hand while she waits. Already given her up as a
bad job, have you? Probably wise. Be sure and marry a pureblood
next time.”
Hermione had let out a little squeak of horror. Yaxley looked
at her. She coughed feebly and turned away.
“I—I—” stammered Ron.
“But if my wife were accused of being a Mudblood,” said Yax-
ley, “—not that any woman I married would ever be mistaken
for such filth—and the Head of the Department of Magical Law
Enforcement needed a job doing, I would make it my priority to
do that job, Cattermole. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” whispered R on.
“Then attend to it, Cattermole, and if my office is not com-
pletely dry within an hour, you wife’s Blood Status will be in even
graver doubt than it is now.”
The golden grille before them clattered open. With a nod an un-
pleasant smile to Harry, who was evidently expected to appreciate
this treatment of Cattermole, Yaxley swept away toward another
lift. Harry, Ron, and Hermione entered theirs, but nobo dy fol-
lowed them: It was as if they were infectious. The grilles shut with
a clang and the lift began to move upward.
“What am I going to do?” Ron asked the other two at once;
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Chapter 12
he looked stricken. “If I don’t turn up, my wife . . . I me an, Cat-
termole’s wife—”
“We’ll come with you, we should stick together—” began Harry,
but Ron shook his head feverishly.
“That’s mental, we haven’t got much time. You two find Um-
bridge, I’ll go and sort out Yaxley’s offic e—but how do I stop it
raining?”
“Try Finite Incantatem,” said Hermione at once, “that s hould
stop the rain if it’s a hex or curse; if it doesn’t, something’s
gone wrong with an Atmospheric Charm, which will be more dif-
ficult to fix, so as an interim measure try Impervius to protect his
belongings—”
“Say it again, slowly—” said Ron, searching his pockets des-
perately for a quill, but at that moment the lift juddered to a halt.
A disembodied female voice said, “Level four, Department for the
Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast,
Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liason Office, and Pest Advi-
sory Bureau,” and the grilles slid open again, admitting a couple
of wizards and several pale violet paper airplanes that fluttered
around the lamp in the ceiling of the lift.
“Morning, Albert,” said a bushily whiskered man, smiling at
Harry. He glanced over at Ron and Hermione as the lift creaked up-
ward once more: Hermione was now whispering frantic instructions
to Ron. The wizard leaned toward Harry, leering, and muttered,
“Dirk Cresswell, eh? From Goblin Liaison? Nice one, Albert, I’m
pretty confident I’ll get his job now!”
He winked. Harry smiled back, hoping that this would suffice.
The lift stopped; the grilles opened once more.
“Level two, Department of Magical law enforcement, including
the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wiz-
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Magic is Might
engamot Administration Services,” said the disembodied witch’s
voice.
Harry saw Hermione give Ron a little push and he hurried out
of the lift, followed by the other wizards, leaving Harry and Her-
mione alone. The moment the golden door had clos ed Hermione
said, very fast, “Actually, Harry, I think I’d better go after him,
I don’t think he knows what he’s doing and if he gets caught the
whole thing—”
“Level one, Minister of Magic and Support Sta↵.”
The golden grilles slid apart again and Hermione gasped. Four
people stood before them, two of them in deep conversation: a
long-haired wizard wearing magnificent robes of black and gold,
and a squat, toad-like witch wearing a velvet bow in her short hair
and clutching a clipboard to her chest.
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Chapter 13
The Muggle-born
Registration Commission
A
h, Mafalda!” said Umbridge, looking at Hermione.
“Travers sent you, did he?”
“Y—yes,” squeaked Hermione.
“Good, you’ll do perfectly well.” Umbridge spoke to
the wizard in black and gold. “That’s that problem solved, Min-
ister, if Mafalda can be spared for record-keeping we shall be able
to start straightaway.” She consulted her clipboard. “Ten peo-
ple today and one of them the wife of a Ministry employee!! Tut,
tut . . . even here, in the heart of the Ministry!” She stepped into
the lift beside Hermione, as did the two wizards who had been
listening to Umbridge’s conversation with the Minister. “We’ll go
straight down, Mafalda, and you’ll find everything you need in the
courtroom.
“Good morning, Albert, aren’t you getting out?”
“Yes, of course,” said Harry in R uncorn’s deep voice.
Harry stepped out of the lift. The golden grilles clanged shut
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The Muggle-born Registration Commission
behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Harry saw Hermione’s
anxious face sinking back out of sight, a tall wizard on either side
of her, Umbridge’s velvet hair-bow level with her shoulder.
“What brings you up here, Runcorn?” asked the new Minister
of Magic. His long black hair and beard were streaked with sil-
ver, and a great overhanging forehead shadowed his glinting eyes,
putting Harry in mind of a crab looking out from beneath a rock.
“Needed a quick word with,” Harry hesitated for a fraction of
a second, “Arthur Weasley. Someone said he was up on level one.”
“Ah,” said Pius Thickness. “Has he been caught having contact
with an Undesirable?”
“No,” said Harry, his throat dry. “No, nothing like that.”
“Ah, well. It’s only a matter of time,” said Thicknesse. “If you
ask me, the blood traitors are as bad as the Mudbloods. Good day,
Runcorn.”
“Good day, Minister.”
Harry watched Thicknesse march away along the thickly car-
peted corridor. The moment the Minister had passed out of sight,
Harry tugged the Invisibility Cloak out from under his heavy black
cloak, threw it over himself, and set o↵ along the corridor in the
opposite direction. Runcorn was so tall that Harry was forced to
stoop to make sure his big feet were hidden.
Panic pulsed in the pit of his stomach. As he passed gleaming
wooden door after gleaming wooden door, each bearing a small
plaque with the owner’s name and occupation upon it, the might
of the Ministry, its complexity, its impenetrability, seemed to force
itself upon him so that the plan he had been carefully concocting
with Ron and Hermione over the past four weeks seemed laughably
childish. They had concentrated all their e↵orts on getting inside
without be ing detected. They had not given a moment’s thought
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Chapter 13
to what they would do if they were forced to separate. Now Her-
mione was stuck in court proceedings, which would undoubtedly
last hours; Ron was struggling to do magic that Harry was sure was
beyond him, a woman’s liberty possibly depending on the outcome;
and he, Harry, was wandering around on the top floor when he
knew pe rfectly well that has quarry had just gone down in the lift.
He stopped walking, leaned against a wall, and tried to decide
what to do. The silence pressed upon him: There was no bustling
or talk or swift footsteps here; the purple-carpeted corridors were
as hushed as though the Mu✏iato charm had been cast over the
place.
Her office must be up here, Harry thought.
It seemed most unlikely that Umbridge would keep her jewelry
in her office, but on the other hand it seemed foolish not to search it
to make sure. He therefore set o↵ along the corridor again, passing
nobody but a frowning wizard who was murmuring instructions to
a quill that floated in front of him, scribbling on a trail of parch-
ment.
Now paying attention to the names on the doors, Harry turned
a corner. Halfway along the next corridor he emerged into a wide
open space where a dozen witches and wizards sat in rows at small
desks not unlike school desks, though much more highly polished
and free from graffiti. Harry paused to watch them, for the e↵ect
was quite mesmerizing. They were all waving and twiddling their
wands in unison, and squares of colored paper were flying in every
direction like little pink kites. After a few seconds, Harry realized
that there was a rhythm to the proceedings, that the papers all
formed the same pattern, and after a few more se conds he realized
that what he was watching was the creation of pamphlets—that
the paper squares were pages, which, when assembled, folded, and
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The Muggle-born Registration Commission
magicked into place, fell into neat stacks beside each witch or wiz-
ard.
Harry crept closer, although the workers were so intent on what
they were doing that he doubted they would notice a carpet-mu✏ed
footstep, and he slid a completed pamphlet from the pile beside a
young witch. He examined it beneath the Invisibility Cloak. Its
pink cover was emblazoned with a golden title:
MUDBLOODS
and the Dangers They Pose to
a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society
Beneath the title was a picture of a red rose with a simpering
face in the middle of its petals, being strangled by a green weed
with fangs and a scowl. There was no author’s name upon the
pamphlet, but again, the scars on the back of his right hand seemed
to tingle as he examined it. Then the young witch bes ide him
confirmed his suspicion as she said, still waving and twirling her
wand, “Will the old hag be interrogating Mudbloods all day, does
anyone know?”
“Careful,” said the wizard beside her, glancing around ner-
vously; one of his pages slipped and fell to the floor.
“What, has she got magic ears as well as an eye, now?”
The witch glanced toward the s hining mahogany door facing the
space full of pamphlet-makers; Harry looked too, and rage reared
in him like a snake. Where there might have been a peephole on
a Muggle front door, a large, round eye with a bright blue iris had
been set into the wood—an eye that was shockingly familiar to
anybody who had known Alastor Moody.
For a split second Harry forgot where he was and what he
was doing there: He even forgot that he was invisible. He strode
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Chapter 13
straight over to the door to examine the eye. It was not moving:
It gazed blindly upward, frozen. The plaque beneath it read:
Dolores Umbridge
Senior Undersecretary to the Min ister
Below that, a slightly shinier new plaque read:
Head of the Muggle-born
Registration Commission
Harry looked back at the dozen pamphlet-makers: Though they
were intent upon their work, he could hardly suppose that they
would not notice if the door of an empty office opened in front
of them. He therefore withdrew from an inner pocket an odd ob-
ject with little waving legs and a rubber-bulbed horn for a body.
Crouching down beneath the cloak, he placed the Decoy Detonator
on the ground.
It scuttled away at once through the legs of the witches and
wizards in front of him. A few moments later, during w hich Harry
waited with his hand upon the doorknob, there came a long band
and a great deal of acrid black smoke billowed from a corner. The
young witch in the front row shrieked: Pink pages flew everywhere
as she and her fellows jumped up, looking around for the source
of the commotion. Harry turned the do orknob, stepped into Um-
bridge’s office, and closed the door behind him.
He felt he had stepped back in time. The room was exactly like
Umbridge’s office at Hogwarts: Lace draperies, doilies, and dried
flowers covered every available surface. The walls bore the same
ornamental plates, each featuring a highly colored, beribboned kit-
ten, gamboling and frisking with a sickening cuteness. The desk
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The Muggle-born Registration Commission
was covered with a flouncy, flowered cloth. Behind Mad-Eye’s eye,
a tele sc opic attachment enabled Umbridge to spy on the workers
on the other side of the door. Harry took a look through it and
saw that they were all still gathered around the Decoy Detona-
tor. He wrenched the telescope out of the door, leaving a hole
behind, pulled the magical eyeball out of it, and placed it in his
pocket. Then he turned to face the room again, raised his wand,
and murmured, “Accio Locket.”
Nothing happened, but he had not expected it to; no doubt
Umbridge knew all about protective charms and spells. He there-
fore hurried behind her desk and began pulling open drawers . He
saw quills and notebooks and Spellotape; enchanted paper clips
that coiled snakelike from their drawer and had to be beaten back;
a sloppy little lace b ox full of spare hair bows and clips; but no
sign of a locket.
There was a filing cabinet behind the desk: Harry set to search-
ing it. Like Filch’s filing cabinets at Hogwarts, it was full of folders,
each labeled with a name. It was not until Harry reached the bot-
tommost drawer that he saw something to distract him from his
search: Mr. Weasley’s file.
He pulled it out and opened it.
Arthur Weasley
Blood Status Pureblood, but with unacceptable pro-
Muggle leanings. Known member of the
Order of the Phoenix
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Chapter 13
Family: Wife (pureblood), seven children, two
youngest at Hogwarts. NB: Youngest son
currently at home, seriously ill, Ministry
inspectors have confirmed.
Security Status: TRACKED. All movements are being
monitored. Strong likelihood Undesirable
No. 1 will contact (has stayed with
Weasley family previously)
“Undesirable Number One,” Harry muttered under his breath
as he replaced Mr. Weasley’s folder and shut the drawer. He had
an idea he knew who that was, and sure enough, as he straightened
up and glanced around the office for fresh hiding places, he saw a
poster of himself on the wall, with the words Undesirable No.
1 emblazoned across his chest. A little pink note was stuck to it
with a picture of a kitten in the corner. Harry moved across to
read it and saw that Umbridge had written, “To be punished.”
Angrier than ever, he proceeded to grope in the bottoms of the
vases and baskets of dried flowers, but was not at all surprised that
the locket was not there. He gave the office one last sweeping look
and his heart skipped a beat. Dumbledore was staring at him from
a small rectangular mirror, propped up on a bookcase beside the
desk.
Harry crossed the room and snatched it up, but realized the
moment he touched it that it was not am mirror at all. Dumble-
dore was smiling wistfully out of the front cover of a glossy book,
Harry had not immediately noticed the curly green writing across
his hat—The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore —nor the slightly
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The Muggle-born Registration Commission
smaller writing across his chest: “by Rita skeeter, bestselling au-
thor of Armando Dippet: Master or Moron? ”
Harry opened the book at random and saw a full-page photo-
graph of two teenage boys, both laughing immoderately with their
arms around each other’s shoulders. Dumbledore, now with elbow-
length hair, had grown a tiny wispy beard that recalled the one
on Krum’s chin that had so annoyed Ron. The boy who roared
in silent amusement beside Dumbledore had a gleeful, wild look
about him. His golden hair fell in curls to his shoulders. Harry
wondered whether it was a young doge, but before he could check
the caption, the door of the office opened.
If Thicknesse had not been looking over his shoulder as he en-
tered, Harry would not have had time to pull the Invisibility cloak
over himself. As it was, he thought Thicknesse might have caught
a glimpse of movement because for a moment or two he remained
quite still, staring curiously at the place where Harry had just
vanished. Perhaps deciding that all he had seen was Dumbledore
scratching his nose on the front of the book, for Harry had hastily
replaced it upon the shelf. Thicknesse finally walked to the desk
and pointed his wand at the quill standing ready in the ink pot. It
sprang out and begun scribbling a note to Umbridge. Very slowly,
hardly daring to breathe, Harry backed out of the office into the
open area beyond.
The pamphlet-makers were still clustered around the remains of
the Decoy Detonator, which continued to hoot feebly as it smoked.
Harry hurried o↵ up the corridor as the young witch said, “I bet
it sneaked up here from Experimental Charms, they’re so careless,
remember that poisonous duck?”
Speeding back toward the lifts, Harry reviewed his options. It
had never been likely that the locket was here at the Ministry, and
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Chapter 13
there was no hope of bewitching its whereabouts out of Umbridge
while she was sitting in a crowded court. Their priority now had to
be to leave the Ministry before they were exposed, and try again
another day. The first thing to do was to find Ron, and then they
could work out a way of extracting Hermione from the courtroom.
The lift was empty when it arrived. Harry jumped in a pulled
o↵ the Invisibility Cloak as it started its descent. To his enormous
relief, when it rattle to a halt at level two, a soaking-wet and wild-
eyed Ron got in.
“M-morning,” he stammered to Harry as the lift set o↵ again.
“Ron, it’s me, Harry!”
“Harry! Blimey, I forgot what you looked like—why isn’t Her-
mione with you?”
“She had to go down to the courtrooms with Umbridge, she
couldn’t refuse, and—”
But before Harry could finish the lift had stopped again. The
doors opened and Mr. Weasley walked inside, talking to an elderly
witch whose blonde hair was teased so high that it resembled an
anthill.
“ . . . I quite understand what you’re saying, Wakanda, but I’m
afraid I cannot be part to—”
Mr. Weasley broke o↵; he had noticed Harry. It was very
strange to have Mr. Weasley glare at him with that much dislike.
The lift doors closed and the four of them trundled downward once
more.
“Oh, hello, Reg,” said Mr. Weasley, looking around at the
sound of steady dripping from Ron’s robes. “Isn’t your wife in for
questioning today? Er—what’s happened to you? Why are you
so wet?”
“Yaxley’s office is raining,” said Ron. He addressed Mr.
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Weasley’s shoulder, and Harry felt sure he was s cared that his
father might recognize him if they looked directly into each other’s
eyes. “I couldn’t stop it, so they’ve sent me to get Bernie—
Pillsworth, I think they said—”
“Yes, a lot of offices have been raining lately,” said Mr. Weasley.
“Did you try Meterolojinx Recanto? It worked for Bletchley.”
“Meterolojinx Recanto?” whispered Ron. “No, I didn’t.
Thanks, D—I me an, thanks, Arthur.”
The lift doors opened; the old witch with the anthill hair left,
and Ron darted past her out of sight. Harry made to follow him,
but found his path blocked as Percy Weasley strode into the lift,
his nose buried in some papers he was reading.
Not until the doors had clanged shut again did Percy realize
he was in a lift with his father. He glanced up, saw Mr. Weasley,
turned radish red, and left the lift the moment the doors opened
again. For the second time, Harry tried to get out, but this time
found his way blocked by Mr. Weasley’s arm.
“One moment, Runcorn.”
The lift doors closed and as they clanked down another floor,
Mr. Weasley said, “I hear you laid information about Dirk Cress-
well.”
Harry had the impression that Mr. Weasley’s anger was no less
because of the brush with Percy. He decided his best chance was
to act stupid.
“Sorry?” he said.
“Don’t pretend, Runcorn,” said Mr. Weasley fiercely. “You
down the wizard who faked his family tree, didn’t you?”
“I—so what if I did?” said Harry.
“So Dirk Cresswell is ten times the wizard you are,” said Mr.
Weasley quietly, as the lift sank ever lower. “And if he survives
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Azkaban, you’ll have to answer to him, not to mention his wife, his
sons, and his friends—”
“Arthur,” Harry interrupted, “you know you’re being tracked,
don’t you?”
“Is that a threat, Runcorn?” said Mr. Weasley loudly.
“No,” said Harry, “it’s a fact! They’re watching your every
move—”
The lift doors opened. They had reached the Atrium. Mr.
Weasley gave Harry a scathing look and swept from the lift. Harry
stood there, shaken. He wished he was impersonating some body
other than Runcorn. . . . the lift doors clanged shut.
Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak and put it back on. He
would try to extricate Hermione on his own while Ron was dealing
with the raining office. When the doors opened, he stepped out
into a torch-lit stone passageway quite di↵erent from the wood-
paneled and carpeted corridors above. As the lift rattled away
again, Harry shivered slightly, looking toward the distant black
door that marked the entrance to the Department of Mysteries.
He set o↵, his destination not the black door, but the doorway
he remembered on the left-hand side, which opened onto the flight
of stairs down to the court chambers. His mind grappled with
possibilities as he crept down them: He still had a couple of Decoy
Detonators, but perhaps it would be better to simply knock on
the courtroom door, enter as Runcorn, and ask for a quick word
with Mafalda? Of course, he did not know whether Runcorn was
sufficiently important to get away with this, and even if he managed
it, Hermione’s non-reappearance might trigger a search before they
were clear of the Ministry. . . .
Lost in thought, he did not immediately register the unnatural
chill that was creeping over him, as if he were descending into fog.
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It was becoming colder and colder with every step he took: a cold
that reached right down into his throat and tore at his lungs. And
then he felt that stealing sense of despair, of hopelessness , filling
him, expanding inside him. . . .
Dementors, he thought.
As he reached the foot of the stairs and turned to his right he
saw a dreadful scene. The dark passage outside the courtrooms
was packed with tall, black-hooded figures, their faces completely
hidden, their ragged breathing the only sound in the place. The
petrified Muggle-borns brought in for questioning sat huddled and
shivering on hard wooden benches. Most of them were hiding their
faces in their hands, perhaps in an instinctive attempt to shield
themselves from the dementors’ greedy mouths. Some were accom-
panied by families, others sat alone. The dementors were gliding
up an down in front of them, and the cold, and the hopelessness,
and the despair of the place laid themselves upon Harry like a
curse. . . .
Fight it, he told himself, but he knew that he could not conjure
a Patronus here without revealing himself instantly. So he moved
forward as silently as he could, and with every step he took numb-
ness seemed to steal over his brain, but he forced himself to think
of Hermione and of Ron, who needed him.
Moving through the towering black figures was terrifying: The
eyeless faces hidden beneath their hoods turned as he passed, and
he felt sure that they sense him, sensed, perhaps, a human presence
that still had some hope, some resilience. . . .
And then, abruptly and shockingly amid the frozen silence, one
of the dungeon doors on the left of the corridor was flung open and
screams echoed out of it.
“No, no, I’m a half-blood, I’m a half-blood, I tell you! My
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father was a wizard, he was, look him up, Arkie Alderton, he’s a
well-known broomstick designer, look him up, I tell you—get your
hands o↵ me, get your hands o↵—”
“This is your final warning,” said Umbridge’s soft voice, magi-
cally magnified so that it sounded clearly over the man’s desperate
screams. “If you struggle, you will be subjecte d to the Dementor’s
Kiss.”
The man’s screams subsided, but dry sobs echoed through the
corridor.
“Take him away,” said Umbridge.
Two dementors appeared in the doorway of the courtroom, their
rotting, scabbed hands clutching the upper arms of a wizard who
appeared to be fainting. They glided away down the corridor with
him, and the darkness they trailed behind them swallowed him
from sight.
“Next—Mary Cattermole,” c alled Umbridge.
A small woman stoo d up; she was trembling from head to foot.
Her dark hair was smoothed back into a bun and she wore long,
plain robes. Her face was completely bloodless. As she pass ed the
dementors, Harry saw her shudder.
He did it instinctively, without any sort of plan, because he
hated the sight of her walking alone into the dungeon: As the door
began to swing closed, he slipped into the courtroom behind her.
It was not the same room in which he had once been inter-
rogated for improper use of magic. This one was much smaller,
though the ceiling was quite as high; it gave the claustrophobic
sense of being stuck at the bottom of a deep well.
There were more dementors in here, casting their freezing aura
over the place; they stood like faceless sentinels in the corners
farthest from the high raised platform. Here, behind a balustrade,
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sat Umbridge, with Yaxley on one side of her, and Hermione, quite
as white-faced as Mrs. Cattermole, on the other. At the foot of the
platform, a bright-silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up
and down, up and down, and Harry realized that it was there to
protect the prosecutors from the despair that emanated from the
dementors: That was for the accused to feel, not the accusers.
“Sit down,” said Umbridge in her soft, silky voice.
Mrs. Cattermole stumbled to the single seat in the middle of
the floor beneath the raised platform. The moment she had sat
down, chains clinked out of the arms of the chair and b ound her
there.
“You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?” asked Umbridge.
Mrs. Cattermole gave a single, shaky nod.
“Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance
Department?”
Mrs. Cattermole burst into tears.
“I don’t know where he is, he was suppos ed to meet me here!”
Umbridge ignored her.
“Mother to Maisie, Ellie, and Alfred Cattermole?”
Mrs. Cattermole sobbed harder than ever.
“They’re frightened, they think I might not come home—”
“Spare us,” spat Yaxley. “The brats of Mudbloods do not stir
our sympathies.”
Mrs. Cattermole’s sobs masked Harry’s footsteps as he made
his way carefully toward the steps that led up to the raised plat-
form. The moment he had passed the place where the Patronus
cat patrolled, he felt the change in temperature: It was warm and
comfortable here. The Patronus, he was sure, was Umbridge’s, and
it glowed brightly because she was so happy here, in her element,
upholding the twisted laws she had helped to write. Slowly, and
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very carefully, he edged his way along the platform behind Um-
bridge, Yaxley, and Hermione, taking a seat b ehind the latter. He
was worried about making Hermione jump. He thought of casting
the Mu✏iato charm upon Umbridge and Yaxley, but even mur-
muring the word might cause Hermione alarm. Then Umbridge
raised her voice to address Mrs. Cattermole, and Harry seized his
chance.
“I’m behind you,” he whispered into Hermione’s ear.
As he had expected, she jumped so violently she nearly over-
turned the bottle of ink with which she was supposed to be record-
ing the interview, but both Umbridge and Yaxley were concentrat-
ing upon Mrs. C attermole, and this went unnoticed.
“A wand was taken from you upon your arrival at the Ministry
today, Mrs. Cattermole,” Umbridge was saying, “Eight-and-three-
quarter inches, cherry, unicorn-hair core. Do you recognize that
description?”
Mrs. Cattermole nodded, mopping her eyes on her sleeve.
“Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took
that wand?”
“T—took?” sobbed Mrs. Cattermole. “I didn’t t-take it from
anybody. I b-bought it when I was eleven years old. It—it—it—
chose me.”
She cried harder than ever.
Umbridge laughed a soft girlish laugh that made Harry want
to attack her. She leaned forward over the barrier, the better to
observe her victim, and something gold swung forward too, and
dangled over the void: the locket.
Hermione had seen it; she let out a little squeak, but Umbridge
and Yaxley, still intent upon their prey, were deaf to everything
else.
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“No,” said Umbridge, “no, I don’t think so, Mrs. Cattermole.
Wands only choose witches or wizards. You are not a witch. I have
your responses to the questionnaire that was sent to you here—
Mafalda, pass them to me.”
Umbridge held out a small hand: She looked so toadlike at that
moment that Harry was quite surprised not to see webs between
the stubby fingers. Hermione’s hands were shaking with shock. She
fumbled in a pile of documents balanced on the chair beside her,
finally withdrawing a sheaf of parchment with Mrs. Cattermole’s
name o nit.
“That’s—that’s pretty, Dolores,” she said, pointing at the pen-
dant gleaming in the ru✏ed folds of Umbridge’s blouse.
“What?” snapped Umbridge, glancing down. “Oh yes—an old
family heirloom,” she said, patting the locket lying on her large
bosom. “The S stands for Selwyn. . . . I am related to the Sel-
wyns. . . . Indeed, there are few pure blood families to whom I am
not related. . . . A pity,” she continued in a louder voice, flicking
through Mrs. Cattermole’s questionnaire, “that the same cannot
be said for you. ‘Parents professions: greengrocers.’”
Yaxley laughed jeeringly. Below, the flu↵y silver cat patrolled
up and down, and the dementors stood waiting in the corners.
It was Umbridge’s lie that brought the blood surging into
Harry’s brain and obliterated his sense of caution—that the locket
she had taken as a bribe from a petty criminal was being used to
holster her own pure-blood credentials. He raised his wand, not
even troubling to keep it concealed beneath the Invisibility Cloak,
and said, “Stupefy!”
There was a flash of red light; Umbridge crumpled and her
forehead hit the edge of the balustrade: Mrs. Cattermole’s papers
slid o↵ her lap onto the floor and, down below, the prowling silver
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cat vanished. Ice-cold air hit them like an oncoming wind: Yax-
ley, confused, looked around for the source of the trouble and s aw
Harry’s disembodied hand and wand pointing at him. He tried to
draw his own wand, but too late: “Stupefy!”
Yaxley slid to the ground to lie c urled on the flood.
“Harry!”
“Hermione, if you think I was going to sit here and let her
pretend—”
“Harry, Mrs. Cattermole!”
Harry whirled around, throwing o↵ the Invisibility Cloak: down
below, the dementors had moved out of their corners: they were
gliding toward the woman chained to the chair: Whether because
the Patronus had vanished or because they sensed that their mas-
ters were no longer in control, they seemed to have abandoned
restraint. Mrs. Cattermole let out a terrible scream of fear as a
slimy, scabbed hand grasped her chin and forced her face back.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The silver stag soared from the tip of Harry’s wand and leaped
toward the dementors, which fell back and melted into the dark
shadows again. The stag’s light, more powerful and more warming
than the cat’s protection, filed the whole dungeon as it cantered
around and around the room.
“Get the Horcrux,” Harry told Hermione.
He ran back down the steps, s tuffing the Invisibility Cloak back
into his bag, and approached Mrs. Cattermole.
“You?” s he whispered, gazing into his face. “But—but Reg
said you were the one who submitted my name for questioning!”
“Did I?” muttered Harry, tugging at the chains binding her
arms.
“Well, I’ve had a change of heart. Diffindo!” Nothing hap-
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pened. “Hermione, how do I get rid of these chains?”
“Wait, I’m trying something up here—”
“Hermione, we’re surrounded by dementors!”
“I know that, Harry, but if she wakes up and the locket’s
gone—I need to replicate it—Geminio! There . . . That should
fool her. . . .”
Hermione came running downstairs.
“Let’s see. . . . Relashio!”
The chains clinked and withdrew into the arms of the chair.
Mrs. Cattermole looked just as frightened as before.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“You’re going to leave here with us,” said Harry, pulling her to
her feet. “Go home, grab your children, and get out, get out of the
country if you’ve got to. Disguise yourselves and run. You’ve seen
how it is, you won’t get anything like a fair hearing here.”
“Harry,” said Hermione, “how are we going to get out of here
with all those dementors outside the door?”
“Patronuses,” said Harry, pointing his wand at his own: The
stag slowed and walked, still gleaming brightly, toward the door.
“As many as we can muster; do yours, Hermione.”
“Expec—Expecto patronum,” said Hermione. Nothing hap-
pened.
“It’s the only spell she ever has trouble with,” Harry told
a completely bemused Mrs. Cattermole. “Bit unfortunate,
really . . . Come on, Hermione. . . .”
“Expecto patronum! ”
A silver otter burst from the end of Hermione’s wand and swam
gracefully through the air to join the stag.
“C’mon,” said Harry, and he led Hermione and Mrs. Catter-
mole to the door.
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When the Patronuses glided out of the dungeon there were cries
of shock from the people waiting outside. Harry looked around: the
dementors were falling back on both sides of them, melding into
the darkness, scattering before the silver creatures.
“It’s been decided that you s hould all go home and go into
hiding with your families.” Harry told the waiting Muggle-borns,
who were dazzled by the light of the Patronuses and still cowering
slightly. “Go abroad if you can. Just get well away from the
Ministry. That’s the—er—new official position. Now, if you’ll just
follow the Patronuses, you’ll be able to leave from the Atrium.”
They managed to get up the stone steps without being inter-
cepted, but as they approached the lifts Harry started to have
misgivings. If they emerged into the Atrium with a silver stag, an
otter soaring alongside it, and twenty or so people, half of them
accused Muggleborns, he could not help feeling that they would
attract unwanted attention. He had just reached this unwelcome
conclusion when the lift clanged to a halt in front of them.
“Reg!” screamed Mrs. Cattermole, and she threw herse lf into
Ron’s arms. “Runcorn let me out, he attacked Umbridge and Yax-
ley, and he’s told all of us to leave the country, I think we’d better
do it, Reg, I really do, let’s hurry home and fetch the children
and—why are you so wet?”
“Water,” muttered Ron, disengaging himself. “Harry, they
know there are intruders inside the Ministry, something about a
hole in Umbridge’s office door. I reckon we’ve got five minutes of
that—”
Hermione’s Patronus vanished with a pop as she turned a horror
struck face to Harry.
“Harry, if we’re trapped here—!”
“We won’t be if we move fast,” said Harry. He addressed the
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silent group behind them, who were all gawping at him.
“Who’s got wands?”
About half of them raised their hands.
“Okay, all of you who haven’t got wands need to attach yourself
to someone who has. We’ll need to be fast before they stop us.
Come on.”
They managed to cram themselves into two lifts. Harry’s Pa-
tronus stood sentinel before the golden grilles as they shut and the
lifts began to rise.
“Level eight,” said the cool witch’s voice, “Atrium.”
Harry knew at once that they were in trouble. The Atrium was
full of people moving from fireplace to fireplace, sealing them o↵.
“Harry!” squeaked Hermione. “What are we going to—?”
“STOP!” Harry thundered, and the powerful voice of Runcorn
echoed through the Atrium: The wizards sealing the fireplaces
froze. “Follow me,” he whispered to the group of terrified Mug-
gleborns, who moved forward in a huddle, shepherded by Ron and
Hermione.
“What’s up, Albert?” said the same balding wizard who had
followed Harry out of the fireplace earlier. He looked nervous.
“This lot need to leave before you seal the exits,” said Harry
with all the authority he could muster.
The group of wizard sin front of him looked at one another.
“We’ve been told to seal all exits and not let anyone—”
“Are you contradicting me? ” Harry blustered. “Would you like
me to have you family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell’s?”
“Sorry!” gasped the balding wizard, backing away. “I didn’t
mean nothing, Albert, but I thought . . . I thought they were in for
questioning and . . . ”
“Their blood is pure,” said Harry, and his deep voice echoed
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impressively through the hall. “Purer than many of yours. I dare-
say. O↵ you go,” he boomed to the Muggle-borns, who scurried
forward into the fireplaces and began to vanish in pairs. The Min-
istry wizards hung back, some looking confused, others scared and
resentful. Then:
“Mary!”
Mrs. Cattermole looked over her shoulder. The real Reg Catter-
mole, no longer vomiting but pale and wan, and just come running
out of a lift.
“R–Reg?”
She looked from her husband to Ron, who swore loudly.
The balding wizard gaped, his head turning ludicrously from
one Reg Cattermole to the other.
“Hey—what’s going on? What is this?”
“Seal the exit! SEAL IT!”
Yaxley had burst out of another lift and was running toward
the group beside the fireplaces into which all of the Muggle-borns
but Mrs. Cattermole had now vanished. As the balding wizard
lifted his wand, Harry raised an enormous fist and punched him,
sending him flying through the air.
“He’s been helping Muggle-borns escape, Yaxley!” Harry
shouted.
The balding wizard’s colleagues set up an uproar, under cover of
which Ron grabbed Mrs. Cattermole, pulled her into the still-open
fireplace, and disappe ared. Confused, Yaxley looked from Harry
to the punched wizard, while the real Reg Cattermole screamed,
“My Wife! Who was that with my wife? What’s going on?”
Harry s aw Yaxley’s head turn, saw an inkling of truth dawn in
that brutish face.
“Come on!” Harry shouted at Hermione; he seized her hand
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and they jumped into the fireplace together as Yaxley’s curse sailed
over Harry’s head. They spun for a few seconds before shooting
up out of a toilet into a cubicle. Harry flung open the door: Ron
was standing there beside the sinks, still wrestling with Mrs. Cat-
termole.
“Reg, I don’t understand—”
“Let go, I’m not your husband, you’ve got to go home!”
There was a noise in the cubicle behind them; Harry looked
around: Yaxley had just appeared.
“LET’S GO!” Harry yelled. He se ized Hermione by the hand
and Ron by the arm and turned on the spot.
Darkness engulfed them, along with the sensation of compress-
ing hands, but something was wrong. . . . Hermione’s hand seemed
to be sliding out of his grip. . . .
He wondered whether he was going to su↵ocate; he could not
breathe or see and the only solid things in the world were Ron’s
arm and Hermione’s fingers, which were slowly slipping away. . . .
And then he saw the door of number twelve, Grimmauld Place,
with its serpent door knocker, but before he could draw breath,
there was a scream and a flash of purple light. Hermione’s hand
was suddenly vicelike upon his hand and everything went dark
again.
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The Thief
H
arry opened his eyes and was dazzled by gold and
green: he had no idea what had happened, he only
knew that he was lying on what seemed to be leaves
and twigs. Struggling to draw breath into lungs that
felt flattened, he blinked and realized that the gaudy glare was
sunlight streaming though a canopy of leaves far above him. Then
an object twitched close to his face. He pushed himself onto his
hands and knees, ready to face some small, fierce creature, but saw
that the object was Ron’s foot. Looking around, Harry saw that
they and Hermione were lying on a forest floor, apparently alone.
Harry’s first thought was of the Forbidden Forrest, and for a
moment, even though eh knew how foolish and dangerous it would
be for them to appear in the grounds of Hogwarts, his heart leaped
at the thought of sneaking through the trees to Hagrid’s hut. How-
ever, in the few moments it took for Ron to give a low groan and
Harry to start crawling toward him, he realized that this was not
the Forbidden Forest: The trees looked younger, they were more
widely spaced, the ground clearer.
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He met Hermione, also on her hands and knees, at Ron’s head.
The moment his eyes fell upon Ron, all other concerns fled Harry’s
mind, for blood drenched the whole of Ron’s left side and his
face stood out, grayish-white, against the leaf-strewn earth. The
Polyjuice Potion was wearing o↵ now: Ron was halfway between
Cattermole and himself in appearance, his hair turning redder and
redder as his face drained of the little color it had left.
“What’s happened to him?”
“Splinched,” said Hermione, her fingers already busy at Ron’s
sleeve, where the blood was wettest and darkest.
Harry watched, horrified, as she tore open Ron’s shirt. He had
always thought of Splinching as something comical, but this . . . His
insides crawled unpleasantly as Hermione laid bare Ron’s upper
arm, where a great chunk of flesh was miss ing, scooped cleanly
away as though by a knife.
“Harry, quickly, in my bag, there’s a small bottle labeled
‘Essence of Dittany’—”
“Bag—right—’
Harry sped tot he place where Hermione had landed, seized
the tiny beaded bag, and thrust his hand inside it. At once, object
after object began presenting itself to his touch: He felt the leather
spines of books, woolly sleeves of jumpers, heels of shoes—
“Quickly!”
“He grabbed his wand from the ground and pointed it into the
depths of the magical bag.
“Accio Dittany!”
A small brown bottle zoomed out of the bag; he caught it and
hastened back to Hermione and Ron, whose eyes were now half-
closed, strips of white eyeball all that were visible between his lids.
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“He’s fainted,” said Hermione who was also rather pale; she no
longer looked like Mafalda, though her hair was still gray in places.
“Unstopper it for me, Harry, my hands are shaking.”
Harry wrenched the stopper o↵ the little bottle, Hermione took
it and poured three drops of the potion onto the bleeding wound.
Greenish smoke billowed upward and when it had cleared, Harry
saw that the bleeding had stoppe d. The wound now looked several
days old; new skin stretched over what had just been open flesh.
“Wow,” said Harry.
“It’s all I feel safe doing,” said Hermione shakily. “There are
spells that would put him completely right, but I daren’t try in
case I do them wrong and cause more damage. . . . He’s lost too
much blood already. . . .”
“How did he get hurt? I mean”—Harry shook his head, trying
to clear it, to make sense of whatever had just taken place—“why
are we here? I thought were were going back to Grimmauld Place?”
Hermione took a deep breath. She looked close to tears.
“Harry, I don’t think we’re going to be able to go back there.”
“What d’you—?”
“As we Disapparated, Yaxley caught hold of me and I couldn’t
get rid of him, he was to o strong, and he was still holding on when
we arrived at Grimmauld Place, and then—well, I think he must
have seen the door, and thought we were stopping there, so he
slackened his grip and I managed to shake him o↵ and I brought
us here instead!”
“But then, where’s he? Hang on. . . . You don’t mean he’s at
Grimmauld Place? He can’t get in there?”
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears as s he nodded.
“Harry, I think he can. I—I forced him to let go with a Revul-
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The Thief
sion Jinx, but I’d already taken him inside the Fidelius Charm’s
protection. Since Dumbledore died, we’re Secret-Keepers, so I’ve
given him the secret, haven’t I?”
There was no pretending; Harry was sure she was right. It was
a serious blow. If Yaxley could now get inside the house, there was
no way that they could return. Even now, he could be bringing
other Death Eaters in there by Apparition. Gloomy and oppressive
though the house was, it had been their one safe refuge: even, now
that Kreacher was so much happier and friendlier, a kind of home.
With a twinge of regret that had nothing to do with food, Harry
imagined the house-elf busying himself over the steak-and-kidney
pie that Harry, Ron, and Hermione would never eat.
“Harry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be stupid, it wasn’t your fault! If anything, it was
mine. . . .”
Harry put his hand in his pocket and drew out Mad-Eye’s eye.
Hermione recoiled, looking horrified.
“Umbridge had stuck it to her office door, to spy on people.
I couldn’t le ave it there . . . but that’s how they knew there were
intruders.”
Before Hermione could answer, Ron groaned and opened his
eyes. He was still gray and his face glistened with sweat.
“How d’you feel?” Hermione whispered.
“Lousy,” croaked Ron, wincing as he felt his injured arm.
‘Where are we?”
“In the woods where they held the Quidditch World Cup,” said
Hermione. “I wanted somewhere enclosed, undercover, and this
was—”
“—the first place you thought of,” Harry finished for her, glanc-
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ing around at the apparently deserted glade. He could not help re-
membering what had happened the last time they had Apparated
to the first place Hermione had thought of—how Death Eaters
had found them within minutes. Had it been Legilimency? Did
Voldemort or his henchmen know, even now, where Hermione had
taken them?
“D’you reckon we should move on?” Ron asked Harry, and
Harry could tell by the look on Ron’s face that he was thinking the
same.
“I dunno.”
Ron still looked pale and clammy. He had made no attem pt
to sit up and it looked as though he was too weak to do so. The
prospect of moving him was daunting.
“Let’s stay here for now,” Harry said..
Looking relieved, Hermione sprang to her feet.
“Where are we going?’ asked Ron.
“If we’re staying, we should put some protective enchantments
around the place,” she replied, and raising her wand, she began to
walk in a wide circle around Harry and Ron, murmuring incanta-
tions as she went. Harry saw little disturbances in the surrounding
air: It was as if Hermione had cast a heat haze upon their clearing.
“Salvio Hexia . . . Prot ego Totalum . . . Repello Muggle-
tum . . . Mu↵liato . . . You could get out the tent, Harry . . . ”
“Tent?”
“In the bag!”
“In the . . . of course,” said Harry.
He did no bother to grope inside it this time , but used another
Summoning Charm. The tent emerged in a lumpy mass of c anvas,
rope, and poles. Harry recognized it, partly because of the smell
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of cats, as the same tent in which they had slept on the night of
the Quidditch World Cup.
“I thought this b e longed to that bloke Perkins at the Ministry?”
he asked, starting to disentangle the tent pegs.
“Apparently he didn’t want it back, his lumbago’s so bad,” said
Hermione, now performing complicated figure-of-eight movements
with her wand, “so Ron’s dad said I could borrow it. Erecto! ”she
added, pointing her wand at the misshapen canvas, which in one
fluid motion rose into the air and settled, fully constructed, onto
the ground before Harry, out of whose started hands a tent peg
soared, to land with a final thud at the end of a guy rope.
“Cave Imunicium,” Hermione finished with a skyward flourish.
“That’s as much as I can do. At the very least, we should know
they’re coming. I can’t guarantee it will keep our Vol—”
“Don’t say the name!” Ron cut across her, his voice harsh.
Harry and Hermione looked at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Ron said, moaning a little as he raised himself to
look at them, “but it feels like a—a jinx or something. Can’t we
call him You-Know-Who—please?”
“Dumbledore said fear of a name—” began Harry.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, mate, calling You-Know-Who by
his name didn’t do Dumbledore much good in the end,” Ron
snapped back. “Just—just show You-Know-Who some respect,
will you?”
“Respect?” Harry repeated, but Hermione shot him a warning
look; apparently he was not to argue with Ron while the latter was
in such a weakened condition.
Harry and Hermione half carried, half dragged Ron through the
entrance of the tent. The interior was exactly as Harry remembered
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it: a small flat, complete with bathroom and tiny kitchen. He
shoved aside an old armchair and lowered Ron carefully onto the
lower berth of a bunk bed. Even this very short journey had turned
Ron whiter still, and once they had settled him on the mattress he
closed his eyes again and did not speak for a while.
“I’ll make some tea,” said Hermione breathlessly, pulling ket-
tle and mugs from the depths of her bag and heading toward the
kitchen.
Harry found the hot drink as welcome as the firewhisky had
been on the night that Mad-Eye had died; it seemed to burn away
a little of the fear fluttering in his chest. After a minute or two,
Ron broke the silence.
“What d’you reckon happened to the Cattermoles?”
“With any luck, they’ll have got away,” said Hermione, clutch-
ing her hot mug for comfort. “As long as Mr. Cattermole had his
wits about him, he’ll have transported Mrs. Cattermole by Side-
Along-Apparition and they’ll be fleeing the country right now with
their children. That’s what Harry told her to do.”
“Blimey, I hope they escaped,” said Ron, leaning back on his
pillows. The tea seemed to be doing him good; a little of his color
had returned. “I didn’t get the feeling Reg Cattermole was all that
quick-witted, though, the way everyone was talking to me when I
was him. God, I hope they made it. . . . If they both end up in
Azkaban because of us . . . ”
Harry looked over at Hermione and the question he had wanted
to ask—about whether Mrs. Cattermole’s lack of a wand would
prevent her Apparating alongside her husband—died in his throat.
Hermione was watching Ron fret over the fate of the Cattermoles,
and there was such tenderness in her expression that Harry felt as
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if he had surprised her in the act of kissing him.
“So, have you got it?” Harry asked her, partly to remind her
that he was there.
“Got—got what?” she said with a little start.
“What did we just go through all that for? The locket! Where’s
the locket?”
“You got it?” shouted Ron, raising himself a little higher on
his pillow. “No one tells me anything! Blimey, you could have
mentioned it!”
“Well, we were running for our lives from the Death Eaters,
weren’t we?” said Hermione. “Here.”
And she pulled the locket out of the pocket of her robe s and
handed it to Ron.
It was as large as a chicken’s egg. An ornate letter S , inlaid
with many small green stones, glinted dully in the di↵used light
shining through the tent’s canvas roof.
“There isn’t any chance someone’s destroyed it since Kreacher
had it?” asked Ron hopefully. “I mean, are we sure it’s still a
Horcrux?”
“I think so,” said Hermione, taking it back from him and looking
at it closely. “There’d be some sign of damage if it had been
magically destroyed.”
She passed it to Harry, who turned it over in his fingers. The
thing looked perfect, pristine. He remembered the mangled re-
mains of the diary, and how the stone in the Horcrux ring had
been cracked open when Dumbledore destroyed it.
“I reckon Kreacher’s right,” said Harry. “We’re going to have
to work out how to open this thing before we can destroy it.”
Sudden awareness of what he was holding, of what lived behind
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the little golden doors, hit Harry as he spoke. Even after all their
e↵orts to find it, he felt a violent urge to fling the locket from him.
Mastering himself again, he tried to prise the locket apart with
his fingers, then attempted the charm Hermione had used to open
Regulus’s bedroom door. Neither worked. He handed the locket
back to Ron and Hermione, each of whom did their best, but were
no more successful at opening it than he had been.
“Can you feel it, though?” Ron asked in a hushed voice, as he
held it tight in his clenched fist.
“What d’you mean?”
Ron passed the Horcrux to Harry. After a moment or two,
Harry thought he knew what Ron meant. Was it his own blood
pulsing through his veins that he could feel, or was it something
beating inside the locket, like a tiny metal heart?
“What are we going to do with it?” Hermione asked.
“Keep it safe till we work out how to destroy it.” Harry replied,
and, little though he wanted to, he hung the chain around his own
neck, dropping the locket out of sight beneath his robes, where it
rested against his chest beside the pouch Hagrid had given him.
“I think we should take it in turns to keep watch outside the
tent,” he added to Hermione, standing up and stretching. “And
we’ll need to think about some food as well. You stay there,” he
added sharply, as Ron attempted to sit up and turned a nasty
shade of green.
With the Sneakoscope Hermione had given Harry for his birth-
day set carefully upon the table in the tent, Harry and Hermione
spent the rest of the day sharing the role of lookout. However,
the Sneakoscope remained silent and still upon its point all day,
and whether because of the protective enchantments and Muggle-
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repelling charms Hermione had spread around them, or because
people rarely ventured this way, their patch of wood remained de-
serted, apart from occasional birds and squirrels. Evening brought
no change; Harry lit his wand as he s wapped places with Hermione
at ten o’clock, and looked out upon a deserted scene, noting the
bats fluttering high above him across the single patch of starry sky
visible from their protected clearing.
He felt hungry now, and a little light-headed. Hermione had
not packed any food in her magical bag, as she had assumed that
they would be returning to Grimmauld Place that night, so they
had had nothing to eat except some wild mushrooms that Her-
mione had collected from amongst the nearest trees and stewed in
a billycan. After a couple of mouthfuls Ron had pushed his portion
away, looking queasy: Harry had only persevered so as not to hurt
Hermione’s feelings.
The surrounding silence was broken by odd rustlings and what
sounded like crackings of twigs: Harry thought that they were
caused by animals rather than people, yet he kept his wand held
tight at the ready. His insides, already uncomfortable due to their
inadequate helping of rubbery mushrooms, tingled with unease .
He had thought that he would feel elated if they managed to
steal back the Horcrux, but somehow he did not; all he felt as he
sat lo oking out at the darkness, of which his wand lit only a tiny
part, was worry about what would happen next. It was as though
he had been hurtling toward this point for weeks, months, maybe
even years, but now he had come to an abrupt half, run out of
road.
There were other Horcruxes out there somewhere, but he did
not have the faintest idea where they could be. He did not even
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know what all of them were. Meanwhile he was at a loss to know
how to destroy the only one that they had found, the Horcrux that
currently lay against the bare flesh of his chest. Curiously, it had
not taken heat from his body, but lay s o cold against his skin it
might just have emerged from icy water. From time to time Harry
thought, or perhaps imagined, that he could feel the tiny heartbeat
ticking irregularly alongside his own.
Nameless forebodings crept upon him as he sat there in the
dark. He tried to res ist them, push them away, yet they came at
him, relentlessly, Neither can live while the other survives. Ron and
Hermione, now talking softly behind him in the tent, could walk
away if they wanted to: He could not. And it seemed to Harry
as he sat there trying to master his own fear and exhaustion, that
the Horcrux against his chest was ticking away the time he had
left. . . . Stupid idea, he told himself, don’t think that....
His scar was starting to prickle again. He was afraid he was
making it happen by having these thoughts, and tried to direct
them into another channel. He thought of poor Kreacher, who had
expected them home and had received Yaxley instead. Would the
elf keep silent or would he tell the Death Eater everything he knew?
Harry wanted to believe that Kreacher had changed toward him in
the past month, that he would be loyal now, but who knew what
would happen? What if the Death Eaters tortured the elf? Sick
images swarmed into Harry’s head and he tried to push these away
too, for these was nothing he could do for Kreacher. He and Her-
mione had already decided against trying to summon him; what
if someone from the Ministry came too? They could not count on
elfish Apparition from being free of the same flaw that had taken
Yaxley to Grimmauld Place on the hem of Hermione’s sleeve.
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Harry’s scar was burning now. He thought that there was
so much they did not know: Lupin had been right about magic
they had never encountered or imagined. Why hadn’t Dumble-
dore explained more? Had he thought that there would be time;
that he would live for years, for centuries, perhaps, like his friend
Nicolas Flamel? If so, he had been wrong. . . . Snape had seen to
that. . . . Snape, the sleeping snake, who had struck at the top of
the tower . . .
And Dumbledore had fallen . . . fallen . . .
“Give it to me, Gregorovitch.”
Harry’s voice was high, clear, and c old, his wand held in front
of him by a long-fingered white hand. The man at whom he was
pointing was suspended upside down in midair, though there were
no ropes holding him; he swung there, invisibly and eerily bound,
his limbs wrapped about him, his terrified face, on a level with
Harry’s, ruddy due to the blood that had rushed to his head. He
had pure-white hair and a thick, bushy beard: a trussed-up Father
Christmas.
“I have it not, I have it no more! It was, many years ago, stolen
from me!”
“Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Gregorovitch. He knows. . . . He
always knows.”
The hanging man’s pupils were wide, dilated with fear, and they
seemed to swell, bigger and bigger until their blackness swallowed
Harry whole—
And now Harry was hurrying along a dark corridor in stout
little Gregorovitch’s wake as he held a lantern aloft: Gregorovitch
burst into the room at the end of the passage and his lantern
illuminated what looked like a workshop; wood shavings and gold
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gleamed in the swinging pool of light, and there on the window
ledge sat perched, like a giant bird, a young man with golden hair.
In the split second that the lantern’s light illuminated him, Harry
saw the delight upon his handsome face, then the intruder shot a
Stunning Spell from his wand and jumped neatly backwards out
of the window with a crow of laughter.
And Harry was hurtling back out of those wide, tunnel-like
pupils and Gregorovitch’s face was stricken with terror.
“Who was the thief, Gregorovitch?” said the high cold voice.
“I do not know, I never know, a young man—no—please—
PLEASE!”
A scream that went on and on and then a burst of green light—
“Harry!”
He opened his eyes, panting, his forehead throbbing. He had
passed out against the side of the tent, had slid sideways down
the canvas, and was sprawled on the ground. He looked up at
Hermione, whose bushy hair obsc ured the tiny patch of sky visible
through the dark branches high above them.
“Dream,” he said, sitting up quickly and attempting to meet
Hermione’s glower with a look of innocence. “Must’ve dozed o↵,
sorry.”
“I know it was your scar! I can tell by the look on your face!
You were looking into Vol—”
“Don’t say his name!” came Ron’s angry voice from the depths
of the tent.
“Fine,” retorted Hermione. “You-Know-Who’s mind, then!”
“I didn’t mean it to happen!” Harry said. “It was a dream!
Can you control what you dream about, Hermione?”
“If you just learned to apply Occlumency.
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But Harry was not interested in being told o↵; he wanted to
discuss what he had just seen.
“He’s found Gregorovitch, Hermione, and I think he’s killed
him, but before he killed him he read Gregorovitch’s mind and I
saw—”
“I think I’d better take over the watch if you’re so tired you’re
falling asleep,” said Hermione coldly.
“I can finish the watch!”
“No, you’re obviously exhausted. Go and lie down.”
She dropped down in the mouth of the tent, looking stubborn.
Angry, but wishing to avoid a row, Harry ducked back inside.
Ron’s still-pale face was poking out from the lower bunk; Harry
climbed into the one above him, lay down, and looked up at the
dark canvas ceiling. After several minutes, Ron spoke in a voice so
low that it would not carry to Hermione, huddled in the entrance.
“What’s You-Know-Who doing?”
Harry screwed up his eyes in the e↵ort to remember every detail,
then whispered into the darkness.
“He found Gregorovitch. He had him tied up, he was torturing
him.”
“How’s Gregorovitch supposed to make him a new wand if he’s
tied up?”
“I dunno. . . . It’s weird, isn’t it?”
Harry closed his eyes, thinking of all he had seen and heard.
The more he recalled, the less sense it made. . . . Voldemort had said
nothing about Harry’s wand, nothing about the twin cores, nothing
about Gregorovitch making a new and more powerful wand to beat
Harry’s. . . .
“He wanted something from Gregorovitch,” Harry said, eyes
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still closed tight. “He asked him to hand it over, but Gregorovitch
said it had been stolen from him . . . and then . . . then . . . ”
He remembered how he, as Voldemort, had seemed to hustle
through Gregorovitch’s eyes, into his memories. . . .
“He read Gregorovitch’s mind, and I saw this young bloke
perched on a windowsill, and he fired a curse at Gregorovitch and
jumped out of sight. He stole it, he stole whatever You-Know-
Who’s after. And I . . . I think I’ve seen him somewhere. . . .”
Harry wished he could have another glimpse of the laughing
boy’s face. The theft had happened many years ago, according to
Gregorovitch. Why did the young thief look s o familiar?
The noises of the surrounding wo ods were mu✏ed inside the
tent; all Harry could hear was Ron’s breathing. After a while, Ron
whispered, “Couldn’t you see what the thief was holding?”
“No . . . it must’ve been something small.”
“Harry?”
The wooden slats of Ron’s bunk creaked as he repositioned him-
self in bed.
“Harry, you don’t reckon You-Know-Who’s after something else
to turn into a Horcrux?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry slowly, “Maybe. But wouldn’t it be
dangerous for him to make another one? Didn’t Hermione say he
had pushed his soul to the limit already?”
“Yeah, but maybe he doesn’t know that.”
“Yeah . . . maybe,” said Harry.
He had been sure that Voldemort had been looking for a way
around the problem of the twin cores, sure that Voldemort sought
a solution from the old wandmaker . . . and yet he had killed him,
apparently without asking him a single question about wandlore.
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What was Voldemort trying to find? Why, with the Ministry of
Magic and the Wizarding world at his feet, was he far away, intent
on the pursuit of an objec t that Gregorovitch had once owned, and
which had been stolen by the unknown thief?
Harry could still see the blond-haired youth’s face; it was merry,
it was wild; there was a Fred and George-ish air of triumphant
trickery about him. He had soared from the windowsill like a bird,
and Harry had seen him before, but he could not think where. . . .
With Gregorovitch dead, it was the merry-faced thief who was
in danger now, and it was on him that Harry’s thoughts dwelled,
as Ron’s snores began to rumble from the lower bunk and as he
himself drifted slowly into sleep once more.
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The Goblin’s Revenge
E
arly next morning, before the other two were awake,
Harry left the tent to search the woods around them
for the oldest, most gnarled, and resilient—looking tree
he c ould find. There in its shadow he buried Mad-Eye
Moody’s eye and m arked the spot by gouging a small cross in the
bark with his wand. It was not much, but Harry felt that Mad-
Eye would have much preferred this to being stuck on Dolores
Umbridge’s door. Then he returned to the tent to wait for the
others to wake, and discuss what they were going to do next.
Harry and Hermione felt that it was best not to stay anywhere
too long, and Ron agree d, with the sole proviso that their next
move took them within reach of a bacon sandwich. Hermione
therefore removed the enchantments she had placed around the
clearing, while Harry and Ron obliterated all the marks and im-
pressions on the ground that might show that they had camp ed
there. Then they Disapparated to the outskirts of a s mall market
town.
Once they had pitched the tent in the shelter of a small copse of
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The Goblin’s Revenge
trees and surrounded it with freshly cast defensive enchantments,
Harry ventured out under the Invisibility Cloak to find sustenance.
This, however, did not go as planned. He had barely entered the
town when an unnatural chill, a descending mist, and a sudden
darkening of the skies made him freeze where he stood.
“But you can make a brilliant Patronus!” protested Ron, when
Harry arrived back at the tent empty-handed, out of breath, and
mouthing the single word, dementors.
“I couldn’t . . . make one,” he panted, c lutching the stitch in his
side. “Wouldn’t come.”
Their expressions of consternation and disappointment made
Harry feel ashamed. It had bee n a nightmarish experience, seeing
the dementors gliding out of the mist in the distance and realizing,
as the paralyzing cold choked his lungs and a distant screaming
filled his ears, that he was not going to be able to protect himse lf.
It had taken all Harry’s will power to uproot himself from the
spot and run, leaving the eyeless deme ntors to glide amongst the
Muggles who might not be able to see them, but would assuredly
feel the despair they cast wherever they went.
“So we still haven’t got any food.”
“Shut up, Ron,” snapped Hermione. “Harry, what happened?
Why do you think you couldn’t make your Patronus? You managed
perfectly yesterday ”
“I don’t know.”
He sat low in one of Perkins’s old armchairs, feeling more hu-
miliated by the moment. He was afraid that something had gone
wrong inside him. Yesterday seemed a long time ago. Today he
might have been thirteen years old again, the only one who col-
lapsed on the Hogwarts Express.
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Ron kicked a chair leg.
“What?” he snarled at Hermione. “I’m starving! All I’ve had
since I bled half to death is a couple of toadstools!”
“You go and fight your way through the dementors, then,” said
Harry, stung.
“I would, but my arm’s in a sling, in case you hadn’t noticed!”
“That’s convenient.”
“And what’s that supposed to—?”
“Of course!” cried Hermione, clapping a hand to her forehead
and startling both of them into silence. “Harry, give me the locket!
Come on,” she said impatiently, clicking her fingers at him, when
he did not react, “the Horcrux, Harry, you’re still wearing it!”
She held out her hands, and Harry lifted the golden chain over
his head. The moment it parted contact with Harry’s skin he felt
free and oddly light. He had not even realized that he was clammy
or that there was a heavy weight pressing on his stomach until
both sensations lifted.
“Better?” asked Hermione.
“Yeah, loads better!”
“Harry,” she said, crouching down in front of him and using the
kind of voice he associated with visiting the very sick, “you don’t
think you’ve been possessed, do you?”
“What? No!” he said defensively. “I remember everything
we’ve done while I’ve been wearing it. I wouldn’t know what I’d
done if I’d been possessed, would I? Ginny told me there were time s
when she couldn’t remember anything.’
“Hmm,” said Hermione, looking down at the heavy gold locket.
“Well, maybe we ought not to wear it. We can just keep it at
the tent.”
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The Goblin’s Revenge
“We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around,” Harry stated
firmly. “If we lose it, if it gets stolen—”
“Oh, all right, all right,” said Hermione, and she placed it
around her own neck and tucked it out of sight down the front
of her shirt. “But we’ll take turns wearing it, so nobody keeps it
on for too long.”
“Great,” said Ron irritably, “and now we’ve sorted that out,
can we please get some food?”
“Fine, but we’ll go somewhere else to find it,” said Hermione
with half a glance at Harry. “There’s no point staying where we
know dementors are swooping around.”
In the end they settled down for the night in a far flung field
belonging to a lonely farm, from which they had managed to obtain
eggs and bread.
“It’s not stealing, is it?” asked Hermione in a troubled voice, as
they devoured scrambled eggs on toast. “Not if I left some money
under the chicken coop?”
Ron rolled his eyes and said, with his cheeks bulging, “’Er—
my—nee, ’oo worry ’oo much. ‘Elax!”
And, indeed, it was much easier to relax w hen they were com-
fortably well fed. The argument about the dementors was forgotten
in the laughter that night, and Harry felt cheerful, even hopeful as
he took the first of the three night watches.
This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach
meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom. Harry
was least surprised by this, because he had su↵ered periods of near
starvation at the Dursleys. Hermione bore up reasonably well on
those nights when they managed to scavenge nothing but berries
or stale biscuits, her temper perhaps a little shorter than usual
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and her silences rather dour. Ron, however, had always been used
to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the
Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable
and irascible. Whenever lack of food coincided with Ron’s turn to
wear the Horcrux, he became downright unpleasant.
“So where next?” was his constant refrain. He did not seem
to have any ideas himself, but expected Harry and Hermione to
come up with plans while he sat and brooded over the low food
supplies. Accordingly Harry and Hermione spent fruitless hours
trying to decide where they might find the other Horcruxes, and
how to destroy the one they had already got, their conversations
becoming increasingly repetitive as they had no new information.
As Dumbledore had told Harry that he believed Voldemort had
hidden the Horcruxes in places important to him, they kept tech-
ing, in a s ort of dreary litany, those locations they knew that Volde-
mort had lived or visited. The orphanage where he had been born
and raised; Hogwarts, where he had been educated; Borgin and
Burkes, where he had worked after completing school; then Alba-
nia, where he had spent his years of exile: These formed the basis
of their speculations.
“Yeah, let’s go to Albania. Shouldn’t take more than an after-
noon to search an entire country,” said Ron sarcastically.
“There can’t be anything there. He’d already made five of his
Horcruxes before he went into exile, and Dumbledore was certain
the snake is the sixth,” said Hermione. “We know the snake’s not
in Albania, it’s usually with Vol—”
“Didn’t I ask you to stop saying that?”
“Fine! The snake is usually with You-Know-Who —happy?”
“Not particularly.”
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“I can’t see him hiding anything at Borgin and Burkes,” said
Harry, who made this point many times before, but said it again
simply to break the nasty silence. “Borgin and Burke were experts
at Dark objects, they would’ve recognized a Horcrux straightaway.”
Ron yawned pointedly. Repressing a strong urge to throw some-
thing at him, Harry plowed on, “I still reckon he might have hidden
something at Hogwarts.”
Hermione sighed.
“But Dumbledore would have found it, Harry!”
Harry repeated the argument he kept bringing out in favor of
this theory.
“Dumbledore said in front of me that he never assumed he knew
all of Hogwarts’s secrets. I’m telling you, if there was one place
Vol—”
“Oi!”
“YOU-KNOW-WHO, then!” Harry shouted, goaded past en-
durance. “If there was one place that was really important to
You-Know-Who, it was Hogwarts!”
“Oh, come on,” sco↵ed Ron. “His school? ”
“Yeah, his school! It was his first real home, the place that
meant he was special: it meant everything to him, and even after
he left—” inquired Ron. He was tugging at the chain of the Hor-
crux around his neck: Harry was visited by a desire to seize it and
throttle him.
“You told us that You-Know-Who asked Dumbledore to give
him a job after he left,” said Hermione.
“That’s right,” said Harry.
“And Dumbledore thought he only wanted to come back to try
and find something, probably another founder’s objec t, to make
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into another Horcrux?”
“Yeah,” said Harry.
“But he didn’t get the job, did he?” said Hermione. “So he
never got the chance to find a founder’s object there and hide it in
the school!”
“Okay, then,” said Harry, defeated. “Forget Hogwarts.”
Without any other leads, they traveled into London and, hidden
beneath the Invisibility Cloak, searched for the orphanage in which
Voldemort had been raised. Hermione stole into a library and
discovered from their records that the place had been demolished
many years before. They visited its site and found a tower block
of offices.
“We could try digging in the foundations?” Hermione suggested
halfheartedly.
“He wouldn’t have hidden a Horcrux here ,” Harry said. He had
known all along: The orphanage had been the place Voldemort had
been determined to escape; he would never have hidden a part of his
soul there. Dumbledore had shown Harry that Voldemort sought
grandeur or mystique in his hiding places; this dismal gray corner
of London was as far removed as you could imagine from Hogwarts
or the Ministry or a building like Gringotts, the Wizarding bank,
with its golden doors and marble floors.
Even without any new ideas, they continued to move through
the countryside, pitching the tent in a di↵erent place each night
for security. Every morning they made sure that they had re-
moved all clues to their presence, then set o↵ to find another lonely
and secluded spot, trave ling by Apparition to m ore woods, to the
shadowy crevices of cli↵s, to purple moors, gorse-covered moun-
tainsides, and once a sheltered a pebbly cove. Every twelve hours
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or so they passed the Horcrux between them as though they were
playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where
they dreaded the music stopping because the reward was twelve
hours of increased fear and anxiety.
Harry’s s car kept prickling. It happened most often, he noticed,
when he was wearing the Hocrux. Sometimes he could not stop
himself reacting to the pain.
“What? What did you see?” demanded Ron, whenever he
noticed Harry wince.
“A face ,” muttered Harry, every time. “The same face. The
thief who stole from Gregorovitch.”
And Ron would turn away, making no e ↵ort to hide his dis-
appointment. Harry knew that Ron was hoping to hear news of
his family or of the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, but after
all, he, Harry, was not a television aerial; he could only see what
Voldemort was thinking at the time, not tune in to whatever took
his fancy. Apparently Voldemort was dwelling endlessly on the un-
known youth with the gleeful face, whose name and whereabouts,
Harry felt s ure, Voldemort knew no better than he did. As Harry’s
scar continued to burn and the merry, blond-haired by swam tan-
talizingly in his memory, he learned to suppress any sign of pain
or discomfort, for the other two showed nothing but impatience at
the mention of the thief. He could not entirely blame them, when
they were so desperate for a lead on the Horcruxes.
As the days stretched into weeks, Harry began to suspect that
Ron and Hermione were having conversations without, and about,
him. Several time s they stopp e d talking abruptly when Harry en-
tered the tent, and twice he came acc identally upon them, huddled
a little distance away, heads together and talking fast; both times
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they fell silent when they realized he was approaching them and
hastened to appear busy collecting wood or water.
Harry could not help wondering whether they had only agreed
to come on what now felt like a pointless and rambling journey
because they thought he had some secret plan that they would learn
in due course. Ron was making no e↵ort to hide his bad mood,
and Harry was starting to fear that Hermione too was disappointed
by his poor leadership. In desperation he tried to think of further
Horcrux locations, but the only one that continued to occur to him
was Hogwarts, and as neither of the other thought this at all likely,
he stopped suggesting it.
Autumn rolled over the countryside as they moved through it.
They were now pitching the tent on mulches of fallen leaves. Natu-
ral mists joined those cast by the dementors: wind and rain added
to their troubles. The fact that Hermione was getting better at
identifying edible fungi could not altogether compensate for their
continuing isolation, the lack of other pe ople’s company, or their
total ignorance of what was going on in the war against Voldemort.
“My mother,” said Ron one night, as they sat in the tent on a
riverbank in Wales, “can make good fear appear out of thin air.”
He prodded moodily at the lumps of charred gray fish on his
plate. Harry glanced automatically at Ron’s neck and saw, as
he had expected, the golden chain of the Horcrux glinting there.
He managed to fight down the impulse to swear at Ron, whose
attitude, he knew, improve slightly when the time came to take o↵
the locket.
“Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air,” said Her-
mione. “No one can. Food is one of the first of five Principal
Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigur—’
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“Oh, speak English, can’t you?” Ron said, prising a fish bone
out from betwee n his teeth.
“It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can
Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can
increase the quantity if you’ve already got some—”
“Well, don’t bother increasing this, it’s disgusting,” said Ron.
“Harry caught the fish and I did my best with it! I notice I’m
always the one who ends up sorting out the food, because I’m a
girl, I suppose!”
“No, it’s bec ause you’re supposed to be the best at magic!” shot
back Ron.
Hermione jumped up and bits of roast pike slid o↵ her tin plate
onto the floor.
“You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingre-
dients and try and charm them into something worth eating, and
I’ll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you—”
“Shut up!” said Harry, leaping to his feet and holding up both
hands. “Shut up now !”
Hermione looked outraged.
“How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook—”
“Hermione, be quiet, I can hear someone!”
He was listening hard, his hands still raised, warning them not
to talk. Then, over the rush and gush of the dark river beside them,
he heard voices again. He looked around at the Sneakoscope. It
was not moving.
“You cast the Mu✏iato charm over us, right?” he whispered to
Hermione.
“I did everything,” she whispered back, “Mu✏iato, Muggle-
Repelling and Disillusionment Charms, all of it. They shouldn’t
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be able to hear or see us, whoever they are.”
Heavy scu✏ing and scraping noises, plus the sound of dislodged
stones and twigs told them that several people were clambering
down the steep, wooded slope that descended to the narrow bank
where they had pitched the tent. They drew their wands, waiting.
The e nchantments they had cast around themselves ought to be
sufficient, ion the near total darkness, to shield them from the
notice of Muggles and normal witches and wizards. If these were
Death Eaters, then pe rhaps their defenses were about to be tested
by Dark Magic for the first time.
The voices became louder but no more intelligible as the group
of men reached the bank. Harry estimated that their owners were
fewer than twenty feet away, but the cascading river made it im-
possible to tell for sure. Hermione snatched up the beaded bag
and started to rummage; after a moment she drew out three Ex-
tendable Ears and threw one each to Harry and Ron, who hastily
inserted the ends of the flesh-colored strings into their ears and fed
the other ends out of the tent entrance.
Within second Harry heard a weary male voice.
“There ought to be a few salmon in here, or d’you reckon it’s
too early in the season? Accio Salmon!”
There were several distinct splashes and then the slapping
sounds of fish against flesh. Somebody grunted appreciatively,
Harry pressed the Extendable Ear deeper into his own: Over the
murmur of the river he could make out more voices, bu they were
not speaking English or any human language he had ever heard. It
was a rough and unmelodious tongue, a string of rattling, guttural
noises, and there seemed to be two speakers, one with a slightly
lower, slower voice than the other.
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A fire danced into life on the other side of the canvas; large
shadows passed between tent and flames. The delicious smell of
baking salmon wafted tantalizingly in their direction. Then came
the clinking of cutlery on plates, and the first man spoke again.
“Here, Griphook, Gornuk.”
Goblins! Hermione mouthed at Harry, who nodded.
“Thank you,” said the goblins together in English.
“So, you three been on the run how long?” asked a new, mellow,
and pleasant voice; it was vaguely familiar to Harry, who pictured
a round-bellied, cheerful-faced man.
“Six weeks . . . seven . . . I forget,” said the tired man. “Met up
with Griphook in the first couple of days and joined forces with
Gornuk not long after. Nice to have a bit of company.” There
was a pause, while knives scraped plates and tin mugs were picked
up and replaced on the ground. “What made you leave, Ted?”
continued the man.
“Knew they were com ing for me,” replied mellow-voiced Ted,
and Harry suddenly knew who he was: Tonks’s father. “Heard
Death Eaters were in the area last week and decided I’d better run
for it. Refused to register as a Muggle-born on principle, see, so I
knew it was a matter of time, knew I’d have to leave in the end.
My wife should be okay, she’s pure-blood. And then I meant Dean
where, what, a few days ago, son?”
“Yeah,” said another voice, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione
stared at each other, silent but beside themselves with excite-
ment, sure they recognized the voice of Dean Thomas, their fellow
Gryffindor.
“Muggle-born, eh?” as ked the first man.
“Not sure,” said Dean. “My dad left my mum when I was a
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kid. I’ve got no proof he was a wizard, though.”
There was silence for a while, except for the sounds of munching;
then Ted spoke again.
I’ve got to say, Dirk, I’m surprised to run into you. Pleased,
but surprised. Word was you’d been caught.”
“I was,” said Dirk. “I was halfway to Azkaban when I made a
break for it. Stunned Dawlish, and nicked his broom. It was easier
than you’d think; I don’t think he’s quite at the moment. Might
be Confunded. If so, I’d like to shake the hand of the witch or
wizard who did it, probably saved my life.”
There was another pause in which the fire crackled and the river
rushed on. Then Ted said, “And where do you two fit in? I, er,
had the impression the goblins were for You-Know-Who, on the
whole.”
“You had a false impression,” said the higher voiced of the gob-
lins. “We take no sides. This is a wizards’ war.”
“How come you’re in hiding, then?”
‘I deemed it prudent,” said the deeper-voiced goblin. “Having
refused what I considered an impertinent request, I could see that
my personal safety was in jeopardy.”
“What did they ask you to do?” asked Ted.
“Duties ill-befitting the dignity of my race,” replied the gob-
lin, his voice rougher and less human as he said it. “I am not a
house-elf.”
“What about you, Griphook?”
“Similar reasons,” said the higher voiced goblin. “Gringotts
is no longer under the sole control of my race . I recognize no
Wizarding master.”
He added something under his breath in Gobbledegook, and
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Gornuk laughed.
“What’s the joke?” asked Dean.
“He said,” replied Dirk, “that there are things wizards don’t
recognize, either.”
There was a short pause.
“I don’t get it,” said Dean.
“I had my small revenge before I left,” said Griphook in English.
“Good man—goblin, I should say,” amended Ted hastily.
“Didn’t manage to lock a Death Eater up in one of the old high-
security vaults, I suppose?”
“If I had, the sword would not have helped him break out,”
replied Griphook. Gornuk laughed again and even Dirk gave a dry
chuckle.
“Dean and I are still missing something here,” said Ted.
“So is Severus Snape, though he does not know it,” said Grip-
hook, and the two goblins roared with malicious laughter. Inside
the tent Harry’s breathing was shallow with excitement: He and
Hermione stared at each other, listening as hard as they could.
“Didn’t you hear about that, Ted?” asked Dirk. “About the
kid who tried to steal Gryffindor’s sword out of Snape’s office at
Hogwarts?”
And electric current seemed to curse through Harry, jangling
his every nerve as he stood rooted to the spot.
“Never heard a word,” said Ted. “Not in the Prophet, was it?”
“Hardly,” chortled dirk. “Gripho ok here told me, he heard
about it from Bill Weasley who works for the bank. One of the
kids who tried to take the sword was Bill’s younger sister.”
Harry glanced toward Hermione and Ron, both of whom were
clutching the Extendable Ears as tightly as lifelines.
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“She and a couple of friends got into Snape’s office and smashed
open the glass case where he was apparently keeping the sword.
Snape caught them as they were trying to smuggle it down the
staircase.”
“Ah, God bless ’em,” said Ted. “What did they think, that
they’d be able to use the sword on You-Know-Who? Or on Snape
himself?”
“Well, whatever they thought they were going to do with it,
Snape decided the sword wasn’t safe where it was,” said Dirk.
“Couple of days later, once he’d got the say-so from You-Know-
Who, I imagine, he sent it down to London to be kept in Gringotts
instead.”
The goblins started to laugh again.
“I’m still not seeing the joke,” said Ted.
“It’s a fake,” rasped Griphook.
“The sword of Gryffindor!”
“Oh yes. It is a copy—an excellent copy, it is true-but it was
Wizard-made. The original was forged centuries ago by goblins and
had certain properties only goblin-made armor possesses. Wher-
ever the genuine sword of Gryffindor is, it is not in a vault at
Gringotts bank.”
“I see,” said Ted. “And I take it you didn’t bother telling the
Death Eaters this?”
“I saw no reason to trouble them with the information,” said
Griphook smugly, and now Ted and Dean joined in Gornuk and
Dirk’s laughter.
Inside the tent, Harry closed his eyes, willing someone to ask
the question he needed answered, and after a minute that seemed
ten, Dean obliged: he was (Harry remembered with a jolt) an ex-
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boyfriend of Ginny’s too.
“What happened to Ginny and the others? The ones who tried
to steal it?”
“Oh, they were punished, and cruelly,” said Griphook indi↵er-
ently.
“They’re okay, though?” asked Ted quickly. “I mean, the
Weasley don’t need any more of their kids injured, do they?”
“They su↵ered no serious injury, as far as I am aware,” said
Griphook.
“Lucky for them,” said Ted. “With Snape’s track record I sup-
pose we should just be glad they’re still alive.”
“You believe that story, then, do you, Ted?” asked Dirk. “You
believe Snape killed Dumbledore?”
“Course I do,” said Ted. “You’re not going to sit there and tell
me you think Potter had anything to do with it?”
“Hard to know what to believe these days,” muttered Dirk.
“I know Harry Potter,” said Dean. “And I reckon he’s the real
thing—The Chosen One, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot would like to believe he’s that, son,” said
Dirk, me included. But where is he? Run for it, by the looks of
things. You’d think if he knew anything we don’t, or had anything
special going for him, he’d be out there now fighting, rallying re-
sistance, inste ad of hiding. And you know, the Prophet made a
pretty good case against him—”
“The Prophet?” sco↵ed Ted. “You deserved to be lied to if
you’re still reading that muck, Dirk. You want the facts, try the
Quibbler.”
There was a sudden explosion of choking and retching, plus a
good deal of thumping; by the sound of it, Dirk had swallowed a
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fish bone. At last he spluttered, “The Quibbler ? That lunatic rag
of Xeno Lovegood’s?”
“It’s not so lunatic these days,” said Ted. “You want to give it
a look. Xeno is printing all the stu↵ the Prophet’s ignoring, not
a single mention of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the last issue.
How long they’ll let you get away with it, mind, I don’t know.
But Xeno says, front page of every issue, that any w izard who’s
against You-Know-Who ought to make helping Harry Potter their
number-one priority.”
“Hard to help a boy who’s vanished o↵ the face of the earth,”
said Dirk.
“Listen, the fact that they haven’t caught him yet’s one hell
of an achievement,” said Ted. “I’d take tip from him gladly; It’s
what we’re trying to do, stay free, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a point there,” said Dirk heavily. “With
the whole of the Ministry and all their informers looking for him I’d
have expected him to be caught by now. Mind, who’s to say they
haven’t already caught and killed him without publicizing it?”
“Ah, don’t say that, Dirk,” murmured Ted.
There was a long pause filled with more clattering of knives and
forks. When they spoke again it was to discuss whether they ought
to sleep on the bank or retreat back up the wooded slope. Deciding
the trees would give better cover, they extinguished their fire, then
clambered back up the incline, their voices fading away.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione reeled in the Extendable Ears.
Harry, who had found the need to remain silent increasingly dif-
ficult the longer they eavesdropped, now found himself unable to
say more than, “Ginny—the sword—”
“I know!” said Hermione.
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She lunged for the tiny beaded bag, this time sinking her arm
in it right up to the armpit.
“Here . . . we . . . are . . . ” she said between gritted teeth, and
she pulled at som ething that was evidently in the depths of the bag.
Slowly the edge of an ornate picture frame came into sight. Harry
hurried to help her. As they lifted the empty portrait of Phineas
Nigellus free of Hermione’s bag, she kept her wand pointing at it,
ready to cast a spell at any moment.
“If somebody swapped the real sword for the fake while it was
in Dumbledore’s office,” she panted, as they propped the painting
against the side of the tent, “Phineas Nigellus would have seen it
happen, he hangs right beside the case!”
“Unless he was asleep,” said Harry, but he still held his breath
as Hermione knelt down in the front of the empty canvas, her wand
directed at its center, cleared her throat, then s aid:
“Er—Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?”
Nothing happened.
“Phineas Nigellus?” said Hermione again. “Professor Black?
Please could we talk to you? Please?”
“‘Please’ always helps,” said a cold, snide voice, and Phineas
Nigellus slid into his portrait. At once, Hermione cried:
“Obscura!”
A black blindfold appeared over Phineas Nigellus’s clever, dark
eyes, causing him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
“What—how dare—what are you—?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Black,” said He rmione, “but it’s a
necessary precaution!”
“Remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are
ruining a great work of art! Where am I? What is going on?”
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“Never mind where we are,” said Harry, and Phineas Nigellus
froze, abandoning his attempts to peel o↵ the painted blindfold.
“Can that possibly be the voice of the elusive Mr. Potter?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, knowing that this would keep Phineas
Nigellus’s interest. “We’ve got a couple of questions to ask you—
about the sword of Gryffindor.”
“Ah,” said Phineas Nigellus, now turning his head this way and
that in an e↵ort to catch sight of Harry, “yes. That silly girl acted
most unwisely there—”
“Shut up about my sister,” said Ron roughly. Phineas Nigellus
raised supercilious eyebrows .
“Who e lse is here?” he asked, turning his head from side to side.
“Your tone displeases me! The girl and her friends were foolhardy
in the extreme. Thieving from the headmaster.”
“They weren’t thieving,” said Harry. “That sword isn’t
Snape’s.”
“It belongs to Professor Snape ’s school,” said Phineas Nigel-
lus. “Exactly what claim did the Weasley girl have upon it? She
deserved his punishment, as did the idiot Longbottom and the
Lovegood oddity!”
“Neville is not an idiot and Luna is not an oddity!” said Her-
mione.
“Where am I?” repeated Phineas Nigellus, starting to wrestle
with the blindfold again. “Where have you brought me? Why have
you removed me from the house of my forebears?”
“Never mind that! How did Snape punish Ginny, Neville, and
Luna?” asked Harry urgently.
“Professor Snape sent them into the Forbidden Forest, to do
some work for the oaf, Hagrid.”
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“Hagrid’s not an oaf!” said Hermione shrilly.
“And Snape might’ve thought that was a punishment,” said
Harry, “but Ginny, Neville, and Luna probably had a good laugh
with Hagrid. The Forbidden Forest . . . they’ve faced plenty worse
than the Forbidden Forest, big deal!”
He felt relieved: he had been imagining horrors, the Cruciatus
Curse at the very least.
“What we really wanted to know, Professor Black, is whether
anyone else has, um, taken out the sword at all? Maybe it’s been
taken away for cleaning or—or something?”
Phineas Nigellus paused again in his struggles to free his eyes
and sniggered.
“Muggle-borns,” he said. “Goblin-made armor does not require
cleaning, simple girl. Goblins’ silver repels mundane dirt, imbibing
only that which strengthens it.”
“Don’t call Hermione simple,” said Harry.
“I grow weary of contradiction,” said Phineas Nigellus. “Per-
haps it is time for me to return to the headmaster’s office?”
Still blindfolded, e h began groping the side of his frame, trying
to feel a way out of his picture and back into the one at Hogwarts.
Harry had a sudden inspiration.
“Dumbledore! Can’t you bring us Dumbledore?”
“I beg you pardon?” asked Phineas Nigellus.
“Professor Dumbledore’s portrait—couldn’t you bring him
along, here, into yours?”
Phineas Nigellus turned his face in the direction of Harry’s
voice.
“Evidently it is not only Muggle-borns who are ignorant, Potter.
The portraits of Hogwarts may commune with each other, but
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they cannot ravel outside the castle except to visit a painting of
themselves hanging elsewhere. Dumbledore cannot come here with
me, and after the treatment I have received at your hands, I can
assure you that I shall not be making a return visit!”
Slightly crestfallen, Harry watched Phineas redouble his at-
tempts to leave his frame.
“Professor Black,” said Hermione, “couldn’t you just tell us,
please, when was the last time the sword was taken out of its case?
Before Ginny took it out, I mean?”
Phineas snorted impatiently.
“I believe the last time I saw the sword of Gryffindor leave its
case was when Professor Dumbledore used it to break open a ring.”
Hermione whipped around to look at Harry. Neither of them
dared say more in front of Phineas Nigellus, who had at last man-
aged to locate the exit.
“Well, good night to you,” he said a little waspishly, and he
began to move out of sight again. Only the edge of his hat brim
remained in view when Harry gave a sudden shout.
“Wait! Have you told Snape you saw this?”
Phineas Nigellus stuck his blindfolded head back into the pic-
ture.
“Professor Snape has more important things on his mind than
the many eccentricities of Albus Dumbledore. Good-bye, Potter!”
And with that, he vanished completely, leaving behind him
nothing but his murky backdrop.
“Harry!” Hermione cried.
“I know!” Harry shouted. Unable to contain himself, he
punched the air: it was more than he had dared to hope for. He
strode up and down the tent, feeling that he could have run a
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mile: he did not even feel hungry anymore. Hermione was squash-
ing Phineas Nigellus’s portrait back into the beaded bag, when
she had fastened their clasp she threw the bag aside and raised a
shining face to Harry.
“The sword can destroy Horcruxes! Goblin-made blades im-
bibe only that which can strengthen them—Harry, that sword’s
impregnated with basilisk venom!”
“And Dumbledore didn’t give it to me because he still needed
it, he wanted to use it on the locket—”
“—and he must have realized they wouldn’t let you have it if
he put in his will—”
“—so he made a copy—”
“—and put a fake in the glass case—”
“—and he left the real one—where?”
They gazed at each other: Harry felt the answer was dangling
invisibly in the air above them, tantalizingly close. Why hadn’t
Dumbledore told him? Or had he, in fact, told Harry, but Harry
had not realized it at the time?
“Think!” whispered Hermione. “Think! Where would he have
left it?”
“Not at Hogwarts,” said Harry, resuming his pacing.
“Somewhere in Hogsmeade?” suggested Hermione.
“The Shrieking Shack?” said Harry. “Nobody ever goes in
there.”
But Snape knows how to get in, wouldn’t that be a bit risky?”
Dumbledore trusted Snape,” Harry reminded her.
Not enough to tell him that he had swapped the words,” said
Hermione.
“Yeah, you’re right!” s aid Harry, and he felt even more cheered
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at the thought that Dumbledore had some reservations, however
faint, about Snape’s trustworthiness. “So, would he have hidden
the s word well away from Hogsmeade then? What d’you reckon,
Ron? Ron?”
Harry looked around. For one bewildered moment he thought
that Ron had left the tent, then realized that Ron was lying in the
shadow of a lower bunk, looking stony.
“Oh, remembered me, have you?” he said.
“What?”
Ron snorted as he started up at the underside of the upper
bunk.
“You two carry on. Don’t let me spoil your fun.”
Perplexed, Harry lo oked to Hermione for help, but she shook
her head, apparently as nonplussed as he was.
“What’s the problem?” asked Harry.
“Problem? There’s no problem,” said Ron, still refusing to look
at Harry. “Not according to you, anyway.”
There were several plunks on the canvas over their heads. It
had started to rain.
“Well, you’ve obviously got a problem,” said Harry. “Spit it
out, will you?”
Ron swung his long legs o↵ the bed and sat up. He looked
mean, unlike himself.
“All right, I’ll spit it out. Don’t expect me to skip up and down
the tent because there’s some other damn thing we’ve got to find.
Just add it to the list of stu↵ you don’t know.”
“I don’t know?” repeated Harry. “I don’t know?”
Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rain was falling harder and heavier; it
pattered on the leaf-strewn bank all around them and into the river
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chattering through the dark. Dread doused Harry’s jubilation. Ron
was saying exactly what he had suspected and feared him to be
thinking.
“It’s not like I’m not having the time of my life here,” said Ron,
“you know, with my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing
my backside o↵ every night. I just hoped, you know, after we’d
been running round a few weeks, we’d have achieved something.”
“Ron,” Hermione said, but in such a quiet voice that Ron could
pretend not to have heard it over the loud tatto o the rain was now
beating on the tent.
“I thought you knew what you’d signed up for,” said Harry.
“Yeah, I thought I did too.”
“So what part of it isn’t living up to expectations?” asked
Harry. Anger was coming to his defense now. “Did you think we’d
be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a Horcrux every other day?
Did you think you’d be back to Mummy by Christmas?”
“We thought you knew what you were doing!” shouted Ron,
standing up, and his words pierced Harry like scalding knives. “We
thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had
a real plan!”
“Ron!” said Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain
thundering on the tent roof, but again, he ignored her.
“Well, sorry to let you down,” said Harry, his voice quite calm
even though he felt hollow, inadequate. “I’ve bee n straight with
you from the start, I told you everything Dumbledore told me.
And in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve found on Horcrux—”
“Yeah, and we’re ab out as near getting rid of it as we are to
finding the rest of them—nowhere effing near in other words?”
“Take o↵ the locket, Ron,” Hermione said, her voice unusually
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high. “Please take it o↵. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you
hadn’t been wearing it all day.”
“Yeah, he would,” said Harry, who did not want excuses made
for Ron. “D’you think I haven’t noticed the two of you whispering
behind my back? D’you think I didn’t guess you were thinking this
stu↵?”
“Harry we weren’t—”
“Don’t lie!” Ron hurled at her. “You said it too, you said you
were disappointed, you said you’d thought he had a bit more to go
on than—”
“I didn’t say it like that—Harry, I didn’t!” she cried.
The rain was pounding the tent, tears were pouring down Her-
mione’s face, and the excitement of a few minutes before had van-
ished as if it had never been, a short-lived firework that had flared
and died, leaving everything dark, wet, and cold. The sword of
Gryffindor was hidden they knew not where, and they were three
teenagers in a tent whose only achievement was not, yet, to be
dead.
“So why are you still here?” Harry asked Ron.
“Search me,” said Ron.
“Go home then,” said Harry.
“Yeah, maybe I will!” s houted Ron, and he took several steps
toward Harry, who did not back away. “Didn’t you hear what they
said about my sister? But you don’t give a rat’s fart, do you, it’s
only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I’ve-Faced-Worse Potter doesn’t
care what happens to her in there—well, I do, all right, giant spider
and mental stu↵—”
“I was only saying—she was with the others, they were with
Hagrid—”
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The Goblin’s Revenge
“Yeah, I get it, you don’t care! And what about the rest of my
family, the Weasleys don’t need another kid injured, did you hear
that?”
“Yeah, I—”
“Not bothered what it meant, though?”
“Ron!” said Hermione, forcing her way between them. “I don’t
think it means anything new has happened, anything we don’t
know about: think, Ron, Bill’s already sc arred; plenty of people
must have seen that George has lost an ear by now, and you’re
supposed to be on your deathbed with spattergroit, I’m sure that’s
all he meant—”
“Oh, you’re sure, are you? Right then, well, I won’t bother
myself ab out them. It’s all right for you two, isn’t it, with your
parents safely out of the way—”
“My parents are dead!” Harry bellowed.
“And mine could be going the same way!” yelled Ron.
“Then GO!” roared Harry. “Go back to them, pretend you’ve
got over your spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up
and—”
Ron made a sudden movement: Harry reacted, but before either
wand was clear of its owner’s pocket, He rmione had raise d her own.
“Protego!” she cried, and an invisible shield expanded between
her and Harry on the one side and Ron on the other; all of them
were forced backward a few steps by the strength of the spell, and
Harry and Ron glared from either side of the transparent barrier
as though they were seeing each other clearly for the first time.
Harry felt a corrosive hatred toward Ron: Something had broken
between them.
“Leave the Horcrux,” Harry said.
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Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket
into a nearby chair. He turned to Hermione.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you staying or what?”
“I . . . ” She looked anguished. “Yes—yes, I’m staying, Ron, we
said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help—”
“I get it. You choose him.”
“Ron, no—please—come back, come back!”
She was impeded by her own Shield charm; by the time she had
removed it he had already stormed into the night. Harry stood
quite still and silent, listening to her sobbing and calling Ron’s
name amongst the trees.
After a few minutes she returned, her sopping hair plastered to
her face.
“He’s g–g–gone! Disapparated!”
She threw herself into a chair, curled up, and started to cry.
Harry felt dazed. He stooped, picked up the Horcrux, and
placed it around his own neck. He dragged blankets o↵ Ron’s
bunk and threw them over Hermione. Then he climbed onto his
own bed and stared up at the dark canvas roof, listening to the
pounding of the rain.
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Godric’s Hollow
W
hen Harry woke the following day it was several
seconds before he remembered what had hap-
pened. Then he hoped, childishly, that it had been
a dream, that Ron was still there and never le ft. Yet
by turning his head on his pillow he could see Ron’s deserted bunk.
It was like a dead body in the way it seemed to draw his eyes.
Harry jumped down from his own bed, keeping his eyes averted
from Ron’s. Hermione, who was already busy in the kitchen, did
not wish Harry good morning, but turned her face away quickly as
he went by.
He’s gone. Harry told himself. He’s gone. He had to keep
thinking it as he washed and dressed, as though repetition would
dull the shock of it. He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And that
was the simple truth of it. Harry knew, because their protective
enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they vacated
this spot, for Ron to find them again.
He and Hermione ate breakfast in silence. Hermione’s eyes were
pu↵y and red; she looked as if she had not slept. They packed up
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their things, Hermione dawdling. Harry knew why she wanted to
spin out their time on the riverbank; several times he saw her look
up eagerly and he was sure she had deluded herself into thinking
that she heard footsteps through the heavy rain, but no red-haired
figure appeared between the trees. Every time Harry imitated her,
looked around (for he could not help hoping a little, himself) and
saw nothing but rain-swept woods, another little parcel of fury
exploded inside him. He could hear Ron saying, “We thought you
knew what you were doing!”, and he resumed packing with a hard
knot in the pit of his stomach.
The muddy river beside them was rising rapidly and would soon
spill over onto their bank. They had lingered a good hour after
they would usually have departed their campsite. Finally having
entirely repacked the beaded bag three times. Hermione seemed
unable to find any more reasons to delay: She and Harry grasped
hands and Disapparated, reappearing on a windswept heather-
covered hillside.
The instant they arrived, Hermione dropped Harry’s hand and
walked away from him, finally sitting down on a large rock; her face
on her knees, shaking with what he knew were sobs. He watched
her, supposing that he ought to go and comfort her, but something
kept him rooted to the spot. Everything inside him felt cold and
tight: Again he saw the contemptuous expression on Ron’s face.
Harry strode o↵ through the heather, walking in a large circle with
the distraught Hermione at its center, casting the spells she usually
performed to ensure their protection.
They did not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Harry
was determined never to mention his name again, and Hermione
seemed to know that it was no use forcing the issue, although some-
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Godric’s Hollow
times at night when she thought he was sleeping, he would hear her
crying. Meanwhile Harry had started bringing out the Marauder’s
Map and examining it by wandlight. He was waiting for the mo-
ment when Ron’s labeled dot would reappear in the corridors of
Hogwarts, proving that he had returned to the comfortable castle,
protected by his status of pureblood. However, Ron did not appear
on the map, and after a while Harry found himself taking it out
simply to stare at Ginny’s name in the girls’ dormitory, wondering
whether the intensity with which he gazed at it might break into
her sleep, that she would somehow know he was thinking about
her, hoping that she was all right.
By day, they devoted themselves to trying to determine the
possible locations of Gryffindor’s sword, but the more they talked
about the places in which Dumbledore might have hidden it, the
more desp erate and far-fetched their speculation became. Cudgel
his brains though he might, Harry c ould not remember Dumbledore
ever mentioning a place in which he might hide something. There
were moments when he did not know whether he was angrier with
Ron or with Dumbledore. We thought you knew what you were
doing. . . . We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do. . . . We
thought you had a real plan!
He could not hide it from himself: Ron had been right. Dum-
bledore had left him virtually nothing. They had discovered one
Horcrux, but they had no means of destroying it: The others were
as unattainable as they had ever bee n. Hopelessness threatened to
engulf him. He was staggered now to think of his own presumption
in accepting his friends’ o↵ers to accompany him on this meander-
ing, pointless journey. He knew nothing, he had no ideas, and he
was constantly painfully on the alert for any indication that Her-
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Chapter 16
mione too was about to te ll him that she had had enough, that she
was leaving.
They were spending many evenings in near silence, and Her-
mione took to bringing out Phineas Nigellus’s p ortrait and prop-
ping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of the gaping
hole left by Ron’s departure. Despite his previous assertion that
he would never visit them again, Phineas Nigellus did not seem
able to resist the chance to find out more about what Harry was
up to, and consented to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so.
Harry was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit
of a snide and taunting kind. They relished any news about what
was happening in Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus was not an
ideal informer. He venerated Snape, the first Slytherin headmas-
ter since he himself had controlled the school, and they had to be
careful not to criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape,
or Phineas Nigellus would instantly leave his painting.
However, he did let drop certain snippets. Snape seemed to be
facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students.
Ginny had been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape had
reinstated Umbridge’s old decree forbidding gatherings of three or
more students or any unofficial student societies.
From all of these things, Harry deduced that Ginny, and prob-
ably Neville and Luna along with her, had been doing their best to
continue Dumbledore’s Army. This scant news made Harry want
to see Ginny so badly it felt like a stomachache; but it also made
him think of Ron again, and of Dumbledore, and of Hogwarts it-
self, which he missed nearly as much as his ex-girlfriend. Indeed
as Phineas Nigellus talked about Snape’s crackdown, Harry expe-
rienced a split second of madness when he imagined simply going
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Godric’s Hollow
back to s chool to join the destabilization of Snape ’s regime. Be-
ing fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge,
seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at that moment.
But then he remembered that he was Undesirable Number One,
that there was a ten-thousand-Galleon price on his head, and that
to walk into Hogwarts these days was just as dangerous as walking
into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently
emphasized this fact by slipping in leading questions about Harry
and Hermione’s whereabouts. Hermione shoved him back inside
the beaded bag every time he did this, and Phineas Nigellus invari-
ably refused to reappear for several days after these uncerem onious
good-bye s.
The weather grew colder and colder. They did not dare remain
in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of
England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of their worries,
they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a
mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh,
where the tent was flooded with chill water: and a tiny island in
the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow buried the tent in the
night.
They already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from s everal
sitting room windows before there came an evening when Harry
resolved to suggest, again, what seemed to him the only unexplored
avenue left to them. They had just eaten an unusually good meal:
Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak
(scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left),
and Harry thought she might be more persuadable than usual on
a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. He had
also had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours’ break
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from wearing the Horcrux, which was hanging over the end of the
bank beside him.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?” She was curled up in one of the sagging armchairs
with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He could not imagine how
much more she could get out of the book, which was not, after
all, very long, but e vidently she was still deciphering something in
it, because Spellman’s Syllabary lay open on the arm of the chair.
Harry cleared his throat. He felt exactly as he had done on the
occasion, several years previously, when he had asked Professor
McGonagall whether he could go into Hogsmeade, despite the fact
that he had not persuaded the Dursleys to sign his permission slip.
“Hermione, I’ve been thinking, and—“
“Harry, could you help me with something?”
Apparently she had not been listening to him. She leaned for-
ward and held out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
“Look at the symbol.” She said, pointing to the top of a page.
Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable
to read runes, he could not be sure), there was a picture of what
looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
“I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione”
“I know that, but it isn’t a rune and it’s not in the syllabary,
either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don’t
think it is! It’s been inked in, look, somebody’s drawn it there, it
isn’t really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?”
“No . . . No, wait a mome nt.” Harry looked closer. “Isn’t it the
same symbol Luna’s dad was wearing around his neck?”
“Well, that’s what I thought too!”
“Then it’s Grindelwald’s mark”
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Godric’s Hollow
She stared at him, open mouthed.
“What?”
“Krum told me . . . “
He recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told him at the
wedding. Hermione looked astonished,
“Grindelwald’s mark?”
She looked from Harry to the weird symbol and back again.
“I’ve never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There’s no men-
tion of it in anything I’ve read about him.”
“Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a
wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there.”
She fell back into the old armchair, frowning.
“That’s very odd. If it’s a s ymbol of Dark Magic, what’s it
doing in a book of children’s stories?”
“Yeah it is weird.” Said Harry. “And you’d think Scrimgeour
would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been
expert on Dark stu↵”
“I know . . . Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did.
All the other stories have little pictures over the titles.”
She did not speak, but continued to pore over the strange mark.
Harry tried again.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been thinking. I—I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.”
She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused, and he was
sure she was still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.
“Yes.” She said. “Yes, I’ve been wondering that too. I really
think we’ll have to.”
“Did you hear me right?” he asked.
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“Of course I did. You want to go to Godric’s Hollow. I agree, I
think we should. I mean, I can’t think of anywhere else it could be
either. It’ll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more
likely it seems it’s there.”
“Er—what’s there?” asked Harry.
At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.
“Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you’d
want to go back there, and I mean, Godric’s Hollow is Godric
Gryffindor’s birthplace—“
“Really? Gryffindor came from Godric’s Hollow?”
“Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?”
“Erm,” he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in
months. The muscles in his face felt oddly sti↵. “I might’ve opened
you know, when I bought it . . . just the once . . . “
“Well as the village is named after him I’d have thought you
might have made the connection.” Said Hermione. She sounded
much more like her old self that she had done of late; Harry half
expected her to announce that she was o↵ to the library. “There’s
a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait . . . “
She opened the beaded bag and rummaged for a while, finally
extracting her copy of the old school textbook. A History of Magic
by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbed through until finding the
page she wanted.
“Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in
1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps,
that they formed their own small communities within a commu-
nity. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical
families, who banded together for mutual support and protection.
The villages of Tinworthin Cornwald, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire,
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Godric’s Hollow
and Ottery S t. Catchpole on the south coast of England were no-
table homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside
tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of
these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric’s Hollow, the
West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was
born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first
Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magi-
cal families, and this accounts, no doubt for the stories of hauntings
that have dogged th e little church beside it for many centuries.”
“You and your parents aren’t mentioned.” Hermione said, clos-
ing the book, “because Professor Bagshot doesn’t cover anything
later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Go-
dric’s Hollow, Godric Gryffindor. Gryffindor’s sword: don’t you
think Dumbledore would have exp e cted you to make the connec-
tion?”
“Oh yeah . . . “
Harry did not want to admit that he had not been thinking
about the sword at all when he suggested they go to Godric’s Hol-
low. For him, the lure of the village lay as his parents’ graves, the
house where he had narrowly esc aped death, and in the person of
Bathilda Bagshot.
“Remember what Muriel said?” he asked eventually.
“Who?”
“You know” he hesitated. He did not want to say Ron’s name.
“Ginny’s great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had
skinny ankles.”
“Oh.” Said Hermione. It was a sticky moment: Harry knew
that she had sensed Ron’s name in the offing. He rushed on:
“She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric’s Hollow.”
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“Bathilda Bagshot,” murmured He rmione, running her index
finger over Bathilda’s embossed name on the front cove r of A His-
tory of Magic. “Well, I suppose—“
She gasped so dramatically that Harry’s insides turned over, he
drew his wand, lo oking around at the entrance, half expecting to
see a hand forcing it sway through the entrance flap, but there was
nothing there.
“What?” he said, half angry, half relieved. “What did you do
that for? Thought you’d seen a Death Eater unzipping the te nt,
at least—“
“Harry, what if Bathilda’s got the sword? What if Dumbledore
entrusted it to her?”
Harry considered this pos sibility. Bathilda would be an ex-
tremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she was
“gaga.” Was it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the
sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, Harry felt that Dumbledore
had left a great deal to chance: Dumbledore had never revealed
that he had replaced the sword with a fake, nor had he so much
mentioned a friendship with Bathilda. Now, however, was not the
moment to cast doubt on Hermione’s theory, not when she was so
surprisingly willing to fall in with Harry’s dearest wish.
“Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to go to Godric’s
Hollow?”
“Yes, but we’ll have to think in through carefully, Harry.” She
was sitting up now, and Harry could tell that the prospect of having
a plan again had lifted her mood as much as his. “We’ll need to
practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a
start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too,
unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice
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Godric’s Hollow
Potion? In that case we’ll need to collect hair from somebody. I
actually think we’d better do that, Harry, the thicker our disguises
the better . . . “
Harry let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a
pause, but his mind had left the conversation. For the first time
since he had discovered that the sword in Gringotts was a fake, he
felt excited.
He was about to go home, about to return to the place where
he had had a family. It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Volde-
mort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday.
He could have invited friends to his house. . . . He might even have
had brothers and sisters. . . . It would have been his mother who
had made his seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had
hardly ever see med so real to him as at this moment, when he knew
he was about to see the place were it had been taken from him. Af-
ter Hermione had gone to bed that night, Harry quietly extracted
his rucksack from Hermione’s beaded bag, and from inside it, the
photograph album Hagrid had given him so long ago. For the first
time in months, he pursued the old pictures of his parents, smiling
and waving up at him from the images, which were all he had left
of them now.
Harry would gladly have set out for Godric’s Hollow the fol-
lowing day, but Hermione had other ideas. Convinced as she was
that Voldemort would expect Harry to return to the scene of his
parents’ deaths, she was determined that they would set o↵ only
after they had ensured that they had the best disguises possible. It
was therefore a full week later—once they had surreptitiously ob-
tained hairs from innocent Muggles who were Christmas shopping,
and had practiced Apparating and Disapparating while underneath
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the Invisibility Cloak together—that Hermione agreed to make the
journey.
They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness,
so it was late afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Po-
tion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man,
Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife. The beaded bag
containing all of their possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which
Harry was wearing around his neck) was tucked into an inside
pocket of Hermione’s buttoned-up coat. Harry lowered the In-
visibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the su↵ocating
darkness once again.
Heart beating in his throat, Harry opened his eyes. They were
standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky in
which the night’s first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cot-
tages s tood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decora-
tions twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a
glow of golden streetlights indicated the centre of the village.
“All this snow!” Hermione whispered beneath the cloak. “Why
didn’t we think of snow? After all our precautions, we’ll leave
prints! We’ll just have to get rid of them—you go in front, I’ll do
it—”
Harry did not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse,
trying to keep themselves concealed while magically covering their
traces.
“Let’s take o↵ the Cloak.” said Harry, and when she looked
frightened, “Oh, come on, we don’t look like us and there’s no one
around.”
He stowed the Cloak under his jacket and they made their way
forward unhampered, the icy air stinging their faces as they passed
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Godric’s Hollow
more cottages. Anyone of them might have been the one in which
James and Lily had once lived or where Bathilda lived now. Harry
gazed at the front doors, their snow-burdened roofs, and their frost
porches, wondering whether he remembered any of them, knowing
deep inside that it was impossible, that he had been little more
than a year old when he had left this place forever. He was not
even sure whether he would be able to see the cottage at all; he did
not know what happened when the subjects of a Fidelius Charm
died. Then the little lane along which they were walking curved to
the left and the heart of the village, a small square, was revealed
to them.
Strung all around with colored lights, there was what looked
like a war memorial in the mile, partly obscured by a windblown
Christmas tree. There were several shops, a post office, a pub and a
little church whose stained-glass windows were glowing jewel-bright
across the square.
The snow here had become impacted, It was hard and slippery
where people had trodden on it all day. Villagers were crisscrossing
in front of them, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps.
They heard a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door
opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little
church.
“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve!” said Hermione.
“Is it?”
He had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper
for weeks.
“I’m sure it is.” Said Hermione, her eyes upon the church.
“They . . . they’ll be in there, won’t they? Your mum and dad? I
can see the graveyard behind it.”
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Harry felt a thrill of something that was beyond excitement,
more like fear. Now that he was s o near, he wondered whether
he wanted to see after all. Perhaps Hermione knew how he was
feeling, because she reached for his hand and took the lead for
the first time, pulling him forward. Halfway across the square,
however, she stopped dead.
“Harry, look!”
She was pointing at the war memorial. As they had passed it,
it had transformed. Instead of an obe lisk covered in names, there
was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses,
a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy
sitting in his mother’s arms. Snow lay upon all their heads, like
flu↵y white caps.
Harry drew closer, gazing up into his parents’ faces. He had
never imagined that there would be a statue. . . . How strange it
was to see himself represented in stone, a happy baby without a
scar on his forehead. . . .
“C’mon,” said Harry, when he had looked his fill they turned
again toward the church. As they crossed the road, he glanced over
his shoulder; the statue had turned back into the war memorial.
The singing grew louder as they approached the church. It
made Harry’s throat constrict. It reminded him so forcefully of
Hogwarts, of Peeves bellowing rude versions of carols from inside
suits of armor, of the Great Hall’s twelve Christmas trees, of Dum-
bledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of Ron in a
hand-knitted sweater . . .
There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Her-
mione pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through
it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow
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Godric’s Hollow
lay deep and untouched. They moved o↵ through the snow, carving
deep trenches behind them as they walked around the building,
keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows.
Behind the church row upon row of snowy tombstones pro-
truded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecke d with dazzling
red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass
hit the snow. Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his
jacket pocket. Harry moved toward the nearest grave.
“Look at this, it’s an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation
of Hannah’s!”
“Keep your voice down.” Hermione begged him.
They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark
tracks into the snow behind them, stooping to peer at the words on
old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding
darkness to make absolutely sure that they were unaccompanied.
“Harry, here!”
Hermione was two rows of tombstones away: he had to wade
back to her, his heart positively banging in his chest.
“Is it—?”
“No, but look!”
She pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw,
upon the frozen lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dum-
bledore and, a short way be low her dates of birth and death, and
Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation:
Where you treasure is, there will your heart be also.
So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right.
The Dumbledore family had indeed lived here, and part of it had
died here.
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Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could
not help thinking that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in
this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told him so, yet
he had never thought to share the connection. They could have vis-
ited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here
with Dumbledore, of what a bond that would been, of how much
it would have m eant to him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore,
the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard
had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the
job he wanted Harry to do.
Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face
was hidden in shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He did not
understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore had cho-
sen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had
died.
“Are you sure he never mentioned—?” Hermione began.
“No,” said Harry curtly, then, “let’s keep looking,” and he
turned away, wishing he had not seen the stone. He did not want
his excited trepidation tainted with resentment.
“Here!” cried Hermione again a few moments later from out of
the darkness. “Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter.” She was
rubbing at a crumpling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little
frown on her face.
“Harry, come back a moment.”
He did not want to be sidetracked again, and only grudgingly
made his way back through the snow toward her.
“What?”
“Look at this!”
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The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could
hardly make out the name. Hermione showed him the symbol
beneath it.
“Harry, that’s the mark in the book!”
He peered at the place she indicated: The stone was so worn
that it was hard to make out what was engraved there, though
there did seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible
name.
“Yeah . . . it could be . . . ”
Hermione lit her wand and pointed it at the name on the head-
stone.
“It says Ig—Ignotus, I think . . . ”
“I’m going to keep looking for my parents, all right?” Harry
told her, a slight edge to his voice, and he set o↵ again, leaving her
crouched beside the old grave.
Every now and then he recognized a surname that, like Abbott,
he had met at Hogwarts. Sometimes there were several genera-
tions of the same Wizarding family represented in the graveyard.
Harry could tell from the dates that it had either died out, or the
current members had moved away from Godric’s Hollow. Deeper
and deeper amongst the graves he went, and every time he reached
a new headstone he felt a little lurch of apprehension and antici-
pation.
The darkness and the silence seemed to become, all of a sudden,
much deeper. Harry looked around, worried, thinking of demen-
tors, then realized that the carols had finished, that the chatter
and flurry of churchgoers were fading away as they made their way
back into the square. Somebody inside the church had just turned
o↵ the lights.
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Then Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third
time, sharp and clear from a few yards away.
“Harry, they’re here . . . right here.”
And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and his father
this time. He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy
were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right
after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on
his heart and lungs.
The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana’s.
It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore’s tomb, and
this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry
did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out
the words engraved upon it.
James Potter Lily Potter
Born 27 March 1960 Born 30 January 1960
Died 31 October 1981 Died 31 October 1981
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one
chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.
“‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’ . . . ” A hor-
rible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. “Isn’t that
a Death Eater idea? Why is that here?”
“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters
mean it, Harry,” said Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means . . . you
know . . . living beyond death. Living after death.”
But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The
empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering
remains lay beneath snow and stone, indi↵erent, unknowing. And
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tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly
freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them o↵ or
pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, lo oking
down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the
last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing
or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating,
alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment,
that he was sleeping under the snow with them.
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly.
He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking
deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to
regain control. He should have brought something to give to them,
and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was
leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a
circle through the air and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed
before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents’ grave.
As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave. He did not think
he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around
Hermione’s shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they
turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dum-
bledore’s mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the
out-of-sight kissing gate.
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Bathilda’s Secret
H
arry, stop.”
“What’s wrong?”
They had only just reached the grave of the unknown
Abbott.
“There’s someone there. Someone’s watching us. I can tell. There:
over by the bushes.”
They sto od quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the
dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry could not see any-
thing.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw something move, I could have sworn I did . . . ”
She broke from him to free her wand arm.
“We look like Muggles,” Harry pointed out.
“Muggles who’ve just b e en laying flowers on your parents’ grave!
Harry, I’m sure there’s someone over there!”
Harry thought of A History of Magic, the graveyard was sup-
posed to be haunted, what if—? But then he heard a rustle and
saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione
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had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow.
“It’s a cat,” said Harry, after a second or two, “or a bird. If it
was a Death Eater we’d be dead by now. But let’s get out of here,
and we can put the Cloak back on.”
They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of
the graveyard. Harry, who did not feel as sanguine as he had
pretended when reassuring Hermione, was glad to reach the gate
and the slippery pavement. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back
over themselves. The pub was fuller than before: Many voices
inside it were now singing the carol that they had heard as they
approached the church. For a moment Harry considered suggesting
they take refuge inside it, but before he could say anything Her-
mione murmured, “Lets go this way,” and pulled him down the
dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from
which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the
cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They
walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with
multicolored light, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through the
curtains.
“How are we going to find Bathilda’s house?” asked Hermione,
who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her s houlder.
“Harry? What do you think? Harry?”
She tugged at his arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He
was looking toward the dark mass that stood at the very end of this
row of houses. Next moment he had sped up, dragging Hermione
along with him; she slipped a little on the ice.
“Harry—”
“Look . . . Look at it Hermione . . . ”
“I don’t . . . oh!”
He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James
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and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since
Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst
the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though
entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top
floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the
curse had backfired. He and Hermione stood at the gate , gazing
at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those
that flanked it.
“I wonder why nobody’s ever rebuilt it?” whispered Hermione.
“Maybe you can’t rebuild it?” Harry replied, “Maybe it’s like
the injuries from Dark Magic and you can’t repair the damage?”
He slipped a hand from beneath the Cloak and grasped the
snowy and thickly rusted gate, not wishing to open it, but simply
to hold some part of the house.
“You’re not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might—oh,
Harry, look!”
His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had
risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles
of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in
golden letters upon the wood it said:
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard
ever to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.
And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been
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added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place
where the Boy Who Lived had escaped. Some had m erely signed
their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into
the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these,
shining brightly over sixteen years’ worth of magical graffiti, all
said similar things.
Good luck, Harry wherever you are.
If you read this, Harry, we’re all behind you!
Long live Harry Potter.
“They shouldn’t have written on the sign!” said Hermione,
indignant.
But Harry beamed at her.
“It’s brilliant. I’m glad they did. I . . . ”
He broke o↵. A heavily mu✏ed figure was hobbling up the lane
toward them, silhouetted by the bright lights in the distant square.
Harry thought, though it was hard to judge, that the figure was
a woman. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping
on the snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shu✏ing gait
all gave an impression of extreme age. They watched in silence as
she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see whether she would turn
into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew instinctively
that she would not. At last she came to a half a few yards from
the and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing
them.
He did not need Hermione’s pinch to his arm. There was next
to no chance this woman was a Muggle: She was standing there
gazing at a house that ought to have been completely invisible to
her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch,
however, it was odd behavior to come out on a night this cold,
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simply to look at an old ruin. By all the rules of normal magic,
meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see Hermione and him at all.
Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that
they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached
this uneasy conclusion, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned.
Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak, her arm pressed
against his.
“How does she know?”
He s hook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigor-
ously. Harry could think of many reasons not to obey the summons,
and yet his suspicions about her identity were growing stronger
every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted
street.
Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these
long months? That Dumbledore had told her to wait, and that
Harry would come in the end? Was it not likely that it was she
who had moved in the shadows in the graveyard and had followed
them to this spot? Even her ability to sense them suggested some
Dumbledore-ish power that he had never encountered be fore.
Finally Harry spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump.
“Are you Bathilda?”
The mu✏ed figure nodded and be ckoned again.
Beneath the Cloak Harry and Hermione lo oked at each other.
Harry raised his eyebrows; Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod.
They stepped toward the woman and, at once, she turned and
hobbled o↵ back the way they had come. Leading them past several
houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed her up the front
path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had
just left. She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door,
then opened it and stepped back to let them pass.
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She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house. Harry wrinkled
his nose as they sidled past her and pulled o↵ the Cloak. Now
that he was beside her, he realized how tiny she was; bowed down
with age she came barely level with his chest. She closed the door
behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the pee ling
paint, then turned and peered into Harry’s face. Her eyes were
thick with cataracts and sunken in folds of transparent skin, and
her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. He
wondered whether she c ould make him out at all; even if she could,
it was the balding Muggle whose identity he had stolen that she
would see.
The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed c lothes and stale food
intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a
head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.
“Bathilda?” Harry repeated.
She nodded again. Harry became aware of the locket against his
skin; the thing inside it that sometimes ticked or beat had woken;
he could feel it pulsing through the cold gold. Did it know, could
it sense, that the thing that would destroy it was near?
Bathilda shu✏ed past them, pushing Hermione aside as though
she had not seen her, and vanished into what seemed to be a sitting
room.
“Harry, I’m not sure about this,” breathed Hermione.
“Look at the size of her, I think we could overpowe r her if we
had to,” said Harry, “Listen, I should have told you, I knew she
wasn’t all there. Muriel called her ‘gaga.’”
“Come!” called Bathilda from the next room.
Hermione jumped and clutched Harry’s arm.
“It’s okay,” said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the
sitting room.
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Bathilda was tottering around the place lighting candle, but
it was still very dark, not to mention extremely dirty. Thick dust
crunched beneath their feet, and Harry’s nose detected, underneath
the dank and mildewed smell, something worse, like meat gone bad.
He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bat-
hilda’s house to check whether she was c oping. She seemed to have
forgotten that she could do magic too, for she lit the candles clum-
sily by hand, her trailing lace cu↵ in constant danger of catching
fire.
“Let me do that,” o↵ered Harry and he took the matches from
her. She stood watching him as he finished lighting the candle
stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously
on stack of book and on side tables crammed with cracke d and
moldy cups.
The last surface on which Harry spotted a candle was a bow-
fronted chest of drawers on which there stood a large number of
photographs. When the flame danced into life, its reflection wa-
vered on their dusty glass and silver. He saw a few tiny movements
from the pictures. As Bathilda fumbled with logs for the fire, he
muttered “Tergeo”; the dust vanished from the photographs, and
he was at once that half a down were missing from the largest and
most ornate frames.
He wondered whether Bathilda or somebody else had removed
them. Then the sight of a photograph near the back of the collec-
tion caught his eye, and he snatched it up.
It was the golden-haired, merry-faced thief, the young man who
had perched on Gregorovitch’s windowsill, smiling lazily up at
Harry out of the silver frame. And it came to Harry instantly
where he had seen the boy before: in The Life and Lies of Albus
Dumbledore, arm in arm with teenage Dumbledore, and that must
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be where all the missing photographs were in Rita’s book.
“Mrs.—Miss—Bagshot?” he said, and his voice shook s lightly.
“Who is this?”
Bathilda was standing in the middle of the room watching Her-
mione light the fire for her.
“Miss Bagshot?” Harry repeated, and he advanced with the
picture in his hands as the flames burst into life in the fireplace.
Bathilda looked up at his voice, and the Horcrux heat faster upon
his chest.
“Who is this person?” Harry asked her, pushing the picture
forward.
She peered at it solemnly, then up at Harry.
“Do you know who this is?” he repeated in a much s lower and
louder voice than usual. “This man? Do you know him? What’s
he called?”
Bathilda merely looked vague. Harry felt an awful frustration.
How had Rita Skeeter unlocked Bathilda’s memories?
“Who is this man?” he repeated loudly.
“Harry, what are you doing?” asked Hermione.
“This picture, Hermione, it’s the thief, the thief who stole from
Gregorovitch! Please!” he said to Bathilda. “Who is this?”
But she only stared at him.
“Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs.—Miss—
Bagshot?” asked Hermione, raising her own voice. “Was there
something you wanted to tell us?”
Giving no sign that she had heard Hermione, Bathilda now
shu✏ed a few steps closer to Harry. With a little jerk of her head
she looked back into the hall.
“You want us to leave?” he asked.
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She repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at him, then
at herself, then at the ceiling.
“Oh, right . . . Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs
with her.”
“All right,” said Hermione, “let’s go.”
But when Hermione moved, Bathilda shook her head with sur-
prising vigor, once more pointing first at Harry, then to herself.
“She wants me to go with her, alone.”
“Why?” asked Hermione, and her voice rang out sharp and
clear in the candlelit room; the old lady shook her head a little at
the loud noise.
“Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only
me?”
“Do you really think she knows who you are?”
“Yes,” said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon
his own, “I think she does.”
“Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry.”
“Lead the way,” Harry told Bathilda.
She seemed to understand, because she shu✏ed around him
toward the door. Harry glanced back at Hermione with a reassuring
smile, but he was not sure she had see n it; she stood hugging herself
in the midst of the candlelit squalor, looking toward the bookcase.
As Harry walked out of the room, unseen by both Hermione and
Bathilda, he slipped the silver-framed photograph of the unknown
thief inside his jacket.
The stairs were steep and narrow; Harry was half tempted to
place his hands on stout Bathilda’s backside to ensure that she
did not topple over backward on top of him, which seemed only
too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper
landing, turned immediately right, and led him into a low-ceilinged
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bedroom.
It was pitch-black and smelled horrible. Harry had just made
out a chamber pot protruding from under the bed before Bathilda
closed the door and even that was swallowed by the darkness.
“Lumos,” said Harry, and his wand ignited. He gave a start;
Bathilda had moved close to him in those few seconds of darkness,
and he had not heard her approach.
“You are Potter?” she whispered.
“Yes, I am.”
She nodded slowly, solemnly. Harry felt the Horcrux beating
fast, faster than his own heart. It was an unpleasant, agitating
sensation.
“Have you got anything for me?” Harry asked, but she see med
distracted by his lit wand-tip.
“Have you got anything for me?” he repeated.
Then she closed her eyes and several things happened at once:
Harry’s scar prickled painfully; the Horcrux twitched so that the
front of his sweater actually moved; the dark, fetid room dissolved
momentarily. He felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice:
Hold him!
Harry swayed where he stood: The dark, foul-smelling room
seemed to close around him again; he did not know what had just
happened.
“Have you got anything for me?” he asked for a third time,
much louder.
“Over here,” she whispered, pointing to the corner. Harry
raised his wand and saw the outline of a cluttered dressing table
beneath the curtained window.
This time she did not lead him. Harry edged between her and
the unmade be d, his wand raised. He did not want to look away
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from her.
“What is it?” he asked as he reached the dres sing table, which
was heaped high with what looked and smelled like dirty laundry.
“There,” she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.
And in the instant that he looked away, his eyes raking the
tangled mess for a sword hilt, a ruby, she moved weirdly: He was
it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn and horror
paralyzed him and he saw the old body collapsing and the great
snake pouring from the place where he neck had been.
The snake struck as he raised his wand. The force of the bite to
his forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling; its light
swung dizzyingly around the ro om and was extinguished. Then a
powerful blow from the tail to his midri↵ knocked the breath out
of him. He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound
of filthy clothing—
He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake’s tail, which
thrashed down upon the table where he had be en a second earlier.
Fragments of the glass surface rained up on him as he hit the floor.
From below he heard Hermione call, “Harry?”
He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back. Then
a heavy smooth mass smashed him into the floor and he felt it slide
over him, powerful, muscular.
“No!” he gasped, pinned to the floor.
“Yes,” whispered the voice. “Yesss . . . hold you . . . hold
you . . . ”
“Accio . . . Accio Wand . . . ”
But nothing happened and he needed his hands to try to force
the snake from him as it coiled itself around his torso, squeezing the
air from him, pressing the Horcrux hard into his chest, a circle of ice
that throbbe d with life, inches from his own frantic heart, and his
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brain was flooding with cold, white light, all thought obliterated,
his own breath drowned, distant footsteps, everything going . . .
A metal heart was banging outside his chest, and now he was
flying, flying with triumph in his heart, without need of broomstick
or thestral. . . .
He was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness; Nagini
had released him. He scrambled up and saw the snake outlined
against the landing light. It struck, and Hermione dived aside
with a shriek; her deflected curse hit the curtained window, which
shattered. Frozen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid
another shower of broken glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like
something—his wand—
He b e nt and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the
snake, its tail thrashing; Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for
a moment Harry thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang
and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking
Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to
the ceiling. Harry raised his wand, but as he did so his scar seared
more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.
“He’s coming! Hermione, he’s coming!”
As he yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos;
It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew every-
where as Harry jumped over the bed and seized the dark s hape he
knew to be Hermione.
She shrieked with pain as he pulled her back across the bed. The
snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was
coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his head was going to
split open with pain from his scar.
The snake lunged as he to ok a running leap, dragging Hermione
with him; as it struck, Hermione scream, “Confringo!” and her
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spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and
ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry
felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek
as, pulling Hermione one with him, he leapt from bed to broken
dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into
nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as they
twisted in midair.
And then his scar burst open and he was Voldemort and he was
running across the fetid be droom, his long white hands clutching
at the windowsill as he glimpsed the bald man and the little woman
twist and vanish, and he screamed with rage, a scream that mingled
with the girl’s, that echoed across the dark gardens over the church
bells ringing in Christmas Day.
And his scream was Harry’s scream, his pain was Harry
pain . . . that it could happen here, where it had happened
before . . . here, within sight of that house where he had come so
close to knowing what it was to die . . . to die. . . . The pain was so
terrible . . . ripped from his body. . . . But if he had no body, why
did his head hurt so badly; if he was dead, how could he feel so
unbearably, didn’t pain cease with death, didn’t it go—
The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins wad-
dling across the square, and the shop window covered in paper spi-
ders, all the tawdry Muggle trapping of a world in which they did
not believe. . . . And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and
power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occa-
sions. . . . Not anger. . . . that was for weaker souls than he . . . but
triumph, yes. . . . He had waited for this, he had hoped for it. . . .
“Nice costume, mister!”
He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see
beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face.
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Then the child turned and ran away. . . . Beneath the robe be fingered
the hand of his wand . . . One simple movement and the child would
never reach his mother . . . but unnecessary, quite unnecessary. . . .
And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his des-
tination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, though
they did not know it yet. . . . And he made less noise than the dead
leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark
hedge, and peered over it. . . .
They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in
their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses,
making pu↵s of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amuse-
ment of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. The child
was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his small
fist. . . .
A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could
not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the
father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. He threw
his wand down upon t he sofa and stretched, yawning. . . .
The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter
did no hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak
and pointed it at the door, which burst open.
He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall.
It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand . . .
“Lily, take Harry and go! It’s him! Go! Run! I’ll hold him
o↵!”
Hold him o↵, without a wand in his hand?. . . . He laughed before
casting the curse. . . .
“Avada Kedavra!”
The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed
against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and
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James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut. . . .
He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but
as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear. . . . He
climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to
barricade herself in. . . . She had no wand either. . . . How stupid they
were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends,
that weapons could be discarded even for moments. . . .
He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily
piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand . . . and there she
stood, the child in her arms. At the last sight of him, she dropped
her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this
would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen
instead. . . .
“Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!”
“Stand aside, you silly girl . . . stand aside now.”
“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—”
“This is my last warning—”
“Not Harry! Please . . . have mercy . . . have mercy. . . . Not
Harry! Not Harry! Please—I’ll do anything—”
“Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!”
He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more
prudent to finish them all. . . .
The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like
her husband. The child had not cried all this time. He could stand,
clutching the bars of his crib and he looked up into the intruder’s
face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his
father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty light, and his
mother would pop up any moment, laughing—
He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy’s face. He
wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable
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Bathilda’s Secret
danger. The child began to cry. It had seen that he was not James.
He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the
small ones whining in the orphanage—
“Avada Kedavra!”
And t hen he broke; He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror,
and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house,
where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away . . . far
away . . .
“No,” he moaned.
The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and he had killed
the boy, and yet he was the boy . . .
“No . . . ”
And now he stood at the broken window of Bathilda’s house,
immersed in memories of his greatest loss, and at his feet the great
snake slithered over broken china and glass . . . He looked down and
saw something . . . something incredible . . .
“No . . . ”
“Harry, it’s all right, you’re all right.”
He stooped down and picked up the smashed photograph. There
he was, the unknown thief he was seeking. . . .
“No . . . I dropped it . . . I dropped it . . . ”
“Harry, it’s okay, wake up, wake up!”
He was Harry . . . Harry, not Voldemort . . . and the thing that
was rustling was not a snake . . . He opened his eyes.
“Harry,” Hermione whispered. “Do you feel all—all right?”
“Yes,” he lied.
He was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a
heap of blankets. He could tell that it was almost dawn by the
stillness and the quality of the cold, flat light beyond the canvas
ceiling. He was drenched in sweat; he could feel it on the sheets
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and blankets.
“We got away.”
“Yes,” said Hermione, “I had to use a Hover Charm to get
you into your bunk, I couldn’t lift you. You’ve been . . . Well, you
haven’t been quite . . . ”
There were purple shadows under her brown eyes and he noticed
a small sponge in her hand. She had been wiping his face.
“You’ve been ill,” she finished, “Quite ill.”
“How long ago did we leave?”
“Hours ago. It’s nearly m orning.”
“And I’ve been . . . what, unconscious?”
“Not exactly,” said Hermione uncomfortable, “You’ve been
shouting and moaning and . . . things,” she added in a tone that
made Harry feel uneasy. What had he done? Screamed curses like
Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib?
“I couldn’t get the Horcrux o↵ you,” Hermione said, and he
knew she wanted to change the subject. “It was stuck, stuck to
your chest. You’ve got a mark; I’m s orry, I had to use a Severing
Charm to get it away. The snake bit you too, but I’ve cleaned the
wound and put some dittany on it.”
He pulled the sweaty T-shirt he was wearing away from himself
and looked down. There was a scarlet oval over his heart where the
locket had burned him. He could also see the half-healed puncture
marks to his forearm.
“Where’ve you put the Horcrux?”
“In my bag. I think we should keep it o↵ for a while.”
He lay back on his pillow and looked into her pinched gray face.
“We shouldn’t have gone to Godric’s Hollow. It’s my fault, it’s
all my fault, Hermione, I’m sorry.”
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Bathilda’s Secret
“It’s not your fault, I wanted to go too, I really thought Dum-
bledore might have left the sword there for you.”
“Yeah, well. . . . we got that wrong, didn’t we?”
“What happened, Harry? What happened when she took you
upstairs? Was the snake hiding somewhere? Did it just come out
and kill her and attack you?”
“No,” he s aid. “She was the snake . . . or the snake was
her . . . all along.”
“W—what?”
He closed his eyes. He could still smell Bathilda’s house on him.
It made the whole thing horribly vivid.
“Bathilda must’ve been dead a while. The snake was . . . was
inside her. You-Know-Who put it there in Godric’s Hollow, to
wait. You were right. He knew I’d go back.”
“The snake was inside her?”
He opened his eyes again. Hermione looked revolted, nause-
ated. “Lupin said there would be magic we’d never imagined,”
Harry said, “She didn’t want to talk in front of you, because it was
Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn’t realize, but of course I
could understand her. One we were up in the room, the snake sent
a message to You-Know-Who. I heard it happen inside my head,
I felt him get excited, he said to keep me there . . . and then. . . .”
He remembe red the snake coming out of Bathilda’s neck; Her-
mione did not need to know the details.
“ . . . she changed, changed into the snake, and attacked.”
He looked down at the puncture marks.
“It wasn’t supposed to kill me, just keep me there till You-
Know-Who came.”
If he had only managed to kill the snake, it would have been
worth it, all of it . . . Sick at heart, he sat up threw back the covers.
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“Harry, no, I’m sure you ought to rest!”
“You’re the one who needs sleep. No o↵ense, but you look
terrible. I’m fine. I’ll keep watch for a while. Where’s my wand?”
She did not answer, she merely looked at him.
“Where’s my wand, Hermione?”
She was biting her lip, and tears swam in her eyes.
“Harry . . . ”
“Where’s my wand?”
She reached down beside the bed and held it out to him.
The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One
fragile strand of phoenix feather kept both pieces hanging together.
The wood had splintered apart completely. Harry took it into his
hands as though it was a living thing that had su↵ered a terrible
injury. He could not think properly. Everything was a blur of panic
and fear. Then he held out the wand to Hermione.
“Mend it. Please.”
“Harry, I don’t think, when its broken like this—”
“Please, Hermione, try!”
“R-Reparo.”
The handling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.
“Lumos!”
The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at
Hermione.
“Expelliarmus!”
Hermione’s wand gave a little jerk, but did not leave her hand.
The feeble attempt at magic was too much for Harry’s wand, which
split into two again. He stared at it, aghast, unable to take in what
he was seeing . . . the wand that had survived so much . . .
“Harry,” Hermione whispered so quietly he could hardly hear
her. “I’m so, so s orry. I think it was me. As we were leaving,
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Bathilda’s Secret
you know, the snake was coming for us, and so I cast a Blasting
Curse, and it rebounded everywhere, and it must have—must have
hit—”
“It was an accident,” said Harry mechanically. He felt empty,
stunned. “We’ll—we’ll find a way to repair it.”
“Harry, I don’t think we’re going to be able to,” said Hermione,
the tears trickling down her face. “Remember . . . remember Ron?
When he broke his want, crashing the car? It was never the same
again, he had to get a new one.”
Harry thought of Ollivander, kidnapped and held hostage by
Voldemort; of Gregorovitch, who was dead. How was he supposed
to find himself a new wand?
“Well,” he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice, “well, I’ll just
borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch.”
Her face glazed with tears, Hermione handed over her wand,
and he left her sitting beside his bed, desiring nothing more than
to get away from her.
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Chapter 18
The Life and Lies of
Albus Dumbledore
T
he sun was coming up: The pure, colorless vastnes s
of the sky stretched over him, indi↵erent to him and
his su↵ering. Harry sat down in the tent entrance and
took a deep breath of clean air. Simply to be alive to
watch the sun rise over the sparkling snowy hillside ought to have
been the greatest treasure on earth, yet he could not appreciate
it: His senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his wand.
He looked out over a valley blanketed in snow, distant church bells
chiming through the glittering silence.
Without realizing it, he was digging his fingers into his arms as
if he were trying to resist physical pain. He had spilled his own
blood more times than he could count; he had lost all the bones
in his right arm once; this journey had already given him scars
to his chest and forearm to join those on his hand and forehead,
but never, until this moment, had he felt himself to be fatally
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
weakened, vulnerable, and naked, as though the best part of his
magical power had been torn from him. He knew exactly what
Hermione would say if he expressed any of this: The wand is only
as good as the wizard. But she was wrong, his case was di↵erent.
She had not felt the wand spin like the needle of a compass and
shoot golden flames at his enemy. He had lost the protection of
the twin cores, and only now that it was gone did he realize how
much he had been counting upon it.
He pulled the pieces of the broken wand out of his pocket and,
without looking at them, tucked them away in Hagrid’s pouch
around his neck. The pouch was now too full of broken and useless
objects to take any more. Harry’s hand brushed the old Snitch
through the moleskin and for a moment he had to fight the temp-
tation to pull it out and throw it away. Impenetrable, unhelpful,
useless, like everything else Dumbledore had left behind—
And his fury at Dumbledore broke over him now like lava,
scorching him inside, wiping out every other feeling. Out of sheer
desperation they had talked themselves into believing that Go-
dric’s Hollow held answers, convinced themselves that they were
supposed to go back, that it was all part of some sec ret path laid out
for them by Dumbledore; but there was no map, no plan. Dum-
bledore had left them to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with
unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided. Nothing
was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and
now, Harry had no wand. And he had dropped the photograph of
the thief, and it would surely be easy now for Voldemort to find
out who he was. . . . Voldemort had all the information now. . . .
“Harry?”
Hermione looked frightened that he might curse her with her
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Chapter 18
own wand. Her face streaked with tears, she crouched down beside
him, two cups of tea trembling in her hands and something bulky
under her arm.
“Thanks,” he said, taking one of the cups.
“Do you mind if I talk to you?”
“No,” he said because he did not want to hurt her feelings.
“Harry, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was.
Well . . . I’ve got the book.”
Timidly she pushed it onto his lap, a pristine copy of The Life
and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
“Where—how—?”
“It was in Bathilda’s sitting room, just lying there. . . . This note
was sticking out of the top of it.”
Hermione read the few lines of spiky, acid-green writing aloud,
“Dear Batty, Thanks for the help. H ere’s a copy of the book,
hope you like it. You said everything, even if you don’t remember
it, Rita. I think it must have arrived while the real Bathilda was
alive, but perhaps she wasn’t in any fit state to read it?”
“No, she probably wasn’t.”
Harry looked down upon Dumbledore’s face and experience d a
surge of savage pleasure: Now he would know all the things that
Dumbledore had never thought it was worth telling him, whether
Dumbledore wanted him to or not.
“You’re still really angry at me, aren’t you?” said Hermione;
he looked up to see fresh tears leaking out of her eyes, and knew
that his anger must have shown in his face.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, Hermione, I know it was an acci-
dent. You were trying to get us out of there, and you were incred-
ible. I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there to help me.”
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
He tried to return her watery smile, then turned his attention
to the book. Its spine was sti↵; it had clearly never been opened
before. He ri✏ed through the pages, looking for photographs. He
came across the one he sought almost at once, the young Dumble-
dore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some
long-forgotten joke. Harry dropped his eyes to the caption:
Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother’s death
with his friend Gellert Grindelwald.
Harry gas ped at the last word for several long moments. Grin-
delwald. His friend Grindelwald. He looked sideways at Hermione,
who was still contemplating the name as though she could not
believe her eyes. Slowly she looked up at Harry.
“Grindelwald?”
Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the
pages around them for a recurrence of that fatal name. He soon
discovered it and read greedily, but became lost: It was necessary
to go farther back to make sense of it all, and eventually he found
himself at the start of a chapter entitled “The Greater Good.”
Together, he and Hermione started to read:
Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left
Hogwarts in a blaze of glory—Head Boy, Prefect, Win-
ner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-
Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot,
Gold Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the
International Alchemical Conference in Cairo. Dumbledore in-
tended, next, to take a Grand Tour with Elphias “Dogbreath”
Doge, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he had picked up
at school.
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Chapter 18
The two young men were staying at the Leaky Cauldron in
London, preparing to depart for Greece the following morning,
when an owl arrived bearing news of Dumbledore’s mother’s
death. “Dogbreath” Doge, who refused to be interviewed for
this book, has given the public his own sentimental version of
what happened next. He represents Kendra’s death as a tragic
blow, and Dumbledore’s decision to give up his expedition as
an act of noble self-sacrifice.
Certainly Dumbledore returned to Godric’s Hollow at
once, supposedly to “care” for his younger brother and sis-
ter. But how much care did he actually give them?
“He were a head case, that Aberforth,” said Enid Smeek,
whose family lived on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow at that
time. “Ran wild. ’Course, with his mum and dad gone you’d
have felt sorry for him, only he kept chucking goat dung at
my head. I don’t think Albus was fussed about him, I never
saw them together, anyway.”
So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young
brother? The answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued im-
prisonment of his sister. For, though her first jailer had died,
there was no change in the pitiful condition of Ariana Dumble-
dore. Her very existence continued to be known only to those
few outsiders who, like “Dogbreath” Doge could be counted
upon to believe in the story of her “ill health.”
Another such easily satisfied friend of the family was Bat-
hilda Bagshot, the celebrated magical historian who has lived
in Godric’s Hollow for many years. Kendra, of course, had
rebu↵ed Bathilda when she first attempted to welcome the
family to the village. Several years later, however, the author
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
sent an owl to Albus at Hogwarts, having be en favorably im-
pressed by his paper on trans-species transformation in Trans-
figuration Today. This initial contact led to acquaintance with
the entire Dumbledore family. At the time of Kendra’s death,
Bathilda was the only person in Godric’s Hollow who was on
speaking terms with Dumbledore’s mother.
Unfortunately, the brilliance that Bathilda exhibited ear-
lier in her life has now dimmed. “The fire’s lit, but the
cauldron’s empty,” as Ivor Dillonsby put it to me, or, in
Enid Smeek’s slightly earthier phrase, “She’s nutty as squirrel
poo.” Nevertheless, a combination of tried-and-tested report-
ing techniques enabled me to extract enough nuggets of hard
fact to string together the whole scandalous story.
Like the rest of the Wizarding world, Bathilda puts
Kendra’s premature death down to a backfiring charm, a story
repeated by Albus and Aberforth in later years. Bathilda also
parrots the family line on Ariana, calling her “frail” and “del-
icate.” On one subject, however, Bathilda is well worth the
e↵ort I put in procuring Veritaserum, for she, and she alone,
knows the full story of the best-kept story of Albus Dumble-
dore’s life. Now revealed for the first time, it calls into ques-
tion everything that his admirers believed of of Dumbledore:
his supposed hatred of the Dark Arts, his opposition to the
oppression of Muggles, even his devotion to his own family.
The very same summer that Dumbledore went home to Go-
dric’s Hollow, now an orphan and head of the family, Bathilda
Bagshot agreed to accept into her home her great-nephew,
Gellert Grindelwald.
The name of Grindelwald is justly famous: In a list of Most
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Chapter 18
Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on
the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a genera-
tion later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never extended
his campaign of terror to Britain, however, the details of his
rise to power are not widely known here.
Educated at Durmstrang, a school famous even then for its
unfortunate tolerance of the Dark Arts, Grindelwald showed
himself quite as precociously brilliant as Dumbledore. Rather
than channel his abilities into the attainment of awards and
prizes, however, Gellert Grindelwald devoted himself to other
pursuits. At sixteen years old, even Durmstrang felt it could
no longer turn a blind eye to the twisted experiments of Gellert
Grindelwald, and he was expelled.
Hitherto, all that has been known of Grindelwald’s next
movements is that he “traveled abroad for some months.” It
can now be revealed that Grindelwald chose to visit his great-
aunt in Godric’s Hollow, and that there, intensely shocking
though it will be for many to hear it, he struck up a close
friendship with none other than Albus Dumbledore.
“He seemed a charming boy to me,” babbles Bathilda,
“whatever he be cam e later. Naturally I introduced him to
poor Albus, who was missing the com pany of lads his own
age. The boys took to each other at once.”
They certainly did. Bathilda shows me a letter, kept by
her, that Albus Dumbledore send Gellert Grindelwald in the
dead of night.
“Yes, even after they’d s pent all day in discussion—both
such brilliant young boys, they got on like a cauldron on fire—
I’d sometimes hear an owl tapping at Gellert’s bedroom win-
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
dow, delivering a letter from Albus! An idea would have struck
him, and then he had to let Gellert know immediately!”
And what ideas they were. Profoundly shocking though
Albus Dumbledore’s fans will find it, here are the thoughts of
their s eventeen-year-old hero, as relayed to his new best friend.
(A copy of the original letter may be seen on page 463.)
Gellert—
Your point about Wizard dominance being FOR
THE MUGGLES’ OWN GOOD—this, I think is
the crucial point. Yes, we have been given power
and yes, that power gives us the right to rule, but it
also gives us responsibilities over the ruled. We must
stress this point, it will be the foundation stone upon
which we build. Where we are opposed, as we surely
will be, this must be the basis of all our counterar-
guments. We seize control FOR THE GREATER
GOOD. And from this it follows that w here we meet
resistance, we must use only the force that is neces-
sary and no more. (This was your mistake at Durm-
strang! But I do not complain, because if you had
not been expelled, we would never have met.)
Albus
Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will
be, this letter constitutes proof that Albus Dumbledore once
dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy and estab-
lishing Wizard rule over Muggles. What a blow for those
who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-borns’
greatest champion! How hollow those spee ches promoting
Muggle rights seem in the light of this damning new evidence!
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Chapter 18
How despicable does Albus Dumbledore appear, busy plot-
ting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his
mother and caring for his sister!
No doubt those determined to keep Dumbledore on his
crumbling pedestal will bleat that he did not, after all, put
his plans into action, that he must have su↵ered a change of
heart, that he came to his senses. However, the truth seems
altogether more shocking.
Barely two months into their great new friendship. Dum-
bledore and Grindelwald parted, never to see each other again
until they met for their legendary dual (for more, see chapter
22). What caused this abrupt rupture? Had Dumbledore
come to his s enses ? Had he told Grindelwald he wanted no
more part in his plans? Alas, no.
“It was poor little Ariana dying, I think, that did it,” says
Bathilda. “It came as an awful shock. Gellert was there in
the house when it happened, and he came back to my house
all of a dither, told me he wanted to go home the next day.
Terribly distressed, you know. So I arranged a Portkey and
that was the last I saw of him.
“Albus was beside himself at Ariana’s death. It was so
dreadful for those two brothers. They had lost everybody ex-
cept each other. No wonder tempers ran a little high. Aber-
forth blamed Albus, you know, as people will under thes e
dreadful circumstances. But Aberforth always talked a lit-
tle madly, poor boy. All the same, breaking Albus’s nose at
the funeral was not decent. It would have destroyed Kendra
to see her sons fighting like that, across her daughter’s body.
A shame Gellert could not have stayed for the funeral. . . . He
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
would have been a comfort to Albus, at least. . . .”
This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few
who attended Ariana Dumbledore’s funeral, raises several
questions. Why exactly did Aberforth Dumbledore blame Al-
bus for his sister’s death? Was it, as “Batty” pretends, a mere
e↵usion of grief? Or could there have been some more concrete
reason for his fury? Grindelwald, expelled from Durmstrang
for near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the country
hours after the girl’s death, and Albus (out of shame or fear?)
never saw him again, not until forced to do so by the pleas of
the Wizarding world.
Neither Dumbledore nor Grindelwald e ver seem to have
referred to this brief boyhood friendship in later life. However,
there can be no doubt that Dumbledore delayed, for some
five years of turmoil, fatalities, and disappearances, his attack
upon Grindelwald. Was it a lingering a↵ection for the man or
fear of exposure as his once best friend that caused Dumble-
dore to hesitate? Was it only reluctantly that Dumbledore set
out to capture the man he was once so delighted he had met?
And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the
inadvertent victim of some Dark rite? Did she stumble across
something s he ought not to have done, as the two young men
sat practicing for their attempt at glory and domination? Is
it possible that Ariana Dumbledore was the first person to die
“for the greater good”?
The chapter ended here and Harry looked up. Hermione had
reached the b ottom of the page before him. She tugged the book
out of Harry’s hands, looking a little alarmed by his expression,
and closed it w ithout looking at it, as though hiding something
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Chapter 18
indecent.
“Harry—”
But he shook his head. Some inner certainty had crashed down
inside him; it was exactly as he had felt after Ron left. He had
trusted Dumbledore, believed him the embodiment of goodness
and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose? Ron,
Dumbledore, the phoenix wand . . . “Harry.” She seemed to have
heard his thoughts. “Listen to me. It—it do es n’t make very nice
reading—”
“Yeah, you could say that—”
“—but don’t forget, Harry this is Rita Skeeter writing.”
“You did read that letter to Grindelwald, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I—I did.” She hesitated, looking upset, cradling her tea
in her cold hands. “I think that’s the worst bit. I know Bathilda
thought it was all just talk, bur ‘For the Greater Good’ becam e
Grindelwald’s slogan, his justification for all the atrocities he com-
mitted later. And . . . from that . . . it looks like Dumbledore gave
him the idea. They say ‘For the Greater Good’ was even carved
over the entrance to Nurmengard.”
“What’s Nurmengard?”
“The prison Grindelwald had built to hold his opponents. He
ended up in there himself, once Dumbledore had caught him. Any-
way, it’s—it’s an awful thought that Dumbledore’s ideas helped
Grindelwald rise to power. But on the other hand, even Rita can’t
pretend that they knew each other for more than a few m onths one
summer when they were both really young, and—”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Harry. He did not want to let
his anger spill out at her, but it was hard to keep his voice steady.
“I thought you’d say ‘They were young.’ They were the same age
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The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the
Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend,
plotting their rise to power over the Muggles.”
His temper would not remain in check much longer: He stood
up and walked around, trying to work some of it o↵.
“I’m not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote,” said Her-
mione. “All that ‘right to rule’ rubbish, it’s ‘Magic Is Might’ all
over again. But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck
alone in the house—”
“Alone? He wasn’t alone! He had his brother and sister for
company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up—”
“I don’t believe it,” said Hermione. She stood up too. “What-
ever was wrong with that girl, I don’t think she was a Squib. The
Dumbledore we know would never, ever have allowed—”
“The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer
Muggles by force!” Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the
empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking
and spiraling against the pearly sky.
“He changed, Harry, he changed! It’s as simple as that! Maybe
he did believe those things when he was seventeen, but the whole
of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dum-
bledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who always
voted for Muggle protection and Muggle born rights, who fought
You-Know-Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him
down!”
Rita’s book lay on the ground between them, so that the face
of Albus Dumbledore smiled dolefully at both.
“Harry, I’m sorry, but I think the real reason you’re so angry is
that Dumbledore never told you any of this himself.”
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“Maybe I am!” Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his
head, hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or
protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment. “Look
what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And
again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything,
just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me
even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!”
His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at
each other in the whiteness and the emptiness, and Harry felt they
were as insignificant as insects be neath that wide sky.
“He loved you,” Hermione whispered. “I know he loved you.”
Harry dropped his arms.
“I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me.
This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight
more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than
he ever shared with me.”
Harry picked up Hermione’s wand, which he dropped in the
snow, and sat back down in the entrance to the tent.
“Thanks for the tea. I’ll finish the watch. You get back in the
warm.”
She hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She picked up the
book and then walked back past him into the tent, but as she did
so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with her hand. He closed
his eyes at her touch, and hated himself for wishing that what she
said was true: that Dumbledore had really cared.
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The Silver Doe
I
t was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch
at midnight. Harry’s dreams were c onfused and disturbing:
Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a gigantic,
cracked ring, then through a wreath of Christmas rose s. He
woke repeatedly, panicky, convinced that somebo dy had called out
to him in the distance, imagining that the wind whipping around
the tent was footsteps or voices.
Finally he got up in the darkness and joined Hermione, who was
huddled in the entrance to the tent reading A History of Magic by
the light of the wand. The snow was still falling thickly, and she
greeted with relief his suggestion of packing up early and moving
on.
“We’ll go somewhere more sheltered,” she agreed, shivering as
she pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas. “I kept thinking I
could hear people m oving outside, I even thought I saw somebody
once or twice.”
Harry paused in the act of pulling on a jumper and glanced at
the silent, motionless Sneakoscope on the table.
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“I’m sure I imagined it,” said Hermione, looking nervous. “The
snow in the dark, it plays tricks on your eyes. . . . But perhaps we
ought to Disapparate under the Invisibility Cloak, just in case?”
Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry was wearing
the Horcrux, and Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disap-
parated. The usual tightness engulfed them; Harry’s feet parted
company with the snowy ground, then s lamme d hard onto what
felt like frozen earth covered with leaves.
“Where are we?” he asked, peering around at a fresh mass of
trees as Hermione opened the beaded bag and began tugging at
tent poles.
“The Forest of Dean,” she said. “‘I came camping here once
with my mum and dad.”
Here too snow lay on the trees all around and it was bitterly
cold, but they were at least protected from the wind. They spent
most of the day inside the tent, huddled for warmth around the
useful bright blue flames that Hermione was so adept at producing,
and which could be scooped up and carried around in a jar. Harry
felt as though he was recuperating from s ome brief but severe ill-
ness; an impression reinforced by Hermione’s solicitousless. That
afternoon fresh flakes drifted down upon them, so that even their
sheltered clearing had a fresh dusting of powdery snow.
After two nights of little sleep, Harry’s senses seemed more alert
than usual. Their escape from Godric’s Hollow had been so narrow
that Voldemort seemed somehow closer than before, more threat-
ening. As darkness drew in again Harry refused Hermione’s o↵er
to keep watch and told her to go to bed.
Harry moved an old cushion into the tent mouth and sat down,
wearing all the sweaters he owned but even so, still shivery. The
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The Silver Doe
darkness deepened with the passing hours until it was virtually
impenetrable. He was on the p oint of taking out the Marauder’s
Map, so as to watch Ginny’s dot for a while, before he remembered
that it was the Christmas holidays and that she would be back at
the Burrow.
Every tiny movement seemed magnified in the vastness of the
forest. Harry knew that it must be full of living creatures, but
he wished they would all remain still and silent so that he could
separate their innocent scurryings and prowlings from noises that
might proclaim other, sinister movements. He remembered the
sound of a cloak slithering over dead leaves many years ago, and
at once thought he heard it again before mentally shaking himself.
Their protective enchantments had worked for weeks; why should
they break now? And yet he could not throw o↵ the feeling that
something was di↵erent tonight.
Several time he jerked upright, he neck aching because he had
fallen asleep, slumped at an awkward angle against the side of the
tent. The night reached such a depth of velvety blackness that he
might have been suspended in limbo between Disapparition and
Apparition. He had just held up a hand in front of his face to see
whether he could make out his fingers when it happened.
A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving
through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly.
The light seemed simply to drift toward him.
He jumped to his feet, his voice frozen in his throat, and raised
Hermione’s wand. He sc rewed up his eyes as the light became
blinding, the trees in front of it pitch-black in silhouette, and still
the thing came closer. . . .
And then the source of the light stepped out from behind an
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oak. It was a silver-white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking
her way over the ground, still silent, and leaving no hoofprints in
the fine powdering of snow. She stepped toward him, her beautiful
head with its wide, long-lashed eyes held high.
Harry stared at the creature, filled with wonder, not at her
strangeness, but at her inexplicable familiarity. He felt that he
had been waiting for her to come, but that he had forgotten, until
that moment, that they had arranged to meet. His impulse to
shout for Hermione, which had been so strong a moment ago, had
gone. He knew, he would have staked his life on it, that she had
come for him, and him alone.
They gazed at each other for several long moments and then
she turned an walked away.
“No,” he said, and his voice was cracked with lack of use. “Come
back!”
She continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon
her brightness was striped by their think black trunks. For one
trembling second he hesitated. Caution murmured it could be a
trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him
that this was not Dark Magic. He set o↵ in pursuit.
Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the doe made no noise as
she passed through the trees, for she was nothing but light. Deeper
and deeper into the forest she led him, and Harry walked quickly,
sure that when she stopped, she would allow him to approach her
properly. And then she would speak and the voice would tell him
what he needed to know.
At last, she came to a halt. She turned her beautiful head
toward him once more, and he broke into a run, a question burning
in him, but as he opened his lips to ask it, she vanished.
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The Silver Doe
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished
image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision,
brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now
fear came: Her presence had meant safety.
“Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited.
The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes
as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant
crackles of twigs, soft swishes of snow. Was he about to be at-
tacked? Had she enticed him into an ambush? Was he imagining
that somebody stood beyond the reach of the wandlight, watching
him?
He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out him, no flash of green
light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this
spot?
Something gleamed in the light of the wand, and Harry spun
about, but all that was there was a small, frozen pool, its cracked
black surface glittering as he raised the wand higher to examine it.
He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The
ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but
deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted.
A great silver cross . . .
His heart skipped into his mouth: He dropp ed to his knees at
the pool’s e dge and angled the wand so as to flood the bottom of the
pool with as much light as possible. A glint of deep red . . . It was a
sword with glittering rubies in its hilt. . . . The sword of Gryffindor
was lying at the bottom of the forest pool.
Barely breathing, he stared down at it. How was this possible?
How could it have come to be lying in a forest pool, this close to
the place where they were camping? Had some unknown magic
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drawn Hermione to this spot, or was the doe, which he had taken
to be a Patronus, some kind of guardian of the pool? Or had
the sword been put into the pool after they had arrived, precisely
because they were here? In which case, where was the person who
had wanted to pass it to Harry? Again he directed the wand at
the surrounding trees and bushes, searching for a human outline,
for the glint of an eye, but he could not see anyone there. All the
same, a little more fear leavened his exhilaration as he returned
his attention to the sword reposing upon the bottom of the frozen
pool.
He pointed the want at the silvery shape and murmured, “Accio
Sword.”
It did not stir. He had not expected it to. If it had been that
easy, the sword would have lain on the ground for him to pick up,
not in the depths of a frozen pool. He set o↵ around the circle
of ice, thinking hard about the last time the sword had delivered
itself to him. He had been in terrible danger then, and had asked
for help.
“Help,” he murmured, but the sword remained upon the pool
bottom, indi↵erent, motionless.
What was it, Harry asked himself (walking again), that Dumble-
dore had told him the last time he had retrieved the sword? Only
a true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat. And what
were the qualities that defined a Gryffindor? A small voice inside
Harry’s head answered him: Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set
Gryffindors apart.
Harry stopped walking and let out a long sigh, his smoky breath
dispersing rapidly upon the frozen air. He knew what he had to
do. If he was honest with himself, he had thought it might come to
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The Silver Doe
this from the moment he had spotted the sword through the ice.
He glanced at the surrounding trees again, but was convinced
that nobody was going to attack him. They had had their chance as
he walked alone through the forest, had had plenty of opportunity
as he examined the pool. The only reason to delay at this point
was because the immediate prospect was so deeply uninviting.
With fumbling fingers Harry started to remove his many layers
of clothing. Where “chivalry” entered this, he thought ruefully, he
was not entirely sure, unless it counted as chivalrous that he was
not calling for Hermione to do it in his stead.
An owl hooted somewhere as he stripped o↵, and he thought
with a pang of Hedwig. He was shivering now, his teeth chat-
tering horribly, and yet he continued to strip of until at last he
stood there in is underwear, barefooted in the snow. He placed
the pouch containing his wand, his mother’s letter, the shard of
Sirius’s mirror, and the old Snitch on top of his clothes, then he
pointed Hermione’s wand at the ice.
“Diffindo.”
It cracked with a sound like a bullet in the silence. The surface
of the pool broke and chunks of dark ice rocked on the ru✏ed water.
As far as Harry could judge, it was not deep, but to retrieve the
sword he would have to submerge himself completely.
Contemplating the task ahead would not make it easier or the
water warmer. He stepped to the pool’s edge and placed Her-
mione’s wand on the ground, still lit. Then, trying not to imagine
how much colder he was about to be come or how violently he would
soon be shivering, he jumped.
Every pore of his body screamed in protest; The very air in his
lungs seem s to freeze solid as he was submerged to his shoulders in
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the frozen water. He could hardly breathe; trembling so violently,
the water lapped over the edges of the pool, he felt for the blade
with his numb feet. He only wanted to dive once.
Harry put o↵ the moment of total submersion from second to
second, gasping and shaking, until he told himself that it must be
done, gathered all his courage, and dived.
The cold was agony: It attacked him like fire. His brain itself
seemed to have frozen as he pushed through the dark water to the
bottom and reached out, groping for the sword. His fingers closed
around the hilt; he pulled it upward.
Then something closed tight around his neck. He though of wa-
ter weeds, though nothing had brushed him as he dived, and raised
his empty hand to free himself. It was not weed: The chain of the
Horcrux had tightened and was slowly constricting his windpipe.
Harry kicked out wildly, trying to push himself back to the
surface, but merely propelled himself into the rocky side of the
pool. Thrashing, su↵ocating, he scrabbled at the strangling chain,
his frozen fingers unable to loosen it, and now little lights were
popping inside his head, and he was going to drown, there was
nothing left, nothing he could do, and the arms that closed around
his chest were surely Death’s. . . .
Choking and retching, soaking and colder than he had ever
been in his life, he came to facedown in the snow. Somewhere
close by, another person was panting and coughing and staggering
around. Hermione had come again, as she had come when the
snake attacked. . . . Yet it did not sound like her, not with those
deep coughs, not judging by the weight of the footsteps. . . .
Harry had no strength to lift his head and see his savior’s iden-
tity. All he could do was raise a shaking hand to his throat and
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The Silver Doe
feel the place where the locket had cut tightly into his flesh. It was
gone. Someone had cut him free. Then a panting voice spoke from
over his head,
“Are—you—mental?”
Nothing but the shock of hearing that voice could have given
Harry the strength to get up. Shivering violently, he staggered to
his feet. There before him stood Ron, fully dressed but drenched
to the skin, his hair plastered to his face, the sword of Gryffindor
in one hand and the Horcrux dangling from its broken chain in the
other.
“What the hell,” panted Ron, holding up the Horcrux, which
swung backward and forward on its shortened chain in some parody
of hypnosis, “didn’t you take this thing o↵ before you dived?”
Harry could not answer. The silver doe was nothing, nothing
compared with R on’s reappearance: he could not believe it. Shud-
dering with cold, he caught up the pile of clothes still lying at the
water’s edge and began to pull them on. As he dragged sweater
after sweater over his head, Harry stared at Ron, half expecting
him to have disappeared every time he lost sight of him, and yet
he had to be real: He had just dived into the pool; he had saved
Harry’s life.
“It was y—you?” Harry said at last, his teeth chattering, his
voice weaker than usual due to his near-strangulation.
“Well, yeah,” said Ron, looking slightly confused.
“Y—you cast that doe?”
“What? No, of course not! I thought it was you doing it!”
“My Patronus is a stag.”
“Oh yeah. I thought it looked di↵erent. No antlers.”
Harry put Hagrid’s pouch back around his neck, pulled on a
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final sweater, stooped to pick up Hermione’s wand, and faced Ron
again.
“How come you’re here?”
Apparently Ron had hop ed that this point would come up later,
if at all.
“Well, I’ve—you know—I’ve come back. If—” He cleared his
throat. “You know. You still want me.”
There was a pause, in which the subject of Ron’s departure
seemed to rise like a wall between them. Yet he was here. He had
returned. He had just saved Harry’s life.
Ron looked down at his hands. He seemed momentarily sur-
prised to see the things he was holding.
“Oh yeah, I got it out,” he said, rather unnecessarily, holding
up the sword for Harry’s inspection. “That’s why you jumped in,
right?”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “But I don’t understand. How did you get
here? How did you find us?”
“Long story,” said Ron. “I’ve been looking for you for hours,
it’s a big forest, isn’t it? And I was just thinking I’d have to kip
under a tree and wait for morning when I saw that deer coming
and you following.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?”
“No,” said Ron, “I—”
But he hesitated, glancing at two trees growing close together
some yards away.
“I did think I saw something move over there, but I was running
to the pool at the time, because you’d gone in and you hadn’t come
up, so I wasn’t going to make a detour to—hey!”
Harry was already hurrying to the place Ron had indicated.
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The Silver Doe
The two oaks grew together: there was a gap of only a few inches
between the trunks at eye level, and ideal place to see but not be
seen. The ground around the roots, however, was free of snow, and
Harry could see no sign of footprints. He walked back to where Ron
stood waiting, still holding the sword and the Horcrux.
“Anything there?” Ron asked.
“No,” said Harry.
“So how did the sword ever get into that pool?”
“Whoever cast the Patronus must have put it there.”
They both looked at the ornate silver sword, its rubied hilt
glinting a little in the light from Hermione’s wand.
“You reckon this is the real one?” asked Ron.
“One way to find out, isn’t there?” said Harry.
The Horcrux was still swinging from Ron’s hand. The locket
was twitching slightly. Harry knew that the ting inside it was
agitated again. It had sensed the presence of the sword and had
tried to kill Harry rather than let him possess it. Now was not
the time for long discussions; now was the moment to destroy the
locket once and for all. Harry looked around, holding Hermione’s
wand high, and saw the place: a flattish rock lying in the shadow
of a sycamore tree.
“Come here,” he said, and he led the way, brushed snow from
the rock’s s urface, and held out his hand for the Horcrux. When
Ron o↵ered the sword, however, Harry shook his head.
“No, you should do it.”
“Me?” said Ron, looking shocked. “Why?”
“Because you got the sword out of the p ool. I think it’s sup-
posed to be you.”
He was not being kind or generous. As certainly as he had
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known that the doe was benign, he knew that Ron had to b e the
one to wield the sword. Dumbledore had at least taught Harry
something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power
of certain acts.
“I’m going to open it,” said Harry, “and you stab it. Straight-
away, okay? Because whatever’s in there will put up a fight. The
bit of Riddle in the diary tried to kill me.”
“Hou are you going to op en it?” asked Ron. He looked terrified.
“I’m going to ask it to open, using Parseltongue,” said Harry.
The answer came so readily to his lips that he thought he had
always known it deep down: Perhaps it had taken his recent en-
counter with Nagini to make him realize it. He looked at the
serpentine S inlaid with glittering green stones: It was easy to
visualize it as a minuscule snake, curled upon the cold rock.
“No!” said Ron. “No, don’t open it! I’m serious!”
“Why not?” asked Harry. “Let’s get rid of the damn thing, it’s
been months—”
“Because that thing’s bad for me!” said Ron, backing away
from the locket on the rock. “I can’t handle it! I’m not making
excuses, Harry, for what I was like, but it a↵ects me worse than
it a↵ec ted you and Hermione, it made me think stu↵—stu↵ I was
thinking anyway, but it made everything worse. I can’t explain
it, and then I’d take it o↵ and I’d get my head on straight again,
and then I’d have to put the effing thing back on—I can’t do it,
Harry!”
He had backed away, the sword dragging at his side, shaking
his head.
“You can do it,” said Harry. “You can! You’ve just got the
sword, I know it’s suppose d to be you who uses it. Please, just get
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The Silver Doe
rid of it, Ron.”
The sound of his name seemed to act like a stimulant. Ron
swallowed, then, still breathing hard through his long nose, moved
back toward the rock.
“Tell me when,” he croaked.
“On three,” said Harry, looking back down at the locket and
narrowing his eyes, concentrating on the letter S, imagining a ser-
pent, while the contents of the locket rattled like a trapped co ck-
roach. It would have been easy to pity it, except that the cut
around Harry’s neck still burned.
“One . . . two . . . three . . . open.”
The last word came as a hiss and a snarl and the golden doors
of the locke t swung wide with a little click.
Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living e ye,
dark and handsome as Tom Riddle’s eyes had been before he turned
them scarlet and slit-pupiled.
“Stab,” said Harry, holding the locket steady on the rock.
Ron raised the sword in his shaking hands: The point dangled
over the frantically swiveling eyes, and Harry gripped the locket
tightly, bracing himself, already imagining blood pouring from the
empty windows.
Then a voice hissed out from the Horcrux.
“I have seen your heart, and it is mine.”
“Don’t listen to it!” Harry s aid harshly. “Stab it!”
“I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley, and I have seen
your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also
possible. . . . ”
“Stab!” shouted Harry; his voice e choed o↵ the surrounding
trees, the sword point trembled, and Ron gazed down into Riddle’s
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eyes.
“Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a
daughter . . . Least loved, now, by the girl who prefers your
friend . . . Second best , always, eternally overshadowed . . . ”
“Ron, stab it now!” Harry bellowed; He could feel the locket
quivering in his grip and was scared of what was coming. Ron
raised the sword still higher, and as he did so, Riddle’s eyes gleamed
scarlet.
Out of the locket’s two windows, out of the eyes, there bloomed,
like two grotesque bubbles, the heads of Harry and Hermione,
weirdly distorted.
Ron yelled in shock and backed away as the figures blossomed
out of the locket, first chests, then waists, then legs, until they
stood in the locket, side by side like trees with a common root,
swaying over Ron and the real Harry, who had snatched his fingers
away from the locke t as it burned, suddenly, white-hot.
“Ron!” he shouted, but the Riddle-Harry was now speaking
with Voldemort’s voice and Ron was gazing, mesmerized, into his
face.
“Why return? We were better without you, happier without
you, glad of your absence. . . . We laughed at your stupidity, your
cowardice, your presumption—”
“Presumption! ” echoed the Riddle-Hermione, who was more
beautiful and yet more terrible than the real Hermione. She
swayed, cackling, before Ron, who looked horrified yet transfixed,
the sword hanging pointlessly at his side. “Who could look at you,
who would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you
ever done, compared with th e Chosen One? What are you, com-
pared with the Boy Who Lived? ”
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The Silver Doe
“Ron, stab it, STAB IT!” Harry yelled, but Ron did not move.
His eyes were wide, and the Riddle-Harry and the Riddle-Hermione
were reflected in them, their hair swirling like flames, their eyes
shining red, their voices lifted in an evil duet.
“You mother confessed,” sneered Riddle-Harry, while Riddle-
Hermione jeered, “that she would have preferred me as a son, would
be glad to exchange . . . ”
“Who wouldn’t prefer him, w hat woman would take you, you
are nothing, nothing, nothing to him,” crooned Riddle-Hermione,
and she stretched like a snake and engulfed herself around Riddle-
Harry, wrapping him in a close embrace: Their lips met.
On the ground in front of them, Ron’s face filled with anguish.
He raised the sword high, his arms shaking.
“Do it, Ron!” Harry yelled.
Ron looked toward him, and Harry thought he saw a trace of
scarlet in his eyes.
“Ron—?”
The sword flashed, plunged; Harry threw himself out of the way,
there was a clang of metal and a long, drawn-out scream. Harry
whirled around, slipping in the snow, wand held ready to defend
himself: but there was nothing to fight.
The monstrous version of himself and Hermione were gone;
There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in
his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on
the flat rock.
Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say
or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at
all, but their normal blue; they were also wet.
Harry stopped, pretending he had not see n, and picked up the
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broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Rid-
dle’s eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was
smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had
vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act.
The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees,
his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from
cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down
beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took
it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it o↵.
“After you left,” he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that
Ron’s face was hidden, “she cried for a week. Probably longer,
only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when
we never even spoke to each other. With you gone . . . ”
He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again
that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them.
“She’s like my sister,” he went on. “I love her like a s ister and
I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always b e en like
that, I thought you knew.”
Ron did not respond, but turned his face away from Harry and
wiped his nose on his sle eve. Harry got to his feet again and walked
to where Ron’s enormous rucksack lay yards away, discarded as
Ron had run toward the pool to save Harry from drowning. He
hoisted it onto his own back and walked back to Ron, who clam-
bered to his feet as Harry approached, eyes bloodshot but otherwise
composed.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m sorry I left. I know I
was a—a—”
He looked around at the darkness, as if hoping a bad enough
world would swoop down upon him and claim him.
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The Silver Doe
“You’ve sort of made up for it tonight,” said Harry. “Getting
the sword. Finishing o↵ the Horcrux. Saving my life.”
“That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,” Ron mumbled.
“Stu↵ like that always sounds cooler than it really was,” said
Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.”
Simultaneously they walked forward and hugged, Harry grip-
ping the still-sopping back of Ron’s jacket.
“And now,” said Harry as they broke apart, “all we’ve got to
do is find the tent again.”
But it was not difficult. Though the walk through the dark
forest with the doe had seemed lengthy, with Ron my his side
the journey back seemed to take a surprisingly short time. Harry
could not wait to wake Hermione, and it was with a quickening
excitement that he entered the tent. Ron lagging a little be hind
him.
It was gloriously warm after the pool and the forest, the only
illumination through the bluebell flames still shimmering in a bowl
on the floor. Hermione was fast asleep, curled up under her blan-
kets, and did not move until Harry had said her name several times.
“Hermione!”
She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her
face.
“What’s wrong? Harry? Are you all right?”
“It’s okay, everything’s fine. More than fine. I’m great. There’s
someone here.”
“What do you mean? Who—?”
She saw Ron, who stood there holding the sword and dripping
onto the threadbare carpet. Harry backed into a shadowy corner,
slipped o↵ Ron’s rucksack, and attempted to blend in with the
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canvas.
Hermione slipp ed out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker
toward Ron, her eyes upon his pale face. She stopped right in front
of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak,
hopeful smile and half raised his arms.
Hermione launched herself forward and started punching every
inch of him that she could reach.
“Ouch—ow—gerro↵! What the—? Hermione—OW!”
“You—complete—arse —Ronald—Weasley!”
She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away,
shielding his head as Hermione advanced.
“You—crawl—back—here—after—weeks—and—weeks—
oh, where’s my wand?”
She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry’s hands
and he reacted instinctively.
“Protego!! ”
The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione. The
force of it knocked her backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out
of her mouth, she leapt up again.
“Hermione!” said Harry. “Calm—”
“I will not calm down!” she screamed. Never before had he
seen her lose control like this; she looked quite demented. “Give
me back my wand! Give it back to me!”
“Hermione, will you please—”
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Harry Potter!” she screeched.
“Don’t you dare! Give it back now! And YOU!”
She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a male-
diction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating s everal steps.
“I came running after you! I called you! I be gged you to come
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back!”
“I know,” Ron said. “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really—”
“Oh you’re sorry!”
She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked
at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness.
“You come back after weeks—weeks —and you think it’s all
going to be all right if you just say sorry?”
“Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad
that Ron was fighting back.
“Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm.
“Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of
seconds—”
“Hermione,” interjected Harry who considered this a low blow,
“he just saved my—”
“I don’t care!” s he screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done!
Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew—”
“I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice
for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the
Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over
the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and
mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight o↵ if you were dead, you
don’t know what it’s been like—”
“What it’s been like for you?”
Her voice was now so shrill only bats would be able to hear it
soon, but she had reached a new level of indignation that rendered
her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity.
“I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I
walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I c ouldn’t
go anywhere!”
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“A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione thew herself down
into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so rightly it seemed
unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.
“Snatchers,” said Ron. “They’re everywhere—gangs trying to
earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there’s
a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my
own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited,
thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get
out of being dragged to the Ministry.”
“What did you say to them?”
“Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think
of.”
“And they believed that?”
“They weren’t the brightest. One of them was definitely part-
troll, the smell o↵ him. . . .”
Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at
this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony
above her tightly knotted limbs.
“Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It
was a bit pathetic to be honest, but there were still five of them
and only one of me and they’d taken my wand. Then two of them
got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to
hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, disarmed
the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn’t do it so well.
Splinched myself again”—Ron held up his right hand to show two
missing fingernails; Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly—“and I
came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to
that bit of riverbank where we’d been . . . you’d gone.”
“Gosh, what a gripping story,” Hermione said in the lofty voice
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she adopted when wishing to wound. “You must have been simply
terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric’s Hollow and, let’s think
what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who’s snake
turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who
himself arrived and missed us by about a second.”
“What?” Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione
ignored him.
“Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our su↵er-
ings into perspective doesn’t it?”
“Hermione,” said Harry quietly. “Ron just saved my life.”
She appeared not to have heard him.
“One thing I would like to know, though,” she said, fixing her
eyes on a spot a foot over Ron’s head. “How exactly did you find
us tonight? That’s important. Once we know, we’ll be able to
make sure we’re not visited by anyone else we don’t want to see.”
Ron glared at her, then pulled a small silver object from his
jeans pocket.
“This.”
She had to look at Ron to see what he was showing them.
“The Deluminator?” she asked, so surprised she forgot to look
cold and fierce.
“It doesn’t just turn the lights on and o↵,” said Ron. “I don’t
know how it works or why it happened then and not any other
time, because I’ve been wanting to come back e ver since I left.
But I was listening to the radio really early on Christmas morning
and I heard . . . I heard you.”
He was looking at Hermione.
“You heard me on the radio?” she asked incredulously.
“No. I heard you coming out of my pocket. Your voice,” he
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held up the Deluminator again, “came out of this.”
“And what exactly did I say?” asked Hermione, her tone s ome -
where betwee n skepticism and curiosity.
“My name. ‘Ron.’ And you said . . . something about a
wand. . . .”
Hermione turned a fiery shade of scarlet. Harry remembered. It
had been the first time Ron’s name had been said aloud by either
of them since the day he had left; Hermione had mentions it when
talking about repairing Harry’s wand.
“So I took it out,” Ron went on, looking at the Deluminator,
“and it didn’t seem di↵erent or anything, but I was sure I’d heard
you. So I clicked it. And the light went out in my room, but
another light appeared right outside my window.”
Ron raised his empty hand and pointed in front of him, his eyes
focused on something neither Harry nor Hermione could see.
“It was a ball of light, kind of pulsing, and bluish, like that like
you get around a Portkey, you know?”
“Yeah,” said Harry and Hermione together automatically.
“I knew this was it,” said Ron. “I grabbed my stu↵ and packed
it then I put on my rucksack and went out into the garden.
“The little ball of light was hovering there, waiting for me, and
when I came out it bobbed along a bit and I followed it behind the
shed and then it . . . well, it went inside me.”
“Sorry?” said Harry, sure he had not heard correctly.
“It sort of floated toward me,” said Ron, illustrating the move-
ment with his free index finger, “right into my chest, and then—it
just went straight through. It was here,” he touched a point close
to his heart. “I could feel it, it was hot. And once it was inside
me I knew where I was supposed to do, I knew it would take me
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where I needed to go. So I Disapparated and c ame out on the side
of a hill. There was snow everywhere. . . .”
“We were there,” said Harry. “We spend two nights there,
and the second night I kept thinking I could hear someone moving
around in the dark and calling out!”
“Yeah, well, that would’ve been me,” said Ron. “Your protec-
tive spells work, anyway, because I couldn’t see you and I couldn’t
hear you. I was sure you were around, though, so in the end I got
in my sleeping bag and waited for one of you to appear. I thought
you’d have to show yourselves when you packed up the tent.”
“No, actually,” said Hermione. “We’ve been Disapparating un-
der the Invisibility Cloak as an extra precaution. And we left re-
ally early, because as Harry says, we’d heard somebody blundering
around.”
“Well, I stayed on that hill all day,” said Ron. “I kept hoping
you’d appear. But when it started to get dark I knew I must have
missed you, so I clicked the Deluminator again, the blue light came
out and went inside me, and I Disapparated and arrived here in
these woods. I still couldn’t see you, so I just had to hope one of
you would show yourselves in the end—and Harry did. Well, I saw
the doe first, obviously.”
“You saw the what?” said Hermione sharply.
They explained what had happened, and as the story of the
silver doe nad the sword in the pool unfolded, Hermione frowned
from one to the other of them, concentrating so hard she forgot to
keep her limbs locked together.
“But it must have bee n a Patronus!” she said. “Couldn’t you
see who was casting it? Didn’t you see anyone? And it led you to
the sword! I can’t believe this! Then what happened?”
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Ron explained how he had watched Harry jump into the pool
and had waited for him to resurface; how he had realized that
something was wrong, dived in, and saved Harry, then returned
for the sword. He got as far as the opening of the locket, then
hesitated, and Harry cut in.
“—and Ron stabbed it with the sword.”
“And . . . it went? Just like that?” she whispered.
“Well, it—screamed,” said Harry with half a glance at Ron.
“Here.”
He threw the locket into her lap; gingerly she picked it up and
examined its punctured windows.
Deciding that it was at last safe to do so, Harry removed the
Shield Charm with a wave of Hermione’s wand and turned to Ron.
“Did you just say you got away from the Snatchers with a spare
wand?”
“What?” said Ron, who had been watching Hermione examin-
ing the locke t. “Oh—oh yeah.”
He tugged open a buckle on his rucksack and pulled a short,
dark wand out of its pocket. “Here. I figured it’s always handy to
have a backup.”
“You were right,” said Harry, holding out his hand. “Mine’s
broken.”
“You’re kidding?” Ron said, but at that moment Hermione got
to her feet, and he looked apprehensive again.
Hermione put the vanquished Horcrux into the beaded bag,
then climbed back into her bed and settled down without another
word.
Ron passed Harry the new wand.
“About the best you could hope for, I think,” murmured Harry.
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“Yeah,” said Ron. “Could’ve been worse. Remember those
birds she set on me?”
“I still haven’t ruled it out,” came Hermione’s mu✏ed voice
from beneath her blankets, but Harry saw Ron smiling slightly as
he pulled his maroon pajamas out of his rucksack.
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Xenophilius Lovegood
H
arry had not expected Hermione’s anger to abate
overnight, and was therefore unsurprised that she com-
municated mainly by dirty looks and pointed silences
the next morning. Ron responded by maintaining an
unnaturally somber demeanor in her presence as an outward sign of
continuing remorse. In fact, when all three of them were together
Harry felt like the only non-mourner at a poorly attended funeral.
During those few moments he spent alone with Harry, however
(collecting water and searching the undergrowth for mushrooms),
Ron became shamelessly cheery.
“Someone helped us.” he kept saying. “Someone sent that doe.
Someone’s on our side. One Horcrux down, mate!”
Bolstered by the destruction of the locket, they set to debating
the possible locations of the other Horcruxes, and e ven though they
had discussed the matter so often before, Harry felt optimistic, c er-
tain that more breakthroughs would succeed the first. Hermione’s
sulkiness could not mar his buoyant spirits; The s udden upswing in
their fortunes, they appearance of the mysterious doe, the recovery
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Xenophilius Lovegood
of Gryffindor’s s word, and above all, Ron’s return, made Harry so
happy that it was quite difficult to maintain a straight face.
Late in the afternoon he and Ron escaped Hermione’s baleful
presence again, and under the pretense of scouting the bare hedges
for nonexistent blackberries, they continued their ongoing exchange
of news. Harry had finally managed to tell Ron the whole story of
his and Hermione’s various wanderings, right up to the full story of
what had happened at Godric’s Hollow; Ron was now filling Harry
in on everything he had discovered about the wider Wizarding
world during his weeks away.
“ . . . and how did you find out about the Taboo?” he asked
Harry after explaining the many desperate attempts of Muggle-
borns to evade the Ministry.
“The what?”
“You and Hermione have stopped saying You-Know-Who’s
name!”
“Oh, yeah. Well, it’s just a bad habit we’ve slipped into,” said
Harry. “But I haven’t got a problem calling him V—”
“NO!” roared Ron, causing Harry to jump into the hedge and
Hermione (nose buried in a boot at the tent entrance) to scowl
over at them. “Sorry.” said Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the
brambles, “but the name’s been jinxed. Harry, that’s how they
track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it
causes some kind of magical disturbance—it’s how they found us
in Totenham Court Road!”
“Because we used his name?”
“Exactly! You’ve got to give them credit, it makes sense. It
was only people who were serious about standing up to him like
Dumbledore, who ever dared use it. Now they’ve put a Taboo on
it, anyone who says it is trackable—quick-and-easy way to find
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they Order members! They nearly got Kingsley—”
“You’re kidding?”
“Yeah, a bunch of Death Eaters cornered him, Bill said, but
he fought his way out. He’s on the run now, just like us.” Ron
scratched his chin thoughtfully with the end of his wand. “You
don’t reckon Kingsley could have sent that doe?”
“His Patronus is a lynx, we saw it at the wedding, remember?”
“Oh yeah . . . ”
They moved farther along the hedge, away from the tent and
Hermione.
“Harry . . . you don’t reckon it c ould’ve been Dumbledore?”
“Dumbledore what?”
Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice, “Dum-
bledore . . . the doe? I mean,” Ron was watching Harry out of the
corners of his eyes, “he had the real sword last, didn’t he?”
Harry did not laugh at Ron, because he understood too well
the longing behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had
managed to come back to them, that he was watching over them,
would have been inexpressibly comforting. He shook his head.
“Dumbledore’s dead,” he said. “I saw it happen, I saw the
body. He’s definitely gone. Anyway, his Patronus was a phoenix,
not a doe.”
“Patronuses can change, though, can’t they?” said Ron.
“Tonks’s changed, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but if Dumbledore was alive, why wouldn’t he show
himself? Why wouldn’t he just hand us the sword?”
“Search me,” said Ron. “Same reason he didn’t give it to you
while he was alive? Same reason he left you an old Snitch and
Hermione a book of kids’ stories?”
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Xenophilius Lovegood
“Which is what?” asked Harry, turning to look Ron full in the
face, desperate for the answer.
“I dunno,” said Ron. “Sometimes I’ve thought, when I’ve been
a bit hacked o↵, he was having a laugh or—or he just wanted to
make it more difficult. But I don’t think so, not anymore. He knew
what he was doing when he gave me the Deluminator, didn’t he?
He—well,” Ron’s ears turned bright red and he became engrossed
in a tuft of grass at his feet, which he prodded with his toe, “he
must’ve known I’d run out on you.”
“No,” Harry corrected him. “He must’ve know you’d always
want to come back.”
Ron looked grateful, but still awkward. Partly to change the
subject, Harry said, “Speaking of Dumbledore, have you heard
what Skeeter wrote about him?”
“Oh yeah,” said Ron at once. “people are talking about it quite
a lot. ’Course, if things were di↵erent, it’d be huge news. Dumble-
dore being pals with Grindelwald, but now it’s just something to
laugh about for people who didn’t like Dumbledore, and a bit of a
slap in the face for everyone who though he was such a good bloke.
I don’t know that it’s such a big deal, though. He was really young
when they—”
“Our age,” said Harry, just as he had retorted to Hermione,
and something in his face seemed to decide Ron against pursuing
the subject.
A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles.
Harry took aim at it with the wand Ron had given him the previous
night, which Hermione had since condescended to examine, and
had decided was made of blackthorn.
“Engorgio.”
The spider game a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web.
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Harry tried again. This time the spider grew slightly larger.
“Stop that,” said Ron sharply. “I’m sorry I said Dumbledore
was young, okay?”
Harry had forgotten Ron’s hatred of spiders.
“Sorry—Reducio.”
The spider did not shrink. Harry looked down at the black-
thorn wand. Every minor spell he had cast with it s o far that
day had seemed less powe rful than those he had pro duced with his
phoenix wand. The new one felt intrusively unfamiliar, like having
somebody else’s hand sown to the end of his arm.
“You just need to practice,” said Hermione, who had ap-
proached them noiselessly from behind and had stood watching
anxiously as Harry tried to enlarge and reduce the spider. “It’s all
a matter of confidence, Harry.”
He knew why she wanted to be right: She still felt guilty about
breaking his wand. He bit back the retort that sprang to his lips,
that she could take the blackthorn wand if she thought it made no
di↵erence, and he would have hers instead. Keen for them all to be
friends again, however, he agreed; but when Ron gave Hermione a
tentative smile, she stalked o↵ and vanished behind her book once
more.
All three of them returned to the tent when darkness fell, and
Harry took first watch. Sitting in the entrance, he tried to make
the blackthorn wand levitate small stones at his feet; but his magic
still seemed clumsier and less powerful than it had done before.
Hermione was lying on her bunk reading, while Ron, after many
nervous glances up at her, had taken a small wooden wireless out
of his rucksack and started to try and tune it.
“There’s this one program,” he told Harry in a low voice, “that
tells the news like it really is. All the others are on You-Know-
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Who’s side and are following the Ministry line, but this one . . . you
wait till you hear it, it’s great. Only they can’t do it every night,
they have to keep changing locations in case they’re raided, and
you need a password to tune in. . . . Trouble is, I missed the last
one. . . .”
He drummed lightly on top of the radio with his wand, mut-
tering random words under his breath. He threw Hermione many
covert glances, plainly fearing an angry outburst, but for all the
notice she took of him he might not have been there. For ten min-
utes or so Ron tapped and muttered. Hermione turned the pages
of her book, and Harry continued to practice with the blackthorn
wand.
Finally He rmione climbed down from her bunk. Ron ceased his
tapping at once.
“If it’s annoying you, I’ll stop!” he told Hermione nervously.
Hermione did not deign to respond, but approached Harry.
“We need to talk,” she s aid.
He looked at the book still clutched in her hand. It was The
Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
“What?” he said apprehensively. It flew through his mind that
there was a chapter on him in there; he was not sure he felt up to
hearing Rita’s version of his relationship with Dumbledore. Her-
mione’s answer, however, was completely unexpected.
“I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood.”
He stared at her.
“Sorry?”
“Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna’s father. I want to go and talk to
him!”
“Er—why?”
She took a deep breath, as though bracing herself, and said,
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“It’s that mark, the mark in Beedle the Bard. Look at this!”
She thrust The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore under
Harry’s unwilling eyes as he saw a photograph of the original letter
than Dumbledore had written Grindelwald, with Dumbledore’s fa-
miliar thin, slanting handwriting. He hated seeing absolute proof
that Dumbledore really had written those words, that they had
not been Rita’s invention.
“The signature,” said Hermione. “Look at the signature,
Harry!”
He obeyed. For a moment he had no idea what she was talking
about, but, looking more closely with the aid of his lit wand, he saw
that Dumbledore had replaced the A of Albus with a tiny version
of the same triangular mark inscribed upon The Tales of Beedle
the Bard.
“Er—what are you—?” said Ron tentatively, but Hermione
quelled him with a look and turned back to Harry.
“It keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?” she said. “I know Viktor
said it was Grindelwald’s mark, but it was definitely on that old
grave in Godric’s Hollow, and the dates on the headstone were long
before Grindelwald came along! And now this! Well, we can’t ask
Dumbledore or Grindelwald what it means—I don’t even know if
Grindelwald’s still alive—but we can ask Mr. Lovegood. He was
wearing the symbol at the wedding. I’m sure this is important,
Harry!”
Harry did not answer immediately. He looked into her intense,
eager face and then out into the surrounding darkness, thinking.
After a long pause he said, “Hermione, we don’t need another
Godric’s Hollow. We talked ourselves into going there, and—”
“But it keeps appearing, Harry! Dumbledore’s left me The
Tales of Beedle the Bard, how do you know we’re not supposed to
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Xenophilius Lovegood
find out about the sign?”
“Here we go again!” Harry felt slightly exasperated. “We keep
trying to convince ourselves Dumbledore left us secret signs and
clues—”
“The Deluminator turned out to be pretty useful,” piped up
Ron. “I think Hermione’s right, I think we ought to go and see
Lovegood.”
Harry threw him a dark look. He was quite sure that Ron’s
support of Hermione had little to do with a desire to know the
meaning of the triangular rune.
“It won’t be like Godric’s Hollow,” Ron added, “Lovegood’s on
your side, Harry, The Quibbler’s bee n for you all along, it keeps
telling everyone they’ve got to help you!”
“I’m sure this is important!” said Hermione earnestly.
“But don’t you think if it was, Dumbledore would have told me
about it before he died?”
“Maybe . . . maybe it’s something you need to find out for your-
self,” said Hermione with a faint air of clutching at straws.
“Yea,” said Ron sycophantically, “that makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” snapped Hermione, “but I still think we ought
to talk to Mr. Lovegood. A symbol that links Dumbledore, Grin-
delwald, and Godric’s Hollow? Harry, I’m sure we ought to know
about this!”
“I think we should vote on it,” said Ron. “Those in favor of
going to see Lovegood—”
His hand flew into the air before Hermione’s. Her lips quivered
suspiciously as she raised her own.
“Outvoted, Harry, sorry,” said Ron, clapping him on the back.
“Fine,” said Harry, half amused, half irritated. “Only, once
we’ve seen Lovegood, let’s try and look for some more Horcruxes,
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shall we? Where do the Lovegoods live, anyway? Do either of you
know?”
“Yeah, they’re not far from my place,” said Ron.. “I dunno
exactly where, but Mum and Dad always point toward the hills
whenever they mention them. Shouldn’t be hard to find.”
When Hermione had returned to her bunk, Harry lowered his
voice.
“You only agreed to try and get back in her good books.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” said Ron brightly, “and this is a bit
of both. Chee r up, it’s the Christmas holidays, Luna’ll be home!”
They had an excellent view of the village of Ottery St. Cachpole
from the breezy hillside to which they Disapparated next morning.
From their high vantage point the village looked like a collection
of toy houses in the great slanting shafts of sunlight stretching to
earth in the breaks between clouds. They stood for a minute or
two looking toward the Burrow their hands shadowing their eyes,
but all they could make out were the high hedges and tree of the
orchard, which a↵orded the crooked little house protection from
Muggle eyes.
“It’s weird, being this near, but not going to visit,” said Ron.
“Well, it’s not like you haven’t just seen them. You were there
for Christmas,” said Hermione coldly.
“I wasn’t at the Burrow!” said Ron with and incredulous laugh.
“Do you think I was going to go back there and tell them all I’d
walked out on you? Yeah, and Fred and George would’ve been
great about it. And Ginny, she’d have been really understanding.”
“But where have you been, then?” asked Hermione, surprised.
“Bill and Fleur’s new place. Shell Cottage. Bill’s always been
decent to me. He—he wasn’t im presse d when he heard what I’d
done, but he didn’t go on about it. He knew I was really sorry.
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Xenophilius Lovegood
None of the rest of the family knew I was there. Bill told Mum he
and Fleur weren’t going home for Christmas because they wanted
to spend it alone. You know, first holiday after they were married. I
don’t think Fleur minded. You know how much she hates Celestina
Warbeck.”
Ron turned his back on the Burrow.
“Let’s try up here,” he said, leading the way over the top of the
hill.
They walked for a few hours, Harry, at Hermione’s insistence,
hidden be neath the Invisibility Cloak. The cluster of low hills
appeared to be uninhabited apart from one small cottage, which
seemed deserted.
“Do you think it’s theirs, and they’ve gone away for Christ-
mas?” said Hermione, peering through the window at a neat little
kitchen with geraniums on the windowsill. Ron snorted.
“Listen, I’ve got a feeling you’d be able to tell who lived there
if you looked through the Lovegood’s window. Let’s try the next
lot of hills.
So they Disapparated a few miles farther north.
“Aha!” shouted Ron, as the wind whipped their hair and
clothes. Ron was pointing upward, toward the top of the hill on
which they had appeared, where a most strange-looking house rose
vertically against the sky, a great black cylinder with a ghostly
moon hanging behind it in the afternoon sky. “That’s got to be
Luna’s house, who else would live in a place like that? It looks like
a giant rook!”
“It’s nothing like a bird,” said Hermione, frowning at the tower.
“I was talking ab out a chess rook,” said Ron. “A castle to you.”
Ron’s legs were the longest and he reached the top of the hill
first. When Harry and Hermione caught up with him, panting and
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clutching stitches in their sides, they found him grinning broadly.
“It’s theirs,” said Ron. “Look.”
Three hand-painted signs had been tacked to a broken-down
gate. The first read,
THE QUIBBLER, EDITOR: X. LOVEGOOD
the second,
PICK YOUR OWN MISTLETOE
the third,
KEEP OFF THE DIRIGIBLE PLUMS
The gate creaked as they opened it. The zigzagging path lead-
ing to the front door was overgrown with a variety of odd plants,
including a bush cove red in the orange radishlike fruit Luna s ome -
times wore as earrings. Harry thought he recognized a Snargalu↵
and gave the wizened stump a wide berth. Two aged crab apple
trees, beat with the wind, stripped of leaves but still heavy with
berry-sized red fruits and bushy crowns of white-beaded mistletoe,
stood sentinel on either side of the front door. A little owl w ith a
slightly flattened, hawklike head pe ered down at them from one of
the branches.
“You’d better take o↵ the Invisibility Cloak, Harry,” said Her-
mione. “It’s you Mr. Lovegood wants to help, not us.”
He did as she suggested, handing her the Cloak to stow in the
beaded bag. She then rapp e d three times on the thick black door,
which was studded with iron nails and bore a knocker shaped like
an eagle.
Barely ten seconds passed, then the do or was flung open and
there stood Xenophilius Lovegood, barefoot and wearing what ap-
peared to be a stained nightshirt. His long white candyfloss hair
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Xenophilius Lovegood
was dirty and unkempt. Xenophilius had been positively dapper
at Bill and Fleur’s wedding by comparison.
“What? What is it? Who are you? What do you want?” he
cried in a high-pitched, querulous voice, looking first at Hermione,
then at Ron, and finally at Harry, upon which his mouth fell open
in a perfect comical O.
“Hello, Mr. Lovegood,” said Harry, holding out his hand. “I’m
Harry, Harry Potter.”
Xenophilius did not take Harry’s hand, although the eye that
was not pointing inward at his nose slid straight to the scar on
Harry’s forehead.
“Would it be okay if we came in?” as ked Harry. “There’s
something we’d like to ask you.”
“I . . . I’m not sure that’s advisable,” whispered Xenophilius.
He swallowed and cast a quick look around the garden. “Rather a
shock . . . My word . . . I . . . I’m afraid I don’t really think I ought
to—”
“It won’t take long,” said Harry, slightly disapp ointed by this
less than warming welcome.
“I—oh, all right then. Come in, quickly. Quickly! ”
They were barely over the threshold when Xenophilius slammed
the door shut behind then. They were s tanding in the most peculiar
kitchen Harry had ever seen. The room was perfectly circular, so
that it felt like being inside a giant p e pper pot. Everything was
curved to fit the walls—the stove, the sink, and the cupboards—
and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects, and birds in
bright primary colors. Harry though he recognized Luna’s style:
The e↵ect in such an enclosed space, was slightly overwhelming.
In the middle of the floor, a wrought-iron spiral staircase led to
the upper levels. There was a great deal of clattering and banging
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coming from overhead: Harry wondered what Luna could be doing.
“You’d better come up,” said Xenophilius, still looking ex-
tremely uncomfortable, and he led the way.
The room above seemed to be a combination of living room and
workplace, and as such, was even more cluttered than the kitchen.
Though much smaller and entirely round, the room somewhat re-
sembled the Room of Requirement on the unforgettable occasion
that it had transformed itself into a gigantic labyrinth comprised
of centuries of hidden objects. There were piles upon piles of b ooks
and papers on every surface. Delicately made models of creatures
Harry did not recognize, all flapping wings or snapping jaws, hung
from the ceiling.
Luna was not there; The thing that was making such a racket
was a wooden object covered in magically turning cogs and wheels.
It looked like the bizarre o↵spring of a workbench and a set of old
shelves, but after a moment Harry decided it was an old fashioned
printing press, due to the fact that it was churning out Quibblers.
“Excuse me,” said Xe nophilius, and he strode over to the ma-
chine, seized a grubby tablecloth from beneath an immense number
of books and papers, which all tumbled onto the floor, and threw
it over the press, somewhat mu✏ing the loud bangs and clatters.
He then faced Harry.
“Why have you come here?”
Before Harry could speak, however, Hermione lot out a small
cry of shock.
“Mr. Lovegood—what’s that?”
She was pointing at an enormous, gray spiral horn, not unlike
that of a unicorn, which had been mounted on the wall, protruding
several feet into the room.
“It is the horn of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” said Xenophi-
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Xenophilius Lovegood
lius.
“No it isn’t!” said He rmione.
“Hermione,” muttered Harry, embarrassed, “now’s not the
moment—”
“But Harry, it’s an Erumpent horn! It’s a Class B Tradeable
Material and it’s an extraordinarily dangerous thing to have in a
house!”
“How d’you know it’s an Erump e nt horn?” asked Ron, edging
away from the horn as fast as he could, given the e xtreme clutter
of the room.
“There’s a description in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them! Mr. Lovegood, you need to get rid of it straightaway, don’t
you know it can explode at the s lightest touch?”
“The Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” said Xenophilius very clearly,
a mullish look upon his face, “is a shy and highly magical creature,
and its horn—”
“Mr. Lovegood, I recognize the grooved markings around the
base, that’s an Erumpent horn and it’s incredibly dangerous—I
don’t know where you got it—”
“I bought it,” said Xenophilius dogmatically, “two weeks ago,
from a delightful young wizard who knew of my interest in the
exquisite Snorkack. A Christmas surprise for my Luna. Now,”
he said, turning to Harry, “why exactly have you come here, Mr.
Potter?”
“We need some help,” said Harry, before Hermione could start
again.
“Ah,” said Xenophilius. “Help. Hmm.”
His good eye moved again to Harry’s scar. He seems simulta-
neously terrified and mesmerized.
“Yes. The thing is . . . helping Harry Potter . . . rather danger-
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ous . . . ”
“Aren’t you the one who keeps telling everyone it’s their first
duty to help Harry?” said Ron. “In that magazine of yours?”
Xenophilius glanced behind him at the c oncealed printing press,
still banging and clattering beneath the tablecloth.
“Er—yes, I have expressed that view. Howe ver—”
“That’s for everyone else to do, not you personally?” said Ron.
Xenophilius did not answer. He kept swallowing, his eyes dart-
ing between the three of them. Harry had the impression that he
was undergoing some painful internal struggle.
“Where’s Luna?” asked Hermione, “Let’s see what she thinks.”
Xenophilius gulped. He seemed to be steeling himself. Finally
he said in a shaky voice difficult to hear over the noise of the
printing press, “Luna is down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater
Plimpies. She . . . she will like to see you. I’ll go and call her and
then—very well. I shall try to help you.”
He disappeared down the spiral staircase and they heard the
front door open and close. They looked at each other.
“Cowardly old wart,” said Ron. “Luna’s got ten times his guts.”
“He’s probably worried about what’ll happen to them if the
Death Eaters find out I was here,” said Harry.
“Well, I agree with Ron,” said Hermione. “Awful old hypocrite,
telling everyone else to help you and trying to worm out of it him-
self. And for heaven’s sake keep away from that horn.”
Harry crossed to the window of the far side of the room. He
could see a stream, a thin, glittering ribbon lying far below them at
the base of the hill. They were very high up; a bird fluttered past
the window as he stared in the direction of the Burrow, now invis-
ible beyond another line of hills. Ginny was over there somewhere.
They were closer to each other than they had been since Bill and
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Xenophilius Lovegood
Fleur’s wedding, but she could have no idea he was gazing toward
her now, thinking of her. He supposed he ought to be glad of it;
anyone he came into contact with was in danger. Xenophilius’s
attitude proved that.
He turned away from the windows and his gaze fell upon another
peculiar object standing upon the cluttered, curved sideboard: a
stone bust of a beautiful but austere-looking witch wearing a most
bizarre-looking headdress. Two object that resembled golden ear
trumpets curved out form the sides. A tiny pair of glittering blue
wings was stuck to a leather strap that ran over the top of her
head, while one of the orange radishes had been stuck to a sec ond
strap around her forehead.
“Look at this,” said Harry.
“Fetching,” said Ron. “Surprised he didn’t wear that to the
wedding.”
They heard the front door close, and a moment later Xenophi-
lius had climbed back up the spiral staircase into the room, his thin
legs now encased in Wellington boots, bearing a tray of ill-assorted
teacups and a steaming teapot.
“Ah, you have spotted my pet invention,” he said, shoving the
tray into Hermione’s arms and joining Harry at the statue’s side.
“Modeled, fittingly enough, upon the head of the beautiful Rowena
Ravenclaw. ’Wit beyond measure is a man’s greatest treasure!’ ”
He indicated the objects like ear trumpets.
“These are the Wrackspurt siphons—to remove all sources of
distraction from the thinker’s immediate area. Here,” he pointed
out the tiny wings, “a billywig propeller, to induce an elevated
frame of mind. Finally,” he pointed to the orange radish. “the
Dirgible Plum, so as th enhance the ability to accept the extraor-
dinary.”
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Xenophilius strode back to the tea tray, which Hermione had
managed to balance precariously on one of the cluttered side tables.
“May I o↵er you all an infusion of Gurdyroots?” said Xenophi-
lius. “We make it ourselves.” As he started to pour out the drink,
which was a deep purple as beetroot juice, he added, “Luna is down
beyond B ottom Bridge, she is most excited that you are here. She
ought not be too long, she has caught nearly enough Plumpies to
make soup for all of us. Do sit down and help yourselves to sugar.
“Now,” he removed a tottering pile of papers from an armchair
and sat down, his Wellingtoned legs crossed, “how may I help you,
Mr. Potter?”
“Well,” said Harry, glancing at Hermione, who nodded encour-
agingly. “it’s about that symbol you were wearing around your
neck at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Mr. Lovegood. We wondered
what it meant.”
Xenophilius raised his eyebrows.
“Are you referring to the sign of the Deathly Hallows?”
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The Tale of the Three
Brothers
H
arry turned to look at Ron and Hermione. Neither
of them seemed to have understood w hat Xenophilius
had said either.
“The Deathly Hallows?”
“That’s right,” said Xenophilius. “You haven’t heard of them?
I’m not surprised. Very, very few wizards believe. Witness that
knuckle-headed young man at your brother’s wedding,” he nodded
at Ron, “who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a well-known
Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the
Hallows—at least, not in that crude sense. One s imply uses the
symbol to reveal oneself to other believers, in the hope that they
might help one with the Quest.”
He stirred several lumps of sugar into his Gurdyroot infusion
and drank some.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry. “I still don’t really understand.”
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“To be polite, he took a sip from his cup too, and almost gagged:
The stu↵ was quite disgusting, as though someone had liquidized
bogey-flavored Every Flavor Beans.
“Well, you see, be lievers seek the Deathly Hallows,” said Xeno-
philius, smacking his lips in apparent appreciation of the Gurdyroot
infusion.
“But what are the Deathly Hallows?” asked Hermione.
Xenophilius set aside his empty teacup.
“I assume that you are all familiar with the “Tale of the Three
Brothers’?”
Harry said, “No,” but Ron and Hermione said, “Yes.” Xeno-
philius nodded gravely.
“Well, well, Mr. Potter, the whole thing starts with ‘The Tale
of the Three Brothers’ . . . I have a copy somewhere. . . .”
He glanced vaguely around the room, at the piles of parchment
and books, but Hermione said, “I’ve got a copy, Mr. Lovegood,
I’ve got it right here.”
And she pulled out The Tales of Beedle the Bard from the small,
beaded bag.
“The original?” inquired Xenophilius sharply, and when she
nodded, he said, “Well then, why don’t you read it out loud? Much
the best way to make sure we all understand.”
“Er . . . all right,” said Hermione nervously. She opened the
book, and Harry saw that the symbol they were investigating
headed the top of the page as she gave a little cough, and began
to read.
“‘There were once three brothers who were traveling along a
lonely, winding road at twilight—’”
“Midnight, our mum always told us,” said Ron, who had
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The Tale of the Three Brothers
stretched out, arms behind his head, to listen. Hermione shot
him a look of annoyance.
“Sorry, I just think it’s a bit spookier if it’s midnight!” said
Ron.
“Yeah, because we really need a bit more fear in our lives,” said
Harry before he could stop himself. Xenophilius did not seem to
be paying much attention, but was staring out of the window at
the sky. “Go on, Hermione.”
“‘In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through
and too dangerous to swim across. However, these brothers were
learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands
and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were
halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded
figure.
“‘And Death spoke to them—’”
“Sorry,” interjected Harry, “but Death sp oke to them?”
“It’s a fairy tale, Harry!”
“Right, sorry. Go on.”
“‘And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been
cheated out of three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in
the river. But Death was cunning. He pretended to congratulate
the three brothers upon their magic, and said that each had earned
a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.
“‘So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for
a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must
always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had
conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks
of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and
gave it to the older brother.
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“‘Then the second brother, who was a n arrogant man, decided
that he wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the
power to recall others from Death. So Death picked up a stone from
the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told him that
the stone would have the power to bring back the dead.
“‘And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he
would like. The youngest brother was the humblest and also the
wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for
something that would enable him to go forth from that place without
being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over
his own Cloak of Invisibility.’”
“Death’s got an Invisibility Cloak?” Harry interrupted again.
“So he can sneak up on people,” said Ron. “Sometimes he gets
bored of running at them, flapping his arms and shrieking . . . sorry
Hermione.”
“‘Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to con-
tinue on their way, and they did so, talking with wonder of the
adventure they had had, and admiring Death’s gifts.
“‘In due course the brothers separated, each for his own desti-
nation.
“‘The first brother traveled on for a w eek or more, and reaching
a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard with whom he had a
quarrel. Naturally, with the Elder Wand as his weapon, he could
not fail to win the duel that followed. Leaving his enemy dead upon
the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted
loudly of the powerful wand he had snatched from Death himself,
and of how it made him invincible.
“‘That very night, another wizard crept upon the older brother
as he lay wine-sodden, upon his bed. The thief took the wand and,
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The Tale of the Three Brothers
for good measure, slit the oldest brother’s throat.
“‘And so Death took the first brother for his own.
“‘Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home,
where he lived alone. Here he took out the stone that had the power
to recall the dead, and he turned it thrice in his hand. To his
amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped
to marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.
“‘Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil.
Though she had returned to the mortal world, she did not truly
belong there and su↵ered. Finally the second brother, driven mad
with hopeless longing, killed himself so as truly to join her.
“‘And so Death took the second brother for his own.
“‘But though Death searched for the third brother for many
years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he attained
a great age that the youngest brother finally took o↵ the Cloak of
Invisibility an d gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as
an old friend, a nd went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed
this life.’”
Hermione closed the book. It was a moment or two before
Xenophilius se eme d to realize that she had stopped reading, then
he withdrew his gaze from the window and said, “Well, there you
are.”
“Sorry?” said Hermione, sounding confused.
“Those are the Deathly Hallows,” said Xenophilius.
He picked up a quill from a packed table at his elbow, and pulled
a torn piece of parchment from between more books.
“The Elder Wand,” he said, and he drew a straight vertical line
upon the parchment. “The Resurrection Stone,” he said, and he
added a circle on top of the line. “The Cloak of Invisibility,” he
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Chapter 21
finished, enclosing both the line and circle in a triangle, to make
the symbol that so intrigued Hermione. “Together,” he said, “the
Deathly Hallows.”
“But there’s no mention of the words ‘Deathly Hallows‘ in the
story,” said Hermione.
“Well, of course not,” said Xenophilius, maddeningly smug.
“That is a children’s tale, told to amuse rather than to instruct.
Those of us who understand these matters, however, recognize
that the ancient story refers to three objects, or Hallows, which, if
united, will make the possessor master of Death.”
There was a short silence in which Xenophilius glanced out of
the window. Already the sun was low in the sky.
“Luna ought to have enough Plimpies soon,” he said quietly.
“When you say ‘master of Death’—” said Ron.
“Master,” said Xenophilius, waving an airy hand. “Conqueror.
Vanquisher. Whichever term you prefer.”
“But then . . . do you mean . . . ” said Hermione slowly, and
Harry could tell that she was trying to keep any trace of skep-
ticism out of her voice, “that you believe these objects—these
Hallows—actually exist?”
Xenophilius raised his eyebrows again.
“Well, of course.”
“But,” said Hermione, and Harry could hear her restraint start-
ing to crack, “Mr. Lovego od, how can you possibly believe—?”
“Luna has told me all about you, young lady,” s aid Xenophilius.
“You are, I gather, no unintelligent, but painfully limited. Narrow.
Close-minded.”
“Perhaps you ought to try on the hat, Hermione,” said Ron,
nodding toward the ludicrous headdress. His voice shock with the
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The Tale of the Three Brothers
strain of not laughing.
“Mr. Lovegood,” Hermione began again, “We all know that
there are such things as Invisibility Cloaks. They are rare, but
they exist. But—”
“Ah, but the Third Hallows is true Cloak of Invisibility, Miss
Granger! I mean to say, it is not a traveling cloak imbued with
a Disillusionment Charm, or carrying a Bedazzling Hex or else
woven from Demiguise hair, which will hide one initially but fade
with the years until it turns opaque. We are talking about a cloak
that really and truly renders the wearer completely invisible, and
endures eternally, giving constant and impenetrable concealment,
no matter what spells are cast at it. How many cloaks have you
ever seen like that, Miss Granger?”
Hermione opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again,
looking more confused than ever. She, Harry, and Ron glanced at
one another, and Harry knew that they were all thinking the same
thing. It so happened that a cloak exactly like the one Xenophi-
lius had just described was in the room with them at that very
moment.
“Exactly,” said Xenophilius, as if he had defeated them all in
reasoned argument. “None of you have ever seen such a thing. The
possessor would be immeasurably rich, would he not?”
He glanced out of the window again. The sky was now tinged
with the faintest trace of pink.
“All right,” said Hermione, disconcerted. “Say the cloak
existed . . . what about the stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you
call the Resurrection Stone?”
“What of it?”
“Well, how can that be real?”
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“Prove that it is not,” said Xenophilius.
Hermione looked outraged.
“But that’s—I’m sorry, but that’s completely ridiculous! How
can I possibly prove it does n’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold
of—of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you
could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it
is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!”
“Yes, you could,” said Xenophilius. “I am glad to see that you
are opening your mind a little.”
“So the Elder Wand,” said Harry quickly, before Hermione
could retort, “you think that exists too?”
“Oh, well, in that case there is endless evidence,” said Xeno-
philius. “The Elder Wand is the Hallow that is most easily traced,
because of the way in which it passes from hand to hand.”
“Which is what?” asked Harry.
“Which is that the possess or of the wand must capture it from
its previous owner, if he is to be truly a master of it,” said Xenophi-
lius. “Surely you have heard of the way the wand came to Egbert
the Egregious, after his slaughter of Emeric the Evil? Of how
Godelot died in his own cellar after his son, Hereward, took the
wand from him? Of the dreadful Loxias, who took the wand from
Barnabas Deverill, whom he had killed? The bloody trail of the
Elder Wand is splattered across the pages of Wizarding history.”
Harry glanced at Hermione. She was frowning at Xenophilius,
but she did not contradict him.
“So where do you think the Elder Wand is now?” asked Ron.
“Alas, who knows?” said Xenophilius, as he gazed out of the
window. “Who knows where the Elder Wand lies hidden? The
trail goes cold with Arcus and Livius. Who can say which of them
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The Tale of the Three Brothers
really defeated Loxias, and which took the wand? And who can
say who may have defeated them? History, alas, does not tell us.”
There was a pause. Finally, Hermione asked sti✏y, “Mr. Loveg-
ood, does the Peverell family have anything to do with the Deathly
Hallows?”
Xenophilius looked taken aback as something shifted in Harry’s
memory, but he could not locate it. Peverell . . . he had heard that
name before. . . .
“But have you bee n misleading me, young woman!” said Xeno-
philius, now sitting up much straighter in his chair and goggling
at Hermione. “I thought you were new to the Hallows Quest!
Many of us Questers believe that the Peverells have everything—
everything! —to do with the Hallows!”
“Who are the Peverells?” asked Ron.
“That was the name on the grave with the mark on it, in Go-
dric’s Hollow,” said Hermione, still watching Xenophilius. “Ignorus
Peverell.”
“Exactly!” said Xenophilius, his forefinger raised pedantically.
“The sign of the Deathly Hallows on Ignotus’s grave is conclusive
proof!”
“Of what?” asked Ron.
“Why, that the three brothers in the story were actually the
three Peverell brothers, Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus! That they
were the original owners of the Hallows!”
With another glance at the window he got to his feet, picked
up the tray, and headed for the spiral staircase.
“You will stay for dinner?” he called, as he vanished down-
stairs again. “Everybody always requests our recipe for Freshwater
Plimpy soup.”
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“Probably to show the Poisoning Department at St. Mungo’s,”
said Ron under his breath.
Harry waited until they could hear Xenophilius moving about
in the kitchen downstairs before speaking.
“What do you think?” he asked Hermione.
“Oh, Harry,” she said wearily, “it’s a pile of utter rubbish. This
can’t be the what the sign really means. This must be his weird
take on it. What a waste of time.”
“I s’pose this is the man who brought us Crumple-Horned
Snorkacks,” said Ron.
“You don’t believe it e ither?” Harry asked him.
“Nah, that story’s just one of those things you tell kids to teach
them lessons, isn’t it? ‘Don’t go looking for trouble, don’t pick up
fights, don’t go messing around with stu↵ that’s best left alone!
Just keep your head down, mind your own business, and you’ll be
okay.’ Come to think of it,” Ron added, “maybe that story’s why
elder wands are supposed to be unlucky.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One of those superstitions, isn’t it? ‘May-born witches will
marry Muggles.’ ‘Jinx by twilight, undone by midnight.’ ‘Wand of
elder, never prosper.’ You must’ve heard them. My mum’s full of
them.”
“Harry and I were raised by Muggles,” Hermione reminded him.
“We were taught di↵erent superstitions.” She sighed deeply as a
rather pungent smell drifted up from the kitchen. The one good
thing about her exasperation with Xenophilius was that it seemed
to make her forget that she was annoyed with Ron. “I think you’re
right,” she told him. “It’s just a morality tale, it’s obvious which
gift is best, which one you’d choose—”
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The three of them spoke at the same time; Hermione said, “the
Cloak,” Ron said, “the wand,” and Harry said, “the stone.”
They looked at each other, half surprised, half amused.
“You’re supposed to say the Cloak,” Ron told Hermione, “but
you wouldn’t need to be invisible if you had the wand. An unbeat-
able wand, Hermione, come on!”
“We’ve already got an Invisibility Cloak,” said Harry.
“And it’s helped us rather a lot, in case you hadn’t noticed!”
said Hermione. “Whereas the wand would be bound to attract
trouble—”
“Only if you shouted about it,” argued Ron. “Only if you were
prat enough to go dancing around, waving it ove r your head, and
singing, ‘I’ve got an unbeatable wand, come and have a go if you
think you’re good enough.’ As you as you kept your trap shut—”
“Yes, but could you keep your trap shut?” said Hermione, look-
ing skeptical. “You know, the only true thing he said to us was that
there have been stories about extra-powerful wands for hundreds
of years.”
“There have?” asked Harry.
Hermione looked exasperated: The express ion was so endear-
ingly familiar that Harry and Ron grinned at each other.
“The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, they crop up under dif-
ferent names through the centuries, usually in the possession of
some Dark wizard who’s boasting about them. Professor Binns
mentioned some of them, but—oh, it’s all nonsense. Wands are
only as powerful as the wizards who use them. Some wizards just
like to boast that theirs are bigger and better than other people’s.”
“But how do you know,” said Harry, “that those wands—the
Deathstick and the Wand of Destiny—aren’t the same wand, sur-
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facing over the centuries under di↵erent names?”
“What, and they’re all really the Elder Wand, made by Death?”
said Ron.
Harry laughed: The strange idea that had occurred to him was,
after all, ridiculous. His wand, he reminded himself, had been of
holly, not elder, and it had been made by Ollivander, whatever it
had done that night Voldemort had pursued him across the skies.
And if it had been unbeatable, how could it have been broken?
“So why would you take the stone?” Ron asked him.
“Well, if you could bring people back, we could have
Sirius . . . Mad-Eye . . . Dumbledore . . . my parents. . . .”
“But according to Beedle the Bard, they wouldn’t want to come
back, would they?” said Harry, thinking about the tale they had
just heard. “I don’t suppose there have been loads of other stories
about a stone that can raise the dead, have there?” he asked Her-
mione.
“No,” she replied sadly. “I don’t think anyone except Mr. Love-
good could kid them se lves that’s possible. Beedle probably took
the idea from the Sorcerer’s Stone; you know, instead of a stone to
make you immortal, a stone to reverse death.”
The smell from the kitchen was getting stronger: It was some-
thing like burning underpants. Harry wondered whether it would
be possible to eat enough of whatever Xenophilius was cooking to
spare his feelings.
“What about the Cloak, though?” said Ron slowly. “Don’t you
realize he’s right? I’ve got so used to Harry’s Cloak and how good
it is , I never stopped to think. I’ve never heard of one like Harry’s.
It’s infallible. We’ve never been spotted under it—”
“Of course not—we’re invisible when we’re under it, Ron!”
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“But all the stu↵ he said about the other cloaks, and they’re not
exactly ten a Knut, you know, is true! It’s never occurred to me
before, but I’ve heard stu↵ about charms wearing o↵ cloaks when
they get old, or them being ripped apart by sp e lls so they’ve got
holes in them. Harry’s was owned by his dad, so it’s not exactly
new, is it, but it’s just . . . perfect!”
“Yes, all right, but Ron, the stone ...”
As they argued in whispered, Harry moved around the room,
only half listening. Reaching the spiral stair, he raised his eyes
absently to the next level and was distracted at once. His own face
was looking back at him from the ceiling of the room above.
After a moment’s bewilderment, he realized that it was not a
mirror, but a painting. Curious, he began to climb the stairs.
“Harry, what are you doing? I don’t think you should look
around when he’s not here!”
But Harry had already reached the next level.
Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully
painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They
were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there
was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought
they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove
around the pictures, linking them together, but after examin-
ing them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains
were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink:
friends . . . friends . . . friends . . .
Harry felt a great rush of a↵ection for Luna. He looked around
the room. There was a large photograph beside the bed, of a young
Luna and a woman who looked very like her. They were hugging.
Luna looked rather better-groomed in this picture than Harry had
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ever seen her in life. The picture was dusty. This struck Harry as
slightly odd. He stared around.
Something was wrong. The pale blue carpet was also thick with
dust. There were no clothes in the wardrobe, whose doors stood
ajar. The bed had a cold, unfriendly look, as though it had not
been slept in for weeks. A single cobweb stretched over the nearest
window, across a bloodred sky.
“What’s wrong?” Hermione asked as Harry descended the stair-
case, but before he could respond, Xenophilius reached the top of
the stairs from the kitchen, now holding a tray laden with bowls.
“Mr. Lovegood,” said Harry. “Where’s Luna?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where’s Luna?”
Xenophilius halted on the top step.
“I—I’ve already told you. She is down at Bortons Bridge, fish-
ing for Plimpies.”
“So why have you only laid that tray for four?”
Xenophilius tried to speak, but no sound came out. The only
noise was the continued chugging of the printing press, and a slight
rattle from the tray as Xenophilius’s hands shook.
“I don’t think Luna’s been here for weeks,” s aid Harry. “Her
clothes are gone, her bed hasn’t been slept in. Where is she? And
why do you keep looking out of the window?”
Xenophilius dropped the tray: The bowls bounced and
smashed. Harry, Ron, and Hermione drew their wands. Xeno-
philius frowned, his hand about to enter his pocket. At that mo-
ment the printing press gave a huge bang and numerous Quibblers
came streaming ac ross the floor from underneath the tablecloth,
the press fell silent at last.
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Hermione stooped down and picked up one of the magazines,
her wand still pointing at Mr. Lovegood.
“Harry, look at this.”
He strode to her as quickly as he could through all the clutter.
The front of The Quibbler carried his own picture, emblazoned
with the words Undesirable Number One and captioned with
the reward money.
“The Quibbler’s going for a new angle, then?” Harry asked
coldly, his mind working very fast. “Is that what you were doing
when you went into the garden, Mr. Lovegood? Sending an owl to
the Ministry?”
Xenophilius licked his lips.
“They took my Luna,” he whispered. “Because of what I’ve
been writing. They took my Luna and I don’t know where she is,
what they’ve done to her. But they might give her back to me if
I—if I—”
“Hand over Harry?” Hermione finished for him.
“No deal,” said Ron flatly. “Get out of the way, we’re leaving.”
Xenophilius looked ghastly, a century old, his laps drawn back
into a dreadful leer.
“They will be here at any moment. I must save Luna. I cannot
lose Luna. You must not leave.”
He spread his arms in front of the staircase, and Harry had a
sudden vision of his mother doing the s ame thing in front of his
crib.
“Don’t make us hurt you,” Harry said. “Get out of the way,
Mr. Lovegood.”
“HARRY!” Hermione screamed.
Figures on broomsticks were flying past the windows. As the
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three of them looked away from him, Xenophilius drew his wand.
Harry realized their mistake just in time: He launched himself side-
ways, shoving Ron and Hermione out of harm’s way as Xenophi-
lius’s Stunning Spell soared across the room and hit the Erumpent
horn.
There was a colossal explosion. The sound of it seemed to blow
the room apart: Fragments of wood and paper and rubble flew to
all directions, along with an impenetrable cloud of thick white dust.
Harry flew through the door, then crashed to the floor, unable to
see as debris rained upon him, his arms above his head. He heard
Hermione’s scream, Ron’s yell, and a series of sickening metallic
thuds, which told him that Xenophilius had been blasted o↵ his
feet and fallen backward down the spiral stairs.
Half buried in rubble, Harry tried to raise himself: He could
barely breathe or see for dust. Half of the ceiling had fallen in, and
the end of Luna’s bed was hanging through the hole. The bust
of Rowena Ravenclaw lay beside him with half its face missing,
fragments of torn parchment were floating through the air, and
most of the printing press lay on its side, blocking the top of the
staircase to the kitchen. Then another whit shape moved close
by, and Hermione, coated in dust like a second statue, presse d her
finger to her lips.
The door downstairs crashed open.
“Didn’t I tell you there was no need to hurry, Travers?” said
a rough voice. “Didn’t I tell you this nutter was just raving as
usual?”
There was a bang and a scream of pain from Xenophilius.
“No . . . no . . . upstairs . . . Potter!”
“I told you last week, Lovegood, we weren’t coming back
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for anything less than some solid information! Remember last
week? When you wanted to swap your daughter for that stupid
bleeding headdress? And the week before”—another bang, an-
other squeal—“when you thought we’d give her back if you of-
fered us proof there are Crumple”—bang —“Headed”—bang —
“Snorkacks?”
“No—no—I beg you!” sobbed Xenophilius. “It really is Potter!
Really!”
“And now it turns out you only called us here to try and blow
us up!” roared the Death Eater, and there are a volley of bangs
interspersed with squeals of agony from Xenophilius.
“This place looks like it’s about to fall in, Selwyn,” said a cool
second voice, echoing up the mangled staircase. “The stairs are
completely blocked. Could trying clearing it? Might bring the
place down.”
“You lying piece of filth,” shouted the wizard named Selwyn.
“you’ve never seen Potter in your life, have you? Thought you’d
lure us here to kill us, did you? And you think you’ll get your girl
back like this?”
“I swear . . . I swear . . . Potter’s upstairs!”
“Homenum revelio,” said the voice at the foot of the stairs.
Harry heard Hermione gasp, and he had the o dd sensation that
something was swooping low over him, immersing his body in its
shadow.
“It’s Potter, I tell you, it’s Potter!” sobbed Xenophilius.
“Please . . . please . . . give me Luna, just let me have Luna. . . .”
“You can have your little girl, Lovegood,” said Selwyn, “if you
get up those stairs and bring me down Harry Potter. But if this is
a plot, if it’s a trick, if you’ve got an ac complice waiting up there
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to ambush us, we’ll see if we can spare a bit of your daughter for
you to bury.”
Xenophilius gave a wail of fear and despair. There were scur-
ryings and scrapings: Xenophilius was trying to get though the
debris on the stairs.
“Come on,” Harry whispered, “we’ve got to get out of here.”
He stated to dig himself out under cover of all the noise Xenophi-
lius was making on the staircase. Ron was buried deep e st: Harry
and Hermione climbed, as quietly as they could, over all the wreck-
age to where he lay, trying to prise a heavy chest of drawers o↵ his
legs. While Xenophilius’s banging and scraping drew nearer and
nearer, Hermione managed to free Ron with the use of a Hover
Charm.
“All right,” breathed Hermione, as the broken printing press
blocking the top of the stairs began to tremble; Xenophilius was
feet away from them. She was still white w ith dust. “Do you trust
me, Harry?”
Harry nodded.
“Okay then,” Hermione whispe red, “give me the Invisibility
Cloak. Ron, you’re going to put it on.”
“Me? But Harry—”
“Please, Ron! Harry, hold on tight to my hand, Ron, grab my
shoulder.”
Harry held out his left hand. Ron vanished beneath the Cloak.
The printing press blocking the stairs was vibrating: Xenophilius
was trying to shift it using a Hover Charm. Harry did not know
what Hermione was waiting for.
“Hold tight,” she whispered. “Hold tight . . . any second . . . ”
Xenophilius’s paper-white face appeared over the top of the
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sideboard.
“Obliviate!” cried Hermione, pointing her wand first into his
face, and then at the floor beneath them. “Deprimo!”
She had blasted a hole in the sitting room floor. They fell like
boulders, Harry still holding onto her hand for dear life; there was
a scream from below, and he glimpsed two men trying to get out
of the way as vast quantities of rubble and broken furniture rained
all around them from the shattered ceiling. Hermione twisted in
midair and the thundering of the collapsing house rang in Harry’s
ears as she dragged him once more into darkness.
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The Deathly Hallows
H
arry fell, panting, onto grass and scrambled up at once.
They seemed to have landed in the corner of a field at
dusk; Hermione was already running in a circle around
them, waving her wand.
“Protego Totalum . . . Salvio Hexia . . . ”
“That treacherous old bleeder.” Ron panted, emerging from
beneath the Invisibility Cloak and throwing it to Harry. “Her-
mione you’re a genius, a total genius. I can’t believe we got out of
that.”
“Cave Inimicum . . . Didn’t I say it was an Erumpent horn,
didn’t I tell him? And now his house has been blown apart!”
“Serves him right,” said Ron, examining his torn jeans and the
cuts to his legs, “What’d you reckon they’ll do to him?”
“Oh I hope they don’t kill him!” groaned Hermione, “That’s
why I wanted the Death Eaters to get a glimpse of Harry before
we left, so they knew Xenophilius hadn’t bee n lying!”
“Why hide me though?” asked Ron.
“You’re supposed to be in bed with spattergroit, Ron! They’ve
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kidnapped Luna because her father supported Harry! What would
happen to your family if they knew you’re with him?”
“But what about your mum and dad?”
“They’re in Australia,” said Hermione, “They should be all
right. They don’t know anything.”
“You’re a genius,” Ron repeated, looking awed.
Yeah, you are, Hermione,” agreed Harry fervently. “I don’t
know what we’d do without you.”
She beamed, but became solemn at once.
“What about Luna?”
“Well, if they’re telling the truth and she’s still Alive—” began
Ron.
“Don’t say that, don’t say it!” squealed Hermione. “She must
be alive, she must!”
“Then she’ll be in Azkaban, I expect,” said Ron. “Whether she
survives the place, though . . . Loads don’t . . . ”
“She will,” said Harry. He could not bear to contemplate the
alternative. “She’s tough, Luna, much tougher than you’d think.
She’s probably teaching all the inmates about Wrackspurts and
Nargles.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Hermione. She passed a hand over
her eyes. “I’d feel so sorry for Xenophilius if—“
“—if he hadn’t just tried to sell us to the Death Eaters, yeah,”
said Ron.
They put up the tent and retreated inside it, where Ron made
them tea. After their narrow escape, the chilly, musty old place
felt like home: safe, familiar, and friendly.
“Oh, why did we go there?” groaned Hermione after a few min-
utes’ silence. “Harry, you were right, it was Godric’s Hollow all over
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again, a complete waste of time! The Deathly Hallows . . . such
rubbish . . . although actually,” a sudden thought seemed to have
struck her, “he might have made it all up, mightn’t he? He prob-
ably doesn’t believe in the Deathly Hallows at all, he just wanted
to keep us talking until the Death Eaters arrived!”
“I don’t think so,” said Ron. “It’s a damn sight harder making
stu↵ up when you’re under stress than you’d think. I found that
out when the Snatchers caught me. It was much easier pretending
to be Stan, because I knew a bit about him, than inventing a whole
new person. Old Lovegood was under loads of pressure, trying to
make sure we stayed put. I reckon he told us the truth, or what
he thinks is the truth, just to keep us talking.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it m atters,” sighed Hermione. “Even if
he was being honest, I never heard such a lot of nonsense in all my
life.”
“Hang on, though,” said Ron. “The Chamber of Secrets was
supposed to be a myth, wasn’t it?”
“But the Deathly Hallows can’t exist, Ron!”
“You keep saying that, but one of them can,” said Ron.
“Harry’s Invisibility Cloak—“
“The Tale of the Three Brothers’ is a story,” said Hermione
firmly. “A story about how humans are frightened of death. If
surviving was as simple as hiding under the Invisibility Cloak, we’d
have everything we need already!”
“I don’t know. We could do with an unbeatable wand,” said
Harry, turning the blackthorn wand he so disliked over in his fin-
gers.
“There’s no such thing, Harry!”
“You said there have been loads of wands—the Deathstick and
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The Deathly Hallows
whatever they were called—“
“All right, even if you want to kid yourself the Elder Wand’s
real, what about the Resurrection Stone?” Her fingers sketched
quotation marks around the name, and her tone dripped sarcasm.
“No magic can raise the dead, and that’s that!”
“When my wand connected with You-Know-Who’s, it made my
mum and dad appear . . . and Cedric . . . ”
“But they weren’t really back from the dead, were they?” said
Hermione. “Those kind of—of pale imitations aren’t the same as
truly bringing someone back to life.”
“But she, the girl in the tale, didn’t really come back, did she?
The story says that once people are dead, they belong with the
dead. But the second brother still got to see her and talk to her,
didn’t he? He even lived with her for a while . . . ”
He saw concern and something less eas ily definable in Her-
mione’s expression. Then, as she glanced at Ron, Harry realized
that it was fear: He had scared her with his talk of living with
dead people.
“So that Peverell bloke who’s buried in Godric’s Hollow,” he
said hastily, trying to sound robustly sane, “you don’t know any-
thing about him, then?”
“No,” she replied, looking relieved at the change of subject. “I
looked him up after I saw the mark on his grave; if he’d been any-
one famous or done anything important, I’m sure he’d be in one of
our books. The only place I’ve managed to find the name ‘Peverell’
is Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. I borrowed it from
Kreacher,” she explained as Ron raised his eyebrows. “It lists the
pure-blood families that are now extinct in the male line. Appar-
ently the Peverells were one of the earliest families to vanish.”
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“Extinct in the male line?” repeated Ron.
“It means the name died out,” said Hermione, “centuries ago,
in the case of the Peverells. They could still have descendants,
though, they’d just be called something di↵erent.”
And then it came to Harry in one s hining piece, the memory
that had stirred at the sound of the name “Pevere ll”: a filthy old
man brandishing an ugly ring in the face of a Ministry official, and
he cried aloud, “Marvolo Gaunt!”
“Sorry,” said Ron and Hermione together.
“Marvolo Gaunt! You-Know-Who’s grandfather! In the Pen-
sieve! With Dumbledore! Marvolo Gaunt said he was descended
from the Peverells!”
Ron and Hermione looked bewildered.
“The ring, the ring that became the Horcrux, Marvolo Gaunt
said it had the Peverell coat of arms on it! I saw him waving it
in the bloke from the Ministry’s face, he nearly shoved it up his
nose!”
“The Peverell coat of arms?” said Hermione sharply. “Could
you see what it looked like?”
“Not really,” said Harry, trying to remember. “There was noth-
ing fancy on there, as far as I could see; maybe a few scratches. I
only ever saw it really close up after it had been cracked open.”
Harry saw Hermione’s comprehension in the sudden widening
of her eyes. Ron was looking from one to the other, astonished.
“Blimey . . . You reckon it was this sign again? The sign of the
Hallows?
“Why not said Harry excitedly, “Marvolo Gaunt was an igno-
rant old git who lived like a pig, all he cared about was his ancestry.
If that ring had been passed down through the centuries, he might
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not have known what it really was. There were no books in that
house, and trust me, he wasn’t the type to read fairy tales to his
kids. He’d have loved to think the scratches on the stone were
a coat of arms, because as far as he was concerned, having pure
blood made you practically royal.”
“Yes . . . and that’s all very interesting,” said Hermione cau-
tiously, “but Harry, if you’re thinking what I think you’re think—“
“Well, why not? Why not? said Harry, abandoning caution.
“It was a stone, wasn’t it?” He looked at Ron for support. “What
if it was the Resurrection Stone?”
Ron’s mouth fell open.
“Blimey—but would it still work if Dumbledore broke—?”
“Work? Work? Ron, it never worked! There’s no such thing as
a Resurrection Stone! ”
Hermione leapt to her feet, looking exasperated and angry.
Harry you’re trying to fit everything into the Hallows story—“
“Fit everything in? ” he repeated. “Hermione, it fits of its own
accord! I know the sign of the Deathly Hallows was on that stone!
Gaunt said he was descended from the Peverells!”
“A minute ago you told us you never saw the mark on the stone
properly!”
“Where’d you reckon the ring is now?” Ron asked Harry.
“What did Dumbledore do with it after he broke it open?”
“But Harry’s imagination was racing ahead, far beyond Ron
and Hermione’s . . .
Three objects, or Hallows, which, if united, will make the posses-
sor master of Death . . . Master . . . Conqueror . . . Vanquisher . . .
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. . . .
And he saw himself, possessor of the Hallows, facing Voldemort,
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whose Horcruxes were no match . . . Neither can live while t he other
survives . . . Was this the answer? Hallows versus Horcruxes? Was
there a way after all, to ensure that he was the one who triumphed?
If he were the master of the Deathly Hallows, would he be safe?
“Harry?”
But he scarcely heard Hermione: He had pulled out his Invisi-
bility Cloak and was running it through his fingers, the cloth supple
as water, light as air. He had never seen anything to equal it in his
nearly seven years in the Wizarding world. The Cloak was exactly
what Xenophilius had described: A cloak that really and truly ren-
ders the wearer completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving
constant and impenetrable con cealment, no matter what spells are
cast at it . . .
And then, with a gasp, he remembered—
“Dumbledore had my Cloak the night my parents died!”
His voice shook and he could feel the color in his face, but he
did not care.
“My mum told Sirius that Dumbledore borrowed the C loak!
This is why! He wanted to examine it, because he thought it was
the third Hallow! Ignotus Peverell is buried in Godric’s Hollow . . . ”
Harry was walking blindly around the tent, feeling as though great
new vistas of truth were opening all around him. “He’s my ances-
tor. I’m descended from the third brother! It all makes sense!”
“He felt armed in certainty, in his belief in the Hallows, as if
the mere idea of possessing them was giving him protection, and
he felt joyous as he turned back to the other two.
“Harry,” said Hermione again, but he was busy undoing the
pouch around his neck, his fingers shaking hard.
“Read it,” he told her, pushing his mother’s letter into her hand.
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“Read it! Dumbledore had the Cloak, Hermione! Why else would
he want it? He didn’t need a Cloak, he could perform a Disillusion-
ment Charm so powerful that he made himself completely invisible
without one!”
Something fell to the floor and rolled, glittering, under a chair:
He had dislodged the Snitch when he pulled out the letter. He
stooped to pick it up, and then the newly tapped spring of fabulous
discoveries threw him another gift, and shock and wonder erupted
inside him so that he shouted out.
“IT’S IN HERE! He left me the ring—it’s in the Snitch!”
“You—you reckon?”
He c ould not understand why Ron looked taken aback. It was
so obvious, so clear to Harry. Everything fit, everything . . . His
Cloak was the third Hallow, and when he discovered how to open
the Snitch he would have the second, and then all he needed to do
was find the first Hallow, the Elder Wand, and then—
But it was as though a curtain fell on a lit stage: All his excite-
ment, all his hope and happiness were extinguished at a stroke, and
he stood alone in the darkness, and the glorious spell was broken.
“That’s what he’s after.”
The change in his voice made Ron and Hermione look even more
scared.
“You-Know-Who’s after the Elder Wand.”
He turned his back on their strained, incredulous faces. He knew
it was the truth. It all made sense, Voldemort was not seeking a
new wand; he was seeking an old wand, a very old wand indeed.
Harry walked to the entrance of the tent, forgetting about Ron and
Hermione as he looked out into the night, thinking . . .
Voldemort had been raised in a Muggle orphanage. Nobody
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could have told him The Tales of Beedle the Bard when he was a
child, any more than Harry had heard them. Hardly any wizards
believed in the Deathly Hallows. Was it likely that Voldemort
knew about them?
Harry gazed into the darkness. . . . If Voldemort had known
about the Deathly Hallows, surely he would have sought them,
done anything to possess them: three objects that made the posses-
sor master of Death? If he had known about the Deathly Hallows,
he might not have needed Horcruxes in the first place. Didn’t the
simple fact that he had taken a Hallow, and turned it into a Hor-
crux, demonstrate that he did not know this last great Wizarding
secret?
Which meant that Voldemort sought the Elder Wand without
realizing its full power, without understanding that it was one of
three. . . . for the wand was the Hallow that could not be hidden,
whose existence was be st known. . . . The bloody trail of the Elder
Wand is splattered across the pages of Wizarding history . . .
Harry watched the cloudy sky, curves of smoke-gray and silver
sliding over the face of the white moon. He felt lightheaded with
amazement at his discoveries.
He turned back into the tent. It was a shock to see Ron and Her-
mione standing exactly where he had left them, Hermione still hold-
ing Lily’s letter, Ron at her side looking slightly anxious. Didn’t
they realize how far they had traveled in the last few minutes?
“This is it?” Harry said, trying to bring them inside the glow
of his own astonished certainty, “This explains everything. The
Deathly Hallows are real and I’ve got one—maybe two—“
He held up the Snitch.
“—and You-Know-Who’s chasing the third, but he doesn’t
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The Deathly Hallows
realize . . . he just thinks it’s a powerful wand—“
“Harry,” said Hermione, moving across to him and handing him
back Lily’s letter, “I’m sorry, but I think you’ve got this wrong, all
wrong.”
“But don’t you see? It all fits—“
“Not, it doesn’t,” she said. “It doesn’t. Harry, you’re just
getting carried away. Please,” she said as she started to speak,
“please just answer me this: If the Deathly Hallows really existed,
and Dumbledore knew about them, knew that the person who pos-
sessed all of them would be master of Death—Harry, why wouldn’t
he have told you? Why?”
He had his answer ready.
“But you said it, Hermione! You’ve got to find out about them
for yourself! It’s a Quest!”
“But I only said that to try and persuade you to come to the
Lovegoods’ !” cried Hermione in exasperation. “I didn’t really
believe it!”
Harry took no notice.
“Dumbledore usually let me find out stu↵ for myself. He let me
try my strength, take risks. This feels like the kind of thing he’d
do.”
“Harry, this isn’t a game, this isn’t practice! This is the real
thing, and Dumbledore left you very clear instructions: Find and
destroy the Horcruxes! That symbol doesn’t mean anything, forget
the Deathly Hallows, we can’t a↵ord to get s idetracked—“
Harry was barely listening to her. He was turning the Snitch
over and over in his hands, half expecting it to break open, to
reveal the Resurrection Stone, to prove to Hermione that he was
right, that the Deathly Hallows were real.
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She appealed to Ron.
“You don’t believe in this, do you?”
Harry looked up, Ron hesitated.
“I dunno . . . I mean . . . bits of it sort of fit together,” said Ron
awkwardly, “But when you look at the whole thing . . . ” He took
a deep breath. “I think we’re supposed to get rid of Horcruxes,
Harry. That’s what Dumbledore told us to do. Maybe . . . maybe
we should forget about this Hallows business.”
“Thank you, Ron,” said Hermione. “I’ll take first watch.”
And she strode past Harry and sat down in the tent entrance
bringing the action to a fierce full stop.
But Harry hardly slept that night. The idea of the Deathly
Hallows had taken possession of him, and he could not rest while
agitating thoughts whirled through his mind: the wand, the stone,
and the Cloak, if he could just possess them all. . . .
I open at the close. . . . But what was the close ? Why couldn’t
he have the stone now? If only he had the stone, he could ask Dum-
bledore these questions in person . . . and Harry murmured words
to the Snitch in the darkness, trying everything, even Parseltongue,
but the golden ball would not open. . . .
And the wand, the Elder Wand, where was that hidden? Where
was Voldemort searching now? Harry wished his scar would burn
and show him Voldemort’s thoughts, because for the first time
ever, he and Voldemort were united in wanting the very same
thing . . . Hermione would not like that idea, of course. . . . But
then, she did not believe. . . . Xenophilius had been right, in a
way . . . Limited, Narrow, Close-minded. The truth was that she
was scared of the idea of the Deathly Hallows, especially of the
Resurrection Stone . . . and Harry pressed his mouth again to the
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The Deathly Hallows
Snitch, kissing it, nearly swallowing it, but the cold medal did not
yield. . . .
It was nearly dawn when he remembered Luna, alone in a cell in
Azkaban, surrounded by dementors, and he suddenly felt ashamed
of himself. He had forgotten all about her in his feverish contem-
plation of the Hallows. If only they could rescue her, but dementors
in those numbers would be virtually unassailable. Now he came
to think about it, he had not tried casting a Patronus with the
blackthorn wand. . . . He must try that in the morning . . .
If only there was a way of getting a better wand . . .
And desire for the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, unbeatable,
invincible, swallowed him once more. . . .
They packed up the tent next morning and moved on through
a dreary shower of rain. The downpour pursued them to the coast,
where they pitched the tent that night, and persisted through the
whole week, through sodden landscapes that Harry found bleak
and depressing. He could think only of the Deathly Hallows. It
was as though a flame had been lit inside him that nothing, not
Hermione’s flat disbelief nor Ron’s persistent doubts, could extin-
guish. And yet the fiercer the longing for the Hallows burned inside
him, the less joyful it made him. He blamed Ron and Hermione:
Their determined indi↵erence was as bad as the relentless rain for
dampening his spirits, but neither could erode his certainty, which
remained absolute. Harry’s belief in and longing for the Hallows
consumed him so much that he felt isolated from the other two and
their obsession with the Horcruxes.
“Obsession?” said Hermione in a low fierce voice, when Harry
was careless enough to use the word one evening, after Hermione
had told him o↵ for his lack of interest in locating more Horcruxes.
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“We’re not the one with an obsession, Harry! We’re the ones trying
to do what Dumbledore wanted us to do!”
But he was impervious to the veiled criticism. Dumbledore
had left the sign of the Hallows for Hermione to decipher, and
he had also, Harry remained convinced of it, left the Resurrection
Stone hidden in the golden Snitch. Neither can live while the other
survives . . . master of Death . . . Why didn’t Ron and Hermione
understand?
“‘The last enemy shall be destroyed is death,’” Harry quoted
calmly.
“I thought it was You-Know-Who we were supposed to be fight-
ing?” Hermione retorted, and Harry gave up on her.
Even the mystery of the s ilver doe, which the other two insisted
on discussing, seemed less important to Harry now, a vaguely in-
teresting sideshow. The only other thing that mattered to him
was that his scar had begun to prickle again, although he did all
he could to hide this fact from the other two. He sought solitude
whenever it happened, but was disappointed by what he saw. The
visions he and Voldemort were sharing had changed in quality;
they had become blurred, shifting as though they were moving in
and out of focus. Harry was just able to make out the indistinct
features of an object that looked like a skull, and something like a
mountain that was more shadow than substance. Used to images
sharp as reality, Harry was disconcerted by the change. He was
worried that the connection between himself and Voldemort had
been damaged, a connection that he both feared and, whatever he
had told Hermione, prized. Somehow Harry connected these un-
satisfying, vague images with the destruction of his wand, as if it
was the blackthorn wand’s fault that he could no longer see into
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The Deathly Hallows
Voldemort’s mind as well as before.
As the weeks crept on, Harry could not help but notice, even
through his new se lf-absorption, that Ron seemed to be taking
charge. Perhaps because he was determined to make up for having
walked out on them, perhaps because Harry’s descent into listless-
ness galvanized his dormant leadership qualities, Ron was the one
now encouraging and exhorting the other two into action.
“Three Horcruxes left,” he kept saying. “We need a plan of
action, come on! Where haven’t we looked? Let’s go through it
again. The orphanage . . . ”
Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, the Riddle House, Borgin and Burkes,
Albania, every place that they knew Tom Riddle had ever lived or
worked, visite d or murdered, Ron and Hermione raked over them
again, Harry joining in only to stop Hermione pestering him. He
would have be en happy to sit alone in silence, trying to read Volde-
mort’s thoughts, to find out more about the Elder Wand, but Ron
insisted on journeying to ever more unlikely places simply, Harry
was aware, to keep them moving.
“You never know,” was Ron’s constant refrain. “Upper Flagley
is a Wizarding village, he might’ve wanted to live there. Let’s go
and have a poke around.”
These frequent forays into Wizarding territory brought them
within occasional sight of Snatchers.
“Some of them are supposed to be as bad as Death Eaters,”
said Ron. “The lot that got me were a bit pathetic, but Bill re cons
some of them are really dangerous. They said on Potterwatch —“
“On what?” said Harry.
“Potterwatch, didn’t I tell you that’s what it was called? The
program I keep trying to get on the radio, the only one that tells
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the truth about what’s going on! Nearly all of the programs are
following You-Know-Who’s line, all except Potterwatch, I really
want you to hear it, but it’s tricky tuning in . . . ”
Ron spent evening after evening using his wand to beat out
various rhythms on top of the wireless while the dials whirled.
Occasionally they would catch snatches of advice on how to treat
dragonpox, and once a few bars of “A Cauldron Full of Hot, Strong
Love.” While he tape d, Ron continued to try to hit on the correct
password, muttering strings of random words under his breath.
“They’re normally something to do with the Order,” he told
them. “Bill had a real knack for guessing them. I’m bound to get
one in the end . . . ”
“But not until March did luck favor Ron at last. Harry was
sitting in the tent entrance, on guard duty, staring idly at a clump
of grape hyacinths that had forced their way through the chilly
ground, when Ron shouted excitedly from inside the tent.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Password was ‘Albus’ ! Get in here,
Harry.”
Roused for the first time in days from his contemplation of the
Deathly Hallows, Harry hurried back inside the tent to find Ron
and Hermione kneeling on the floor beside the little radio. Her-
mione, who had been polishing the sword of Gryffindor just for
something to do, was sitting open-mouthed, staring at the tiny
speaker, from which a most familiar voice was issuing.
“ . . . apologize for our temporary absence from the airwaves,
which was due to a number of house calls in our area by those
charming Death Eaters.”
“But that’s Lee Jordan!” s aid He rmione.
“I know!” beamed Ron. “Cool, eh?”
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The Deathly Hallows
“ . . . now found ourselves another secure location,” Lee was say-
ing, and I’m pleased to tell you that two of our regular contributors
have joined me here this evening. Evening, boys!”
“Hi.”
“Evening, River.”
“‘River’” that’s Lee,” Ron explained. “They’ve all got code
names, but you can usually tell—“
“Shh!” said Hermione.
“But before we hear from Royal and Romulus,” Lee went on,
“let’s take a moment to report those deaths that the Wizarding
Wireless Network News and Daily Prophet don’t think important
enough to mention. It is with great re gret that we inform our
listeners of the murders of Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell.”
Harry felt a s ick, swooping in his belly. He, Ron, and Hermione
gazed at one another in horror.
“A goblin by the name of Gornuk was also killed. It is believed
that Muggle-born Dean Thomas and a second goblin, both believed
to have been traveling with Tonks, Cresswell, and Gornuk, may
have escaped. If Dean is listening, or if anyone has any knowledge
of his whereabouts, his parents and sisters are desperate for news.
“Meanwhile, in Gaddley, a Muggle family of five has been found
dead in their home. Muggle authorities are attributing their deaths
to a gas leak, but members of the Order of the Phoenix inform me
that it was the Killing Curse—more evidence, as if it were needed,
of the fact that Muggle slaughter is becoming little more than a
recreational sport under the new regime.
“Finally, we regret to inform our listeners that the remains of
Bathilda Bagshot have been disc overed in Godric’s Hollow. The
evidence is that she died several months ago. The Order of the
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Chapter 22
Phoenix informs us that her body showed unmistakable signs of
injuries inflicted by Dark Magic.
“Listeners, I’d like to invite you now to join us in a minute’s si-
lence in memory of Ted Tonks, Dirk Cresswell, Bathilda Bagshot,
Gornuk, and the unnamed, but no less regretted, Muggles mur-
dered by the Death Eaters.”
Silence fell, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione did not speak. Half
of Harry yearned to hear more, half of him was afraid of what
might come next. It was the first time he had felt fully connected
to the outside world for a long time.
“Thank you,” said Lee’s voice. “And now we can return to
regular contributor Royal, for an update on how the new Wizarding
order is a↵ecting the Muggle world.”
“Thanks, River,” said an unmistakable voice, deep, measured,
reassuring.
“Kingsley!” burst out Ron.
“We know!” said Hermione, hushing him.
“Muggles remain ignorant of the source of their su↵ering as they
continue to sustain heavy casualties,” said Kingsley. “However, we
continue to hear truly inspirational stories of wizards and witches
risking their own safety to protect Muggle friends and neighbors,
often without the Muggles’ knowledge. I’d like to appeal to all our
listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective
charm over any Muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could
be saved if such simple measures are taken.”
“And what would you say, Royal, to those listeners who reply
that in these dangerous times, it should be ‘Wizards first’?” asked
Lee.
“I’d say that it’s one short step from ‘Wizards first’ to ‘Pure-
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The Deathly Hallows
bloods first,’ and then to ‘Death Eaters,’” replied Kingsley. “We’re
all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the s ame , and
worth saving.”
“Excellently put, Royal, and you’ve got my vote for Minister of
Magic if we ever get out of this mess,” said Lee. “And now, over
to Romulus for our popular feature ‘Pals of Potter.’”
“Thanks, River,” said another very familiar voice. Ron started
to speak, but Hermione forestalled him in a whisper.
“We know it’s Lupin!”
“Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve ap-
peared on our program, that Harry Potter is still alive?”
“I do,” said Lupin firmly. “There is no doubt at all in my
mind that his death would be proclaimed as widely as possible by
the Death Eaters if it had happened, because it would strike a
deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime. ‘The
Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are
fighting: the triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to
keep resisting.”
A mixture of gratitude and shame welled up in Harry. Had
Lupin forgiven him, then, for the terrible things he had said when
they had last met?
“And what would you say to Harry if you knew he was listening,
Romulus?”
“I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit,” said Lupin, then
hesitated slightly, “And I ’d tell him to follow his instincts, which
are good and nearly always right.”
Harry looked at Hermione, whose eyes were full of tears.
“Nearly always right,” she repeated.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Ron in surprise. “Bill told me
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Lupin’s living with Tonks again! And apparently she’s getting
pretty big too . . . ”
“ . . . and our usual update on those friends of Harry Potter’s
who are su↵ering for their allegiance?” Lee was saying.
“Well, as regular listeners will know, several of the more out-
spoken supporters of Harry Potter have now been imprisoned, in-
cluding Xenophilius Love good, erstwhile editor of The Quibbler,”
said Lupin.
“At least he’s still alive!” muttered Ron.
“We have also heard within the last few hours that Rubeus
Hagrid”—all three of them gasped, and so nearly missed the rest
of the sentence—“well-known gamekeeper at Hogwarts School, has
narrowly escaped arrest within the grounds of Hogwarts, where he
is rumored to have hosted a ‘Support Harry Potter’ party in his
house. However, Hagrid was not taken into c ustody, and is, we
believe, on the run.”
“I suppose it helps, when escaping from Death Eaters, if you’ve
got a sixteen-foot-high half brother?” asked Lee.
“It would tend to give you an edge,” agreed Lupin gravely.
“May I just add that while we here at Potterwatch applaud Ha-
grid’s spirit, we would urge even the most devoted of Harry’s sup-
porters against following Hagrid’s lead. ‘Support Harry Potter’
parties are unwise in the present climate.”
“Indeed they are, Romulus,” said Lee, “so we suggest that you
continue to show your devotion to the man with the lightning scar
by listening to Potterwatch! And now let’s move to news concern-
ing the wizard who is proving just as elusive as Harry Potter. We
like to refer to him as the Chief Death Eater, and here to give his
views on some of the more insane rumors circulating about him,
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The Deathly Hallows
I’d like to introduce a new correspondent. Rodent?”
“‘Rodent’?” said yet another familiar voice, and Harry, Ron,
and Hermione cried out together:
“Fred!”
“No—is it George?”
“It’s Fred, I think,” said Ron, leaning in closer, as whichever
twin it was said,
“I’m not being ‘Rodent,’ no way, I told you I wanted to be
‘Rapier’!”
“Oh, all right then, ‘Rapier,’ could you please give us your take
on the various stories we’ve been hearing about the Chief Death
Eater?”
“Yes, River, I can,” said Fred. “As our listeners will know,
unless they’ve taken refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or
somewhere similar, You-Know-Who’s strategy of remaining in the
shadows is creating a nice little climate of panic. Mind you, if
all the alleged sightings of him are genuine, we must have a good
nineteen You-Know-Whos running around the place.”
“Which suits him, of course,” said Kingsley. “The air of mystery
is creating more terror than actually showing himself.”
“Agreed,” said Fred. “So, people, let’s try and calm down a
bit. Things are bad enough w ithout inventing stu↵ as well. For
instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill people with
a single glance from his eyes. That’s a basilisk, listeners. One
simple test: Check whether the thing that’s glaring at you has got
legs. If it has, it’s safe to look into its eyes, although if it really
is You-Know-Who, that’s still likely to be the last thing you ever
do.”
For the first time in weeks and weeks, Harry was laughing: He
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could feel the weight of tension leaving him.
“And the rumors that he keeps being sighted abroad?” asked
Lee.
“Well, who wouldn’t want a nice little holiday after all the hard
work he’s been putting in?” asked Fred. “Point is, people, don’t
get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking he’s out of the
country. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but the fact remains he can
move faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo when he
wants to, so don’t count on him be ing a long way away if you’re
planning to take any risks. I never thought I’d hear myself say it,
but safety first!”
“Thank you very much for those wise words, Rapier,” said Lee.
“Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch.We
don’t know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you
can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: The
next password will be ‘Mad-Eye.’ Keep each other safe: Keep
faith. Good night.”
The radio’s dial twirled and the lights behind the tuning panel
went out. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were still beaming. Hearing
familiar, friendly voices was an extraordinary tonic; Harry had
become so used to their isolation he had nearly forgotten that other
people were resisting Voldemort. It was like waking from a long
sleep.
“Good, eh?” said Ron happily.
“Brilliant,” said Harry.
“It’s so brave of them,” sighed Hermione admiringly. “If they
were found . . . ”
“Well, they keep on the move, don’t they?” said Ron. “Like
us.”
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The Deathly Hallows
“But did you hear what Fred said?” asked Harry excitedly;
now the broadcast was over, his thoughts turned around toward
his all consuming obsession. “He’s abroad! He’s still looking for
the Wand, I knew it!”
“Harry—“
“Come on, Hermione, why are you so determined not to admit
it? Vol—“
“HARRY, NO!”
“—demort’s after the Elder Wand!”
“The name’s Taboo!” Ron bellowed, leaping to his feet as a
loud crack sounded outside the tent. “I told you, Harry, I told
you, we can’t say it anymore—we’ve got to put the protection
back around us—quickly—it’s how they find—“
But Ron stopped talking, and Harry knew why. The Sneako-
scope on the table had lit up and begun to spin; they could hear
voices coming nearer and nearer: rough, excited voices. Ron pulled
the Deluminator out of his pocket and clicked it: Their lamps went
out.
“Come out of there with your hands up!” came a rasping voice
through the darkness. “We know you’re in there! You’ve got half
a dozen wands pointing at you and we don’t care who we curse!”
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Malfoy Manor
H
arry looked around at the other two, now m ere outlines
in the darkness. He saw Hermione point her wand, set
toward the outside, but into his face; there was a bang,
a burst of white light, and he buckled in agony, unable
to see. He could feel his face swelling rapidly under his hands as
heavy footfalls surrounded him.
“Get up, vermin.”
Unknown hands dragged Harry roughly o↵ the ground, before
he could stop them, someone had rummaged through his pockets
and removed the blackthorn wand. Harry clutched at his excruci-
atingly painful face, which felt unrecognizable b e neath his fingers,
tight, swollen, and pu↵y as though he had su↵ered some violent
allergic reaction. His eyes had been reduced to slits through which
he c ould barely see; his glasses fell o↵ as he was bundled out of the
tent: all he could make out were the blurred shapes of four or five
people wrestling Ron and Hermione outside too.
“Get—o↵—her!” Ron shouted. There was the unmistakable
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Malfoy Manor
sound of knuckles hitting flesh: Ron grunted in pain and Hermione
screamed, “No! Leave him alone, leave him alone!”
“Your boyfriend’s going to have worse than that done to him if
he’s on my list,” said the horribly familiar, rasping voice. “Deli-
cious girl . . . what a treat . . . I do enjoy the softness of the skin. . . .”
Harry’s stomach turned over. He knew who this was, Fenrir
Greyback, the werewolf who was permitted to wear Death Eater
robes in return for his hired savagery.
“Search the tent!” said another voice.
Harry was thrown face down onto the ground. A thud told
him that Ron had been cast down beside him. They could hear
footsteps and crashes; the men were pushing over chairs inside the
tent as they searched.
“Now, let’s see who we’ve got,” said Greyback’s gloating voice
from overhead, and Harry was rolled over onto his back. A beam
of wand light fell onto his face and Greyback laughed.
“I’ll be needing butterbeer to wash this one down. What hap-
pened to you, ugly?”
Harry did not answer immediately.
“I said,” repeated Greyback, and Harry received a blow to the
diaphragm that m ade him double over in pain. “what happened
to you?”
“Stung.” Harry muttered. “Been Stung.”
“Yeah, looks like it.” said a second voice.
“What’s your name?” snarled Greyback.
“Dudley.” said Harry.
“And your first name?”
“I—Vernon. Vernon Dudley.”
“Check the list, Scabior.” said Greyback, and Harry head him
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move sideways to look down at Ron, instead. “And what about
you, ginger?”
“Stan Shunpike.” said Ron.
“Like ’ell you are.” said the man called Scabior. “We know
Stan Shunpike, ’e’s put a bit of work our way.”
There was another thud.
“I’b Bardy,” said Ron, and Harry could tell that his mouth was
full of blood. “Bardy Weasley.”
“A Weasley?” rasped Greyback. “So you’re related to blood
traitors even if you’re not a Mudblood. And lastly, your pretty
little friend . . . ” The relish in his voice made Harry’s flesh crawl.
“Easy, Greyback.” said Scabior over the jeering of the others.
“Oh, I’m not going to bite just yet. We’ll see if she’s a bit
quicker at remembering her name than Barny. Who are you,
girly?”
“Penelope Clearwater.” said Hermione. She sounded terrified,
but convincing.
“What’s your blood status?”
“Half-Blood.” said Hermione.
“Easy enough to check,” said Scabior. “But the ’ole lot of ’em
look like they could still be ’ogwarts age—”
“We’b lebt,” said Ron.
“Left, ’ave you, ginger?” said Scabior. “And you decided to go
camping? And you thought, just for a laugh, you’d use the Dark
Lords name?”
“Nod a laugh,” said Ron. “Aggiden.”
“Accident?” There was more jeering laughter.
“You know who used to like using the Dark Lord’s name,
Weasley?” growled Greyback, “The Order of the Phoenix. Mean
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Malfoy Manor
anything to you?”
“Doh.”
“Well, they don’t show the Dark Lord proper respect, so the
name’s been Tabooed. A few Order members have been tracked
that way. We’ll see. Bind them up with the other two prisoners!”
Someone yanked Harry up by the hair, dragged him a short
way, pushed him down into a sitting position, then started binding
him back-to-back with other people. Harry was still half blind,
barely able to see anything through his pu↵ed-up eyes. When at
last the man tying then had walked away, Harry whispered to the
other prisoners.
“Anyone still got a wand?”
“No.” Said Ron and Hermione from either side of him.
“This is all my fault. I said the name. I’m sorry—”
“Harry?”
It was a new, but familiar voice. And it came from directly
behind Harry, from the person tied to Hermione’s left.
“Dean?”
“It is you! If they find out who they’ve got—! They’re Snatch-
ers, they’re only looking for truants to sell for gold—”
“Not a bad little haul for one night.” Greyback was saying, as
a pair of hobnailed boots marched close by Harry and they heard
more crashes from inside the tent. “A Mudblood, a runaway gob-
lin, and these truants. You checked their names on the list yet,
Scabior?” he roared.
“Yeah. There’s no Vernon Dudley un ’ere, Greyback.”
“Interesting,” said Greyback. “That’s interesting.”
He crouched down beside Harry, who saw, through the infinites-
imal gap left between his swollen eyelids, a face covered in matted
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Chapter 23
gray hair and whiskers, with pointed brown teeth and sores in the
corners of his mouth. Greyback smelled as he had done at the
top of the tower where Dumbledore had died: of dirt, sweat, and
blood.
“So you aren’t wanted, then, Vernon? Or are you on that list
under a di↵erent name? What house were you in at Hogwarts?”
“Slytherin,” said Harry automatically.
“Funny ’ow they all thinks we wants to ’ear that.” leered
Scabior out of the shadows. “But none of ’em can tell us where
the common room is.”
“It’s in the dungeons.” said Harry clearly. “You enter through
the wall. It’s full of skulls and stu↵ and its under the lake, so the
light’s all green,”
There was a short pause.
“Well, well, looks like we really ’ave caught a little Slytherin.”
said Scabior. “Good for you, Vernon, ’cause there ain’t a lot of
Mudblood Slytherins. Who’s your father?”
“He works at the Ministry,” Harry lied. He knew that his whole
story would collapse with the smallest investigation, but on the
other hand, he only had until his face regained its usual app e arance
before the game was up in any case. “Department of Magical
Accidents and Catastrophes.”
“You know what, Greyback,” said Scabior. “I think there is a
Dudley in there.”
Harry could barely breathe: Could luck, sheer luck, get them
safely out of this?
“Well, well.” said Greyback, and Harry could hear the tiniest
note of trepidation in that callous voice, and knew that Greyback
was wondering whether he had just indeed just attacked and bound
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Malfoy Manor
the son of a Ministry Official. Harry’s heart was pounding against
the ropes around his ribs; he would not have been surprised to
know that Greyback could see it. “If you’re telling the truth, ugly,
you’ve got nothing to fear from a trip to the Ministry. I expect
your father’ll reward us just for picking you up.”
“But,” said Harry, his mouth bone dry, “if you just le t us—”
“Hey!” came a shout from inside the tent. “Look at this. Grey-
back!”
A dark figure came bustling toward them, and Harry saw a glint
of silver to the light of their wands. They had found Gryffindor’s
sword.
“Ve–e–ery nice,” said Greyback appreciatively, taking it from
his companion. “Oh, very nice indeed. Looks goblin-made, that.
Where did you get something like this?”
“It’s my father’s,” Harry lied, hoping against hope that it was
too dark for Greyback to see the name etched just below the hilt.
“We borrowed it to cut firewood—”
“’Ang on a minute, Greyback! Look at this, in the Prophet!”
As Scabior said it, Harry’s scar, which was stretched tight across
his distended forehead, burned savagely. More clearly than he
could make out anything around him, he saw a towering building, a
grim fortress, jet-black and forbidding: Voldemort’s thoughts had
suddenly become Razor-Sharp again; he was gliding toward the
gigantic building with a sense of calmly euphoric purpose. . . .
So close . . . So close ...
With a huge e↵ort of will Harry closed his mind to Voldemort’s
thoughts, pulling himself back to where he sat, tied to Ron, Her-
mione, Dean, and Griphook in the darkness, listening to Greyback
and Scabior. “‘’ermione Granger,’” Scabior was saying, “‘the Mud-
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Chapter 23
blood who is known to be traveling with ’arry Potter.’”
Harry’s scar burned in the silence, but he made a supreme e↵ort
to keep himself present, not to slip into Voldemort’s mind. He
heard the creak of Greyback’s boots as he crouched down, in front
of Hermione.
“You know what, little girly? This picture looks a hell of a lot
like you.”
“It isn’t! It isn’t me !”
Hermione’s terrified squeak was as goo d as a confession.
“...known to be traveling with Harry Potter,” repeated Grey-
back quietly.
A stillness had settled over the scene. Harry’s scar was
Exquisitely painful, but he struggled with all his strength against
the pull of Voldemort’s thoughts. I t had never been so important
to remain in his own right mind.
“Well, this changed things, doesn’t it?” whispered Greyback.
Nobody spoke: Harry sensed the gang of Snatchers watching,
frozen, and felt Hermione’s arm trembling against his. Greyback
got up and took a couple of steps to where Harry sat, crouching
down again to stare closely at his miss hapen features.
“What’s that on your forehead, Vernon?” he asked softly, his
breath foul in Harry’s nostrils as he pressed a filthy finger to the
taught scar.
“Don’t touch it!” Harry yelled; he could not stop himself, he
thought he might be sick from the pain of it.
“I thought you wore glasses, Potter?” breathed Greyback.
“I found glasses!” yelped one of the Snatchers skulking in the
background. “There was glasses in the tent, Greyback, wait—”
And seconds later Harry’s glasses had b e en rammed back onto
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his face. The Snatchers were closing in now, peering at him.
“It is!” rasped Greyback. “We’ve caught Potter!”
They all took several steps backward, stunned by what they
had done. Harry, still fighting to remain present in his own split-
ting head, could think of nothing to say. Fragmented visions were
breaking across the surface of his mind—
—He was gliding around the high walls of the black fortress —
No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger—
—looking up, up to the topmost window, the highest tower —
He was Harry, and they were discussing his fate in low voices—
—Time to fly ...
“ . . . To the Ministry?”
“To hell with the Ministry.” growled Greyback. “They’ll take
the credit, and we won’t get a look in. I say we take him straight
to You-Know-Who.”
“Will you s ummon ’im? ’ere? ” said Scabior, sounding awed,
terrified.
“No,” snarled Greyback, “I haven’t got—they say he’s using
the Malfoy’s place as a base. We’ll take the boy there.”
Harry thought he knew why Greyback was not calling Volde-
mort. The werewolf might be allowed to wear Death Eater robes
when they wanted to use him, but only Voldemort’s inner circle
were branded with the Dark Mark: Greyback had not been granted
this highest honor.
Harry’s scar seared again—
—and he rose into the night, flying straight up to the windows
at the very top of the tower—
“ . . . completely sure it’s him? ’Cause if it ain’t, Greyback,
we’re dead.”
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“Who’s in charge here?” roared Greyback, covering his moment
of inadequacy. “I say that’s Potter, and him plus his wand, that’s
two hundred thousand Galleons right there! But if you’re too gut-
less to come along, any of you, it’s all for me, and with any luck,
I’ll get the girl thrown in!”
—The window was the merest slit in the black rock, not big
enough for a man to enter. . . . A skeletal figure was just visible
through it, curled beneath a blanket. . . . Dead, or sleeping . . . ?
“All right!” said Scabior. “All right, we’re in! And what about
the rest of ’em, Greyback, what’ll we do with ’em?”
“Might as well take the lot. We’ve got two Mudbloods, that’s
another ten Galleons. Give me the sword as well. If they’re rubies,
that’s another small fortune right there.”
The prisoners were dragged to their feet. Harry could hear
Hermione’s breathing, fast and terrified.
“Grab hold and make it tight. I’ll do Potter!” said Greyback,
seizing a fistful of Harry’s hair; Harry could feel his long yellow
nails scratching his scalp. “On three! One—two—three—“
They Disapparated, pulling the prisoners with them. Harry
struggled, trying to throw o↵ Greyback’s hand, but it was hopeless:
Ron and Hermione were squeezed tightly against him on either
side; he could not separate from the group, and as the breath was
squeezed out of him his scar seared more painfully still—
—as he forced himself through the slit of a window like a snake
and landed, lightly as vapor inside the cell-like room —
The prisoners lurched into one another as they landed in a coun-
try lane. Harry’s eyes, still pu↵y, took a moment to acclimatize,
then he saw a pair of wrought-iron gates at the foot of what looked
like a long drive. He experienced the tiniest trickle of relief. The
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worst had not happened yet: Voldemort was not here. He was,
Harry knew, for he was fighting to resist the vision, in some strange,
fortresslike place, at the top of a tower. How long it would take
Voldemort to get to this place, once he knew that Harry was here,
was another matter. . . .
One of the Snatchers strode to the gates and shook them .
“How do we get in? They’re locked, Greyback, I c an’t—
blimey!”
He whipped his hands away in fright. The iron was contorting,
twisting itself out of the abstract furls and coils into a frighten-
ing face, which spoke in a clanging, echoing voice. “State your
purpose!”
“We’ve got Potter!” Greyback roared triumphantly. “We’ve
captured Harry Potter!”
The gates swung open.
“Come on!” said Greyback to his men, and the prisoners were
shunted through the gates and up the drive, betwe en high hedges
that mu✏ed their footsteps. Harry saw a ghostly white shape above
him, and realized it was an albino peac ock. He stumbled and was
dragged onto his feet by Greyback; now he was staggering along
sideways, tied back-to-back to the four other prisoner. Closing his
pu↵y eyes, he allowed the pain in his scar to overcome him for a
moment, wanting to know what Voldemort was doing, whether he
knew yet that Harry was caught. . . .
The emaciated figure stirred beneath its thin blanket and rolled
over toward him, eyes opening in a skull of a face. . . . The frail
man sat up, great sunken eyes fixed upon him, upon Voldemort,
and then he smiled. Most of his teeth were gone. . . .
“So, you have come. I thought you would . . . one day. But your
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journey was pointless. I never had it.”
“You lie!”
As Voldemort’s anger throbbed inside him, Harry’s scar threat-
ened to burst with pain, and he wrenched his mind back to his own
body, fighting to remain present as the prisoners were pushed over
gravel.
Light spilled out over all of them.
“What is this?” said a woman’s cold voice.
“We’re here to see He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!” rasped
Greyback.
“Who are you?”
“You know me!” There was resentment in the werewolf’s voice.
“Fenrir Greyback! We’ve caught Harry Potter!”
Greyback seized Harry and dragged him around to face the
light, forcing the other prisoners to shu✏e around too.
“I know ’es swollen, ma’am, but it’s ’im!” piped up Scabior.
“If you look a bit closer, you’ll see ’is scar. And this ’ere, see
the girl? The Mudblood who’s been traveling around with ’im,
ma’am. There’s no doubt it’s ’im, and we’ve got ’is wand as well!
’Ere, ma’am—“
Through his pu↵y eyelids Harry saw Narcissa Malfoy scrutiniz-
ing his swollen face. Scabior thrust the blackthorn wand at her.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Bring them in,” she said.
Harry and the others were shoved and kicked up broad stone
steps into a hallway lined with portraits.
“Follow me,” said Narcissa, leading the way across the hall.
“My son, Draco, is home for his Easter holidays. If that is Harry
Potter, he will know.”
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The drawing room dazzled after the darkness outside; even with
his e yes almost closed Harry could make out the wide proportions
of the room. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, more
portraits against the dark purple walls. Two figures rose from
chairs in front of an ornate marble fireplace as the prisoners were
forced into the room by the Snatchers.
“What is this?”
The dreadfully familiar, drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy fell on
Harry’s ears. He was panicking now. He could see no way out,
and it was easier, as his fear mounted, to block out Voldemort’s
thoughts, though his scar was still burning.
“They say they’ve got Potter,” said Narcissa’s cold voice.
“Draco, come here.”
Harry did not dare look directly at Draco, but saw him
obliquely; a figure slightly taller than he was, rising from an arm-
chair, his face a pale and pointed blur beneath white-blond hair.
Greyback forced the prisoners to turn again so as to place Harry
directly beneath the chandelier.
“Well, boy?” rasped the werewolf.
Harry was facing a mirror over the fireplace, a great gilded thing
in an intricately scrolled frame. Through the slits of his eyes he
saw his own reflection for the first time since leaving Grimmauld
Place.
His face was huge, shiny, and pink, every feature distorted by
Hermione’s jinx. His black hair reached his shoulders and there
was a dark shadow around his jaw. Had he not known that it was
he who stood there, he would have wondered who was wearing his
glasses. He resolved not to spe ak, for his voice was sure to give
him away; yet he still avoided eye contact with Draco as the latter
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approached.
“Well, Draco?” said Lucius Malfoy. He sounded avid. “Is it?
Is it Harry Potter?”
“I can’t—I can’t be sure,” said Draco. He was keeping his
distance from Greyback, and seemed as scared of looking at Harry
as Harry was of looking at him.
“But look at him carefully, look! Come closer!”
Harry had never heard Lucius Malfoy so excited.
“Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over to the Dark
Lord, everything will be forgiv—“
“Now, we won’t be forgetting who actually caught him, I hope
Mr. Malfoy?” said Greyback menacingly.
“Of course not, of course not!” said Lucius impatiently. He
approached Harry himself, came so close that Harry could see the
usually languid, pale face in sharp detail even through his swollen
eyes. With his face a pu↵y mask, Harry felt as though he was
peering out from between the bars of a cage.
“What did you do to him?” Lucius asked Greyback. “How did
he get into this state?”
“That wasn’t us.”
“Looks more like a Stinging Jinx to me,” said Lucius.
His gray eyes raked Harry’s forehead.
“There’s something there,” he whispered. “it could be the scar,
stretched tight. . . .” Draco, come here, look properly! What do
you think?”
Harry saw Draco’s face up close now, right beside his father’s.
They were extraordinarily alike, except that while his father looked
beside himself with excitement, Draco’s expression was full of re-
luctance, even fear.
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“I don’t know,” he said, and he walked away toward the fire-
place where his mother stood watching.
“We had better be certain, Lucius,” Narcissa called to her hus-
band in her cold, clear voice. “Completely sure that it is Potter,
before we summon the Dark Lord . . . They say this is his”—she
was looking closely at the blackthorn wand—“but it does not re-
semble Ollivander’s description. . . . If we are mistaken, if we call the
Dark Lord here for nothing . . . Remember what he did to Rowle
and Dolohov?”
“What about the Mudblood, then?” growled Greyback. Harry
was nearly thrown o↵ his feet as the Snatchers forced the prisoners
to swivel around again, so that the light fell on Hermione instead.
“Wait,” said Narcissa sharply. “Yes—yes, she was in Madam
Malkin’s with Potter! I saw her picture in the Prophet! Look,
Draco, isn’t it the Granger girl?”
“I . . . maybe . . . yeah.”
“But then, that’s the Weasley boy!” shouted Lucius, strid-
ing around the bound prisoners to face Ron. “It’s them, Potter’s
friends—Draco, look at him, isn’t it Arthur Weasley’s son, what’s
his name—?”
“Yeah,” said Draco again, his back to the prisoners. “It could
be.”
The drawing room door opened behind Harry. A woman spoke,
and the sound of the voice wound Harry’s fear to an even higher
pitch.
“What is this? What’s happened, Cissy?”
Bellatrix Lestrange walked slowly around the prisoners, and
stopped on Harry’s right, staring at Hermione through her heavily
lidded eyes,
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“But surely,” she said quietly, “this is the Mudblood girl? This
is Granger?”
“Yes, yes, it’s Granger!” cried Lucius, “And beside her, we
think, Potter! Potter and his friends, caught at last!”
“Potter?” shrieked Bellatrix, and she backed away, the better
to take in Harry. “Are you sure? Well then, the Dark Lord must
be informed at once!”
She dragged back her left sleeve: Harry saw the Dark Mark
burned into the flesh of her arm, and knew that she was about to
touch it, to summon her beloved master—
“I was about to call him!” said Lucius, and his hand actually
closed upon Bellatrix’s wrist, preventing her from touching the
Mark. “I shall summon him, Bella. Potter has been brought to
my house, and it is therefore upon my authority—“
“Your authority!” she sneered, attempting to wrench her hand
from his grasp. “You los t your authority when you lost your wand,
Lucius! How dare you! Take your hands o↵ me!”
“This is nothing to do with you, you did not capture the boy—“
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Malfoy,” interjected Greyback, “but
it’s us that caught Potter, and it’s us that’ll be claiming the gold—
“
“Gold!” laughed Bellatrix, still attempting to throw o↵ her
brother-in-law, her free hand groping in her pocket for her wand.
“Take your gold, filthy scavenger, what do I want with gold? I seek
only the honor of his—of—“
She stopped struggling, her dark eyes fixed upon something
Harry could not see. Jubilant at her capitulation, Lucius threw
her hand from him and ripped up his own sleeve—
“STOP!” shrieked Bellatrix, “Do not touch it, we shall all perish
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if the Dark Lord comes now!”
Lucius froze, his index finger hovering over his own Mark. Bel-
latrix strode out of Harry’s limited line of vision.
“What is that?” he heard her say.
“Sword,” grunted an out-of-sight Snatcher.
“Give it to me.”
“It’s not yours, missus, it’s mine, I reckon I found it.”
There was a bang and a flash of red light; Harry knew that the
Snatcher had been Stunned. There was a roar of anger from his
fellows: Scabior drew his wand.
“What d’you think you’re playing at, woman?”
“Stupefy!” she screamed, “Stupefy!”
They were no match for her, even thought there were four of
them against one of her: She was a witch, as Harry knew, with
prodigious skill and no conscience. They fell where they stood, all
except Greyback, who had been forced into a kneeling position,
his arms outstretched. Out of the corners of his eyes Harry saw
Bellatrix bearing down upon the werewolf, the sword of Gryffindor
gripped tightly in her hand, her face waxen.
“Where did you get this sword?” she whisp ere d to Greyback
as she pulled his wand out of his unresisting grip.
“How dare you?” he snarled, his mouth the only thing that
could move as he was forced to gaze up at her. He bared his
pointed teeth. “Release me, woman!”
“Where did you find this sword?” she repeated, brandishing it
in his face, “Snape sent it to my vault in Gringotts!”
“It was in their tent,” rasped Greyback. “Release me, I say!”
She waved her wand, and the werewolf sprang to his feet, but
appeared too wary to approach her. He prowled behind an arm-
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chair, his filthy curved nails clutching its back.
“Draco, move this scum outside,” said Bellatrix, indicating the
unconscious men. “If you haven’t got the guts to finish them, then
leave them in the courtyard for me.”
“Don’t you dare speak to Draco like—” said Narcissa furiously,
but Bellatrix screamed.
“Be quiet! The situation is graver than you can possibly imag-
ine, Cissy! We have a very serious problem!”
She stood, panting slightly, looking down at the sword, exam-
ining its hilt. Then she turned to look at the silent prisoners.
“If it is indeed Potter, he must not be harmed,” she muttered,
more to herself than to the others. “The Dark Lord wishes to
dispose of Potter himself. . . . But if he finds out . . . I must . . . I
must know. . . .”
She turned back to her sister again.
“The prisoners must be placed in the cellar, while I think what
to do!”
“This is my house, Bella, you don’t give orders in my—“
“Do it! You have no idea of the danger we’re in!” shrieked
Bellatrix. She looked frightening, mad; a thin stream of fire issued
from her wand and burned a hole in the carpet.
Narcissa hesitated for a moment, then addressed the werewolf.
“Take these prisoners down to the cellar, Greyback.”
“Wait,” said Bellatrix sharply. “All except. . . . except for the
Mudblood.”
Greyback gave a grunt of pleasure.
“No!” shouted Ron. “You can have me, keep me!”
Bellatrix hit him across the face: the blow echoed around the
room.
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“If she dies under questioning, I’ll take you next,” she said.
“Blood traitor is next to Mudblood in my book. Take them down-
stairs, Greyback, and make sure they are secure, but do nothing
more to them—yet.”
She threw Greyback’s wand back to him, then took a short
silver knife from under her robes. She cut Hermione free from the
other prisoners, then dragged her by the hair into the middle of the
room, while Greyback forced the rest of them to shu✏e across to
another door, into a dark passageway, his wand held out in front
of him, projecting an invisible and irresistible force.
“Reckon she’ll let me have a bit of the girl when she’s finished
with her?” Greyback crooned as he forced them along the corridor.
“I’d say I’ll get a bite or two, wouldn’t you, ginger?”
Harry could feel Ron shaking. They were forced down a steep
flight of stairs, still tied back-to-back and in danger of slipping and
breaking their necks at any moment. At the bottom was a heavy
door. Greyback unlocked it with a tap of his wand, then forced
them into a dank and musty room and left them in total darkness.
The echoing bang of the slammed cellar door had not died away
before there was a terrible, drawn out scream from directly above
them.
“HERMIONE!” Ron bellowed, and he started to writhe and
struggle against the ropes tying them together, so that Harry stag-
gered. “HERMIONE!”
“Be quiet!” Harry said. “Shut up. Ron, we need to work out a
way — “
“HERMIONE! HERMIONE!”
“We need a plan, stop yelling—we need to get these ropes o↵—
“
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“Harry?” came a whisper through the darkness. “Ron? Is that
you?”
Ron stopped shouting. There was a sound of movement close
by them, then Harry saw a shadow moving closer.
“Harry? Ron?”
“Luna?”
“Yes, it’s me! Oh no, I didn’t want you to be caught!”
“Luna, can you help us get these ropes o↵?” said Harry.
“Oh yes, I expect so. . . . There’s an old nail we use if we need
to break anything. . . . Just a moment . . . ”
Hermione screamed again from overhead, and they could hear
Bellatrix screaming too, but her words were inaudible, for Ron
shouted again, “HERMIONE! HERMIONE!”
“Mr. Ollivander?” Harry could hear Luna saying. “Mr. Olli-
vander, have you got the nail? If you just move over a little bit . . . I
think it was beside the water jug.”
She was back within seconds.
“You’ll need to stay still,” she said.
Harry could feel her digging at the rope’s tough fibers to work
the knots free. From upstairs they heard Bellatrix’s voice.
“I’m going to ask you again! Where did you get this sword?
Where?”
“We found it—we found it—PLEASE!” Hermione screamed
again; Ron struggled harder than ever, and the rusty nail slipped
onto Harry’s wrist.
“Ron, please stay still!” Luna whispered. “I can’t see what I’m
doing—“
“My pocket!” said Ron, “In my pocket, there’s a Deluminator,
and it’s full of light!”
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A few seconds later, there was a click, and the luminescent
spheres the Deluminator had sucked from the lamps in the tent flew
into the cellar: Unable to rejoin their sources, they simply hung
there, like tiny suns, flooding the underground room with light.
Harry saw Luna, all eyes in her white face, and the motionless
figure of Ollivander the wandmaker, curled up on the floor in the
corner. Craning around, he caught sight of their fellow prisoners:
Dean and Griphook the goblin, who seemed barely conscious, kept
standing by the ropes that bound him to the humans.
“Oh, that’s much easier, thanks, Ron,” s aid Luna, and she be-
gan hacking at their bindings again. “Hello, Dean!”
From above came Bellatrix’s voice.
“You’re lying, filthy Mudblood, and I know it! You have been
inside my vault at Gringotts! Tell the truth, tell the truth!”
Another terrible scream—
“HERMIONE!”
“What else did you take? What else have you got? Tel me the
truth or, I swear, I shall run you through with this knife!”
“There!”
Harry felt the ropes fall away and turned, rubbing his wrists, to
see Ron running around the cellar, looking up at the low ceiling,
searching for a trapdoor. Dean, his face bruised and bloody, said
“Thanks” to Luna and stood there, shivering, but Griphook sank
onto the cellar floor, looking groggy and disoriented, many welts
across his swarthy face.
Ron was now trying to Disapparate without a wand.
“There’s no way out, Ron,” said Luna, watching his fruitless
e↵orts. “The cellar is completely escape -proof. I tried, at first. Mr.
Ollivander has been here for a long time, he’s tried everything.”
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Hermione was screaming again: The sound went through Harry
like physical pain. Barely conscious of the fierce prickling of his
scar, he too started to run around the cellar, feeling the walls for
he hardly knew what, knowing in his heart that it was use less .
“What else did you take, what else? ANSWER ME! CRUCIO!”
Hermione’s screams echoed o↵ the walls upstairs, Ron was half
sobbing as he pounded the walls with his fists, and Harry in ut-
ter desperation seized Hagrid’s pouch from around his neck and
groped inside it: He pulled out Dumbledore’s Snitch and shook it,
hoping for he did not know what—nothing happened—he waved
the broken halves of the phoenix wand, but they were lifeless—the
mirror fragment fell sparkling to the floor, and he saw a gleam of
brightest blue—
Dumbledore’s eye was gazing at him out of the mirror.
“Help us!” he yelled at it in mad desperation. “We’re in the
cellar of Malfoy Manor, help us!”
The eye blinked and was gone.
Harry was not even sure that it had really been there. He tilted
the shard of mirror this way and that, and saw nothing reflected
there but the walls and ceiling of their prison, and upstairs Her-
mione was screaming worse than ever, and next to him Ron was
bellowing, “HERMIONE! HERMIONE!”
“How did you get into my vault?” they heard Bellatrix scream.
“Did that dirty little goblin in the cellar help you?”
“We only met him tonight!” Hermione sobbed. “We’ve never
been inside your vault. . . . It isn’t the real sword! It’s a copy, just
a copy!”
“A copy?” screeched Bellatrix. “Oh, a likely story!”
“But we can find out easily!” came Lucius’s voice. “Draco,
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fetch the goblin, he can tell us whether the sword is real or not!”
Harry dashed across the cellar to where Griphook was huddled
on the floor.
“Griphook,” he whispered into the goblin’s pointed ear, “you
must tell them that sword’s a fake, they mustn’t know it’s the real
one, Griphook, please—“
He could hear someone scuttling own the cellar steps; next mo-
ment, Draco’s shaking voice spoke from behind the door.
“Stand back. Line up against the back wall. Don’t try anything,
or I’ll kill you!”
They did as they were bidden; as the lo ck turned, Ron clicked
the Deluminator and the lights whisked back into his pocket,
restoring the cellar’s darkness. The door flew open; Malfoy
marched inside, wand held out in front of him, pale and deter-
mined. He seized the little goblin by the arm and backed out
again, dragging Griphook with him. The door slammed shut and
at the same moment a loud crack echoed inside the cellar.
Ron clicked the Deluminator. Three balls of light flew back
into the air from his pocket, revealing Dobby the house-elf, who
had just Apparated into their midst.
“DOB—!”
Harry hit Ron on the arm to stop him shouting, and Ron looked
terrified at his mistake. Foots teps crossed the ceiling overhead:
Draco marching Griphook to Bellatrix.
Dobby’s enormous, tennis—ball shaped eyes were wide; he was
trembling from his fee t to the tips of his ears. He was back in the
home of his old masters, and it was clear that he was petrified.
“Harry Potter,” he squeaked in the tiniest quiver of a voice,
“Dobby has come to rescue you.”
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“But how did you—?”
An awful scream drowned Harry’s words: Hermione was being
tortured again. He cut to the essentials.
“You can Disapparate out of this cellar?” he asked Dobby, who
nodded, his ears flapping.
“And you can take humans with you?”
Dobby nodded again.
“Right. Dobby, I want you to grab Luna, Dean, and Mr. Olli-
vander, and take them—take them to—“
“Bill and Fleur’s,” said Ron. “Shell Cottage on the outskirts of
Tinworth!”
The elf nodded for a third time.
“And then come back,” said Harry. “Can you do that, Dobby?”
“Of course, Harry Potter,” whispered the little elf. He hurried
over to Mr. Ollivander, who appeared to be barely conscious. He
took one of the wandmaker’s hands in his own, then held out the
other to Luna and Dean, neither of whom moved.
“Harry, we want to help you!” Luna whispered.
“We can’t leave you here,” said Dean.
“Go, both of you! We’ll see you at Bill and Fleur’s.”
As Harry spoke, his scar burned worse than ever, and for a few
seconds he looked down, not upon the wandmaker, but on another
man who was just as old, just as thin, but laughing scornfully.
“Kill me, then. Voldemort, I welcome death! But my death
will not bring you what you seek. . . . There is so much you do not
understand. . . .”
He felt Voldemort’s fury, but as Hermione screamed again he
shut it out, returning to the cellar and the horror of his own present.
“Go!” Harry beseeched to Luna and Dean. “Go! We’ll follow,
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just go!”
They caught hold of the elf’s outstretched fingers. There was
another loud crack, and Dobby, Luna, Dean, and Ollivander van-
ished.
“What was that?” shouted Lucius Malfoy from over their heads.
“Did you hear that? What was that noise in the cellar?”
Harry and Ron stared at each other.
“Draco—no, call Wormtail! Make him go and check!”
Footsteps crossed the room overhead, then there was silence.
Harry knew that the people in the drawing room were listening for
more noises from the cellar.
“We’re going to have to try and tackle him,” he whispered to
Ron. They had no choice: The moment anyone entered the room
and saw the absence of three prisoners, they were lost. “Leave the
lights on,” Harry added, and as they heard someone descending
the steps outside the door, they backed against the wall on either
side of it.
“Stand back,” came Wormtail’s voice. “Stand away from the
door. I’m coming in.” The door flew open. For a split second
Wormtail gazed into the apparently empty cellar, ablaze with light
from the three miniature suns floating in midair. Then Harry and
Ron launched themselves upon him. Ron seized Wormtail’s wand
arm and forced it upwards. Harry slapped a hand to his mouth,
mu✏ing his voice. Silently they struggled: Wormtail’s wand emit-
ted sparks; his silver hand closed around Harry’s throat.
“What is it, Wormtail?” called Lucius Malfoy from above.
“Nothing!” Ron called back, in a passable imitation of Worm-
tail’s wheezy voice. “All fine!”
Harry could barely breathe.
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“You’re going to kill me?” Harry choked, attempting to prise o↵
the metal fingers. “After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail!”
The silver fingers slackened. Harry had not expec ted it: He
wrenched himself free, as tonished, keeping his hand over Worm-
tail’s mouth. He saw the ratlike man’s small watery eyes widen
with fear and surprise: He seemed just as shocked as Harry at
what his hand had done, at the tiny, merciful impulse it had be-
trayed, and he continued to struggle more powerfully, as though to
undo that moment of weakness.
“And we’ll have that,” whispered Ron, tugging Wormtail’s
wand from his other hand.
Wandless, helpless, Pettigrew’s pupils dilated in terror. His eyes
had slid from Harry’s face to something else. His own silver fingers
were moving inexorably toward his own throat.
“No—“
Without pausing to think, Harry tried to drag back the hand,
but there was no stopping it. The silver tool that Voldemort had
given his most cowardly servant had turned upon its disarmed and
useless owner; Pettigrew was reaping his reward for his hesitation,
his moment of pity; he was being s trangled before their eyes.
“No!”
Ron had released Wormtail too, and together he and Harry tried
to pull the crushing metal fingers from around Wormtail’s throat,
but it was no use. Pettigrew was turning blue.
“Relashio!” said Ron, pointing the wand at the silver hand,
but nothing happened; Pettigrew dropped to his knees, and at the
same moment, Hermione gave a dreadful scream from overhead.
Wormtail’s eyes rolled upward in his purple face; he gave a last
twitch, and was still.
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Harry and Ron looked at each other, then leaving Wormtail’s
body on the floor behind them, ran up the stairs and back into
the shadowy passageway leading to the drawing room. Cautiously
they crept along it until they reached the drawing room door, which
was ajar. Now they had a clear view of Bellatrix looking down at
Griphook, who was holding Gryffindor’s sword in his long-fingered
hands. Hermione was lying at Bellatrix’s feet. She was barely
stirring.
“Well?” Bellatrix said to Griphook. “Is it the true sword?”
Harry waited, holding his breath, fighting against the prickling
of his scar.
“No,” said Griphook. “It is a fake.”
“Are you sure?” panted Bellatrix. “Quite sure?”
“Yes,” said the goblin.
Relief broke across her face, all tension drained from it.
“Good,” she said, and with a casual flick of her wand she slashed
another deep cut into the goblin’s face, and he dropped with a yell
at her feet. She kicked him aside. “And now,” she said in a voice
that burst with triumph, “we call the Dark Lord!”
And she pushed back her sleeve and touched her forefinger to
the Dark Mark.
At once, Harry’s scar felt as though it had split open again.
His true surroundings vanished: He was Voldemort, and the skele-
tal wizard before him was laughing toothlessly at him; he was en-
raged at the summons he felt—he had warned them, he had told
them to summon him for nothing less than Potter. If they were
mistaken . . .
“Kill me, then!” demanded th e old man. “You will not win,
you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours—“
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And Voldemort’s fury broke: A burst of green light filled the
prison room and the frail old body was lifted from its hard bed
and then fell back, lifeless, and Voldemort returned to the window,
his wrath barely controllable. . . . They would su↵er his retribution
if they had no good reason for calling him back. . . .
“And I think,” said Bellatrix’s voice, “we can dispose of the
Mudblood. Greyback, take her if you want her.”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Ron had burst into the drawing room; Bellatrix looked around,
shocked; she turned her wand to face Ron instead—
“Expelliarmus!” he roared, pointing Wormtail’s wand at Bella-
trix, and hers flew into the air and was caught by Harry, who had
sprinted after Ron. Lucius, Narcissa, Draco and Greyback wheeled
about; Harry yelled, “Stupefy!” and Lucius Malfoy collapsed onto
the hearth. Jets of light flew from Draco’s, Narcissa’s, and Grey-
back’s wands; Harry threw himself to the floor, rolling behind a
sofa to avoid them.
“STOP OR SHE DIES!
Panting, Harry peered around the edge of the sofa. Bellatrix
was supporting Hermione, who seemed to be unconscious, and was
holding her short silver knife to Hermione’s throat.
“Drop your wands,” she whispered. “Drop them, or we’ll see
exactly how filthy her blood is!”
Ron stood rigid, clutching Wormtail’s wand. Harry straight-
ened up, still holding Bellatrix’s.
“I said, drop them!” she screeched, pressing the blade into
Hermione’s throat: Harry saw beads of blood appear there.
“All right!” he shouted, and he dropped Bellatrix’s wand onto
the floor at his feet, Ron did the same with Wormtail’s. Both
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raised their hands to shoulder height.
“Good!” she leered. “Draco, pick them up! The Dark Lord is
coming, Harry Potter! Your death approaches!”
Harry knew it; his scar was bursting with the pain of it, and
he could feel Voldemort flying through the sky from far away, over
a dark and stormy sea, and soon he would be close enough to
Apparate to them, and Harry could see no way out.
“Now,” said Bellatrix softly, as Draco hurried back to her with
the wands. “Cissy, I think we ought to tie these little heroes up
again, while Greyback takes care of Miss Mudblood. I am sure the
Dark Lord will not begrudge you the girl, Greyback, after what
you have done tonight.”
At the last word there was a peculiar grinding noise from above.
All of them looked upward in time to see the crystal chandelier
tremble; then, with a creak and an ominous jingling, it began to
fall. Bellatrix was directly beneath it; dropping Hermione, she
threw herself aside with a scream. The chandelier crashed to the
floor in an explosion of crystal and chains, falling on top of Her-
mione and the goblin, who still clutched the sword of Gryffindor.
Glittering shards of crystal flew in all directions; Draco doubled
over, his hands covering his bloody face.
As Ron ran to pull Hermione out of the wreckage, Harry took
the chance: He leapt over an armchair and wrested the three wands
from Draco’s grip, pointed all of them at Greyback, and yelled,
“Stupefy!” The werewolf was lifted o↵ his feet by the triple spell,
flew up to the ceiling and then smashed to the ground.
As Narcissa dragged Draco out of the way of further harm,
Bellatrix sprang to her feet, her hair flying as she brandished the
silver knife; but Narcissa had directed her wand at the doorway.
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“Dobby!” she screamed and even Bellatrix froze. “You! You
dropped the chandelier—?”
The tiny elf trotted into the room, his shaking finger pointing
at his old mistress.
“You must not hurt Harry Potter,” he squeaked.
“Kill him, Cissy!” shrieked Bellatrix, but there was another
loud crack, and Narcissa’s wand too flew into the air and landed
on the other side of the room.
“You dirty little monkey!” bawled Bellatrix. “How dare you
take a witch’s wand, how dare you defy your masters?”
“Dobby has no master!” squealed the elf. “Dobby is a free elf,
and Dobby has come to save Harry Potter and his friends!”
Harry’s scar was blinding him with pain. Dimly he knew that
they had moments, seconds before Voldemort was with them.
“Ron, catch—and GO!” he yelled, throwing one of the wands
to him; then he bent down to tug Griphook out from under the
chandelier. Hoisting the groaning goblin, who still clung to the
sword, over one shoulder, Harry seize d Dobby’s hand and spun on
the spot to Disapparate.
As he turned into darkness he caught one last view of the draw-
ing ro om of the pale, frozen figures of Narcissa and Draco, of the
streak of red that was Ron’s hair, and a blue of flying silver, as
Bellatrix’s knife flew across the room at the place where he was
vanishing—
Bill and Fleur’s . . . Shell Cottage . . . Bill an d Fleur’s . . .
He had disappeared into the unknown; all he could do was re-
peat the name of the destination and hope that it would suffice
to take him there. The pain in his forehead pierced him, and the
weight of the goblin bore down upon him; he could feel the blade of
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Gryffindor’s sword bumping against his back: Dobby’s hand jerked
in his; he wondered w hether the elf was trying to take charge, to
pull them in the right direction, and tried, by squeezing the fingers,
to indicate that that was fine with them. . . .
And then they hit solid earth and smelled salty air. Harry fell
to his knees, relinquished Dobby’s hand, and attempted to lower
Griphook gently to the ground.
“Are you all right?” he said as the goblin stirred, but Griphook
merely whimpered.
Harry squinted around through the darkness. There seemed to
be a cottage a short way away under the wide starry sky, and he
thought he saw movement outside it.
“Dobby, is this Shell Cottage?” he whispered, clutching the
two wands he had brought from the Malfoys’, ready to fight if he
needed to. “Have we come to the right place? Dobby?”
He looked around. The little elf stood feet from him.
“DOBBY!”
The elf swayed slightly, stars reflected in his wide, shining eyes.
Together, he and Harry looked down at the silver hilt of the knife
protruding from the elf’s heaving chest.
“Dobby—no—HELP!” Harry bellowed toward the c ottage, to-
ward the people moving there. “HELP!”
He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Mug-
gles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was
spreading across Dobby’s front, and that he had stretched out his
own arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him
and laid him sideways on the cool grass.
“Dobby, no, don’t die, don’t die—”
The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the e↵ort
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to form words.
“Harry . . . Potter . . . ”
And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and
his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with
light from the stars they could not see.
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The Wandmaker
I
t was like s inking into an old nightmare; for an instant Harry
knelt again beside Dumbledore’s body at the foot of the
tallest tower at Hogwarts, but in reality he was staring at
a tiny body curled upon the grass , pierced by Bellatrix’s sil-
ver knife. Harry’s voice was still saying, “Dobby . . . Dobby ...”
even though he knew that the elf had gone where he could not call
him back.
After a minute or so he realized that they had, after all, come
to the right place, for here were Bill and Fleur, Dean and Luna,
gathering around him as he knelt over the elf. “Hermione,” he
said suddenly. “Where is she?” “Ron’s taken her inside,” said
Bill. “She’ll be all right.” Harry looked back down at Dobby. He
stretched out a hand and pulled the sharp blade from the elf’s
body, then dragged o↵ his own jacket and covered Dobby in it like
a blanket.
The sea was rushing against the rock somewhere nearby; Harry
listened to it while the others talked, discussing matters in which he
could take no interest, making decisions, Dean carried the injured
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Griphook into the house, Fleur hurrying with them; now Bill was
really knowing what he was saying. As he did so, he gazed down
at the tiny body, and his scar prickled and burned, and in one part
of his mind, viewed as if from the w rong end of a long telescope,
he saw Voldemort punishing those they had left behind at the
Malfoy Manor. His rage was dreadful and yet Harry’s grief for
Dobby seemed to diminish it, so that it b ec ame a distant storm
that reached Harry from across a vast, silent ocean.
“I want to do it properly,” were the first words of which Harry
was fully conscious of speaking. “Not by magic. Have you got a
spade?” And shortly afterward he had set to work, alone, digging
the grave in the place that Bill had shown him at the end of the
garden, between bushes. He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the
manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every drop of his
sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved their
lives.
His scar burned, but he was master of the pain, he felt it, yet
was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut
his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted
him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to
possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his
thoughts could not penetrate Harry now while he mourned Dobby.
Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out . . . though Dumbledore, of
course, would have said that it was love.
On Harry dug, deepe r and deeper into the hard, cold earth,
subsuming his grief in sweat, denying the pain in his scar. In the
darkness, with nothing but the sound of his own breath and the
rushing sea to keep him company, the things that had happened at
the Malfoys’ returned to him, the things he had heard came back
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to him, and understanding blossomed in the darkness . . .
The steady rhythm of his arms beat time with his thoughts.
Hallows . . . Horcruxes . . . Hallows . . . Horcruxes . . . yet no longer
burned with that weird, obsessive longing. Loss and fear had
snu↵ed it out. He felt as though he had bee n slapped awake again.
Deeper and deeper Harry sank into the grave, and he knew
where Voldemort had been tonight, and whom he had killed in the
topmost cell of Nurmengard, and why . . .
And he thought of Wormtail, dead because of one small uncon-
scious impulse of mercy . . . Dumbledore had foreseen that . . . How
much more had he known?
Harry lost track of time. He knew only that the darkness had
lightened a few degrees when he was rejoined by Ron and Dean.
“How’s Hermione?” “Better,” said Ron. “Fleur’s looking after
her.” Harry had his retort ready for when they asked him why he
had not simply created a perfect grave with his wand, but he did
not need it. They jumped down into the hole he had made with
spades of their own and together they worked in silence until the
hole seemed deep enough.
Harry wrapped the elf more snugly in his jacket. Ron sat on
the edge of the grave and stripped o↵ his shoes and socks, which he
placed on the elf’s bare feet. Dean produced a woolen hat, which
Harry placed carefully upon Dobby’s head, mu✏ing his batlike
ears. “We should close his eyes.”
Harry had not heard the others coming through the darkness.
Bill was wearing a traveling cloak, Fleur a large white apron, from
the pocket of which protruded a bottle of what Harry recognized
to be Skele-Gro. Hermione was wrapped in a borrowed dressing
gown, pale and unsteady on her feet; Ron put an arm around her
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when she reached him. Luna, who was huddled in one of Fleur’s
coats, crouched down and placed her fingers tenderly upon each of
the elf’s eyelids, sliding them over his glassy stare. “There,” she
said softly. “Now he could be sleeping.”
Harry placed the elf into the grave, arranged his tiny limbs so
that he might have been resting, then climbed out and gazed for
the last time up on the little body. He forced himself not to break
down as he remembered Dumbledore’s funeral, and the rows and
rows of golden chairs, and the Minister of Magic in the front row,
the recitation of Dumbledore’s achievements, the stateliness of the
white marble tomb. He felt that Dobby deserved just as grand a
funeral, and yet here the elf lay between bushes in a roughly dug
hole. “I think we ought to say something,” piped up Luna. “I’ll
go first, shall I?”
And as everybody looked at her, she addressed the dead elf at
the bottom of the grave. “Thank you so much Dobby for rescuing
me from that cellar. It’s so unfair that you had to die when you
were so good and brave. I’ll always remember what you did for us.
I hope you’re happy now.”
She turned and looked expectingly at Ron, who cleared
his throat and said in a thick voice, “yeah . . . thanks Dobby.”
“Thanks,” muttered Dean. Harry swallowed. “Good bye Dobby,”
he said It was all he could manage, but Luna had said it all for
him. Bill raised his wand, and the pile of earth beside the grave
rose up into the air and fell neatly upon it, a small, reddish mound.
“D’ya mind if I stay here a moment?” He asked the others.
They murmured words he did not catch; he felt gentle pats
upon his back, and then they all traipsed back toward the cottage,
leaving Harry alone beside the elf.
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The Wandmaker
He looked around: There were a number of large white stones,
smoothed by the sea, marking the edge of the flower beds. He
picked up one of the largest and laid it, pillowlike , over the place
where Dobby’s head now rested. He then felt in his pocket for a
wand. There were two in there. He had forgotten, lost track; he
could not now remember whose wands these were; he seemed to
remember wrenching them out of someone’s hand. He selected the
shorter of the two, which felt friendlier in his hand, and pointed it
at the rock.
Slowly, under his murmured instruction, deep cuts appeared
upon the rock’s surface. He knew that Hermione could have done
it more neatly, and probably more quickly, but he wanted to mark
the spot as he had wanted to dig the grave . When Harry stood up
again, the stone read:
HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.
He looked at his handiwork for a few more seconds, then walked
away, his scar still prickling a little, and his mind full of those things
that had come to him in the grave, ideas that had taken shape in
the darkness, ideas both fascinating and terrible.
They were all sitting in the living room when he entered the
little hall, their attention focused up on Bill, who was talking. The
room was light-colored, pretty, with a small fire of driftwood burn-
ing brightly in the fireplace. Harry did not want to drop mud upon
the carpet, so he stood in the doorway, listening.
“ . . . lucky that Ginny’s on holiday. If she’d been at Hogwarts
they could have taken her be fore we reached her. Now we know
she’s safe too.” He looked around and saw Harry standing there.
“I’ve been getting them all out of the Burrow,” he explained.
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“Moved them to Muriel’s. The Death Eaters know Ron’s with
you now, they’re bound to target the family—don’t apologize,” he
added at the sight of Harry’s expression. “It was always a matter
of time, Dad’s been saying so for months. We’re the biggest blood
traitor family there is.”
“How are they protected?” asked Harry. “Fidelius Charm.
Dad’s Secret-Keeper. And we’ve done it on this cottage too; I’m
Secret-Keeper here. None of us can go to work, but that’s hardly
the most important thing now. Once Ollivander and Griphook are
well enough, we’ll move them to Muriel’s too. There isn’t much
room here, but she’s got plenty. Griphook’s legs are on the mend.
Fleur’s given him Skele-Gro—we could probably move them in an
hour or—“
“No,” Harry said and Bill looked startled. “I need both of
them here. I need to talk to them. It’s important.” He heard
the authority of his own voice, the conviction, the voice of purpos e
that had come to him as he dug Dobby’s grave. All of their faces
were turned toward him looking puzzled.
“I’m going to wash,” Harry told Bill looking down at his hands
still covered with mud and Dobby’s blood. “Then I’ll need to see
them, s traight away.” He walked into the little kitchen, to the
basin be neath a window overlooking the sea. Dawn was breaking
over the horizon, shell pink and faintly gold, as he washed, again
following the train of thought that had come to him in the dark
garden . . .
Dobby would never be able to tell them who had s ent him to
the cellar, but Harry knew what he had se en. A piercing blue eye
had lo oked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come.
Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.
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Harry dried his hands, impervious to the beauty of the scene
outside the window and to the murmuring of the others in the
sitting room. He lo oked out over the ocean and felt closer, this
dawn, than ever before, closer to the heart of it all.
And still his s car prickled, and he knew that Voldemort was
getting there too. Harry understood and yet did not understand.
His instinct was telling him one thing, his brain quite another. The
Dumbledore in Harry’s head smiled, surveying Harry over the tips
of his fingers, pressed together as if in prayer.
You gave Ron the Deluminator . . . You understood him. . . . You
gave him a way back . . .
And you understood Wormtail too. . . . You knew there was a bit
of regret there, somewhere. . . .
And if you knew them . . . What did you know about me, Dum-
bledore?
Am I meant to know but not to seek? Did you know how hard
I’d feel that? Is that why you made it this difficult? So I’d have
time to work that out?
Harry stood quite still, eyes glazed, watching the place where a
bright gold ray of dazzling sun was rising over the horizon. Then he
looked down at his clean hands and was momentarily surprised to
see the cloth he was holding in them. He set it down and returned
to the hall, and as he did so, he felt his scar pulse angrily, and then
flashed ac ross his mind, swift as the reflection of a dragonfly over
water, the outline of a building he knew extremely well.
Bill and Fleur were standing at the foot of the stairs.
“I need to speak to Griphook and Ollivander,” Harry said.
“No,” said Fleur. “You will ’ave to wait, ’Arry. Zey are both
too tired—”
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“I’m sorry,” he said without heat, “but it can’t wait. I need to
talk to them now. Privately—and separately. It’s urgent.”
“Harry, what the hell’s going on?” asked Bill. “You turn up
here with a dead house-elf and a half-conscious goblin, Hermione
looks as though she’s been tortured, and Ron’s just refused to tell
me anything—”
“We can’t tell you what we’re doing,” said Harry flatly. “You’re
in the Order, Bill, you know Dumbledore left us a mission. We’re
not supposed to talk about it to anyone else.”
Fleur made an impatient noise, but Bill did not look at her; he
was staring at Harry. His deeply scarred face was hard to read.
Finally, Bill said, “All right. Who do you want to talk to first?”
Harry hesitated. He knew what hung on his decision. There was
hardly any time left; now was the moment to decide: Horcruxes or
Hallows?
“Griphook,” Harry said. “I’ll s peak to Griphook first.”
His heart was racing as if he had been sprinting and had just
cleared an enormous obstacle.
“Up here, then,” said Bill, leading the way.
Harry had walked up several steps before stopping and looking
back.
“I need you two as well!” he called to Ron and Hermione, who
had been skulking, half conceale d, in the doorway of the sitting
room.
They both moved into the light, looking oddly re lieved.
“How are you?” Harry asked Hermione. “You were amazing—
coming up with that story when she was hurting you like that—”
Hermione gave a weak smile as Ron gave her a one-armed
squeeze.
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“What are we doing now, Harry?” he asked.
“You’ll see. Come on.”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed Bill up the steep stairs onto
a small landing. Three doors led o↵ it.
“In here,” said Bill, opening the door into his and Fleur’s room,
it too had a view of the sea, now flecked with gold in the sunrise.
Harry moved to the window, turned his back on the spectacular
view, and waited, his arms folded, his scar prickling. Hermione
took the chair beside the dressing table; Ron sat on the arm.
Bill reappeared, carrying the little goblin, whom he set down
carefully upon the bed. Griphook grunted thanks, and Bill left,
closing the door upon them all.
“I’m sorry to take you out of bed,” said Harry. “How are your
legs?”
“Painful,” replied the goblin. “But mending.”
He was still clutching the sword of Gryffindor, and wore a
strange look: half truculent, half intrigued. Harry noted the gob-
lin’s sallow skin, his long thin fingers, his black eyes. Fleur had
removed his shoes: His long feet were dirty. He was larger than a
house-elf, but not by much. His domed head was much bigger than
a human’s.
“You probably don’t remember—” Harry began.
“—that I was the goblin who showed you to your vault, the first
time you ever visited Gringotts?” said Griphook. “I remember,
Harry Potter. Even amongst goblins, you are very famous.”
Harry and the goblin looked at each other, sizing each other
up. Harry’s scar was still prickling. He wanted to get through this
interview with Griphook quickly, and at the same time was afraid
of making a false move. While he tried to decide on the best way
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to approach his request, the goblin broke the silence.
“You buried the elf,” he said, s ounding unexpectedly rancorous.
“I watched you from the window of the bedroom next door.”
“Yes,” said Harry.
Griphook looked at him out of the corners of his slanting black
eyes.
“You are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter.”
“In what way?” asked Harry, rubbing his scar absently.
“You dug the grave.”
“So?”
Griphook did not answer. Harry rather thought he was being
sneered at for acting like a Muggle, but it did not matter to him
whether Griphook approved of Dobby’s grave or not. He gathered
himself for the attack.
“Griphook, I need to ask—”
“You also rescued a goblin.”
“What?”
“You brought me here. Saved me.”
“Well, I take it you’re not sorry?” said Harry a little impa-
tiently.
“No, Harry Potter,” said Griphook, and with one finger he
twisted the thin black beard upon his chin, “but you are a very
odd wizard.”
“Right,” said Harry. “Well, I need some help, Griphook, and
you can give it to me.”
The goblin made no sign of encouragement, but continued to
frown at Harry as though he had never seen anything like him.
“I need to break into a Gringotts vault.”
Harry had not meant to say it so badly: the words were forced
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The Wandmaker
from him as pain shot through his lightning scar and he saw, again,
the outline of Hogwarts. He closed his mind firmly. He needed to
deal with Griphook first. Ron and Hermione were staring at Harry
as though he had gone mad.
“Harry—” said Hermione, but she was cut o↵ by Griphook.
“Break into a Gringotts vault?” repeated the goblin, wincing a
little as he shifted his position upon the bed. “It is impossible.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ron contradicted him. “It’s been done.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “The same day I first met you, Griphook.
My birthday, seven years ago.”
“The vault in question was empty at the time,” snapped the
goblin, and Harry understood that even though Griphook had
let Gringotts, he was o↵ended at the idea of its defenses being
breached. “Its protection was minimal.”
“Well, the vault we need to get into isn’t empty, and I’m guess-
ing its protection will be pretty powerful,” said Harry. “It belongs
to the Lestranges.”
He saw Hermione and Ron look at each other, astonished, but
there would be time enough to explain after Gripho ok had given
his answer.
“You have no chance,” said Griphook flatly. “No chance at all.
If you seek beneath our floors, a treasure that was never yours —”
“Thief, you have been warned, beware —yeah, I know, I remem-
ber,” said Harry. “But I’m not trying to get myself any treasure,
I’m not trying to take anything for personal gain. Can you believe
that?”
The goblin looked slantwise at Harry, and the lightning scar on
Harry’s forehead prickled, but he ignored it, refusing to acknowl-
edge its pain or its invitation.
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“If there was a wizard of whom I would believe that they did not
seek personal gain,” said Griphook finally, “it would be you, Harry
Potter. Goblins and elves are not used to the protection or the
respect that you have shown this night. Not from wand-carriers.”
“Wand-carriers,” repeated Harry: The phrase fell oddly upon
his ears as his scar prickled, as Voldemort turned his thoughts
northward, and as Harry burned to question Ollivander next door.
“The right to carry a wand,” said the goblin quietly, “has long
been contested between wizards and goblins.”
“Well, goblins can do magic without wands,” said Ron.
“That is immaterial! Wizards refuse to share the secrets of
wandlore with other magical beings, they deny us the possibility
of extending our powers!”
“Well, goblins won’t share any of their magic either,” said Ron.
“You won’t tell us how to make swords and armor the way you do.
Goblins know how to work metal in a way wizards have never—”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Harry, noting Griphook’s rising color.
“This isn’t about wizards versus goblins or any other sort of mag-
ical creature—”
Griphook gave a nasty laugh.
“But it is, it is precisely that! As the Dark Lord becomes
ever more powerful, your race is set still more firmly above mine!
Gringotts falls under Wizarding rule, house-elves are slaughtered,
and who amongst the wand-carriers protests?”
“We do!” said Hermione. She had sat up straight, her eyes
bright. “We protest! And I’m hunted quite as much as any goblin
or elf, Griphook! I’m a Mudblood!”
“Don’t call yourself—” Ron muttered.
“Why shouldn’t I?” said Hermione. “Mudblood, and proud of
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it! I’ve got no higher pos ition under this new order than you have,
Griphook! It was me they chose to torture, back at the Malfoys!”
As she spoke, she pulled aside the neck of the dressing gown to
reveal the thin cut Bellatrix had made, scarlet against her throat.
“Did you know that it was Harry who set Dobby free?” she
asked. “Did you know that we’ve wanted elves to be freed for
years?” (Ron fidgeted uncomfortably on the arm of Hermione’s
chair.) “You can’t want You-Know-Who defeated more than we
do, Griphook!”
The goblin gazed at Hermione with the same curiosity he had
shown Harry.
“What do you seek within the Lestranges’ vault?” he asked
abruptly. “The sword that lies inside it is a fake. This is the real
one.” He looked from one to the other of them. “I think that you
already know this. You asked me to lie for you back there.”
“But the fake sword isn’t the only thing in that vault, is it?”
asked Harry. “Perhaps you’ve seen other things in there?”
His heart was pounding harder than ever. He redoubled his
e↵orts to ignore the pulsing of his scar.
The goblin twisted his beard around his finger again.
“It is against our code to speak of the secrets of Gringotts. We
are the guardians of fabulous treasures. We have a duty to the
objects placed in our care, which were, so often, wrought by our
fingers.”
The goblin stroked the sword, and his black eyes roved from
Harry to Hermione to Ron and then back again.
“So young,” he said finally, “to be fighting so many.”
“Will you help us?” said Harry. “We haven’t got a hope of
breaking in without a goblin’s help. You’re our one chance.”
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“I shall . . . think about it,” said Griphook maddeningly.
“But—” Ron started angrily; Hermione nudged him in the ribs.
“Thank you,” said Harry.
The goblin bowed his great domed head in acknowledgement,
then flexed his short legs.
“I think,” he said, settling himself ostentatiously upon Bill and
Fleur’s bed, “that the Skele-Gro has finished its work. I may be
able to sleep at last. Forgive me. . . .”
“Yeah, of course,” said Harry, but before leaving the room he
leaned forward and took the sword of Gryffindor from be side the
goblin. Griphook did not protest, but Harry thought he saw re-
sentment in the goblin’s eyes as he closed the door upon him.
“Little git,” whispered Ron. “He’s enjoying keeping us hang-
ing.”
“Harry,” whispered Hermione, pulling them both away from
the door, into the middle of the still-dark landing, “are you saying
what I think you’re saying? Are you saying there’s a Horcrux in
the Lestranges vault?”
“Yes,” said Harry. “Bellatrix was terrified when she thought
we’d been in there, she was beside herself. Why? What did
she think we’d seen, what else did she think we might have
taken? Something she was petrified You-Know-Who would find
out about.”
“But I thought we were looking for places You-Know-Who’s
been, places he’s done something important?” said Ron, looking
ba✏ed. “Was he ever inside the Lestranges’ vault?”
“I don’t know whether he was ever inside Gringotts,” said
Harry. “He never had gold there when he was younger, because
nobody left him anything. He would have seen the bank from the
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outside, though, the first time he ever went to Diagon Alley.”
Harry’s scar throbbed, but he ignored it; he wanted Ron and
Hermione to understand about Gringotts before they spoke to Ol-
livander.
“I think he would have envied anyone who had a key to a
Gringotts vault. I think he’d have seen it as a real symbol of
belonging to the Wizarding world. And don’t forget, he trusted
Bellatrix and her husband. They were his most devoted servants
before he fell, and they went looking for him after he vanished. He
said it night he came back, I heard him.”
Harry rubbed his scar.
“I don’t think he’d have told Bellatrix it was a Horcrux, though.
He never told Lucius Malfoy the truth about the diary. He probably
told her it was a treasured possession and asked her to place it in
her vault. The safest place in the world for anything you want to
hide, Hagrid told me . . . except for Hogwarts.”
When Harry had finished speaking, Ron shook his head.
“You really understand him.”
“Bits of him,” said Harry. “Bits . . . I just wish I’d understood
Dumbledore as much. But we’ll see. Come on—Ollivander now.”
Ron and Hermione looked bewildered but very impressed as
they followed him across the little landing and knocked upon the
door opposite Bill and Fleur’s. A weak “Come in!” answered them.
The wandmaker was lying on the twin bed farthest from the
window. He had been held in the cellar for more than a year, and
tortured, Harry knew, on at least one occasion. He was emaciated,
the bones of his face sticking out sharply against the yellowish skin.
His great silver eyes seemed vas t in their sunken sockets. The hands
that lay upon the blanket could have belonged to a skeleton. Harry
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sat down on the empty bed, beside Ron and Hermione. The rising
sun was not visible here. The room faced the cli↵-top garden and
the freshly dug grave.
“Mr. Ollivander, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Harry said.
“My dear boy,” Ollivander’s voice was feeble. “You rescued us, I
thought we would die in that place, I can never thank you . . . never
thank you . . . enough.”
“We were glad to do it.”
Harry’s scar throbbed. He knew, he was ce rtain, that there was
hardly any time left in which to beat Voldemort to his goal, or
else to attempt to thwart him. He felt a flutter of panic . . . yet he
had made his decision when he chose to speak to Griphook first.
Feigning a calm he did not feel, he groped in the pouch around his
neck and took out the two halves of his broken wand.
“Mr. Ollivander, I need some help.”
“Anything. Anything.” Said the wandmaker weakly.
“Can you mend this? Is it possible?”
Ollivander held out a trembling hand, and Harry placed the two
barely connected halves in his palm.
“Holly and phoenix feather,” said Ollivander in a tremulous
voice. “Eleven inches. Nice and supple.”
“Yes,” said Harry. “Can you—?”
“No,” whispered Ollivander. “I am sorry, very sorry, but a wand
that has su↵ered this degree of damage cannot be repaired by any
means that I know of.”
Harry had been braced to hear it, but it was a blow nevertheless.
He took the wand halves back and replaced them in the pouch
around his neck. Ollivander stared at the place where the shattered
wand had vanished, and did not look away until Harry had taken
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from his pocket the two wands he had brought from the Malfoys’.
“Can you identify these?” Harry asked.
The wandmaker took the first of the wands and held it close
to his faded eyes, rolling it between his knobble-knuckled fingers,
flexing it slightly.
“Walnut and dragon heartstring,” he said. “Twelve-and-three-
quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix
Lestrange.”
“And this one?”
Ollivander performed the same examination.
“Hawthorn and unicorn hair. Ten inches precisely. Reasonably
springy. This was the wand of Draco Malfoy.”
“Was?” repeated Harry. “Isn’t it still his?”
“Perhaps not. If you took it—”
“—I did—”
“—then it may be yours. Of course, the manner of taking
matters. Much also depends upon the wand itself. In general,
however, where a wand has been won, its allegiance will change.”
There was a silence in the room, except for the distant rushing
of the sea.
“You talk about wands like they’ve got feelings,” said Harry,
“like they can think for themselves.”
“The wand chooses the wizard,” said Ollivander. “That much
has always been clear to those of us who have studied wandlore.”
“A person can still use a wand that hasn’t chosen them,
though?” asked Harry.
“Oh yes, if you are any wizard at all you will be able to chan-
nel your magic through almost any instrument. The be st results,
however, must always come where there is the strongest affinity
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between wizard and wand. These connections are complex. An ini-
tial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience , the wand
learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand.”
The se a gushed forward and backward; it was a mournful sound.
“I took this wand from Draco Malfoy by force,” said Harry.
“Can I use it safely?”
“I think so. Subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the con-
quered wand will usually bend its will to its new master.”
“So I should use this one?” said Ron, pulling Wormtail’s wand
out of his pocket and handing it to Ollivander.
“Chestnut and dragon heartstring. Nine-and-a-quarter inches.
Brittle. I was forced to make this shortly after my kidnapping, for
Peter Pettigrew. Yes, if you won it, it is more likely to do your
bidding, and do it well, than another wand.”
“And this holds true for all wands, does it?” asked Harry.
“I think so,” replied Ollivander, his protuberant eyes upon
Harry’s face. “You ask deep questions, Mr. Potter. Wandlore
is a complex and mysterious branch of magic.”
“So, it isn’t necessary to kill the previous owner to take the
possession of a wand?” asked Harry.
Ollivander swallowed.
“Necessary? No, I should not say that it is necessary to kill.”
“There are legends, though,” said Harry, and as his heart rate
quickened, the pain in his scar became more intense; he was sure
that Voldemort has decided to put his idea into action. “Legends
about a wand—or wands—that have been passed from hand to
hand by murder.”
Ollivander turned pale. Against the snowy pillow he was light
gray, and his eyes were enormous, bloodshot, and bulging with
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what looked like fear.
“Only one wand, I think,” he whispered.
“And You-Know-Who is interested in it, isn’t he?” asked Harry.
“I—how?” croaked Ollivander, and he looked appealingly at
Ron and Hermione for help. “How do you know this?”
“He wanted you to tell him how to overcome the connection
between our wands,” said Harry.
Ollivander looked terrified.
“He tortured me, you must understand that! The C ruciatus
Curse, I–I had no choice but to tell him what I knew, what I
guessed!”
“I understand,” said Harry. “You told him about the twin
cores? You said he just had to borrow another wizard’s wand?”
Ollivander looked horrified, transfixed, by the amount that
Harry knew. He nodded slowly.
“But it didn’t work,” Harry went on. “Mine still beat the bor-
rowed wand. Do you know why that is?”
Ollivander shook his head slowly as he had just nodded.
“I had . . . never heard of such a thing. Your wand performed
something unique that night. The connection of the twin cores
is incredibly rare, yet why your wand would have snapped the
borrowed wand, I do not know. . . .
“We were talking about the other wand, the wand that changes
hands by murder. When You-Know-Who realized my wand had
done something strange, he came back and asked about that other
wand, didn’t he?”
“How do you know this?”
Harry did not answer.
“Yes, he asked,” whispered Ollivander. “He wanted to know
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everything I could tell him about the wand variously known as the
Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, or the Elder Wand.”
Harry glanced sideways at Hermione. She looked flabbergasted.
“The Dark Lord,” said Ollivander in hushed and frightened
tones, “had always been happy with the wand I made him—yew
and phoenix feather, thirteen-and-a-half inches—until he discov-
ered the connection of the twin cores. Now he seeks another, more
powerful wand, as the only way to conquer yours.”
“But he’ll know soon, if he doesn’t already, that mine’s broken
beyond repair,” said Harry quietly.
“No!” said Hermione, sounding frightened. “He can’t know
that, Harry, how could he—?”
“Priori Incantatem,” said Harry. “We left your wand and the
blackthorn wand at the Malfoys’, Hermione. If they examine them
properly, make them re-create the spells they’ve cast lately, they’d
see that yours broke mine, they’ll see that you tried and failed to
mend it, and they’ll realize that I’ve been using the blackthorn one
ever since.”
The little color she had regained since their arrival had drained
from her face. Ron gave Harry a reproachful look, and said, “Let’s
not worry about that now—”
But Mr. Ollivander intervened.
“The Dark Lord no longer seeks the Elder Wand only for your
destruction, Mr. Potter. He is determined to possess it because he
believes it will make him truly invulnerable.”
“And will it?”
“The owner of the Elder Wand must always fear attack,” said
Ollivander, “but the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of the
Deathstick is, I must admit . . . formidable.”
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Harry was suddenly reminded of how unsure, when they first
met, of how much he like Ollivander. Even now, having been tor-
tured and imprisoned by Voldemort, the idea of the Dark Wizard
in possession of this wand seemed to enthrall him as much as it
repulsed him.
“You—you really think this wand exists, then, Mr. Ollivan-
der?” asked Hermione.
“Oh yes,” said Ollivander. “Yes, it is perfectly possible to trace
the wand’s course through history. There are gaps, of, course, and
long ones , where it vanishes from view, temporarily lost or hidden;
but always it resurfaces. It has certain identifying characteristics
that those who are learned in wandlore recognize. There are writ-
ten accounts, some of them obscure, that I and other wandmakers
have made it our business to study. They have the ring of authen-
ticity.”
“So you—you don’t think it can be a fairy tale or a myth?”
Hermione asked hopefully.
“No,” said Ollivander. “Whether it needs to pass by murder,
I do not know. Its history is bloody, but that may be simply due
to the fact that it is such a desirable object, and arouses such
passions in wizards. Immensely powerful, dangerous in the wrong
hands, and an object of incredible fascination to all of us who study
the power of wands.”
“Mr. Ollivander,” said Harry, “you told You-Know-Who that
Gregorovitch had the Elder Wand, didn’t you?”
Ollivander turned, if possible, even paler. He looked ghostly as
he gulped.
“But how—how do you—?”
“Never mind how I know it,” said Harry, closing his eyes mo-
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mentarily as his scar burned and he saw, for mere se conds, a vision
of the main street in Hogsmeade, still dark, because it was so much
farther north. “You told You-Know-Who that Gregorovitch had
the wand?”
“It was a rumor,” whispered Ollivander. “A rumor, years and
years ago, long before you were born I believe Gregorovitch himself
started it. You can see how good it would be for business; that he
was studying and duplicating the qualities of the Elder Wand!”
“Yes, I can s ee that,” said Harry. He stood up. “Mr. Ollivander,
one last thing, and then we’ll let you get some rest. What do you
know about the Deathly Hallows?”
“The—the what?” asked the wandmaker, looking utterly be-
wildered.
“The Deathly Hallows.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this still
something to do with wands?”
Harry looked into the sunken face and believed that Ollivander
was not acting. He did not know about the Hallows.
“Thank you,” s aid Harry. “Thank you very much. We’ll leave
you to get some rest now.”
Ollivander looked stricken.
“He was torturing me!” he gasped. “The Cruciatus
Curse . . . you have no idea. . . .”
“I do,” said Harry, “I really do. Please get some rest. Thank
you for telling me all of this.”
He led Ron and Hermione down the staircase. Harry caught
glimpses of Bill, Fleur, Luna, and Dean sitting at the table in the
kitchen, cups of tea in front of them. They all looked up at Harry
as he appeared in the doorway, but he merely nodded to them and
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continued into the garden, Ron and Hermione behind him. The
reddish mound of earth that covered Dobby lay ahead, and Harry
walked back to it, as the pain in his head built more and more
powerfully. It was a huge e↵ort now to close down the visions that
were forcing themselves upon him, but he knew that he would have
to resist only a little longer. He would yield very soon, because he
needed to know that his theory was right. He must make only one
more short e↵ort, so that he could explain to Ron and Hermione.
“Gregorovitch had the Elder Wand a long time ago,” he said,
“I saw You-Know-Who trying to find him. When he tracke d him
down, he found that Gregorovitch didn’t have it anymore: It was
stolen from him by Grindelwald. How Grindelwald found out that
Gregorovitch had it, I don’t know—but if Gregorovitch was stupid
enough to spread the rumor, it can’t have been that difficult.”
Voldemort was at the gates of Hogwarts; Harry could see him
standing there, and see too the lamp bobbing in the pre-dawn,
coming closer and closer.
“And Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to become powerful.
And at the height of his power, when Dumbledore knew he was
the only one who could stop him, he dueled Grindelwald and beat
him, and he took the Elder Wand.”
“Dumbledore had the Elder Wand?” said Ron. “But then—
where is it now?”
“At Hogwarts,” said Harry, fighting to remain with them in the
cli↵-top garden.
“But then, let’s go!” said Ron urgently. “Harry, let’s go and
get it before he does!”
“It’s too late for that,” said Harry. He could not help himself,
but clutched his head, trying to help it resist. “He knows where it
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is. He’s there now.”
“Harry!” Ron said furiously. “How long have you known this—
why have we been wasting time? Why did you talk to Griphook
first? We could have gone—we could still go—”
“No,” said Harry, and he sank to his knees in the grass. “Her-
mione’s right. Dumbledore didn’t want me to have it. He didn’t
want me to take it. He wanted me to get the Horcruxes.”
“The unbeatable wand, Harry!” moaned Ron.
“I’m not supposed to . . . I’m supposed to get the Hor-
cruxes. . . .”
And now everything was cool and dark: The sun was barely
visible over the horizon as he glided alongside Snape, up through
the grounds toward the lake.
“I shall join you in the castle shortly,” he said in his high, cold
voice. “Leave me now.”
Snape bowed and set o↵ back up the path, his black cloak bil-
lowing behind him. Harry walked slowly, waiting for Snape’s figure
to disappear. It would not do for Snape, or indeed anyone else, to
see where he was going. But there were no lights in the castle win-
dows, and he could conceal himself . . . and in a second he had cast
upon himself a Disillusionment Charm that hid him even from his
own eyes.
And he walked on, around the e dge of the lake, taking in the
outlines of the beloved castle, his first kingdom, his birthright. . . .
And here it was, beside the lake, reflected in the dark waters.
The white marble tomb, an unnecessary blot on the familiar land-
scape. He felt again that rush of controlled euphoria, that heady
sense of purpose in destruction. He raised the old yew wand: How
fitting that this would be its last great act.
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The tomb split open from head to foot. The shrouded figure
was as long as thin as it had been in life. He raised the wand again.
The wrappings fell open. The face was translucent, pale,
sunken, yet almost perfectly preserved. They had left his spec-
tacles on the crooked nose: He felt amused derision. Dumbledore’s
hands were folded upon his chest, and there it lay, clutched beneath
them, buried with him.
Had the old fool imagined that marble or death would protect
the wand? Had he thought that the Dark Lord would be scared
to violate his tomb? The spiderlike hand swooped and pulled the
wand from Dumbledore’s grasp, and as he took it, a shower of
sparks flew from its tip, sparkling over the corpse of its last owner,
ready to serve a new master at last.
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Shell Cottage
B
ill and Fleur’s cottage stood alone on a cli↵ overlook-
ing the sea, its walls embedded with shells and white-
washed. It was a lonely and beautiful place. Wherever
Harry went inside the tiny cottage or its garden, he
could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing
of some great, slumbering creature. He spent much of the next
few days making excuse s to escape the crowded cottage, craving
the cli↵-top view of open sky and wide, empty sea, and the feel of
cold, salty wind on his face.
The enormity of his decision not to race Voldemort to the wand
still scared Harry. He could not remember, ever before, choosing
not to act. He was full of doubts, doubts that Ron could not help
voicing whenever they were together.
“What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in
time to get the wand?” “What if working out what the symbol
meant made you ‘worthy’ to get the Hallows?” “Harry, if that
really is the Elder Wand, how the hell are we supposed to finish
o↵ You-Know-Who?”
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Shell Cottage
Harry had no answers: There were moments when he won-
dered whether it had been outright madness not to try to prevent
Voldemort breaking open the tomb. He could not even explain
satisfactorily why he had decided against it: Every time he tried
to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision,
they sounded feebler to him.
The odd thing was that Hermione’s support made him feel just
as confused as Ron’s doubts. Now forced to accept that the Elder
Wand was real, s he maintained that it was an evil object, and that
the way Voldemort had taken possession of it was repellent, not to
be considered.
“You could never have done that, Harry,” she said again and
again. “You couldn’t have broken into Dumbledore’s grave.”
But the idea of Dumbledore’s corpse frightened Harry much less
than the possibility that he might have misunderstood the living
Dumbledore’s intentions. He felt that he was still groping in the
dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering
whether he had m isread the signs, whether he should not have
taken the other way. From time to time, anger at Dumbledore
crashed over him again, powerful as the waves slamming themselves
against the cli↵ beneath the cottage, anger that Dumbledore had
not explained before he died.
“But is he dead?” said Ron, three days after they had arrived
at the cottage. Harry had been staring out over the wall that
separated the cottage garden from the cli↵ when Ron and Her-
mione had found him; he wished they had not, having no wish to
join in with their argument.
“Yes, he is. Ron, please don’t start that again!”
“Look at the facts, He rmione,” said Ron, speaking across Harry,
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who continued to gaze at the horizon. “The silver doe. The sword.
The eye Harry saw in the mirror—”
“Harry admits he could have imagined the eye! Don’t you,
Harry?”
“I could have,” said Harry without looking at her.
“But you don’t think you did, do you?” asked Ron.
“No, I don’t,” said Harry.
“There you go!” said Ron quickly, before Hermione could carry
on. “If it wasn’t Dumbledore, explain how Dobby knew we were
in the cellar, Hermione?”
“I can’t—but can you explain how Dumbledore sent him to us
if he’s lying in a tomb at Hogwarts?” “I dunno, it could’ve been
his ghost!”
“Dumbledore wouldn’t come back as a ghost,” said Harry.
There was little about Dumbledore he was sure of now, but he
knew that much. “He would have gone on.”
“What d’you mean, ‘gone on’?” asked Ron, but before Harry
could say any more, a voice behind them said, “’Arry?”
Fleur had come out of the cottage, her long silver hair flying in
the breeze.
“’Arry, Grip’ook would like to speak to you. ’E eez in ze small-
est bedroom, ’e says ’e does not want to be over’eard.”
Her dislike of the goblin sending her to deliver me ss ages was
clear; she looked irritable as she walked back around the house.
Griphook was waiting for them, as Fleur had said, in the tiniest
of the cottage’s three bedrooms, in which Hermione and Luna slept
by night. He had drawn the red cotton curtains against the bright,
cloudy sky, which gave the room a fiery glow at odds with the rest
of the airy, light cottage.
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Shell Cottage
“I have reached my decision, Harry Potter,” said the goblin,
who was sitting cross-legged in a low chair, drumming its arms
with his spindly fingers. “Though the goblins of Gringotts will
consider it base treachery, I have decided to help you—”
“That’s great!” said Harry, relief surging through him. “Grip-
hook, thank you, we’re really—”
“—in return,” said the goblin firmly, “for payment.”
Slightly taken aback, Harry hesitated.
“How much do you want? I’ve got gold.”
“Not gold,” said Griphook. “I have gold.”
His black eyes glittered; there were no whites to his eyes.
“I want the sword. The sword of Godric Gryffindor.”
Harry’s spirits plummeted.
“You can’t have that,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Then,” said the goblin softly, “we have a problem.”
“We can give you something else,” said Ron eagerly. “I’ll bet
the Lestranges have got loads of stu↵, you can take your pick once
we get into the vault.”
He had said the wrong thing. Gripho ok flushed angrily.
“I am not a thief, boy! I am not trying to pro c ure treasures to
which I have no right!”
“The sword’s ours—”
“It is not,” said the goblin. “We’re Gry↵indors, and it was
Godric Gry↵indor’s—”
“And before it was Gryffindor’s, whose was it?” demanded the
goblin, sitting up straight.
“No one’s,” said Ron. “It was made for him, wasn’t it?”
“No!” cried the goblin, bristling with anger as he pointed a
long finger at Ron. “Wizarding arrogance again! That sword was
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Ragnuk the First’s, taken from him by Godric Gryffindor! It is
a lost treasure, a masterpiece of goblinwork! It belongs with the
goblins. The sword is the price of my hire, take it or leave it!”
Griphook glared at them. Harry glanced at the other two, then
said, “We need to discuss this, Griphook, if that’s all right. Could
you give us a few minutes?”
The goblin nodded, looking sour.
Downstairs in the empty sitting room, Harry walked to the
fireplace, brow furrowed, trying to think what to do. Behind him,
Ron said, “He’s having a laugh. We can’t let him have that sword.”
“It is true?” Harry asked Hermione. “Was the sword stolen by
Gryffindor?”
“I don’t know,” she s aid hopelessly. “Wizarding history often
skates over what the wizards have done to other magical races, but
there’s no account that I know of that says Gryffindor stole the
sword.”
“It’ll be one of those goblin stories,” said Ron, “about how the
wizards are always trying to get one over on them. I suppose we
should think ourselves lucky he hasn’t asked for one of our wands.”
“Goblins have got go od reason to dislike wizards, Ron.” said
Hermione. “They’ve be en treated brutally in the past.”
“Goblins aren’t exactly flu↵y little bunnies, though, are they?”
said Ron. “They’ve killed plenty of us. They’ve fought dirty too.”
“But arguing with Griphook about whose race is most under-
handed and violent isn’t going to make him more likely to help us,
is it?”
There was a pause while they tried to think of a way around the
problem. Harry looked out of the window at Dobby’s grave. Luna
was arranging sea lavender in a jam jar beside the headstone.
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Shell Cottage
“Okay,” said Ron, and Harry turned back to face him, “how’s
this? We tell Griphook we need the sword until we get inside the
vault and then he can have it. There’s a fake in these, isn’t there?
We switch them, and give him the fake.”
“Ron, he’d know the di↵erence better than we would!” said
Hermione. “He’s the only one who realized there had been a swap!”
“Yeah, but we could scarper before he realizes—”
He quailed beneath the look Hermione was giving him.
“That,” she said quietly, “is despicable. Ask for his help, then
double-cross him? And you wonder why goblins don’t like wiz ards,
Ron?”
Ron’s ears had turned red.
“All right, all right! It was the only thing I could think of!
What’s your solution, then?”
“We nee d to o↵er him something else, something just as valu-
able.”
“Brilliant, I’ll go and get one of our ancient goblin-made swords
and you can gift wrap it.”
Silence fell between them again. Harry was sure that the goblin
would accept nothing but the sword, even if they had som ething as
valuable to o↵er him. Yet the sword was their one, indispensable
weapon against the Horcruxes.
He closed his eyes for a moment or two and listened to the
rush of the sea. The idea that Gryffindor might have stolen
the sword was unpleasant to him: He had always been proud to
be a Gryffindor; Gryffindor had bee n the champion of Muggle-
borns, the wizard who had clashed with the pureblood-loving
Slytherin. . . .
“Maybe he’s lying,” Harry said, opening his eyes again. “Grip-
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hook. Maybe Gryffindor didn’t take the sword. How do we know
the goblin version of history’s right?”
“Does it make a di↵erence?” asked Hermione. “Changes how I
feel about it,” said Harry.
He took a deep breath.
“We’ll tell him he can have the sword after he’s helped us get
into that vault—but we’ll be careful to avoid telling him exactly
when he can have it.”
A grin spread slowly across Ron’s face. Hermione, however,
looked alarmed.
“Harry, we can’t—”
“He can have it,” Harry went on, “after we’ve used it on all of
the Horcruxes. I’ll make s ure he gets it then. I’ll keep my word.”
“But that could be years!” said Hermione. “I know that, but
he needn’t. I won’t be lying . . . really.”
Harry me t her eyes with a mixture of defiance and shame. He
remembered the words that had been engraved over the gateway
to Nurmengard: For the Greater Good. He pushed the idea
away. What choice did they have?
“I don’t like it,” said Hermione.
“Nor do I, much,” Harry admitted.
“Well, I think it’s genius,” said Ron, standing up again. “Let’s
go and tell him.”
Back in the smallest bedroom, Harry made the o↵er, careful to
phrase it so as not to give any definite time for the handover of
the sword. Hermione frowned at the floor while he was speaking;
he felt irritated at her, afraid that she might give the game away.
However, Griphook had eyes for nobody but Harry.
“I have your word, Harry Potter, that you will give me the
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sword of Gryffindor if I help you?”
“Yes,” said Harry.
“Then shake,” said the goblin, holding out his hand.
Harry took it and shook. He wondered whether those black eyes
saw any misgivings in his own. Then Griphook relinquished him,
clapped his hands together, and said, “So. We begin!”
It was like planning to break into the Ministry all over again.
They settled to work in the smallest bedroom , which was kept,
according to Griphook’s preference, in semidarkness.
“I have visited the Lestranges’ vault only once,” Griphook told
them, “on the occasion I was told to place inside it the false sword.
It is one of the most ancient chambers. The oldest Wizarding
families store their treasures at the deepest level, where the vaults
are largest and best protected. . . .”
They remained shut in the cupboardlike room for hours at a
time. Slowly the days stretched into weeks. There was problem
after problem to overcome, not least of which was that their store
of Polyjuice Potion was greatly depleted.
“There’s really only enough left for one of us,” said Hermione,
tilting the thick mudlike potion against the lamplight.
“That’ll be enough,” said Harry, who was examining Griphook’s
hand-drawn map of the deepest passageways.
The other inhabitants of Shell Cottage could hardly fail to no-
tice that something was going on now that Harry, Ron and Her-
mione only emerged for mealtimes. Nobody asked questions, al-
though Harry often felt Bill’s eyes on the three of them at the table,
thoughtful, concerned.
The longer they spent together, the more Harry realized that he
did not much like the goblin. Griphook was unexpectedly blood-
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thirsty, laughed at the idea of pain in lesser creatures and s ee med
to relish the possibility that they might have to hurt other wizards
to reach the Lestranges’ vault. Harry could tell that his distaste
was shared by the other two, but they did not discuss it. They
needed Griphook.
The goblin ate only grudgingly with the rest of them. Even
after his legs had mended, he continued to request trays of foo d
in his room , like the still-frail Ollivander, until Bill (following an
angry outburst from Fleur) went upstairs to tell him that the ar-
rangement could not continue. Thereafter Griphook joined them
at the overcrowded table, although he refused to eat the same food,
insisting, instead, on lumps of raw meat, roots, and various fungi.
Harry felt responsible: It was, after all, he who had insisted
that the goblin remain at Shell Cottage so that he could question
him; his fault that the whole Weasley family had been driven into
hiding, that Bill, Fred, George, and Mr. Weasley could no longer
work.
“I’m sorry,” he told Fleur, one blustery April evening as he
helped her prepare dinner. “I never meant you to have to deal
with all of this.”
She had just set s ome knives to work, chipping up steaks for
Griphook and Bill, who had preferred his meat bloody ever since
he had been attacked by Greyback. While the knives sliced behind
her, her somewhat irritable expression softened.
“’Arry, you saved my sister’s life, I do not forget.”
This was not, strictly speaking, true, but Harry decided against
reminding her that Gabrielle had never been in real danger.
“Anyway,” Fleur went on, pointing her want at a pot of sauce on
the stove, which began to bubble at once, “Mr. Ollivander leaves
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for Muriel’s zis evening. Zat will make zings easier. Ze goblin,”
she scowled a little at the mention of him, “can move downstairs,
and you, Ron, and Dean can take zat room.”
“We don’t mind sleeping in the living room,” said Harry, who
knew that Griphook would think poorly of having to sleep on the
sofa; keeping Griphook happy was essential to their plans. “Don’t
worry about us.” And when she tried to protest he went on, “We’ll
be o↵ your hands soon too, Ron, Hermione, and I. We won’t need
to be here much longer.”
“But, what do you mean?” she said, frowning at him, her wand
pointing at the casserole dish now suspended in midair. “Of course
you must not leave, you are safe ’ere!”
She looked rather like Mrs. Weasley as she said it, and he was
glad that the back door opened at that moment. Luna and Dean
entered, their hair damp from the rain outside and their arms full
of driftwood.
“ . . . and tiny little ears,” Luna was saying, “a bit like hippo’s,
Daddy says, only purple and hairy. And if you want to call them,
you have to hum; they prefer a waltz, nothing too fast. . . .”
Looking uncomfortable, Dean shrugged at Harry as he passed,
following Luna into the combined dining and sitting room where
Ron and Hermione were laying the dinner table. Seizing the chance
to escape Fleur’s questions, Harry grabbed two jugs of pumpkin
juice and followed them.
“ . . . and if you e ver come to our house I’ll be able to show
you the horn, Daddy wrote to me about it but I haven’t seen it
yet, because the Death Eaters took me from the Hogwarts Express
and I never got home for Christmas,” Luna was saying, as she and
Dean relit the fire.
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“Luna, we told you,” Hermione called over to her. “That horn
exploded. It came from an Erumpent, not a Crumple-Horned
Snorkack—”
“No, it was definitely a Snorkack horn,” said Luna serenely,
“Daddy told me. It will probably have re–formed by now, they
mend themselves, you know.”
Hermione shook her head and continued laying down forks as
Bill appeared, leading Mr. Ollivander down the stairs. The wand-
maker still looked exceptionally frail, and he clung to Bill’s arm as
the latter supported him, carrying a large suitcase.
“I’m going to miss you, Mr. Ollivander,” said Luna, approach-
ing the old man.
“And I you, my dear,” said Ollivander, patting her on the shoul-
der. “You were an inexpressible comfort to m e in that terrible
place.”
“So, au revoir, Mr. Ollivander,” said Fleur, kissing him on both
cheeks. “And I wonder whezzer you could oblige me by delivering
a package to Bill’s Auntie Muriel!? I never returned ’er tiara.”
“It will be an honor,” said Ollivander with a little bow, “the
very least I can do in return for your generous hospitality.”
Fleur drew out a worn velvet case, which she opened to show
the wandmaker. The tiara sat glittering and twinkling in the light
from the low-hanging lamp.
“Moonstones and diamonds,” said Griphook, who had sidled
into the room without Harry noticing. “Made by goblins, I think?”
“And paid for by wizards,” said Bill quietly, and the goblin shot
him a look that was both furtive and challenging.
A strong wind gusted against the cottage windows as Bill and
Ollivander set o↵ into the night. The rest of them squeezed in
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around the table; elbow to elbow and with barely enough room to
move, they started to eat. The fire crackled and popped in the
grate beside them. Fleur, Harry noticed, was merely playing with
her food; she glanced at the window every few minutes; however,
Bill returned before they had finished their first course, his long
hair tangled by the wind.
“Everything’s fine,” he told Fleur. “Ollivander settled in, Mum
and Dad say hello. Ginny sends you all her love, Fred and George
are driving Muriel up the wall, they’re still operating an Owl-Order
business out of her back room. It cheered her up to have her tiara
back, though. She said she thought we’d stolen it.”
“Ah, she eez charmante, your aunt,” said Fleur crossly, waving
her wand and causing the dirty plates to rise and form a stack in
midair. She caught them and marched out of the room.
“Daddy’s made a tiara,” piped up Luna, “Well, more of a crown,
really.”
Ron caught Harry’s eye and grinned; Harry knew that he was
remembering the ludicrous headdress they had seen on their visit
to Xenophilius.
“Yes, he’s trying to re-create the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. He
thinks he’s identified most of the main elements now. Adding the
billywig wings really made a di↵erence—”
There was a bang on the front door. Everyone’s head turned to-
ward it. Fleur came running out of the kitchen, looking frightened;
Bill jumped to his feed, his wand pointing at the door; Harry, Ron,
and Hermione did the same. Silently Griphook slipped beneath
the table, out of sight.
“Who is it?” Bill called.
“It is I, Remus John Lupin!” called a voice over the howling
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wind. Harry experienced a thrill of fear; what had happened?
“I am a werewolf, married to Nymphadora Tonks, and you, the
Secret-Keeper of Shell Cottage, told me the address and bade me
come in an emergency!”
“Lupin,” muttered Bill, and he ran to the door and wrenched
it open.
Lupin fell over the threshold. He was white-faced, wrapped in
a traveling cloak, his graying hair windswept. He straightened up,
looked around the room, making sure of who was there, then cried
aloud, “It’s a boy! We’ve named him Ted, after Dora’s father!”
Hermione shrieked.
“Wha—? Tonks—Tonks has had the baby?”
“Yes, yes, she’s had the baby!” shouted Lupin. All around the
table came cries of delight, sighs of relief: Hermione and Fleur both
squealed, “Congratulations!” and Ron said, “Blimey, a baby!” as
if he had never heard of such a thing before.
“Yes—yes—a boy,” said Lupin again, who seemed dazed by
his own happiness. He strode around the table and hugged Harry;
the scene in the basement of Grimmauld Place might never have
happened.
“You’ll be godfather?” he said as he released Harry. “M–me?”
stammered Harry.
“You, yes, of course—Dora quite agrees, no one better—”
“I—yeah—blimey—”
Harry felt overwhelmed, astonished, delighted; now Bill was
hurrying to fetch wine, and Fleur was persuading Lupin to join
them for a drink.
“I can’t stay long, I must get back,” said Lupin, beaming around
at them all: He looked years younger than Harry had ever seen him.
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Shell Cottage
“Thank you, thank you, Bill”
Bill had soon filled all of their goblets, they stood and raised
them high in a toast.
“To Teddy Remus Lupin,” said Lupin, “a great wizard in the
making!”
“’Oo does ’e look like?” Fleur inquired.
“I think he looks like Dora, but she thinks he is like me. Not
much hair. It looked black when he was born, but I swear it’s
turned ginger in the hour since. Probably blond by the time I get
back. Andromeda says Tonks’s hair started changing color the day
that she was born.” He drained his goblet. “Oh, go on then, just
one more,” he added, beaming, as Bill made to fill it again.
The wind bu↵eted the little cottage and the fire leapt and crack-
led, and Bill was soon opening another bottle of wine. Lupin’s news
seemed to have taken them out of thems elves, removed them for
a while from their state of siege: Tidings of new life were exhila-
rating. Only the goblin seemed untouched by the suddenly festive
atmosphere, and after a while he slunk back to the bedroom he
now occupied alone. Harry thought he was the only one who had
noticed this, until he saw B ill’s eyes following the goblin up the
stairs.
“No . . . no . . . I really must get back,” said Lupin at last, de-
clining yet another goblet of wine. He got to his feet and pulled
his traveling cloak back around himself.
“Good-bye, good-bye—I’ll try and bring some pictures in a few
day’s time—they’ll all be so glad to know that I’ve seen you—”
He fastened his cloak and made his farewells, hugging the women
and grasping hands with the men, then, still beaming, returned
into the wild night.
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“Godfather, Harry!” said Bill as they walked into the kitchen
together, helping clear the table. “A real honor! Congratulations!”
As Harry set down the empty goblets he was carrying, Bill
pulled the door behind him closed, shutting out the still-voluble
voices of the others, who were continuing to celebrate even in
Lupin’s absence.
“I wanted a private word, actually, Harry. It hasn’t been easy
to get an opportunity with the cottage this full of people.”
Bill hesitated.
“Harry, you’re planning something with Griphook.”
It was a statement, not a question, and Harry did not bother
to deny it. He merely looked at Bill, waiting.
“I know goblins,” said Bill. “I’ve worked for Gringotts ever
since I left Hogwarts. As far as there can be friendship between
wizards and goblins, I have goblin friends—or, at least, goblins I
know well, and like.” Again, Bill hesitated.
“Harry, what do you want from Griphook, and what have you
promised him in return?”
“I can’t tell you that,” said Harry. “Sorry, Bill.”
The kitchen door opened behind them; Fleur was trying to bring
through more empty goblets.
“Wait,” Bill told her, “Just a moment.”
She backed out and he closed the door again.
“Then I have to say this,” Bill went on. “If you have struck any
kind of bargain with Griphook, and most particularly if that bar-
gain involves treasure, you must be exceptionally careful. Goblin
notions of ownership, payment, and repayment are not the same
as human ones.”
Harry felt a slight squirm of discomfort, as though a small snake
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had stirred inside him.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“We are talking about a di↵erent breed of being,” said Bill.
“Dealings between wizards and goblins have been fraught for
centuries—but you’ll know all that from History of Magic. There
has b e en fault on both sides, I would never claim that wizards have
been innocent. However, there is a belief among some goblins, and
those at Gringotts are perhaps most prone to it, that wizards can-
not be trusted in matters of gold and treasure, that they have no
respect for goblin ownership.”
“I respect—” Harry began, but Bill shook his head.
“You don’t understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless
they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true
master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin
made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs.”
“But it was bought—”
“—then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid
the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of
goblin-made objects passing from wizard to w izard. You saw Grip-
hook’s face when the tiara passed under his eyes. He disapproves.
I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, that it ought to
have been returned to the goblins once the original purchaser died.
They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing
them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more
than theft.”
Harry had an ominous feeling now; he wondered whether Bill
guessed more than he was letting on.
“All I am saying,” said Bill, setting his hand on the door back
into the sitting room, “is to be very careful what you promise gob-
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lins, Harry. It would be less dangerous to break into Gringotts
than to renege on a promise to a goblin.”
“Right,” said Harry as B ill opened the door, “yeah. Thanks.
I’ll bear that in mind.” As he followed Bill back to the others a
wry thought came to him, born no doubt of the wine he had drunk.
He seemed set on course to become just as reckless a godfather to
Teddy Lupin as Sirius Black had been to him.
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Gringotts
T
heir plans were made, their preparations complete; in
the smallest bedroom a single long, coarse black hair
(plucked from the sweater Hermione had been wearing
at Malfoy Manor) lay curled in a s mall glas s phial on
the mantelpiece.
“And you’ll be using her actual wand,” said Harry, nodding
toward the walnut wand, “so I reckon you’ll be pretty convincing.”
Hermione looked frightened that the wand might sting or bit
her as she picked it up.
“I hate that thing,” she said in a low voice. “I really hate it. It
feels all wrong, it doesn’t work properly for me . . . It’s like a bit of
her.”
Harry could not help but remember how Hermione has dis-
missed his loathing of the blackthorn wand, insisting that he was
imagining things when it did not work as well as his own, telling
him to simply practice. He chose not to repeat her own advice back
to her, however, the eve of their attempted assault on Gringotts
felt like the wrong moment to antagonize her.
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“It’ll probably help you get in character, though,” said Ron.
“think what that wand’s done!”
“But that’s my point!” said Hermione. “This is the wand that
tortured Neville’s mum and dad, and who knows how many other
people? This is the wand that killed Sirius!”
Harry had not thought of that: He looked down at the wand
and was visited by a brutal urge to snap it, to slice it in half with
Gryffindor’s sword, which was propped against the wall beside him.
“I miss my wand,” Hermione s aid miserably. “I wish Mr. Olli-
vander could have made me another one too.”
Mr. Ollivander had sent Luna a new wand that morning. She
was out on the back lawn at that moment, testing its capabilities
in the late afternoon sun. Dean, who had lost his wand to the
Snatchers, was watching rather gloomily.
Harry looked down at the hawthorn wand that had once be-
longed to Draco Malfoy. He had been surprised, but pleased to
discover that it worked for him at least as well as Hermione’s had
done. Remembering what Ollivander had told them of the secret
workings of wands, Harry thought he knew what Hermione’s prob-
lem was: She had not won the walnut wand’s allegiance by taking
it personally from Bellatrix.
The door of the b e droom op ened and Griphook entered. Harry
reached instinctively for the hilt of the sword and drew it c lose to
him, but regretted his action at once. He could tell that the gob-
lin had noticed. Seeking to gloss over the sticky moment, he said,
“We’ve just been checking the last-minute stu↵, Griphook. We’ve
told Bill and Fleur we’re leaving tomorrow, and we’ve told them
not to get up to see us o↵.”
They had been firm on this point, because Hermione would
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Gringotts
need to transform in Bellatrix before they left, and the less that
Bill and Fleur knew or suspected about what they were about to
do, the better. They had also explained that they would not be
returning. As they had lost Perkin’s old tent on the night that the
Snatcher’s caught them, Bill had lent them another one. It was
now packed inside the beaded bag, which, Harry was impressed to
learn, Hermione had protected from the Snatchers by the simple
expedient of stuffing it down her sock.
Though he would miss Bill, Fleur, Luna, and Dean, not to
mention the home comforts they had enjoyed over the last few
weeks, Harry was lo oking forward to escaping the confinement of
Shell Cottage. He was tired of trying to make sure that they were
not overheard, tired of being shut in the tiny, dark bedroom. Most
of all, he longed to be rid of Griphook. However, precisely how
and when they were to part from the goblin without handing over
Gryffindor’s sword remained a question to which Harry had no
answer. It had been impossible to decide how they were going
to do it, because the goblin rarely left Harry, Ron, and Hermione
alone together for more than five minutes at a time: “He could
give my mother lessons,” growled Ron, as the goblin’s long fingers
kept appearing around the edges of doors. With Bill’s warning in
mind, Harry could not help suspe cting that Griphook was on the
watch for possible skulduggery. Hermione disapproved so heartily
of the planned double-cross that Harry had given up attempting
to pick her brains on how best to do it: Ron, on the rare occasions
that they had b e en able to snatch a few Griphook-free moments,
had come up with nothing better than “We’ll just have to wing it,
mate.”
Harry slept badly that night. Lying away in the early hours,
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he thought back to the way he had felt the night before they had
infiltrated the Ministry of Magic and remembered a determination,
almost an excitement. Now he was experiencing jolts of anxiety
nagging doubts: He could not shake o↵ the fear that it was all
going to go wrong. He kept telling himself that their plan was
good, that Griphook knew what they were facing, that they were
well-prepared for all the difficulties they were likely to encounter,
yet still he felt uneasy. Once or twice he heard Ron stir and was
sure that he too was awake, but they were sharing the sitting room
with Dean, so Harry did not speak.
It was a relief when six o’clock arrived and they could slip out
of their sleeping bags, dress in the semidarkness, then creep out
into the garden, where they were to meet Hermione and Griphook.
The dawn was chilly, but there was little wind now that it was
May. Harry looked up at the stars still glimmering palely in the
dark sky and listened to the sea washing backward and forward
against the cli↵: He was going to miss the sound.
Small green shoots were forcing their way up through the red
earth of Dobby’s grave now, in a year’s time the mound would
be covered in flowers. The white stone that bore the elf’s name
had already acquired a weathered look. He realized now that they
could hardly have laid Dobby to rest in a more beautiful place, but
Harry ached with sadness to think of leaving him behind. Looking
down on the grave, he wondered yet again how the elf had known
where to come to rescue them. His fingers moved absentmindedly
to the little pouch still strung around his neck, thorough which he
could feel the jagged mirror fragment in which he had be en sure
he had seen Dumbledore’s eye. Then the sound of a door opening
made him look around.
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Gringotts
Bellatrix Lestrange was striding across the lawn toward them,
accompanied by Griphook. As she walked, she was tucking the
small, b eaded bag into the inside pocket of another set of the old
robes they had taken from Grimmauld Place. Though Harry knew
perfectly well that it was really Hermione, he c ould not suppress
a shiver of loathing. She was taller than he was, her long black
hair rippling down her back, her heavily lidded e yes disdainful as
they rested upon him; but then she spoke, and he heard Hermione
through Bellatrix’s low voice.
“She tasted disgusting, worse than Gurdyroots! Okay, Ron,
come here so I can do you. . . .”
“Right, but remember, I don’t like the beard too long”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, this isn’t about looking handsome”
“It’s not that, it gets in the way! But I liked my nose a bit
shorter, try and do it the way you did last time.”
Hermione sighed and set to work, muttering under her breath
as she transformed various aspects of Ron’s appearance. He was
to be given a completely fake identity, and they were trusting to
the malevolent aura cast by Bellatrix to protect him. Meanwhile
Harry and Griphook were to be concealed under the Invisibility
Cloak.
“There,” said Hermione, “how does he look, Harry?”
It was just possible to discern Ron under his disguise, but only,
Harry thought, because he knew him so well. Ron’s hair was now
long and wavy; he had a thick brown beard and mustache, no
freckles, a short, broad nose, and heavy eyebrows.
“Well, he’s not my type, but he’ll do,” said Harry. “Shall we
go, then?”
All three of them glanced back at Shell Cottage, lying dark and
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silent under the fading stars, then turned and began to walk toward
the point, just beyond the boundary wall, where the Fidelius Chard
stopped working and they would be able to Disapparate. Once past
the gate, Griphook spoke.
“I should climb up now, Harry Potter, I think?”
Harry bent down and the goblin clambered onto his back, his
hands linked on front of Harry’s throat. He was not heavy, but
Harry disliked the feeling of the goblin and the surprising strength
with which he clung on. Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak out
of the beaded bag and threw it over them both.
“Perfect,” she said, bending down to check Harry’s feet. “I
can’t see a thing. Let’s go.”
Harry turned on the spot, with Griphook on his shoulders, con-
centrating with all his might on the Leaky Cauldron, the inn that
was the entrance to Diagon Alley. The goblin clung even tighter
as they moved into the compressing darkness, and se conds later
Harry’s feet found pavement and he opened his eyes on Charing
Cross Road. Muggles bustled past wearing the hangdog expressions
of early morning, quite unconscious of the little inn’s existence.
The bar of the Leaky Cauldron was nearly deserted. Ton, the
stooped and toothless landlord, was polishing glasses behind the
bar counter; a couple of warlocks having a muttered conve rsation in
the far corner glanced at Hermione and drew back into the shadows.
“Madam Lestrange,” murmured Tom, and as Hermione paused
he inclined his head subserviently.
“Good morning,” said Hermione, and as Harry crept past, still
carrying Griphook piggyback under the Cloak, he saw Tom look
surprised.
“Too polite,” Harry whispered in Hermione’s ear as they passed
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Gringotts
out of the Inn into the tiny backyard. “You need to treat people
like they’re scum!”
“Okay, okay!”
Hermione drew out Bellatrix’s wand and rapped a brick in the
nondescript wall in front of them. At once the bricks began to
whirl and spin: A hole appeared in the middle of them, which
grew wider and wider, finally forming an archway onto the narrow
cobbled street that was Diagon Alley.
It was quiet, barely time for the shops to open, and there were
hardly any shoppers abroad. The crooked, cobbled street was much
altered now from the bustling place Harry had visited b efore his
first team at Hogwarts so many years before. More shops than ever
were boarded up, though several new establishments dedicated to
the Dark Arts had been created since his last visit. Harry’s own
face glared down at him from posters plastered over many windows,
always captioned with the words undesirable number one.
A number of ragged people sat huddled in doorways. He heard
them moaning to the few passersby, pleading for gold, insisting
that they were really w izards. One man had a bloody bandage
over his eye.
As they set o↵ along the street, the beggars glimpsed Hermione.
They seemed to melt away before her, drawing hoods over their
faces and fleeing as fast as they c ould. He rmione looked after them
curiously, until the man with the bloodied bandage came staggering
right across her path.
“My children,” he bellowed, pointing at her. His voice was
cracked, high-pitched, he sounded distraught. “Where are my chil-
dren? What has he done with them? You know, you know!”
“I–I really—” s tamme red Hermione.
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The man lunged at her, reaching for her throat. Then, with a
bang and a burst of red light he was thrown backward onto the
ground, unconscious. Ron stood there, his wand still outstretched
and a look of shock visible behind his beard. Fac es appeared at
the windows on either side of the s treet, while a little knot of
prosperous-looking passerby gathered their robes about them and
broke into gentle trots, keen to vacate the scene.
Their entrance into Diagon Alley could hardly have been more
conspicuous; for a moment Harry wondered whether it might not
be better to leave now and try to think of a di↵erent plan. Before
they could move or consult one another, howeve r, they heard a cry
from behind them.
“Why, Madam Lestrange!”
Harry whirled around and Griphook tightened his hold around
Harry’s neck: A tall, think wizard with a crown of bushy gray hair
and a long, sharp nose was striding toward them.
“It’s Travers,” hissed the goblin into Harry’s ear, but at that
moment Harry could not think who Travers was. Hermione had
drawn herself up to full height and said with as much contempt as
she could muster:
“And what do you want?”
Travers stopped in his tracks, clearly a↵ronted.
“He’s another Death Eater!” breathed Griphook, and Harry
sidled sideways to repeat the information into Hermione’s ear.
“I merely s ought to greet you,” said Travers coolly, “but if my
presence is not welcome . . . ”
Harry recognized his voice now: Travers was one of the Death
Eaters who had been summoned to Xenophilius’s house.
“No, no, not at all, Travers,” said He rmione quickly, trying to
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cover up her mistake. “How are you?”
“Well, I confess I am surprised to see you out and about, Bel-
latrix.”
“Really? Why?” asked Hermione.
“Well,” Travers c oughed, “I heard that the Inhabitants of Mal-
foy Manor were c onfined to the house, after the . . . ah . . . escape.”
Harry willed Hermione to keep her head. If this was true, and
Bellatrix was not supposed to be out in public—
“The Dark Lord forgives those who have s erved him most faith-
fully in the past,” said Hermione in a magnificent imitation of Bel-
latrix’s most contemptuous manner. “Perhaps your credit is not
as good with him as mine is, Travers.”
Though the Death Eater looked o↵ended, he also seemed less
suspicious. He glanced down at the man Ron had just Stunned.
“How did it o↵end you?”
“It does not matter, it will not do so again,” said Hermione
coolly.
“Some of thes e wandless can be troublesome,” said Travers.
“While they do nothing but beg I have no objection, but one of
them actually asked me to plead her case in the Ministry last week.
‘I’m a witch, sir, I’m a witch, let me prove it to you! ’” he said
in a squeaky impersonation. “As if I was going to give her my
wand—but whose wand,” said Travers curiously, “are you using
at the moment, Bellatrix? I heard that your own was—”
“I have my wand here,” said Hermione coldly, holding up Bel-
latrix’s wand. “I don’t know what rumors you have been listening
to, Travers, but you seem sadly misinformed.”
Travers seemed a little taken aback at that, and he turned in-
stead to Ron.
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“Who is your friend? I do not recognize him.”
“This is Dragomir Despard,” said Hermione; they had decided
that a fictional foreigner was the safest cover for Ron to assume.
“He speaks very little English, but he is in sympathy with the Dark
Lord’s aims. He has traveled here from Transylvania to see our new
regime.”
“Indeed? How do you do, Dragomir?”
“’Ow you?” said Ron, holding out his hand.
Travers extended two fingers and shook Ron’s hand as though
frightened of dirtying himself.
“So what brings you and your—ah—sympathetic friend to Di-
agon Alley this early?” as ked Travers.
“I need to visit Gringotts,” said Hermione.
“Alas, I also,” said Travers. “Gold, filthy gold! We cannot live
without it, yet I confess I deplore the necessity of consorting with
our long-fingered friends.”
Harry felt Griphook’s clasped hands tighten momentarily
around his neck.
“Shall we?” said Travers, gesturing Hermione forward.
Hermione had no choice but to fall into step beside him and
head along the crooked, cobbled street toward the place where the
snowy-white Gringotts stood towering over the other little shops.
Ron sloped along beside them, and Harry and Griphook followed.
A watchful Death Eater was the very last thing they needed,
and the worst of it was, with Travers matching at what he believed
to be Bellatrix’s side, there was no means for Harry to communicate
with Hermione or Ron. All too soon they arrived at the foot of the
marble s teps leading up to the great bronze doors. As Griphook
had already warned them, the liveried goblins who usually flanked
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the entrance had been replaced by two wizards, both of whom were
clutching long thin golden rods.
“Ah, Probity Probes,” signed Travers theatrically, “so crude—
but so e↵ective!”
And he set o↵ up the steps, nodding left and right to the wiz-
ards, who raised the golden rods and passed them up and down
his body. The Probes, Harry knew, detecte d spells of concealment
and hidden magical objects. Knowing that he had only seconds,
Harry pointed Draco’s wand at each of the guards in turn and mur-
mured, “Confundo” twice. Unnoticed by Travers, who was looking
through the bronze doors at the inner hall, each of the guards gave
a little start as the spells hit them.
Hermione’s long black hair rippled behind her as she climbed
the steps.
“One moment, madam,” said the guard, raising his Probe.
“But you’ve just done that!” said Hermione in Bellatrix’s com-
manding, arrogant voice. Travers looked around, eyebrows raised.
The guard was confused. He stared down at the thin golden Probe
and then at his companion, who said in a slightly dazed voice,
“Yeah, you’ve just checked them, Marius.”
Hermione swept forward. Ron by her side, Harry and Griphook
trotting invisibly behind them. Harry glanced back as they crossed
the threshold. The wizards were both scratching their heads.
Two goblins stood before the inner doors, which were made of
silver and which carried the poem warning of dire retribution to
potential thieves. Harry looked up at it, and all of a sudden a
knife-sharp memory came to him: standing on this very spot on
the day that he had turned eleven, the most wonderful birthday
of his life, and Hagrid standing bes ide him saying, “Like I said,
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yeh’d be mad ter try an’ rob it.” Gringotts had seemed a place of
wonder that day, the enchanted repository of a trove of gold he
had never known he possessed, and never for an instant could he
have dreamed that he would return to steal. . . . But within seconds
they were standing in the vast marble hall of the bank.
The long counter was manned by goblins sitting on high stools
serving the first customers of the day. Hermione, Ron, and Travers
headed toward an old goblin who was examining a thick gold coin
through an eyeglass. Hermione allowed Travers to step ahead of
her on the pretext of explaining features of the hall to Ron.
The goblin tossed the coin he was holding aside, said to nobody
in particular, “Leprechaun,” and then greeted Travers, who passed
over a tiny golden key, which was examined and given back to him.
Hermione stepped forward.
“Madam Lestrange!” said the goblin, evidently startled. “Dear
me! How—how may I help you today?”
“I wish to enter my vault,” said Hermione.
The old goblin seemed to recoil a little. Harry glanced around.
Not only was Travers hanging back, watching, but several other
goblins had looked up from their work to stare at Hermione.
“You have . . . identification?” asked the goblin.
“Identification? I–I have never been asked for identification
before!” said Hermione.
“They know! ” whispered Griphook in Harry’s ear, “They must
have been warned there might be an imposter!”
“Your wand will do, madam,” said the goblin. He held out a
slightly trembling hand, and in a dreadful blast of realization Harry
knew that the goblins of Gringotts were aware that Bellatrix’s wand
had been stolen.
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Gringotts
“Act now, act now,” whispered Griphook in Harry’s ear, “the
Imperious Curse!”
Harry raised the hawthorn wand beneath the c loak, pointed
it at the old goblin, and whispered, for the first time in his life,
“Imperio!”
A curious sensation shot down Harry’s arm, a feeling of tingling,
warmth that se eme d to flow from his mind, down the sinews and
veins connecting him to the wand and the curse it had just cast.
The goblin took Bellatrix’s wand, examined it closely, and then
said, “Ah, you have had a new wand made, Madam Lestrange!”
“What?” said Hermione, “No, no, that’s mine—”
“A new wand?” said Travers, approaching the counter again;
still the goblins all around were watching. “But how could you
have done, which wandmaker did you use?”
Harry acted without thinking. Pointing his wand at Travers,
he muttered, “Imperio!” once more.
“Oh yes, I see,” said Travers, looking down at Bellatrix’s wand,
“yes, very handsome. and is it working well? I always think wands
require a little breaking in, don’t you?”
Hermione looked utterly bewildered, but to Harry’s enormous
relief she accepted the bizarre turn of events without c omm ent.
The old goblin behind the counter clapped his hands and a
younger goblin approached.
“I shall need the Clankers,” he told the goblin, who dashed
away and returned a moment later with a leather bag that seemed
to be full of jangling metal, which he handed to his senior. “Good,
good! So, if you will follow me, Madam Lestrange,” said the old
goblin, hopping down o↵ his stool and vanishing from sight. “I
shall take you to your vault.”
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He appeared around the end of the counter, jogging happily
toward them, the contents of the leather bag still jingling. Travers
was now standing quite still with his mouth hanging wide open.
Ron was drawing attention to this odd phenomenon by regarding
Travers with confusion.
“Wait—Bogrod!”
Another goblin came scurrying around the counter.
“We have instructions,” he said with a bow to Hermione. “For-
give m e, Madam, but there have been special orders regarding the
vault of Lestrange.”
He whispered urgently in Bogrod’s ear, but the Imperiused gob-
lin shook him o↵.
“I am aware of the instructions, Madam Lestrange wishes
to visit her vault. . . . Very old family . . . old clients . . . This way,
please . . . “
And, still clanking, he hurried toward one of the many doors
leading o↵ the hall. Harry looked back at Travers, who was still
rooted to the spot looking abnormally vacant, and made his deci-
sion. With a flick of his wand he made Travers come with them,
walking meekly in their wake as they reached the door and passed
into the rough stone passageway beyond, which was lit with flaming
torches.
“We’re in trouble; they suspect,” said Harry as the door
slammed behind them and he pulled o↵ the Invisibility Cloak.
Griphook jumped down from his shoulders: neither Travers nor
Bogrod showed the slightest surprise at the sudden appearance of
Harry Potter in their midst. “They’re Imperiused,” he added, in
response to Hermione and Ron’s confused queries about Travers
and Bogrod, who were both now standing there looking blank. “I
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don’t think I did it strongly enough, I don’t know . . . ”
And another memory darted through his mind, of the real Bel-
latrix Lestrange shrieking at him when he had first tried to use an
Unforgivable Curse: “You need to mean them, Potter!”
“What do we do?” asked Ron. “Shall we get out now, while we
can?”
“If we can,” said Hermione, looking back toward the door into
the main hall, beyond which who knew what was happening.
“We’ve got this far, I say we go on,” said Harry.
“Good!” said Griphook. “So, we need Bogrod to control the
cart; I no long have the authority. But there will not be room for
the wizard.”
Harry pointed his wand at Travers.
“Imperio!”
The wizard turned and set o↵ along the dark track at a smart
pace.
“What are you making him do?”
“Hide,” said Harry as he pointed his wand at Bogrod, who
whistled to summon a little cart that came trundling along the
tracks toward them out of the darkness. Harry was sure he could
hear shouting behind them in the main hall as they all clambered
into it, Bogrod in front of Griphook, Harry, Ron, and Hermione
crammed together in the back.
With a jerk the cart moved o↵, gathering speed: They hurried
past Travers, who was wriggling into a crack in the wall, then the
cart began twisting and turning through the labyrinthine passage s,
sloping downward all the time. Harry could not hear anything over
the rattling of the cart on the tracks: His hair flew behind him as
they swerved between stalactites, flying ever deeper into the earth,
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Chapter 26
but he kept glancing back. They might as well have left enormous
footprints behind them; the more he thought about it, the more
foolish it seemed to have disguised Hermione as Bellatrix, to have
brought along Bellatrix’s wand, when the Death Eaters knew who
had stolen it—
There were deeper than Harry had ever penetrated within
Gringotts; they took a hairpin bend at speed and saw ahead of
them, with sec onds to spare, a waterfall pounding over the track.
Harry heard Griphook shout, “No!” but there was no braking.
They zoomed through it. Water filled Harry’s eyes and mouth:
He could not see or breathe: Then, with an awful lurch, the cart
flipped over and they were all thrown out of it. Harry heard the
cart smash into pieces against the passage wall, heard Hermione
shriek something, and felt himself glide back toward the ground as
though weightless, landing painlessly on the rocky passage floor.
“C–Cushioning Charm,” Hermione spluttered, as Ron pulled
her to her feet, but to Harry’s horror he saw that she was no longer
Bellatrix; instead she stood there in overlarge robes, sopping wet
and completely herself; Ron was red-haired and beardless again.
They were realizing it as they looked at each other, feeling their
own faces.
“The Thief’s Downfall!” said Griphook, clambering to his feet
and looking back the deluge onto the tracks, which, Harry knew
now, had been more than water. “It washes away all enchant-
ment, all magical concealment! They know there are imposers in
Gringotts, they have set o↵ defenses against us!”
Harry saw Hermione checking that she still had the beaded bag,
and hurriedly thrust his own hand under his jacket to make sure he
had not lost the Invisibility Cloak. Then he turned to see Bogrod
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Gringotts
shaking his head in bewilderment: The Thief’s Downfall seemed
to have lifted his Imperius Curse.
“We need him,” said Griphook, “we cannot enter the vault with-
out a Gringott’s goblin. And we need the clankers!”
“Imperio! ” Harry said again; his voice echoed through the stone
passage as he felt again the sense of heady control that flowed
from brain to wand. Bogrod submitted once more to his will, his
befuddled expression changing to one of polite indi↵erence, as Ron
hurried to pick up the leather bag of metal tools.
“Harry, I think I can hear people coming!” said Hermione, and
she pointed Bellatrix’s wand at the waterfall and cried, “Protego! ”
They saw the Shield Charm break the flow of enchanted water as
it flew up the passageway.
“Good thinking,” said Harry. “Lead the way, Griphook!”
“How are we going to get out again?” Ron asked as they hurried
on foot into the darkness after the goblin, Bogrod panting in their
wake like an old dog.
“Let’s worry about that when we have to,” said Harry. He was
trying to listen: He thought he could hear something clanking and
moving around nearby. “Griphook, how much farther?”
“Not far, Harry Potter, not far . . . “
And they turned a corner and saw the thing for which Harry
had been prepared, but which still brought all of them to a halt.
A gigantic dragon was tethered to the ground in front of them,
barring access to four or five of the deepest vaults in the place. The
beast’s scales had turned pale and flaky during its long incarcer-
ation under the ground, its eyes were milkily pink; both rear legs
bore heavy cu↵s from which chains led to enormous pegs driven
deep into the rocky floor. Its great spiked wings, folded close to its
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Chapter 26
body, would have filled the chamber if it spread them, and when
it turned its ugly head toward them, it roared with a noise that
made the rock tremble, opened its mouth, and spat a jet of fire
that sent them running back up the passageway.
“It is partially blind,” panted Griphook, “but even more savage
for that. However, we have the means to control it. It has learned
what to expect when the Clankers come. Give them to me.”
Ron passed the bag to Griphook, and the goblin pulled out a
number of small metal instruments that when shaken made a long
ringing noise like miniature hammers on anvils. Griphook handed
them out: Bogrod accepted his meekly.
“You know what to do,” Griphook told Harry, Ron, and Her-
mione. “It will expect pain when it hears the noise. It will retreat,
and Bogrod must place his palm upon the door of the vault.”
They advanced around the corner again, shaking the Clankers,
and the noise echoed o↵ the rocky walls, grossly magnified, so that
the inside of Harry’s skull seemed to vibrate with the den. The
dragon let out another hoarse roar, then retreated. Harry could
see it trembling, and as they drew nearer he saw the scars made by
vicious slashes across its face, and guess that it had been taught
to fear hot swords when it heard the sound of the Clankers.
“Make him press his hand to the door!” Griphook urged Harry,
who turned his wand again upon Bogrod. The old goblin obeyed,
pressing his palm to the wood, and the door of the vault melted
away to reveal a cavelike opening crammed from floor to ceiling
with golden coins and goblets, silver armor, the skins of strange
creatures—some with long spines, other with dro oping wings-
potions in jeweled flasks, and a skull still wearing a crown. “Search,
fast!” said Harry as they all hurried inside the vault. He had de-
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Gringotts
scribed Hu✏epu↵’s cap to Ron and Hermione, but if it was the
other, unknown Horcrux that resided in this vault, he did not know
what it looked like. He barely had time to glance around, however,
before there was a mu✏ed clunk from behind them: The door had
reappeared, sealing them inside the vault, and they were plunged
into total darkness.
“No matter, Bogrod will be able to release us!” said Griphook
as Ron gave a shout of surprise. “Light your wands, can’t you?
And hurry, we have little time!”
“Lumos!”
Harry shone his lit wand around the vault: Its beam fell upon
glittering jewels; he saw the fake sword of Gryffindor lying on a
high shelf amongst a jumble of chains. Ron and Hermione had
lit their wands too, and were now examining the piles of objects
surrounding them.
“Harry, could this be—? Aargh!”
Hermione screamed in pain, and Harry turned his wand on her
in time to see a jeweled goblet tumbling from her grip. But as it
fell, it s plit, became a shower of goblets, so that a second later,
with a great clatter, the floor was covered in identical cups rolling
in every direction, the original impossible to discern amongst them.
“It burned me!” moaned Hermione, sucking her blistered fin-
gers.
“They have added Germino and Flagrante Curses!” said Grip-
hook.
“Everything you touch will burn and multiply, but the copies
are worthless—and if you continue to handle the treasure, you will
eventually be crushed to death by the weight of expanding gold!”
“Okay, don’t touch anything!” said Harry desperately, but even
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Chapter 26
as he said it, Ron accidentally nudged one of the fallen goblets with
his foot, and twenty more exploded into b e ing while Ron hopped
on the spot, part of his shoe burned away by contact with the hot
metal.
“Stand still, don’t move!” said Hermione, clutching at Ron.
“Just look around!” said Harry. “Remember, the cup’s small
and gold, it’s got a badger engraved on it, two handles—otherwise
see if you can spot Ravenclaw’s symbol anywhere, the eagle—”
They directed their wands into every nook and crevice, turning
cautiously on the spot. It was imposs ible not to brush up against
anything; Harry sent a great cascade of fake Galleons onto the
ground where they joined the goblets, and now there was scarcely
room to place their feet, and the glowing gold blaze d with heat, so
that the vault felt like a furnace. Harry’s wandlight passed over
shields and goblin-made helmets set on shelves rising to the ceiling;
higher and higher he raised the beam, until s uddenly it found an
object that made his heart skip and his hand tremble.
“It’s there, it’s up there! ”
Ron and Hermione pointed there wands at it too, so that the
little golden cup sparkled in a three-way spotlight: the cup that had
belonged to Helga Hu✏epu↵, which had passed into the possession
of Hepzibah Smith, from whom it had been stolen by Tom Riddle.
“And how the hell are we going to get up there without touching
anything?” asked Ron.
“Accio Cup!” cried Hermione, who had evidently forgotten in
her desperation what Griphook had told them during their plan-
ning sessions.
“No use, no use!” snarled the goblin.
“Then what do we do?” said Harry, glaring at the goblin. “If
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Gringotts
you want the sword, Griphook, then you’ll have to help us more
than—wait! Can I touch stu↵ with the sword? Hermione, give it
here!”
Hermione fumbled insider her robes, drew out a beaded bag,
rummaged for a few seconds, then removed the shining sword.
Harry seized it by its rubied hilt and touched the tip of the blade
to a silver flagon nearby, which did not multiply.
“If I can just poke the sword through a handle—but how am I
going to get up there?”
The shelf on which the cup reposed was out of reach for any
of them, even Ron, who was tallest. The heat from the enchanted
treasure rose in waves, and sweat ran down Harry’s face and back
as he struggled to think of a way up to the cup; and then he heard
the dragon roar on the other side of the vault door, and the sound
of clanking growing louder and louder.
They were truly trapped now: There was no way out except
through the door, and a horde of goblins seemed to be approaching
on the other side. Harry looked at Ron and Hermione and saw
terror in their faces.
“Hermione,” said Harry, as the clanking grew louder, “I’ve got
to get up there, we’ve got to get rid of it—”
She raised her wand, pointed it at Harry, and whispered, “Lev-
icorpus.”
Hoisted into the air by his ankle, Harry hit a suit of armor and
replicas burst out of it like white-hot bodies, filling the cramped
space. With screams of pain, Ron, Hermione, and the two gob-
lins were knocked aside into other objects, which also began to
replicate. Half buried in a rising tide of red-hot treasure, they
struggled and yelled has Harry thrust the sword through the handle
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Chapter 26
of Hu✏epu↵’s cup, hooking it onto the blade.
“Impervius!” screeched Hermione in an attempt to protect her-
self, Ron, and the goblins from the burning metal.
Then the worst scream yet made Harry look down: Ron and
Hermione were waist deep in treasure, struggling to keep Bogrod
from slipping beneath the rising tide, but Griphook had s unk out
of sight; and nothing but the tips of a few long fingers were left in
view.
Harry seized Griphook’s fingers and pulled. The blistered gob-
lin emerged by degrees, howling.
“Liberatocorpus!” yelled Harry, and with a crash he and Grip-
hook landed on the s urface of the swelling treasure, and the sword
flew out of Harry’s hand.
“Get it!” Harry yelled, fighting the pain of the hot metal on his
skin, as Griphook clambered onto his shoulders again, determined
to avoid the swelling mass of red-hot objects. “Where’s the sword?
It had the cup on it!”
The clanking on the other side of the door was growing
deafening—it was too late—
“There!”
It was Griphook who had seen it and Griphook who lunged,
and in that instant Harry knew that the goblin had never expected
them to keep their word. One hand holding tightly to a fistful of
Harry’s hair, to make s ure he did not fall into the heaving sea of
burning gold, Griphook seized the hilt of the sword and swung it
high out of Harry’s reach. The tiny golden cup, skewered by the
handle on the sword’s blade was flung into the air. The goblin
astride him, Harry dived and caught it, and although he could feel
it sc alding his flesh he did not relinquish it, even while countless
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Gringotts
Hu✏epu↵ cups burst from his fist, raining down upon him as the
entrance of the vault opened up again and he found himself sliding
uncontrollably on an expanding avalanche of fiery gold and silver
that bore him, Ron, Hermione into the outer chamb er.
Hardly aware of the pain from the burns covering his body, and
still borne along the swell of replicating treasure, Harry shoved
the cup into his pocket and reached up to retrieve the sword, but
Griphook was gone. Sliding from Harry’s shoulders the moment
he could, he had sprinted for cover amongst the surrounding gob-
lins, brandishing the sword and crying, “Thieves! Thieves! Help!
Thieves!” He vanished into the midst of the advancing crowd,
all of whom were holding daggers and who accepted him without
question.
Slipping on the hot m etal, Harry struggled to his feet and knew
that the only way out was through.
“Stupefy!” he bellowed, and Ron and Hermione joined in: Jets
of red light flew into the crowd of goblins, and some toppled over,
but others advance d, and Harry saw several wizard guards running
around the corner.
The tethered dragon let out a roar, and a gush of flame flew
over the goblins; The wizards fled, doubled-up, back the way they
had come, and inspiration, or madness, came to Harry. Pointing
his wand at the thick cu↵s chaining the beast to the floor, he yelled,
“Relashio! ”
The cu↵s broken open with loud bangs.
“This way!” Harry yelled, and still shooting Stunning Spells at
the advancing goblins, he sprinted toward the blind dragon.
“Harry—Harry—what are you doing?” cried Hermione.
“Get up, climb up, come on—”
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The dragon had not realized that it was free: Harry’s foot found
the crook of its hind leg and he pulled himself up onto its back.
The scales were hard as steel; it did not even seem to feel him. He
stretched out an arm; Hermione hoisted herself up; Ron climbed
on behind them, and a second later the dragon became aware that
it was untethered.
With a roar it reared: Harry dug in his knees, clutching as
tightly as he could to the jagged scales as the wings opened, knock-
ing the shrieking goblins aside like skittles, and it soared into the
air. Harry, Ron, and Hermione, flat on its back, scraped against the
ceiling as it dived toward the passage opening, while the pursuing
goblins hurled daggers that glanced o↵ its flanks.
“We’ll never get out, it’s too big!” Hermione screamed, but
the dragon opened its mouth and belched flame again, blasting the
tunnel, whose floors and ceiling cracked and crumbled. By sheer
force, the dragon clawed and fought its way through. Harry’s eyes
were shut tight against the heat and dust: Deafened by the crash
of rock and the dragon’s roars, he could only cling to its back,
expecting to be shaken o↵ at any moment; then he heard Her-
mione yelling, “Defodio! ”
She was helping the dragon enlarge the passageway, carving
out the ceiling as it struggled upward toward the fresher air, away
from the shrieking and clanking goblins: Harry and Ron copied
her, blasting the ceiling apart with more gouging spells. They
passed the underground lake, and the great crawling, snarling beast
seemed to sense freedom and space ahead of it, and behind them
the passage was full of the dragon’s thrashing, spiked tail, of great
lumps of rock, gigantic fractured stalactites, and the clanking of
the goblins seemed to be growing more mu✏ed, while ahead, the
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Gringotts
dragon’s fire kept their progress clear—
And then at last, by the combined force of their spells and
the dragon’s brute strength, they had blasted their way out of the
passage into the marble hallway. Goblins and wizards shrieked and
ran for cover, and finally the dragon had room to stretch its wings:
Turning its horned head toward the cool outside air it could smell
beyond the entrance, it took o↵, and with Harry, Ron, and Her-
mione still clinging to its back, it forced its way through the metal
doors, leaving them buckled and hanging from their hinges, as it
staggered into Diagon Alley and launched itself into the sky.
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The Final Hiding Place
T
here was no means of steering; the dragon could not see
where it was going, and Harry knew that if it turned
sharply or rolled in midair they would find it impossible
to cling onto its broad back. Nevertheless, as they
climbed higher and higher, London unfurling below them like a
gray-and-green map, Harry’s overwhelming feeling was of gratitude
for an escape that had seemed impossible. Crouching low over the
beast’s neck, he clung tight to the metallic scales, and the cool
breeze was soothing on his burned and blistered skin, the dragon’s
wings beating the air like the sails of a windmill. Behind him,
whether from delight or fear he could not tell. Ron kept swearing
at the top of his voice, and Hermione se em ed to be sobbing.
After five minutes or so, Harry lost some of his immediate dread
that the dragon was going to throw them o↵, for it seemed intent on
nothing but getting as far away from its underground prison as pos-
sible; but the question of how and when they were to dismount re-
mained rather frightening. He had no idea how long dragons could
fly without landing, nor how this particular dragon, which could
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The Final Hidin g Place
barely see, would locate a good place to put down. He glanced
around constantly, imagining that he could feel his seat prickling.
How long would it be before Voldemort knew that they had
broken into the Lestranges’ vault? How soon would the goblins of
Gringotts notify Bellatrix? How quickly would they realize what
had been taken? And then, when they discovered that the golden
cup was missing? Voldemort would know, at last, that they were
hunting Horcruxes.
The dragon seemed to crave cooler and fresher air. It climbed
steadily until they were flying through wisps of chilly cloud, and
Harry could no longer make out the little colored dots which were
cars pouring in and out of the capital. On and on they flew, over
countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads
and rivers winding through the landscape like strips of m atte and
glossy ribbon.
“What do you reckon it’s looking for?” Ron yelled as they flew
farther and farther north.
“No idea,” Harry bellow back. His hands were numb with cold
but he did not date attempt to shift his grip. He had been won-
dering for some time what they would do if they saw the coast sail
beneath them, if the dragon headed for open seal he was cold and
numb, not to mention desperately hungry and thirsty. When, he
wondered, had the beast itself last eaten? Surely it would need
sustenance before long? And what if, at that point, it realized it
had three highly edible humans sitting on its back?
The sun slipped lower in the sky, which was turning indigo; and
still the dragon flew, cities and towns gliding out of sight beneath
them, its enormous shadow sliding over the earth like a giant dark
cloud. Every part of Harry ached with the e↵ort of holding on to
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the dragon’s back.
“Is it my imagination,” shouted Ron after a considerable stretch
of silence, “or are we losing height?”
Harry looked down and saw deep green mountains and lakes,
coppery in the sunset. The landscape seemed to grow larger and
more detailed as he squinted over the side of the dragon, and he
wondered whether it had divined the presence of fresh water by
the flashes of reflected sunlight.
Lower and lower the dragon flew, in great spiraling circles, hon-
ing in, it seemed, upon one of the smaller lakes.
“I say we jump when it gets low enough!” Harry called back to
the others. “Straight into the water before it realizes we’re here!”
They agreed, Hermione a little faintly, and now Harry could see
the dragon’s wide yellow underbelly rippling in the surface of the
water.
“NOW!”
He s lithered over the side of the dragon and plummeted feetfirst
toward the surface of the lake; the drop was greater than he had
estimated and he hit the water hard, plunging like a stone into
a freez ing, green, reed-filled world. He kicked toward the surface
and emerged, panting, to s ee enormous ripples emanating in circles
from the places where Ron and Hermione had fallen. The dragon
did not seem to have noticed anything; it was already fifty feet
away, swooping low over the lake to scoop up water in its scarred
snout. As Ron and Hermione emerged, spluttering and gasping,
from the depths of the lake, the dragon flew on, its wings beating
hard, and landed at last on a distant bank.
Harry, Ron and He rmione struck out for the opposite shore.
The lake did not seem to be deep. Soon it was more a question of
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The Final Hidin g Place
fighting their way through reeds and mud than swimming, and at
last they flopped, sodden, panting, and exhausted, onto slippery
grass.
Hermione collapsed, coughing and shuddering. Though Harry
could have happily lain down and slept, he staggered to his feet,
drew out his wand, and started casting the usual protective spells
around them.
When he had finished, he joined the others. It was the first
time that he had seen them properly since esc aping from the vault.
Both had angry red burns all over their faces and arms, and their
clothing was singed away in places. They were wincing as they
dabbed essence of dittany onto their many injuries. Hermione
handed Harry the bottle, then pulled out three bottles of pumpkin
juice she had brought from Shell Cottage and clean, dry robes for
all of them. They changes and then gulped down the juice.
“Well, on the upside,” said Ron finally, who was sitting watch-
ing the skin on his hands regrow, “we got the Horcrux. On the
downside—”
“—no sword,” said Harry through gritted teeth, as he dripped
dittany through the singed hole in his jeans onto the angry burn
beneath.
“No sword,” repeated Ron. “That double-crossing little
scab . . . ”
Harry pulled the Horcrux from the pocket of the wet jacket he
had just taken o↵ and set it down on the grass in front of them.
Glinting in the sun, it drew their eyes as they swigged their bottles
of juice.
“At least we can’t wear it this time, that’d look a bit weird
hanging around our necks,” s aid Ron, wiping his mouth on the
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back of his hand.
Hermione looked across the lake to the far bank where the
dragon was still drinking.
“What’ll happ e n to it, do you think?” she asked, “Will it be
alright?”
“You sound like Hagrid,” said Ron, “It’s a dragon, Hermione,
it can look after itself. It’s us we need to worry about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well I don’t know how to break this to you,” s aid Ron, “but I
think they might have noticed we broke into Gringotts.”
All three of them started to laugh, and once started, it was dif-
ficult to stop. Harry’s ribs ached, he felt lightheaded with hunger,
but he lay back on the grass be neath the reddening sky and laughed
until his throat was raw.
“What are we going to do, though?” said He rmione finally,
hiccuping herself back to seriousness. “He’ll know, won’t he? You-
Know-Who will know we know about his Horcruxes!”
“Maybe they’ll be too scared to tell him!” said Ron hopefully,
“Maybe they’ll cover up—”
The sky, the smell of the lake water, the sound of Ron’s voice
were extinguished. Pain cleaved Harry’s head like a sword stroke.
He was standing in a dimly lit room, and a semicircle of wizards
faced him, and on the floor at his feet knelt a small, quaking figure.
“What did you say to me?” His voice was high and cold,
but fury and fear burned inside him. The one thing that he had
dreaded—but it could not be true, he could not see how . . .
The goblin was trembling, unable to meet the red eyes high
above his.
“Say it again!” murmured Voldemort. “Say it again! ”
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The Final Hidin g Place
“M-my Lord,” stammered the goblin, its black eyes
wide with terror, “m -my Lord . . . we t–tried to st–stop
them . . . Im–impos tors, my Lord . . . broke—broke into the—into
the Lestranges’ vault . . . ”
“Impostors? What impostors? I thought Gringotts had ways
of revealing impostors? Who were they?”
“It was . . . it was . . . the P–Potter b–boy and the t–two
accomplices . . . ”
“And they took? ” he said, his voice rising, a terrible fear grip-
ping him, “Tell me! What did they take? ”
“A . . . a s–small golden c–cup m–my Lord . . . ”
The scream of rage, of denial left him as if it were a stranger’s.
He was crazed, frenzied, it could not be true, it was impossible,
nobody had known. How was it possible that the boy could have
discovered his secret?
The Elder Wand slashed through the air and green light erupted
through the room; the kneeling goblin rolled over dead; the watch-
ing wizards scattered before him, terrified. Bellatrix and Lucius
Malfoy threw others behind them in their race for the door, and
again and again his wand fell, and those who were left were slain, all
of them, for bringing him this news, for hearing about the golden
cup—
Alone amongst the dead he stomped up and down, and they
passed before him in vision: his treasures, his safeguards, his an-
chors to immortality—the diary was destroyed and the cup was
stolen. What if, what if, the boy knew about the others? Could
he know, had he already acted, had he traced more of them? Was
Dumbledore at the root of this? Dumbledore, who had always sus-
pected him; Dumbledore, dead on his orders; Dumbledore, whose
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wand was his now, yet who reached out from the ignominy of death
through the boy, the boy —
But surely if the boy had destroyed any of his Horcruxes, he,
Lord Voldemort, would have known, would have felt it? He, the
greatest wizard of them all; he, the most powerful; he, the killer
of Dumbledore and of how many other worthless, nameless men.
How could Lord Voldemort not have known, if he, himself, most
important and precious, had been attacked, mutilated?
True, he had not felt it when the diary had been destroyed,
but he had thought that was because he had no body to fell, being
less than ghost. . . . No, surely, the rest were safe . . . The other Hor-
cruxes must be intact. . . .
But he must know, he must be sure . . . He paced the room,
kicking aside the goblin’s corpse as he passed, and the pictures
blurred and burned in his b oiling brain: the lake, the shack, and
Hogwarts—
A modicum of calm cooled his rage now. How could the boy
know that he had hidden the ring in the Gaunt shack? No one had
ever known him to be related to the Gaunts, he had hidden the
connection, the killings had never been traced to him. The ring,
surely, was safe.
And how could the boy, or anybody else, know about the cave
or penetrate its protection? The idea of the locket being stolen
was absurd. . . .
As for the school: He alone knew where in Hogwarts he had
stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumed the deepest
secrets of that place . . .
And there was still Nagini, who must remain close now, no
longer sent to do his bidding, under his protection. . . .
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The Final Hidin g Place
But to be sure, to be utterly sure, he must return to each of
his hiding places, he must redouble protection around each of his
Horcruxes. . . . A job, like the quest for the Elder Wand, that he
must undertake alone . . .
Which should he visit first, which was in most danger? An old
unease flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle
name. . . . Dumbledore might have made the connection with the
Gaunts. . . . Their abandoned home was, p erhaps, the least secure
of his hiding places, it was there that he would go first. . . .
The lake, surely impossible . . . though was there a slight p os -
sibility that Dumbledore might have known some of his past mis-
deeds, through the orphanage.
And Hogwarts . . . but he knew the his Horcrux there was safe;
it would be impossible for Potter to enter Hogsmeade without de-
tection, let alone the school. Nevertheless, it would be prudent
to alert Snape to the fact that the boy might try to reenter the
castle. . . . To tell Snap e why the boy might return would be fool-
ish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and
Malfoy. Didn’t their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise
it was ever to trust?
He would visit the Gaunt shack first, then, and take Nagini with
him. He would not be parted from the snake anymore . . . and he
strode from the room, through the hall, and out into the dark gar-
den where the fountain played; he called the snake in Parseltongue
and it slithered out to join him like a long shadow. . . .
Harry’s eyes flew open as he wrenched himself back to the
present. He was lying on the bank of the lake in the setting sun,
and Ron and Hermione were looking down at him. Judging by
their worried looks, and by the continued pounding of his scar, his
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Chapter 27
sudden excursion into Voldemort’s mind had not passed unnoticed.
He s truggled up, shivering, vaguely surprised that he was still wet
to his skin, and saw the cup lying innocently in the grass before
him, and the lake, deep blue shot with gold in the falling sun.
“He knows.” His own voice sounded strange and low after
Voldemort’s high screams. “He knows and he’s going to check
where the others are, and the last one,” he was already on his feet,
“is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it.”
“What?”
Ron was gaping at him; Hermione sat up, looking worried.
“But what did you see? How do you know?”
“I saw him find out about the cup, I–I was in his head, he’s”—
Harry remembered the killings—“he’s seriously angry, and scared
too, he can’t understand how we knew, and now he’s going to check
the others are safe, the ring first. He thinks the Hogwarts one is
safest, because Snape’s there, because it’ll be so hard not to be
seen getting in. I think he’ll check that one last, but he could still
be there within hours—”
“Did you se e where in Hogwarts it is?” asked Ron, now scram-
bling to his feet too.
“No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn’t think
about exactly where it is—”
“Wait, wait!” cried Hermione as Ron caught up to the Horcrux
and Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak again. “We can’t just
go, we haven’t got a plan, we need to—”
“We need to get going,” said Harry firmly. He had been hoping
to sleep, looking forward to getting into the new tent, but that was
impossible now, “Can you imagine what he’s going to do once he
realizes the ring and the locket are gone? What if he moves the
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The Final Hidin g Place
Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn’t safe enough?”
“But how are we going to get in?”
“We’ll go to Hogsmeade,” said Harry, “and try to work some-
thing out once we see what the protection around the school’s like.
Get under the Cloak, Hermione, I want to stick together this time.”
“But we don’t really fit—”
“It’ll be dark, no one’s going to notice our feet.”
The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water.
The dragon had drunk its fill and risen into the air. They paused
in their preparations to watch it climb higher and higher, now
black against the rapidly darkening sky, until it vanished over a
nearby mountain. Then Hermione walked forward and took her
place between the other two, Harry pulled the Cloak down as far
as it would go, and together they turned on the spot into the
crushing darkness.
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Chapter 28
The Missing Mirror
H
arry’s feet touched the road. He saw the achingly fa-
miliar Hogsmeade High Street: dark shop fronts, and
the mist line of black mountains beyond the village
and the c urve in the road ahead that led o↵ toward
Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broom-
sticks, and with a lurch of the heart, he remembered w ith piercing
accuracy, how he had landed here nearly a year before, support-
ing a desperately weak Dumbledore, all this in a second, upon
landing—and then, even as he relaxed his grip upon Ron’s and
Hermione’s arms, it happened.
The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Voldemort’s
when he had realized the cup had been stolen: It tore at every
nerve in Harry’s body, and he knew that their appearance had
caused it. Even as he looked at the other two beneath the Cloak,
the door of the Three Broomsticks burst open and a dozen cloaked
and hooded Death Eaters dashed into the streets, their wands aloft.
Harry seized Ron’s wrist as he raised his wand; there were too
many of them to run. Even attempting it would have give away
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The Missing Mirror
their position. One of the Death Eaters raised his wand, and the
scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.
“Accio Cloak! ” roared one of the Death Eaters
Harry seized his folds, but it made no attempt to escape. The
Summoning Charm had not worked on it.
“Not under your wrapper, then, Potter?” yelled the Death
Eater who had tried the charm and then to his fellows. “Spread
now. He’s here.”
Six of the Death Eaters ran toward them: Harry, Ron and Her-
mione backed as quickly as possible down the nearest side street,
and the Death Eaters missed them by inches. They waited in the
darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams
of light flying along the street from the Death Eaters’ searching
wands.
“Let’s just leave!” Hermione whispered. “Disapparate now!”
“Great idea,” said Ron, but before Harry could reply, a Death
Eater shouted,
“We know you are here, Potter, and there’s no getting away!
We’ll find you!”
“They were ready for us,” w hispered Harry. “They set up that
spell to tell them we’d come. I reckon they’ve done something to
keep us here, trap us—”
“What about dementors?” called another Death Eater.
“Let’em have free rein, they’d find him quick enough!”
“The Dark Lord wants Potter dead by no hands but his—”
“’An dementors won’t kill him! The Dark Lord wants Potter’s
life, not his soul. He’ll be easier to kill if he’s been Kissed first!”
There were noises of agreement. Dread filled Harry: To rep el
dementors they would have to produce Patronuses which would
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Chapter 28
give them away immediately.
“We’re going to have to try to Disapparate, Harry!” Hermione
whispered.
Even as she said it, he felt the unnatural cold being spread over
the street. Light was sucke d from the environment right up to the
stars, which vanished. In the pitch blackness, he felt Hermione
take hold of his arm and together, they turned on the spot.
The air through which they needed to move, seemed to have
become solid: They could not Disapparate; the Death Eaters had
cast their charms well. The cold was biting deeper and deeper
into Harry’s flesh. He, Ron and Hermione retreated down the side
street, groping their way along the wall trying not to make a sound.
Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly, came dementors, ten
or more of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness
than their surroundings, with their black c loaks and their scabbed
and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity? Harry
was sure of it: They seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking
those dragging, rattling breaths he detested, tasting despair in the
air, closing in—
He raised his wand: He could not, would not su↵er the De-
mentor’s Kiss, whatever happened afterward. It was of Ron and
Hermione that he thought as he whispere d “Expecto Patronum! ”
The silver stag burst from his wand and charged: The Demen-
tors scattered and there was a triumphant yell from somewhere out
of sight
“It’s him, down there, down there, I saw his Patronus, it was a
stag!”
The Dementors have retreated, the stars were popping out again
and the fo otsteps of the Death Eaters were becoming louder; but
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The Missing Mirror
before Harry in his panic could decide what to do, there was a
grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-side of the
narrow street, and a rough voice said: “Potter, in here, quick!”
He obeyed without hesitation, the three of them hurried through
the open doorway.
“Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!” muttered a tall
figure, passing them on his way into the street and slammed the
door behind him.
Harry had had no idea where they were, but now he saw, by
the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust bar of
the Hog’s Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through a
second doorway, which led to a trickery wooden staircase, that they
climbed as fast as they could. The stairs opened into a sitting room
with a durable carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a
single large oil painting of a blonde girl who gazed out at the room
with a kind of a vacant sweetness.
Shouts reached from the streets below. Still wearing the Invisi-
bility Cloak on, they hurried toward the grimy window and looked
down. Their savior, whom Harry now recognized as the Hog’s
Head’s barman, was the only person not wearing a hood.
“So what?” he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. “So
what? You send dementors down my street, I’ll send a Patronus
back at’em! I’m not having’em near me, I’ve told you that. I’m
not having it!”
“That wasn’t your Patronus,” said a Death Eater. “That was
a stag. It was Potter’s!”
“Stag!” roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. “Stag!
You idiot—Expecto Patronum! ”
Something huge and horned erupted from the wand. Head
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Chapter 28
down, it charged toward the High Street, and out of sight.
“That’s not what I saw” said the Death Eater, though was less
certainly
“Curfew’s been broken, you heard the noise,” one of his com-
panions told the barman. “Someone was out on the streets against
regulations—”
“If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your
curfew!”
“You set o↵ the Caterwauling Charm?”
“What if I did? Going to cart me o↵ to Azkaban? Kill me for
sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want
to! But I hope for your sakes you haven’t pressed your little Dark
Marks, and summoned him. He’s not going to like being called
here, for me and my old cat, is he, now?”
“Don’t worry about us.” said one of the Death Eaters, “Worry
about yourself, breaking curfew!”
“And where will you lot traffic potions and poisons when my
pub’s closed down? What will happen to your little sidelines then?”
“Are you threatening—?”
“I keep my mouth shut, it’s why you come here, is n’t it?”
“I still say I saw a stag Patronus!” shouted the first Death
Eater.
“Stag?” roared the barman. “It’s a goat, idiot!”
“All right, we made a mistake,” said the second Death Eater.
“Break curfew again and we won’t be so lenient!”
The Death Eaters strode back towards the High Street. Her-
mione moaned with relief, wove out from under the Cloak, and
sat down on a wobble-legged chair. Harry drew the curtains then
pulled the Cloak o↵ himself and Ron. They could hear the barman
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The Missing Mirror
down below, rebolting the door of the bar, then climbing the stairs.
Harry’s attention was caught by something on the mantelpiece:
a small, rectangular mirror, propped on top of it, right be neath
the portrait of the girl.
The barman entered the room.
“You bloody fools,” he said gru✏y, looking from one to the
other of them. “What were you thinking, coming here?”
“Thank you,” said Harry. “You can’t thank you enough. You
saved our lives!”
The barman grunted. Harry approached him looking up into
the face: trying to see past the long, stringy, wire-gray hair beard.
He wore spectacles. Behind the dirty lenses, the eyes were a pierc-
ing, brilliant blue.
“It’s your eye I’ve been seeing in the mirror.”
There was a silence in the room. Harry and the barman looked
at each other.
“You sent Dobby.”
The barman nodded and looked around for the elf.
“Thought he’d be with you. Where’ve you left him?”
“He’s dead,” said Harry, “Bellatrix Lestrange killed him.”
The barman face was impassive. After a few moments he said,
“I’m sorry to hear it, I liked that elf.”
He turned away, lightning lamps with prods of his wand, not
looking at any of them.
“You’re Aberforth,” said Harry to the man’s back.
He neither confirmed or denied it, but bent to light the fire.
“How did you get this?” Harry asked, walking across to Sirius’s
mirror, the twin of the one he had broken nearly two years before.
“Bought it from Dung ’bout a year ago,” said Aberforth. “Al-
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Chapter 28
bus told me what it was. Been trying to keep an eye out for you.”
Ron gasped.
“The silver doe,” he said e xcitedly, “Was that you too?”
“What are you talking about?” asked Aberforth.
“Someone sent a doe Patronus to us!”
“Brains like that, you could be a Death Eater, son. Haven’t I
just proved my Patronus is a goat?”
“Oh,” said Ron, “Yeah . . . well, I’m hungry!” he added defen-
sively as his stomach gave an enormous rumble.
“I got food,” said Aberforth, and he sloped out of the room,
reappearing moments later with a large loaf of bread, some cheese,
and a pewter jug of mead, which he set upon a small table in front
of the fire. Ravenous, they ate and drank, and for a while there
was sound of chewing.
“Right then,” said Aberforth when the had eaten their fill and
Harry and Ron sat slumped dozily in their chairs. “We need to
think of the best way to get you out of here. Can’t be done by
night, you heard what happens if anyone moves outdoors during
darkness: Caterwauling Charm’s set o↵, they’ll be onto you like
bowtruckles on doxy eggs. I don’t reckon I’ll be able to pass of
a stag as a goat a second time. Wait for daybreak when curfew
lifts, then you can put your Cloak back on and set out on foot.
Get right out of Hogsmeade, up into the mountains, and you’ll be
able to Disapparate there. Might see Hagrid. He’s been hiding in
a cave up there with Grawp ever since they tried to arrest him.”
“We’re not leaving,” said Harry. “We need to get into Hog-
warts.”
“Don’t be stupid, boy,” said Aberforth.
“We’ve got to,” said Harry.
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The Missing Mirror
“What you’ve got to do,” said Aberforth, leaning forward, “is
to get as far from here as from here as you can.”
“You don’t understand. There isn’t much time. We ’ve got to
get into the castle. Dumbledore—I mean, your brother—wanted
us—”
The firelight made the grimy lenses of Aberforth’s glasses m o-
mentarily opaque, a bright flat white, and Harry remembered the
blind eyes of the giant spider, Aragog.
“My brother Albus wanted a lot of things,” said Aberforth,
“and pe ople had a habit of getting hurt while he was carrying out
his grand plans. You get away from this school, Potter, and out of
the country if you can. Forget my brother and his clever schemes.
He’s gone where none of this can hurt him, and you don’t owe him
anything.”
“You don’t understand.” said Harry again.
“Oh, don’t I?” said Aberforth quietly. “You don’t think I un-
derstood my own brother? Think you know Albus better than I
did?”
“I didn’t mean that,” said Harry, whose brain felt sluggish with
exhaustion and from the surfeit of food and wine. “It’s . . . he left
me a job.”
“Did he now?” said Ab e rforth. “Nice job, I hope? Pleasant?
Easy? Sort of thing you’d expe ct an unqualified wizard kid to be
able to do without overstretching themselves?”
Ron gave a rather grim laugh. Hermione was looking strained.
“I—it’s not e asy, no,” said Harry. “B ut I ’ve got to—”
“‘Got to’? Why ‘got to’ ? He’s dead, isn’t he?” said Aberforth
roughly. “Let it go, boy, be fore you follow him! Save yourself!”
“I can’t.”
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“Why not?”
“I—” Harry felt overwhelmed; he could not explain, so he took
the o↵ensive instead. “But you’re fighting too, you’re in the Order
of the Phoenix—”
“I was,” said Aberforth. “The Order of the Phoenix is finished.
You-Know-Who’s won, it’s over, and anyone who’s pretending dif-
ferent’s kidding themselves. It’ll never be safe for you here, Potter,
he wants you too badly. So go abroad, go into hiding, save your-
self. Best take these two with you.” He jerked a thumb at Ron and
Hermione. “They’ll be in danger long as they live now everyone
knows they’ve been working with you.”
“I can’t leave,” said Harry. “I’ve got a job—”
“Give it to someone else!”
“I can’t. It’s got to be me, Dumbledore explained it all—”
“Oh, did he now? And did he tell you everything, was he honest
with you?”
Harry wanted him with all his heart to say “Yes,” but somehow
the simple word would not rise to his lips, Aberforth seemed to
know what he was thinking.
“I knew my brother, Potter. He learned secrecy at our mother’s
knee. Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up, and Albus . . . he
was a natural.”
The old man’s eyes traveled to the painting of the girl over the
mantelpiece. It was, now Harry looked around properly, the only
picture in the room. There was no photograph of Albus Dumble-
dore, nor of anyone else.
“Mr. Dumbledore” said Hermione rather timidly. “Is that your
sister? Ariana?”
“Yes.” said Abe rforth tersely. “Been reading Rita Skeeter, have
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you, missy?”
Even by the rosy light of the fire it was clear that Hermione
had turned red.
“Elphias Doge mentioned her to us,” said Harry, trying to spare
Hermione.
“That old berk,” muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of
mead. “Thought the sun shone out of my brother’s every office, he
did. Well, so did plenty of people, you three included, by the looks
of it.”
Harry kept quiet. He did not want to express the doubts and
uncertainties about Dumbledore that had riddled him for months
now. He had made his choice while he dug Dobby’s grave, he had
decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated
for him by Albus Dumbledore, to accept that he had not been told
everything that he wanted to know, but simply to trust. He had no
desire to doubt again; he did not want to hear anything that would
deflect him from his purpose. He met Aberforth’s gaze, which was
so strikingly like his brother’s: The bright blue eyes gave the same
impression that they were X-raying the object of their scrutiny,
and Harry thought that Aberforth knew what he was thinking and
despised him for it.
“Professor Dumbledore cared about Harry, very much,” said
Hermione in a low voice.
“Did he now?” said Aberforth. “Funny thing how many of the
people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse
state than if he’d left ’em well alone.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hermione breathlessly.
“Never you mind,” said Aberforth.
“But that’s a really serious thing to say!” said Hermione. “Are
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you—are you talking about your sister?”
Aberforth glared at her: His lips moved as if he were chewing
the words he was holding back. Then he burst into speech.
“When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, by three
Muggle boys. They’d seen her doing magic, spying through the
back garden hedge: She was a kid, she couldn’t control it, no witch
or wizard can at that age. What they saw, scared them, I expect.
They forced their way through the hedge, and when she c ouldn’t
show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the
little freak doing it.”
Hermione’s eyes were huge in the firelight; Ron looked slightly
sick. Aberforth stood up, tall as Albus, and suddenly terrible in
his anger and the intensity of his pain.
“It destroyed her, what they did: She was never right again.
She wouldn’t use magic, but she couldn’t get rid of it; it turned
inward and drove her mad, it exploded out of her when she couldn’t
control it, and at times s he was strange and dangerous. But mostly
she was sweet and scared and harmless.
“And my father went after the bastards that did it,” said Aber-
forth, “and attacked them. And they locked him up in Azkaban
for it. He never said why he’d done it, because the Ministry had
known what Ariana had become, she’d have been locked up in St.
Mungo’s for good. They’d have seen her as a serious threat to
the International Statute of Secrecy, unbalanced like she was, with
magic exploding out of her at moments when she couldn’t keep it
in any longer.
“We had to keep her safe and quiet. We moved house, put it
about she was ill, and my mother looked after her, and tried to
keep her calm and happy.
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“I was her favourite,” he said, and as he said it, a grubby
schoolboy seemed to look out through Aberforth’s wrinkles and
wrangled beard. “Not Albus, he was always up in his bedroom
when he was home, reading his books and counting his prizes,
keeping up with his correspondence with ‘the most notable magical
names of the day,’” Aberforth succored. “He didn’t want to be
bothered with her. She liked me best. I could get her to eat when
she wouldn’t do it for my mother, I could calm her down, when
she was in one of her rages, and when she was quiet, she used to
help me feed the goats.
“Then, when she was fourteen . . . See, I wasn’t there.” said
Aberforth. “If I’d been there, I could have calmed her down. She
had one of her rages, and my mother wasn’t as young as she was,
and . . . it was an accident. Ariana couldn’t control it. But my
mother was killed.”
Harry felt a horrible mixture of pity and repulsion; he did not
want to hear any more, but Aberforth kept talking, and Harry
wondered how long it had been since he had spoken about this;
whether, in fact, he had ever spoken about it.
“So that put paid to Albus’s trip round the world with little
Doge. The pair of ’em came home for my mother’s funeral and
then Doge went o↵ on his own, and Albus se ttled down as head of
the family. Ha!”
Aberforth spat into the fire.
“I’d have looked after her, I told him so, I didn’t care about
school, I’d have stayed home and done it. He told me I had to
finish my education and he’d take over from my mother. Bit of a
comedown for Mr. Brilliant, there’s no prizes for looking after your
half-mad sister, stopping her blowing up the house every other day.
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But he did all right for a few weeks . . . till he came.”
And now a positively dangerous look crept over Aberforth’s
face.
“Grindelwald. And at last, my brother had an equal to talk to,
someone just as bright and talented he was. And looking after Ar-
iana took a backseat then, while they were hatching all their plans
for a new Wizarding order and looking for Hallows, and whatever
else it was they were so interested in. Grand plans for the be nefit
of all Wizardkind, and if one young girl neglected, what did that
matter, when Albus was working for the greater good ?
“But after a few weeks of it, I’d had enough, I had. It was
nearly time for me to go hack to Hogwarts, so I told ’em, both
of ’em, face-to-face, like I am to you, now,” and Aberforth looked
downward Harry, and it took a little imagination to see him as
a teenager, wiry and angry, confronting his elder brother. “I told
him, you’d better give it up now. You can’t move her, she’s in no fit
state, you can’t take her with you, wherever it is you’re planning
to go, when you’re making your clever speeches, trying to whip
yourselves up a following. He didn’t like that.” said Aberforth,
and his e yes were briefly occluded by the fireflight on the lenses
of his glasses: They turned white and blind again. “Grindelwald
didn’t like that at all. He got angry. He told me what a stupid
little boy I was, trying to stand in the way of him and my brilliant
brother . . . Didn’t I understand, my poor sister wouldn’t have to
be hidden once they’d changed the world, and led the wizards out
of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?
“And there was an argument . . . and I pulled my wand, and he
pulled out his, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my
brother’s best friend—and Albus was trying to stop him, and then
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all three of us were dueling, and the flashing lights and the bangs
set her o↵, she couldn’t stand it—”
The color was draining from Aberforth’s face as though he had
su↵ered a mortal wound.
“—and I think she wanted to help, but she didn’t really know
what she was doing, and I don’t know which of us did it, it could
have been any of us—and she was dead.”
His voice broke on the last word and he dropped down into the
nearest chair. Hermione’s face was wet with tears, and Ron was
almost as pale as Aberforth. Harry felt nothing but revulsion: He
wished he had not heard it, wished he could wash is mind clean of
it.
“I’m so . . . I’m so sorry,” Hermione whispered.
“Gone,” croaked Aberforth. “Gone forever.”
He wiped his nose on hiss cu↵ and cleared his throat.
“’Course, Grindelwald scarpered. He had a bit of a track record
already, back in his own country, and he didn’t want Ariana set
to his account too. And Albus was free, wasn’t he? Free of the
burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the—”
“He was never free,” said Harry.
“I beg your pardon?” said Aberforth.
“Never,” said Harry. “The night that your brother died, he
drank a potion that drove him out of his mind. He started scream-
ing, pleading with someone who wasn’t there. ‘Don’t hurt them,
please . . . hurt me instead.’”
Ron and Hermione were staring at Harry. He had never gone
into details about what had happened on the island on the lake:
The events that had taken place after he and Dumbledore had
returned to Hogwarts had eclipsed it so thoroughly.
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“He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I
know he did,” said Harry, remembering Dumbledore whispering,
pleading. “He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you
and Ariana . . . It was torture to him, if you’d seen him then, you
wouldn’t say he was free.”
Aberforth seemed lost in contemplation of his own knotted and
veined hands. After a long pause he said. “How can you be sure,
Potter, that my brother wasn’t more interested in the greater good
than in you? How can you be sure you aren’t dispensable, just like
my little sister?”
A shard of ice seemed to pierce Harry’s heart.
“I don’t believe it. Dumbledore loved Harry,” said Hermione.
“Why didn’t he tell him to hide, then?” shot back Aberforth.
“Why didn’t he say to him, ‘Take care of yourself, here’s how to
survive’?”
“Because,” said Harry before Hermione could answer, “some-
times you’ve got to think about more than your own safety! Some-
times you’ve got to think about the greater good! This is war!”
“You’re seventeen, boy!”
“I’m of age, and I’m going to keep fighting even if you’ve given
up!”
“Who says I’ve given up?”
“The Order of the Phoenix is finished,” Harry repeated, “You-
Know-Who’s won, it’s over, and anyone who’s pretending di↵er-
ent’s kidding themselves.”
“I don’t say I like it, but it’s the truth!”
“No, it isn’t.” said Harry. “Your brother knew how to finish
You-Know-Who and he passed the knowledge on to me. I’m going
to keep going until I succeed—or I die. Don’t think I don’t know
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how this might end. I’ve known it for years.”
He waited for Aberforth to jeer or to argue, but he did not. He
merely moved.
“We need to get into Hogwarts,” said Harry again. “If you can’t
help us, we’ll wait till daybreak, leave you in peace, and try to find
a way in ourselves. If you can help us—well, now would be a great
time to mention it.”
Aberforth remained fixed in his chair, gazing at Harry with
the eye, that were so extraordinarily like his brother’s. At last he
cleared his throat, got to his feet, walked around the little table,
and approached the portrait of Ariana.
“You know what to do,” he said.
She smiled, turned, and walked away, not as people in portraits
usually did, one of the sides of their frames, but along what seemed
to be a long tunnel painted be hind her. They watched her slight
figure retreating until finally she was swallowed by the darkness.
“Er—what—?” began Ron.
“There’s only one way in now,” said Aberforth. “You must
know they’ve got all the old secret passageways covered at both
ends, dementors all around the boundary walls, regular patrols
inside the school from what my sources tell me. The place has
never been so heavily guarded. How you expect to do anything
once you get inside it, with Snape in charge and the Carrows as
his deputies . . . well, that’s your lookout, isn’t it? You say you’re
prepared to die.”
“But what . . . ?” said Hermione, frowning at Ariana’s picture.
A tiny white dot reappeared at the end of the painted tunnel,
and now Ariana was walking back toward them, growing bigger
and bigger as she came. But there was somebody else with her
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now, someone taller than she was, who was limping along, looking
excited. His hair was longer than Harry had ever seen. He appeared
and torn. Larger and larger the two figures grew, until only their
heads and shoulders filled the portrait. Then the whole thing swang
forward on the wall like a little door, and the entrance to a real
tunnel was revealed. And our of it, his hair overgrown, his face
cut, his robes ripped, clambered the real Neville Longbottom, who
gave a roar of delight, leapt down from the mantelpiece and yelled.
“I knew you’d come! I knew it, Harry! ”
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The Lost D iadem
N
eville—what the—how—?”
But Neville had spotted Ron and Hermione, and with
yells of delight was hugging them too. The longer
Harry looked at Neville, the worse he appe ared: One
of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks
on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he
had been living rough. Nevertheless, his battered visage shone with
happiness as he let go of Hermione and said again, “I knew you’d
come! Kept telling Seamus it was a matter of time!”
“Neville, what’s happened to you?”
“What? This?” Neville dismissed his injuries with a shake of
the head. “This is nothing, Seamus is worse. You’ll see. Shall we
get going then? Oh,” he turned to Aberforth, “Ab, there might be
a couple more people on the way.”
“Couple more?” repeated Aberforth ominously. “What d’you
mean, a couple more, Longbottom? There’s a curfew and a Caur-
wauling Charm on the whole village!”
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“I know, that’s why they’ll be Apparating directly into the bar,”
said Neville. “Just send them down the passage when they get here,
will you? Thanks a lot.”
Neville held out his hand to Hermione and helped her climb
up onto the mantelpiece and into the tunnel, Ron followed, then
Neville. Harry addressed Aberforth.
“I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve saved our lives twice.”
“Look after ’em, then,” said Aberforth gru✏y. “I might not be
able to save ’em a third time.”
Harry clambered up onto the mantelpiece and through the hold
behind Ariana’s portrait. There were smooth stone steps on the
outside: It looked as though the passageway had been there for
years. Brass lamps hung from the walls and the earthy floor was
worn and smooth; as they walked, their shadows rippled, fanlike,
across the wall.
“How long’s this been here?” Ron asked as they set o↵. “It
isn’t on the Marauder’s Map, is it, Harry? I thought there were
only seven passages in and out of the s chool?”
“They sealed o↵ all of those before the start of the year,” said
Neville. “There’s no chance of getting through any of them now,
not with the curses over the entrances and Death Eaters and de-
mentors waiting at the exits.” He started walking backward, beam-
ing, drinking them in. “Never mind that stu↵. . . . Is it true? Did
you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It’s ev-
erywhere, everyone’s talking about it, Teddy Boot got beaten up
by Carrow for yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!”
“Yeah, it’s true,” said Harry.
Neville laughed gleefully,
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“What did you do with the dragon?”
“Released it into the wild,” said Ron. “Hermione was all for
keeping it as a pet—”
“Don’t exaggerate, Ron—”
“But what have you been doing? People have been saying
you’ve just been on the run, Harry, but I don’t think so. I think
you’ve been up to something.”
“You’re right,” said Harry. “but tell us about Hogwarts,
Neville, we haven’t heard anything.”
“It’s been . . . well, it’s not really like Hogwarts anymore,” said
Neville, the smile fading from his face as he spoke. “Do you know
about the Carrows?”
“Those two Death Eaters who teach here?”
“They do more than teach,” said Neville. “They’re in charge of
all discipline. They like punishment, the Carrows.”
“Like Umbridge?”
“Nah, they make her look tame. The other teachers are all
supposed to refer us the the Carrows if we do anything wrong.
They don’t, though, if they can avoid it. You can tell they all hate
them as much as we do.”
“Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against
the Dark Arts, except now it’s just Dark Arts. We’re supposed to
practice the Cruciatus Curse on people who’ve earned detentions—”
“What?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s united voices echoed up and down
the passage.
“Yeah,” said Neville. “That’s how I got this one,” he p ointed
at a particularly deep gash in his cheek, “I refused to do it. Some
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people are into it, though; Crabbe and Goyle love it. First time
they’ve ever been top in anything, I expect.
“Alecto, Amycus’ sister, teaches Muggle Studies, which is com-
pulsory for everyone. We’ve all got to listen to her explain how
Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty, and how they drove
wizards into hiding by being vicious toward them, and how the
natural order is being reestablished. I got this one,” he indicated
another slash to his face, “for asking how much Muggle blood she
and her brother have got.”
“Blimey, Neville,” said Ron, “there’s a time and a place for
getting a smart mouth.”
“You didn’t hear her,” said Neville. “You wouldn’t have stood
it either. The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it
gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry.”
“But they’ve used you as a knife sharpener,” said Ron, wincing
slightly as they passed a lamp and Neville’s injuries were thrown
into even greater relief.
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to s pill too much pure blood,
so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually
kill us.”
Harry did not know what was worse, the things that Neville
was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.
“The only people in real danger are the ones whose friends
and relatives on the outside are giving trouble. They get taken
hostage. Old Xeno Lovegood was getting a bit too outspoken in
The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna o↵ the train on the way back
for Christmas.”
“Neville, she’s all right, we’ve seen her—”
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The Lost Diadem
“Yeah, I know, she managed to m et a message to me.”
From his pocket he pulled a golden coin, and Harry recognized
it as one of the fake Galleons that Dumbledore’s Army had used
to send one another messages.
“These have been great,” said Neville, beaming at Hermione.
“The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove
them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the
walls: Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting, stu↵ like that. Snape
hated it.”
“You used to?” said Harry, who had noticed the past tense.
“Well, it got more difficult as time went on,” said Neville. “We
lost Luna at Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter,
and the three of us were sort of leaders. The Carrows seemed to
know that I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on
me hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing
a first-year they’d chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly.
That scared people o↵.”
“No kidding,” muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope
upward.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t ask people to go through what Michael
did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fight-
ing, doing underground stu↵, right up until a couple of weeks ago.
That’s when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I
suppose, and they went for Gran.”
“They what?” said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.
“Yeah,” said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage
was climbing so steeply, “well, you can see their thinking. It had
worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to be-
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have, I s’pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the
other way around. Thing was,” he faced them, and Harry was
astonished to see that he was grinning, “they bit o↵ a bit more
than they could chew with Gran. Little old witch living along,
he the probably thought they didn’t need to send anyone particu-
larly powerful. Anyway,” Neville laughed, “Dawlish is still in St.
Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run. She sent me a letter” he clapped
a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was proud
of me, that I’m my parents’ son, and to keep it up.”
“Cool,” said Ron.
“Yeah,” said Neville happily. “Only thing was, once they re-
alized they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do
without me after all. I don’t know whether they were planning to
kill me or send me to Azkaban, either way, I knew it was time to
disappear.”
“But,” said Ron, looking thoroughly confused, “aren’t—aren’t
we heading straight back into Hogwarts?”
“’Course,” said Neville. “You’ll see. We’re here.”
They turned a corner and there ahead of them was the end of
the passage. Another short flight of steps led to a door just like
the one hidden behind Ariana’s portrait. Neville pushed it open
and climbed through. As Harry followed, he heard Neville call out
to unseen people:
“Look who it is! Didn’t I tell you?”
As Harry emerged into the room beyond the passage, there were
several screams and yells: “HARRY!” “It’s Potter, it’s POTTER!”
“Ron!” “Hermione! ”
He had a confused impression of colored hangings, of lamps
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The Lost Diadem
and many faces. The next moment, he, Ron, and Hermione were
engulfed, hugged, pounded on the back, their hair ru✏ed, their
hands shaken, by what seemed to be more than twenty people:
They might just have won a Quidditch final.
“Okay, okay, calm down!” Neville called, and as the crowd
backed away, Harry was able to take in their surroundings.
He did not recognize the room at all. It was enormous, and
rather looked like the interior of a particularly sumptuous tree
house, or perhaps a gigantic ship’s cabin. Multicolored hammocks
were strung from the ceiling and from a balcony that ran around
the dark wood-paneled and windowless walls, which were covered
in bright tapestry hangings: Harry saw the gold Gryffindor lion,
emblazoned on scarlet; the black badger of Hu✏epu↵, s et against
yellow; and the bronze eagle of Ravenclaw, on blue. The silver and
green of Slytherin alone were absent. There were bulging book-
cases, a few broomsticks propped against the walls, and in the
corner, a large wooden-c ase d wireless.
“Where are we?”
“Room of Requirement, of course!” said Neville. “Surpassed
itself, hasn’t it? The Carrows were chasing me, and I knew I had
just one chance for a hideout: I managed to get through the door
and this is what I found! Well, it wasn’t exactly like this when I
arrived, it was a load s maller, there was only one hammo ck and
just Gryffindor hangings, but it’s expanded as more and more of
the D.A. have arrived.”
“And the Carrows can’t get in?” asked Harry, looking around
for the door.
“No,” said Seamus Finnigan, whom Harry had not recognized
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until he spoke: Seamus’ face was bruised and pu↵y. “It’s a proper
hideout, as long as one of us stays in here, they can’t get at us, the
door won’t open. I t’s all down to Neville. He really gets this room.
You’ve got to as k it for exactly what you need—like, “I don’t want
any Carrow supporters to be able to get in—and it’ll do it for you!
You’ve just got to make sure you close the loopholes! Neville’s the
man!”
“It’s quite straightforward, really,” said Neville modestly. “I’d
been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry, and
wishing I could get something to eat, and that’s when the passage
to Hog’s Head opened up. I went through it and met Aberforth.
He’s been providing us with food, because for some reason, that’s
the one thing the room doesn’t really do.”
“Yea, well, food’s one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of
Elemental Transfiguration,” said Ron to general astonishment.
“So we’ve been hiding out here for nearly two weeks,” said
Seamus, “and it even sprouted a pretty good bathroom once girls
started turning up—”
“—and thought they’d quite like to wash, yes,” supplied Laven-
der Brown, whom Harry had not noticed until that point. Now
that he looked around properly, he recognized many familiar faces.
Both Patil twins were there, as were Terry Boot, Ernie Macmillan,
Anthony Goldstein, and Michael Corner.
“Tell us what you’ve been up to, though,” said Ernie. “There’ve
been so many rumors, we’ve been trying to keep up with you on
Potterwatch,” He pointed at the wireless. “You didn’t break into
Gringotts?”
“They did!” said Neville. “And the dragon’s true too!”
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There was a smattering of applause and a few whoops; Ron
took a bow.
“What were you after?” asked Seamus eagerly.
Before any of them could parry the question with one of their
own, Harry felt a terrible, scorching pain in the lightning scar. As
he turned his back hastily on the curious and delighted faces, the
Room of Requirement vanished, and he was standing inside some
shack, an the rotting floorboards were ripped apart at his feet, a
disinterred golden box lay open and empty beside the hole, and
Voldemort’s scream of fury vibrated inside his head.
With an enormous e↵ort he pulled out of Voldemort’s mind
again, back to where he stood, swaying, in the Room of Require-
ment, sweat pouring from his face and Ron holding him up.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Neville was saying. “Want to sit
down? I expect you’re tired, aren’t—?”
“No,” said Harry. He lo oked at Ron and Hermione, trying to
tell them without words that Voldemort has just discovered the
loss of one of the other Horcruxes. Time was running out fast:
If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their
chance.
“We need to get going,” he said, and their expression told him
that they understood.
“What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus.
“What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” repeated Harry. He was exercising all his willpower
to prevent himself succumbing again to Voldemort’s rage: His scar
was still burning. “Well, there’s something we—Ron, Hermione,
and I—need to do, and then we’ll get out of here.”
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Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked
confused.
“What d’you mean, ‘get out of here’ ?”
“We haven’t come back to stay,” said Harry, rubbing his scar,
trying to soothe the pain. “There’s something important we need
to do—”
“What is it?”
“I—I can’t tell you.”
There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville’s brows con-
tracted.
“Why can’t you tell us? It’s something to do with fighting
You-Know-Who, right?”
“Well, yeah—”
“Then we’ll help you.”
The other members of Dumbledore’s Army were no dding, some
enthusiastically, other solemnly. A couple of them rose from their
chairs to demonstrate their willingness for immediate action.
“You don’t understand,” Harry seemed to have said that a lot
in the last few hours. “We—we can’t tell you. We’ve got to do
it—alone.”
“Why?” asked Neville.
“Because . . . ” In his desperation to start looking for the missing
Horcrux, or at least to have a private discussion with Ron and
Hermione about where they might comme nce their search, Harry
found it difficult to gather his thoughts; His scar was still searing.
“Dumbledore left the three of us a job,” he said carefully, “and we
weren’t supposed to tell—I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the
three of us.”
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The Lost Diadem
“We’re his army,” said Neville. “Dumbledore’s Army. We were
all in it together, we’ve been keeping it going w hile you three have
been o↵ on your own—”
“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic, mate,” said Ron.
“I never said it had, but I don’t see why you can’t trust us.
Everyone in this room’s been fighting and they’ve been driven in
here because the Carrows were hunting them down. Everyone in
here’s proven they’re loyal to Dumbledore—loyal to you.”
“Look,” Harry began, without knowing what he was going to
say, but it did not matter: the tunnel door had just opened behind
him.
“We got your message, Neville! Hello, you three, I thought you
must be here!”
It was Luna and Dean. Seamus gave a great roar of delight and
ran to hug his best friend.
“Hi, everyone!” said Luna happily. “Oh, it’s great to be back!”
“Luna,” said Harry distractingly, “what are you doing here?
How did you—?”
“I sent for her,” said Neville, holding up the fake Galleon. “I
promised her and Ginny that if you turned up I’d let them know.
We all thought that if you came back, it would mean revolution.
That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows.”
“Of course that’s what it means,” said Luna brightly, “Isn’t it,
Harry? We’re going to fight them out of Hogwarts?”
“Listen,” said Harry with a rising sense of panic, “I’m sorry,
but that’s not what we came back for. There’s something we’ve
got to do, and then—”
“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael
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Corner.
“No!” said Ron. “What we’re doing will benefit everyone in
the end, it’s all about trying to get rid of You-Know-Who—”
“Then let us help!” said Neville angrily. “We want to be a part
of it!”
There was another noise behind them, and Harry turned. His
head seemed to fall: Ginny was now climbing through the hole in
the wall, closely followed by Fred, George, and Lee Jordan. Ginny
gave Harry a radiant smile: He had forgotten, he had never fully
appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less
please to see her.
“Aberforth’s getting a bit annoyed,” said Fred, raising his hand
in answer to several cries of greeting. “He wants a kip, and his
bar’s turned into a railway station.”
Harry’s mouth fell open. Right behind Lee Jordan came Harry’s
old girlfriend, Cho Chang. She smiled at him.
“I got the message,” she said, holding up her own fake Galleon,
and she walked over to sit beside Michael Corner.
“So what’s the plan, Harry?” s aid George .
“There isn’t one,” said Harry, still disoriented by the sudden
appearance of all these people, unable to take everything in while
his scar was still burning so fiercely.
“Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favorite
kind,” said Fred.
“You’ve got to stop this!” Harry told Neville. “What did you
call them all back for? This is insane—”
“We’re fighting aren’t we?” said Dean, taking out his fake
Galleon. “The message said Harry was back, and we were going to
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The Lost Diadem
fight! I’ll have to get a wand, though—”
“You haven’t got a wand —?” began Seamus.
Ron turned suddenly to Harry.
“Why can’t they help?”
“What?”
“They can help.” He dropped his voice and said, so that none
of them could hear but He rmione, who stood between then, “We
don’t know where it is, We’ve got to find it fast. We don’t have to
tell them it’s a Horcrux.”
Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, who murmured, “I think
Ron’s right. We don’t even know what we’re looking for, we need
them.” And when Harry looked unconvinced, “You don’t have to
do everything alone, Harry.”
Harry thought fast, his scar still prickling, his head threatening
to split again. Dumbledore had warned against telling anyone but
Ron and Hermione about the Horcruxes. Secrets and lies, that’s
how we grew up, and Albus . . . he was a natural . . . Was he turning
into Dumbledore, keeping his secrets clutched to his chest, afraid
to trust? But Dumbledore had trusted Snape, and where had that
led? To murder at the top of the highest tower . . .
“All right,” he said quietly to the other two. “Okay,” he called
to the room at large, and all noise ceased: Fred and George, who
had been cracking jokes for the benefit of those nearest, fell silent,
and all of them looked alert, excited.
“There’s something we need to find,” Harry said. “Something—
something that’ll help us overthrow You-Know-Who. It’s here at
Hogwarts, but we don’t know where. It might have belonged to
Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone
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ever come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?”
He looked hopefully toward the little group of Ravenclaws, to
Padma, Michael, Terry, and Cho, but it was Luna who answered,
perched on the arm of Ginny’s chair.
“Well, that’s her lost diadem. I told you about it, remember,
Harry? The lost diadem of Rave nclaw? Daddy’s trying to dupli-
cate it.”
“Yeah, but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his
eyes, “is lost, Luna. That’s sort of the point.”
“When was it lost?” asked Harry.
“Centuries ago, they say,” said Cho, and Harry’s heart sank.
“Professor Flitwick says the diadem vanished with Ravenclaw her-
self. People have looked, but,” she appealed to her fellow Raven-
claws, “nobody’s ever found a trace of it, have they?”
They all shook their heads.
“Sorry, but what is a diadem?” asked Ron.
“It’s a kind of crown,” said Terry Boot. “Ravenclaw’s was
supposed to have magical properties, enhance the wisdom of the
wearer.”
“Yes, Daddy’s Wrackspurt siphons—”
But Harry cut across Luna.
“And none of you have ever seen anything that looks like it?”
They all shook their heads again. Harry looked at Ron and Her-
mione and his own disappointment was mirrored back at him. An
object that had been lost this long, and apparently without trace,
did not seem like a good candidate for the Horcrux hidden in the
castle. . . . Before he could formulate a new question, however, Cho
spoke again.
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The Lost Diadem
“If you’d like to see what the diadem’s supposed to look like,
I could take you up to our common room and show you, Harry.
Ravenclaw’s wearing it in her statue.”
Harry’s scar scorched again: For a moment the Room of Re-
quirement swam be fore him, and he saw instead the dark earth
soaring beneath him and felt the great snake wrapped around
his shoulders. Voldemort was flying again, whether to the un-
derground lake or here, to the castle, he did not know; Either way,
there was hardly any time left.
“He’s on the move,” he said quietly to Ron ad Hermione. He
glanced at Cho and then back at them. “Listen, I know it’s not
much of a lead, but I’m going to go and look at this statue, at least
find out what the diadem looks like. Wait for me here and keep,
you know—the other one—safe,”
Cho had got to her fee t, but Ginny said rather fierc ely, “No,
Luna will take Harry, won’t you, Luna?”
“Oooh, yes, I’d like to,” said Luna happily, and Cho sat down
again, looking disappointed.
“How do we get out?” Harry asked Neville.
“Over here.”
He lead Harry and Luna into a corner, where a small cupboard
opened onto a staircase.
“It comes out somewhere di↵erent every day, so they’ve never
been able to find it,” he said. “Only trouble is, we never know
exactly where we’re going to end up when we go out. Be careful,
Harry, they’re always patrolling the corridors at night.”
“No problem.” said Harry. “See you in a bit.”
He and Luna hurried up the staircase, which was long, lit by
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torches, and turned corners in unexpected places. At last they
reached what appeared to be solid wall.
“Get under here,” Harry told Luna, pulling out the Invisibility
Cloak and throwing it over both of them. He gave the wall a little
push.
It melted away at his touch and they slipped outside: Harry
glanced back and saw that it had resealed itself at once. They
were standing in a dark corridor: Harry pulled Luna back into
the shadows, fumbled in the pouch around his neck, and took out
the Marauder’s Map. Holding it close to his nose he search, and
located his and Luna’s dots at last.
“We’re up on the fifth floor,” he whispere d, watching Filch mov-
ing away from them, a corridor ahead. “Come on, this way.”
They crept o↵.
Harry had prowled the castle at night many times before, but
never has his heart hammered this fast, never had so much de-
pended oh his safe passage through the place. Through squares
of moonlight upon the floor, past suits of armor whose helmets
creaked at the sound of their soft footsteps, around corners beyond
which who knew what lurked, Harry and Luna walked, checking
the Marauder’s Map whenever light permitted, twice pausing to
allow a ghost to pass without drawing attention to themselves. He
expected to encounter an obstacle at any moment; his worst fear
was Peeves, and he strained his ears with every step to hear the
first, telltale signs of the poltergeist’s approach.
“This way, Harry,” breathed Luna, plucking his sleeve and
pulling him toward a spiral staircase.
They climbed in tight, dizzying circles; Harry had never been
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The Lost Diadem
up here before. At last they reached a door. There was no handle
and no keyhole: nothing but a plain expanse of aged wood, and a
bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle.
Luna reached out a pale hand, which looked eerie floating in
midair, unconnected to arm or body. She knocked once, and in
the silence, it sounded to Harry like a cannon blast. At once the
beak of the eagle opened, but instead of a bird’s call, a soft musical
voice said, “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”
“Hmm . . . What do you think, Harry?” said Luna, looking
thoughtful.
“What? Isn’t there just a password?”
“Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,” said Luna.
“What if you get it wrong?”
“Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,” said
Luna. “That way you learn, you see?”
“Yeah . . . Trouble is, we can’t really a↵ord to wait for anyone
else, Luna.”
“No, I see what you mean,” said Luna seriously. “Well then, I
think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.”
“Well reasoned,” said the voice, and the door swung open.
The deserted Ravenclaw common room was a wide, circular
room, airier than any Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. Graceful
etched w indows punctuated the walls, which were hung with blue-
and-bronze silks; By day, the Ravenclaws would have a spectacular
view of the surrounding mountains. The ceiling was domed and
painted with stars, which were echoed in the midnight-blue carpet.
There were tables, chairs, and bookcases, and in a niche opposite
the door stood a tall statue of white marble.
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Harry recognized Rowena Ravenclaw from the bust he had s een
at Luna’s house. The statue stood beside a door that led, he
guessed, to dormitories above. He strode right up to the marble
woman, and she seemed to look back at him with a quizzical half
smile on her face, beautiful yet slightly intimidating. A delicate-
looking circlet had been reproduced in marble on top of her head.
It was not unlike the tiara Fleur had worn at her wedding. There
were tiny words etched into it. Harry stepped out from under the
Cloak and climbed up onto Ravenclaw’s plinth to read them.
“‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.’”
“Which makes you pretty skint, witless,” said a cackling voice.
Harry whirled around, slipped o↵ the plinth, and landed on the
floor. The sloping-shouldered figure of Alecto Carrow was standing
before him, and even as Harry raised his wand, she pressed a stubby
forefinger to the skull and snake branded on her forearm.
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Chapter 30
The Sacking of Se ver us
Snape
T
he moment her finger touched the Mark, Harry’s scar
burned savagely, the starry room vanished from sight,
and he was standing upon an overcrop of rock beneath
a cli↵, and the sea was washing around him and there
was triumph in his heart—They have the boy.
A loud bang brought Harry back to where he stood: Disoriented,
he raised his wand, but the witch be fore him was already falling
forward; she hit the ground so hard that the glass in the bookcases
tinkled.
“I’ve never Stunned anyone except in our D.A. lessons,” said
Luna, sounding mildly interested. “That was noisier than I thought
it would be.”
And sure enough, the c eiling had begun to tremble. Scurrying,
echoing footsteps were growing louder from behind the door leading
to the dormitories: Luna’s spell had woken Ravenclaws sleeping
above.
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“Luna, where are you? I need to get under the Cloak!”
Luna’s feet appeared out of nowhere; he hurried to her side and
she let the Cloak fall back over them as the door opened and a
stream of Ravenclaws, all in their nightclothes, flooded into the
common room. There were gasps and cries o surprise as they say
Alecto lying there unconscious. Slowly they shu✏ed in around her,
a savage beast that might wake at any moment and attack them.
Then one brave little first-year darted up to her and prodded her
backside with his big toe.
“I think she might be dead!” he shouted with delight.
“Oh, look,” whispered Luna happily, as the Ravenclaws
crowded in around Alecto. “They’re pleased!”
“Yeah . . . great . . . ”
Harry closed his eyes, and as his scar throbbed he chose to sink
again into Voldemort’s mind. . . . He was moving along the tunnel
into the first cave. . . . He had chosen to make sure of the locket
before coming . . . but that would not take him long. . . .
There was a rap on the common room door and every Ravenclaw
froze. From the other side, Harry heard the soft, musical voice that
issued from the eagle door knocker: “Where do Vanished objects
go?”
“I dunno, do I? Shut it!” snarled an uncouth voice that Harry
knew was that of the Carrow brother, Amycus. “Alecto? Alecto?
Are you there? Have you got him? Open the door!”
The Ravenclaws were whisp e ring amongst thems elves, terri-
fied. Then, without warning, there came a series of loud bangs,
as though somebody was firing a gun into the door.
“ALECTO! If he comes, and we haven’t got Potter—d’you
want to go the same way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!” Amycus
bellowed, shaking the door for all he was worth, but still it did not
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
open. T he Ravenclaws were all backing away, and some of the most
frightened began scampering back up the staircase to their beds.
Then, just as Harry was wondering whether he ought not to blast
the door open and Stun Amycus before the Death Eater could do
anything else, a second, most familiar voice rang out be yond the
door.
“May I ask what you are doing, Professor Carrow?”
“Trying—to get—through this damned—door!” shouted
Amycus. “Go and get Flitwick! Get him to open it, now!”
“But isn’t your sister in there?” asked Professor McGonagall.
“Didn’t Professor Flitwick let her in earlier this evening, at you
urgent request? Perhaps she could open the door for you? Then
you needn’t wake up half the castle.”
“She ain’t answering, you old besom! You open it! Garn! Do
it, now!”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” said Professor McGonagall, with
awful coldness. There was a gentle tap of the knocker and the
musical voice asked again.
“Where do Vanished objects go?”
“Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything.” replied Professor
McGonagall.
“Nicely phrased,” replied the eagle door knocke r, and the door
swung open.
The few Ravenclaws who had remained behind sprinted for the
stairs as Amycus burst over the threshold, brandishing his wand.
Hunched like his sister, he had a pallid, doughy face and tiny eyes,
which fell at once on Alecto, sprawled motionless on the floor. He
let out a yell of fury and fear.
“What’ve they done, the little whelps?” he screamed. “I’ll
Cruciate the lot of ’em till they tell me who did it—and what’s
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the Dark Lord going to say?” he shrieked, standing over his sister
and smacking himself on the forehead with his fist, “We haven’t
got him, and they’ve gone and killed her!”
“She’s only Stunned,” said Professor McGonagall impatiently,
who had stooped down to examine Alecto. “She’ll be perfectly all
right.”
“No she bludgering well won’t!” bellowed Amycus. “Not after
the Dark Lord gets hold of her! She’s gone and sent for him, I felt
me Mark burn, and he thinks we’ve got Potter!”
“Got Potter?” said Professor McGonagall sharply. “What do
you mean, ‘got Potter’?”
“He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower,
and to send for him if we caught him!”
“Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower?
Potter belongs in my House!”
Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of
pride in her voice, and a↵ection for Minerva McGonagall gushed
up inside him.
“We was told he might come in here!” said Carrow. “I dunno
why, do I?”
Professor McGonagall stood up and her beady eyes swept the
room. Twice they passed right over the place where Harry and
Luna stood.
“We can push it o↵ on the kids,” said Amycus, his piglike face
suddenly crafty. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll say Alecto was
ambushed by the kids, them kids up there”—he looked up at the
starry ceiling toward the dormitories—“and we’ll say they forced
her to press the Mark, and that’s why he got a false alarm. . . . He
can punish them. Couple of kids more or less, what’s the di↵er-
ence?”
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
“Only the di↵erence between truth and lies, c ourage and cow-
ardice,” said Professor Mc Gonagall, who had turned pale, “a di↵er-
ence, in short, which you and your sister seem unable to appreciate.
But let me make one thing very clear. You are not going to pass
o↵ your many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts. I shall not
permit it.”
“Excuse me?”
Amycus moved forward until he was o↵ensively close to Profes-
sor McGonagall, his face within inches of hers. She refused to back
away, but looked down at him as if he were something disgusting
she had found stuck to a lavatory seat.
“It’s not a case of what you’ll permit, Minerva McGonagall.
You time’s over. It’s us what’s in charge here now, and you’ll back
me up or you’ll pay the price.”
And he spat in her face.
Harry pulled the Cloak o↵ himself, raised his wand, and said,
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, “Crucio! ”
The Death Eater was lifted o↵ his feet. He writhed through the
air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then,
with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front
of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.
“I see what Bellatrix meant,” said Harry, the blood thundering
through his brain, “you need to really mean it.”
“Potter!” whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart.
“Potter—you’re here! What—? How—?” She struggled to pull
herself together. “Potter, that was foolish!”
“He spat at you,” said Harry.
“Potter, I—that was very—very gallant of you—but don’t you
realize—?”
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“Yeah, I do,” Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied
him. “Professor McGonagall, Voldemort’s on the way.”
“Oh, are we allowed to say the name now?” asked Luna with an
air of interest, pulling o↵ the Invisibility Cloak. This appearance
of a second outlaw seemed to overwhelm Professor McGonagall,
who staggered backward and fell into a nearby chair, clutching at
the neck of her old tartan dressing gown.
“I don’t think it makes any di↵erence what we call him,” Harry
told Luna. “He already knows where I am.”
In a distant part of Harry’s brain, that part connected to the
angry, burning scar, he could see Voldemort sailing fast over the
dark lake in the ghostly green boat. . . . He had nearly reached the
island where the stone basin stood. . . .
“You must flee,” whispered Professor McGonagall. “Now, Pot-
ter, as quickly as you can!”
“I can’t,” said Harry. “There’s something I need to do. Profes-
sor, do you know where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”
“The d–diadem of Ravenclaw? Of course not—hasn’t it been
lost for centuries?” She sat up a little straighter. “Potter, it was
madness, utter madness, for you to enter this cas tle—”
“I had to,” said Harry. “Professor, there’s something hidden
here that I’m supposed to find, and it could be the diadem—if I
could just speak to Professor Flitwick—”
There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was
coming around. Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGon-
agall rose to her feet, pointing her want at the groggy Death Eater,
and said, “Imperio.”
Amycus got up, walked over to his sis ter, picked up her wand,
then shu✏ed obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it
over along with his own. Then he lay down on the floor beside
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length
of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked
around the Carrows, binding them tightly together.
“Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again
with superb indi↵erence to the Carrows’ predicament. “if He-Who-
Must-Not-Be-Named does indeed know that you are here—”
As she said it, a wrath that was like physical pain blazed
through Harry, setting his scar on fire, and for a se cond he looked
down upon a basin whose potion had turned clear, and saw that
no golden locket lay safe beneath the surface—
“Potter, are you all right?” said a voice, and Harry came back.
He was clutching Luna’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Time’s running out, Voldemort’s getting nearer. Professor, I’m
acting on Dumbledore’s orders, I must find what he wanted me to
find! But we’ve got to get the students out while I’m searching the
castle—It’s me Voldemort wants, but he won’t care about killing
a few more or less, not now—’” not now he knows I’m attacking
Horcruxes. Harry finished the sentence in his head.
“You’re acting on Dumbledore’s orders?” she repeated with a
look of dawning wonder. Then she drew herself up to her fullest
height.
“We shall secure the school against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-
Named while you search for this—this object.”
“Is that possible?”
“I think so,” said Professor McGonagall dryly, “we teachers are
rather good at magic, you know. I am sure we will be able to hold
him o↵ for a while if we all put out best e↵orts into it. Of course,
something will have to be done about Professor Snape—”
“Let me—”
“—and if Hogwarts is about to e nter a stage of siege, with the
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Dark Lord at the gates, it would indeed be advisable to take as
many innocent people out of the way as possible. With the Floo
network under observation, and Apparition impossible within the
grounds—”
“There’s a way,” said Harry quickly, and he explained about
the passageway leading into the Hog’s Head.
“Potter, we’re talking about hundreds of students—”
“I know, Professor, but if Voldemort and the Death Eaters are
concentrating on the school boundaries they won’t be interested in
anyone who’s Disapparating out of Hog’s Head.”
“There’s something in that,” she agreed. She pointed her wand
at the Carrows, and a silver net fell upon their bound bo dies,
tied itself around them, and hoisted them into the air, where they
dangled beneath the blue-and-gold ceiling like two large, ugly sea
creatures. “Come. We must alert the other Heads of House. You’d
better put that Cloak back on.”
She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her
wand. From the tip burst three silver cats with spectacle markings
around their eyes. The Patronuses ran sleekly ahead, filling the
spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall, Harry,
and Luna hurried back down.
Along the corridors they raced, and one by one the Patronuses
left them; Professor McGonagall’s tartan dressing gown rustled
over the floor, and Harry and Luna jogged behind her under the
Cloak.
They had descended two more floors when another set of quiet
footsteps joined theirs, Harry, whose scar was still prickling, heard
them first. He felt in the pouch around his neck for the Marauder’s
Map, but before he could take it out, McGonagall too se eme d to
become aware of their company, She halted, raised her wand ready
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
to duel, and said, “Who’s there?”
“It is I,” said a low voice.
From behind a suit of armor stepped Severus Snape .
Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him: He had forgotten
the details of Snape’s appearance in the magnitude of his crimes,
forgotten how his greasy black hair hung in curtains around his
thin face, how his black eyes had a dead, cold lo ok. He was not
wearing nightclothes, but was dressed in his usual black cloak, and
he too was holding his wand ready for a fight.
“Where are the Carrows?” he asked quietly.
“Wherever you told them to be , I expect, Severus,” said Pro-
fessor McGonagall.
Snape stopped nearer, and his eyes flitted over Professor
McGonagall into the air around her, as if he knew that Harry
was there. Harry held up his wand tip too, ready to attack.
“I was under the impression,” said Snape, “that Alecto had
apprehended an intruder.”
“Really?” said Professor McGonagall. “And what gave you
that impression?”
Snape made a slight flexing movement of his left arm, where
the Dark Mark was branded into his skin.
“Oh, but naturally,” said Professor McGonagall. “You Death
Eaters have you own private means of communication, I forgot.”
Snape pretended not to have heard her. His eyes were still
probing the air all about her, and he was moving gradually closer,
with an air of hardly noticing what he was doing.
“I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors,
Minerva.”
“You have some objection?”
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“I wonder what could have brought you out of you bed at this
hour?”
“I thought I heard a disturbance,” said Professor McGonagall.
“Really? But all see ms calm.”
Snape looked into her eyes.
“Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have, I
must insist—”
Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have be -
lieved: Her wand slashed through the air and for a split sec-
ond Harry thought that Snape must crumple, unconscious, but
the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was
thrown o↵ balance. She brandished her wand at a torch on the
wall and it flew out of its bracket. Harry, about to curse Snape,
was forced to pull Luna out of the way of the descending flames,
which became a ring of fire that filled the corridor and flew like a
lasso at Snape—
Then it was no longer fire, but a great black serpent that
McGonagall blasted to smoke, which re-formed and solidified in
seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers. Snape avoided
them only be forcing the suit of armor in front of him, and with
echoing clang, the dagger s ank, one after another, into the breast—
“Minerva!” said a squeaky voice, and looking behind him, still
shielding Luna from flying spells, Harry saw Professor Flitwick and
Sprout sprinting up the corridor toward them in the nightclothes,
with the enormous Professor Slughorn panting along at the rear.
“No!” squeaking Flitwick, raising his wand. “You’ll do more
murder at Hogwarts!”
Flitwick’s sp ell hit the suit of armor behind which Snap had
taken shelter: With a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free
of the crushing arms and sent it flying back toward his attackers;
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
Harry and Luna had to dive sideways to avoid it as it smashed into
the wall and shattered. When Harry looked up again, Snape was in
full flight, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all thundering after
him. He hurtled through a classroom door and, moments later, he
heard McGonagall cry, “Coward! COWARD!”
“What’s happened, what’s happened?” asked Luna.
Harry dragged her to her feet and they raced along the corri-
dor, trailing the invisibility Cloak behind them, into the deserted
classroom where Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were
standing at a smashed window.
“He jumped,” said Professor McGonagall as Harry and Luna
ran into the room.
“You means he’s dead?” Harry sprinted to the window, ignoring
Flitwick’s and Sprout’s yells of shock at his sudden appearance.
“No, he’s not dead,” said McGonagall bitterly. “Unlike Dum-
bledore, he was still carrying a wand . . . and he seems to have
learned a few tricks from his master.”
With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, batlike
shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.
There were heavy footfalls behind them, and a great deal of
puffing: Slughorn had just caught up.
“Harry!” he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath
his emerald-green silk pajamas. “My dear boy . . . what a
surprise . . . Minerva, do please explain. . . . Severus . . . what . . . ?”
“Our headmaster is taking a short break,” said Professor
McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the windows.
“Professor!” Harry shouted, his hands at his forehead. He could
see the Inferi-filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt the ghostly
green boat bump into the underground shore, and Voldemort le apt
from it with murder in his heart—
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“Professor, we’ve got to barricade the school, he’s coming now!”
“Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,” she told
the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped; Slughorn let out a
low groan. “Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore’s
orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are
capable while Potter does what he needs to do.”
“You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep
out You-Know-Who indefinitely?” said Professor Sprout.
“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and be -
tween the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding.
“I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then
gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be
evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay
and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.”
“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the
door. “I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with
my House.”
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering,
“Tentacula, Devil’s Snare. And Snargalu↵ pod . . . yes, I’d like to
see the Death Eaters fighting those.”
“I can act from here,” said Flitwick, and although he could bare
see out of it, he pointed his wand through the smashed w indow and
started muttering incantations of great complexity. Harry heard a
weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the power
of the wind into the grounds.
“Professor,” Harry said, approaching the little Charms master,
“Professor, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you
got any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”
“—Protego H orribilis —the diadem of Ravenclaw?” squeaked
Flitwick. “A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
hardly think it would be much use in this situation!”
“I only meant—do you know where it is? Have you se en it?”
“Seen it? Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost,
my boy!”
Harry felt a mixture of desperate disappointment and panic.
What, then, was the Horcrux?
“We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall,
Filius!” said Professor McGonagall, beckoning to Harry and Luna
to follow her.
They had just reached the door when Slughorn rumbled into
speech.
“My word,” he pu↵ed, pale and sweaty, his walrus mustache
aquiver. “What a to-do! I’m not at all sure whether this is wise,
Minerva. He is bound to find a way in, you know, and anyone who
has tried to delay him will be in most grievous peril—”
“I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great hall in twenty
minutes, also,” said Professor McGonagall. “If you wish to leave
with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt
to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this
castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.”
“Minerva!” he said, aghast.
“The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its
loyalties,” interrupted Professor McGonagall. “Go and wake your
students, Horace.”
Harry did not stay to watch Slughorn splutter: He and Luna
ran after Professor McGonagall, who had taken up a position in
the middle of the corridor and raised her wand.
“Piertotum —oh, for heaven’s sake, Filch, not now —”
The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting,
“Students out of bed! Students in the corridors!”
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“They’re supposed to be here, you blithering idiot!” shouted
McGonagall. “Now go and do something constructive! Find
Peeves!”
“P–Peeves?” stammered Filch as though he had never heard
the name before.
“Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven’t you been complaining
about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once!”
Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave
of her senses, but hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering un-
der his breath.
“And now—Piertotum Locomotor! ” cried Professor McGon-
agall.
And all along the corridor the statues and s uits of armor jumped
down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the
floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout
the castle had done the same.
“Hogwarts is threatened!” shouted Professor McGonagall.
“Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!”
Clattering and yelling, the horde of moving statues stampeded
past Harry, some of them smaller, others larger, than life. There
were animals too, and the clanking suits of armor brandished
swords and spiked balls on chains.
“Now, Potter,” said McGonagall, “you and Miss Lovegood had
better return to your friends and bring them to the Great Hall—I
shall rouse the other Gryffindors.”
They parted at the top of the next staircase, Harry and Luna
turning back toward the concealed entrance to the Room of Re-
quirement. As they ran, they met crowds of students, most wearing
traveling cloaks over their pajamas, being shepherded down to the
Great Hall by teachers and prefects.
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
“That was Potter!”
“Harry Potter!”
“It was him, I swear, I just s aw him!”
But Harry did not look back, and at last they reached the en-
trance to the Room of Requirement. Harry leaned against the
enchanted wall, which opened to admit them, and he and Luna
sped back down the steep staircase .
“Wh—?”
As the room came into view, Harry slipped down a few stairs
in shock. It was packed, far more crowded than when he had last
been in there. Kingsley and Lupin were looking up at him, as were
Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet,
Bill and Fleur, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.
“Harry, what’s happening?” said Lupin, meeting him at the
foot of the stairs.
“Voldemort’s on his way, they’re barricading the school—
Snape’s run for it—What are you doing here? How did you know?”
“We sent messages to the rest of Dumbledore’s Army,” Fred
explained. “You couldn’t expect everyone to miss the fun, Harry,
and the D.A. let the Order of the Phoenix know, and it all kind of
snowballed.”
“What first, Harry?” called George. “What’s going on?”
“They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting
in the Great Hall to get organized,” Harry said. “We’re fighting.”
There was a great roar and a surge toward the foot of the stairs,
he was pressed back against the wall as they ran past him, the min-
gled members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army,
and Harry’s old Quidditch team, all with their wands drawn, head-
ing up into the main castle.
“Come on, Luna,” Dean called as he passed, holding out his
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free hand; she took it and followed him back up the stairs.
The crowd was thinning: Only a little knot of people remained
below in the Room of Requirement, and Harry joined them. Mrs.
Weasley was struggling with Ginny. Around them stood Lupin,
Fred, George, Bill, and Fleur.
“You’re underage!” Mrs. We asley shouted at her daughter as
Harry approached. “I won’t permit it! They boys, yes, but you,
you’ve got to get home!”
“I won’t!”
Ginny’s hair flew as she pulled her arm out of her mother’s grip.
“I’m in Dumbledore’s Army—”
“A teenagers’ gang!”
“A teenagers’ gang that’s about to take him on, which no one
else has dared to do!” said Fred.
“She’s sixteen!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “She’s not old enough!
What you two were thinking, bringing her with you—”
Fred and George looked s lightly ashamed of themselves.
“Mum’s right, Ginny,” said Bill gently. “You can’t do this.
Everyone underage will have to leave, it’s only right.”
“I can’t go home!” Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her
eyes. “My whole family’s here, I can’t stand waiting there alone
and not knowing and—”
Her eyes met Harry’s for the first time. She looked at him
beseechingly, but he shook his head and she turned away bitterly,
“Fine,” she said, staring at the entrance to the tunnel back to
the Hog’s Head. “I’ll say good-bye now, then, and—”
There was a scu✏ing and a great thump: Someone else had
clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He
pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through
lopsided horn-rimmed glasse s, and said, “Am I too late? Has it
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The Sacking of Severus Snape
started? I only just found out, s o I–I—”
Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected
to run into most of his family. There was a long moment of as-
tonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a
wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, “So—’ow ee z lee-
tle Teddy?”
Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the
Weasleys seemed to by s olidifying, like ice.
“I—oh yes—he’s fine!” Lupin said loudly. “Yes , Tonks is with
him—at her mother’s—”
Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another,
frozen.
“Here, I’ve got a picture!” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph
from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw
a tiny baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at
the camera.
“I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly
dropped his photograph. “I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I
was a—a—”
“Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron.”
said Fred.
Percy swallowed.
“Yes, I was!”
“Well, you can’t say fairer that that,” said Fred, holding out
his hand to Percy.
Mrs. Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred
aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her
on the back, his eyes on his father.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” Percy said.
Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug
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his son.
“What made you see sense, Perce?” inquired George.
“It’s been coming on for a while,” said Percy, mopping his eyes
under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. “But I had
to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re
imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with
Aberforth and he tipped me o↵ ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was
going to make a fight for it, so here I am.”
“Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as
these,” said George in a good imitation of Percy’s most pompous
manner. “Now let’s get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death
Eaters’ll be taken.”
“So, you’re my sister-in-law now?” said Percy, shaking hands
with Fleur as they hurried o↵ toward the staircase with Bill, Fred,
and George.
“Ginny!” barked Mrs. Weasley.
Ginny has be en attempting, under cover of the reconciliation,
to sneak upstairs too.
“Molly, how about this,” said Lupin. “Why doesn’t Ginny stay
here, then at least she’ll be on the scene and know what’s going
on, but she won’t be in the middle of the fighting?”
“I—”
“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Weasley firmly. “Ginny, you
stay in this room, you hear me?”
Ginny did not seem to like the idea much, but under her father’s
unusually stern gaze, she nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and
Lupin headed o↵ for the stairs as well.
“Where’s Ron?” asked Harry. “Where’s Hermione?”
“They must have gone up to the Great Hall already,” Mr.
Weasley called over his shoulder.
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“I didn’t see them pass me,” said Harry.
“They said something about a bathroom,” said Ginny, “not
long after you left.”
“A bathroom?”
Harry strode across the room to an open door leading o↵ the
Room of Requirement and checked the bathroom beyond. It was
empty.
“You’re sure that they said bath—?”
But then his scar seared and the Room of Requirement van-
ished: He was looking through the high wrought-iron gates with
winded boars on pillars at either side, looking through the dark
grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights. Nagini
lay draped over his shoulders. He was possessed of that cold, cruel
sense of purpose that preceded murder.
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The Battle of Hogwarts
T
he enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was dark and
scattered with stars, and below it the four long House
tables were lined with disheveled students, some in
traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns. Here and
there shone the pearly white figures of the school ghosts. Ev-
ery eye, living and dead, was fixed upon Professor McGonagall,
who was speaking from the raised platform at the top of the Hall.
Behind her stood the remaining teachers, including the palomino
centaur, Firenze, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix
who had arrived to fight.
“—evacuation will be overseen by Mr. Filch and Madam Pom-
frey. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House
and take your charges, in an orderly fashion, to the evacuation
point.”
Many of the students looked petrified. However, as Harry
skirted the walls, scanning the Gryffindor table for Ron and Her-
mione, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the Hu✏epu↵ table and
shouted. “And what if we want to stay and fight?”
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The Battle of Hogwarts
There was a smattering of applause.
“If you are of age, you may stay,” said Professor McGonagall.
“What about our things?” called a girl at the Ravenclaw table.
“Our trunks, our owls?”
“We have no time to collect posses sions,” said Professor McGon-
agall. “The important thing is to get you out of here safely.”
“Where’s Professor Snape?” shouted a girl from the Slytherin
table.
“He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk,” replied Pro-
fessor McGonagall, and a great cheer erupted from the Gryffindors,
Hu✏epu↵s, and Ravenclaws.
Harry moved up the Hall alongside the Gryffindor table, still
looking for Ron and Hermione. As he paused, faces turned in his
direction, and a great deal of whispering broke out in his wake.
“We have already placed protection around the castle,” Profes-
sor McGonagall was saying, “but it is unlikely to hold for very long
unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly
and calmly, and do as your prefects—”
But her final words were drowned as a di↵erent voice echoed
throughout the Hall. It was high, cold, and clean. There was
no telling from where it came; it seemed to issue from the walls
themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might
have lain dormant there for centuries.
“I know you are preparing to fight.” There were screams
amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, look-
ing around in terror for the source of the sound. “Your e↵orts are
futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great
respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical
blood.”
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There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that
presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained
by walls.
“Give me Harry Potter,” said Voldemort’s voice, “and none
shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school
untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you should be rewarded.
“You have until midnight.”
The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every
eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him frozen
in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose
from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as
she raised a shaking arm and screamed, “But he’s there! Potter’s
there! Someone grab him!”
Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The
Gryffindors in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry,
but the Slytherins. Then the Hu✏epu↵s stood, and almost at the
same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them, with their backs to
Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awe-
struck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled
from beneath cloaks and under sleeves.
“Thank you, Miss Parkinson,” said Professor McGonagall in a
clipped voice. “You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the
rest of your House could follow.”
Harry heard the grinding of benches and then the sound of the
Slytherins trooping out on the other side of the Hall.
“Ravenclaws, follow on!” cried Professor McGonagall.
Slowly the four tables emptied. The Slytherin table was com-
pletely deserted, but a number of older Ravenclaws remained
seated while their fellows filed out; even more Hu✏epu↵s stayed
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The Battle of Hogwarts
behind, and half of remained in their seats, necessitating Professor
McGonagall’s descent from the teachers’ platform to chivvy the
underage on their way.
“Absolutely not, Creevey, go! And you, Peakes!”
Harry hurried over to the Weasleys, all sitting together at the
Gryffindor table.
“Where are Ron and Hermione?”
“Haven’t you found—?” began Mr. Weasley, looking worried.
But he broke o↵ as Kingsley had stepped forward on the raised
platform to address those who had remained behind.
“We’ve only got half an hour until midnight, so we need to
act fast! A battle plan has bee n agreed between the teachers
of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick,
Sprout, and McGonagall are going to take groups of fighters
up to the three highest towers—Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and
Gryffindor—where they’ll have a good ove rview, excellent posi-
tions from which to work spells. Meanwhile Remus”—he indi-
cated Lupin—“Arthur”—he pointed toward Mr. We asley, sitting
at the Gryffindor table—“and I will take groups into the grounds.
We’ll need s ome body to organize defense of the entrances of the
passageways into the school—”
“Sounds like a job for us,” called Fred, indicating himself and
George, and Kingsley nodded his approval.
“All right, leaders up here and we’ll divide up the troops!”
“Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, hurrying up to him, as
students flooded the platform, jostling for p os ition, receiving in-
structions, “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for something?”
“What? Oh,” said Harry, “oh yeah!”
He had almost forgotten about the Horcrux, almost forgotten
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that the battle was being fought so that he could search for it: The
inexplicable absence of Ron and Hermione had momentarily driven
every other thought from his mind.
“Then go, Potter, go!”
“Right—yeah—”
He sensed eyes following him as he ran out of the Great Hall
again, into the entrance hall still crowded with evacuating stu-
dents. He allowed himself to be swept up the marble staircase with
them, but at the top he hurried o↵ along a deserted corridor. Fear
and panic were clouding his thought processes. He tried to calm
himself, to concentrate on finding the Horcrux, but his thoughts
buzzed as frantically and fruitlessly as wasps trapped beneath a
glass. Without Ron and Hermione to help him he could not seem
to marshal his ideas. He slowed down, coming to a halt halfway
along an empty passage, where he sat down upon the plinth of a
departed statue and pulled the Marauder’s Map out of the pouch
around his neck. He could not see Ron’s or Hermione’s names any-
where on it, though the density of the crowd of dots now making its
way to the Ro om of Requirement might, he thought, be concealing
them. He put the map away, pressed his hands over his face, and
closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. . . .
Voldemort thought I’d go to Ravenclaw Tower.
There it was: a solid fact, the place to start. Voldemort had sta-
tioned Alecto Carrow in the Ravenclaw common room, and there
could only be one explanation: Voldemort feared that Harry al-
ready knew his Horcrux was connected to that house.
But the only object anyone seemed to associate with Ravenclaw
was the los t diadem . . . and how could the Horcrux be the diadem?
How was it possible that Voldemort, the Slytherin, had found the
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diadem that had eluded generations of Ravenclaws? Who could
have told him where to look, when nobody had seen the diadem in
living memory?
In living memory....
Beneath his fingers, Harry’s eyes flew open again. He leapt up
from the plinth and tore back the way he had come, now in pursuit
of his one last hope. The sound of hundreds of people marching
towards the Room of Requirement grew louder and louder as he
returned to the marble stairs. Prefects were shouting instructions,
trying to keep track of the students in their own Houses; there was
much pushing and shoving; Harry saw Zacharias Smith bowling
over first years to ge t to the front of the queue; here and there
younger students were in tears, while older ones called desperately
for friends or siblings. . . .
Harry caught sight of a pearly white figure drifting across the
entrance hall below and yelled as loudly as he could over the clamor.
“Nick! NICK! I need to talk to you!”
He forced his way back through the tide of students, finally
reaching the bottom of the stairs, where Nearly Headless Nick,
ghost of Gryffindor Tower, stood waiting for him.
“Harry! My dear boy!”
Nick made to grasp Harry’s hands with both of his own: Harry’s
felt as though they had been thrust into icy water.
“Nick, you’ve got to help me. Who’s the ghost of Ravenclaw
Tower?”
Nearly Headless Nick looked surprised and a little o↵ended.
“The Gray Lady, of course; but if it is ghostly services you
require—?”
“It’s got to be her—d’you know where she is?”
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Chapter 31
“Let’s see. . . .”
Nick’s head wobbled a little on his ru↵ as he turned hither and
thither, peering over the heads of the swarming s tudents.
“That’s her over there, Harry, the young woman with the long
hair.”
Harry looked in the direction of Nick’s transparent, pointing
finger and saw a tall ghost who caught sight of Harry looking at
her, raised her eyebrows, and drifted away through a solid wall.
Harry ran after her. Once through the door of the corridor
into which she had disappe ared, he saw her at the very end of the
passage, still gliding smoothly away from him.
“Hey—wait—come back!”
She consented to pause, floating a few inches from the ground.
Harry supposed that she was beautiful, with her waist-length hair
and floor-length cloak, but she also looked haughty and proud.
Close to, he recognized her as a ghost he had passed several times
in the corridor, but to whom he had never spoken.
“You’re the Gray Lady?”
She nodded but did not speak.
“The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?”
“That is correct.”
Her tone was not encouraging.
“Please: I need some help. I need to know anything you can
tell me about the lost diadem.”
A cold smile curved her lips.
“I am afraid,” she said, turning to leave, “that I cannot help
you.”
“WAIT!”
He had not meant to shout, but anger and panic were threat-
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The Battle of Hogwarts
ening to overwhelm him. He glanced at his watch as she hovered
in front of him. It was a quarter to midnight.
“This is urgent,” he said fiercely. “If that diadem’s at Hogwarts,
I’ve got to find it, fast.”
“You are hardly the first student to covet the diadem,” she said
disdainfully. “Generations of students have badgered me—”
“This isn’t about trying to get better marks!” Harry shouted
at her. “It’s about Voldemort—defeating Voldemort—or aren’t
you interested in that?”
She could not blush, but her transparent cheeks became more
opaque, and her voice was heated as she replied, “Of course I—how
dare you suggest—?”
“Well, help me, then!”
Her composure was slipping.
“It—it is not a question of—” she stammered. “My mother’s
diadem—”
“Your mother’s?”
She looked angry with herself.
“When I lived,” she said sti✏y, “I was Helena Ravenclaw.”
“You’re her daughter? But then, you must know what hap-
pened to it!”
“While the diadem bestows wisdom,” she said with an obvi-
ous e↵ort to pull herself together, “I doubt that it would greatly
increase your chances of defeating the wizard who calls himse lf
Lord—”
“Haven’t I just told you, I’m not interested in wearing it!”
Harry said fiercely. “There’s no time to explain—but if you care
about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort finished, you’ve got
to tell me anything you know about the diadem!”
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She remained quite still, floating in midair, staring down at
him, and a sense of hopelessness engulfed Harry. Of course, if she
had known anything, she would have told Flitwick or Dumbledore,
who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his
head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.
“I stole the diadem from my mother.”
“You—you did what?”
“I stole the diadem,” repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a in a whis-
per. “I sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my
mother. I ran away with it.”
He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence
and did not ask; he simply listened, hard, as she went on.
“My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was
gone, but pretended that she had it still. She concealed her loss,
my dreadful betrayal, even from the other founders of Hogwarts.
“Then my mother fell ill-fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she
was despe rate to see me one more time. She sent a man who had
long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She
knew that he would not rest until he had done so.”
Harry waited. She drew a deep breath and threw back her head.
“He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused
to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a
hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom,
he stabbed me.”
“The Baron? You mean—?”
“The Bloody B aron, yes,” said the Gray Lady, and she lifted
aside the cloak she wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white
chest. “When he saw what he had done, he was overcome with
remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used
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it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as
an act of penitence . . . as he should,” she added bitterly.
“And . . . and the diadem?”
“It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron
blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hol-
low tree.”
“A hollow tree?” repeated Harry. “What tree? Where was
this?”
“A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond
my mother’s reach.”
“Albania,” repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously
from confusion, and now he understood why she was telling him
what she had denied Dumbledore and Flitwick. “You’ve already
told someone this story, haven’t you? Another student?”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“I had . . . no idea. . . . He was . . . flattering. He seemed to . . . to
understand . . . to sympathize. . . .”
Yes, Harry thought, Tom Riddle would certainly have under-
stood Helena Ravenclaw’s desire to possess fabulous objects to
which she had little right.
“Well, you weren’t the first person Riddle wormed things out
of,” Harry muttered. “He could be charming when he wanted. . . .”
So Voldemort had managed to wheedle the location of the lost
diadem out of the Gray Lady. He had traveled to that far-flung
forest and retrieved the diadem from its hiding place, perhaps as
soon as he left Hogwarts, before he even started work at Borgin
and Burkes.
And wouldn’t those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an
excellent refuge when, so much later, Voldemort had needed a place
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to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long years?
But the diadem, once it became his precious Horcrux, had not
been left in that lowly tree. . . . No, the diadem had been returned
secretly to its true home, and Voldemort must have put it there—
“—the night he asked for a job!” said Harry, finishing his
thought.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He hid the diadem in the castle, the night he asked Dumble-
dore to let him teach!” said Harry. Saying it out loud enabled
him to make sense of it all. “He must’ve hidden the diadem on
his way up to, or down from, Dumbledore’s offic e! But it was still
worth trying to get the job—then he might’ve got the chance to
nick Gryffindor’s sword as well . . . thank you, thanks!”
Harry left her floating there, looking utterly bewildered. As
he rounded the corner back into the entrance hall, he checked his
watch. It was five minutes until midnight, and though he now knew
what the last Horcrux was, he was no closer to discovering where
it was.
Lost in desperate speculation, Harry turned a corner, but he
had taken only a few steps down the new corridor when the win-
dow to his left broke open with a deafening, shattering crash. As
he leapt aside, a gigantic b ody flew in through the window and
hit the opposite wall. Something large and furry detached itse lf,
whimpering, from the new arrival and flung itself at Harry.
“Hagrid!” Harry bellowed, fighting o↵ Fang the boarhound’s
attentions as the enormous bearded figure clambered to his feet.
“What the—?”
“Harry, yer here! Yer here! ”
Hagrid stooped down, b e stowed upon Harry a cursory and rib-
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The Battle of Hogwarts
cracking hug, then ran back to the shattered window.
“Good boy, Grawpy!” he bellowed through the hole in the
window. “I’ll see yer in a moment, there’s a good lad!”
Beyond Hagrid, out in the dark night, Harry saw bursts of light
in the distance and heard a weird, keening scream. He looked down
at his watch. It was midnight. The battle had begun.
“Blimey, Harry,” panted Hagrid, “this is it, eh? Time ter fight?”
“Hagrid, where have you come from?”
“Heard You-Know-Who from up in our cave,” said Hagrid
grimly. “Voice carried, didn’ it? ‘Yeh got till midnight ter gimme
Potter.’ Knew yeh mus’ be here, knew what mus’ be happenin’.
Get down, Fang. So we come ter join in, me an’ Grawpy an’ Fang.
Smashed our way through the boundary by the forest, Grawpy was
carryin’ us, Fang an’ me. Told him ter let me down at the castle,
so he shoved me through the window, bless him. Not exac’ly what
I meant, bu’—where’s Ron an’ Hermione?”
“That,” said Harry, “is a really good question. Come on.”
They hurried together along the corridor, Fang lolloping be-
side them. Harry could hear movement through the corridors all
around: running footsteps, shouts; through the windows, he could
see more flashes of light in the dark grounds.
“Where’re we goin’ ?” pu↵ed Hagrid, pounding along at Harry’s
heels, making the floorboards quake.
“I dunno exactly,” said Harry, making another random turn,
“but Ron and Hermione must be around here somewhere. . . .”
The first casualties of the battle were already strewn across the
passage ahead: The two stone gargoyles that usually guarded the
entrance to the sta↵room had been smashed apart by a jinx that
had sailed through another broken window. Their remains stirred
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Chapter 31
feebly on the floor, and as Harry leapt over one of their disembodied
heads, it moaned faintly. “Oh, don’t mind me . . . I’ll just lie here
and crumble. . . .”
Its ugly stone face made Harry think suddenly of the marble
bust of Rowena Ravenclaw at Xenophilius’s house, wearing that
mad headdress—and then of the statue in Ravenclaw Tower, with
the stone diadem upon her white curls. . . .
And as he reached the end of the passage, the memory of a
third stone effigy came back to him: that of an ugly old warlock,
onto whose head Harry hims elf had placed a wig and a battered old
tiara. The shock shot through Harry with the heat of firewhisky,
and he nearly stumbled.
He knew, at last, where the Horcrux sat waiting for him. . . .
Tom Riddle, who confided in no one and operated alone, might
have been arrogant enough to assume that he, and only he, had
penetrated the deepest mysteries of Hogwarts Castle. Of course,
Dumbledore and Flitwick, those model pupils, had never s et foot
in that particular place, but he, Harry, had strayed o↵ the beaten
track in his time at school—here at last was a secret he and Volde-
mort knew, that Dumbledore had never discovered—
He was roused by Professor Sprout, who was thundering past
followed by Neville and half a dozen others, all of them wearing
earmu↵s and carrying what appeared to be large potted plants.
“Mandrakes!” Neville bellowed at Harry over his shoulder as
he ran. “Going to lob them over the walls—they won’t like this!”
Harry knew now where to go. He sped o↵, with Hagrid and Fang
galloping behind him. They passed portrait after portrait, and the
painted figures raced alongside them, wizards and witches in ru↵s
and breeches, in armor and cloaks, cramming themselves into each
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The Battle of Hogwarts
others’ canvases, screaming news from other parts of the castle. As
they reached the end of this corridor, the whole castle shook, and
Harry knew, as a gigantic vase blew o↵ its plinth with explosive
force, that it was in the grip of enchantments more sinister than
those of the teachers and the Order.
“It’s all righ’, Fang—it’s all righ’!” yelled Hagrid, but the great
boarhound had taken flight as slivers of china flew like shrapnel
through the air, and Hagrid pounded o↵ after the terrified dog,
leaving Harry alone.
He forged on through the trembling passages, his wand at the
ready, and for the length of one corridor the little painted knight,
Sir Cadogan, rushed from painting to painting beside him, clanking
along in his armor, screaming encouragement, his fat little pony
cantering behind him.
“Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out,
Harry Potter, see them o↵!”
Harry hurtled around a corner and found Fred and a sm all knot
of students, including Lee Jordan and Hannah Abbott, standing
beside another empty plinth, whose statue had concealed a secret
passageway. Their wands were drawn and they were listening at
the concealed hole.
“Nice night for it!” Fred shouted as the castle quaked again, and
Harry sprinted by, elated and terrified in equal measure. Along yet
another corridor he dashed, and then there were owls everywhere,
and Mrs. Norris was hissing and trying to bat them with her paws,
no doubt to return them to their proper place. . . .
“Potter!”
Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his
wand held ready.
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“I’ve had hundreds of kids thundering through my pub, Potter.”
“I know, we’re evacuating,” Harry said, “Voldemort’s—”
“—attacking because they haven’t handed you over, yeah,” said
Aberforth. “I’m not deaf, the whole of Hogsmeade heard him. And
it never occurred to any of you to keep a few Slytherins hostage?
There are kids of Death Eaters you’ve just sent to safety. Wouldn’t
it have been a bit smarter to keep ’em here?”
“It wouldn’t stop Voldemort,” said Harry, “and your brother
would never have done it.”
Aberforth grunted and tore away in the opposite direction.
Your brother would never have done it. . . . Well, it was the
truth, Harry thought as he ran on again: Dumbledore, who had
defended Snape for so long, would never have held students ran-
som. . . .
And then he skidded around a final corner and with a yell of
mingled relief and fury he saw them: Ron and Hermione, both with
their arms full of large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Ron with a
broomstick under his arm.
“Where the hell have you been?” Harry shouted.
“Chamber of Secrets,” said Ron.
“Chamber—what?” said Harry, coming to an unsteady halt
before them.
“It was Ron, all Ron’s idea!” said Hermione breathlessly.
“Wasn’t it absolutely brilliant? There we were, after you left, and
I said to Ron, even if we had the other one, how are we going to
get rid of it? We still hadn’t gotten rid of the cup! And then he
thought of it! The basilisk!”
“What the—?”
“Something to get rid of Horcruxes,” said Ron simply.
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The Battle of Hogwarts
Harry’s eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Ron and Her-
mione’s arms: great curved fangs, torn, he now realized, from the
skull of a dead basilisk.
“But how did you get in there?” he asked, staring from the
fangs to Ron. “You need to speak Parseltongue!”
Ron made a horrible strangled hissing noise.
“It’s what you did to open the locket,” he told Harry apologet-
ically. “I had to have a few goes to get it right, but,” he shrugged
modestly, “we got there in the end.”
“He was amazing!” s aid He rmione, “Amazing!”
“So . . . ” Harry was struggling to keep up. “So . . . ”
“So we’re another Horcrux down,” said Ron, and from under
his jacket he pulled the mangled remains of Hu✏epu↵’s cup. “Her-
mione stabbed it. Thought she should. She hasn’t had the pleasure
yet.”
“Genius!” yelled Harry.
“It was nothing,” said Ron, though he looked delighted with
himself. “So what’s new with you?”
As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: All three
of them looked up as dust fell from the ceiling and they heard a
distant scream.
“I know what the diadem looks like, and I know where it is,”
said Harry, talking fast. “He hid it exactly where I hid my old
Potions book, where everyone’s been hiding stu↵ for centuries. He
thought he was the only one to find it. Come one.”
“As the walls trembled again, he led the other two back through
the concealed entrance and down the staircase into the Room of
Requirement. It was empty except for three women: Ginny, Tonks,
and an elderly witch wearing a moth-eaten hat, whom Harry rec-
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ognized immediately as Neville’s grandmother.
“Ah, Potter,” she said crisply as if she had been waiting for
him. “You can tell us what’s going on.”
“Is everyone okay?” said Ginny and Tonks together.
“’S far as we know,” said Harry. “Are there still people in the
passage to the Hog’s Head?”
He knew that the room would not be able to transform while
there were still users inside it.
“I was the last to come through,” said Mrs. Longbottom. “I
sealed it, I think it unwise to leave it open now Aberforth has left
his pub. Have you seen my grandson?”
“He’s fighting,” said Harry.
“Naturally,” said the old lady proudly. “Excuse me, I must go
and assist him.”
With surprising speed she trotted o↵ toward the stone steps.
Harry looked at Tonks.
“I thought you were supposed to be with Teddy at your
mother’s?”
“I couldn’t stand not knowing—” Tonks looked anguished.
“She’ll look after him—have you seen Remus?”
“He was planning to lead a group of fighters into the grounds—”
Without another word, Tonks sped o↵.
“Ginny,” said Harry, “I’m sorry, but we need you to leave to o.
Just for a bit. Then you can come back in.”
Ginny looked simply delighted to leave her sanctuary.
“And then you can come back in!” he shouted after her as she
ran up the steps after Tonks. “You’ve got to come back in!”
“Hang on a mom ent!” said Ron sharply. “We’ve forgotten
someone!”
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The Battle of Hogwarts
“Who?” asked Hermione.
“The house-elves, they’ll all be down in the kitchen, won’t
they?”
“You mean we ought to get them fighting?” asked Harry.
“No,” said Ron seriously, “I mean we should tell them to get
out. We don’t want anymore Dobbies, do we? We can’t order them
to die for us—“
There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Her-
mione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck
and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and
broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm
that he lifted Hermione o↵ her feet.
“Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing
happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still
more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. “Oi!
There’s a war going on here!”
Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each
other.
“I know, mate,” said Ron, who looked as though he had recently
been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, “so it’s now or
never, isn’t it?”
“Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?” Harry shouted.
“D’you think you could just—just hold it in until we’ve got the
diadem?”
“Yeah—right—sorry—” said Ron, and he and Hermione set
about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face.
It was clear, as the three of them stepped back into the corridor
upstairs, that in the minutes that they had spent in the Room
of Requirement the situation within the castle had deteriorated
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Chapter 31
severely: The walls and ceiling were shaking worse than e ver; dust
filled the air, and through the nearest window, Harry saw bursts of
green and red light so close to the foot of the castle that he knew
the Death Eaters must be very near to entering the place. Looking
down, Harry saw Grawp the giant meandering past, swinging what
looked like a stone gargoyle torn from the roof and roaring his
displeasure.
“Let’s hope he steps on some of them!” said Ron as more
screams echoed from close by.
“As long as it’s not any of our lot!” said a voice: Harry turned
and saw Ginny and Tonks, both with their wands drawn at the next
window, which was missing several panes. Even as he watched,
Ginny sent a well-aimed jinx into a crowd of fighters below.
“Good girl!” roared a figure running through the dust toward
them, and Harry saw Aberforth again, his gray hair flying as he
led a small group of students past. “They look like they might be
breaching the north battlements, they’ve brought giants of their
own.”
“Have you seen Remus?” Tonks called after him.
“He was dueling Dolohov,” shouted Aberforth, “haven’t seen
him since!”
“Tonks,” said Ginny, “Tonks, I’m sure he’s okay—“
But Tonks had run o↵ into the dust after Aberforth.
Ginny turned, helpless, to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
“They’ll be all right,” said Harry, though he knew they were
empty words. “Ginny, we’ll b e back in a moment, just keep out
of the way, keep safe—come on!” he said to Ron and Hermione,
and they ran back to the stretch of wall beyond which the Room
of Requirement was waiting to do the bidding of the next entrant.
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The Battle of Hogwarts
I need the place where everything is hidden. Harry begged of it
inside his head, and the door materialized on their third run past.
The furor of the battle died the moment they crossed the thresh-
old and c losed the door behind them: All was silent. They were
in a place the size of a cathedral with the appearance of a city, its
towering walls built of objects hidden by thousands of long-gone
students.
“And he never realized anyone could get in?” said Ron, his
voice echoing in the silence.
“He thought he was the only one,” said Harry. “Too bad for
him I’ve had to hide stu↵ in my time . . . this way,” he added. “I
think it’s down here. . . .”
He passed the stu↵ed troll and the Vanish Cabinet Draco Mal-
foy had mended last year with such disastrous consequenecs, then
hesitated, looking up and down aisles of junk; he could not remem-
ber we to go next. . . .
“Accio Diadem!” cried Hermioen in desperation, but nothing
flew through the air toward them. It seemed that, like the vault at
Gringotts, the room would not yield its hidden objects that easily.
“Let’s split up.” Harry told the other two. “Look for a stone
bust of an old man wearing a wig an a tiara! It’s standing on a
cupboard and it’s definitely somewhere around here. . . .”
They sped o↵ up adjacent aisles; Harry could hear the others’
footsteps echoing through the towering piles of junk, of bottles,
hats, crates, chairs, books , weapons, broomsticks, bats. . . .
“Somewhere near here,” Harry muttered to himself.
“Somewhere . . . somewhere . . . ”
Deeper and deeper into the labyrinth he went, looking for ob-
jects he recognized from his one previous trip into the room. His
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Chapter 31
breath was loud in his ears, and then his very soul seemed to shiver.
There it was, right ahead, the blistered old cupboard in which he
had hidden his old Potions book, and on top of it, the pockmarked
stone warlock wearing a dusty old wig and what looked like an
ancient discolored tiara.
He had already stretched out his hand, though he remained few
feet away, when a voice behind him said, “Hold it, Potter.”
He skidded to a halt and turned around. Crabbe and Goyle were
standing behind him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right
at Harry. Through the small space between their jeering faces he
saw Draco Malfoy.
“That’s my wand you’re holding, Potter,” said Malfoy, pointing
his own through the gap between Crabbe and Goyle.
“Not anymore,” panted Harry, tightening his grip on the
hawthorn wand. “Winners, keepers, Malfoy. Who’s lent you
theirs?”
“My mother,” said Draco.
Harry laughed, though there was nothing very humorous about
the situation. He could not hear Ron or Hermione anymore. They
seemed to have run out of earshot, searching for the diadem.
“So how come you three aren’t with Voldemort?” asked Harry.
“We’re gonna be rewarded,” said Crabbe. His voice was sur-
prisingly soft for such an enormous person: Harry had hardly ever
heard him speak before. Crabbe was speaking like a small child
promised a large bag of sweets. “We ’ung back, Potter. We decided
not to go. Decided to bring you to ’im.”
“Good plan,” said Harry in mock admiration. He c ould not
believe that he was this close, and was going to be thwarted by
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. He began edging slowly backward
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The Battle of Hogwarts
toward the place where the Horcrux sat lopsided upon the bust. If
he could just get his hands on it before the fight broke out . . .
“So how did you get in here?” he asked, trying to distract them.
“I virtually lived in the Room of Hidden Things all last year,”
said Malfoy, his voice brittle. “I know how to get in.”
“We was hiding in the corridor outside,” grunted Goyle. “We
can do Diss-lusion Charms now! And then,” his face split into a
gormless grin, “you turned up right in front of us and said you was
looking for a die-dum! What’s a die-dum?”
“Harry?” Ron’s voice echoed suddenly from the other side of
the wall to Harry’s right. “Are you talking to someone?”
With a whiplike movement, Crabbe pointed his wand at the
fifty foot mountain of old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books
and robes and unidentifiable junk, and shouted, “Descendo!”
The wall began to totter, then the top third crumbled into the
aisle next door where Ron stood.
“Ron!” Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione
screamed, and Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the
floor on the other side of the des tabilized wall: He pointed his
wand at the rampart, cried, “Finite!” and it steadied.
“No!” shouted Malfoy, staying Crabbe’s arm as the latter made
to repeat his spell. “If you wreck the room you might bury this
diadem thing!”
“What’s that matter?” said Crabbe, tugging himself free. “It’s
Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?”
“Potter came in here to get it,” said Malfoy with ill-disguised
impatience at the slow-wittedness of his colleagues. “so that must
mean—“
“‘Must mean’?” Crabbe turned on Malfoy with undisguised
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ferocity. “Who cares what you think? I don’t take your orders no
more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.”
“Harry?” shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk
wad. “What’s going on?”
“Harry?” mimicked Crabbe. “What’s going on—no, Potter!
Crucio!”
Harry had lunged for the tiara; Crabbe’s curse missed him but
hit the stone bust, which flew into the air; the diadem soared up-
ward and then dropped out of sight in the mass of objects on which
the bust had rested.
“STOP!” Malfoy shouted at Crabbe, his voice echoing through
the enormous room. “The Dark Lord wants him alive—“
“So? I’m not killing him, am I?” yelled Crabbe , throwing o↵
Malfoy’s restraining arm. “But if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants
him dead anyway, what’s the di↵—?”
A jet of scarlet light shot past Harry by inches: Hermione
had run around the corner be hind him and sent a Stunning Spell
straight at Crabbe’s head. It only missed be cause Malfoy pulled
him out of the way.
“It’s that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra! ”
Harry saw Hermione dive aside, and his fury that Crabb e had
aimed to kill wiped all else from his mind. He shot a Stunning
Spell at Crabbe, who lurched out of the way, knocking Malfoy’s
wand out of his hand; it rolled out of sight beneath a mountain of
broken furniture and bones.
“Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!” Malfoy yelled at Crabbe
and Goyle, who were both aiming at Harry: Their split second’s
hesitation was all Harry needed.
“Expelliarmus!”
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The Battle of Hogwarts
Goyle’s wand flew out of his hand and disappeared into the
bulwark of objects beside him; Goyle leapt fo olishly on the spot,
trying to retrieve it; Malfoy jumped out of range of Hermione’s
second Stunning Spell, and Ron, appearing suddenly at the end of
the aisle, shot a full Body-Bind Curse at Crabbe, which narrowly
missed.
Crabbe wheele d around and screamed, “Avada Kedavra!”
again. Ron leapt out of s ight to avoid the jet of green light. The
wand-less Malfoy cowered behind a three-legged wardrobe as Her-
mione charged toward them, hitting Goyle with a Stunning Spell
as she came.
“It’s somewhere here!” Harry yelled at her, pointing at the pile
of junk into which the old tiara had fallen. “Look for it while I go
and help R—“
“HARRY!” she screamed.
A roaring, billowing noise behind him gave him a moment’s
warning. He turned and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as
hard as they could up the aisle toward them.
“Like it hot, scum?” roared Crabbe as he ran.
But he seemed to have no control over what he had done.
Flames of abnormal size were pursuing them, licking up the sides
of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to soot at their touch.
“Aguamenti!” Harry bawled, but the jet of water that soared
from the tip of his wand evaporated in the air.
“RUN!”
Malfoy grabbed the Stunned Goyle and dragged him along;
Crabbe outstripped all of them, now looking terrified; Harry, Ron,
and Hermione pelted along in his wake, and the fire pursued them.
It was not normal fire; Crabbe had used a curse of which Harry had
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no knowledge. As they turned a corner the flames chased them as
though they were alive, sentient, intent upon killing them. Now the
fire was mutating, forming a gigantic pack of fiery beasts: Flaming
serpents, chimaeras, and dragons rose and fell and rose again, and
the detritus of centuries on which they were feeding was thrown up
into the air into their fanged mouths, tossed high on clawed feet,
before being consumed by the inferno.
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had vanished from view: Harry, Ron
and Hermione stopped dead; the fiery monsters were circling them,
drawing closer and closer, claws and horns and tails lashed, and
the heat was solid as a wall around them.
“What can we do?” Hermione screamed over the deafening
roars of the fire. “What can we do?”
“Here!”
Harry seized a pair of heavy-looking broomsticks from the near-
est pile of junk and threw one to Ron, who pulled Hermione onto it
behind him. Harry swung his leg over the second broom and, with
hard kicks to the ground, they soared up in the air, missing by feet
the horned beak of a flaming raptor that snapped its jaws at them.
The smoke and heat were becoming overwhelming: Below them
the cursed fire was consuming the contraband of generations of
hunted students, the guilty outcomes of a thousand banned exper-
iments, the secrets of the countless souls who had sought re fuge in
the ro om . Harry could not see a trace of Malfoy, Crabbe, or Goyle
anywhere. He swooped as low as he dare over the marauding mon-
sters of flame to try to find them, but there was nothing but fire:
What a terrible way to die. . . . He had never wanted this. . . .
“Harry, let’s get out, let’s get out!” bellowed Ron, though it
was impossible to see where the door was through the black smoke.
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The Battle of Hogwarts
And then Harry heard a thin, piteous human scream from
amidst the terrible commotion, the thunder of devouring flame.
“It’s—too—dangerous—!” Ron yelled, but Harry wheeled in
the air. His glasses giving his eyes some small protection from the
smoke, he raked the firestorm b elow, seeking a sign of life, a limb
or a face that was not yet charred like wood. . . .
And he saw them: Malfoy with his arms around the unconscious
Goyle, the pair of them perched on a fragile tower of charred desks,
and Harry dived. Malfoy saw him coming and raised one arm, but
even as Harry grasped it he knew at once that it was no good.
Goyle was too heavy and Malfoy’s hand, covered in sweat, slid
instantly out of Harry’s—
“IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I’LL KILL YOU, HARRY!” roared
Ron’s voice, and, as a great flaming chimaera bore down upon
them, he and Hermione dragged Goyle onto their broom and rose,
rolling and pitching, into the air once more as Malfoy clambered
up behind Harry.
“The door, get to the door, the door!” screamed Malfoy in
Harry’s ear, and Harry sped up, following Ron, Hermione, and
Goyle through the billowing black smoke, hardly able to breathe:
and all around them the last few objec ts unburned by the devouring
flames were flung into the air, as the creatures of the cursed fire cast
them high in celebration: cups and shields, a sparkling necklace,
and an old, discolored tiara—
“What are you doing, what are you doing, the door’s that way!”
screamed Malfoy, but Harry made a hairpin swerve and dived. The
diadem seemed to fall in slow motion, turning and glittering as it
dropped toward the maw of a yawning serpent, and then he had
it, caught it around his wrist—
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Harry swerved again as the serpent lunged at him; he soared
upward and straight toward the place where, he prayed, the door
stood open; Ron, Hermione and Goyle had vanished; Malfoy was
screaming and holding Harry so tightly it hurt. Then, through the
smoke, Harry saw a rectangular patch on the wall and steered the
broom at it, and moments later clean air filled his lungs and they
collided with the wall in the corridor beyond.
Malfoy fell o↵ the broom and lay facedown, gasping, coughing,
and retching. Harry rolled over and sat up: The door to the Room
of Requirement had vanished, and Ron and Hermione sat panting
on the floor beside Goyle, who was still unconscious.
“C–Crabbe,” choked Malfoy as soon as he could speak. “C–
Crabbe . . . ”
“He’s dead,” said Ron harshly.
There was silence, apart from panting and coughing. Then a
number of huge bangs shook the castle, and a great cavalcade of
transparent figures galloped past on horses, their heads screaming
with bloodlust under their arms. Harry staggered to his feet when
the Headless Hunt had passed and looked around: The battle was
still going on all around him. He could hear more scream than
those of the retreating ghosts. Panic flared within him.
“Where’s Ginny?” he said sharply. “She was here. She was
supposed to be going back into the Room of Requirement.”
“Blimey, d’you reckon it’ll still work after that fire?” asked
Ron, but he too got to his feet, rubbing his chest and looking left
and right. “Shall we split up and look—?”
“No,” said Hermione, getting to her feet to o. Malfoy and Goyle
remained slumped hopelessly on the corridor floor; neither of them
had wands. “Let’s stick together. I say we go—Harry, what’s that
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The Battle of Hogwarts
on your arm?”
“What? Oh yeah—“
He pulled the diadem from his wrist and held it up. It was still
hot, blackened with soot, but as he looked at it closely he was just
able to make out the tiny words etched upon it; WIT BEYOND
MEASURE IS MAN’S GREATEST TREASURE.
A bloodlike substance, dark and tarry, seemed to be leaking
from the diadem. Suddenly Harry felt the thing vibrate violently,
then break apart in his hands, and as it did so, he thought he heard
the faintest, most distant scream of pain, echoing not from the
grounds or the castle, but from the thing that had just fragmented
in his fingers.
“It must have been Fiendfyre!” whimpered Hermione, her eyes
on the broken piece.
“Sorry?”
“Fiendfyre-cursed fire — it’s one of the substances that destroy
Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared use it, it’s so dan-
gerous — how did Crabbe know how to—?”
“Must’ve learned from the Carrows,” said Harry grimly.
“Shame he wasn’t concentrating when they mentioned how to
stop it, really,” said Ron, whose hair, like Hermione’s, was singed,
and whose face was blackened. “If he hadn’t tried to kill us all, I’d
be quite sorry he was dead.”
“But don’t you realize?” whispered Hermione. “This means, if
we can just get the snake—“
But s he broke o↵ as yells and shouts and the unmistakable
noises of dueling filled the corridor. Harry looked around and his
heart seemed to fail: Death Eaters had penetrated Hogwarts. Fred
and Percy had just backed into view, both of them dueling masked
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Chapter 31
and hooded men.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione ran forward to help: Jets of light
flew in every direction and the man dueling Percy backed o↵, fast:
Then his hood slipped and they saw a high forehead and streaked
hair—
“Hello, Minister!” bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight
at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of
his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. “Did I mention I’m
resigning?”
“You’re joking, Perce!” shouted Fred as the Death Eater he
was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning
Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupt-
ing all over him; he se em ed to be turning into some form of sea
urchin. Fred looked at Percy with glee.
“You actually are joking, Perce. . . . I don’t think I’ve heard you
joke since you were—“
The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry,
Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their
feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment
of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world
was rent apart, Harry felt himself flying through the air, and all he
could do was hold as tightly as possible to that thin stick of wood
that was his one and only weapon, and shield his head in his arms:
He heard the screams and yells of his companions without a hope
of knowing what had happened to them—
And then the world res olved itself into pain and semidarkness:
He was half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been
subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told him that the side of
the cas tle had been blown away, and hot stickiness on his cheek
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The Battle of Hogwarts
told him that he was bleeding copiously. Then he heard a terrible
cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind nei-
ther flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more
frightened than he had be en that day, more frightened, perhaps,
than he had been in his life. . . .
And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and
three redheaded men were grouped on the ground where the wall
had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand as they stag-
gered and stumbled over stone and wood.
“No—no—no!” someone was shouting. “No! Fred! No!” And
Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them,
and Fred’s eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh
still etched upon his face.
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The Elder Wand
T
he world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased,
the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant
laid down their arms? Harry’s mind was in free fall,
spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossi-
bility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all
his senses must be lying—
And then a body fell past the hole blown into the side of the
school and curses flew in at them from the darkness, hitting the
wall behind their heads.
“Get down!” Harry shouted, as more curses flew through the
night: He and Ron had both grabbed He rmione and pulled her
to the floor, but Percy lay across Fred’s body, shielding it from
further harm, and when Harry shouted “Percy, come on, we’ve got
to move!” he shook his head.
“Percy!” Harry saw tear tracks streaking the grime c oating
Ron’s face as he seized his elder brother’s shoulders and pulled,
but Percy would not budge. “Percy, you can’t do anything for
him! We’re going to—”
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The Elder Wand
Hermione screamed, and Harry, turning, did not need to ask
why. A monstrous s pider the size of a small car was trying to climb
through the huge hole in the wall. One of Aragog’s descendants
had joined the fight.
Ron and Harry shouted together; their spells collided and the
monster was blown backward, its legs jerking horribly, and van-
ished into the darkness.
“It brought friends!” Harry called to the others, glancing over
the edge of the castle through the hole in the wall the curses had
blasted. More giant spiders were climbing the side of the building,
liberated from the Forbidden Forest, into which the Death Eaters
must have penetrated. Harry fired Stunning Spells down upon
them, knocking the lead monster into its fellows, so that they rolled
back down the building and out of sight. Then more curses came
soaring over Harry’s head, so close he felt the force of them blow
his hair.
“Let’s move, NOW!”
Pushing Hermione ahead of him with Ron, Harry stooped to
seize Fred’s body under the armpit. Percy, realizing what Harry
was trying to do, stopped clinging to the body and helped: to-
gether, crouching low to avoid the curses flying at them from the
grounds, they hauled Fred out of the way.
“Here,” said Harry, and they placed him in a niche where a suit
of armor had stood earlier. He could not bear to look at Fred a
second longer than he had to, and after making sure that the body
was well-hidden, he took o↵ after Ron and He rmione. Malfoy and
Goyle had vanished but at the end of the corridor, which was now
full of dust and falling masonry, glass long gone from windows, he
saw many people running backward and forward, whether friends
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Chapter 32
or foes he could not tell. Rounding the corner, Percy let out a
bull-like roar: “ROOKWOOD!” and sprinted o↵ in the direction
of a tall man, who was pursuing a couple of students.
“Harry, in here!” Hermione screamed.
She had pulled Ron behind a tapestry. They seemed to be
wrestling together, and for one mad second Harry thought that
they were embracing again; then he saw that Hermione was trying
to restrain Ron, to stop him running after Percy.
“Listen to me—LISTEN RON !”
“I wanna help—I wanna kill Death Eaters—”
His face was c ontorted, smeared with dust and smoke, and he
was shaking with rage and grief.
“Ron, we’re the only ones who can end it! Please—Ron—we
need the snake, we’ve got to kill the snake!” said Hermione.
But Harry knew how Ron felt: Pursuing another Horcrux could
not bring the satisfaction of revenge; he too wanted to fight, to
punish them, the people who had killed Fred, and he wanted to
find the other Weasleys, and above all make sure, make quite sure,
that Ginny was not—but he could not permit that idea to form in
his mind—
“We will fight!” Hermione said. “We’ll have to, to reach the
snake! But let’s not lose sight now of what we’re suppose d to be
d–doing! We’re the only ones who can end it!”
She was crying too, and she wiped her face on her torn and
singed sleeve as s he spoke, but she took great heaving breaths to
calm herself as, still keeping a tight hold on Ron, she turned to
Harry. “You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he’ll
have the snake with him, won’t he? Do it, Harry—look inside
him!”
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The Elder Wand
Why was it so easy? Because his scar had been burning for
hours, yearning to show him Voldemort’s thoughts? He closed his
eyes on her command, and at once, the screams and bangs and
all the discordant sounds of the battle were drowned until they
became distant, as though he stood far, far away from them. . . .
He was standing in the middle of a desolate but strangely fa-
miliar room, with peeling paper on the walls and all the windows
boarded up except for one. The sounds of the assault on the castle
were mu✏ed and distant. The single unblocked window revealed
distant bursts of light where the castle stood, but inside the room
was dark except for a solitary oil lamp.
He was rolling his wand between his fingers, watching it, his
thoughts on the room in the castle, the secret room only he had ever
found, the room, like the chamber, that you had to be clever and
cunning and inquisitive to discover . . . He was confident that the
boy would not find the diadem . . . although Dumbledore’s puppet
had come much farther than he ever expec ted . . . too far. . . .
“My Lord,” said a voice, desperate and cracked. He turned:
there was Lucius Malfoy sitting in the darkest corner, ragged and
still bearing the marks of the punishment he had received after the
boy’s last escape. One of his eyes remained closed and pu↵y. “My
Lord . . . please . . . my son . . . ”
“If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come
and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins. Perhaps he has decided
to befriend Harry Potter?”
“No—never,” whispered Malfoy.
“You must hope not.”
“Aren’t—aren’t you afraid, my Lord that Potter might die
at another hand but yours?” asked Malfoy, his voice shaking.
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Chapter 32
“Wouldn’t it be . . . forgive me . . . more prudent to call o↵ this bat-
tle, enter the castle, and seek him y–yourself?”
“Do not pretend Lucius. You wish the battle to cease so that
you can discover what has happened to your son. And I do not
need to seek Potter. Before the night is out, Potter will have come
to find me.”
Voldemort dropped his gaze once more to the wand in his
fingers. It troubled him . . . and those things that troubled Lord
Voldemort needed to be rearranged. . . .
“Go and fetch Snape.”
“Snape, m–my Lord?”
“Snape. Now. I need him. There is a—service—I require from
him. Go.”
Frightened, stumbling a little through the gloom, Lucius left
the room. Voldemort continued to stand there, twirling the wand
between his fingers, staring at it.
“It is the only way, Nagini,” he whispered, and he looked
around, and there was the great thick snake, now suspended in
midair, twisting gracefully within the enchanted, protected space
he had made for her, a starry, transparent sphere somewhere b e -
tween a glittering cage and a tank.
With a gasp, Harry pulled back and opened his eyes at the same
moment his ears were assaulted with the screeches and cries, the
smashes and bangs of battle.
“He’s in the Shrieking Shack. The snake’s with him, it’s got
some sort of magical protection around it. He’s just sent Lu-
cius Malfoy to find Snape.” “Voldemort’s sitting in the shriek-
ing Shack?” said Hermione, outraged. “He’s not—he’s not even
fighting??”
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The Elder Wand
“He doesn’t think he needs to fight,” said Harry. “He thinks
I’m going to go to him.”
“But why?”
“He knows I’m after Horcruxes—he’s keeping Nagini close be-
side him—obviously I’m going to have to go to him to get near
the thing—”
“Right,” said Ron, squaring his shoulders. “So you can’t go,
that’s what he wants, what he’s expecting. You stay here and look
after Hermione, and I’ll go and get it—”
Harry cut across Ron.
“You two stay here, I’ll go under the Cloak and I’ll be back as
soon as I—”
“No,” said Hermione, “it makes much more s ense if I take the
Cloak and—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Ron snarled at her.
Before Hermione could get farther than “Ron, I’m just as
capable—” the tapestry at the top of the staircas e on which they
stood was ripped open.
“POTTER!”
Two masked Death Eaters stood there, but even before their
wands were fully raised, Hermione shouted “Glisseo!”
The stairs beneath their feet flattened into a chute and she,
Harry, and Ron hurtled down it, unable to control their speed but
so fast that the Death Eaters’ Stunning Spells flew far over their
heads. They shot through the concealing tapestry at the bottom
and spun onto the floor, hitting the oppos ite wall.
“Duro!” cried Hermione, pointing her wand at the tapestry,
and there were two loud, sickening crunches as the tapestry turned
to stone and the Death Eaters pursuing them crumpled against it.
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Chapter 32
“Get back!” shouted Ron, and he, Harry, and Hermione hurled
themselves against a door as a herd of galloping desks thundered
past, shepherded by a sprinting Professor McGonagall. She ap-
peared not to notice them. Her hair had come down and there
was a gash on her cheek. As she turned the corner, they heard her
scream, “CHARGE!”
“Harry, you get the Cloak on,” said Hermione. “Never mind
us—
“But he threw it over all three of them; large though they were
he doubted anyone would see their disembodied feet through the
dust that clogged the air, the falling stone, the shimmer of spells.
They ran down the next staircase and found themselves in a
corridor full of duelers. The portraits on either side of the fighters
were crammed with figures screaming advice and encouragement,
while Death Eaters, both masked and unmasked, dueled students
and teachers. Dean had won himself a wand, for he was face-to-
face with Dolohov, Parvati with Travers. Harry, Ron and Her-
mione raised their wands at once, ready to strike, but the duelers
were weaving and darting so much that there was a strong like-
lihood of hurting on of their own side if they cast curses. Even
as they stood braced, looking for the opportunity to act, there
came a gre at “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!” and looking up, Harry saw Peeves
zooming over them, dropping Snargalu↵ pods down onto the Death
Eaters, whose heads were suddenly engulfed in wriggling green tu-
bers like fat worms.
“Argh!”
A fistful of tubers had hit the Cloak over Ron’s head; the damp
green roots were suspended improbably in midair as Ron tried to
shake them loose.
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The Elder Wand
“Someone’s invisible there!” shouted a masked Death Eater,
pointing.
Dean made the most of the Death Eater’s momentary distrac-
tion, knocking him out with a stunning Spell; Dolohov attempted
to retaliate, and Parvati shot a Body Bind Curse at him.
“LET’S GO!” Harry yelled, and he, Ron, and Hermione gath-
ered the Cloak tightly around themselves and pelted, heads down,
through the midst of the fighters, slipping a little in pools of Snar-
galu↵ juice, toward the top of the m arble staircase into the entrance
hall.
“I’m Draco Malfoy, I’m Draco, I’m on your side!”
Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with another masked
Death Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed. Mal-
foy looked around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him
from under the Cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the De ath
Eater, his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused.
“And that’s the second time we’ve saved your life tonight, you
two-faced bastard!” Ron yelled.
There were more duelers all over the stairs and in the hall.
Death Eaters everywhere Harry looked: Yaxley, close to the front
doors, in combat with Flitwick, a masked Death Eater dueling
Kingsley right beside them. Students ran in every direction; some
carrying or dragging injured friends. Harry directed a Stunning
Spell toward the masked Death Eater; it missed but nearly hit
Neville, who had emerged from nowhere brandishing armfuls of
Venomous Tentacula, which looped itself happily around the near-
est Death Eater and began reeling him in.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione sped down the marble staircase:
glass shattered on the left, and the Slytherin hourglass that had
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Chapter 32
recorded House points spilled its e meralds everywhere, so that peo-
ple slipped and staggered as they ran. Two bodies fell from the
balcony overhead as they reached the ground a gray blur that Harry
took for an animal sped four-legged across the hall to sink its teeth
into one of the fallen.
“NO!” shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her
wand, Fenrir Greyback was thrown backward from the feebly strug-
gling body of Lavender Brown. He hit the marble banisters and
struggled to return to his feet. Then, with a bright white flash and
a crack, a crystal ball fell on top of his head, and he crumpled to
the ground and did not move.
“I have more!” shrieked Professor Trelawney from over the
banisters. “More for any who want them! Here—”
And with a move like a te nnis serve, she heaved another enor-
mous crystal sphere from her bag, waved her wand through the air,
and caused the ball to speed across the hall and smash through a
window. At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst
open, and more of the gigantic spiders forced their way into the
front hall.
Screams of terror rent the air: the fighters scattered, Death
Eaters and Hogwartians alike, and red and green jets of light flew
into the midst of the oncoming monsters, which shuddered and
reared, more terrifying than ever.
“How do we get out?” yelled Ron over all the screaming, but
before either Harry or Hermione could answer they were bowled
aside; Hagrid had come thundering down the stairs, brandishing
his flowery pink umbrella.
“Don’t hurt ’em, don’t hurt ’em!” he yelled.
“HAGRID, NO!”
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The Elder Wand
Harry forgot everything else: he sprinted out from under the
cloak, running bent double to avoid the curses illuminating the
whole hall.
“HAGRID, COME BACK!” But he was not even halfway to Ha-
grid when he saw it happen: Hagrid vanished amongst the spiders,
and with a great scurrying, a foul swarming movement, they re-
treated under the onslaught of spells, Hagrid buried in their midst.
“HAGRID!”
Harry heard someone calling his own name, whether friend or
foe he did not care: He was sprinting down the front ste ps into
the dark grounds, and the spiders were swarming away with their
prey, and he could see nothing of Hagrid at all.
“HAGRID!”
He thought he could make out an enormous arm waving from
the midst of the spider swarm, but as he made to chase after them,
his way was impeded by a monumental foot, which swung down out
of the darkness and made the ground on which he stood shudder.
He looked up: A giant stood before him, twenty feet high, its head
hidden in shadow, nothing but its treelike, hairy shins illuminated
by light from the castle doors. With one brutal, fluid movement,
it smashed a massive fist through an upper window, and glass
rained down upon Harry, forcing him back under the shelter of the
doorway.
“Oh my—!” shrieked Hermione, as she and Ron caught up with
Harry and gazed upward at the giant now trying to seize people
through the window above.
“DON’T!” Ron yelled, grabbing Hermione’s hand as she raised
her wand. “Stun him and he’ll crush half the castle—”
“HAGGER?”
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Chapter 32
Grawp came lurching around the corner of the castle; only now
did Harry realize that Grawp was, indeed, an undersized giant.
The gargantuan monster trying to crush pe ople on the upper floors
turned around and let out a roar. The stone steps trembled as
he stomped toward his smaller kin, and Grawp’s lopsided mouth
fell open, showing yellow, half brick-sized teeth; and then they
launched themselves at each other with the savagery of lions.
“RUN!” Harry roared; the night was full of hideous yells and
blows as the giants wrestled, and he seized Hermione’s hand and
tore down the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear.
Harry had not lost hope of finding and saving Hagrid; he ran so fast
that they were halfway toward the forest before they were brought
up short again.
The air around them had frozen: Harry’s breath caught and
solidified in his chest. Shapes moved out in the darkness, swirling
figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave towards
the castles, their faces hooded and their breath rattling . . .
Ron and Hermione closed in beside him as the sounds of fight-
ing behind them grew suddenly muted, deadened, because a si-
lence only dementors could bring was falling thickly through the
night, and Fred was gone, and Hagrid was surely dying or already
dead . . .
“Come on, Harry!” said Hermione’s voice from a very long way
away. “Patronuses, Harry, come on!” he raised his wand, but a
dull hopelessness was spreading throughout him: How many more
lay dead that he did not yet know about? He felt as though his
soul had already half left his body. . . .
“HARRY, COME ON!” screamed Hermione.
A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward them,
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The Elder Wand
sucking their way closer to Harry’s despair, which was like a
promise of a feast. . . .
He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly,
and expire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in midair and fade, and
his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the
oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling. . . .
And then a silver hare, a boar, and fox soared past Harry, Ron,
and Hermione’s heads: the dementors fell back before the creatures’
approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to
stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continuing to cast
Patronuses: Luna, Ernie, and Seamus.
“That’s right,” said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back
in the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice
for the D.A., “That’s right, Harry . . . come on think of something
happy. . . .”
“Something happy?” he said, his voice cracked.
“We’re all still here,” she whispered, “we’re still fighting. Come
on, now. . . .”
There was a silver spark, then a wavering light, and then, with
the greates t e↵ort it had ever cost him the stag burst from the
end of Harry’s wand. It cantered forward, and now the dementors
scattered in earnest, and immediately the night was mild again,
but the sounds of the surrounding battle were loud in his ears.
“Can’t thank you enough,” said Ron shakily, turning to Luna,
Ernie, and Seamus “you just saved—”
With a roar and an earth-quaking tremor, another giant came
lurching out of the darkness from the direction of the forest, bran-
dishing a club taller than any of them.
“RUN!” Harry shouted again, but the others needed no telling;
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Chapter 32
They all scattered, and not a second too soon, for the next moment
the creature’s vast foot had fallen exactly where they had been
standing. Harry looked round: Ron and Hermione were following
him, but the other three had vanished back into the battle.
“Let’s get out of range!” yelled Ron as the giant swung its club
again and its bellows echoed through the night, across the grounds
where bursts of red and green light continued to illuminate the
darkness.
“The Whomping willow,” said Harry, “go!”
Somehow he walled it all up in his mind, crammed it into a
small space into which he could not look now: thoughts of Fred
and Hagrid, and his terror for all the people he loved, scattered in
and outside the castle, must all wait, because they had to run, had
to reach the snake and Voldemort, because that was, as Hermione
said, the only way to end it—
He sprinted, half—believing he could outdistance death itself,
ignoring the jets of light flying in the darkness all around him, and
the sound of the lake crashing like the sea, and the creaking of the
Forbidden Forest though the night was windless; through grounds
that seemed themselves to have risen in re bellion, he ran faster
than he had ever moved in his life, and it was he who saw the
great tree first, the Willow that protected the s ec ret at its roots
with whiplike, slashing branches.
Panting and gasping, Harry slowed down, skirting the willow’s
swiping branches, peering through the darkness toward its tick
trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree that
would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up, Hermione so out
of breath that she could not speak.
“How—how’re we going to get in?” panted Ron. “I can—see
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The Elder Wand
the place—if we just had—Crookshanks again—”
“Crookshanks?” wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her
chest. “Are you a wizard, or what? ”
“Oh—right—yeah—”
Ron looked around, then directed his wand at a twig on the
ground and said “Wingardium Leviosa! ” The twig flew up from
the ground, spun through the air as if caught by a gust of wind,
then zoomed directly at the trunk through the Willow’s ominously
swaying branches. It jabbed at a place near the roots , and at once,
the writhing tree became still.
“Perfect!” panted Hermione.
“Wait.”
For one teetering second, while the crashes and booms of the
battle filled the air, Harry hesitated. Voldemort wanted him to do
this, wanted him to come. . . . Was he leading Ron and Hermione
into a trap?
But the reality see med to close upon him, cruel and plain: the
only way forward was to kill the snake, and the snake was where
Voldemort was, and Voldemort was at the end of this tunnel. . . .
“Harry, we’re coming, just get in there!” said Ron, pushing him
forward.
Harry wriggled into the earthy passage hidden in the tree’s
roots. It was a much tighter squeeze than it had been the last
time they had entered it. The tunnel was low—ceilinged: they
had had to double up to move through it nearly four years previ-
ously; now there was nothing for it but to crawl. Harry went first,
his wand illuminated, expecting at any moment to meet barriers,
but none came. They moved in silence, Harry’s gaze fixed upon
the swinging beam of the wand held in his fist.
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At last, the tunnel began to slope upward and Harry saw a
sliver of light ahead. Hermione tugged at his ankle.
“The Cloak!” she w hispered. “Put the Cloak on!”
He groped behind him and she forced the bundle of slippery
cloth into his free hand. With difficulty he dragged it ove r himself,
murmured, “Nox,” extinguishing his wandlight, and continued on
his hands and knees, as silently as poss ible, all his senses straining,
expecting every second to be discovered, to hear a cold clear voice,
see a flash of green light.
And then he heard voices coming from the room directly ahead
of them, only slightly mu✏ed by the fact that the opening at the
end of the tunnel had been blocked up by what looked like an
old crate. Hardly daring to breathe, Harry edged right up tot he
opening and peered through a tiny gap left between crate and wall.
The room beyond was dimly lit, but he could see Nagini,
swirling and coiling like a serpent underwater, safe in her en-
chanted, starry sphere, which floated unsupported in midair. He
could see the edge of a table, and a long-fingered white hand toying
with a wand. Then Snape spoke, and Harry’s heart lurched: Snap e
was inches away from where he crouched, hidden.
“ . . . my Lord, their resistance is crumbling—”
“—and it is doing so without your help,” said Voldemort in
his high, clear voice. “Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I
do not think you will make much di↵erence now. We are almost
there . . . almost.”
“Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can
find him, my Lord. Please.”
Snape strode past the gap, and Harry drew back a little, keeping
his eyes fixed upon Nagini, wondering whether there was any spell
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that might penetrate the protection surrounding her, but he could
not think of anything. One failed attempt, and he would give away
his position. . . .
Voldemort stood up. Harry could see him now, see the red eyes,
the flattened, serpe ntine face, the pallor of him gleaming slightly
in the semidarkness.
“I have a problem, Severus,” said Voldemort softly.
“My Lord?” said Snape .
Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, holding it as delicately and
precisely as a conductor’s baton.
“Why doesn’t it work for me, Severus?”
In the silence Harry imagined he could hear the s nake hissing
slightly as it coiled and uncoiled—or was it Voldemort’s sibilant
sigh lingering on the air?
“My—my lord?” said Snape blankly. “I do not understand.
You—you have p erformed extraordinary magic with that wand.”
“No,” said Voldemort. “I have performed my usual magic. I
am extraordinary, but this wand . . . no. It has not revealed the
wonders it has promised. I feel no di↵erence b e tween this wand
and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago.”
Voldemort’s tone was musing, calm, but Harry’s scar had begun
to throb and pulse: Pain was building in his forehead, and he could
feel that controlled sense of fury building inside Voldemort.
“No di↵erence,” said Voldemort again.
Snape did not speak. Harry could not see his face. He wondered
whether Snape sensed danger, was trying to find the right words
to reassure his master.
Voldemort started to move around the ro om : Harry lost sight
of him for seconds as he prowled, speaking in that same measured
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voice, while the pain and fury mounted in Harry.
“I have thought long and hard, Severus . . . do you know why I
have called you back from battle?”
And for a moment Harry saw Snape’s profile. His eyes were
fixed upon the coiling snake in its enchanted cage.
“No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find
Potter.”
“You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as
I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I knew
his weakness you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the
others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it
happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come.”
“But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by someone other
than yourself—”
“My instructions to the De ath Eaters have been perfectly clear.
Capture Potter. Kill his friends—the more, the be tter—but do
not kill him.
“But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry
Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable.”
“My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But—let me go and
find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can—”
“I have told you, no!” said Voldemort, and Harry caught the
glint of red in his eyes as he turned again, and the swis hing of his
cloak was like the slithering of a snake, and he felt Voldemort’s
impatience in his burning scar. “My concern at the mom ent, Se-
verus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy!”
“My Lord, there can be no question, surely—?”
“—but there is a question, Severus. There is.”
Voldemort halted, and Harry could see him plainly again as he
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slid the Elder Wand through his white fingers, staring at Snape.
“Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at
Harry Potter?”
“I—I cannot answer that, my Lord.”
“Can’t you?”
The stab of rage felt like a spike driven through Harry’s head:
he forced his own fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying
out in pain. He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was Voldemort,
looking into Snape’s pale face.
“My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus,
except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me
under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another’s wand. I
did so, but Lucius’s wand shattered upon mee ting Potter’s.”
“I—I have no explanation, my Lord.”
Snape was not looking at Voldemort now. His dark eyes were
still fixed upon the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.
“I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand
of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I
took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”
And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape’s face was like
a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke,
it was a shock to s ee that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.
“My Lord—let me go to the boy—”
“All this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have
sat here,” said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper,
“wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it
ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for
its rightful owner . . . and I think I have the answer.”
Snape did not speak.
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“Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all,
Severus. You have bee n a good and faithful servant, and I regret
what must happen.”
“My Lord—”
“The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because
I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard
who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While
you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine.”
“My Lord!” Snape proteste d, raising his wand.
“It cannot be any other way,” said Voldemort. “I must master
the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last.”
And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did
nothing to Snape, who for a split second seemed to think he had
been reprieved: but then Voldemort’s intention became clear. The
snake’s cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do
anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders,
and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.
“Kill.”
There was a terrible scream. Harry saw Snape’s face losing the
little color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as the
snake’s fangs pierced his neck, as he failed to push the enchanted
cage o↵ himself, as his knees gave way and he fell to the floor.
“I regret it,” said Voldemort coldly.
He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. It was
time to leave this shack and take charge, with a wand that would
now do his full bidding. He pointed it at the starry cage holding
the snake, which drifted upward, o↵ Snape, who fell sideways onto
the floor, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort
swept from the room without a backward glance, and the great
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serpent floated after him in its huge protective sphere.
Back in the tunnel and his own mind, Harry opened his eyes;
He had drawn blood biting down on his knuckles in an e↵ort not
to shout out. Now he was looking through the tiny crack between
crate and wall, watching a foot in a black boot trembling on the
floor.
“Harry!” breathed Hermione behind him, but he had already
pointed his wand at the crate blocking his view. It lifted an inch
into the air and drifted sideways silently. As quietly as he could,
he pulled himself up into the room.
He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching
the dying man: he did not know what he felt as he saw Snape ’s
white face, and the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound
at his neck. Harry took o↵ the invisibility cloak and looked down
upon the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry
as he cried to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the
front of his robes and pulled him close.
A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape’s throat.
“Take . . . it. . . . Take . . . it. . . .”
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery
blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed form his mouth and his ears
and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what
to do—
A flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking
hand by Hermione. Harry lifted the silvery substance into it with
his wand. When the flask was full to the brim, and Snape looked
as though there was no blood left in him, his grip on Harry’s robes
slackened.
“Look . . . at . . . me. . . .” he whispered.
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The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something
in the depths of the dark pair seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed,
blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor,
and Snape moved no more.
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The Prince’s Tale
H
arry remained kneeling at Snape’s side, simply staring
down at him, until quite suddenly a high, cold voice
spoke so close to them that Harry jumpe d on his feet,
the flask gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that
Voldemort had reentered the room .
Voldemort’s voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and
Harry realized that he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the sur-
rounding area, that the residents of Hogsmeade and all those still
fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he stood beside
them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.
“You have fought,” said the high, cold voice, “valiantly. Lord
Voldemort knows how to value bravery.
“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist
me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen.
Every drop of magical blood s pilled is a loss and a waste.
“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I com mand my forces to retreat
immediately.
“You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat
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your injured.
“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted
your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall
wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that
hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then
battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry
Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man,
woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One
hour.”
Both Ron and Hermione shook their heads frantically, looking
at Harry.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Ron.
“It’ll be all right,” said Hermione wildly. “Let’s—let’s get back
to the castle, if he’s gone to the forest we’ll need to think of a new
plan—”
She glanced at Snape’s body, then hurried back to the tunnel
entrance. Ron followed her. Harry gathered up the Invisibility
Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He did not know what to feel,
except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for
which it had been done . . .
They crawled back through the tunnel, none of them talking,
and Harry wondered whether Ron and Hermione could still hear
Voldemort ringing in their heads as he c ould.
You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than
face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden
Forest . . . One hour . . .
Small bundles seemed to litter the lawn at the front of the castle
(?). It could only be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch-
black. The three of them hurried toward the stone steps. A lone
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dog, the size of a small boat, lay abandoned in front of them. There
was no other sign of Grawp or of his attacker.
The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of
light now, no bangs or screams or shouts. The flagstones of the
deserted entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds were
still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and
splintered wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away.
“Where is everyone?” whispered Hermione.
Ron led the way to the Great Hall. Harry stopp e d in the door-
way.
The House tables were gone and the room was crowded. The
survivors stood in groups, their arms around each other’s necks.
The injured were being treated upon the raised platform by Madam
Pomfrey and a group of helpers. Firenze was amongst the injured;
his flank poured blood and he shook where he lay, unable to stand.
The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry could
not see Fred’s body, because his family surrounded him. George
was kneeling at his head; Mrs. Weasley was lying across Fred’s
chest, her body s haking. Mr. Weasley stroking her hair while
tears cascaded down his cheeks.
Without a word to Harry, Ron and Hermione walked away.
Harry saw Hermione approach Ginny, whose face was swollen and
blotchy, and hug her. Ron joined Bill, Fleur, and Percy, who flung
an arm around Ron’s shoulders. As Ginny and Hermione moved
closer to the rest of the family, Harry had a c lear view of the bodies
lying next to Fred. Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-
looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, e nchanted ceiling.
The Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, s hrink,
as Harry reeled backward from the doorway. He c ould not draw
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breath. He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see
who else had died for him. He could not bear to join the Weasleys,
could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in
the first place, Fred might never have died . . .
He turned away and ran up the marble staircase. Lupin,
Tonks . . . He yearned not to feel . . . He wished he could rip out his
heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside him . . .
The castle was completely empty; even the ghosts seemed to
have joined the mass mourning in the Great Hall. Harry ran with-
out stopping, clutching the crystal flask of Snape’s last thoughts,
and he did not slow down until he reached the stone gargoyle guard-
ing the headmaster’s office.
“Password?”
“Dumbledore!” said Harry without thinking, because it was he
whom he yearned to see, and to his surprise the gargoyle slid aside
revealing the spiral staircase behind.
But when Harry burst into the circular office he found a change.
The portraits that hung all around the walls were empty. Not
a single headmaster or headmistres s remained to see him; all, it
seemed, had flitted away, charging through the paintings that lined
the castle so that they could have a clear view of what was going
on.
Harry glanced hopelessly at Dumbledore’s deserted frame,
which hung directly behind the headmaster’s chair, then turned
his back on it. The stone Pensieve lay in the cabinet where it had
always been. Harry heaved it onto the desk and poured Snape’s
memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the
edge. To escape into someone else’s head would be a blessed
relief . . . Nothing that even Snape had left him c ould be worse than
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his own thoughts. The memories swirled, silver white and strange,
and without hesitating, with a feeling of reckless abandonment, as
though this would assuage his torturing grief, Harry dived.
He fell headlong into sunlight, and his feet found warm ground.
When he straightened up, he saw that he was in a nearly deserted
playground. A single huge chimney dominated the distant skyline.
Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy
was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair
was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked
deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might
have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.
Harry moved closer to the boy. Snape looked no more than
nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised
greed in his thin face as he watched the younger of the two girls
swinging higher and higher than her sister.
“Lily, don’t do it!” shrieked the elder of the two.
But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its
arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself
skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling
on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through
the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.
“Mummy told you not to!”
Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals
on the ground, making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up,
hands on hips.
“Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!”
“But I’m fine,” said Lily, still giggling. “Tuney, look at this.
Watch what I can do.”
Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart
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from themselves and, though the girls did not know it, Snape. Lily
had picked up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Snape
lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and
disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a
clear view, then held out her palm. The flower sat there, opening
and closing its petals, like some bizarre, many-lipped oyster.
“Stop it!” shrieked Petunia.
“It’s not hurting you,” said Lily, but she closed her hand on the
blossom and threw it back to the ground.
“It’s not right,” said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the
flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. “How do you do
it?” she added, and there was definite longing in her voice.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Snape could no longer contain himself,
but had jumped out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and
ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled,
remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his appearance.
A dull flush of color mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at
Lily.
“What’s obvious?” asked Lily.
Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the
distant Petunia, now hovering beside the swings, he lowered his
voice and said, “I know what you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re . . . you’re a witch,” whispered Snap e.
She looked a↵ronted.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to s ome body!”
She turned, nose in the air, and marched o↵ toward her siste r.
“No!” said Snape. He was highly colored now, and Harry won-
dered why he did not take o↵ the ridiculously large coat, unless it
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was because he did not want to reveal the smock beneath it. He
flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older
self.
The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding
on to one of the swing poles, as though it was the safe place in tag.
“You are,” said Snape to Lily. “You are a witch. I’ve been
watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that.
My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.”
Petunia’s laugh was like cold water.
“Wizard!” she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had
recovered from the shock of his unexpec ted appearance. “I know
who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s
End by the river,” she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone
that she considered the address a poor recommendation. “Why
have you been spying on us?”
“Haven’t been spying,” said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and
dirty-haired in the bright sunlight. “Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,”
he added spitefully, “you’re a Muggle.”
Though Petunia evidently did not understand the word, she
could hardly mistake the tone.
“Lily, come on, we’re leaving!” she said shrilly. Lily obeyed her
sister at once, glaring at Snape as she left. He stood watching them
as they marched through the playground gate, and Harry, the only
one left to observe him, recognized Snape’s bitter disappointment,
and understood that Snape had been planning this moment for a
while, and that it had all gone wrong . . .
The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed
around him. He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could
see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast
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by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat
facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed
his coat now; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.
“ . . . and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside
school, you get letters.”
“But I have done magic outside school!”
“We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you o↵
when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,”
he nodded importantly, “and they start training you, then you’ve
got to go careful.”
There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and
twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks
trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in toward the
boy, and said, “It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says
you’re lying to me. Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real,
isn’t it?”
“It’s real for us,” said Snape. “Not for her. But we’ll get the
letter, you and me.”
“Really?” whispered Lily.
“Definitely,” said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and
his odd clothes, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in
front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.
“And will it really come by owl?” Lily whispered.
“Normally,” said Snape. “But you’re Muggle-born, so someone
from the school will have to come and explain to your parents.”
“Does it make a di↵erence, being Muggle-born?”
Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom,
moved over the pale face, the dark red hair.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t make any di↵erence.”
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“Good,” said Lily, relaxing. It was clear that she had been
worrying.
“You’ve got loads of magic,” said Snape. “I saw that. All the
time I was watching you . . . ”
His voice trailed away; she was not listening, but had stretched
out on the leafy ground and was looking up at the canopy of leaves
overhead. He watched her as greedily as he had watched her in the
playground.
“How are things at your house?” Lily asked.
A little crease appeared between his eyes.
“Fine,” he said.
“They’re not arguing anymore?”
“Oh yes, they’re arguing,” said Snape. He picked up a fistful of
leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what
he was doing. “But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.”
“Doesn’t your dad like magic?”
“He doesn’t like anything, much,” said Snape.
“Severus?”
A little smile twisted Snape’s mouth when she said his name.
“Yeah?”
“Tell me about the dementors again.”
“What d’you want to know about them for?”
“If I use magic outside school—”
“They wouldn’t give you to the dementors for that! Dementors
are for people who do really bad stu↵. They guard the wizard
prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re
too—”
He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small
rustling noise behind Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind
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a tree, had lost her footing.
“Tuney!” said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but
Snape had jumped to his feet.
“Who’s spying now?” he shouted. “What d’you want?”
Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Harry could
see her struggling for something hurtful to say.
“What is that you’re wearing, anyway?” she said, pointing at
Snape’s chest. “Your mum’s blouse?”
There was a crack. A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen.
Lily screamed. The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and
she staggered backward and burst into tears.
“Tuney!”
But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape.
“Did you make that happen?”
“No.” He looked both defiant and scared.
“You did!” She was backing away from him. “You did! You
hurt her!”
“No—no, I didn’t!”
But the lie did not convince Lily. After one last burning look,
she ran from the little thicket, o↵ after her sister, and Snape looked
miserable and confused . . .
And the scene re-formed. Harry looked around. He was on
platform nine and three quarters, and Snape stood beside him,
slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman
who greatly resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four
a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their
parents. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister. Harry moved
closer to listen.
“ . . . I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen—” She caught her
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sister’s hand and held tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull
it away. “Maybe once I’m there—no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once
I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade
him to change his mind!”
“I don’t—want—to—go!” said Petunia, and she dragged her
hand back out of her sister’s grasp. “You think I want to go to
some stupid castle and learn to be a–a . . . ”
Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in
their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each
other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black
robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting
one another with glad cries after a summer apart.
“—you think I want to be a–a freak?”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her
hand away.
“I’m not a freak,” said Lily. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“That’s where you’re going,” said Petunia with relish. “A spe -
cial school for freaks. You and that Snape boy . . . weirdos, that’s
what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal
people. It’s for our safety.”
Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the
platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the
scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low
and fierce.
“You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote
to the headmaster and begged him to take you.”
Petunia turned scarlet.
“Beg? I didn’t beg!”
“I saw his reply. It was very kind.”
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“You shouldn’t have read—” whispered Petunia, “that was my
private—how could you—?”
Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape
stood nearby. Petunia gasped.
“That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in
my room!”
“No—not sneaking—” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Sever-
us saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have
contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards
working undercover in the postal service who take care of—”
“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” said
Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed. “Freak!” she spat
at her sister, and she flounced o↵ to where her parents stood . . .
The scene dissolved again. Snape was hurrying along the corri-
dor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the country-
side. He had already changed into his school robes, had perhaps
taken the first opportunity to take o↵ his dreadful Muggle clothes.
At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of
rowdy boys were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the
window was Lily, her face pressed against the windowpane.
Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite
Lily. She glanced at him and then looked back out of the window.
She had been crying.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice.
“Why not?”
“Tuney h–hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumble-
dore.”
“So what?”
She threw him a look of deep dislike.
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“So she’s my sister!”
“She’s only a—” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy try-
ing to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.
“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration
in his voice. “This is it! We’re o↵ to Hogwarts!”
She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half
smiled.
“You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she
had brightened a little.
“Slytherin?”
One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no
interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at
the word, and Harry, whose attention had b ee n focused entirely on
the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like
Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for,
even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.
“Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t
you?” James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him,
and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius. Sirius did not
smile.
“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” he said.
“Blimey,” said James, “and I thought you see med all right!”
Sirius grinned.
“Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if
you’ve got the choice?”
James lifted an invisible sword.
“‘Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ Like my dad.”
Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.
“Got a problem with that?”
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“No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If
you’d rather be brawny than brainy—”
“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” inter-
jected Sirius.
James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and
looked from James to Sirius in dislike.
“Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.”
“Oooooo . . . ”
James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip
Snape as he passed.
“See ya, Snivellus!” a voice called, as the compartment door
slammed . . .
And the scene dissolved once more . . .
Harry was standing right behind Snape as they faced the can-
dlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. Then Professor McGon-
agall said, “Evans, Lily!”
He watched his mother walk forward on trembling legs and sit
down upon the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the
Sorting Hat onto her head, and barely a s ec ond after it had touched
the dark red hair, the hat cried, “Gryffindor!”
Harry heard Snape let out a tiny groan. Lily took o↵ the hat,
handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the
cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she glanced back at Snape,
and there was a sad little smile on her face. Harry saw Sirius
move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at
him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and
firmly turned her back on him.
The roll call continued. Harry watched Lupin, Pettigrew, and
his father join Lily and Sirius at the Gryffindor table. At last, when
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only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall
called Snape.
Harry walked with him to the stool, watched him place the hat
upon his head. “Slytherin!” cried the Sorting Hat.
And Severus Snape moved o↵ to the other side of the Hall, away
from Lily, to where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where
Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, patted
Snape on the back as he sat down beside him . . .
And the scene changed . . .
Lily and Snape were walking across the castle courtyard, evi-
dently arguing. Harry hurried to catch up with them, to listen in.
As he reached them, he realized how much taller they both were.
A few years seemed to have passed since their Sorting.
“ . . . thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was say-
ing, “Best friends?”
“We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging
round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber!
What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he
tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?”
Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into
the thin, sallow face.
“That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all—”
“It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—”
“What about the stu↵ Potter and his mates get up to?” de-
manded Snape. His color rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed,
to hold in his resentment.
“What’s Potter got to do with anything?” said Lily.
“They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that
Lupin. Where does he keep going?”
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“He’s ill,” said Lily. “They say he’s ill—”
“Every month at the full moon?” said Snape.
“I know your theory,” said Lily, and she sounded cold. “Why
are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what
they’re doing at night?”
“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as every-
one seems to think they are.”
The intensity of his gaze made her blush.
“They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” She dropped her voice.
“And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the
other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomp-
ing Willow, and James Potter saved you from whatever’s down
there—”
Snape’s whole face c ontorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved?
You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and
his friends’ too! You’re not going to—I won’t let you—”
“Let me? Le t me?”
Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once.
“I didn’t me an—I just don’t want to see you made a fool of—
He fancies you, James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed
wrenched from him against his will. “And he’s not . . . everyone
thinks . . . big Quidditch hero—” Snape’s bitterness and dislike
were rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were travel-
ing farther and farther up her forehead.
“I know James Potter’s an arrogant toerag,” she said, cutting
across Snape. “I don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and
Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don’t understand
how you can be friends with them.”
Harry doubted that Snape had even heard her strictures on
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Mulciber and Avery. The moment she had insulted James Potter,
his whole body had relaxed, and as they walked away there was a
new spring in Snape’s step . . .
And the scene dissolved . . .
Harry watched again as Snape left the Great Hall after sitting
his O.W.L. in Defense Against the Dark Arts, watched as he wan-
dered away from the castle and strayed inadvertently close to the
place beneath the beech tree where James, Sirius, Lupin, and Pet-
tigrew sat together. But Harry kept his distance this time, because
he knew what happened after James had hoisted Severus into the
air and taunted him; he knew what had been done and said, and it
gave him no pleasure to hear it again . . . He watched as Lily joined
the group and went to Snape’s defense. Distantly he heard Snape
shout at her in his humiliation and his fury, the unforgivable word:
“Mudblood.”
The scene changed . . .
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not interested.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Save your breath.”
It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood
with her arms folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at
the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.
“I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening
to sleep here.”
“I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood,
it just—”
“Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too
late. I’ve made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can
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understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little
Death Eater friends—you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t
even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to
join You-Know-Who, can you?”
He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.
“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen
mine.”
“No—listen, I didn’t me an—”
“—to call me Mudblood? But you c all everyone of my birth
Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any di↵erent?”
He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous
look she turned and climbed back through the portrait hole . . .
The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to
reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting s hapes and colors
until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop,
forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the
branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting,
turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting
for something or for someone . . . His fear infected Harry too, even
though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over
his shoulder, wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for—
Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air.
Harry thought of lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees
and his wand had flown out of his hand.
“Don’t kill me!”
“That was not my intention.”
Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by
the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape
with his robes whipping around him, and his face was illuminated
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from below in the light cast by his wand.
“Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for
me?”
“No—no mess age—I’m here on my own acc ount!”
Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his
straggling black hair flying around him.
“I—I come with a warning—no, a request—please—”
Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still
flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot
where he and Snape faced each other.
“What request could a Death Eater make of me?”
“The—the prophecy . . . the prediction . . . Trelawney . . . ”
“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore. “How much did you relay to Lord
Voldemort?”
“Everything—everything I heard!” said Snape. “That is
why—it is for that reason—he thinks it means Lily Evans!”
“The prophecy did not refer to a woman,” said Dumbledore.
“It spoke of a boy born at the end of July—”
“You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is
going to hunt her down—kill them all—”
“If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord
Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the
mother, in exchange for the son?”
“I have—I have asked him—”
“You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard
so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little,
“You do not c are, then, about the deaths of her husband and child?
They can die, as long as you have what you want?”
Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.
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“Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Ke ep her—them—safe.
Please.”
“And what will you give me in return, Severus?”
“In—in return?” Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry ex-
pected him to protest, but after a long moment he s aid, “Any-
thing.”
The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and
something was making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal.
Snape was slumped forward in a chair and Dumbledore was stand-
ing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape raised
his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years
of misery since leaving the wild hilltop.
“I thought . . . you were going . . . to keep her . . . safe . . . ”
“She and James put their faith in the wrong person,” said Dum-
bledore. “Rather like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord
Voldemort would spare her?”
Snape’s breathing was shallow.
“Her boy survives,” said Dumbledore.
With a tiny jerk of the head, Snape seemed to flick o↵ an irk-
some fly.
“Her son lives. He has her eyes, precisely her eyes. You remem-
ber the shape and color of Lily Evans’s eyes, I am sure?”
“DON’T!” bellowed Snape. “Gone . . . dead . . . ”
“Is this remorse, Severus?”
“I wish . . . I wish I were dead . . . ”
“And what use would that be to anyone?” said Dumbledore
coldly. “If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your
way forward is clear.”
Snape seemed to peer through a haze of pain, and Dumbledore’s
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words appeared to take a long time to reach him.
“What—what do you mean?”
“You know how and why she died. Make sure it was not in
vain. Help me protect Lily’s son.”
“He does not need protection. The Dark Lord has gone—”
“The Dark Lord will return, and Harry Potter will be in terrible
danger when he does.”
There was a long pause, and slowly Snape regained control of
himself, mastered his own breathing. At last he said, “Very well.
Very well. But never—never tell, Dumbledore! This must be
between us! Swear it! I cannot bear . . . especially Potter’s son . . . I
want your word!”
“My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of
you?” Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape’s ferocious,
anguished face. “If you insist . . . ”
The office dissolved but re-formed instantly. Snape was pacing
up and down in front of Dumbledore.
“—mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule-
breaker, delighted to find himself famous, attention-seeking and
impertinent—”
“You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore,
without raising his eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today.
“Other teachers report that the boy is modest, likable, and rea-
sonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.”
Dumbledore turned a page, and said, without looking up, “Keep
an eye on Quirrell, won’t you?”
A whirl of color, and now everything darkened, and Snape and
Dumbledore stoo d a little apart in the entrance hall, while the last
stragglers from the Yule Ball passe d them on their way to bed.
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“Well?” murmured Dumbledore.
“Karkaro↵’s Mark is becoming darker too. He is panicking,
he fears retribution; you know how much help he gave the Min-
istry after the Dark Lord fell.” Snape looked s ideways at Dumble-
dore’s crooked-nosed profile. “Karkaro↵ intends to flee if the Mark
burns.”
“Does he?” said Dumbledore softly, as Fleur Delacour and
Roger Davies came giggling in from the grounds. “And are you
tempted to join him?”
“No,” said Snape, his black eyes on Fleur’s and Roger’s retreat-
ing figures. “I am not such a coward.”
“No,” agreed Dumbledore. “You are a braver man by far than
Igor Karkaro↵. You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon . . . ”
He walked away, leaving Snape looking stricken . . .
And now Harry stood in the headmaster’s office yet again. It
was nighttime, and Dumbledore sagged sideways in the thronelike
chair behind the desk, apparently semiconscious. His right hand
dangled over the side, blackened and burned. Snape was muttering
incantations, pointing his wand at the wrist of the hand, while
with his left hand he tipped a goblet full of thick golden potion
down Dumbledore’s throat. After a moment or two, Dumbledore’s
eyelids fluttered and opened.
“Why,” said Snape, without preamble, “why did you put on
that ring? It c arries a curse, surely you realized that. Why even
touch it?”
Marvolo Gaunt’s ring lay on the desk before Dumbledore. It
was cracked; the sword of Gryffindor lay beside it.
Dumbledore grimaced.
“I . . . was a fool. Sorely tempted . . . ”
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“Tempted by what?”
Dumbledore did not answer.
“It is a miracle you managed to return here!” Snape sounded
furious. “That ring carried a curse of extraordinary power, to
contain it is all we can hope for; I have trapped the curse in one
hand for the time being—”
Dumbledore raised his blackened, useless hand, and examined
it with the expression of one being shown an interesting curio.
“You have done very well, Severus. How long do you think I
have?”
Dumbledore’s tone was conversational; he might have been ask-
ing for a weather forecast. Snape hesitated, and then said, “I can-
not tell. Maybe a year. There is no halting such a spell forever. It
will spread eventually, it is the sort of curse that strengthens over
time.”
Dumbledore smiled. The news that he had less than a year to
live seemed a matter of little or no concern to him.
“I am fortunate, extremely fortunate, that I have you, Severus.”
“If you had only summoned me a little earlier, I might have
been able to do more, buy you more time!” said Snape furiously.
He looked down at the broken ring and the sword. “Did you think
that breaking the ring would break the curse?”
“Something like that . . . I was delirious, no doubt . . . ” said
Dumbledore. With an e↵ort he straightened himself in his chair.
“Well, really, this makes matters much more straightforward.”
Snape looked utterly perplexed. Dumbledore smiled.
“I refer to the plan Lord Voldemort is revolving around me. His
plan to have the poor Malfoy boy murder me.”
Snape sat down in the chair Harry had so often oc cupied, across
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the desk from Dumbledore. Harry could tell that he wanted to say
more on the subject of Dumbledore’s cursed hand, but the other
held it up in polite refusal to discuss the matter further. Scowling,
Snape said, “The Dark Lord does not expect Draco to succeed.
This is merely punishment for Lucius’s recent failures. Slow torture
for Draco’s parents, while they watch him fail and pay the price.”
“In short, the boy has had a death sentence pronounced upon
him as surely as I have,” said Dumbledore. “Now, I should have
thought the natural successor to the job, once Draco fails, is your-
self?”
There was a short pause.
“That, I think, is the Dark Lord’s plan.”
“Lord Voldemort foresees a moment in the near future when he
will not need a spy at Hogwarts?”
“He believes the school will soon be in his grasp, yes.”
“And if it does fall into his grasp,” said Dumbledore, almost, it
seemed, as an aside, “I have your word that you will do all in your
power to protect the students at Hogwarts?”
Snape gave a sti↵ nod.
“Good. Now then. Your first priority will be to discover what
Draco is up to. A frightened teenage boy is a danger to others
as well as to himself. O↵er him help and guidance, he ought to
accept, he likes you—”
“—much less since his father has lost favor. Draco blames me,
he thinks I have usurped Lucius’s position.”
“All the same, try. I am concerned less for myself than for
accidental victims of whatever schemes might occur to the boy.
Ultimately, of course, there is only one thing to be done if we are
to save him from Lord Voldemort’s wrath.”
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Snape raised his eyebrows and his tone was sardonic as he asked,
“Are you intending to let him kill you?”
“Certainly not. You must kill me.”
There was a long silence, broken only by an odd clicking noise.
Fawkes the phoenix was gnawing a bit of cuttlebone.
“Would you like m e to do it now?” asked Snape, his voice
heavy with irony. “Or would you like a few moments to compose
an epitaph?”
“Oh, not quite yet,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “I daresay the
moment will present itself in due course. Given what has happened
tonight,” he indicated his withered hand, “we can be sure that it
will happen within a year.”
“If you don’t mind dying,” said Snape roughly, “why not let
Draco do it?”
“That boy’s soul is not yet so damaged,” said Dumbledore. “I
would not have it ripped apart on my account.”
“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”
“You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an
old man avoid pain and humiliation,” said Dumbledore. “I ask
this one great favor of you, Severus, be cause death is coming for
me as surely as the Chudley Cannons will finish bottom of this
year’s league. I confess I should prefer a quick, painless exit to the
protracted and messy a↵air it will be if, for instance, Greyback is
involved—I hear Voldemort has recruited him? Or dear Bellatrix,
who likes to play with her food before she eats it.”
His tone was light, but his blue e yes pierced Snape as they had
frequently pierced Harry, as though the soul they discuss ed was
visible to him. At last Snape gave another curt nod.
Dumbledore seemed satisfied.
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“Thank you, Severus . . . ”
The office disappeared, and now Snape and Dumbledore were
strolling together in the deserted castle grounds by twilight.
“What are you doing with Potter, all these evenings you are
closeted together?” Snape asked abruptly.
Dumbledore looked weary.
“Why? You aren’t trying to give him more detentions, Severus?
The boy will soon have spent more time in detention than out.”
“He is his father over again—”
“In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his
mother’s. I spend time with Harry because I have things to discuss
with him, information I must give him before it is too late.”
“Information,” repeated Snape. “You trust him . . . you do not
trust me.”
“It is not a question of trust. I have, as we both know, limited
time. It is essential that I give the boy enough information for him
to do what he needs to do.”
“And why may I not have the same information?”
“I prefer not to put all of my secrets in one basket, particularly
not a basket that spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord
Voldemort.”
“Which I do on your orders!”
“And you do it extreme ly well. Do not think that I underes-
timate the constant danger in which you place yourself, Severus.
To give Voldemort what appears to be valuable information while
withholding the essentials is a job I would entrust to nobody but
you.”
“Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlu-
mency, whose magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection
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into the Dark Lord’s mind!”
“Voldemort fears that connection,” said Dumbledore. “Not so
long ago he had one small taste of what truly sharing Harry’s mind
means to him. It was pain such as he has never experienced. He
will not try to possess Harry again, I am sure of it. Not in that
way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Lord Voldemort’s soul, maimed as it is, cannot bear close con-
tact with a soul like Harry’s. Like a tongue on frozen steel, like
flesh in flame—”
“Souls? We were talking of minds!”
“In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is
to speak of the other.”
Dumbledore glanced around to make sure that they were alone.
They were close by the Forbidden Forest now, but there was no
sign of anyone near them.
“After you have killed me, Severus—”
“You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small
service of me!” snarled Snape, and real anger flared in the thin face
now. “You take a great deal for granted, Dumbledore! Perhaps I
have changed my mind!”
“You gave me your word, Severus. And while we are talking
about services you owe me, I thought you agreed to keep a close
eye on our young Slytherin friend?”
Snape looked angry, mutinous. Dumbledore sighed.
“Come to my office tonight, Severus, at e leven, and you shall
not complain that I have no confidence in you . . . ”
They were back in Dumbledore’s office, the windows dark, and
Fawkes sat silent as Snape sat quite still, as Dumbledore walked
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around him, talking.
“Harry must not know, not until the last moment, not until it
is necess ary, otherwise how could he have the strength to do what
must be done?”
“But what must he do?”
“That is between Harry and me. Now listen closely, Severus.
There will come a time—after my death—do not argue, do not
interrupt! There will come a time when Lord Voldemort will seem
to fear for the life of his snake.”
“For Nagini?” Snape looked astonished.
“Precisely. If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort stops
sending that snake forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside
him under magical protection, then, I think, it will be safe to tell
Harry.”
“Tell him what?”
Dumbledore took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him,
when Lily cast her own life between them as a shield, the Killing
Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort, and a fragment of Volde-
mort’s soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself
onto the only living soul left in that collapsed building. Part of
Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him
the power of s peech with snakes, and a connection with Lord Volde-
mort’s mind that he has never understood. And while that frag-
ment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and
protected by Harry, Lord Voldemort c annot die.”
Harry seemed to be watching the two men from one end of a
long tunnel, they were so far away from him, their voices echoing
strangely in his ears.
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“So the boy . . . the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly.
“And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”
Another long silence . Then Snape said, “I thought . . . all those
years . . . that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.”
“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach
him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” said Dumbledore,
his eyes still tight shut. “Meanwhile, the connection between them
grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth. Sometimes I have thought
he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters
so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean
the end of Voldemort.”
Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.
“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right mo-
ment?”
“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have
you watched die?”
“Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Snape. He
stood up. “You have used me.”
“Meaning?”
“I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal dan-
ger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s
son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for
slaughter—”
“But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously.
“Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?”
“For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!”
From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on
the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of
the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery
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glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
“After all this time?”
“Always,” said Snape.
And the scene shifted. Now, Harry saw Snape talking to the
portrait of Dumbledore behind his desk.
“You will have to give Voldemort the correct date of Harry’s
departure from his aunt and uncle’s,” said Dumbledore. “Not to
do so will raise suspicion, when Voldemort believes you so well
informed. However, you must plant the idea of decoys; that, I
think, ought to ensure Harry’s safety. Try Confunding Mundungus
Fletcher. And Severus, if you are forced to take part in the chase,
be sure to act your part convincingly . . . I am counting upon you
to remain in Lord Voldemort’s good books as long as possible, or
Hogwarts will be left to the mercy of the Carrows . . . ”
Now Snape was head to head with Mundungus in an unfamiliar
tavern, Mundungus’s face looking curiously blank, Snape frowning
in concentration.
“You will suggest to the Order of the Phoenix,” Snape mur-
mured, “that they use decoys. Polyjuice Potion. Identical Potters.
It’s the only thing that might work. You will forget that I have
suggested this. You will present it as your own idea. You under-
stand?”
“I understand,” murmured Mundungus, his eyes unfocused . . .
Now Harry was flying alongside Snape on a broomstick through
a clear dark night: He was accompanied by other hooded Death
Eaters, and ahead were Lupin and a Harry who was really
George . . . A Death Eater moved ahead of Snape and raised his
wand, pointing it directly at Lupin’s back.
“Sectumsempra! ” shouted Snape.
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But the spell, intended for the Death Eater’s wand hand, missed
and hit George instead—
And next, Snape was kneeling in Sirius’s old bedroom. Tears
were dripping from the end of his hooked nose as he read the old
letter from Lily. The second page carried only a few words:
could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I
think her mind’s going, personally! Lots of love,
Lily
Snape took the page bearing Lily’s signature, and her love , and
tucked it inside his rob es. Then he ripped in two the photograph he
was also holding, so that he kept the part from which Lily laughed,
throwing the portion showing James and Harry back onto the floor,
under the chest of drawers . . .
And now Snape stood again in the headmaster’s study as
Phineas Nigellus came hurrying into his portrait.
“Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The
Mudblood—”
“Do not use that word!”
“—the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened
her bag and I heard her!”
“Good. Very good!” cried the portrait of Dumbledore behind
the headmaster’s chair. “Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget
that it must be taken under conditions of need and valor—and he
must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read Harry’s
mind and see you acting for him—”
“I know,” said Snape curtly. He approached the portrait of
Dumbledore and pulled at its side. It swung forward, revealing a
hidden cavity behind it from which he took the sword of Gryffindor.
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“And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to
give Potter the sword?” said Snape as he swung a traveling cloak
over his robes.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. “He will
know what to do with it. And Severus, be very careful, they
may not take kindly to your appearance after George Weas ley’s
mishap—”
Snape turned at the door.
“Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said coolly. “I have a plan . . . ”
And Snape left the room. Harry rose up out of the Pensieve,
and moments later he lay on the carpeted floor in exactly the same
room; Snape might just have close d the door.
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The Forest Again
F
inally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the
dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he
was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at
last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to
walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was
to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at
last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a
wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that
ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished:
Neither would live, neither could survive.
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange
that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly
keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats
were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and
walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds
and into the forest?
Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral
drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times
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he had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, he had
never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had always
been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur
to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he
knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.
If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had
left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble
phoenix-feather wand had saved him! If he could only have died
like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened!
Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save
someone he loved. . . . He envied even his parents’ deaths now. This
cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a di↵erent
kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an
e↵ort to control them, although no one could see him; the portraits
on the walls were all empty.
Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive
and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had
he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and
bounding heart? It would all be gone . . . or at least, he would be
gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and
throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.
Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there
had been a bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see
it, he realized that now. He had never questioned that his own
assumption: that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that
his life span had always be en determined by how long it took to
eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of
destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip
away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life!
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How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give
the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for
slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another
blow against Voldemort.
And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out,
that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end,
because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn’t he? Dum-
bledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone
else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to
stop it. The images of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks lying dead in the
Great Hall forced their way back into his mind’s eye, and for a
moment he could hardly breathe: Death was impatient. . . .
But Dumbledore had overes timated him. He had failed: The
snake survived. One Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the
earth, even after Harry had bee n killed. True, that would mean an
easier job for somebody. He wondered who would do it. . . . Ron and
Hermione would know what needed to be done, of course. . . . That
would have been why Dumbledore wanted him to confide in two
others . . . so that if he fulfilled his true destiny a little early, they
could carry on. . . .
Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the
hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must
doe. I must die. It must end.
Ron and Hermione seemed a long way away, in a far-o↵ country;
he felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would
be no good-byes and no explanations, he was determined of that.
This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts
they would make to stop him would waste valuable time. He looked
down at the battered gold watch he had received on his seventeenth
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birthday. Nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his
surrender had elapsed. He stood up. His heart was leaping against
his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left,
perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime’s beats before the
end. He did not look back as he closed the office door.
The castle was empty. He felt ghostly striding through it alone,
as if he had already died. The portrait people were still missing
from their frames; the whole place was eerily still, as if all its
remaining lifeblood were concentrated in the Great Hall where the
dead and the mourners were crammed.
Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself and descended
through the floors, at last walking down the marble staircase into
the entrance hall. Perhaps some tiny part of him hoped to be
sensed, to be seen, to be stopped, but the Cloak was, as ever,
impenetrable, perfect, and he reached the front doors easily.
Then Neville nearly walked into him. He was only half of a
pair that was carrying a bo dy in from the grounds. Harry glanced
down and felt another dull blow to his stomach: Colin Creevey,
though underage, must have sneaked back just as Malfoy, Crabbe,
and Goyle had done. He was tiny in death.
“You know what? I can manage him alone, Neville,” said Oliver
Wood, and he heaved Colin over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and
carried him into the Great Hall.
Neville leaned against the door frame for a moment and wiped
his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked like an old man.
Then he set o↵ down the stops again into the darkness to recover
more bodies.
Harry took one glance back at the entrance of the Great Hall.
People were moving around, trying to com fort each other, drinking,
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kneeling b es ide the dead, but he could not see any of the people
he loved, no hint of Hermione, Ron, Ginny, or any of the other
Weasleys, no Luna. He felt he would have given all the time re-
maining to him for just one last look at them; but then, would he
ever have the strength to stop looking? It was better like this.
He moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was
nearly four in the morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds
felt as though they were holding their breath, waiting to see
whether he could do what he must.
Harry moved toward Neville, who was bending over another
body.
“Neville.”
“Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure!”
Harry had pulled o↵ the Cloak: The idea had come to him out
of nowhere, born out of a desire to make absolutely sure.
“Where are you going, alone?” Neville asked suspiciously.
“It’s all part of the plan,” said Harry. “There’s something I’ve
got to do. Listen—Neville—”
“Harry!” Neville looked suddenly scared. “Harry, you’re not
thinking of handing yourself over?”
“No,” Harry lied easily. “’Course not . . . this is something else.
But I might be out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort’s
name, Neville? He’s got a huge snake. . . . Calls it Nagini . . . ”
“I’ve heard, yeah. . . . What about it?”
“It’s got to be killed. Ron and Hermione know that, but just
in case they—”
The awfulness of that poss ibility smothered him for a moment,
made it impossible to keep talking. But he pulled himself together
again; This was crucial, he must be like Dumbledore, keep a cool
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head, make sure there were backups, others to carry on. Dum-
bledore had died knowing that three people still knew about the
Horcruxes; now Neville will take Harry’s place. There would still
be three in the secret.
“Just in case they’re—busy—and you get the chance—”
“Kill the snake?”
“Kill the snake,” Harry repeated.
“All right, Harry, You’re okay, are you?”
“I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.”
But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to move on.
“We’re all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?”
“Yeah, I—”
The su↵ocating feeling extinguished the end of the sentence; he
could not go on. Neville did not seem to find it strange. He patted
Harry on the shoulder, rele ased him, and walked away to look for
more bodies.
Harry swing the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Some-
one eyes was moving not far away, s tooping over another prone
figure on the ground. He was feet away from her when he realized
it was Ginny.
He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was
whispering for her mother.
“It’s all right,” Ginny was saying. “It’s okay. We’re going to
get you inside.”
“But I want to go home,” whispered the girl. “I don’t want to
fight anymore!”
“I know,” said Ginny, and her voice broke. “It’s going to be all
right.”
Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout
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out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he
wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped,
to be dragged back, to be sent back home. . . .
Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her
hand. With a huge e ↵ort Harry forced himself on. He thought he
saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she
had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he
did not look back.
Hagrid’s hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights,
no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in
welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper
kettle on the fire, and ro ck cakes and giant grubs, and his great
bearded face, and Ron vomiting slugs, and Hermione helping him
save Norbert . . .
He moved on, and now he reached the edge of the forest, and
he stopped.
A swarm of dementors was gliding amongst the trees; he could
feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely
through it. He had no strength left for a Patronus. He could no
longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to
die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air
on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and
years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging
to e ach second. At the sam e time he thought that he would not be
able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended,
the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air. . . .
The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with
the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.
I open at the close.
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Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he
wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped
up, and understanding was com ing so fast it seemed to have by-
passed thought. This was the close. This was the moment.
He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, “I am
about to die.”
The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised
Draco’s wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, “Lumos.”
The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center
sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had
cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The
triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still
discernible.
And again Harry understood without having to think. It did
not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join
them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.
He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three
times.
He knew it had happ ened, because he heard slight movements
around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on
the earthly, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the
forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.
They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They
resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary
so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less
substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they
moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving
smile.
James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing
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the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and
ru✏ed, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley’s.
Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry
had seen him in life. He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his
pockets and a grin on his face.
Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was
thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar
place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings.
Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as
she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, s earched his
face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him
enough.
“You’ve been so brave.”
He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought
that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would
be enough.
“You are nearly there,” said James. “Very close. We are . . . so
proud of you.”
“Does it hurt?”
The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he
could stop it.
“Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “Quicker and easier than
falling asleep.”
“And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over,” said Lupin.
“I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. These words came
without his volition. “Any of you. I’m sorry—”
He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him.
“—right after you’d had your son . . . Remus, I’m sorry—”
“I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know
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him . . . but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand.
I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.”
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the
forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would
not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision.
“You’ll stay with me?”
“Until the very end,” said James.
“They won’t be able to se e you?” asked Harry.
“We are part of you,” said Sirius. “Invisible to anyone else.”
Harry looked at his mother.
“Stay close to me,” he said quietly.
And he self o↵. The dementors’ chill did not overcome him;
he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like
Patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old
trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots
gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly
around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the
forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that
he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked
James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage,
and the reason he was about to keep putting one foot in front of
the other.
His body and mind felt oddly disconnecte d now, his limbs work-
ing without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not
driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked
beside him through the forest were much more real to him now
that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all
the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and
slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .
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A thud and a whisper. Some other living creature had stirred
close by Harry stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening,
and his mother and father, Lupin and Sirius stopped too.
“Someone there,” came a rough whisper close at hand. “He’s
got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be—?”
Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree; Their wands
flared and Harry saw Yaxley and Dolohov peering into the dark-
ness, directly at the place Harry, his mother and father and Sirius
and Lupin stood. Apparently they could not see anything.
“Definitely heard something,” said Yaxley. “Animal, d’you
reckon?”
“That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stu↵ in here,”
said Dolohov, glancing over his shoulder.
Yaxley looked down at his watch.
“Time’s nearly up. Potter’s had his hour. He’s not coming.”
“And he was sure he’d come! He won’t be happy.”
“Better go back,” said Yaxley, “Find out what the plan is now.”
He and Dolohov turned and walked deeper into the forest.
Harry followed them, knowing that they would lead him exactly
where he wanted to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled
at him, and his father nodded encouragement.
They had traveled on mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead,
and Yaxley and Dolohov stepped out into a clearing that Harry
knew had been the place where the monstrous Aragog had once
lived. The remnants of his vast web were there still, but the swarm
of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death
Eaters, to fight for their cause.
A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and its flickering
light fell over a crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters.
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Some of them were still masked and hooded; others showed their
faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, casting massive
shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like rock.
Harry saw Fenrir, skulking, chewing his long nails; the great blonde
Rowle was dabbing at his bleeding lip. He saw Lucius Malfoy, who
looked defeated an terrified, and Narcissa, whose eyes were sunken
and full of apprehension.
Every eye was fixed up on Voldemort, who stood with his head
bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of
him. He might have been praying, or else counting silently in his
mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene, thought
absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind
him head, still swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated
in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.
When Dolohov and Yaxley rejoined the c ircle, Voldemort looked
up.
“No sign of him, my Lord,” said Dolohov.
Voldemort’s expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to
burn in the firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between his
long fingers.
“My Lord—”
Bellatrix had s poken; She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled,
her face a little bloody but otherwise unharmed.
Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak
another word, but eyed him in worshipful fascination.
“I thought he would come,” said Voldemort in his high, clear
voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. “I expected him to c ome .”
Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart
was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to
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escape the body he was about to cast aside. He hands were swear-
ing as he pulled o↵ the Invisibility Cloak and stu↵ed it beneath his
robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.
“I was, it seems . . . mistaken,” said Voldemort.
“You weren’t.”
Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could
muster. He did not want to sound afraid. The Resurrection Stone
slipped from between his numb fingers, and out of the corner of
his eyes he saw his parents, Sirius, and Lupin vanish as he stepped
forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody
mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.
The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants
roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many
cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood,
but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared at Harry moved
toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.
Then a voice yelled, “HARRY! NO!”
He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby.
His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled,
desperate.
“NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT’RE YEH—?”
“QUIET!” shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid
was silenced.
Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from
Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that
moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the
glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.
Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made not
attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected,
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knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses
would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at
each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side,
considering the b oy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless
smile curled the lipless mouth.
“Harry Potter,” he said very softly His voice might have been
part of the splitting fire. “The Boy Who Lived.”
None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Every-
thing was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was pant-
ing, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look,
and the feel of her lips on his—
Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to
one s ide, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he
proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it
to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost
control, before he betrayed fear—
He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and every-
thing was gone.
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King’s Cross
H
e lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was per-
fectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was
there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there
himself.
A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that
he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because
he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a
sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.
Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became
conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total
solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly.
He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In
opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.
He lay in a bright mist, through it was not like mist he had ever
experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy
vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surround-
ings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm
nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.
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He s at up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face.
He was not wearing glasses anymore.
Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness
that surrounded him: the small soft thumpings of something that
flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slight
indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdrop-
ping on something furtive, shameful.
For the first time, he wished he were clothed.
Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a
short distance away. He took them and put them on. They were
soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared
just like that, the moment he had wanted them. . . .
He stoo d up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of
Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see . A
great domed glass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Per-
haps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd
thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by
in the mist. . . .
Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed
to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright
and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear
domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person
there, except for—
He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the
noise. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground,
its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering un-
der a seat where it had be en left, unwanted, stu↵ed out of sight,
struggling for breath.
He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it
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was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly
nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near
enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt
like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.
“You cannot help.”
He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him,
sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.
“Harry,” He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both
whole and white and undamaged. “You wonderful boy. You brave,
brave man. Let us walk.”
Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from
where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading him to two seats
that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away un-
der that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of
them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old headmaster’s
face. Dumbledore’s long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue
eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything
was as he had remembered it. And yet . . .
“But you’re dead.” said Harry.
“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.
“Then . . . I’m dead too?”
“Ah,” said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. “That is
the question, isn’t it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.”
They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.
“Not?” repeate d Harry.
“Not,” said Dumbledore.
“But . . . ” Harry raised his hand instinctively towards the light-
ning scar. It did not seem to be there. “But I should have died—I
didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!”
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“And that,” said Dumbledore, “will, I think, have made all the
di↵erence.”
Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like
fire: Harry had never seen the man s o utterly, so palpably, content.
“Explain,” said Harry.
“But you already know,” said Dumbledore. He twiddled his
thumbs together.
“I let him kill me,” said Harry. “Didn’t I?”
“You did,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Go on!”
“So the part of his soul that was in me . . . ”
Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry
onward, a broad smile of encouragement on his face.
“ . . . has it gone?”
“Oh yes!” said Dumbledore. “Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul
is whole, and completely your own, Harry.”
“But then . . . ”
Harry glanced over his shoulder to where the small, maimed
creature trembled under the chair.
“What is that, Professor?”
“Something that is beyond either of our help,” said Dumble-
dore.
“But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse,” Harry started again
“and nobody died for me this time—how can I be alive?”
“I think you know,” said Dumbledore. “Think back. Remember
what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty.”
Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his s urroundings. If
this was indeed a palace in which they s at, it was an odd one,
with chairs set in little rows and bits of railing here and there, and
still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creature under the chair
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were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily,
without e↵ort.
“He took my blood.” said Harry.
“Precisely!” said Dumbledore. “He took your blood and rebuilt
his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s
protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he
lives!”
“I live . . . while he lives! But I thought . . . I thought it was the
other way round! I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same
thing?”
He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the ag-
onized creature behind them and glanced back at it yet again.
“Are you sure we can’t do anything?”
“There is no help possible.”
“Then explain . . . more,” said Harry, and Dumbledore smiled.
“You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never
meant to make. He had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke
apart when he committed those acts of unspeakable evil, the mur-
der of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what
escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more
than his body behind. He left part of himself latched to you, the
would-be victim who had survived.
“And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry!
That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to com-
prehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and
innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing.
That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the
reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.
“He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He
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took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother
laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice
alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does
Voldemort’s one last hope for himself.”
Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.
“And you knew this? You knew—all along?”
“I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good,” said Dum-
bledore happily, and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long
time, while the creature behind them continued to whimpe r and
tremble.
“There’s more,” said Harry. “There’s more to it. Why did my
wand break the wand he borrowed?”
“As to that, I cannot be sure.”
“Have a guess, then,” said Harry, and Dumbledore laughed.
“What you must understand, Harry, is that you and Lord Volde-
mort have journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto un-
known and unprecedented, and no wandmaker could, I think, ever
have predicted it or explained it to Voldemort.
“Without meaning to, as you now know, Lord Voldemort dou-
bled the bond between you when he returned to a human form.
A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to
strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother’s sacrifice into
himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible
power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, had dared to touch
your blood. . . . But then, if he had been able to understand, he
could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at
all.
“Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your
destinies together more securely than ever two wizards were joined
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in history, Voldemort proceeded to attack you with a wand that
shared a core with yours. And now something very strange hap-
pened, as we know. The cores reacted in a way that Lord Volde-
mort, who never knew that your wand was twin of his, had never
expected.
“He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had
accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord
Voldemort has never b e en able to do. Your courage won, your wand
overpowered his. And in doing so, something happened between
those wands, something that echoed the relationship between their
masters.
“I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qual-
ities of Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it con-
tained a little of Voldemort himself. So your wand recognized him
when he pursued you, recognized a man who was both kin and
mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against
him, magic much more powerful than anything Lucius’s wand had
ever p e rformed. Your wand now contained the power of your enor-
mous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill: What chance
did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?”
“But if my wand was so powerful, how come Hermione was able
to break it?” asked Harry.
“My dear boy, its remarkable e↵ects were directed only at Volde-
mort, who had tamp ered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of
magic. Only toward him was that wand abnormally powerful. Oth-
erwise it was a wand like any other . . . though a good one, I am
sure,” Dumbledore finished kindly.
Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It
was very hard to be sure of things like time, here.
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“He killed me with your wand.”
“He failed to kill you with my wand,” Dumbledore corrected
Harry. “I think we can agree you are not dead—though, of course,”
he added, as if fearing he had been discourteous, “I do not minimize
your su↵erings, which I am sure were severe.”
“I feel great at the moment, though,” said Harry, looking down
at his clean, unblemished hands. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Well, I was going to ask you that,” said Dumbledore, looking
around. “Where would you say that we are?”
Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, how-
ever, he found that he had an answer ready to give.
“It looks,” he said slowly, “like King’s Cross station. Except a
lot cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.”
“King’s Cross station!” Dumbledore was chuckling immoder-
ately. “Good gracious, really?”
“Well, where do you think we are?” asked Harry, a little defen-
sively.
“My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.”
Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being
infuriating. He glared at him, then remember a much more pressing
question than that of their current location.
“The Deathly Hallows,” he said, and he was glad to see that
the words wiped the smile from Dumbledore’s face.
“Ah, yes,” he said. He even looked a little worried.
“Well?”
For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked
less than an old man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small
boy caught in wrongdoing.
“Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not
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trusting you? For not telling you? Harry, I only feared that you
would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that you would make my
mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time
now, that you are the better man.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Harry, startled by Dum-
bledore’s tone, by the sudden tears in his eyes.
“The Hallows, the Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore. “A des-
perate man’s dream!”
“But they’re real!”
“Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,” said Dumbledore.
“And I was such a fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets
from you anymore. You know.”
“What do I know?”
Dumbledore turned his whole body to face Harry, and tears still
sparkled in his brilliantly blue eyes.
“Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ulti-
mately, than Voldemort?”
“Of course you were,” said Harry. “Of course—how can you
ask that? You never killed if you could avoid it!”
“True, true,” said Dumbledore, and he was like a child seeking
reassurance. “Yet I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry.”
“Not the way he did,” said Harry. After all his anger at Dumble-
dore, how odd it was to sit here, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling,
and defend Dumbledore from himself. “Hallows, not Horcruxes.”
“Hallows,” mumbled Dumbledore, “not Horcruxes. Precisely”
There was a pause. The c reature behind them whimpered, but
Harry no longer looked around.
“Grindelwald was looking for them too?” he asked.
Dumbledore closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.
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“It was the thing, above all, that drew us together,” he said
quietly. “Two clever, arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He
wanted to come to Godric’s Hollow, as I am sure you have guessed,
because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore the
place the third brother had died.”
“So it’s true?” asked Harry. “All of it? The Peverell brothers—
”
“—were the three brothers of the tale,” said Dumbledore, nod-
ding. “Oh yes, I think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely
road . . . I think it more likely that the Peverell brothers were sim-
ply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating those pow-
erful objects. The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems
to me the sort of legend that might have sprung up around such
creations.
“The Cloak, as you know now, trave led down through the ages,
father to son, mother to daughter, right down to Ignotus’s last
living descendant, who was born, as Ignotus was, in the village of
Godric’s Hollow.”
Dumbledore smiled at Harry.
“Me?”
“You. You have guessed, I know, why the Cloak was in my
possession on the night your parents died. James had showed it
to me just a few days previously. It explained so much of his
undetected wrong-doing at school! I could hardly believe what
I was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long
since given up my dream of uniting the Hallows, but I could not
resist, could not help taking a closer look . . . It was a Cloak the
likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every
respect . . . and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at
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last, all to myself!”
His tone was unbearably bitter.
“The Cloak wouldn’t have helped them survive, though,” Harry
said quickly. “Voldemort knew where my mum and dad were. The
Cloak couldn’t have made them curse-proof.”
“True,” sighed Dumbledore. “True.”
Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak, so he prompted
him.
“So you’d given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the
Cloak?”
“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed that he forced
himself to meet Harry’s eyes. “You know what happened. You
know. You cannot despise me more than I despise myself.”
“But I don’t despise you—”
“Then you should,” said Dumbledore. He drew a deep breath.
“You know the secret of my siste r’s ill health, what those Muggles
did, what she became. You know how my poor father sought re-
venge, and paid the price, died in Azkaban. You know how my
mother gave up her own life to care for Ariana.
“I resented it, Harry.”
Dumbledore stated it baldly, coldly. He was looking now over
the top of Harry’s head, into the distance.
“I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to
shine. I wanted glory.
“Do not misunderstand me,” he said, and pain crossed the face
so that he looked ancient again. “I loved them. I love d my par-
ents, I loved my brother and my sister, but I was selfish, Harry,
more selfish than you, who are a remarkably selfless person, could
possibly imagine.
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“So that, when my mother died, and I was left the responsibility
of a damaged sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village
in anger and bitterness. Trapped and wasted, I thought! And then,
of course, he came. . . .”
Dumbledore looked directly into Harry’s eyes again.
“Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me,
Harry, inflamed me. Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards
triumphant. Grindelwald and I, the glorious young leaders of the
revolution.
“Oh, I had a few scruples. I assuaged my conscience with empty
words. It would all be for the greater good, and any harm done
would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits for wizards. Did I know,
in my heart of hearts, what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I
did, but I closed my eyes. If the plans we were making came to
fruition, all my dreams would come true.
“And at the heart of our schemes, the Deathly Hallows! How
they fascinated him, how they fascinated both of us! The un-
beatable wand, the weapon that would lead us to powe r! The
Resurrection Stone—to him, though I pretended not to know it, it
meant an army of Inferi! To me, I confess, it meant the return of
my parents, and the lifting of all responsibility from my shoulders.
“And the Cloak . . . somehow, we never discussed the Cloak
much, Harry. Both of us could conceal ourselves well enough with-
out the Cloak, the true magic of which, of course, is that it can be
used to protect and shield others as well as its owner. I thought
that, if we ever found it, it might be useful in hiding Ariana, but
our interest in the Cloak was mainly that it completed the trio, for
the legend said that the man who united all three objects would
then be truly master of death, which we took to mean ‘invincible.’
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“Invincible masters of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore!
Two months of insanity, of cruel dreams, and neglect of the only
two members of my family left to me.
“And then . . . you know what happened. Reality returned in
the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable
brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me. I did
not want to hear that I could not set forth to seek Hallows with a
fragile and unstable sister in tow.
“The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That
which I had always sensed in him, though I had pretended not
to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana . . . after all my
mother’s care and caution . . . lay dead upon the floor.”
Dumbledore gave a little gasp and began to cry in earnest.
Harry reached out and was glad to find that he could touch him:
He gripped his arm tightly and Dumbledore gradually regained
control.
“Well, Grindelwald fled, as anyone but I could have predicted.
He vanished, with his plans for seizing power, and his schemes for
Muggle torture, and his dreams of the Deathly Hallows, dreams
in which I had encouraged him and helped him. He ran, while I
was left to bury my sister, and learn to live with my guilt and my
terrible grief, the price of my shame.
“Years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had
procured a wand of immense power. I, meanwhile, was o↵ered the
post of Minister of Magic, not once, but several times. Naturally,
I refused. I had learned that I was not to be trusted with power.”
“But you’d have been better, much better, than Fudge or Scrim-
geour!” burst out Harry.
“Would I?” asked Dumbledore heavily. “I am not so sure. I
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had proven, as a very young man, that powe r was my weakness
and my temptation. It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those
who are best suited to p ower are those who have never sought it.
Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take
up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise
that they wear it well.
“I was safer at Hogwarts. I think I was a good teacher—”
“You were the be st—”
“—you are very kind, Harry. But while I busied myself with
the training of young wizards, Grindelwald was raising an army.
They say he feared me, and perhaps he did, but less, I think, than
I feared him.
“Oh, not death,” said Dumbledore, in answer to Harry’s ques -
tioning look. “Not what he could do to me magically. I knew that
we were evenly matched, perhaps that I was a shade more skillful.
It was the truth I feared. You see, I never knew which of us, in
that last, horrific fight, had actually cast the curse that killed my
sister. You may call me cowardly: You would be right. Harry, I
dreaded beyond all things the knowledge that it had bee n I who
brought about her death, not merely through my arrogance and
stupidity, but that I actually struck the blow that snu↵ed out her
life.
“I think he knew it. I think he knew what frightened me. I
delayed meeting him until finally, it would have been too shameful
to resist any longer. People were dying and he seemed unstoppable,
and I had to do what I could.
“Well, you know what happened next. I won the duel. I won
the wand.”
Another silence. Harry did not ask whether Dumbledore had
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ever found out who struck Ariana dead. He did not want to know,
and even less did he want Dumbledore to have to tell him. At last
he knew what Dumbledore would have seen when he looked in the
Mirror of Erised, and why Dumbledore had been so understanding
of the fascination it had exercised ove r Harry.
They sat in silence for a long time, and the whimperings of the
creature behind them barely disturbed Harry anymore.
At last he said, “Grindelwald tried to stop Voldemort going
after the wand. He lied, you know, pretended he had never had
it.”
Dumbledore nodded, looking down at his lap, tears still glitter-
ing on the crooked nose.
“They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell
at Nurmengard. I hop e that it is true. I would like to think he
did feel the horror and shame of what he had done. Perhaps that
lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends . . . to prevent
Voldemort from taking the Hallow . . . ”
“ . . . or maybe from breaking into your tomb?” suggested
Harry, and Dumbledore dabbed his eyes.
After another short pause Harry said, “You tried to use the
Resurrection Stone.”
Dumbledore nodded.
“When I discovered it, after all those years, buried in the aban-
doned home of the Gaunts—the Hallow I had craved most of all,
though in my youth I had wanted it for very di↵erent reasons—I
lost my head, Harry. I quite forgot that it was now a Horcrux, that
the ring was sure to carry a curse. I picked it up, and I put it on,
and for a second I imagined that I was about to s ee Ariana, and
my mother, and my father, and to tell them how very, very sorry
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I was . . .
“I was such a fo ol, Harry. After all those years I had learned
nothing. I was unworthy to unite the Deadly Hallows. I had proved
it time and again, and here was the final proof.”
“Why?” said Harry. “It was natural! You wanted to see them
again. What’s wrong with that?”
“Maybe a man in a million could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was
fit only to possess the meanest one of them, the least extraordinary.
I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to
kill with it. I was permitted to tam e and to use it, because I took
it, not for gain, but to save others from it.
“But the Cloak, I took out of vain curiosity, and so it could
never have worked for me as it works for you, its true owner. The
stone I would have used in an attempt to drag back those who are
at peace, rather than to enable my self-sacrifice, as you did. You
are the worthy possessor of the Hallows.”
Dumbledore patted Harry’s hand, and Harry looked up at the
old man and smiled; he could not help himself. How could he
remain angry with Dumbledore now?
“Why did you have to make it so difficult?”
Dumbledore’s smile was tremulous.
“I am afraid I counted on Miss Granger to slow you up, Harry.
I was afraid that your hot head might dominate your good heart.
I was scared that, if prese nted outright with the facts about those
tempting objects, you might seize the Hallows as I did, at the
wrong time, for the wrong reasons. If you laid hands on them,
I wanted you to possess them safely. You are the true master of
death, because the true master does not seek to run away from
Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there
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are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.”
“And Voldemort never knew about the Hallows?”
“I do not think so, because he did not recognize the Resurrection
Stone he turned into a Horcrux. But even if he had known about
them, Harry, I doubt that he would have been interested in any
except the first. He would not think that he needed the Cloak,
and as for the stone, whom would he want to bring back from the
dead? He fears the dead. He does not love.
“But you expected him to go after the wand?”
“I have been sure that he would try, ever since your wand beat
Voldemort’s in the graveyard of Little Hangleton. At first, he was
afraid that you had conquered him by superior skill. Once he
had kidnapped Ollivander, however, he discovered the existence of
the twin cores. He thought that explained everything. Yet the
borrowed wand did no better against yours! So Voldemort, instead
of asking himself what quality it was in you that had made your
wand so strong, what gift you possessed that he did not, naturally
set out to find the one wand that, they said, would beat any other.
For him, the Elder Wand has become an obsession to rival his
obsession with you. He believes that the Elder Wand removes his
last weakness and makes him truly invincible. Poor Severus. . . .”
“If you planned your death with Snape, you meant him to end
up with the Elder Wand, didn’t you?”
“I admit that was my intention,” said Dumbledore, “but it did
not work as I had intended, did it?”
“No,” said Harry. “That bit didn’t work out.”
The creature behind them jerked and moaned, and Harry and
Dumbledore sat without talking for the longest time yet. The
realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry
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in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.
“I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?”
“That is up to you.”
“I’ve got a choice?”
“Oh yes.” Dumbledore smiled at him. “We are in King’s Cross,
you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be
able to . . . let’s say . . . board a train.”
“And where would it take me?”
“On,” said Dumbledore simply.
Silence again.
“Voldemort’s got the Elder Wand.”
“True. Voldemort has the Elder Wand.”
“But you want me to go back?”
“I think,” said Dumbledore, “that if you choose to return, there
is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it.
But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning
here than he does.”
Harry glanced again at the raw-looking thing that trembled and
choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair.
“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all,
those who live without love. By returning, you may e nsure that
fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems
to you a worthy goal, then we say goo d-bye for the present.”
Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be
nearly as hard as walking into the forest had been, but it was warm
and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back
to pain and the fear of more loss. He stood up, and Dumbledore
did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other’s
faces.
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“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this
been happening inside my head?”
Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and
strong in Harry’s ears even though the bright white mist was de-
scending again, obscuring his figure.
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on
earth should that mean that it is not real?”
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The Flaw in the Plan
H
e was lying facedown on the ground again. The smell
of the forest filled his nostrils. He could feel the cold
hard ground beneath his cheek, and the hinge of his
glasses, which had been knocked sideways by the fall,
cutting into his temple. Every inch of him ached, and the place
where the Killing Curse had hit him felt like the bruise of an iron-
clad punch. He did not stir but remained exactly where he had
fallen, with his left arm bent out at an awkward angle and his
mouth gaping.
He had expected to hear cheers of triumph and jubilation at
his death, but instead hurried footsteps, whispers, and solicitous
murmurs filled the air.
“My Lord . . . my Lord ...”
It was Bellatrix’s voice, and she spoke as if to a lover. Harry
did not dare open his eyes, but allowed his other senses to explore
his predicament. He knew that his wand was still stowed beneath
his robes because he could feel it pressed between his chest and the
ground. A slight cushioning e↵ect in the area of his stomach told
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The Flaw in the Plan
him that the Invisibility Cloak was also there, stu↵ed out of s ight.
“My Lord ...”
“That will do,” said Voldemort’s voice.
More footsteps. Several people were backing away from the
same spot. Desperate to see what was happening and why, Harry
opened his eyes by a millimeter.
Voldemort seemed to be getting to his feet. Various Death
Eaters were hurrying away from him, returning to the crowd lin-
ing the clearing. Bellatrix alone remained behind, kneeling beside
Voldemort.
Harry closed his eyes again and considered what he had seen.
The Death Eaters had been huddled around Voldemort, who
seemed to have fallen to the ground. Something had happened
when he had hit Harry with the Killing Curse. Had Voldemort too
collapsed? It seemed like it. And both of them had fallen briefly
unconscious and both of them had now returned. . . .
“My Lord, let me—”
“I do not require assistance,” said Voldemort coldly, and though
he could not see it, Harry pictured Bellatrix withdrawing a helpful
hand. “The boy . . . Is he dead?”
There was complete silence in the clearing. Nobody approached
Harry, but he felt their concentrated gaze; it seemed to press him
harder into the ground, and he was terrified a finger or an eyelid
might twitch.
“You,” said Voldemort, and there was a bang and a small shriek
of pain. “Examine him. Tell me whether he is dead.”
Harry did not know who had been sent to verify. He could
only lie there, with his heart thumping traitorously, and wait to be
examined, but at the same time noting, small comfort though it
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Chapter 36
was, that Voldemort was wary of approaching him, that Voldemort
suspected that all had not gone to plan. . . .
Hands, softer than he had been expecting, touched Harry’s face,
pulled back an eyelid, crept beneath his shirt, down to his chest,
and felt his heart. He could hear the woman’s fast breathing, her
long hair tickled his face. He knew that she could feel the steady
pounding of life against his ribs.
“Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle? ”
The whisper was barely audible; her lips were an inch from his
ear, her head bent so low that her long hair shielded his face from
the onlookers.
“Yes,” he breathed back.
He felt the hand on his chest contract; her nails pierced him.
Then it was withdrawn. She had sat up.
“He is dead!” Narciss a Malfoy called to the watchers.
And now they shouted, now they yelled in triumph and stamped
their feet, and through his eyelids, Harry saw bursts of red and
silver light shoot into the air in celebration.
Still feigning death on the ground, he understood. Narcissa
knew that the only way she would be permitted to enter Hogwarts,
and find her son, was as part of the conquering army. She no longer
cared whether Voldemort won.
“You see?” screeched Voldemort over the tumult. “Harry Pot-
ter is dead by my hand, and no man alive can threaten me now!
Watch! Crucio! ”
Harry had been expecting it, knew his body would not b e al-
lowed to remain unsullied upon the forest floor; it must be sub-
jected to humiliation to prove Voldemort’s victory. He was lifted
into the air, and it took all his determination to remain limp, yet
726
The Flaw in the Plan
the pain he expected did not come . He was thrown once, twice,
three times into the air: His glasses flew o↵ and he felt his wand
slide a little b eneath his robes, but he kept himself floppy and life-
less, and when he fell to the ground for the last time, the clearing
echoed with jeers and shrieks of laughter.
“Now,” said Voldemort, “we go to the castle, and show them
what has become of their hero. Who shall drag the body? No—
Wait—”
There was a fresh outbreak of laughter, and after a few moment
Harry felt the ground trembling beneath him.
“You carry him,” Voldemort said, “He will be nice and visible
in your arms, will he not? Pick up your little friend, Hagrid. And
the glasses—put on the glasses—he must be recognizable—”
Someone slammed Harry’s glasses onto his face with deliberate
force, but the enormous hands that lifted him into the air were
exceedingly gentle. Harry could feel Hagrid’s arms trembling with
the force of his heaving sobs; great tears splashed down upon him
as Hagrid cradled Harry in his arms, and Harry did not dare, by
movement or word, to intimate to Hagrid that all was not, yet,
lost.
“Move,” said Voldemort, and Hagrid stumbled forward, forcing
his way through the close-growing trees, back through the forest.
Branches caught at Harry’s hair and robes, but he lay quiescent,
his mouth lolling open, his eyes shut, and in the darkness, while
the Death Eaters crowed all around them, and while Hagrid sobbed
blindly, nobody looked to see whether a pulse beat in the exposed
neck of Harry Potter. . . .
The two giants crashed along behind the Death Eaters; Harry
could hear trees creaking and falling as they passed; they made
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Chapter 36
so much din that birds rose shrieking into the sky, and even the
jeers of the Death Eaters were drowned. The victorious procession
marched on toward the open ground, and after a while Harry could
tell, by the lightening of the darkness through his c lose d eyelids,
that the trees were beginning to thin.
“BANE!”
Hagrid’s unexpected bellow nearly forced Harry’s eyes open.
“Happy now, are yeh, that yeh didn’ fight, yeh cowardly bunch o’
nags? Are yeh happy Harry Potter’s—d–dead . . . ?”
Hagrid could not continue, but broke down in fresh tears. Harry
wondered how many centaurs were watching their procession pass;
he dared not open his eyes to look. Some of the Death Eaters
called insults at the centaurs as they left them behind. A little
later, Harry sensed, by the freshening of the air, that they had
reached the edge of the forest.
“Stop.”
Harry thought that Hagrid must have been forced to obey
Voldemort’s command, because he lurched a little. And now a chill
settled over them where they stood, and Harry heard the rasping
breath of the dementors that patrolled the outer trees. They would
not a↵ect him now. The fact of his own survival burned inside him,
a talisman against them, as though his father’s stag kept guardian
in his heart.
Someone passed close by Harry, and he knew that it was Volde-
mort himself because he spoke a moment later, his voice magically
magnified so that it swelled through the grounds, crashing upon
Harry’s eardrums.
“Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to
save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you
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The Flaw in the Plan
his body as proof that your hero is gone.
“The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My
Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished.
There must be no more war. Anybody who continues to resist,
man, woman, or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member
of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and
you s hall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and
sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new
world we shall build together.”
There was silence in the grounds and from the castle. Voldemort
was so close to him that Harry did not dare open his eyes again.
“Come,” said Voldemort, and Harry heard him move ahead,
and Hagrid was forced to follow. Now Harry opened his eyes a
fraction, and saw Voldemort striding in front of them, wearing the
great snake Nagini around his shoulders, now free of her enchanted
cage. But Harry had no possibility of extracting the wand con-
cealed under his rob es without being noticed by the Death Eaters,
who marched on either side of them through the slowly lightening
darkness. . . .
“Harry,” sobbed Hagrid. “Oh, Harry . . . Harry . . . ”
Harry shut his eyes tight again. He knew that they were ap-
proaching the castle and strained his ears to distinguish, above the
gleeful voices of the Death Eaters and their tramping footsteps,
signs of life from those within.
“Stop.”
The Death Eaters came to a halt; Harry heard them spreading
out in a line facing the open front doors of the school. He could
see, even through his closed lids, the reddish glow that meant light
streamed upon him from the entrance hall. He waited. Any mo-
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Chapter 36
ment, the people for whom he had tried to die would see him, lying
apparently dead, in Hagrid’s arms.
“NO!”
The scream was the more terrible because he had never ex-
pected or dreame d that Professor McGonagall could make such a
sound. He heard another woman laughing nearby, and knew that
Bellatrix gloried in McGonagall’s despair. He squinted again for a
single second and saw the open doorway filling with people, as the
survivors of the battle came out onto the front steps to face their
vanquishers and see the truth of Harry’s death for themselves. He
saw Voldemort standing a little in front of him, stroking Nagini’s
head with a single white finger. He closed his eyes again.
“No!”
“No!”
“Harry! HARRY!”
Ron’s, Hermione’s, and Ginny’s voices were worse than McGon-
agall’s; Harry wanted nothing more than to call back, yet he made
himself lie silent, and their cries acted like a trigger; the crowd of
survivors took up the cause, screaming and yelling abuse at the
Death Eaters, until—
“SILENCE!” cried Voldemort, and there was a bang and a flash
of bright light, and silence was forced up on them all. “It’s over!
Set him down, Hagrid, at my feet, where he belongs!”
Harry felt himself lowered onto the grass.
“You see ?” said Voldemort, and Harry felt him striding back-
ward and forward right beside the place where he lay. “Harry
Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was
nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to s acrifice them-
selves for him!”
730
The Flaw in the Plan
“He beat you!” yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the de-
fenders of Hogwarts were shouting and screaming again until a
second, more powerful bang extinguished their voices once more.
“He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds,”
said Voldemort, and there was relish in his voice for the lie, “killed
while trying to save himself—”
But Voldemort broke o↵: Harry heard a scu✏e and a shout,
then another bang, a flash of light, and a grunt of pain; he opened
his eyes an infinitesimal amount. Someone had broken free of the
crowd and charged at Voldemort: Harry saw the figure hit the
ground, Disarmed, Voldemort throwing the challenger’s wand aside
and laughing.
“And who is this?” he said in his soft snake’s hiss. “Who has
volunteered to demonstrate what happens to those who continue
to fight when the battle is lost?”
Bellatrix gave a delighted laugh.
“It is Neville Longbottom, my Lord! The boy who has been
giving the Carrows so much trouble! The son of the Aurors, re-
member?”
“Ah, yes, I remember,” said Voldemort, looking down at
Neville, who was struggling back to his feet, unarmed and unpro-
tected, standing in the no-man’s-land between the survivors and
the Death Eaters. “But you are a pureblood, aren’t you, my brave
boy?” Voldemort asked Neville, who stood facing him, his empty
hands curled into fists.
“So what if I am?” said Neville loudly.
“You show s pirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock.
You will make a very valuable Death Eater. We need your kind,
Neville Longbottom.”
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Chapter 36
“I’ll join you when hell freezes over,” said Neville. “Dumble-
dore’s Army!” he shouted, and there was an answering cheer from
the crowd, whom Voldemort’s Silencing Charms seemed unable to
hold.
“Very well,” said Voldemort, and Harry heard more danger in
the silkiness of his voice than in the most powerful curse. “If that
is your choice, Longbottom, we revert to the original plan. On
your head,” he said quietly, “be it.”
Still watching through his lashes, Harry saw Voldemort wave his
wand. Seconds later, out of one of the castle’s shattered windows,
something that looked like a misshapen bird flew through the half
light and landed in Voldemort’s hand. He shook the mildewed
object by its pointed end and it dangled, empty and ragged: the
Sorting Hat.
“There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts School,” said Volde-
mort. “There will be no more Houses. The emblem, shield, and
colors of my noble ancestor, Salazar Slytherin, will suffice for ev-
eryone. Won’t they, Neville Longbottom?”
He pointed his wand at Neville, who grew rigid and still, then
forced the hat onto Neville’s head, so that it slipped down below
his eyes. There were movements from the watching crowd in front
of the castle, and as one, the Death Eaters raised their wands,
holding the fighters of Hogwarts at bay.
“Neville here is now going to demonstrate what happens to
anyone foolish enough to continue to oppose me,” said Voldemort,
and with a flick of his wand, he caused the Sorting Hat to burst
into flames.
Screams split the dawn, and Neville was aflame, rooted to the
spot, unable to move, and Harry could not bear it: He must act—
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The Flaw in the Plan
And then many things happened at the same moment.
They heard uproar from the distant boundary of the school as
what sounded like hundreds of people came swarming over the out-
of-sight walls and pelted toward the castle, uttering loud war cries.
At the same time, Grawp came lumbering around the side of the
castle and yelled, “HAGGER!” His cry was answered by roars from
Voldemort’s giants: They ran at Grawp like bull elephants, making
the earth quake. Then came hooves and the twangs of bows, and
arrows were suddenly falling amongst the Death Eaters, who broke
ranks, shouting their surprise. Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak
from inside his robes, swung it over himself, and sprang to his feet,
as Neville moved too.
In one swift, fluid motion, Neville broke free of the Body-Bind
Curse upon; the flaming hat fell o↵ him and he drew from its depths
something silver, with a glittering, rubied handle—
The slash of the silver blade could not be heard over the roar of
the oncoming crowd or the sounds of the clashing giants or of the
stampeding centaurs, and yet it seemed to draw every eye. With a
single stroke Neville sliced o↵ the great snake’s head, which spun
high into the air, gleaming in the light flooding from the entrance
hall, and Voldemort’s mouth was open in a scream of fury that
nobody could hear, and the snake’s body thudded to the ground
at his feet—
Hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, Harry cast a Shield
Charm between Neville and Voldemort before the latter could raise
his wand. Then, over the screams and the roars and the thunder-
ous stamps of the battling giants, Hagrid’s yell came loudest of
all
“HARRY!” Hagrid shouted. “HARRY—WHERE’S HARRY?”
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Chapter 36
Chaos reigned. The charging centaurs were scattering the
Death Eaters, everyone was fleeing the giants’ stamping feet, and
nearer and nearer thundered the reinforcements that had come
from who knew where; Harry saw great winged creatures soaring
around the heads of Voldemort’s giants, thestrals and Buckbeak
the hippogri↵ scratching at their eyes while Grawp punched and
pummeled them, and now the wizards, defenders of Hogwarts and
Death Eaters alike, were being forced back into the castle. Harry
was shouting jinxes and curses at any Death Eater he could see,
and they crumpled, not knowing what or who had hit them, and
their bodies were trampled by the retreating crowd.
Still hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, Harry was bu↵eted
into the entrance hall: He was searching for Voldemort and saw
him across the room, firing spells from his wand as he backed into
the Great hall, still screaming instructions to his followers as he
sent curses flying left and right; Harry cast more Shield Charms,
and Voldemort’s would-be victims, Seamus Finnigan and Hannah
Abbott, darted past him into the Great Hall, where they joined
the fight already flourishing inside it.
And now there were more, even more people storming up the
front steps, and Harry saw Charlie Weas ley overtaking Horace
Slughorn, who was still wearing his emerald pajamas. They seemed
to have returned at the head of what looked like the families and
friends of every Hogwarts student who had remained to fight, along
with the shopkeepers and homeowners of Hogsmeade. The centaurs
Ban, Ronan, and Magorian burst into the hall with a great clatter
of hooves, as behind Harry the door that led to the kitchens was
blasted o↵ its hinges.
The house-elves of Hogwarts swarmed into the entrance hall,
734
The Flaw in the Plan
screaming and waving carving knives and cleavers, and at their
head, the locket of Regulus Black bouncing on his chest, was
Kreacher, his bullfrog’s voice audible even above this din: “Fight!
Fight! Fight for my Master, defender of the house-elves! Fight the
Dark Lord, in the name of brave Regulus! Fight!”
They were hacking and stabbing at the ankles and shins of
Death Eaters, their tiny faces alive with malice, and everywhere
Harry looked Death Eaters were folding under sheer weight of num-
bers, overcome by spells, dragging arrows from wounds, stabbed in
the leg by e lves, or else simply attempting to escape, but swallowed
by the oncoming horde.
But it was not over yet: Harry sped between duelers, past strug-
gling prisoners, and into the Great Hall.
Voldemort was in the center of the battle, and he was striking
and smiting all within reach. Harry could not get a clear shot, but
fought his way nearer, still invisible, and the Great Hall became
more and more crowded as everyone who could walk forced their
way inside.
Harry saw Yaxley slammed to the floor by George and Lee
Jordan, saw Dolohov fall with a scream at Flitwick’s hands, saw
Walden Macnair thrown across the room by Hagrid, hit the stone
wall opposite, and slide unconscious to the ground. He saw Ron
and Neville bringing down Fenrir Greyback, Aberforth Stunning
Rookwood, Arthur and Percy flooring Thicknesse, and Lucius and
Narcissa Malfoy running through the crowd, not even attempting
to fight, screaming for their son.
Voldemort was now dueling McGonagall, Slughorn, and Kings-
ley all at once, and there was cold hatred in his face as they wove
and ducked around him, unable to finish him—
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Chapter 36
Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort,
and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and
Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them,
and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close
to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—
He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort,
but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways.
“NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!”
Mrs. Weasley threw o↵ her cloak as she ran, freeing her arms.
Bellatrix spun on the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of
her new challenger.
“OUT OF MY WAY!” shouted Mrs. Weasley to the three
girls, and with a swipe of her wand she began to duel. Harry
watched with terror and elation as Molly Weasley’s wand slashed
and twisted, and Bellatrix Les trange’s smile faltered and became
a snarl. Jets of light flew from both wands, the floor around the
witches’ feet became hot and cracked; both women were fighting
to kill.
“No!” Mrs. Weasley cried as a few students ran forward, trying
to come to her aid. “Get back! Get back! She is mine!”
Hundreds of people now lined the walls, watching the two fights,
Voldemort and his three opponents, Bellatrix and Molly, and Harry
stood, invisible, torn between both, wanting to attack and yet to
protect, unable to be sure that he would not hit the innocent.
“What will happen to your children when I’ve killed you?”
taunted Bellatrix, as mad as her master, capering as Molly’s curses
danced around her. “When Mummy’s gone the same way as Fred-
die?”
“You—will—never—touch—our—children—again!”
736
The Flaw in the Plan
screamed Mrs. Weasley.
Bellatrix laughed, the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius
had given as he toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly
Harry knew what was going to happen before it did.
Molly’s curse soared beneath Bellatrix’s outstretched arm and
hit her squarely in the chest, directly over her heart.
Bellatrix’s gloating smile froze, her eyes began to bulge: For the
tiniest space of time she knew what had happened, and then she
toppled, and the watching crowd roared, and Voldemort screamed
Harry felt as though he turned in slow motion; he saw McGon-
agall, Kingsley, and Slughorn blasted backward, flailing and
writhing through the air, as Voldemort’s fury at the fall of his
last, be st lieutenant exploded with the force of a bomb. Voldemort
raised his wand and directed it at Molly Weasley.
“Protego! ” roared Harry, and the Shield Charm expanded in
the middle of the Hall, and Voldemort stared around for the source
as Harry pulled o↵ the Invisibility Cloak at last.
The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of
“Harry!” “HE’S ALIVE!” were stifled at once. The crowd was
afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and
Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to
circle each other.
“I don’t want anyone else to try to help.” Harry said loudly,
and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. “It’s
got to be like this. It’s got to be me.”
Voldemort hissed.
“Potter doesn’t mean that,” he said, his red eyes wide. “That
isn’t how he works, is it? Who are you going to use as a shield
today, Potter?”
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Chapter 36
“Nobody,” said Harry simply. “There are no more Horcruxes.
It’s just you and me. Neither can live while the other survives, and
one of us is about to leave for good. . . .”
“One of us?” jeered Voldemort, and his whole body was taunt
and his red eyes stared, a snake that was about to strike. “You
think it will be you, do you, the boy who has survived by accident,
and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?”
“Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?” asked
Harry. They were still moving sideways, both of them, in that p er-
fect circle, maintaining the same distance from each other, and for
Harry no face existed but Voldemort’s. “Accident, when I decided
to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn’t defend myself
tonight, and still survived, and returned to fight again?”
“Accidents! ” screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike,
and the watching crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hun-
dreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to breathe but they two. “Ac-
cident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled
behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to
kill them for you!”
“You won’t be killing anyone else tonight,” said Harry as they
circled, and stared into each other’s eyes, green into red. “You
won’t be able to kill any of them ever again. Don’t you get it? I
was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—”
“But you did not!”
“—I meant to, and that’s what it did. I’ve done what my
mother did. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how
none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture
them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes,
Riddle, do you?”
738
The Flaw in the Plan
“You dare —”
“Yes, I dare,” said Harry. “I know things you don’t know, Tom
Riddle. I know lots of important things that you don’t. Want to
hear some, before you make another big mistake?”
Voldemort did not speak, but prowled in a circle, and Harry
knew that he kept him temporarily mesmerized and at bay, held
back by the faintest possibility that Harry might indeed know a
final secret. . . .
“Is it love again?” said Voldemort, his snake’s face jeering.
“Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered
death, though love did not stop him falling from the tower and
breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me
stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter—
and nobody seems to love you enough to run forward this time
and take my c urse. So what will stop you from dying now when I
strike?”
“Just one thing,” said Harry, and still they circled each other,
wrapped in each other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.
“If it is not love that will save you this time,” said Voldemort,
“you must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a
weapon more powerful than mine?”
“I believe both,” said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the
snakelike face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began
to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams;
humorless and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.
“You think you know more magic than I do?” he said. “Than I,
than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore
himself never dreamed of?”
“Oh, he dreamed of it,” said Harry, “but he knew more than
739
Chapter 36
you, knew enough not to do what you’ve done.”
“You mean he was weak!” screamed Voldemort. “Too weak
to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be
mine!”
“No, he was cleverer than you,” said Harry, “a better wizard, a
better man.”
“I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!”
“You thought you did,” said Harry, “but you were wrong.”
For the first time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds
of people around the walls drew breath as one.
“Dumbledore is dead!” Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as
though they would cause him unendurable pain. “His body decays
in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle. I have seen it,
Potter, and he will not return!”
“Yes, Dumbledore’s dead,” said Harry calmly, “but you didn’t
have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months
before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought
was your servant.”
“What childish dream is this?” said Voldemort, but still he did
not strike, and his red eyes did not waver from Harry’s.
“Severus Snape wasn’t yours,” said Harry. “Snape was Dumble-
dore’s. Dumbledore’s from the moment you started hunting down
my mother. And you never realized it, because of the thing you
can’t understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you,
Riddle?”
Voldemort did not answer. They continued to circle each other,
like wolves about to tear each other apart.
“Snape’s Patronus was a doe,” said Harry, “the same as my
mother’s, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the
740
The Flaw in the Plan
time when they were children. You should have realized,” he said
as he saw Voldemort’s nostrils flare, “he asked you to spare her
life, didn’t he?”
“He desired her, that was all,” sneered Voldemort, “but when
she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer
blood, worthier of him—”
“Of course he told you that,” said Harry, “but he was Dum-
bledore’s spy from the moment you threatened her, and he’s been
working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying
when Snape finished him!”
“It matters not!” shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every
word with rapt attention, but now let out a cackle of mad laughter.
“It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore’s, or what
petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I
crushed your mother, Snape’s supposed great love! Oh, but it all
makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand!
“Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He
intended that Snape should be the true master of the wand! But
I got there ahead of you, little boy—I reached the wand before
you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you
caught up, I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder
Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dum-
bledore’s last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!”
“Yeah, it did,” said Harry. “You’re right. But before you try to
kill me, I’d advise you to think about what you’ve done. . . . Think,
and try for some remorse, Riddle. . . .”
“What is this?”
Of all the things that Harry had said to him, b eyond any rev-
elation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry
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Chapter 36
saw his pupils contact to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes
whiten.
“It’s your one last chance,” said Harry, “it’s all you’ve got left. . . . I’ve
seen what you’ll be otherwise. . . . Be a man . . . try . . . Try for some
remorse. . . .”
“You dare—?” said Voldemort again.
“Yes, I dare,” said Harry, “because Dumbledore’s last plan
hasn’t backfired on me at all. It’s backfired on you, Riddle.”
Voldemort’s hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry
gripped Draco’s very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds
away.
“That wand still isn’t working properly for you because you
murdered the wrong person. Severus Snape was never the true
master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated Dumbledore.”
“He killed—”
“Aren’t you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dum-
bledore’s death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended
to die undefeated, the wand’s last true master! If all had gone as
planned, the wand’s power would have died with him, because it
had never been won from him!”
“But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!”
Voldemort’s voice shook with malicious pleasure. “I stole the wand
from its last master’s tomb! I removed it against its last master’s
wishes! It’s power is mine!”
“You still don’t get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn’t
enough! Holding it, using it, doesn’t make it really yours. Didn’t
you listen to Ollivander? The wand chooses the wizard. . . . The El-
der Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, some-
one who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed
742
The Flaw in the Plan
the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly
what he had done, or that the world’s most dangerous wand had
given him its allegiance. . . .
Voldemort’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the
curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.
“The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy.”
Blank shock showed in Voldemort’s face for a mom ent, but then
it was gone.
“But what does it matter?” he said softly. “Even if you are
right, Potter, it makes no di↵erence to you and me. You no longer
have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone . . . and after I have
killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy. . . .”
“But you’re too late,” said Harry. “You’ve missed your chance.
I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took this wand
from him.”
Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of
everyone in the Hall upon it.
“So it all comes down to this, doesn’t it?” whispered Harry.
“Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed?
Because if it does . . . I am the true master of the Elder Wand.”
A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above
them as an edge of dazzling s un appeared over the sill of the nearest
window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that
Voldemort’s was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high
voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing
Draco’s wand:
“Avada Kedavra! ”
“Expelliarmus! ”
The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that
743
Chapter 36
erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had
been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry
saw Voldemort’s green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand
fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted
ceiling like the head of Nagini, spinning through the air toward the
master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it
at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the
wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed,
the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit
the floor w ith a mundane finality, his b ody feeble and shrunken,
the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing.
Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry
stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy’s
shell.
One shivering se cond of silence, the shock of the moment sus-
pend: and then the tumult broke around Harry as the screams and
the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air. The fierce new
sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and the
first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms
that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that
deafened him. Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then
all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and
Flitwick and Spout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone
was shouting, nor tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him,
trying to hug some part of him, hundreds of them pressing in, all
of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was
over at last—
The sun rose steadily over Hogwarts, and the Great Hall blazed
with life and light. Harry was an indispensable part of the mingled
744
The Flaw in the Plan
outpourings of jubilation and mourning, of grief and celebration.
They wanted him there with them, their leader and symbol, their
savior and their guide, and that he had not slept, that he craved
the company of only a few of them, seemed to occur to on one.
He must speak to the bereaved, clap their hands, witness their
tears, receive their thanks, hear the new now creeping in from every
quarter as the morning drew on; that the Imperiused up and down
the country had come back to themselves, that Death Eaters were
fleeing or else being captured, that the innocent of Azkaban were
being released at that very moment, and that Kingsley Shacklebolt
had been named temporary Minister of Magic. . . .
They moved Voldemort’s body and laid it in a chamber o↵ the
Hall, away from the bodies of Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Colin Creevey,
and fifty others who had died fighting him. McGonagall had re-
placed the House tables, but nobody was sitting according to House
anymore: All were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts
and parents, centaurs and house-elves, and Firenze lay recovering
in a corner, and Grawp peered in through a smashed window, and
people were through food into his laughing mouth. After a while,
exhausted and drained, Harry found himself s itting on a bench
beside Luna.
“I’d want some peace and quite, if it were me,” she said.
“I’d love some,” he replied.
“I’ll distract them all,” she said. “Use your Cloak.”
And before he could say a word she cried, “Oooh, look, a Blib-
bering Humdinger!” and pointed out of the window. Everyone who
heard looked around, and Harry slid the Cloak up over himself, and
got to his feet.
Now he could move through the Hall without interference. He
745
Chapter 36
spotted Ginny two tables away; she was sitting with her head on
her mother’s shoulder: There would be time to talk later, hours
and days and maybe years in which to talk. He saw Neville, the
sword of Gryffindor lying beside his plate as he ate, surrounded
by a knot of fervent admirers. Along the aisle between the tables
he walked, and he spotted the three Malfoys, huddled together as
though unsure whether or not they were supposed to be there, but
nobody was paying them any attention. Everywhere he looked he
saw families reunited, and finally, he saw the two whose company
he craved most.
“It’s me,” he muttered, crouching down betwe en them. “Will
you come with me?”
They stood up at once, and together he, Ron, and Hermione left
the Great Hall. Great chunks were missing from the marble stair-
case, part of the balustrade was gone, and rubble and bloodstains
occurred every few steps as they climbed.
Somewhere in the distance they could hear Peeves zooming
through the corridors singing a victory song of his own compo-
sition:
We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one,
And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!
“Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing,
doesn’t it?” said Ron, pushing open a door to let Harry and Her-
mione through.
Happiness would com e, Harry thought, but at the moment it
was mu✏ed by exhaustion, and the pain of losing Fred and Lupin
and Tonks pierced him like a physical wound every few steps. Most
of all he felt the most stupendous relief, and a longing to sleep. But
746
The Flaw in the Plan
first he owed an e xplanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck
with him for so long, and who deserved the truth. Painstakingly he
recounted what he had seen in the Pensieve and what had happened
in the forest, and they had not even begun to express all their
shock and amazement when at last they arrived at the place to
which they had been walking, though none of them had mentioned
their destination.
Since he had last seen it, the gargoyle guarding the entrance to
the headmaster’s study had been knocked aside; it stood lopsided,
looking a little punch-drunk, and Harry wondered whether it would
be able to distinguish passwords anymore. “Can we go up?” he
asked the gargoyle.
“Feel free.” groaned the statue.
They clambered over him and onto the spiral stone staircase
that moved slowly upward like an escalator. Harry pushed open
the door at the top.
He had one, brief glimpse of the stone Pensieve on the desk
where he had left it, and then an earsplitting noise made him cry
out, thinking of curses and returning Death Eaters and the rebirth
of Voldemort—
But it was applause. All around the walls, the headmasters and
head mistresses of Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation;
they waved their hats and in some cases their wigs, they reached
through their frames to grip each other’s hands; they danced up
and down on the chairs in which they had been painted; Dilys
Derwent sobbed unashamedly; Dexter Fortescue was waving his
ear-trumpet; and Phineas Nigellus called, in his high, reedy voice,
“And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our
contribution not be forgotten!”
747
Chapter 36
But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest
portrait directly behind the headmaster’s chair. Tears were sliding
down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver
beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled
Harry with the same balm as phoenix song.
At last, Harry held up his hands, and the portraits fell respect-
fully silent, beaming and mopping their eyes and waiting eagerly
for him to speak. He directed his words at Dumbledore, however,
and chose them with enormous care. Exhausted and bleary-eyed
though he was, he must m ake one last e↵ort, seeking one last piece
of advice.
“The thing that was hidden in the Snitch,” he began, “I dropped
it in the forest. I don’t know exactly where, but I’m not going to
go looking for it again. Do you agree?”
“My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, while his fellow pictures
looked confused and curious. “A wise and courageous decision, but
no less than I would have exp e cte d of you. Do e s anyone else know
where it fell?”
“No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded his satisfaction.
“I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though,” said Harry, and
Dumbledore beamed.
“But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!”
“And then there’s this.”
Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked
at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived
state, Harry did not like to see.
“I don’t want it.” said Harry.
“What?” said Ron Loudly. “Are you mental?”
“I know it’s powerful,” said Ron wearily. “But I was happier
748
The Flaw in the Plan
with mine. So . . . ”
He rummaged in the pouch hung around his neck, and pulled
out the two halves of holly still just connected by the finest thread
of phoenix feather. Hermione had said that they could not be
repaired, that the damage was too severe. All he knew was that if
this did not work, nothing would.
He laid the broken wand upon the headmaster’s desk, touch it
with the very tip of the Elder Wand, and said “Reparo.”
As his wand resealed, red sparks flew out of its end. Harry knew
that he had succeeded. He picked up the holly and phoenix wand
and felt a sudden warmth in his fingers, as though wand and hand
were rejoicing at their reunion.
“I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was
watching him with enormous a↵ection and admiration, “back
where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death
like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous mas-
ter will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.”
Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other.
“Are you sure?” said Ron. There was the faintest trace of
longing in his voice as he looked at the Elder Wand.
“I think Harry’s right,” said Hermione quietly.
“That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry. “And
quite honestly,” he turned away from the painted portraits, think-
ing now only of the four-poster bead lying waiting for him in
Gryffindor Tower and wondering whether Kreacher might bring
him a sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”
749
750
751
752
Epilogue
Nineteen Years Later
A
utumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning
of the first of September was crisp and golden as an ap-
ple, and as the little family bobbed across the rumbling
road towards the great sooty station, the fumes of car
exhausts and the breath of pedestrians sparkled like cobwebs in the
cold air. Two large cages rattled on top of the laden trolleys the
parents were pushing; the owls inside them hooted indignantly, and
the redheaded girl trailed tearfully behind her brothers, clutching
her father’s arm.
“It won’t be long now, and you’ll be going too,” Harry told her.
“Two years,” sni↵ed Lily. “I want to go now !”
The commuters stared curiously at the owls as the family wove
its way towards the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Al-
bus’s voice drifted back to Harry over the surrounding clamor; his
sons had resumed the argument they had started in the car.
“I won’t!Iwon’t be in Slytherin!”
“James, give it a rest!” said Ginny.
“I only said he might be,” said James, grinning at his younger
753
Epilogue
brother. “There’s nothing wrong with that. He might be in
Slyth—”
But James caught his mother’s eye and fell silent. The five
Potters approached the barrier. With a slightly cocky look over
his shoulder at his younger brother, James took the trolley from
his mother and broke into a run. A moment later, he had vanished.
“You’ll write to me, won’t you?” Albus asked his parents im-
mediately, capitalizing on the momentary absence of his brother.
“Every day, if you want us to,” said Ginny.
“Not every day,” said Albus quickly. “James says mos t p e ople
only get letters from home about once a month.”
“We wrote to James three times a week last year,” said Ginny.
“And you don’t want to believe everything he tells you about
Hogwarts,” Harry put in. “He likes a laugh, your brother.”
Side by side, they pushed the second trolley forward, gathering
speed. As they reached the barrier, Albus winced, but no colli-
sion came. Instead, the family emerged onto platform nine and
three-quarters, which was obscured by thick white steam which
was pouring from the scarlet Hogwarts Express. Indistinct figures
were swarming through the mist, into which James had already
disappeared.
“Where are they?” as ked Albus anxiously, peering at the hazy
forms they passed as they made their way down the platform
“We’ll find them,” said Ginny reassuringly.
But the vapor was dense, and it was difficult to make out any-
body’s faces. Detached from their owners, voices sounded unnat-
urally loud. Harry thought he heard Percy discoursing loudly on
broomstick regulations, and was quite glad of the e xcuse not to
stop and say hello. . . .
754
Nineteen Years Later
“I think that’s them, Al,” said Ginny suddenly.
A group of four people emerged from the mist, standing along-
side the very last carriage. Their faces only came into focus when
Harry, Ginny, Lily, and Albus had drawn right up beside them.
“Hi,” said Albus, sounding immensely relieved.
Rose, who was already wearing her brand-new Hogwarts robes,
beamed at him.
“Parked all right, then?” Ron asked Harry. “I did. Hermione
didn’t believe I could pass a Muggle driving test, did you? She
thought I’d have to Confund the examiner.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Hermione, “I had complete faith in you.”
“As a matter of fact, I did Confund him,” Ron whispered to
Harry, as together they lifted Albus’s trunk and owl onto the train.
“I only forgot to look in the wing mirror, and let’s face it, I can
use a Supersensory Charm for that.”
Back on the platform, they found Lily and Hugo, Rose’s younger
brother, having an animated discussion about which House they
would be sorted into when they finally went to Hogwarts.
“If you’re not in Gryffindor, we’ll disinherit you,” said Ron,
“but no pressure.”
“Ron!”
Lily and Hugo laughed, but Albus and Rose looked solemn.
“He doesn’t mean it,” said Hermione and Ginny, but Ron was
no longer paying attention. Catching Harry’s eye, he nodded
covertly to a point some fifty yards away. The steam had thinned
for a moment, and three people stood in sharp relief against the
shifting mist.
“Look who it is.”
Draco Malfoy was standing there with his wife and son, a dark
755
Epilogue
coat buttoned up to his throat. His hair was receding some what,
which emphasized the pointed chin. The new boy resembled Draco
as much as Albus resembled Harry. Draco caught sight of Harry,
Ron, Hermione, and Ginny staring at him, nodded curtly, and
turned away again.
“So that’s little Scorpius,” said Ron under his breath. “Make
sure you beat him in every test, Rosie. Thank God you inherited
your mother’s brains.”
“Ron, for heaven’s sake,” said Hermione, half stern, half
amused. “Don’t try to turn them against each other before they’ve
even started school!”
“You’re right, sorry,” said Ron, but unable to help himself, he
added, “Don’t get too friendly with him, though, Rosie. Granddad
Weasley would never forgive you if you married a pureblood.”
“Hey!”
James had reappeared; he had divested himself of his trunk,
owl, and trolley, and was evidently bursting with news.
“Teddy’s back there,” he said breathlessly, pointing back over
his shoulder into the billowing clouds of steam. “Just seen him!
And guess what he’s doing? Snogging Victoire!”
He gazed up at the adults, evidently disappointed by the lack
of reaction.
“Our Teddy! Teddy Lupin! Snogging our Victoire! Our cousin!
And I asked Teddy what he was doing—”
“You interrupted them ?” said Ginny. “You are so like Ron—”
“—and he said he’d come to see her o↵! And then he told me
to go away! He’s snogging her!” James added as though worried
he had not made himself clear.
“Oh, it would be lovely if they got married,” whispered Lily
756
Nineteen Years Later
sarcastically. “Teddy would really be part of the family then!”
“He already comes round for dinner about four times a week,”
said Harry. “Why don’t we just invite him to live with us and have
done with it?”
“Yeah!” said James enthusiastically. “I don’t mind sharing a
room with Al—Teddy could have my room!”
“No,” said Harry firmly, “you and Al will share a room only
when I want the house demolished.”
He checked the battered old watch which had once been Fabian
Prewett’s.
“It’s nearly eleven, you’d better get on board.”
“Don’t forget to give Neville our love!” Ginny told James as
she hugged him.
“Mum! I can’t give a professor love!”
“But you know Neville!—”
James rolled his eyes.
“Outside, yeah, but at school he’s Professor Longbottom, isn’t
he? I can’t walk into He rbology and give him love. . . .”
Shaking his head at his mother’s foolishness, he vented his feel-
ings by aiming a kick at Albus.
“See you later, Al. Watch out for the thestrals.”
“I thought they were invisible? You said they were invisible!”
But James merely laughed, permitted his mother to kiss him,
gave his father a fleeting hug, then leapt onto the rapidly filling
train. They saw him wave, then sprint away up the corridor to
find his friends.
“Thestrals are nothing to worry about,” Harry told Albus.
“They’re gentle things, there’s nothing scary about them. Any-
way, you won’t be going up to school in the carriages, you’ll b e
757
Epilogue
going in the boats.”
Ginny kissed Albus good-by.
“See you at Christmas.”
“By, Al,” said Harry as his son hugged him. “Don’t forget
Hagrid’s invited you to tea next Friday. Don’t mess with Peeves.
Don’t duel anyone till you’ve learned how. And don’t let James
wind you up.”
“What if I’m in Slytherin?”
The whisper was for his father alone, and Harry knew that only
the moment of departure could have forced Albus to reveal how
great and sincere that fear was.
Harry crouched down so that Albus’s face was slightly above his
own. Alone of Harry’s three children, Albus had inherited Lily’s
eyes.
“Albus Severus,” Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny
could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving
to Rose, who was now on the train, “you were named for two
headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he
was probably the bravest man I ever knew.”
“But just say —”
“—then Slytherin House will have gained an excellent student,
won’t it? It doesn’t matter to us, Al. But if it matters to you,
you’ll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin. The Sorting
Hat takes your choice into account.”
“Really?”
“It did for me,” said Harry.
He had never told any of his children that before, and he saw
the wonder in Albus’s face when he said it. But now the doors
were slamming all along the scarlet train, and the blurred out-
758
Nineteen Years Later
lines of parents were swarming forward for final kisses, last-minute
reminders. Albus jumped into the carriage and Ginny closed the
door behind him. Students were hanging from the windows nearest
them. A gre at number of face s, both on the train and o↵, seemed
to be turned towards Harry.
“Why are they staring?” dem anded Albus as he and Rose
craned around to look at the other students.
“Don’t let it worry you,” said Ron. “It’s me. I’m extremely
famous.”
Albus, Rose, Hugo, and Lily laughed. The train began to move,
and Harry walked alongside it, watching his son’s thin face, al-
ready ablaze with excitement. Harry kept smiling and waving,
even though it was like a little bereavement, watching his son glide
away from him. . . .
The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air. The train
rounded a corner. Harry’s hand was still raised in farewell.
“He’ll be all right,” murmured Ginny.
As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly
and touched the lightning scar on his forehead.
“I know he will.”
The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.
759
The
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Vim and TeTeX L
A
T
E
X
v3.0 in URW Garamond, af-
ter being transcribed from digital
camera captures of the book, origi-
nally posted on 4chan. Dark Miasma typed
around half of this work (chapters 1-15, 18-20,
28-30, 33-Epilogue). The remaining chapters were
taken from the DSB release, to whom we extend our
gratitude, and the text was processed using the stan-
dard Linux tools sed and awk. aspell was
used to spell check the document. In this
second release, most of the remaining
typos should be fixed, thanks to a
combination of our reading
the book and helpful
comments. Thanks
to The Pi-
rate Bay.
Adieu.
