[小说]哈利波特和死圣（英文版）全文

三英战大蛇

本来打算翻译一遍，搞个中文版的《哈利波特和死圣》玩玩，可惜最近时间吃紧，到8月份又赶上FF12国际版的发售。
这样一来，完成全部汉化工作也就拖到8月底了 [s:267].

三英战大蛇

以下是英文原版内容，大家比较着看
Chapter One
The Dark Lord Ascending

The 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 beneath their cloaks and started walking
briskly in the same direction.
"News?" asked the taller of the two.
"The best," replied Severus Snape.
The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high,
neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they
marched.
"Thought I might be late," said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as
the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. "It was a little trickier than I
expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be
good?"
Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led
off the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the distance beyond the
pair of imposing 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 was smoke.
The yew hedges muffled 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 pea***,
strutting majestically along the top of the hedge.
“He always did himself well, Lucius. Pea***s …” 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 downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden
beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath 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 lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent
carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the wall
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 carelessly up against the walls. Illumination
came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded
mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. 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,
revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in
the bare, polished surface of the table below. None of the people seated underneath this

singular sight were looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below
it. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every minute or so.
“Yaxley. Snape,” 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 diffi***, at
first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer,
however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, s***like, 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 seat on his immediate 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 nightfall.”
The interest around the table sharpened palpably: Some stiffened, others fidgeted,
all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.
“Saturday … at nightfall,” repeated Voldemort. His red eyes 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 Voldemort and Snape.
All faces turned to him.
“My Lord, I have heard differently.”
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 been Confunded, naturally he is certain,” said 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 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 subsided 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 enchantments 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 news on that score. I have – with diffi***y, and after great
effort – succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse.”
Many of those sitting around Yaxley 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 contact not only with the Minister
himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It 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, then 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 apprehensively, each of them,
by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter’s continued
existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any 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 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 him 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 shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
“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 front 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 wand and compared the lengths. Lucius
Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expected
to receive Voldemort’s wand 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 displaces you, Lucius?”
“Nothing – nothing, my Lord!”
“Such lies Lucius … “

The soft voice seemed 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 sliding across the floor beneath the table.
The huge s*** 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 eyes, 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 desire it – we do.”
To Malfoy’s left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from
Voldemort and the s***. 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 longing 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!”
“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 yours, 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 giant
s***, disliking the disturbance, opened its mouth wide 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 wit 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?” asked Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet, it
carried clearly 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 resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.
“Enough,” said Voldemort, stroking the angry s***. “Enough.”

And the laughter died at once.
“Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over 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 suspended 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, “Severus! Help me!”
“Ah, yes,” said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.
“And you, Draco?” asked Voldemort, stroking the s***’s snout with his wand-
free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemed
unable to look at her anymore.
“But you would not have taken her classes,” 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 wizards all about
Muggles … how they are not so different 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 Mudbloods in the
Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge and
magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable
circumstance … She would have us 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 him 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 s*** swayed and slithered
from his shoulders onto the polished wood.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Six --The Ghoul in Pajamas


Chapter Six
The Ghoul in Pajamas

The 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 Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had
drifted off 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 wanted 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 closer to Harry.
“Mum’s been trying to get it out of Hermione and me. What we’re off to do.
She’ll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and Lupin’ve both asked 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 have come out of his rucksack. Once she had him cornered in the tiny
scullery off 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. Weasley.
“Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,” mumbled Harry. “Ron and Hermione
know about it, and they want to come too.”
“What sort of ‘stuff’?”
“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 so 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 sock 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 realized. Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here,
you won’t mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will you?
There’s still so much to do.”
“No – I – of course not,” said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of
subject.
“Sweet of you,” she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery.
From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley kept Harry, Ron and Hermione 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 favors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming
the garden and helping Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canapés, however, Harry
started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed 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 you 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 muttered. “Someone
else might kill off 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 said. “That’s what you’re trying to do?”
“I – not – I was joking,” said Harry evasively.
They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s
expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been
alone with her since those 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-
Keeper 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 be 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 become so shaky.”
The kitchen was so crowded that evening it was diffi*** to maneuver 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
trying so 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 diffi*** 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
escaping 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
powerful 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
resigned. She hasn’t been seen for weeks now. Meanwhile Scrimgeour 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 the 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 Death Eaters, but we cannot guarantee zat zey will not let something
slip after zey ‘ave ‘ad champagne.”
From this, Harry gathered that she still suspected Hagrid.
“Yes, good point,” said Mrs. Weasley 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 piece 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 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 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 much out the chickens, and
Hermione, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d change 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 coop, “but,
er, Ted Tonks sent me most of what was left of Sirius’s bike and, er, I’m hiding – that’s
to say, keeping – it in here. Fantastic stuff: 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 chance was that Hermione was now sitting
in the far corner, her fluffy 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 bed.
“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
The 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.”
“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 weight 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 stuffed 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 bedsprings, Ron bounded off 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 oven earlier. Hastily
pulling out his wand, he pointed it at the rag and said, “Tergeo.”
The wand siphoned off most of the grease. Looking rather pleased with himself,
Ron handed the slightly smoking handkerchief to Hermione.
“Oh . . . thanks, Ron. . . . I’m sorry. . . .” She blew her nose and hiccupped. “It’s
just so awf-ful, isn’t it? R-right after Dumbledore . . . 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 ***ed his arm back from around her shoulders; she had dropped
The Monster 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 wrenched the book from Ron’s
leg and retied it shit.
“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 Hermione, “When we’re
looking for the Horcruxes.”
“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,” he 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 diffi***
magic, not to mention smuggling Mad-Eye’s whole stock of Polyjuice Potion right under
Ron’s mum’s nose.
“I’ve also modified my parents’ memories so that they’re convinced 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 diffi*** for Voldemort to track them
down and interrogate them about me – or you, because unfortunately, 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 off the bed, put
his arm 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 Hermione and stumped
over to the door.
“C’mon.”
“Why?” Harry asked, following Ron out of the room onto the 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 actually 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 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 them 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’re gone.”
There was silence in the room, broken only by gentle thuds as Hermione
continued to throw books onto one pile or the other. Ron sat watching her, and Harry
looked from one to the other, unable to say anything. The measure 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 dangerous 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 muffled 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 wedding.”
“Fleur’s sister’s a bridesmaid, she needs to be here for the rehearsal, 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 Defensive 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 understood his desire to return to Godric’s
Hollow. His parents’ graves 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 that he was facing the
challenge of repeating the feat, Harry was drawn to the place where it had 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 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 off?” 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?”
“There weren’t,” said Hermione, who had turned pink. “Dumbledore removed
them all, but he – he didn’t destroy them.”
Ron sat up straight, wide-eyed.
“How in the name of Merlin’s pants have you managed to get your hands on those
Horcrux books?”
“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 off 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 Dumbledore 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 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?” asked 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 by 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 destroy you. I can’t see Voldemort attempting it
somehow, 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 examining 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 few
really foolproof 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 there 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, Hermione 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 survive, 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, remembering 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 inside it can flit in and
out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don’t mean holding it for too long, it’s
nothing to do with touching it,” she added before Ron could speak. “I mean 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 trailed away: He was thinking of all the things he should have asked
Dumbledore, and of how, since the headmaster had died, it seemed to Harry that he had
wasted so many opportunities when Dumbledore had been alive, to find out more . . . to
find out everything. . . .
The silence was shattered as the bedroom door flew open with a wall-shaking
crash. Hermione shrieked and dropped Secrets of the Darkest Art; Crookshanks streaked
under the bed, hissing indignantly; Ron jumped off 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 stacked 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 to 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 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 resentful toward 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 cauldrons 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 effect. 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 usual contingent of capering gnomes.
He had lost track of how many security enchantments 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 Delacours 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 robes, who
could 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 plumb, with a little, pointed black beard. However, he looked
good-natured. Bouncing towards Mrs. Weasley on high-heeled boots, he kissed her twice
on each cheek, leaving her flustered.
“You ‘ave been so 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 own 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.
“Enchantée,” 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 became 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 a glowing look, batting her eyelashes. Ginny cleared her throat loudly.
“Well, come in, do!” said Mrs. Weasley brightly, and she ushered the Delacours
into the house, with many “No, please!”s and “After you!”s and “Not at all!”s.
The Delacours, 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’
shoes “Charmant!” Madame Delacour was most accomplished at household spells and
had the oven properly cleaned in a trice; Gabrielle followed 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 sitting room, having shouted down Monsieur
and Madame Delacour’s protests and insisted they take their bedroom. Gabrielle was
sleeping with Fleur in Percy’s old room, and Bill would be sharing with Charlie, his best
man, once Charlie arrived from Romania. Opportunities 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 escape the overcrowded house.
“But she still won’t leave us alone!” snarled Ron, and their second 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 approached them. “We’d
better shut them away again before the 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 additional strain this
would put on them all. “Really, Mrs. Weasley, just a normal dinner would be fine. . . . It’s
the day before the wedding. . . .”
“Oh, well, if you’re sure, dear. I’ll invite Remus and Tonks, shall I? And how
about Hagrid?”
“That’d be great,” said 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.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Seven
The Will of Albus Dumbledore

He 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 opened 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 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 sat 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 Gregorovitch. 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. "Although how she expects
me to stop seeing stuff in my sleep..."
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 Quidditch. There's some
connection, but I can't--I can't think what it is."
"Quidditch?" said Ron. "Sure you're not thinking of Gorgovitch?"
"Who?"
"Dragomir Gorgovitch, Chaser, transferred to the Chudley Cannons for a record
fee two years ago. Record holder for most Quaffle drops in a season."
"No," said Harry. "I'm definitely not thinking 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, at least until they poked him in the eye.
"Slick," snorted Ron.
Reveling in the removal of his Trace, Harry sent Ron's possessions flying around
the room, causing Pigwidgeon to wake up and 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 bright blue.

"I'd do your fly by hand, though," Ron advised Harry, sniggering 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'd 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 would've 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 presents 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 race 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 cooker. "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 cheek clumsily when he released her, then waved her wand in a slightly random way,
causing half a pack of bacon to flop 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 ever 'ave," Monsieur Delacour assured him, "but you must tell it clearly what you
want...ozzerwise 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
and tugged him on up the stairs. Feeling nervous, Harry followed Ginny into her room.
He had never been 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 a 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 diffi*** to look back at her;
it was like gazing into a brilliant light.
"Nice view," he said feebly, pointing toward with 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 brothers 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 off 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, slight out of breath. There was a strained
silence, then Ginny had said in a flat little voice,
"Well, happy birthday anyway, Harry."
Ron's ears were scarlet; Hermione looked nervous. Harry wanted to slam the door
in their faces, but it felt as though a cold draft had entered the room when the door
opened, 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, seemed 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, though 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 mown 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--"
"She's not an idiot, she knows it can't happen, she's not expecting 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 polite
conversation in her room. Nevertheless, 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 midair 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 of her wand and
drape themselves artistically over the trees and bushes.
"Nice," said Ron, as with one final flourish of her wand, Hermione

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 remembering
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 brown 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.
"Seventeen, eh!" said Hagrid as he accepted a bucket-sized glass of wine from
Fred. "Six years ter the day since 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, Hermione?"
"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 Hermione's gazes as Hagrid rummaged in his pocket.
"Here. Harry -- couldn't think what ter get teh, but then I remembered this." He pulled out
a small, 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! Charlie!"
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
muscley 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.
"How can you tell?" asked Hermione.

"They're a lot more vicious," said Charlie. He looked over his shoulder and
dropped his voice. "Wish Dad would hurry up and get here. Mum's getting 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 at the place where it had vanished.
"We shouldn't be here," said Lupin at once. "Harry -- I'm sorry -- I'll explain some
other time--"
He seized Tonks’s wrist and pulled her away; they 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 light. Harry saw that he looked much older than the last time
that 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, had
learned that the three of them were planning to drop out of Hogwarts.
Scrimgeour did not speak as they all passed through the messed 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 lamps as he entered and they
illuminated the shabby but cozy room. Scrimgeour sat himself in 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 you, and I think it will be best if we do it
individually. If you two" -- he pointed at Harry and Hermione -- "can wait upstairs, I will
start with Ronald."

"We're not going anywhere," said Harry, while Hermione nodded 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 whether 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 Dumbledore's will."
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at one another.
"A surprise, apparently! You were not aware then that Dumbledore 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 Decree for Justifiable
Confiscation gives the Ministry the power the confiscate the contents of a will--"
"That law was created to stop wizards passing on Dark artifacts," said Hermione,
"and the Ministry is supposed to have powerful 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 think of a pretext
to keep them?"
"No, it'll be because 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? Not -- 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 expected, 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 account for the fact that
he remembered you in his will? He made exceptionally few personal bequests. The vast
majority of his possessions -- his private library, his magical instruments, and other
personal effects -- were left to Hogwarts. Why do you think you were singled out?"
"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 point; as far as Harry knew, Ron and
Dumbledore had never been alone together, and direct contact between them had been
negligible. However, Scrimgeour 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 when he uses it.'"
Scrimgeour took from the bag an object that Harry had seen before: 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 the 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 and item
so rare?"
Ron shook his head, looking bewildered.
"Dumbledore must have taught thousands of students," Scrimgeour persevered.
"Yet the only ones he remembered in his will are you three. Why is that? To what use did
he think you would put to the Deluminator, Mr. Weasley?"
"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
tow, 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 entertaining and instructive.'"
Scrimgeour now pulled out of the bag a small book that looked as ancient as the
copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art 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 Hermione, still wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "And if the
Ministry 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
diffi***y extracting his arm to put it around Hermione's shoulders. Scrimgeour turned
back to the will.
"'To Harry James Potter,'" he read, and Harry's insides contracted with a sudden
excitement, "'I leave the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a
reminder of 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 a definite sense of anticlimax.
"Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?" asked Scrimgeour.
"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 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 Harry's a great Seeker, that's way too
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 Scrimgeour, "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.
"Because Snitches have flesh memories," she said.
"What?" said Harry and Ron together; both considered Hermione'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 which it
can identify the first human to lay hands upon it, in case of a disputed capture. This
Snitch" -- he held up the tiny golden ball -- "will remember your touch, Potter.
It occurs to me that Dumbledore, who had prodigious 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 Scrimgeour 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 already 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, really knew it, and could read Hermione's
mind; he could practically hear her brain whizzing 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 place 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 concealed ball, as if still hoping it might transform in some way.
"That was dramatic," said Harry coolly. Both Ron and Hermione laughed.
"That's all, then, is it?" asked Hermione, making to raise herself off the sofa.
"Not quite," said 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 stiffened.
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 Dumbledore's to give
away. The sword of Godric Gryffindor is an important 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 Dumbledore 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 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 sticking a sword in
Voldemort? Maybe the Ministry should put some people onto that, instead of wasting
their time stripping down Deluminators or covering up breakouts from Azkaban. So this
is what you've been doing, Minister, shut up in your office, 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 no word about any of that from the
Ministry, 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 Scrimgeour 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 crown, 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 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 Dumbledore – desired. We ought to work together."
"I don't like your methods, Minister," said Harry. "Remember?"
For the second time, he raised his right fist and displayed to Scrimgeour the scar
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 what Dumbledore left us," said Harry. "They've only just released the
content of his will."
Outside in the garden, over the dinner tables, the three objects Scrimgeour had
given them were passed from hand to hand. Everyone 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 offer any suggestion as to why Dumbledore
would have left Harry an old Snitch. As Mr. Weasley examined the Deluminator for the
third of 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 string 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.
"Muffiato," she whispered, waving her wand in the direction of the stairs.
"Thought you didn't approve of that spell?" said Ron.
"Times change," said Hermione. "Now, show us that Deluminator."

Ron obliged at once. Holding I up in front of him, he clicked it. The solitary lamp
they had lit went out at once.
"The thing is," whispered Hermione through the dark, "we could have achieved
that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder."
There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flew back to the
ceiling and illuminated them all once more.
"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 will 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 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 left 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 something was going to happen!"
"Yeah, well," said Harry, his pulse quickened 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 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. Hermione was quite right.
Engraved upon the smooth golden surface, where seconds before there had been nothing,
were five words written in the thin, slanted 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 blank.
"I open at the close… at the close… I open at the close…"

But no matter how often they repeated the words, with many different inflections,
they were unable to wring any more meaning from them.
"And the sword," said Ron finally, when they had at last abandoned 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 last year! If he wanted me to have
it, why didn't he just give it to me then?"
He felt as thought 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, however, looked bemused by their surprise.
"Oh come on! All the old kids' stories are supposed to be Beedle's aren't they?
'The Fountain of Fair Fortune' … 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot'… 'Babbitty Rabbitty
and her Cackling Stump'…"
"Excuse me?" said Hermione giggling. "What was the last one?"
"Come off it!" said Ron, looking in disbelief from Harry to Hermione. "You
must've heard of Babbitty Rabbitty –"
"Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!" said
Hermione. "We didn't hear stories like that when we were little, we heard 'Snow White
and the Seven Dwarves' and 'Cinderella' –"
"What's that, an illness?" asked Ron.
"So these are children's stories?" asked Hermione, bending against over the runes.
"Yeah." Said Ron uncertainly. "I mean, 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 cracked downstairs.
"Probably just Charlie, now Mum's asleep, sneaking off to regrow his hair," said
Ron nervously.
"All the same, we should get to bed," whispered Hermione. "It wouldn't do to
oversleep tomorrow."
"No," agreed Ron. "A brutal triple murder by the bridegroom's mother might put a
bit of damper on the wedding. I'll get the light."
And he clicked the Deluminator once more as Hermione left the room.
　

a9米兰众

= = 太恐怖了  楼主准备翻译吗?

三英战大蛇

Chapter Eight --The Wedding


Chapter Eight
The Wedding
Three 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
wedding 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 relatives 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 smoke issuing from the spot.
Behind Harry, the entrance to the marquee revealed rows and rows of fragile golden
chairs set on either side of a long purple carpet. The supporting poles were entwined with
white and gold flowers. 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 hovering lazily over the grass and hedgerow.
Harry was rather uncomfortable. The Muggle boy whose appearance he was affecting
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 Bird 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 s*** its
way up through the garden toward the marquee. Exotic flowers and bewitched birds
fluttered on the witches’ hats, while precious gems glittered from many of the wizards’
cravats; 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, craning his neck for a
better look. “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 for the procession, he said, “Here – permetiez moi to assister
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 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 museum and we thought our presence might not do you any favors.”
“It’s fine, I understand,” said Harry, speaking more 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 matter.
Hagrid was causing a certain amount of disruption. Having misunderstood Fred’s
directions as he had sat himself, not upon the magically enlarged and reinforced seat set
aside for him in the back row, but on five sets 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
robes 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.
“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 Barry,” 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 get over the brightness of it all,
the general effect was quite pleasant. At least there were no radishes dangling from her
ears.
Xenophilius, who was deep in conversation with an acquaintance, had missed the
exchange between Luna and Harry. Biding the wizard 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 fingers 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 declaims 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 Xenophilius toward
their seats, “but my father has done a lot of research on Gernumbli magic.”

“Really?” said Harry, who had long since decided not to challenge 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 she drifted off after her father, Ron reappeared with an elderly witch clutching
his arm. Her beaky nose, red-rimmed eyes, and leathery pink hat gave her the look of a
bad-tempered flamingo.
“…and your 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, 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 offense because Fred and
George set off a Dungbomb under her chair at diner. Dad always says she’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 matching 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 said, ‘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’s 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 twenty-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
robes, and start pulling bunches of flowers out of his –“
“Yes, he sounds a real charmer,” said Hermione, while Harry roared with laughter.
“Never married, for some reason,” said Ron.
“You amaze me,” said Hermione.
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 to 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?”
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 vicinity, offered to show him his seat.
“Your friend is not pleased to see me,” said Krum, as they 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, Hermione, 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 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 larger white roses in their buttonholes; Fred wolf-whistled and
there was an outbreak of giggling from the veela cousins. Then the crowd fell silent as
music swelled from what seemed to be the golden balloons.
“Ooooh!” said Hermione, swiveling around in her seat to look at the entrance.
A great 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 dress and
seemed to be emitting a strong, silvery glow. While her radiance usually dimmed
everyone else by comparison, today it beautified everybody it fell upon. Ginny and
Gabrielle, both wearing golden dresses, looked even prettier than usual and once Fleur
had reached for him, Bill did not look as though he had ever met Fenrit Greyback.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a slightly singsong voice, and with a slight shock,
Harry saw the same small, tufty-hired 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…”
“Yes, my tiara set off 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 the afternoons
spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago;
they had always seemed too 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
around and beamed at Harry; her eyes too were full of tears.
“…then I declare you bonded for life.”
The tufty-haired wizard waved his hand 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. Birds 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 tufty-haired wizard. “If you would please
stand up!”
They all did so, Auntie Muriel grumbling audibly; he waved his wand again. The
scars on which they had been sitting rose gracefully 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. Next, a pool of molten
gold spread from the center of the tent to form a gleaming dance floor; the hovering
chairs grouped themselves around small, white-clothed tables, which all floated
gracefully back to earth round it, and the golden-jacketed hand trooped toward a podium.
“Smooth,” said Ron approvingly as the waiters popped up on all sides, some
hearing silver trays of pumpkin juice, butterbeer, and firewhisky, others tottering piles of
tarts and sandwiches.
“We should go and congratulate them!” said Hermione, standing 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, ***ing three butterbeers 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
Mr. Weasley and Fleur’s father.
“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 distracted.
“Er – sort of,” said Harry.
“Who are you?” Krum asked.
“Barny Weasley.”
They shook hands.
“You, Barny – you know this man Lovegood well?”
“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 vus not a guest of Fleur’s I vould dud him, here and
now, for veering that filthy sign upon his chest.”
“Sign?” said Harry, looking over at Xenophilius too. The strange triangular eye
was gleaming on his chest. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Grindelvald. That is Grindelvald’s sign.”
“Grindelwald… the Dark wizard Dumbledore defeated?”
“Exactly.”
Krum’s jaw muscles worked as if he were chewing, then he said, “Grindelvald
killed many people, my grandfather, for instance. Of course, he vos never powerful in
this country, they said he feared Dumbledore – and rightly, seeing how he vos finished.
But this” – he pointed a finger at Xenophilius – “this is his symbol, I recognized it at
vunce: Grindelvald carved it into a vall at Durmstrang ver he vos a pupil there. Some
idiots copied it onto 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 Xenophilius. Harry felt
perplexed. It seemed 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, finlike shape.

“Are you – er – quite sure it’s Grindelwald’s -?”
“I am not mistaken,” said Krum coldly. “I walked past that sign for several years,
I know it vell.”
“Well, there’s a chance,” said Harry, “that Xenophilius doesn’t actually know
what the symbol means, the Lovegoods are quite… unusual. He could have easily 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 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 off 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 hand from inside his robe and tapped it menacingly on his thighs; sparks flew
out of the end.
“Gregorovitch!” said Harry loudly, and Krum started, but Harry was too excited
to care; the memory had come 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 wand?”
“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 Gregorowitch these days?”
Krum looked puzzled.
“He retired several years ago. I was one of the last to purchase a Gregorovitch
vand. They are the best –although I know, of course, that your 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 celebrated wandmaker and Harry did not
have to search far for a reason. It was surely because of what Harry’ wand had done on
the night that Voldemort pursued him across the skies. The holly and phoenix feather
wand had conquered the borrowed wand, some thing that Ollivander had not anticipated
or understood. Would Gregorowitch 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 someone. 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 off 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 resentful about the
promise he had given Ron.
He had never been to a wedding before, so he could not judge how Wizarding
celebrations differed 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 under the canopy, now lit with floating
golden lanterns, the revelry became more and more uncontained. Fred 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 the corner.
Wandering through the crowd so as 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 and was topped by a moth-eaten fez. He was vaguely familiar: Racking his brains,
Harry suddenly realized that this was Elphias Doge, member of the Order of the Phoenix
and the writer of Dumbledore’s 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 of nervous pleasure Doge poured Harry a goblet of champagne.
“I thought of writing to you,” he whispered, “after Dumbledore… the shock…
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. “Certainly I
knew him longest, if you don’t count Aberforth – 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 my 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 Doge 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 reassured, 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 concerned 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 hair, 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 –“
“You there! Give me your chair, I’m a hundred and seven!”
Another redheaded Weasley cousin jumped off his seat, looking alarmed, and
Auntie Muriel swung it around with surprising 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 read it. I must remember to place an order at Flourish and
Blotts!”
Doge looked stiff 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 stuffed
frogs! Before he became 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 noticed 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 was a Squib? I
thought she was ill?”

“Thought wrong, then, didn’t you, Barry!” said Auntie Muriel, looking delighted
at the effect she had produced. “Anyway, how could you expect to know anything about
it! IT all happened years and years before 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 as a Squib,” said Harry, without thinking, still cold
inside.
“And why on earth would he tell you?” screeched Muriel, swaying a little in her
seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry.
“The reason Albus never spoke about Ariana,” began Elphias in a voice stiff 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? Off
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 answered Harry.
“Dumbledore’s mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrifying. Muggle-born,
though I heard she pretended otherwise-“
“She never pretended anything of the sort! Kendra was a fine woman,” whispered
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 imprisoning 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 off to Muggle schools and encouraged 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 been seen
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 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 suffered the same fate
in reverse: imprisoned for her lack of magic? And had Dumbledore truly left her to her
fate while he went off 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 off 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 funeral, 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 Auntie Muriel happily.
“Bathilda described the whole thing to mother 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. According 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, hiccupping 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 cheerfully.

“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 even if Bathilda’s completely cuckoo, I’m sure she’d
still have old photographs, 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 Hollows?”
“Yes, Barry, that’s what I just said,” said Auntie Muriel testily.
Harry felt drained, empty. Never once, in six years, had Dumbledore 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 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 coming.”
　

三英战大蛇

Chapter Nine
A Place to Hide

Everything seemed fuzzy, slow. Harry and Hermione jumped to their feet and
drew their wands. Many people 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 buffered by
terrified guests: Harry seized her hand to make sure they weren’t separated as a streak of
light whizzed over their 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 moment he thought they had not left the wedding
after all; They still seemed to be surrounded 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 robes.
“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 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 cargo 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 off 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 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, even
if he could not see his face. “Most of the Order was there, they’ll look 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 men on the other side of
the road started wolf-whistling at her. “We can hardly book rooms at the Leaky Cauldron,
can we? And Grimmauld 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 men on the other 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 café. 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 Ministry, what else do
we need to know?”
“Okay, okay, it was just an idea!”
They relapsed into a prickly silence. The gum-chewing waitress shuffled 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 café and squeezed into the next
booth. Hermione dropped her voice to a whisper.

“I say we find a quiet place to Disapparate and head for the 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
coffee. The waitress had heard; she shot Ron a nasty look as she shuffled off to take the
new customers’ 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, affronted.
“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 mirrored them without
conscious thought: All three of them drew their wands. Ron, a few seconds late in
realizing what was going 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 slumped
sideways, unconscious. His companion, unable 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 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 off him.
“Petrificus Totalus!” screamed Hermione from out of sight, and the Death Eater
fell forward like a statue to land with a crunching thud on the mess of broken china, table,
and coffee. Hermione crawled out from underneath the bench, shaking bits of glass
ashtray 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 Dumbledore 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 hysterically. “How did
they find us? What are we going to do?”
Somehow her panic seemed to clear Harry’s head.
“Lock the door,” he told her, “and Ron, turn out the lights.”

He looked down at the paralyzed Dolohov, thinking fast as the lock clicked and
Ron used the Deluminator to plunge the café 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 shook his head.
“We just need to wipe their memories,” said Harry. “It’s better like that, it’ll
throw them off 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 café. “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 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 café 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 seventeen, 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 been 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.
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 café door, Ron clicked the Deluminator to release the café’s light. Then, on
Harry’s count of three, they reversed the spells upon their three victims, and before the
waitress or either of the Death Eaters could 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 the hallway. It looked just as Harry
remembered it: eerie, cobwebbed, 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, pointing 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 impossible 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!”
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
eye sockets: Horribly 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 the horror-figure
aside as casually as he had killed the real Dumbledore? 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 reported. “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 see?” Ron asked, advancing on Harry. “Did 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
closed!”
“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 can plant false images
in your mind, remember –“
“Yeah, I do remember, 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 examine 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 silver Patronus soar through the drawing room window 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: Hermione 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 behind 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, screaming and writhing, and a slighter figure standing
over him, wand outstretched, while Harry spoke in a high, cold, merciless 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? 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 Hermione’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.

nds

最后一部了...............

三英战大蛇

Chapter Eleven
The Bribe

If Kreacher could escape a lake full of Inferi, Harry was confident 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 discouraged and anxious, and a supper composed
largely of moldy bread, upon which Hermione had tried a variety of unsuccessful
Transfigurations, 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 outside number twelve, and they remained there
into the night, gazing in the direction of the house that they could not 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 has his tongue tied by 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 twelve. They had not heard a word form 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 off.
“Will you stop it!” she cried on the third evening of Kreacher’s absence, as all the
light was sucked from the drawing room yet again.
“Sorry, sorry!” said Ron, clicking the Deluminator and restoring 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 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 beside the decapitated elf heads, and waited. The door opened: 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 the 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 hall 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.
Lupin moved forward into the lamplight, hands still held high in a gesture of
surrender.

“I am Remus 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 so quick to lower your defenses.”
They ran down the stairs towards him. Wrapped in a thick black traveling cloak,
he looked exhausted, but pleased to see 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 happened
after you left the Burrow.”
They descended into the kitchen, where Hermione pointed her wand at the grate.
A fire sprang up instantly: It gave the illusion of coziness to the stark stone walls and
glistened off the long wooden table. Lupin pulled a few butterbeers from beneath his
traveling cloak and they sat down.
“I’d have been here three days ago but I needed to shake off 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 café 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 disappear.”
“And it doesn’t seem likely they were just strolling down Tottenham 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 else, 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 looked disturbed, but as far as Harry was concerned, that question could wait.
“Tell us what happened after we left, we haven’t heard a thing since Ron’s dad
told us the family was 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 Hermione.

“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 Scrimgeour 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 too 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 been there.
“At the same time that they were smashing up the wedding, more Death Eaters
were forcing their way into every Order-connected house in the country. No deaths,” he
added quickly, forestalling 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 Cruciarus
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 effective these 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 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 to give an excuse for torturing Harry’s whereabouts out
of people?” asked Hermione, an edge to her voice.
“Well,” Lupin said. 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 nothing. He pushed the
newspaper away; he did not want to read anymore: He knew what it would say. Nobody
but those who had been on top of the tower when Dumbledore died knew who had really
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.
“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. Effectively, 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 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, “involves warning the
Wizarding world against me instead of Voldemort?”
“That’s certainly a part of it,” said Lupin, “and it is a masterstroke. 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
hat’s death, Voldemort has not only set a price upon your head, but sown doubt and fear
amongst many who would have defended you.
“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
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 better 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
magical power by theft or force.
“‘The Ministry is determined to root out such usurpers of magical power, and to
this end has issued an invitation to every so-called Muggle-born to present themselves for
interview by the newly appointed 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 suffer the punishment.”

Ron glanced at Hermione, then said, “What if purebloods and halfbloods 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 fiercely, 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
country, I don’t think it matters. If I was going back to school it would be different.
What’s Voldemort planning for Hogwarts?” she asked Lupin.
“Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wizard,” 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, because students must be
given Blood Status – meaning that they have proven to the Ministry that they are of
Wizard descent – before they are allowed 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,
“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 different answer.
“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 might 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 me exactly what you were up to.”
Harry hesitated. It was a very tempting offer, 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 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 offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would
have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all.
And I must tell you that I believe 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 perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a
finality bordering on indifference: “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 dropped
ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize 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 have regretted it very much every since.”
“I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with
us?”
Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them
so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, she shadow of the wolf upon his human
face.
“Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should
never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!”
Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned.
“You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s
protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures
like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see
what I’ve done?

Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what 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 off, a hundred times
so, 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 or
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 shoes –”
“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?”
“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!” snarled Ron.
“No – no – we mustn’t fight!” said Hermione, launching herself between them.
“You shouldn’t have said that stuff 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 mercy . . .
“Parents,” said Harry, “shouldn’t leave their kids unless – unless they’ve got to.”
“Harry –“ said Hermione, stretching out a consoling hand, but he shrugged it off
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 Hermione 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 form 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, 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, thinking 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 recent scene and with Ron
and Hermione’s unspoken reproaches. The Daily Prophet Lupin had brought was still
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 too 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 carefully. 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 a 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
seen as he studied her dark eyes, high cheekbones, and straight nose, formally composed
above a high-necked silk gown. Albus and Aberforth 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.
The family looked quite happy and normal, smiling serenely up out of the
newspaper. Baby Ariana’s arm waved vaguely out of her shawl. Harry looked above the
picture and saw the headline:

EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT FROM UPCOMING
BIOGRAPHY OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
by Rita Skeeter

Thinking 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 husband Percival’s well-publicized arrest and imprisonment in
Azkaban. She therefore decided to uproot the family and relocate to Godric’s Hollow,
the village that was later to gain fame as the scene of Harry Potter’s strange escape
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 ensured 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 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 Godric’s Hollow was the perfect
opportunity to hide Ariana once and for all, something she had probably been
planning for years. The timing was significant. 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 revealed itself, if present. Nobody now alive remembers Ariana ever
demonstrating even the slightest sign of magical ability. It seems clear, therefore, that
Kendra made a decision to hide her daughter’s existence rather than suffer the shame
of admitting that she had produced a Squib. Moving away from the friends and
neighbors who knew Ariana would, of course, make imprisoning her all the easier.
The tiny number of people who henceforth knew of Ariana’s existence could be
counted upon to keep the secret, including her two brothers, who had deflected
awkward questions with the answer their mother had taught them. “My sister is too
frail for school.”
Next week: Albus Dumbledore at Hogwarts – the Prizes and the Pretense.

Harry had been wrong: What he had read had indeed made him feel 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: 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 feet 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 muffled crunch.
“What?” he bellowed, writhing in his attempts to free himself from Ron’s grip.
“Wha’ve I done? Setting a bleedin’ ‘house-elf on me, what are you playing at, wha’ve I
done, lemme go, lemme go, of – ”
“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 struggling and looked terrified. Ron got up, panting, and
watched as Harry pointed his wand deliberately at Mundungus’s nose. Mundungus s***
of stale sweat and tobacco smoke. His hair was matted and his robes stained.
“Kreacher apologizes for the delay in bringing the thief, Master,” croaked the elf.
“Fletcher knows how to avoid capture, has many hidey-holes and accomplices.
Nevertheless, Kreacher cornered the thief in the end.”
“You’ve done really well, Kreacher,” said Harry, and the elf bowed low.
“Right, we’ve got a few questions for you,” Harry told Mundungus, who shouted
at once.
“I panicked, okay? I never wanted to come along, no offense, 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 meself –”
“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 goblets 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 this house of anything valuable,” Harry began, but
Mundungus interrupted him again.
“Sirius never cared about any of the junk –”
There was the sound of pattering fee, 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 off, call ‘im off, ‘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 stuff from the kitchen cupboard. There was a locket there.”
Harry’s mouth was suddenly dry: He could sense Ron and Hermione’s tension 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 diffi*** . . .bleedin’
gave it away, di’n’ I? No choice.”
“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 off that 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 ‘er head.”
He frowned and 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.
“Aquamenti!” screamed 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.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Twelve
Magic is Might

As 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
twelve were never seen by anyone in the surrounding houses, and nor was number twelve
itself. The muggles who lived in Grimmauld Place had long since accepted the amusing
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 railings
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 why anyone would wear cloaks in this 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 before. Half a dozen men in long cloaks stood 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 off 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 moment.
“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 to the kitchen, out
of earshot of Mrs. Black and clear of the dust cloud, before calling, “I’ve got news, and
you won’t like it.”
The kitchen was almost unrecognizable. Every surface now shone; Copper 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
different than the house-elf who now came hurrying toward Harry, dressed in a snowy-
white towel, his ear hair as clean and fluffy as cotton wool, Regulus’s locket bouncing on
his thin chest.
“Shoes off, if you please, Master Harry, and hands washed before dinner,”
croaked Kreacher, seizing the Invisibility Cloak and slouching off 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 are Hermione had been
pouring 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 ***ed 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 headmaster in the most important of several staffing
changes at the ancient school. Following the resignation of the previous Muggle Studies
teacher, Alecto Carrow 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 traditions and values
–‘ Like committing murder and cutting off people’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 Dumbledore 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 of 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 staying 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 curcen 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 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 this 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 off 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, craning 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 ease, into the
bag’s capacious 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 travel between his portrait in Grimmauld Place and the one that hung in
the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts: the circular cower-top room where Snape was no
doubt sitting right now, in triumphant possession of Dumbledore’s collection of delicate,
silver magical instruments, the stone Pensieve, the Sorting Hat and, unless it ad been
moved elsewhere, the sword of Gryffindor.
“Snape could send Phineas Nigellus to look inside this house for him,” Hermione
explained to Ron as she resumed her seat. “But let him try it now, all Phineas Nigellus
will be 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 happened today?”
“Nothing,” said Harry. “Watched the Ministry entrance for seven hours. No sign
of her. Saw your dad though, Ron. He looks fine.”
Ron nodded his appreciation of this news. The had agreed that it was far too
dangerous to try and communicate with Mr. Weasley while he walked in and out of the
Ministry, because 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.”
“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?” Hermione asked, her
soupspoon 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 she 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, dies 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 dangerous 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 off, the farther 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 opening it and she’s now possessed.”
“Wouldn’t make any difference to her, she 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 members are allowed to connect their homes to the Floo Network now,
because Ron heard those two Unspeakables complaining about it. And we know roughly
where Umbridge’s office is, because of what you heard the 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 calmly.
“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 preparing,” 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 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 observation which of them
could be relied 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 tomorrow … 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 different.
Hermione,” Ron jabbed a finger at a copy of the Daily Prophet dated 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 off 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 savory stew, or else the
treacle tart to which Master is so partial?”
“Thanks, Kreacher, but I’ll be back in a minute – er – bathroom.”
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 knocked. He felt a
mounting excitement …
The door opened: A laughing woman stood 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 weiff ich nicht! He move! I know not, I know not!”
He raised his hand. 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 –
“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 off!” said Ron.
“Oh yeah … I must’ve dozed off 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 supposed to let this happen anymore!” Hermione cried, her
voice echoing through the bathroom. “Dumbledore 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.”
“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 just 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 behind his back.
“Harry, you keep talking about what your wand did,” said Hermione, “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, Hermione! We both
know what really happened!”
They glared at each other; Harry knew that he had not convinced Hermione and
that she was marshaling counterarguments, against both his theory on his wand and the
fact that he was permitting 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 treacle
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 though of
Gregorovitch 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 coffee and
hot rolls by Kreacher and wearing the slightly manic expression that Harry associated
with exam review.
“Robes,” she said under her breath, acknowledging their presence with a nervous
nod and continuing to poke around in her beaded bag, “Polyjuice Potion … Invisibiliity
Cloak … Decoy Detonators … You should each take a couple just in case … Puking
Pastilles, Nosebleed Norgat, Extendable Ears …”
They gulped down their breakfast, then set off 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 off his head and sticking it on the wall.”
They made their way onto the front step with immense caution. They could see a
couple of puffy-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 suffocation, 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 thought it was still closed.

“And now,” she said, turning, back to face the other two in the alleyway, “we put
on the Cloak again –“
“—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 behind a bin beside the theater
door as Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak. Together they carried the little witch into
the dark passageway that led backstage. Hermione 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 tokens.”
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 removed
Mafalda’s spectacles and put them on, Harry checked his watch.
“We’re 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, and a small, ferrety looking wizard appeared before them.
“Oh, hello, Mafalda.”
“Hello!” said Hermione in a quavery voice, “How are you today?”
“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 weather,” said Hermione, talking firmly over
the little wizard and 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 in his face.
Looking rather alarmed, the little wizard took one.
The effect 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. “Perhaps you’d better
take the day off!”
“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.
“You simply can’t go to work like this!” cried Hermione.
At last he seemed to accept the truth of her words. Using a reposed Hermione to
claw his way back into a standing position, he turned on the spot and vanished, leaving
nothing behind but the bag Ron had ***ed from his hand as he went and some flying
chunks of vomit.
“Urgh,” said Hermione, holding up the skirt 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 ferrety 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 concealing the Stunned Mafalda. Finally Ron
and Hermione reappeared.
“We don’t know who he is,” Hermione said, passing Harry several curly black
hairs, “but he’s gone home with a dreadful nosebleed! 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.
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 Invisibility 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 him.
“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 stairs, one labeled
GENTLEMEN, the other LADIES.
“See you in a moment, then,” said Hermione nervously, and she tottered off 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 sound 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.
“We have to flush ourselves in?” he whispered.
“Looks like it,” Harry whispered back; his voice came out deep and gravelly.
They both stood up. Feeling exceptionally foolish, Harry clambered into the toilet.
He knew at once that he had done the right thing; thought 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 of a fireplace into
the Ministry of Magic.
He got up clumsily; there was a lot more of his body 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 vast 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. Apparently the man who
Harry was impersonating, Runcorn, was intimidating.
“Psst!” said a voice, and he looked around to see a whispy little witch and the
ferrety wizard from Magical Maintenance gesturing to him from over beside the statue.
Harry hastened to join them.
“You got in all right, then?” Hermione whispered to Harry.
“No, he’s still stuck in the hog,” 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 thought were
decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and
hundreds of ***d 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 surreptitiously as possible, but there was no sign of
the distinctive figure of Dolores Umbridge. They passed 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 sycophantically, “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 intervene, but nobody
spoke.
“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 lift and bustled off.
“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 cough
feebly and turned away.
“I – I –“ stammered Ron.
“But if my wife were accused of being a Mudblood,” said Yaxley, “—not that any
woman I married would ever be mistaken for such filth – and the Head of Department of
Magical Law Enforcement needed a job doing, I would make it my priority to do this job,
Cattermole. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” whispered Ron.
“Then attend to it, Cattermole, and if my office is not completely dry within an
hour, your wife’s Blood Status will be in even greater doubt than it is now.”
The golden grille before them clattered open. With a nod and unpleasant 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 nobody
followed 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; he looked stricken. “If
I don’t turn up, my wife … I mean, Cattermole’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 Umbridge, I’ll go and
sort out Yaxley’s office – but how do I stop a raining?”
“Try Finite Incantatem,” said Hermione at once, “that should 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 diffi*** to fix, so as an interim measure try Impervius to protect his
belongings – “
“Say it again, slowly – “ said Ron, searching his pockets desperately 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 Liaison Office, and Pest Advisory 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 upward once more; Hermione was now
whispering frantic instructions to Ron. The wizard leaned toward Harry, leering, and
muttering “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 Wizengamot 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 Hermione alone. The moment the golden door
had closed 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 Staff.”
The golden grilles slid apart again and Hermione gasped. Four people stood
before them, two of them deep in conversation: a long-haired wizard wearing magnificent
robes of black and gold, and a squat, toadlike witch wearing a velvet bow in her short
hair and clutching a clipboard to her chest.