[小说]哈利波特和死圣（英文版）全文

三英战大蛇

Chapter Thirteen
The Muggle-Born Registration Commission

“Ah, Mafalda!” said Umbridge, looking at Hermione. “Travers sent you, did he?”
“Y-yes,” squeaked Hermione.
“God, you’ll do perfectly well.” Umbridge spoke to the wizard in black and gold.
“That’s that problem solved. Minister, if Mafalda can be spared for record-keeping we
shall be able to start straightaway.” She consulted her clipboard. “Ten people today and
one of them the wife of a Ministry employee! Tut, tut… even here, in the heart of the
Ministry!” She stepped into the lift besides Hermione, as did the two wizards who had
been listening to Umbridge’s conversation with the Minister. “We’ll go straight down,
Mafalda, you’ll find everything you need in the courtroom. Good morning, Albert, aren’t
you getting out?”
“Yes, of course,” said Harry in Runcorn’s deep voice.
Harry stepped out of the life. The golden grilles clanged shut behind him.
Glancing over his shoulder, Harry saw Hermione’s anxious face sinking back out of sight,
a tall wizard on either side of her, Umbridge’s velvet hair-bow level with her shoulder.
“What brings you here, Runcorn?” asked the new Minister of Magic. His long
black hair and beard were streaked with silver and a great overhanging forehead
shadowed his glinting eyes, putting Harry in the mind of a crab looking out from beneath
a rock.

“Needed a quick word with,” Harry hesitated for a fraction of a second, “Arthur
Weasley. Someone said he was up on level one.”
“Ah,” said Plum Thicknesse. “Has he been caught having contact with an
Undesirable?”
“No,” said Harry, his throat dry. “No, nothing like that.”
“Ah, well. It’s only a matter of time,” said Thicknesse. “If you ask me, the blood
traitors are as bad as the Mudbloods. Good day, Runcorn.”
“Good day, Minister.”
Harry watched Thicknesse march away along the thickly carpeted corridor. The
moment the Minister had passed out of sight, Harry tugged the Invisibility Cloak out
from under his heavy black cloak, threw it over himself, and set off along the corridor in
the opposite direction. Runcorn was so tall that Harry was forced to stoop to make sure
his big feet were hidden.
Panic pulsed in the pit of his stomach. As he passed gleaming wooden door after
gleaming wooden door, each bearing a small plaque with the owner’s name and
occupation upon it, the might of the Ministry, its complexity, its impenetrability, seemed
to force itself upon him so that the plan he had been carefully concocting with Ron and
Hermione over the past four weeks seemed laughably childish. They had concentrated all
their efforts on getting inside without being detected: They had not given a moment’s
thought to what they would do if they were forced to separate. Now Hermione was stuck
in court proceedings, which would undoubtedly last hours; Ron was struggling to do
magic that Harry was sure was beyond him, a woman’s liberty possibly depending on the
outcome, and he, Harry, was wandering around on the top floor when he knew perfectly
well that his quarry had just gone down in the lift.
He stopped walking, leaned against a wall, and tried to decide what to do. The
silence pressed upon him: There was no bustling or talk or swift footsteps here the
purple-carpeted corridors were as hushed as though the Muffliato charm had been cast
over the place.
Her office must be up here, Harry thought.
It seemed most unlikely that Umbridge would keep her jewelry in her office, but
on the other hand it seemed foolish not to search it to make sure. He therefore set off
along the corridor again, passing nobody but a frowning wizard who was murmuring
instructions to a quill that floated in front of him, scribbling on a trail of parchment.
Now paying attention to the names on the doors, Harry turned a corner. Halfway
along the next corridor he emerged into a wide, open space where a dozen witches and
wizards sat in rows at small desks not unlike school desks, though much more highly
polished and free from graffiti. Harry paused to watch them, for the effect was quite
mesmerizing. They were all waving and twiddling their wands in unison, and squares of
colored paper were flying in every direction like little pink kites. After a few seconds,
Harry realized that there was a rhythm to the proceedings, that the papers all formed the
same pattern and after a few more seconds he realized what he was watching was the
creation of pamphlets – that the paper squares were pages, which, when assembled,
folded and magicked into place, fell into neat stacks beside each witch or wizard.
Harry crept closer, although the workers were so intent on what they were doing
that he doubted they would notice a carpet-muffled footstep, and he slid a completed

pamphlet from the pile beside a young witch. He examined it beneath the Invisibility
Cloak. Its pink cover was emblazoned with a golden title:

Mudbloods
and the Dangers They Pose to
a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society

Beneath the title was a picture of a red rose with a simpering face in the middle of
its petals, being strangled by a green weed with fangs and a scowl. There was no author’s
name upon the pamphlet, but again, the scars on the back of his right hand seemed to
tingle as he examined it. Then the young witch beside him confirmed his suspicion as she
said, still waving and twirling her wand, “Will the old hag be interrogating Mudbloods all
day, does anyone know?”
“Careful,” said the wizard beside her, glancing around nervously; one of his pages
slipped and fell to the floor.
“What, has she got magic ears as well as an eye, now?”
The witch glanced toward the shining mahogany door facing the space full of
pamphlet-makers; Harry looked too, and the rage reared in him like a s***. Where there
might have been a peephole on a Muggle front door, a large, round eye with a bright blue
iris had been set into the wood – an eye that was shockingly familiar to anybody who had
known Alastor Moody.
For a split second Harry forgot where he was and what he was doing there: He
even forgot that he was invisible. He strode straight over to the door to examine the eye.
It was not moving. It gazed blindly upward, frozen. The plaque beneath it read:

Dolores Umbridge
Senior Undersecretary to the Minister


Below that a slightly shinier new plaque read:

Head of the Muggle-Born
Registration Commission

Harry looked back at the dozen pamphlet-makers: Though they were intent upon

their work, he could hardly suppose that they would not notice if the door of an empty
office opened in front of them. He therefore withdrew from an inner pocket an odd object
with little waving legs and a rubber-bulbed horn for a body. Crouching down beneath the
Cloak, he placed the Decoy Detonator on the ground.
It scuttled away at once through the legs of the witches and wizards in front of
him. A few moments later, during which Harry waited with his hand upon the doorknob,
there came a loud bang and a great deal of acrid smoke billowed from a corner. The
young witch in the front row shrieked: Pink pages flew everywhere as she and her
fellows jumped up, looking around for the source of the commotion. Harry turned the
doorknob, stepped into Umbridge’s office, and closed the door behind him.

He felt he had stepped back in time. The room was exactly like Umbridge’s office
at Hogwarts: Lace draperies, doilies and dried flowers covered every surface. The walls
bore the same ornamental plates, each featuring a highly colored, beribboned kitten,
gamboling and frisking with sickening cuteness. The desk was covered with a flouncy,
flowered cloth. Behind Mad-eye’s eye, a telescopic attachment enabled Umbridge to spy
on the workers on the other side of the door. Harry took a look through it and saw that
they were all still gathered around the Decoy Detonator. He wrenched the telescope out
of the door, leaving a hole behind, pulled the magical eyeball out of it, and placed it in his
pocket. The he turned to face the room again, raised his wand, and murmured, “Accio
Locker.”
Nothing happened, but he had not expected it to; no doubt Umbridge knew all
about protective charms and spells. He therefore hurried behind her desk and began
pulling open all the drawers. He saw quills and notebooks and Spellotape; enchanted
paper clips that coiled s***like from their drawer and had be beaten back; a fussy little
lace box full of spare hair bows and clips; but no sign of a locket.
There was a filing cabinet behind the desk: Harry set to searching it. Like Filch’s
filing cabinet at Hogwarts, it was full of folders, each labeled with a name. It was not
until Harry reached the bottommost drawer that he saw something to distract him from
the search: Mr. Weasley’s file.
He pulled it out and opened it.

Arthur Weasley
Pureblood, but with unacceptable pro-Muggle
Blood Status:
leanings. Known member of the Order of the
Phoenix.
Wife (pureblood), seven children, two
Family:
youngest at Hogwarts. NB: Youngest son
currently at home, seriously ill, Ministry
inspectors have confirmed.
TRACKED. All movements are being
Security Status:
monitored. Strong likelihood Undesirable No.
1 will contact (has stayed with Weasley
family previously)

“Undesirable Number One,” Harry muttered under his breath as he replaced Mr.

Weasley’s folder and shut the drawer. He had an idea he knew who that was, and sure
enough, as he straightened up and glanced around the office for fresh hiding places he
saw a poster of himself on the wall, with the words UNDESIRABLE NO. 1 emblazoned
across his chest. A little pink note was stuck to it with a picture of a kitten in the corner.
Harry moved across to read it and saw that Umbridge had written, “To be punished.”
Angrier than ever, he proceeded to grope in the bottoms of the vases and baskets
of dried flowers, but was not at all surprised that the locket was not there. He gave the
office one last sweeping look, and his heart skipped a beat. Dumbledore was staring at
him from a small rectangular mirror, propped up on a bookcase beside the desk.
Harry crossed the room at a run and ***ed it up, but realized that the moment
he touched it that it was not a mirror at all. Dumbledore was smiling wistfully out of the

front cover of a glossy book. Harry had not immediately noticed the curly green writing
across his hat – The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore – nor the slightly smaller writing
across his chest: “by Rita Skeeter, bestselling author of Armando Dippet: Master or
Moron?”
Harry opened the book at random and saw a full-page photograph of two teenage
boys, both laughing immoderately with their arms around each other’s shoulders.
Dumbledore, now with elbow-length hair, had grown a tiny wispy beard that recalled the
one on Krum’s chin that had so annoyed Ron. The boy who roared in silent amusement
beside Dumbledore had a gleeful, wild look about him. His golden hair fell in curls to his
shoulders. Harry wondered whether it was a young Doge, but before he could check the
caption, the door of the office opened.
If Thicknesse had not been looking over his shoulder as he entered, Harry would
not have had time to pull the Invisibility Cloak over himself. As it was, he thought
Thicknesse might have caught a glimpse of movement, because for a moment or two he
remained quite still, staring curiously at the place where Harry had just vanished. Perhaps
deciding that that all he had seen was Dumbledore scratching his nose on the front of the
book, for Harry had hastily replaced it upon the shelf. Thicknesse finally walked to the
desk and pointed his wand at the quill standing ready in the ink pot. It sprang out and
began scribbling a note to Umbridge. Very slowly, hardly daring to breathe, Harry
backed out of the office into the open area beyond.
The pamphlet-makers were still clustered around the remains of the Decoy
Detonator, which continued to hoot feebly as it smoked. Harry hurried off up the corridor
as the young witch said, “I bet it sneaked up here from Experimental Charms, they’re so
careless, remember that poisonous duck?”
Speeding back toward the lifts, Harry reviewed his options. It had never been
likely that the locket was here at the Ministry, and there was no hope of bewitching its
whereabouts out of Umbridge while she was sitting in a crowded court. Their priority
now had to be to leave the Ministry before they were exposed, and try again another day.
The first thing to do was to find Ron, and then they could work out a way of extracting
Hermione from the courtroom.
The lift was empty when it arrived. Harry jumped in and pulled off the Invisibility
Cloak as it started its descent. To his enormous relief, when it rattled to a halt at level two,
a soaking-wet and wild-eyed Ron got in.
“M-morning,” he stammered to Harry as the lift set off again.
“Ron, it’s me, Harry!”
“Harry! Blimey, I forgot what you looked like – why isn’t Hermione with you?”
“She had to go down to the courtrooms with Umbridge, she couldn’t refuse, and –
“
But before Harry could finish the lift had stopped again. The doors opened and
Mr. Weasley walked inside, talking to an elderly witch whose blonde hair was teased so
high it resembled an anthill.
“… I quite understand what you’re saying, Wakanda, but I’m afraid I cannot be
party to – “
Mr. Weasley broke off; he had noticed Harry. It was very strange to have Mr.
Weasley glare at him with that much dislike. The lift doors closed and the four of them
trundled downward once more.

“Oh hello, Reg,” said Mr. Weasley, looking around at the sound of steady
dripping from Ron’s robes. “Isn’t your wife in for questioning today? Er – what’s
happened to you? Why are you so wet?”
“Yaxley’s office is raining,” said Ron. He addressed Mr. Weasley’s shoulder, and
Harry felt sure he was scared that his father might recognize him if they looked directly
into each other’s eyes. “I couldn’t stop it, so they’ve sent me to get Bernie – Pillsworth, I
think they said –“
“Yes, a lot of offices have been raining lately,” said Mr. Weasley. “Did you try
Meterolojinx Recanto? It worked for Bletchley.”
“Meteolojinx Recanto?” whispered Ron. “No, I didn’t. Thanks, D – I mean,
thanks, Arthur.”
The lift doors opened; the old witch with the anthill hair left, and Ron darted past
her out of sight. Harry made to follow him, but found his path blocked as Percy Weasley
strode into the lift, his nose buried in some papers he was reading.
Not until the doors had clanged shut again did Percy realize he was in a lit with
his father. He glanced up, saw Mr. Weasley, turned radish red, and left the lift the
moment the doors opened again. For the second time, Harry tried to get out, but this time
found his way blocked by Mr. Weasley’s arm.
“One moment, Runcorn.”
The lift doors closed and as they clanked down another floor, Mr. Weasley said,
“I hear you had information about Dirk Cresswell.”
Harry had the impression that Mr. Weasley’s anger was no less because of the
brush with Percy. He decided his best chance was to act stupid.
“Sorry?” he said.
“Don’t pretend, Runcorn,” said Mr. Weasley fiercely. “You tracked down the
wizard who faked his family tree, didn’t you?”
“I – so what if I did?” said Harry.
“So Dirk Cresswell is ten times the wizard you are,” said Mr. Weasley quietly, as
the lift sank ever lower. “And if he survives Azkaban, you’ll have to answer to him, not
to mention his wife, his sons, and his friends –“
“Arthur,” Harry interrupted, “you know you’re being tracked, don’t you?”
“Is that a threat, Runcorn?” said Mr. Weasley loudly.
“No,” said Harry, “it’s a fact! They’re watching your every move –“
The lift doors opened. They had reached the Atrium. Mr. Weasley gave Harry a
scathing look and swept from the lift. Harry stood there, shaken. He wished he was
impersonating somebody other than Runcorn…. The lift doors clanged shut.
Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak and put it back on. He would try to
extricate Hermione on his own while Ron was dealing with the raining office. When the
doors opened, he stepped out into a torch-lit stone passageway quite different from the
wood-paneled and carpeted corridors above. As the left rattled away again, Harry
shivered slightly, looking toward the distant black door that marked the entrance to the
Department of Mysteries.
He set off, his destination not the black door, but the doorway he remembered on
the left hand side, which opened onto the flight of stairs down to the court chambers. His
mind grappled with possibilities as he crept down them: He still had a couple of Decoy
Detonators, but perhaps it would be better to simply knock on the courtroom door, enter

as Runcorn, and ask for a quick word with Mafalda? Of course, he did not know whether
Runcorn was sufficiently important to get away with this, and even if he managed it,
Hermione’s non-reappearance might trigger a search before they were clear of the
Ministry….
Lost in thought, he did not immediately register the unnatural chill that was
creeping over him, as if he were descending into fog. It was becoming colder and colder
with every step he took; a cold that reached right down his throat and tore at his lungs.
And then he felt that stealing sense of despair, or hopelessness, filling him, expanding
inside him….
Dementors, he thought.
And as he reached the foot of the stairs and turned to his right he saw a dreadful
scene. The dark passage outside the courtrooms was packed with tall, black-hooded
figures, their faces completely hidden, their ragged breathing the only sound in the place.
The petrified Muggle-borns brought in for questioning sat huddled and shivering on hard
wooden benches. Most of them were hiding their faces in their hands, perhaps in an
instinctive attempt to shield themselves from the dementors’ greedy mouths. Some were
accompanied by families, others sat alone. The dementors were gliding up and down in
front of them, and the cold, and the hopelessness, and the despair of the place laid
themselves upon Harry like a curse….
Fight it, he told himself, but he knew that he could not conjure a Patronus here
without revealing himself instantly. So he moved forward as silently as he could, and
with every step he took numbness seemed to steal over his brain, but he forced himself to
think of Hermione and of Ron, who needed him.
Moving through the towering black figures was terrifying: The eyeless faces
hidden beneath their hoods turned as he passed, and he felt sure that they sensed him,
sensed, perhaps, a human presence that still had some hope, some resilience….
And then, abruptly and shockingly amid the frozen silence, one of the dungeon
doors on the left of the corridor was flung open and screams echoed out of it.
“No, no, I’m half-blood, I’m half-blood, I tell you! My father was a wizard, he
was, look him up, Arkie Alderton, he’s a well known broomstick designer, look him up, I
tell you – get your hands off me, get your hands off –“
“This is your final warning,” said Umbridge’s soft voice, magically magnified so
that it sounded clearly over the man’s desperate screams. “If you struggle, you will be
subjected to the Dementor’s Kiss.”
The man’s screams subsided, but dry sobs echoed through the corridor.
“Take him away,” said Umbridge.
Two dementors appeared in the doorway of the courtroom, their rotting, scabbed
hands clutching the upper arms of a wizard who appeared to be fainting. They glided
away down the corridor with him, and the darkness they trailed behind them swallowed
him from sight.
“Next – Mary Cattermole,” called Umbridge.
A small woman stood up; she was trembling from head to foot. Her dark hair was
smoothed back into a bun and she wore long plain robes. Her face was completely
bloodless. As she passed the dementors, Harry saw her shudder.

He did it instinctively, without any sort of plan, because he hated the sight of her
walking alone into the dungeon: As the door began to swing closed, he slipped into the
courtroom behind her.
It was not the same room in which he had once been interrogated for improper use
of magic. This one was much smaller, though the ceiling was quite as high it gave the
claustrophobic sense of being stuck at the bottom of a deep well.
There were more dementors in here, casting their freezing aura over the place;
they stood like faceless sentinels in the corners farthest from the high, raised platform.
Here, behind a balustrade, sat Umbridge, with Yaxley on one side of her, and Hermione,
quite as white-faced as Mrs. Cattermole, on the other. At the foot of the platform, a bight-
silver, long-haired cat prowled up and down, up and down, and Harry realized that it was
there to protect the prosecutors from the despair that emanated from the dementors: That
was for the accused to feel, not the accusers.
“Sit down,” said Umbridge in her soft, silky voice.
Mrs. Cattermole stumbled to the single seat in the middle of the floor beneath the
raised platform. The moment she had sat down, chains clinked out of the arms of the
chair and bound her there.
“You are Mary Elizabeth Cattermole?” asked Umbridge.
Mrs. Cattermole gave a single, shaky nod.
“Married to Reginald Cattermole of the Magical Maintenance Department?”
Mrs. Cattermole burst into tears.
“I don’t know where he is, he was supposed to meet me here!”
Umbridge ignored her.
“Mother to Maisie, Ellie and Alfred Cattermole?”
Mrs. Cattermole sobbed harder than ever.
“They’re frightened, they think that I might not come home –“
“Spare us,” spat Yaxley. “The brats of Mudbloods do not stir our sympathies.”
Mrs. Cattermole’s sobs masked Harry’s footsteps as he made his way carefully
toward the steps that led up to the raised platform. The moment he had passed the place
where the Patronus cat patrolled, he felt the change in temperature: It was warm and
comfortable here. The Patronus, he was sure, was Umbridge’s, and it glowed brightly
because she was so happy here, in her element, upholding the twisted laws she had
helped to write. Slowly and very carefully he edged his way along the platform behind
Umbridge, Yaxley, and Hermione, taking a seat behind the latter. He was worried about
making Hermione jump. He thought of casting the Muffliato charm upon Umbridge and
Yaxley, but even murmuring the word might cause Hermione alarm. Then Umbridge
raised her voice to address Mrs. Cattermole, and Harry seized his chance.
“I’m behind you,” he whispered into Hermione’s ear.
As he had expected, she jumped so violently she nearly overturned the bottle of
ink with which she was supposed to be recording the interview, but both Umbridge and
Yaxley were concentrating upon Mrs. Cattermole, and this went unnoticed.
“A wand was taken from you upon your arrival at the Ministry today, Mrs.
Cattermole,” Umbridge was saying. “Eight-and-three-quarter inches, cherry, unicorn-hair
core. Do you recognize the description?”
Mrs. Cattermole nodded, mopping her eyes on her sleeve.
“Could you please tell us from which witch or wizard you took that wand?”

“T-took?” sobbed Mrs. Cattermole. “I didn’t t-take it from anybody. I b-bought it
when I was eleven years old. It – it – it – chose me.”
She cried harder than ever.
Umbridge laughed a soft girlish laugh that made Harry want to attack her. She
leaned forward over the barrier, the better to observe her victim, and something gold
swung forward too, and dangled over the void: the locket.
Hermione had seen it; she let out a little squeak, but Umbridge and Yaxley, still
intent upon their prey, were deaf to everything else.
“No,” said Umbridge, “no, I don’t think so, Mrs. Cattermole. Wands only choose
witches or wizards. You are not a witch. I have your responses to the questionnaire that
was sent to you here – Mafalda, pass them to me.”
Umbridge held out a small hand: She looked so toadlike at that moment that
Harry was quite surprised not to see webs between the stubby fingers. Hermione’s hands
were shaking with shock. She fumbled in a pile of documents balanced on the chair
beside her, finally withdrawing a sheaf of parchment with Mrs. Cattermole’s name on it.
“That’s – that’s pretty, Dolores,” she said, pointing at the pendant gleaming in the
ruffled folds of Umbridge’s blouse.
“What?” snapped Umbridge, glancing down. “Oh yes – an old family heirloom,”
she said, patting the locket lying on her large bosom. “The S stands for Selwyn…. I am
related to the Selwyns…. Indeed, there are few pure-blood families to whom I am not
related. …A pity,” she continued in a louder voice, flicking through Mrs. Cattermole’s
questionnaire, “that the same cannot be said for you. ‘Parents professions:
greengrocers’.”
Yaxley laughed jeeringly. Below, the fluffy silver cat patrolled up and down, and
the dementors stood waiting in the corners.
It was Umbridge’s lie that brought the blood surging into Harry’s brain and
obliterated his sense of caution – that the locket she had taken as a bribe from a petty
criminal was being used to bolster her own pure-blood credentials. He raised his wand,
not even troubling to keep it concealed beneath the Invisibility Cloak, and said,
“Stupefy!”
There was a flash of red light; Umbridge crumpled and her forehead hit the edge
of the balustrade: Mrs. Cattermole’s papers slid off her lap onto the floor and, down
below, the prowling silver cat vanished. Ice-cold air hit them like an oncoming wind:
Yaxley, confused, looked around for the source of the trouble and saw Harry’s
disembodied hand and wand pointing at him. He tried to draw his own wand, but too late:
“Stupefy!”
Yaxley slid to the ground to lie curled on the floor.
“Harry!”
“Hermione, if you think I was going to sit here and let her pretend –“
“Harry, Mrs. Cattermole!”
Harry whirled around, throwing off the Invisibility Cloak; down below, the
dementors had moved out of their corners; they were gliding toward the woman chained
to the chair: Whether because the Patronus had vanished or because they sensed that their
masters were no longer in control, they seemed to have abandoned restraint. Mrs.
Cattermole let out a terrible scream of fear as a slimy, scabbed hand grasped her chin and
forced her face back.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The silver stag soared from the tip of Harry’s wand and leaped toward the
dementors, which fell back and melted into the dark shadows again. The stag’s light,
more powerful and more warming than the cat’s protection, filled the whole dungeon as it
cantered around the room.
“Get the Horcrux,” Harry told Hermione.
He ran back down the steps, stuffing the Invisibility Cloak into his back, and
approached Mrs. Cattermole.
“You?” she whispered, gazing into his face. “But – but Reg said you were the one
who submitted my name for questioning!”
“Did I?” muttered Harry, tugging at the chains binding her arms, “Well, I’ve had
a change of heart. Diffindo!” Nothing happened. “Hermione, how do I get rid of these
chains?”
“Wait, I’m trying something up here –“
“Hermione, we’re surrounded by dementors!”
“I know that, Harry, but if she wakes up and the locket’s gone – I need to
duplicate it – Geminio! There… That should fool her….”
Hermione came running downstairs.
“Let’s see…. Relashio!”
The chains clinked and withdrew into the arms of the chair. Mrs. Cattermole
looked just as frightened as ever before.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“You’re going to leave here with us,” said Harry, pulling her to her feet. “Go
home, grab your children, and get out, get out of the country if you’ve got to. Disguise
yourselves and run. You’ve seen how it is, you won’t get anything like a fair hearing
here.”
“Harry,” said Hermione, “how are we going to get out of here with all those
dementors outside the door?”
“Patronuses,” said Harry, pointing his wand at his own. The stag slowed and
walked, still gleaming brightly, toward the door. “As many as we can muster; do yours,
Hermione.”
“Expec – Expecto patronum,” said Hermione. Nothing happened.
“It’s the only spell she ever has trouble with,” Harry told a completely bemused
Mrs. Cattermole. “Bit unfortunate, really… Come on Hermione….”
‘Expecto patronum!”
A silver otter burst from the end of Hermione’s wand and swam gracefully
through the air to join the stag.
“C’mon,” said Harry, and he led Hermione and Mrs. Cattermole to the door.
When the Patronuses glided out of the dungeon there were cries of shock from the
people waiting outside. Harry looked around; the dementors were falling back on both
sides of them, melding into the darkness, scattering before the silver creatures.
“It’s been decided that you should all go home and go into hiding with your
families,” Harry told the waiting Muggle-born, who were dazzled by the light of the
Patronuses and still cowering slightly. “Go abroad if you can. Just get well away from the
Ministry. That’s the – er – new official position. Now, if you’ll just follow the Patronuses,
you’ll be able to leave the Atrium.”

They managed to get up the stone stops without being intercepted, but as they
approached the lifts Harry started to have misgivings. If they emerged into the Atrium
with a silver stag, and otter soaring alongside it, and twenty or so people, half of them
accused Muggle-borns, he could not help feeling that they would attract unwanted
attention. He had just reached this unwelcome conclusion when the lift clanged to a halt
in front of them.
“Reg!” screamed Mrs. Cattermole, and she threw herself into Ron’s arms.
“Runcorn let me out, he attacked Umbridge and Yaxley, and he’s told all of us to leave
the country. I think we’d better do it, Reg, I really do, let’s hurry home and fetch the
children and – why are you so wet?”
“Water,” muttered Ron, disengaging himself. “Harry, they know there are
intruders inside the Ministry, something about a hole in Umbridge’s office door. I reckon
we’ve got five minutes if that –“
Hermione’s Patronus vanished with a pop as she turned a horror struck face to
Harry.
“Harry, if we’re trapped here – !”
“We won’t be if we move fast,” said Harry. He addressed the silent group behind
them, who were all gawping at him.
“Who’s got wands?”
About half of them raised their hands.
“Okay, all of you who haven’t got wands need to attach yourself to somebody
who has. We’ll need to be fast before they stop us. Come on.”
They managed to cram themselves into two lifts. Harry’s Patronus stood sentinel
before the golden grilles as they shut and the lifts began to rise.
“Level eight,” said the witch’s cool voice, “Atrium.”
Harry knew at once that they were in trouble. The Atrium was full of people
moving from fireplace to fireplace, sealing them off.
“Harry!” squeaked Hermione. “What are we going to – ?”
“STOP!” Harry thundered, and the powerful voice of Runcorn echoed through the
Atrium: The wizards sealing the fireplaces froze. “Follow me,” he whispered to the group
of terrified Muggle-borns, who moved forward in a huddle, shepherded by Ron and
Hermione.
“What’s up, Albert?” said the same balding wizard who had followed Harry out
of the fireplace earlier. He looked nervous.
“This lot need to leave before you seal the exits,” said Harry with all the authority
he could muster.
The group of wizards in front of him looked at one another.
“We’ve been told to seal all exits and not let anyone –“
“Are you contradicting me?” Harry blustered. “Would you like me to have your
family tree examined, like I had Dirk Cresswell’s?”
“Sorry!” gasped the balding wizard, backing away. “I didn’t mean nothing, Albert,
but I thought… I thought they were in for questioning and…”
“Their blood is pure,” said Harry, and his deep voice echoed impressively through
the hall. “Purer than many of yours, I daresay. Off you go,” he boomed to the Muggle-
borns, who scurried forward into the fireplaces and began to vanish in pairs. The Ministry
wizards hung back, some looking confused, others scared and fearful. Then:

“Mary!”
Mrs. Cattermole looked over her shoulder. The real Reg Cattermole, no longer
vomiting but pale and wan, had just come running out of a lift.
“R- Reg?”
She looked from her husband to Ron, who swore loudly.
The balding wizard gaped, his head turning ludicrously from one Reg Cattermole
to the other.
“Hey – what’s going on? What is this?”
“Seal the exit! SEAL IT!”
Yaxley had burst out of another lift and was running toward the group beside the
fireplaces, into which all of the Muggle-borns but Mrs. Cattermole had now vanished. As
the balding wizard lifted his wand, Harry raised an enormous fist and punched him,
sending him flying through the air.
“He’s been helping Muggle-borns escape, Yaxley!” Harry shouted.
The balding wizard’s colleagues set up and uproar, under cover of which Ron
grabbed Mrs. Cattermole, pulled her into the still-open fireplace, and disappeared.
Confused, Yaxley looked from Harry to the punched wizard, while the real Reg
Cattermole screamed, “My wife! Who was that with my wife? What’s going on?”
Harry saw Yaxley’s head turn, saw an inkling of truth dawn on that brutish face.
“Come on!” Harry shouted at Hermione; he seized her hand and they jumped into
the fireplace together as Yaxley’s curse sailed over Harry’s head. They spun for a few
seconds before shooting up out of a toilet into a cubicle. Harry flung open the door: Ron
was standing there beside the sinks, still wrestling with Mrs. Cattermole.
“Reg, I don’t understand –“
“Let go, I’m not your husband, you’ve got to go home!”
There was a noise in the cubicle behind them; Harry looked around; Yaxley had
just appeared.
“LET’S GO!” Harry yelled. He seized Hermione by the hand and Ron by the arm
and turned on the stop.
Darkness engulfed them, along with the sensation of compressing hands, but
something was wrong…. Hermione’s hand seemed to be sliding out of his grip….
He wondered whether he was going to suffocate; he could not breathe or see and
the only solid things in the world were Ron’s arm and Hermione’s fingers, which were
slowly slipping away….
And then he saw the door to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, with its serpent
door knocker, but before he could draw breath, there was a scream and a flash of purple
light: Hermione’s hand was suddenly vicelike upon his and everything went dark again.
　

三英战大蛇

Chapter Fourteen
The Thief

Harry opened his eyes and was dazzled by gold and green; he had no idea what
had happened, he only knew that he was lying on what seemed to be leaves and twigs.
Struggling to draw breath into lungs that felt flattened, he blinked and realized that the
gaudy glare was sunlight streaming through a canopy of leaves far above him. Then an

object twitched close to his face. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, ready to
face some small, fierce creature, but saw that the object was Ron’s foot. Looking around,
Harry saw that they and Hermione were lying on a forest floor, apparently alone.
Harry’s first thought was of the Forbidden Forest, and for a moment, even though
he knew how foolish and dangerous it would be for them to appear in the grounds of
Hogwarts, his heart leapt at the thought of sneaking through the trees to Hagrid’s hut.
However, in the few moments it took for Ron to give a low groan and Harry to start
crawling toward him, he realized that this was not the Forbidden Forest; The trees looked
younger, they were more widely spaced, the ground clearer.
He met Hermione, also on her hands and knees, at Ron’s head. The moment his
eyes fell upon Ron, all other concerns fled Harry’s mind, for blood drenched the whole of
Ron’s left side and his face stood out, grayish-white, against the leaf-strewn earth. The
Polyjuice Potion was wearing off now: Ron was halfway between Cattermole and himself
in appearance, his hair turning redder and redder as his face drained of the little color it
had left.
“What’s happened to him?”
“Splinched,” said Hermione, her fingers already busy at Ron’s sleeve, where the
blood was wettest and darkest.
Harry watched, horrified, as she tore open Ron’s short. He had always thought of
Splinching as something comical, but this . . . His insides crawled unpleasantly as
Hermione laid bare Ron’s upper arm, where a great chunk of flesh was missing, scooped
cleanly away as though by a knife.
“Harry, quickly, in my bag, there’s a small bottle labeled ‘Essence of Dittany’– “
“Bag – right –“
Harry sped to the place where Hermione had landed, seized the tiny beaded bag,
and thrust his hand inside it. At once, object after object began presenting itself to his
touch: He felt the leather spines of books, woolly sleeves of jumpers, heels of shoes –
“Quickly!”
He grabbed his wand from the ground and pointed it into the depths of the
magical bag.
“Accio Dittany!”
A small brown bottle zoomed out of the bag; he caught it and hastened back to
Hermione and Ron, whose eyes were now half-closed, strips of white eyeball all that
were visible between his lids.
“He’s fainted,” said Hermione, who was also rather pale; she no longer looked
like Mafalda, though her hair was still gray in places. “Unstopper it for me, Harry, my
hands are shaking.”
Harry wrenched the stopper off the little bottle, Hermione took it and poured three
drops of the potion onto the bleeding wound. Greenish smoke billowed upward and when
it had cleared, Harry saw that the bleeding had stopped. The wound now looked several
days old; new skin stretched over what had just been open flesh.
“Wow,” said Harry.
“It’s all I feel safe doing,” said Hermione shakily. “There are spells that would put
him completely right, but I daren’t try in case I do them wrong and cause more
damage. . . . He’s lost so much blood already. . . .”

“How did he get hurt? I mean” – Harry shook his head, trying to clear it, to make
sense of whatever had just taken place – “why are we here? I thought we were going back
to Grimmauld Place?”
Hermione took a deep breath. She looked close to tears.
“Harry, I don’t think we’re going to be able to go back there.”
“What d’you – ?”
“As we Disapparated, Yaxley caught hold of me and I couldn’t get rid of him, he
was too strong, and he was still holding on when we arrived at Grimmauld Place, and
then – well, I think he must have seen the door, and thought we were stopping there, so
he slackened his grip and I managed to sake him off and I brought us here instead!”
“But then, where’s he? Hang on. . . . You don’t mean he’s at Grimmauld Place?
He can’t get in there?”
Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears as she nodded.
“Harry, I think he can. I – I forced him to let go with a Revulsion Jinx, but I’d
already taken him inside the Fidelius Charm’s protection. Since Dumbledore died, we’re
Secret-Keepers, so I’ve given him the secret, haven’t I?”
There was no pretending; Harry was sure she was right. It was a serious blow. If
Yaxley could now get inside the house, there was no way that they could return. Even
now, he could be bringing other Death Eaters in there by Apparition. Gloomy and
oppressive though the house was, it had been their one safe refuge; even, now that
Kreacher was so much happier and friendlier, a kind of home. With a twinge of regret
that had nothing to do with food, Harry imagined the house-elf busying himself over the
steak-and-kidney pie that Harry, Ron, and Hermione would never eat.
“Harry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t be stupid, it wasn’t your fault! If anything, it was mine. . . .”
Harry put his hand in his pocket and drew out Mad-Eye’s eye. Hermione recoiled,
looking horrified.
“Umbridge had stuck it to her office door, to spy on people. I couldn’t leave it
there . . . but that’s how they knew there were intruders.”
Before Hermione could answer, Ron groaned and opened his eyes. He was still
gray and his face glistened with sweat.
“How d’you feel?” Hermione whispered.
“Lousy,” croaked Ron, wincing as he felt his injured arm. “Where are we?”
“In the woods where they held the Quidditch World Cup,” said Hermione. “I
wanted somewhere enclosed, undercover, and this was –“
“– the first place you thought of,” Harry finished for her, glancing around at the
apparently deserted glade. He could not help remembering what had happened the last
time they had Apparated to the first place Hermione had thought of – how Death Eaters
had found them within minutes. Had it been Legilimency? Did Voldemort or his
henchmen know, even now, where Hermione had taken them?
“D’you reckon we should move on?” Ron asked Harry, and Harry could tell by
the look on Ron’s face that he was thinking the same.
“I dunno.”
Ron still looked pale and clammy. He had made no attempt to sit up and it looked
as though he was too weak to do so. The prospect of moving him was daunting.
“Let’s stay here for now,” Harry said.

Looking relieved, Hermione sprang to her feet.
“Where are you going?” asked Ron.
“If we’re staying, we should put some protective enchantments around the place,”
she replied, and raising her wand, she began to walk in a wide circle around Harry and
Ron, murmuring incantations as she went. Harry saw little disturbances in the
surrounding air: It was as if Hermione had cast a heat haze upon their clearing.
“Salvio Hexia . . . Protego Totalum . . . Repello Muggletum . . . Muffliato . . . You
could get out the tent, Harry. . . .”
“Tent?”
“In the bag!”
“In the . . . of course,” said Harry.
He did not bother to grope inside it this time, but used another Summoning Charm.
The tent emerged in a lumpy mass of canvas, ropes, and poles. Harry recognized it, partly
because of the smell of cats, as the same tent in which they had slept on the night of the
Quidditch World Cup.
“I thought this belonged to that bloke Perkins at the Ministry?” he asked, starting
to disentangle the pent pegs.
“Apparently he didn’t want it back, his lumbago’s so bad,” said Hermione, now
performing complicated figure-of-eight movements with her wand. “so Ron’s dad said I
could borrow it. Erecto!” she added, pointing her wand at the misshapen canvas, which in
one fluid motion rose into the air and settled, fully constructed, onto the ground before
Harry, out of whose startled hands a tent peg soared, to land with a final thud at the end
of a guy rope.
“Cave Inimicum,” Hermione finished with a skyward flourish. “That’s as much as
I can do. At the very least, we should know they’re coming; I can’t guarantee it will keep
out Vol –“
“Don’t say the name!” Ron cut across her, his voice harsh.
Harry and Hermione looked at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Ron said, moaning a little as he raised himself to look at them, “but it
feels like a – a jinx or something. Can’t we call him You-Know-Who – please?”
“Dumbledore said fear of a name –“ began Harry.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, mate, calling You-Know-Who by his name didn’t do
Dumbledore much good in the end,” Ron snapped back. “Just – just show You-Know-
Who some respect, will you?”
“Respect?” Harry repeated, but Hermione shot him a warning look; apparently he
was not to argue with Ron while the latter was in such a weakened condition.
Harry and Hermione half carried, half dragged Ron through the entrance of the
tent. The interior was exactly as Harry remembered it; a small flat, complete with
bathroom and tiny kitchen. He shoved aside an old armchair and lowered Ron carefully
onto the lower berth of a bunk bed. Even this very short journey had turned Ron whiter
still, and once they had settled him on the mattress he closed his eyes again and did not
speak for a while.
“I’ll make some tea,” said Hermione breathlessly, pulling kettle and mugs from
the depths of her bag and heading toward the kitchen.

Harry found the hot drink as welcome as the firewhisky had been on the night that
Mad-Eye had died; it seemed to burn away a little of the fear fluttering in his chest. After
a minute or two, Ron broke the silence.
“What d’you reckon happened to the Cattermoles?”
“With any luck, they’ll have got away,” said Hermione, clutching her hot mug for
comfort. “As long as Mr. Cattermole had his wits about him, he’ll have transported Mrs.
Cattermole by Side-Along-Apparition and they’ll be fleeing the country right now with
their children. That’s what Harry told her to do.”
“Blimey, I hope they escaped,” said Ron, leaning back on his pillows. The tea
seemed to be doing him good; a little of his color had returned. “I didn’t get the feeling
Reg Cattermole was all that quick-witted, though, the way everyone was talking to me
when I was him. God, I hope they made it. . . . If they both end up in Azkaban because of
us . . .”
Harry looked over at Hermione and the question he had been about to ask – about
whether Mrs. Cattermole’s lack of a wand would prevent her Apparating alongside her
husband – died in his throat. Hermione was watching Ron fret over the fate of the
Cattermoles, and there was such tenderness in her expression that Harry felt almost as if
he had surprised her in the act of kissing him.
“So, have you got it?” Harry asked her, partly to remind her that he was there.
“Got – got what?” she said with a little start.
“What did we just go through all that for? The locket! Where’s the locket?”
“You got it?” shouted Ron, raising himself a little higher on his pillows. “No one
tells me anything! Blimey, you could have mentioned it!”
“Well, we were running for our lives from the Death Eaters, weren’t we?” said
Hermione. “Here.”
And she pulled the locket out of the pocket of her robes and handed it to Ron.
It was as large as a chicken’s egg. An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green
stones, glinted dully in the diffused light shining through the tent’s canvas roof.
“There isn’t any chance someone’s destroyed it since Kreacher had it?” asked
Ron hopefully. “I mean, are we sure it’s still a Horcrux?”
“I think so,” said Hermione, taking it back from him and looking at it closely.
“There’d be some sign of damage if it had been magically destroyed.”
She passed it to Harry, who turned it over in his fingers. The thing looked perfect,
pristine. He remembered the mangled remains of the diary, and how the stone in the
Horcrux ring had been cracked open when Dumbledore destroyed it.
“I reckon Kreacher’s right,” said Harry. “We’re going to have to work out how to
open this thing before we can destroy it.”
Sudden awareness of what he was holding, of what lived behind the little golden
doors, hit Harry as he spoke. Even after all their efforts to find it, he felt a violent urge to
fling the locket from him. Mastering himself again, he tried to prise the locket apart with
his fingers, then attempted the charm Hermione had used to open Regulus’s bedroom
door. Neither worked. He handed the locket back to Ron and Hermione, each of whom
did their best, but were no more successful at opening it than he had been.
“Can you feel it, though?” Ron asked in a hushed voice, as he held it tight in his
clenched fist.

“What d’you mean?”
Ron passed the Horcrux to Harry. After a moment or two, Harry thought he knew
what Ron meant. Was it his own blood pulsing through his veins that he could feel, or
was it something beating inside the locket, like a tiny metal heart?
“What are we going to do with it?” Hermione asked.
“Keep it safe till we work out how to destroy it.” Harry replied, and, little though
he wanted to, he hung the chain around his own neck, dropping the locket out of sight
beneath his robes, where it rested against his chest beside the pouch Hagrid had given
him.
“I think we should take it in turns to keep watch outside the tent,” he added to
Hermione, standing up and stretching. “And we’ll need to think about some food as well.
You stay there,” he added sharply, as Ron attempted to sit up and turned a nasty shade of
green.
With the Sneakoscope Hermione had given Harry for his birthday set carefully
upon the table in the tent, Harry and Hermione spent the rest of the day sharing the role
of lookout. However, the Sneakoscope remained silent and still upon its point all day, and
whether because of the protective enchantments and Muggle-repelling charms Hermione
had spread around them, or because people rarely ventured this way, their patch of wood
remained deserted, apart from occasional birds and squirrels. Evening brought no change;
Harry lit his wand as he swapped places with Hermione at ten o’clock, and looked out
upon a deserted scene, noting the bats fluttering high above him across the single patch of
starry sky visible from their protected clearing.
He felt hungry now, and a little light-headed. Hermione had not packed any food
in her magical bag, as she had assumed that they would be returning to Grimmauld Place
that night, so they had had nothing to eat except some wild mushrooms that Hermione
had collected from amongst the nearest trees and stewed in a Billycan. After a couple of
mouthfuls Ron had pushed his portion away, looking queasy; Harry had only persevered
so as to not hurt Hermione’s feelings.
The surrounding silence was broken by odd rustlings and what sounded like
crackings of twigs: Harry thought that they were caused by animals rather than people,
yet he kept his wand held tight at the ready. His insides, already uncomfortable due to
their inadequate helping of rubbery mushrooms, tingled with unease.
He had though that he would feel elated if they managed to steal back the Horcrux,
but somehow he did not; all he felt as he sat looking out at the darkness, of which his
wand lit only a tiny part, was worry about what would happen next. It was as though he
had been hurtling toward this point for weeks, months, maybe even years, but how he had
come to an abrupt halt, run out of road.
There were other Horcruxes out there somewhere, but he did not have the faintest
idea where they could be. He did not even know what all of them were. Meanwhile he
was at a loss to know how to destroy the only one that they had found, the Horcrux that
currently lay against the bare flesh of his chest. Curiously, it had not taken heat from his
body, but lay so cold against his skin it might just have emerged from icy water. From
time to time Harry thought, or perhaps imagined, that he could feel the tiny heartbeat
ticking irregularly alongside his own. Nameless forebodings crept upon him as he sat
there in the dark. He tried to resist them, push them away, yet they came at him
relentlessly. Neither can live while the other survives. Ron and Hermione, now talking

softly behind him in the tent, could walk away if they wanted to: He could not. And it
seemed to Harry as he sat there trying to master his own fear and exhaustion, that the
Horcrux against his chest was ticking away the time he had left. . . . Stupid idea, he told
himself, don’t think that. . . .
His scar was starting to prickle again. He was afraid that he was making it happen
by having these thoughts, and tried to direct them into another channel. He thought of
poor Kreacher, who had expected them home and had received Yaxley instead. Would
the elf keep silent or would he tell the Death Eater everything he knew? Harry wanted to
believe that Kreacher had changed towards him in the past month, that he would be loyal
now, but who knew what would happen? What if the Death Eaters tortured the elf? Sick
images swarmed into Harry’s head and he tried to push these away too, for there was
nothing he could do for Kreacher: He and Hermione had already decided against trying to
summon him; what if someone from the Ministry came too? They could not count on
elfish Apparition being free from the same flaw that had taken Yaxley to Grimmauld
Place on the hem of Hermione’s sleeve.
Harry’s scar was burning now. He thought that there was so much they did not
know: Lupin had been right about magic they had never encountered or imagined. Why
hadn’t Dumbledore explained more? Had he thought that there would be time; that he
would live for years, for centuries perhaps, like his friend Nicolas Flamel? If so, he had
been wrong. . . . Snape had seen to that. . . . Snape, the sleeping s***, who had struck at
the top of the tower . . .
And Dumbledore had fallen . . . fallen . . .
“Give it to me, Gregorovitch.”
Harry’s voice was high, clear, and cold, his wand held in front of him by a long-
fingered white hand. The man at whom he was pointing was suspended upside down in
midair, though there were no ropes holding him; he swung there, invisibly and eerily
bound, his limbs wrapped about him, his terrified face, on a level with Harry’s ruddy due
to the blood that had rushed to his head. He had pure-white hair and a thick, bushy beard:
a trussed-up Father Christmas.
“I have it not, I have it no more! It was, many years ago, stolen from me!”
“Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Gregorovitch. He knows. . . . He always knows.”
The hanging man’s pupils were wide, dilated with fear, and they seemed to swell,
bigger and bigger until their blackness swallowed Harry whole –
And how Harry was hurrying along a dark corridor in stout little Gregorovitch’s
wake as he held a lantern aloft: Gregorovitch burst into the room at the end of the passage
and his lantern illuminated what looked like a workshop; wood shavings and gold
gleamed in the swinging pool of light, and there on the window ledge sat perched, like a
giant bird, a young man with golden hair. In the split second that the lantern’s light
illuminated him, Harry saw the delight upon his handsome face, then the intruder shot a
Stunning Spell from his wand and jumped neatly backward out of the window with a
crow of laughter.
And Harry was hurtling back out of those wide, tunnellike pupils and
Gregorovitch’s face was stricken with terror.
“Who was the thief, Gregorovitch?” said the high cold voice.
“I do not know, I never knew, a young man – no – please – PLEASE!”
A scream that went on and on and then a burst of green light –

“Harry!”
He opened his eyes, panting, his forehead throbbing. He had passed out against
the side of the tent, had slid sideways down the canvas, and was sprawled on the ground.
He looked up at Hermione, whose bushy hair obscured the tiny patch of sky visible
through the dark branches high above them.
“Dream,” he said, sitting up quickly and attempting to meet Hermione’s glower
with a look of innocence. “Must’ve dozed off, sorry.”
“I know it was your scar! I can tell by the look on your face! You were looking
into Vol –“
“Don’t say his name!” came Ron’s angry voice from the depths of the tent.
“Fine,” retorted Hermione, “You-Know-Who’s mind, then!”
“I didn’t mean it to happen!” Harry said. “It was a dream! Can you control what
you dream about, Hermione?”
“If you just learned to apply Occlumency –“
But Harry was not interested in being told off; he wanted to discuss what he had
just seen.
“He’s found Gregorovitch, Hermione, and I think he’s killed him, but before he
killed him he read Gregorovitch’s mind and I saw –“
“I think I’d better take over the watch if you’re so tired you’re falling sleep,” said
Hermione coldly.
“I can finish the watch!”
“No, you’re obviously exhausted. Go and lie down.”
She dropped down in the mouth of the tent, looking stubborn. Angry, but wishing
to avoid a row, Harry ducked back inside.
Ron’s still-pale face was poking out from the lower bunk; Harry climbed into the
one above him, lay down, and looked up at the dark canvas ceiling. After several
moments, Ron spoke in a voice so low that it would not carry to Hermione, huddle in the
entrance.
“What’s You-Know-Who doing?”
Harry screwed up his eyes in the effort to remember every detail, then whispered
into the darkness.
“He found Gregorovitch. He had him tied up, he was torturing him.”
“How’s Gregorovitch supposed to make him a new wand if he’s tied up?”
“I dunno. . . . It’s weird, isn’t it?”
Harry closed his eyes, thinking of all that he had seen and heard. The more he
recalled, the less sense it made. . . . Voldemort had said nothing about Harry’s wand,
nothing about the twin cores, nothing about Gregorovitch making a new and more
powerful wand to beat Harry’s. . . .
“He wanted something from Gregorovitch,” Harry said, eyes still closed tight.
“He asked him to hand it over, but Gregorovitch said it had been stolen from him . . . and
then . . . then . . .”
He remembered how he, as Voldemort, had seemed to hurtle through
Gregorovitch’s eyes, into his memories. . . .
“He read Gregorovitch’s mind, and I saw this young bloke perched on a
windowsill, and he fired a curse at Gregorovitch and jumped out of sight. He stole it, he
stole whatever You-Know-Who’s after. And I . . . I think I’ve seen him somewhere. . . .”

Harry wished he could have another glimpse of the laughing boy’s face. The theft
had happened many years ago, according to Gregorovitch. Why did the young thief look
familiar?
The noises of the surrounding woods were muffled inside the tent; all Harry could
hear was Ron’s breathing. After a while, Ron whispered, “Couldn’t you see what the
thief was holding?”
“No . . . it must’ve been something small.”
“Harry?”
The wooden slats of Ron’s bunk creaked as he repositioned himself in bed.
“Harry, you don’t reckon You-Know-Who’s after something else to turn into a
Horcrux?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry slowly. “Maybe. But wouldn’t it be dangerous for him
to make another one? Didn’t Hermione say he had pushed his soul to the limit already?”
“Yeah, but maybe he doesn’t know that.”
“Yeah . . .maybe,” said Harry.
He had been sure that Voldemort had been looking for a way around the problem
of the twin cores, sure that Voldemort sought a solution from the old wandmaker . . . and
yet he had killed him, apparently without asking him a single question about wandlore.
What was Voldemort trying to find? Why, with the Ministry of Magic and the
Wizarding world at his feet, was he far away, intent on the pursuit of an object that
Gregorovitch had once owned, and which had been stolen by the unknown thief?
Harry could still see the blond-haired youth’s face; it was merry, wild; there was a
Fred and George-ish air of triumphant trickery about him. He had soared from the
windowsill like a bird, and Harry had seen him before, but he could not think where. . . .
With Gregorovitch dead, it was the merry-faced thief who was in danger now, and
it was on him that Harry’s thoughts dwelled, as Ron’s snores began to rumble from the
lower bunk and as he himself drifted slowly into sleep once more.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Fifteen
The Goblin’s Revenge

Early next morning, before the other two were awake, Harry left the tent to search
the woods around them for the oldest, most gnarled, and resilient-looking tree he could
find. There in its shadows he buried Mad-Eye Moody's eye and marked the spot by
gouging a small cross in the bark with his wand. It was not much, but Harry felt that
Mad-Eye would have much preferred this to being stuck on Dolores Umbridge's door.
Then he returned to the tent to wait for the others to wake, and discuss what they were
going to do next.
Harry and Hermione felt that it was best not to stay anywhere too long, and Ron
agreed, wit the sole proviso that their next move took them within reach of a bacon
sandwich. Hermione therefore removed the enchantments she had placed around the
clearing, while Harry and Ron obliterated all the marks and impressions on the ground
that might show they had camped there. Then they Disapparated to the outskirts of a
small market town.

Once they had pitched the tent in the shelter of a small copse of trees and
surrounded it with freshly cast defensive enchantments. Harry ventured out under the
Invisibility Cloak to find sustenance. This, however, did not go as planned. He had barely
entered the town when an unnatural chill, a descending mist, and a sudden darkening of
the skies made him freeze where he stood.
"But you can make a brilliant Patronus!" protested Ron, when Harry arrived back at the
tent empty handed, out of breath, and mouthing the single word, dementors.
"I couldn't . . . make one." he panted, clutching the stitch in his side. "Wouldn't . . .
come."
Their expressions of consternation and disappointment made Harry feel ashamed. It had
been a nightmarish experience, seeing the dementors gliding out of the must in the
distance and realizing, as the paralyzing cold choked his lungs and a distant screaming
filled his ears, that he was not going to be able to protect himself. It had taken all Harry's
willpower to uproot himself from the spot and run, leaving the eyeless dementors to glide
amongst the Muggles who might not be able to see them, but would assuredly feel the
despair they cast wherever they went.
"So we still haven't got any food."
"Shut up, Ron," snapped Hermione. "Harry, what happened? Why do you think
you couldn't make your Patronus? You managed perfectly yesterday!"
"I don't know."
He sat low in one of Perkins's old armchairs, feeling more humiliated by the
moment. He was afraid that something had gone wrong inside him. Yesterday seemed a
long time ago: Today me might have been thirteen years old again, the only one who
collapsed on the Hogwarts Express.
Ron kicked a chair leg.
"What?" he snarled at Hermione. "I'm starving! All I've had since I bled half to
death is a couple of toadstools!"
"You go and fight your way through the dementors, then," said Harry, stung.
"I would, but my arm's in a sling, in case you hadn't noticed!"
"That's convenient."
"And what's that supposed to — ?"
"Of course!" cried Hermione, clapping a hand to her forehead and startling both
of them into silence. "Harry, give me the locket! Come on," she said impatiently, clicking
her fingers at him when he did not react," to Horcrux, Harry, you're still wearing it!"
She held out her hands, and Harry lifted the golden chain over his head. The
moment it parted contact with Harry's skin he free and oddly light. He had not even
realized that he was clammy or that there was a heavy weight pressing on his stomach
until both sensations lifted.
"Better?" asked Hermione.
"Yeah, loads better!"
"Harry," she said, crouching down in front of him and using the kind of voice he
associated with visiting the very sick, "you don't think you've been possessed, do you?"
"What? No!" he said defensively, "I remember everything we've done while I've
bee wearing it. I wouldn't know what I'd done if I'd been possessed, would I? Ginny told
me there were times when she couldn't remember anything."

"Hmm," said Hermione, looking down at the heavy locket. "Well, maybe we
ought not to wear it. We can just keep it in the tent."
"We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around," Harry stated firmly. "If we lose it,
if it gets stolen—"
"Oh, all right, all right," said Hermione, and she placed it around her own neck
and tucked it out of sight down the front of her shirt. "But we'll take turns wearing it, so
nobody keeps it on too long."
"Great," said Ron irritably, "and now we've sorted that out, can we please get
some food?"
"Fine, but we'll go somewhere else to find it," said Hermione with half a glance at
Harry. "There's no point staying where we know dementors are swooping around."
In the end they settled down for the night in a far flung field belonging to a lonely
farm, from which they had managed to obtain eggs and bread.
"It's not stealing, is it?" asked Hermione in a troubled voice, as they devoured
scrambled eggs on toast. "Not if I left some money under the chicken coo?"
Ron rolled his eyes and said, with his cheeks bulging, "Er-my-nee, 'oo worry 'oo
much. 'Elax!"
And, indeed, it was much easier to relax when they were comfortably well fed.
The argument about the dementors was forgotten in laughter that night, and Harry felt
cheerful, even hopeful, as he took the first of the three night watches.
This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits,
an empty one, bickering and gloom. Harry was least surprised by this, because be had
suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys’. Hermione bore up reasonably well on
those nights when they managed to scavenge nothing but berries or stale biscuits, her
temper perhaps a little shorter than usual and her silences dour. Ron, however, had
always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the
Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable and irascible. Whenever
lack of food coincided with Ron's turn to wear the Horcrux, he became downright
unpleasant.
"So where next?" was his constant refrain. He did not seem to have any ideas
himself, but expected Harry and Hermione to come up with plans while he sat and
brooded over the low food supplies. Accordingly Harry and Hermione spent fruitless
hours trying to decide where they might find the other Horcruxes, and how to destroy the
one they already got, their conversations becoming increasingly repetitive as they got no
new information.
As Dumbledore had told Harry that be believed Voldemort had hidden the
Horcruxes in places important to him, they kept reciting, in a sort of dreary litany, those
locations they knew that Voldemort had lived or visited. The orphanage where he had
been born and raised: Hogwarts, where he had been educated; Borgin and Burks, where
he had worked after completing school; then Albania, where he had spent his years of
exile: These formed the basis of their speculations.
"Yeah, let's go to Albania. Shouldn't take more than an afternoon to search an
entire country," said Ron sarcastically.
"There can't be anything there. He'd already made five of his Horcruxes before he
went into exile, and Dumbledore was certain the s*** is the sixth," said Hermione. "We
know the s***'s not in Albania, it's usually with Vol—"

"Didn't I ask you to stop say that?"
"Fine! The s*** is usually with You-Know-Who—happy?"
"Not particularly."
"I can't see him hiding anything at Borgin and Burkes." said Harry, who had made
this point many times before, but said it again simply to break the nasty silence. "Borgin
and Burke were experts at Dark objects, they would've recognized a Horcrux
straightaway."
Ron yawned pointedly. Repressing a strong urge to throw something at him,
Harry plowed on, "I still reckon he might have hidden something at Hogwarts."
Hermione sighed.
"But Dumbledore would have found it, Harry!"
Harry repeated the argument he kept bringing out in favor of this theory.
"Dumbledore said in front of me that he never assumed he knew all of Hogwart's
secrets. I'm telling you, if there was one place Vol—"
"Oi!"
"YOU-KNOW-WHO, then!" Harry shouted, goaded past endurance. "If there was
one place that was really important to You-Know-Who, it was Hogwarts!"
"Oh, come on," scoffed Ron. "His school?"
"Yeah, his school! It was his first real home, the place that meant he was special:
it meant everything to him, and even after he left—"
"This is You-Know-Who we're talking about, right? Not you?" inquired Ron. He
was tugging at the chain of the Horcrux around his neck; Harry was visited by a desire to
seize it and throttle him.
"You told us that You-Know-Who asked Dumbledore to give him a job after he
left," said Hermione.
"That's right," said Harry.
"And Dumbledore thought he only wanted to come back to try and find something,
probably another founder's object, to make into another Horcrux?"
“Yeah,” said Harry.
“But he didn’t get the job, did he?” said Hermione. “So he never got the chance to
find a founder’s object there and hide it in the school!”
“Okay, then,” said Harry, defeated. “Forget Hogwarts.”
Without any other leads, they traveled into London and, hidden beneath the
Invisibility Cloak, search for the orphanage in which Voldemort had been raised.
Hermione stole into a library and discovered from their records that the place had been
demolished many years before. They visited its site and found a tower block of offices.
“We could try digging in to foundations?” Hermione suggested halfheartedly.
“He wouldn’t have hidden a Horcrux here,” Harry said. He had known it all along.
The orphanage had been the place Voldemort had been determined to escape; he would
never have hidden a part of his soul there. Dumbledore had shown Harry that Voldemort
sought grandeur or mystique in his hiding places; this dismal gray corner of London was
as far removed as you could imagine from Hogwarts of the Ministry or a building like
Gringotts, the Wizarding banks, with its gilded doors and marble floors.
Even without any new idea, they continued to move through the countryside,
pitching the tent in a different place each night for security. Every morning they made
sure that they had removed all clues to their presence, then set off to find another lonely

and secluded spot, traveling by Apparition to more woods, to the shadowy crevices of
cliffs, to purple moors, gorse-covered mountainsides, and once a sheltered and pebbly
cove. Every twelve hours or so they passed the Horcrux between them as though they
were playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where they dreaded
the music stopping because the reward was twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety.
Harry’s scare kept prickling. It happened most often, he noticed, when he was
wearing the Horcrux. Sometimes he could not stop himself reacting to the pain.
“What? What did you see?” demanded Ron, whenever he noticed Harry wince.
“A face,” muttered Harry, every time. “The same face. The thief who stole from
Gregorovitch.”
And Ron would turn away, making no effort to hide his disappointment. Harry
knew that Ron was hoping to bear news of his family or the rest of the Order of the
Phoenix, but after all, he, Harry, was not a television aerial; he could only see what
Voldemort was thinking at the time, not tune in to whatever took his fancy. Apparently
Voldemort was dwelling endlessly on the unknown youth with the gleeful face, whose
name and whereabouts, Harry felt sure, Voldemort knew no better than he did. As
Harry’s scar continued to burn and the merry, blond-haired boy swam tantalizingly in his
memory, he learned to suppress any sign of pain or discomfort, for the other two showed
nothing but impatience at the mention of the thief. He could not entirely blame them,
when they were so desperate for a lean on the Horcruxes.
As the days stretched into weeks, Harry began to suspect that Ron and Hermione
were having conversations without, and about, him. Several times they stopped talking
abruptly when Harry entered the tent, and twice he came accidentally upon them, huddled
a little distance away, heads together and talking fast; both times they fell silent when
they realized he was approaching them and hastened to appear busy collecting wood or
water.
Harry could not help wondering whether they had only agreed to come on what
now felt like a pointless and rambling journey because they thought he had some secret
plan that they would learn in due course. Ton was making no effort to hide his bad mood,
and Harry was starting to fear that Hermione too was disappointed by his poor leadership.
In desperation he tried to think of further Horcrux locations, but the only one that
continued to occur to him was Hogwarts, and as neither of the others thought this at all
likely, he stopped suggesting it.
Autumn rolled over the countryside as they moved through it. They were now
pitching the tent on mulches of fallen leaves. Natural mists joined those cast by the
dementors; wind and rain added to their troubles. The fact that Hermione was getting
better at identifying edible fungi could not altogether compensate for their continuing
isolation, the lack of other people’s company, or their total ignorance of what was going
on in the war against Voldemort.
“My mother,” said Ron on night, as they sat in the tent on a riverbank in Wales,
“can make good food appear out of thin air.”
He prodded moodily at the lumps of charred gray fish on his plate. Harry glanced
automatically at Ron’s neck and saw, as he has expected, the golden chain of the Horcrux
glinting there. He managed to fight down the impulse to swear at Ron, whose attitude
would, he knew, improve slightly when the time came to take off the locket.

“Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air,” said Hermione. “no one can.
Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental
Transfigura—”
“Oh, speak English, can’t you?” Ron said, prising a fish out from between his
teeth.
“It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you
know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got
some—”
“Well, don’t bother increasing this, it’s disgusting,” said Ron.
“Harry caught the fish and I did my best with it! I notice I’m always the one who
ends up sorting out the food, because I’m a girl, I suppose!”
“No, it’s because you’re supposed to be the best at magic!” shot back Ron.
Hermione jumped up and bits of roast pike slid off her tin plate onto the floor.
“You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingredients and try and
charm them into something worth eating, and I’ll sit here and pull faces and moan and
you can see you—”
“Shut up!,” said Harry, leaping to his feet and holding up both hands. “Shut up
now!”
Hermione looked outraged.
“How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook—”
“Hermione, be quiet, I can hear someone!”
He was listening hard, his hands still raised, warning them not to talk. Then, over
the rush and gush of the dark river beside them, he heard voices again. He looked around
at the Sneakoscope. It was not moving.
“You cast the Muffliato charm over us, right?” he whispered to Hermione.
“I did everything,” she whispered back, “Muffliato, Muggle-Repelling and
Disillusionment Charms, all of it. They shouldn’t be able to hear of see us, whoever they
are.”
Heavy scuffing and scraping noises, plus the sound of dislodged stones and twigs,
told them that several people were clambering down the steep, wooded slope that
descended to the narrow bank where they had pitched the tent. They drew their wands,
waiting. The enchantments they had cast around themselves ought to be sufficient, in the
near total darkness, to shield them from the notice of Muggles and normal witches and
wizards. If these were Death Eaters, then perhaps their defenses were about to be tested
by Dark Magic for the first time.
The voices became louder but no more intelligible as the group of men reached
the bank. Harry estimated that their owners were fewer than twenty feet away, but the
cascading river made it impossible to tell for sure. Hermione ***ed up the beaded bag
and started to rummage; after a moment she drew out three Extendible Ears and threw
one each to Harry and Ron, who hastily inserted the ends of the flesh-colored strings into
their ears and fed the other ends out of the tent entrance.
Within seconds Harry heard a weary male voice.
“There ought to be a few salmon in here, or d’you reckon it’s too early in the
season? Accio Salmon!”
There were several distinct splashes and then the slapping sounds of fish against
flesh. Somebody grunted appreciatively. Harry pressed the Extendable ear deeper into his

own: Over the murmur of the river he could make out more voices, but they were not
speaking English or any human language he had ever heard. It was a rough and
unmelodious tongue, a string of rattling, guttural noises, and there seemed to be two
speakers, one with a slightly lower, slower voice than the other.
A fire danced into life on the other side of the canvas, large shadows passed
between tent and flames. The delicious smell of baking salmon wafted tantalizingly in
their direction. Then came the clinking of cutlery on plates, and the first man spoke again.
“Here, Griphook, Gornuk.”
Goblins! Hermione mouthed at Harry, who nodded.
“Thank you,” said the goblins together in English.
“So, you three have been on the run how long?” asked a new, mellow, and
pleasant voice; it was vaguely familiar to Harry, who pictured a round-bellied, cheerful-
faced man.
“Six weeks . . . Seven . . . I forget,” said the tired man. “Met up with Griphook in
the first couple of days and joined forces with Gornuk not long after. Nice to have a but
of company.” There was a pause, while knives scraped plates and tin mugs were picked
up and replaced on the ground. “What made you leave, Ted?” continued the man.
“Knew they were coming for me,” replied mellow-voiced Ted, and Harry
suddenly knew who he was: Tonks’s father. “Heard Death Eaters were in the area last
week and decided I’d better run for it. Refused to register as a Muggle-born on principle,
see, so I knew it was a matter of time, knew I’d have to leave in the end. My wife should
be okay, she’s pure-blood. And then I net Dean here, what, a few days ago, son?”
“Yeah,” said another voice, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione stared at each other,
silent but besides themselves with excitement, sure they recognized the voice of Dean
Thomas, their fellow Gryffindor.
“Muggle-born, eh?” asked the first man.
“Not sure ,” said Dean. “My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I’ve got no proof
he was a wizard, though.”
There was silence for a while, except for the sounds of munching; then Ted spoke
again.
“I’ve got to say, Dirk, I’m surprised to run into you. Pleased, but surprised. Word
was that you’d been caught.”
“I was,” said Dirk. “I was halfway to Azkaban when I made a break for it.
Stunned Dawlish, and nicked his broom. It was easier than you’d think; I don’t reckon
he’s quite right at the moment .Might be Confunded. If so, I’d like to shake the hand of
the witch or wizard who did it, probably saved my life.”
There was another pause in which the fire crackled and the river rushed on. The
Ted said, “And where do you two fit in? I, er, had the impression the goblins were for
You-Know-Who, on the whole.”
“You had a false impression,” said the higher-voiced of the goblins. “We take no
sides. This is a wizards’ war.”
“How come you’re in hiding, then?”
“I deemed in prudent,” said the deeper-voiced goblin. “Having refused what I
considered an impertinent request, I could see that my person safety was in jeopardy.”
“What did they ask you to do?” asked Ted.

“Duties ill-befitting the dignity of my race,” replied the goblin, his voice rougher
and less human as he said it. “I am not a house-elf.”
“What about you, Griphook?”
“Similar reasons,” said the higher voiced goblin. “Gringotts is no longer under the
sole control of my race. I recognize no Wizarding master.”
He added something under his breath in Gobbledegook, and Gornuk laughed.
“What’s the joke?” asked Dean.
“He said,” replied Dirk, “that there are things wizards don’t recognize, either.”
There was a short pause.
“I don’t get it,” said Dean.
“I had my small revenge before I left,,” said Griphook in English.
“Good man—goblin, I should say,” amended Ted hastily. “Didn’t manage to lock
a Death Eater up in one of the old high-security vaults, I suppose?”
“If I had, the sword would not have helped him break out,” replied Griphook.
Gornuk laughed again and even Dirk gave a dry chuckle.
“Dean and I are still missing something here,” said Ted.
“So is Severus Snape, though he does not know it,” said Griphook, and the two
goblins roared with malicious laughter. Inside the tent Harry’s breathing was shallow
with excitement: He and Hermione stared at each other, listening as hard as they could.
“Didn’t you hear about that, Ted?” asked Dirk. “About the kids who tried to steal
Gryffindor’s sword out of Snape’s office at Hogwarts?”
An electric current seemed to course through Harry, jangling his every nerve as he
stood rooted to the spot.
“Never heard a word,” said Ted, “Not in the Prophet, was it?”
“Hardly,” chortled Dirk. “Griphook here told me, he heard about it from Bill
Weasley who works for the bank. One of the kids who tried to take the sword was Bill’s
younger sister.”
Harry glanced toward Hermione and Ron, both of whom were clutching the
Extendable Ears as tightly as lifelines.
“She and a couple of friends got into Snape’s office and smashed open the glass
case where he was apparently keeping the sword. Snape caught them as they were trying
to smuggle it down the staircase.
“Ah, God bless ‘em,” said Ted. “What did they think, that they’d be able to use
the sword on You-Know-Who? Or on Snape himself?
“Well, whatever they thought they were going to do with it, Snape decided the
sword wasn’t safe where it was,” said Dirk. “Couple of days later, once he’d got the say-
so from You-Know-Who, I imagine, he sent it down to London to be kept in Gringotts
instead.”
The goblins started to laugh again.
“I’m still not seeing the joke,” said Ted.
“It’s a fake,” rasped Griphook.
“The sword of Gryffindor!”
“Oh yes. It is a copy—en excellent copy, it is true—but it was Wizard-made. The
original was forged centuries ago by goblins and had certain properties only goblin-made
armor possesses. Wherever the genuine sword of Gryffindor is, it is not in a vault at
Gringotts bank.”

“I see,” said Ted. “And I take it you didn’t bother telling the Death Eaters this/’
“I saw no reason to trouble them with the information,” said Griphook smugly,
and now Ted and Dean joined in Gornuk and Dirk’s laughter.
Inside the tent, Harry closed his eyes, willing someone to ask the question he
needed answered, and after a minute that seemed ten, Dean obliged: he was (Harry
remembered with a jolt) an ex-boyfriend of Ginny’s too.
“What happened to Ginny and all the others? The ones who tried to steal it?”
“Oh, they were punished, and cruelly,” said Griphook indifferently.
“They’re okay, though?” asked Ted quickly, “I mean, the Weasleys don’t need
any more of their kids injured, do they?”
“They suffered no serious injury, as far as I am aware,” said Griphook.
“Lucky for them,” said Ted. “With Snape’s track record I suppose we should just
be glad they’re still alive.”
“You believe that story, then, do you, Ted?” asked Dirk.” You believe Snape
killed Dumbledore?
“Course I do,” said Ted. “You’re not going to sit there and tell me you think
Potter had anything to do with it?”
“Hard to know what to believe these days,” muttered Dirk.
“I know Harry Potter,” said Dean. “And I reckon he’s the real thing—the Chosen
One, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot would like to believe he’s that, son,” said Dirk, “me included.
But where is he? Run for it, by the looks of things. You’d think if he knew anything we
don’t, or had anything special going for him, he’d be out there now fighting, rallying
resistance, instead of hiding. And you know, the Prophet made a pretty good case against
him—”
“The Prophet?” scoffed Ted. “You deserve to be lied to if you’re still reading that
much, Dirk. You want the facts, try the Quibbler.”
There was a sudden explosion of choking and retching, plus a good deal of
thumping, by the sound of it. Dirk had swallowed a fish bone. At last he sputtered, “The
Quibbler? That lunatic rag of Xeno Lovegood’s?”
“It’s not so lunatic these days,” said Ted. “You want to give it a look, Xeno is
printing all the stuff the Prophet’s ignoring, not a single mention of Crumple-Horned
Snorkacks in the last issue. How long they’ll let him get with it, mind, I don’t know. But
Xeno says, front page of every issue, that any wizard who’s against You-Know-Who
ought to make helping Harry Potter their number-one priority.”
“Hard to help a boy who’s vanished off the face of the earth,” said Dirk.
“Listen, the fact that they haven’t caught him yet’s one hell of an achievement,”
said Ted. “I’d take tips from him gladly; it’s what we’re trying to do, stay free, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got a point there,” said Dirk heavily. “With the whole of the
Ministry and all their informers looking for him, I’d have expected him to be caught by
now. Mind, who’s to say they haven’t already caught and killed him without publicizing
it?”
“Ah, don’t say that, Dirk,” murmured Ted.
There was a long pause filled with more clattering of knives and forks. When they
spoke again it was to discuss whether they ought to sleep on the back or retreat back up

the wooded slope. Deciding the trees would give better cover, they extinguished their fire,
then clambered back up the incline, their voices fading away.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione reeled in the Extendable Ears. Harry, who had found
the need to remain silent increasingly diffi*** the longer they eavesdropped, now found
himself unable to say more then, “Ginny—the sword—”
“I know!” said Hermione.
She lunged for the tiny beaded bag, this time sinking her arm in it right up to the
armpit.
“Here . . . we . . . are . . .” she said between gritted teeth, and she pulled at
something that was evidently in the depths of the bag. Slowly the edge of an ornate
picture frame came into sight. Harry hurried to help her. As they lifted the empty portrait
of Phineas Nigellus free of Hermione’s bag, she kept her wand pointing at it, ready to
cast a spell at any moment.
“If somebody swapped the real sword for the face while it was in Dumbledore’s
office,” she panted, as they propped the painting against the side of the tent, “Phineas
Nigellus would have seen it happen, he hangs right beside the case!”
“Unless he was asleep,” said Harry, but he still held his breath as Hermione knelt
down in front of the empty canvas, her wand directed at its center, cleared her throat, then
said:
“Er—Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?”
Nothing happened.
“Phineas Nigellus?” said Hermione again. “Professor Black? Please could we talk
to you? Please?”
“’Please’ always helps,” said a cold, snide voice, and Phineas Nigellus slid into
his portrait. At one, Hermione cried:
“Obscura!”
A black blindfold appeared over Phineas Nigellus’s clever, dark eyes, causing
him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
“What—how dare—what are you—?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Black,” said Hermione, “but it’s a necessary
precaution!”
“remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are ruining a great work
of art! Where am I? What is going on?”
“Never mind where we are,” said Harry, and Phineas Nigellus froze, abandoning
his attempts to peel off the painted blindfold.
“Can that possible be the voice of the elusive Mr. Potter?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, knowing that this would keep Phineas Nigellus’s interest.
“We’ve got a couple of questions to ask you—about the sword of Gryffindor.”
“Ah,” said Phineas Nigellus, now turning his head this way and that in an effort to
catch sight of Harry, “yes. That silly girl acted most unwisely there—”
“Shut up about my sister,” said Ron roughly, Phineas Nigellus raised supercilious
eyebrows.
“Who else is here?” he asked, turning his head from side to side. “Your tone
displeases me! The girl and her friends were foolhardily in the extreme. Thieving from
the headmaster.”
“They weren’t thieving,” said Harry. “That sword isn’t Snape’s.”

“It belongs to Professor Snape’s school,” said Phineas Nigellus. “Exactly what
claim did the Weasley girl have upon it? She deserved her punishment, as did the idiot
Longbottom and the Lovegood oddity!”
“Neville is not an idiot and Luna is not an oddity!” said Hermione.
“Where am I?” repeated Phineas Nigellus, starting to wrestle with the blindfold
again. “Where have you brought me? Why have you removed me from the house of my
forebears?”
“never mind that! How did Snape punish Ginny, Neville, and Luna?” asked Harry
urgently.
“Professor Snape sent them into the Forbidden Forest, to do some work for the
oaf, Hagrid.”
“Hagrid’s not an oaf!” said Hermione shrilly.
“And Snape might’ve though that was a punishment,” said Harry, “buy Ginny,
Neville, and Luna probably had a good laugh with Hagrid. The Forbidden Forest . . .
they’ve faced plenty worse than the Forbidden Forest, big deal!”
He felt relieved; he had been imagining horrors, the Cruciatus Curse at the very
least.
“What we really wanted to know, Professor Black, is whether anyone else has, um,
taken out the sword at all? Maybe it’s been taken away for cleaning—or something!”
Phineas Nigellus paused again in his struggles to free his eyes and sniggered.
“Muggle-born,” he said, “Goblin-made armor does not require cleaning, simple
girl. Goblin’s silver repels mundane dirt, imbibing only that which strengthens it.”
“Don’t call Hermione simple,” said Harry.
“I grow weary of contradiction,” said Phineas Nigellus. “perhaps it is time for me
to return to the headmaster’s office.?”
Still blindfolded, he began groping the side of his frame, trying to feel his way out
of his picture and back into the one at Hogwarts. Harry had a sudden inspiration.
“Dumbledore! Can’t you bring us Dumbledore?”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Phineas Nigellus.
“Professor Dumbledore’s portrait—couldn’t you bring him along, here, into
yours?”
Phineas Nigellus turned his face in the direction of Harry’s voice.
“Evidently it is not only Muggle-borns who are ignorant, Potter. The portraits of
Hogwarts may commune with each other, but they cannot travel outside of the castle
except to visit a painting of themselves elsewhere. Dumbledore cannot come here with
me, and after the treatment I have received at your hands, I can assure you that I will not
be making a return visit!”
Slightly crestfallen, Harry watched Phineas redouble his attempts to leave his
frame.
“Professor Black,” said Hermione, “couldn’t you just tell us, please, when was the
last time the sword was taken out of its case? Before Ginny took it out, I mean?”
Phineas snorted impatiently.
“I believe that the last time I saw the sword of Gryffindor leave its case was when
Professor Dumbledore used it to break open a ring.”
Hermione whipped around to look at Harry. Neither of them dared say more in
front of Phineas Nigellus, who had at least managed to locate the exit.

“Well, good night to you,” he said a little waspishly, and he began to move out of
sight again. Only the edge of his hat brim remained in view when Harry gave a sudden
shout.
“Wait! Have you told Snape you saw this?”
Phineas Nigellus stuck his blindfolded head back into the picture.
“Professor Snape has more important things on his mind that the many
eccentricities of Albus Dumbledore. Good-bye, Potter!”
And with that, he vanished completely, leaving behind him nothing but his murky
backdrop.
“Harry!” Hermione cried.
“I know!” Harry shouted. Unable to contain himself, he punched the air; it was
more than he had dared to hope for. He strode up and down the tent, feeling that he could
have run a mile; he did not even feel hungry anymore. Hermione was squashing Phineas
Nigellus’s back into the beaded bag; when she had fastened the clasp she threw the bag
aside and raised a shining face to Harry.
“The sword can destroy Horcruxes! Goblin-made blades imbibe only that which
strengthens them—Harry, that sword’s impregnated with basilisk venom!”
“And Dumbledore didn’t five it to me because he still needed it, he wanted to use
it on the locket—”
“—and he must have realized they wouldn’t let you have it if he put it in his
will—”
“—so he made a copy—”
“—and put a fake in the glass case—”
“—and he left the real one—where?”
They gazed at east other Harry felt that the answer was dangling invisibly in the
air above them, tantalizingly close. Why hadn’t Dumbledore told him? Or had he, in fact,
told Harry, but Harry had not realized it at the time?”
“Think!” whispered Hermione. “Think! Where would he have left it?”
“Not at Hogwarts,” said Harry, resuming his pacing.
“Somewhere in Hogsmeade?” suggested Hermione.
“The Shrieking Shack?” said Harry. “Nobody ever goes in there.”
“But Snape knows how to get in, wouldn’t that be a bit risky?”
“Dumbledore trusted Snape,” Harry reminded her.
“Not enough to tell him that he had swapped the swords,” said Hermione.
“Yeah, you’re right!” said Harry, and he felt even more cheered at the thought
that Dumbledore had had some reservations, however faint, about Snape’s
trustworthiness. “So, would he have hidden the sword well away from Hogsmeade, then?
What d’you reckon, Ron? Ron?”
Harry looked around. For one bewildered moment he thought that Ron had left
the tent, then realized that Ron was lying in the shadow of a bunk, looking stony.
“Oh, remembered me, have you?” he said.
“What?”
Ron snorted as he stared up at the underside of the upper bunk.
“You two carry on. Don’t let me spoil your fun.”
Perplexed, Harry looked to Hermione for help, but she shook her head, apparently
as nonplussed as he was.

“What’s the problem?” asked Harry.
“Problem? There’s no problem,” said Ron, still refusing to look at Harry. “Not
according to you, anyways.”
There were several plunks on the canvas over their heads. It had started to rain.
“Well, you’ve obviously got a problem,” said Harry. “Spit it out, will you?”
Ron swung his long legs off the bed and sat up. He looked mean, unlike himself.
“All right, I’ll spit it out. Don’t expect me to skip up and down the tent because
there’s some other damn thing we’ve got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don’t
know.”
“I don’t know?” repeated Harry. “I don’t know?”
Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rain was falling harder and heavier; it pattered on the
leaf-strewn bank all around them and into the river chattering through the dark. Dread
doused Harry’s jubilation; Ron was saying exactly what he had suspected and feared him
to be thinking.
“It’s not like I’m not having the time of my life here,” said Ron, “you know, with
my arm mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night. I just
hoped, you know, after we’d been running round a few weeks, we’d have achieved
something.”
“Ron,” Hermione said, but in such a quiet voice that Ron could pretend not to
have heard it over the loud tattoo the rain was beating on the tent.
“I thought you knew what you’d signed up for,” said Harry.
“Yeah, I thought I did too.”
“So what part of it isn’t living up to your expectations?” asked Harry. Anger was
coming to his defense now. “Did you think we’d be staying in five-star hotels? Finding a
Horcrux every other day? Did you think you’d be back to Mummy by Christmas?”
“We thought you knew what you were doing!” shouted Ron, standing up, and his
words Harry like scalding knives. “We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we
thought you had a real plan!”
“Ron!” said Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain thundering on the
tent roof, but again, he ignored her.
“Well, sorry to let you down,” said Harry, his voice quite calm even though he
felt hollow, inadequate. “I’ve been straight with you from the start. I told you everything
Dumbledore told me. And in the case you haven’t noticed, we’ve found one Horcrux—”
“Yeah, and we’re about as near getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of
them—nowhere effing near in other words.”
“take off the locket, Ron,” Hermione said, her voice unusually high. “Please take
it off. You wouldn’t be talking like this if you hadn’t been wearing it all day.”
“Yeah, he would,” said Harry, who did not want excuses made for Ron. “D’you
think I haven’t noticed the two of you whispering behind my back? D’you think I didn’t
guess you were thinking this stuff?
“Harry, we weren’t—”
“Don’t lie!” Ron hurled at her. “You said it too, you said you were disappointed,
you said you’d thought he had a bit more to go on than—”
“I didn’t say it like that—Harry, I didn’t!” she cried.
The rain was pounding the tent, tears were pouring down Hermione’s face, and
the excitement of a few minutes before had vanished as if it had never been, a short-lived

firework that had flared and died, leaving everything dark, wet, and cold. The sword of
Gryffindor was hidden they knew not where, and their were three teenagers in a tent
whose only achievement was not, yet, to be dead.
“So why are you still here?” Harry asked Ron.
“Search me,” said Ron.
“Go home then,” said Harry.
“Yeah, maybe I will!” shouted Ron, and he took several steps toward Harry, who
did not back away. “Didn’t you hear what they said about my sister? But you don’t give a
rat’s fart, do you, it’s only the Forbidden Forest, Harry I’ve-Faced-Worse Potter doesn’t
care what happened to her in there—well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff—”
“I was only saying—she was with the others, they were with Hagrid—”
“Yeah, I get it, you don’t care! And what about the rest of my family, ‘the
Weasleys don’t need another kid injured,’ did you hear that?” “Yeah, I—”
“Not bothered what it meant, though?”
“Ron!” said Hermione, forcing her way between them. “I don’t think it means
anything new has happened, anything we don’t know about; think, Ron, Bill’s already
scared, plenty of people must have seen that George has lost an ear by now, and you’re
supposed to be on your deathbed with spattergroit, I’m sure that’s all he meant—”
“Oh, you’re sure, are you? Right then, well, I won’t bother myself about them.
It’s all right for you, isn’t it, with your parents safely out of the way—”
“My parents are dead!” Harry bellowed.
“And mine could be going the same way!” yelled Ron.
“Then GO!” roared Harry. “Go back to them, pretend you’re got over your
spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you up and—”
Ron made a sudden movement: Harry reacted, but before either wand was clear of
its owner’s pocket, Hermione had raised her own.
“Prestego!” she cried, and an invisible shield expanded between her and Harry on
the one side and Ron on the other; all of them were forced backward a few steps by the
strength of the spell, and Harry and Ron glared from either side of the transparent barrier
as though they were seeing each other clearly for the first time. Harry felt a corrosive
hatred toward Ron: Something had broken between them.
“Leave the Horcrux,” Harry said.
Ron wrenched the chain from over his head and cast the locket into a nearby chair.
He turned to Hermione.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you staying, or what?”
“I . . .” She looked anguished. “Yes—yes, I’m staying. Ron, we said we’d go with
Harry, we said we’d help—”
“I get it. You choose him.”
“Ron, no—please—come back, come back!”
She was impeded by her own Shield Charm; by the time she had removed it he
had already stormed into the night. Harry stood quite still and silent, listening to her
sobbing and calling Ron’s name amongst the trees.
After a few minutes she returned, her sopping hair plastered to her face.
“He’s g-g-gone! Disapparated!”

She threw herself into a chair, curled up, and started to cry.
Harry felt dazed. He stooped, picked up the Horcrux, and placed it around his
own neck. He dragged blankets off Ron’s bunk and threw them over Hermione. Then he
climbed onto his own bed and stared up at the dark canvas roof, listening to the pounding
of the rain.
　

三英战大蛇

Chapter Sixteen
Godric’s Hollow

When Harry woke the following day it was several seconds before he
remembered what had happened. Then he hoped childishly, that it had been a dream, that
Ron was still there and had never left. Yet by turning his head on his pillow he could see
Ron's deserted bunk. It was like a dead body in the way it seems to draw his eyes. Harry
jumped down from his own bed, keeping his eyes averted from Ron's. Hermione, who
was already busy in the kitchen, did not wish Harry good morning, but turned
her face away quickly as he went by. He's gone, Harry told himself. He's gone. He had to
keep thinking it as he washed and dressed as though repetition would dull the shock of it.
He's gone and he's not coming back. And that was the simple truth of it, Harry knew,
because their protective enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they
vacated this spot, for Ron to find them again. He and Hermione ate breakfast in silence.
Hermione's eyes were puffy and red; she looked as if she had not slept. They packed up
their things, Hermione dawdling. Harry knew why she wanted to spin out their time on
the riverbank; several times he saw her look up eagerly, and he was sure she had deluded
herself into thinking that she heard footsteps through the heavy rain, but no red-haired
figure appeared between the trees. Every time Harry imitated her, looked around ( for he
could not help hoping a little, himself) and saw nothing but rain-swept woods, another
little parcel of fury exploded inside him. He could hear Ron saying, "We thought you
knew what you were doing!", and he resumed packing with a hard knot in the pit of his
stomach.
The muddy river beside them was rising rapidly and would soon spill over onto their
bank. They had lingered a good hour after they would usually have departed their
campsite. Finally having entirely repacked the beaded bag three times, Hermione seemed
unable to find any more reasons to delay: She and Harry gasped hands and Disapparated,
reappearing on a windswept heather-covered hillside. The instant they arrived, Hermione
dropped Harry's hand and walked away from him, finally sitting down on a large rock,
her face on her knees, shaking with what he knew were sobs. He watched her, supposing
that he ought to go and comfort her, but something kept him rooted to the spot.
Everything inside him felt cold and tight: Again he saw the contemptuous expression on
Ron's face. Harry strode off through the heather, walking in a large circle with the
distraught Hermione at its center, casting the spell she usually performed to ensure their
protection.
They did not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Harry was determined never to
mention his name again and Hermione seemed to know that it was no use forcing the
issue, although sometimes at night when she thought he was sleeping, he would hear her

crying. Meanwhile Harry had started bringing out the Marauder's map and examining it
by wandlight. He was waiting for the moment when Ron's labeled dot would reappear in
the corridors of Hogwarts, proving that he had returned to the comfortable castle,
protected by his status of pureblood. However, Ron did not appear on the map and after a
while Harry found himself taking it out simply to stare at Ginny's name in the girl's
dormitory, wondering whether the intensity with which he gazed at it might break into
her sleep, that she would somehow know he was thinking about her, hoping that she was
all right.
By day, hey devoted themselves to trying to determine the possible locations of
Gryffindor's sword, but the more they talked about the places in which Dumbledore
might have hidden it, the more desperate and far-fetched their speculation became.
Cudgel his brains though he might, Harry could not remember Dumbledore ever
mentioning a place in which he might hide something. There were moments when he did
not know whether he was angrier with Ron or with Dumbledore. We thought you knew
what you were doing ...We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do ... We thought
you had a real plan!
He could not hide it from himself: Ron had been right. Dumbledore had left him
with virtually nothing. They had discovered one Horcrux, but they had no means of
destroying it: The others were as unattainable as they had ever been. Hopelessness
threatened to engulf him. He was staggered now to think of his own presumption in
accepting his friends' offers to accompany him on this meandering, pointless journey. he
knew nothing, he had no ideas, and he was constantly, painfully on the alert for any
indications that Hermione too was about to tell him that she had had enough. That she
was leaving.
They were spending many evenings in near silence and Hermione took to bringing out
Phineas Nigellus's portrait and propping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of
the gaping hole left by Ron's departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would
never visit them again, Phineas Nigellus did not seem able to resist the chance to find out
more about what Harry was up to and consented to reappear, blindfolded, every few days
of so. Harry was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit of a snide and
taunting kind. They relished any news about what was happening at Hogwarts, though
Phineas Nigellus was not an ideal informer. He venerated Snape, the first Slytherin
headmaster since he himself had controlled the school, and they had to be careful not to
criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape, or Phineas Nigellus would instantly
leave his painting.
However, he did let drop certain snippets. Snape seemed to be facing a constant,
low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny had been banned from going into
Hogsmeade. Snape had reinstated Umbridge's old decree forbidding gatherings of three
or more students or any unofficial student societies. From all of these things, Harry
deduced that Ginny, and probably Neville and Luna along with her, had been doing their
best to continue Dumbledore's Army. This scant news made Harry want to see Ginny so
badly it felt like a stomachache; but it also made him think of Ron again, and of
Dumbledore, and of Hogwarts itself, which he missed nearly as much as his ex-girlfriend.
Indeed, as Phineas Niggellus talked about Snape's crackdown, Harry experienced a split
second of madness when he imagined simply going back to school to join the
destabilization of Snape’s regime: Being fed and having a soft bad, and other people

being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at this moment. But
then he remembered that he was Undesirable Number One, that there was a ten-thousand
Galleon price on his head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days was just as
dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently
emphasized this fact my slipping in leading questions about Harry and
Hermione's whereabouts. Hermione shoved him back inside the beaded bag every time
he did this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refused to reappear for several days after
these unceremonious good-byes.
The weather grew colder and colder. They did not dare remain in any area too
long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the
worst of their worries, they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a
mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was
flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow
half buried the tent in the night. They had already spotted Christmas Trees twinkling
from several sitting room windows before there came an evening when Harry resolved to
suggest again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to them. They had
just eaten an unusually good meal: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the
Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left), and
Harry thought that she might be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of
spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears.
He had also had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours’ break from
wearing the Horcrux, which was hanging over the end of the bunk beside him.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?” She was curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of
Beedle the Bard. He could not imagine how much more she could get out of the book,
which was not, after all, very long, but evidently she was still deciphering something in it,
because Spellman’s Syllabary lay open on the arm of the chair.
Harry cleared his throat. He felt exactly as he had done on the occasion, several
years previously, when he had asked Professor McGonagall whether he could go into
Hogsmeade, despite the fact that he had not persuaded the Dursleys to sign his
permission slip.
“Hermione, I’ve been thinking, and –“
“Harry, could you help me with something?”
Apparently she had not been listening to him. She leaned forward and held out
The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
“Look at that symbol,” she said, pointing to the top of a page. Above what Harry
assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure), there
was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
“I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione.”
“I know that; but it isn’t a rune and it’s not in the syllabary, either. All along I
thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don’t think it is! It’s been inked in, look,
somebody’s drawn it there, it isn’t really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it
before?”
“No . . . No, wait a moment.” Harry looked closer. “Isn’t it the same symbol
Luna’s dad was wearing round his neck?”

“Well, that’s what I thought too!”
“Then it’s Grindelwald’s mark.”
She stared at him, openmouthed.
“What?”
“Krum told me . . .”
He recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told him at the wedding. Hermione
looked astonished.
“Grindelwald’s mark?”
She looked from Harry to the weird symbol and back again. “I’ve never heard that
Grindelwald had a mark. There’s no mention of it in anything I’ve ever read about him.”
“Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang,
and Grindelwald put it there.”
She fell back into the old armchair, frowning.
“That’s very odd. If it’s a symbol of Dark Magic, what’s it doing in a book of
children’s stories?”
“Yeah, it is weird,” said Harry. “And you’d think Scrimgeour would have
recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff.”
“I know. . . . Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories
have little pictures over the titles.”
She did not speak, but continued to pore over the strange mark. Harry tried again.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been thinking. I – I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.”
She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused, and he was sure she was still
thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ve been wondering that too. I really think we’ll have to.”
“Did you hear me right?” he asked.
“Of course I did. You want to go to Godric’s Hollow. I agree. I think we should. I
mean, I can’t think of anywhere else it could be either. It’ll be dangerous, but the more I
think about it, the more likely it seems it’s there.”
“Er – what’s there?” asked Harry.
At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.
“Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you’d want to go back
there, and I mean, Godric’s Hollow is Godric Gryffindor’s birthplace –“
“Really? Gryffindor came from Godric’s Hollow?”
“Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?”
“Erm,” he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in months: The muscles in
his face felt oddly stiff. “I might’ve opened it, you know, when I bought it . . . just the
once. . . .”
“Well, as the village is named after him I’d have thought you might have made
the connection,” said Hermione. She sounded much more like her old self than she had
done of late; Harry half expected her to announce that she was off to the library. “There’s
a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait . . .”
She opened the beaded bag and rummaged for a while, finally extracting her copy
of their old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbed
through until finding the page she wanted.

“’Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went
into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small
communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several
magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of
Tinworsh in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south
coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside
tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical
dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric’s Hollow, the West Country village where the great
wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged
the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families,
and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little
church beside it for many centuries.’
“You and your parents aren’t mentioned.” Hermione said, closing the book,
“because Professor Bagshot doesn’t cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth
century. But you see? Godric’s Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor’s sword; don’t
you think Dumbledore would have expected you to make the connection?”
“Oh yeah . . .”
Harry did not want to admit that he had not been thinking about the sword at all
when he suggested they go to Godric’s Hollow. For him, the lore of the village lay in his
parents’ graves, the house where he had narrowly escaped death, and in the person of
Bathilda Bagshot.
“Remember what Muriel said?” he asked eventually.
“Who?”
“You know,” he hesitated. He did not want to say Ron’s name. “Ginny’s great-
aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles.”
“Oh,” said Hermione. It was a sticky moment: Harry knew that she had sensed
Ron’s name in the offing. He rushed on:
“She said Bathilda Bagshot still lived in Godric’s Hollow.”
“Bathilda Bagshot,” murmured Hermione, running her index finger over
Bathilda’s embossed name on the front cover of A History of Magic. “Well, I suppose –“
She gasped so dramatically that Harry’s insides turned over; he drew his wand,
looking around at the entrance, half expecting to see a hand forcing its way through the
entrance flap, but there was nothing there.
“What?” he said, half angry, half relieved. “What did you do that for? I thought
you’d seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least –“
“Harry, what if Bathilda’s got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to
her?”
Harry considered this possibility. Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by
now, and according to Muriel, she was “gaga.” Was it likely that Dumbledore would
have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, Harry felt that Dumbledore had left
a great deal to chance: Dumbledore had never revealed that he had replaced the sword
with a fake, nor had he so much as mentioned a friendship with Bathilda. Now, however,
was not the moment to cast doubt on Hermione’s theory, not when she was so
surprisingly willing to fall in with Harry’s dearest wish.
“Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to go to Godric’s Hollow?”

“Yes, but we’ll have to think it through carefully, Harry.” She was sitting up now,
and Harry could tell that the prospect of having a plan again had lifted her mood as much
as his. “We’ll need to practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a
start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we
should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case we’ll need to collect hair
from somebody. I actually think we’d better do that, Harry, the thicker our disguises the
better. . . .”
Harry let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a pause, but his mind
had left the conversation. For the first time since he had discovered that the sword in
Gringotts was a fake, he felt excited.
He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family.
It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent
every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house. . . . He might even have
had brothers and sisters. . . . It would have been his mother who had made his
seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as
at this moment, when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken
from him. After Hermione had gone to bed that night, Harry quietly extracted his
rucksack from Hermione’s beaded bag, and from inside it, the photograph album Hagrid
had given him so long ago. For the first time in months, he perused the old pictures of his
parents, smiling and waving up at him from the images, which were all he had left of
them now.
Harry would gladly have set out for Godric’s Hollow the following day, but
Hermione had other ideas. Convinced as she was that Voldemort would expect Harry to
return to the scene of his parents’ deaths, she was determined that they would set off only
after they had ensured that they had the best disguises possible. It was therefore a full
week later – once they had surreptitiously obtained hairs from innocent Muggles who
were Christmas shopping, and had practiced Apparating and Disapparating while
underneath the Invisibility Cloak together – that Hermione agreed to make the journey.
They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it was late
afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a
balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife. The
beaded bag containing all of their possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry was
wearing around his neck) was tucked into an inside pocket of Hermione’s buttoned-up
coat. Harry lowered the Invisibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the
suffocating darkness once again.
Heart beating in his throat, Harry opened his eyes. They were standing hand in
hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night’s first stars were already
glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas
decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden
streetlights indicated the center of the village.
“All this snow!” Hermione whispered beneath the cloak. “Why didn’t we think of
snow? After all our precautions, we’ll leave prints! We’ll just have to get rid of them –
you go in front, I’ll do it –“
Harry did not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse, trying to keep
themselves concealed while magically covering their traces.

“Let’s take off the Cloak,” said Harry, and when she looked frightened, “Oh,
come on, we don’t look like us and there’s no one around.”
He stowed the Cloak under his jacket and they made their way forward
unhampered, the icy air stinging their faces as they passed more cottages. Any one of
them might have been the one in which James and Lily had once lived or where Bathilda
lived now. Harry gazed at the front doors, their snow-burdened roofs, and their front
porches, wondering whether he remembered any of them, knowing deep inside that it was
impossible, that he had been little more than a year old when he had left this place forever.
He was not even sure whether he would be able to see the cottage at all; he did not know
what happened when the subjects of a Fidelius Charm died. Then the little lane along
which they were walking curved to the left and the heart of the village, a small square,
was revealed to them.
Strung all around with colored lights, there was what looked like a war memorial
in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree. There were several shops,
a post office, a pub, and a little church whose stained-glass windows were glowing jewel-
bright across the square.
The snow here had become impacted: It was hard and slippery where people had
trodden on it all day. Villagers were crisscrossing in front of them, their figures briefly
illuminated by streetlamps. They heard a *** of laughter and pop music as the pub
door opened and closed; then they heard a carol start up inside the little church.
“Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve!” said Hermione.
“Is it?”
He had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks.
“I’m sure it is,” said Hermione, her eyes upon the church. “They . . . they’ll be in
there, won’t they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it.”
Harry felt a thrill of something that was beyond excitement, more like fear. Now
that he was so near, he wondered whether he wanted to see after all. Perhaps Hermione
knew how he was feeling, because she reached for his hand and took the lead for the first
time, pulling him forward. Halfway across the square, however, she stopped dead.
“Harry, look!”
She was pointing at the war memorial. As they had passed it, it had transformed.
Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there was a statue of three people: a man with
untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy
sitting in his mother’s arms. Snow lay upon all their heads, like fluffy white caps.
Harry drew closer, gazing up into his parents’ faces. He had never imagined that
there would be a statue. . . . How strange it was to see himself represented in stone, a
happy baby without a scar on his forehead. . . .
“C’mon,” said Harry, when he had looked his fill, and they turned again toward
the church. As they crossed the road, he glanced over his shoulder; the statue had turned
back into the war memorial.
The singing grew louder as they approached the church. It made Harry’s throat
constrict, it reminded him so forcefully of Hogwarts, of Peeves bellowing rude versions
of carols from inside suits of armor, of the Great Hall’s twelve Christmas trees, of
Dumbledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of Ron in a hand-knitted
sweater. . . .

There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushed it
open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path
to the church doors, the snow lay deep and untouched. They moved off through the snow,
carving deep trenches behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the
shadows beneath the brilliant windows.
Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket
of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections
from the stained glass hit the snow. Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his
jacket pocket, Harry moved toward the nearest grave.
“Look at this, it’s an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah’s!”
“Keep your voice down,” Hermione begged him.
They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark tracks into the
snow behind them, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then
squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that they were
unaccompanied.
“Harry, here!”
Hermione was two rows of tombstones away; he had to wade back to her, his
heart positively banging in his chest.
“Is it – ?”
“No, but look!”
She pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw , upon the frozen,
lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way down her dates of
birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation:

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore
family had indeed lived here, and part of it had died here.
Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could not help thinking
that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore
ought to have told him so, yet he had never thought to share the connection. They could
have visited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here with
Dumbledore, of what a bond that would have been, of how much it would have meant to
him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the
same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he
wanted Harry to do.
Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face was hidden in
shadow. He read the words on the tombstone again. Where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also. He did not understand what these words meant. Surely Dumbledore
had chosen them, as the eldest member of the family once his mother had died.
“Are you sure he never mentioned – ?” Hermione began.
“No,” said Harry curtly, then, “let’s keep looking,” and he turned away, wishing
he had not seen the stone: He did not want his excited trepidation tainted with resentment.
“Here!” cried Hermione again a few moments later from out of the darkness. “Oh
no, sorry! I thought it said Potter.”

She was rubbing at a crumbling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little frown on
her face.
“Harry, come back a moment.”
He did not want to be sidetracked again, and only grudgingly made his way back
through the snow toward her.
“What?”
“Look at this!”
The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could hardly make out the
name. Hermione showed him the symbol beneath it.
“Harry, that’s the mark in the book!”
He peered at the place she indicated: The stone was so worn that it was hard to
make out what was engraved there, though there did seem to be a triangular mark beneath
the nearly illegible name.
“Yeah . . . it could be. . . .”
Hermione lit her wand and pointed it at the name on the headstone.
“It says Ig – Ignotus, I think. . . .”
“I’m going to keep looking for my parents, all right?” Harry told her, a slight edge
to his voice, and he set off again, leaving her crouched beside the old grave.
Every now and then he recognized a surname that, like Abbott, he had met at
Hogwarts. Sometimes there were several generations of the same Wizarding family
represented in the graveyard: Harry could tell from the dates that it had either died out, or
the current members had moved away from Godric’s Hollow. Deeper and deeper
amongst the graves he went, and every time he reached a new headstone he felt a little
lurch of apprehension and anticipation.
The darkness and the silence seemed to become, all of a sudden, much deeper.
Harry looked around, worried, thinking of dementors, then realized that the carols had
finished, that the chatter and flurry of churchgoers were fading away as they made their
way back into the square. Somebody inside the church had just turned off the lights.
Then Hermione’s voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and
clear from a few yards away.
“Harry, they’re here . . . right here.”
And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved
toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation
he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart
and lungs.
The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana’s. It was made of
white marble, just like Dumbledore’s tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to
shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make
out the words engraved upon it.


The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.


Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in
their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.
“’The last enemy that shall be defeated is death’ . . .” A horrible thought came to
him, and with a kind of panic. “Isn’t that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?”
“It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry,” said
Hermione, her voice gentle. “It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after
death.”
But they were not living, thought Harry. They were gone. The empty words could
not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone,
indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then
instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending?
He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding
from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust,
not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive
because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under
the snow with them.
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look
at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to
steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something o give them,
and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But
Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas
roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents’ grave.
As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave: He did not think he could stand
another moment there. He put his arm around Hermione’s shoulders, and she put hers
around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past
Dumbledore’s mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing
gate.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Seventeen
Bathilda’s Secret

"Harry, stop."

"What's wrong?"

They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.

"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes."

They stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the
graveyard. Harry could not see anything.

"Are you sure?"


"I saw something move. I could have sworn I did..."

She broke from him to free her wand arm.

"We look like Muggles," Harry pointed out.

"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' grave? Harry, I'm sure there's
someone over there!"

Harry thought of A History of Magic; the graveyard was supposed to be haunted; what if
--? But then he heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to
which Hermione had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow.

"It's a cat," said Harry, after a second or two, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be
dead by now. But let's get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on."

They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. Harry, who
did not feel as sanguine as he had pretended when reassuring Hermione, was glad to
reach the gate and the slippery pavement. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over
themselves. The pub was fuller than before. Many voices inside it were now singing the
carol that they had heard as they approached the church. For a moment, Harry considered
suggesting they take refuge inside it, but before he could say anything Hermione
murmured, "Let's go this way," and pulled him down the dark street leading out of the
village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the
point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked
as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicolored lights, the
outlines of Christmas trees dark through the curtains.

"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" asked Hermione, who was shivering a little
and kept glancing back over her shoulder. "Harry? What do you think? Harry?"

She tugged at this arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He was looking toward the
dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. Next moment he sped up,
dragging Hermione along with him, she slipped a little on the ice.

"Harry --"

"Look ... Look at it, Hermione ..."

"I don't ... oh!"

He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had
grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay
scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though
entirely covered in the dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been
blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired. He and Hermione

stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like
those that flanked it.

"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione.

"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry replied. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark
Magic and you can't repair the damage?"

He slipped a hand from beneath the Cloak and grasped the snowy and thickly rusted gate,
not wishing to open it, but simply so he'd some part of the house.

"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might -- oh, Harry, look!"

His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front
of them, up thorough the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing
flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:

On this spot, on this night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard
ever to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.

And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches
and wizards who had come to see the place where the Boy Who Lived had escaped.
Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials
into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly
over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.

Good luck, Harry, wherever you are.
If you read this, Harry, we're all behind you!
Long live Harry Potter.

"They shouldn't have written on the sign!" said Hermione, indignant.

But Harry beamed at her.

"It's brilliant. I'm glad they did. I ..."

He broke off. A heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them, silhouetted
by the bright lights in the distant square. Harry thought, though it was hard to judge, that
the figure was a woman. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping on the
snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of

extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see
whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew
instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a halt a few yards from them and
simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them.

He did not need Hermione's pinch to his arm. There was next to no chance that this
woman was a Muggle: She was standing there gazing at a house that ought to have been
completely invisible to her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch,
however, it was odd behavior to come out on a night this cold, simply to look at an old
ruin. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see
Hermione and him at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that
they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion,
she raised a gloved hand and beckoned.

Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak, her arm pressed against his.

"How does she know?"

He shook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Harry could think of
many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet his suspicions about her identity were
growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street.

Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these long months? That
Dumbledore had told her to wait, and that Harry would come in the end? Was it not likely
that it was she who had moved in the shadows in the graveyard and had followed them to
this spot? Even her ability to sense them suggested some Dumbledore-ish power that he
had never encountered before.

Finally Harry spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump.

"Are you Bathilda?"

The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again.

Beneath the Cloak Harry and Hermione looked at each other. Harry raised his eyebrows;
Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod.

They stepped toward the woman and , at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way
they had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed
her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left.
She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back
to let them pass.

She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house; Harry wrinkled his nose as they sidled past
her and pulled off the Cloak. Now that he was beside her, he realized how tiny she was;
bowed down with age, she came barely level with his chest. She closed the door behind

them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into
Harry's face. Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken into folds of transparent skin,
and her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. He wondered whether
she could make him out at all; even if she could, it was the balding Muggle whose
identity he had stolen that she would see.

The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as the
unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which
the scalp showed clearly.

"Bathilda?" Harry repeated.

She nodded again. Harry became aware of the locket against his skin; the thing inside it
that sometimes ticked or beat had woken; he could feel it pulsing through the cold gold.
Did it know, could it sense, that the thing that would destroy it was near?

Bathilda shuffled past them, pushing Hermione aside as though she had not seen her, and
vanished into what seemed to be a sitting room.

"Harry, I'm not sure about this," breathed Hermione.

"Look at the size of her, I think we could overpower her if we had to," said Harry. "Listen,
I should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga.'"

"Come!" called Bathilda from the next room.

Hermione jumped and clutched Harry's arm.

"It's okay," said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the sitting room.

Bathilda was tottering around the place lighting candles, but it was still very dark, not to
mention extremely dirty. Thick dust crunched beneath their feet, and Harry's nose
detected, underneath the dank and mildewed smell, something worse, like meat gone bad.
He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda's house to check
whether she was coping. She seemed to have forgotten that she could do magic, too, for
she lit the candles clumsily by hand, her trailing lace cuff in constant danger of catching
fire.

"Let me do that," offered Harry, and he took the matches from her. She stood watching
him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room,
perched precariously on stacks of books and on side tables crammed with cracked and
moldy cups.

The last surface on which Harry spotted a candle was a bow-fronted chest of drawers on
which there stood a large number of photographs. When the flame danced into life, its
reflection wavered on their dusty glass and silver. He saw a few tiny movements from the

pictures. As Bathilda fumbled with logs for the fire, he muttered "Tergeo": The dust
vanished from the photographs, and he saw at once that half a dozen were missing from
the largest and most ornate frames. He wondered whether Bathilda or somebody else had
removed them. Then the sight of a photograph near the back of the collection caught his
eye, and he ***ed it up.

It was the golden-haired, merry-faced thief, the young man who had perched on
Gregorovitch's windowsill, smiling lazily up at Harry out of the silver frame. And it came
to Harry instantly where he had seen the boy before: in The Life and Lies of Albus
Dumbledore, arm in arm with the teenage Dumbledore, and that must be where all the
missing photographs were: in Rita's book.

"Mrs. -- Miss -- Bagshot?" he said, and his voice shook slightly. "Who is this?"

Bathilda was standing in the middle of the room watching Hermione light the fire for her.

"Miss Bagshot?" Harry repeated, and he advanced with the picture in his hands as the
flames burst into life in the fireplace. Bathilda looked up at his voice, and the Horcrux
beat faster upon his chest.

"Who is this person?" Harry asked her, pushing the picture forward.

She peered at it solemnly, then up at Harry.

"Do you know who this is?" he repeated in a much slower and louder voice than usual.
"This man? Do you know him? What's he called?"

Bathilda merely looked vague. Harry felt an awful frustration. How had Rita Skeeter
unlocked Bathilda's memories?

"Who is this man?" he repeated loudly.

"Harry, what area you doing?" asked Hermione.

"This picture. Hermione, it's the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please!" he
said to Bathilda. "Who is this?"

But she only stared at him.

"Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs. - Miss -- Bagshot?" asked Hermione,
raising her own voice. "Was there something you wanted to tell us?"

Giving no sign that she had heard Hermione, Bathilda now shuffled a few steps closer to
Harry. With a little jerk of her head she looked back into the hall.

"You want us to leave?" he asked.


She repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at him, then at herself, then at the
ceiling.

"Oh, right... Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her."

"All right," said Hermione, "let's go."

But when Hermione moved, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigor, once more
pointing first at Harry, then to herself.

"She wants me to go with her, alone."

"Why?" asked Hermione, and her voice rang out sharp and clear in the candlelit room, the
old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise.

"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only to me?"

"Do you really think she knows who you are?"

"Yes," said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon his own. "I think she
does."

"Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry."

"Lead the way," Harry told Bathilda.

She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around him toward the door. Harry
glanced back at Hermione with a reassuring smile, but he was not sure she had seen it;
she stood hugging herself in the midst of the candlelit squalor, looking toward the
bookcase. As Harry walked out of the room, unseen by both Hermione and Bathilda, he
slipped the silver-framed photograph of the unknown thief inside his jacket.

The stairs were steep and narrow; Harry was half tempted to place his hands on stout
Bathilda's backside to ensure that she did not topple over backward on top of him, which
seemed only too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper landing,
turned immediately right, and led him into a low-ceilinged bedroom.

It was pitch-black and smelled horrible: Harry had just made out a chamber pot
protruding from under the bed before Bathilda closed the door and even that was
swallowed by the darkness.

"Lumos," said Harry, and his wand ignited. He gave a start: Bathilda had moved close to
him in those few seconds of darkness, and he had not heard her approach.

"You are Potter?" she whispered.


"Yes, I am."

She nodded slowly, solemnly. Harry felt the Horcrux beating fast, faster than his own
heart; It was an unpleasant, agitating sensation.

"Have you got anything for me?" Harry asked, but she seemed distracted by his lit wand-
tip.

"Have you got anything for me?" he repeated.

Then she closed her eyes and several things happened at once: Harry's scar prickled
painfully; the Horcrux twitched so that the front of his sweater actually moved; the dark,
fetid room dissolved momentarily. He felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice:
Hold him!

Harry swayed where he stood: The dark, foul-smelling room seemed to close around him
again; he did not know what had just happened.

"Have you got anything for me?" he asked for a third time, much louder.

"Over here," she whispered, pointing to the corner. Harry raised his wand and saw the
outline of a cluttered dressing table beneath the curtained window.

This time she did not lead him. Harry edged between her and the unmade bed, his wand
raised. He did not want to look away from her.

"What is it?" he asked as he reached the dressing table, which was heaped high with what
looked and smelled like dirty laundry.

"There," she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.

And in the instant that he looked away, his eyes taking the tangled mess for a sword hilt,
a ruby, she moved weirdly: He saw it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn
and horror paralyzed him as he saw the old body collapsing and the great s*** pouring
from the place where her neck had been.

The s*** struck as he raised his wand: The force of the bite to his forearm sent the wand
spinning up toward the ceiling; its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was
extinguished; Then a powerful blow from the tail to his midriff knocked the breath out of
him: He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing --

He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the s***'s tail, which thrashed down upon the
table where he had been a second earlier. Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him
as he hit the floor. From below he heard Hermione call, "Harry?"


He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass
smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular --

"No!" he gasped, pinned to the floor.

"Yes," whispered the voice. "Yesss... hold you ... hold you ..."

"Accio ... Accio Wand ..."

But nothing happened and he needed his hands to try to force the s*** from him as it
coiled itself around his torso, squeezing the air from him, pressing the Horcrux hard into
his chest, a circle of ice that throbbed with life, inches from his own frantic heart, and his
brain was flooding with cold, white light, all thought obliterated, his own breath drowned,
distant footsteps, everything going...

A metal heart was banging outside his chest, and now he was flying, flying with triumph
in his heart, without need of broomstick or thestral...

He was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness; Nagini had released him. He
scrambled up and saw the s*** outlined against the landing light: It struck, and
Hermione dived aside with a shriek; her deflected curse hit the curtained window, which
shattered. Frozen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid another shower of broken
glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like something -- his wand --

He bent and ***ed it up, but now the room was full of the s***, its tail thrashing;
Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for a moment Harry thought the worst, but then
there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the s*** flew into the air, smacking
Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Harry
raised his wand, but as he did so, his scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it
had done in years.

"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"

As he yelled the s*** fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos: It smashed shelves
from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere as Harry jumped over the bed and
seized the dark shape he knew to be Hermione --

She shrieked with pain as he pulled her back across the bed: The s*** reared again, but
Harry knew that worse than the s*** was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his
head was going to split open with the pain from his scar --

The s*** lunged as he took a running leap, dragging Hermione with him; as it struck,
Hermione screamed, "Confringo!" and her spell flew around the room, exploding the
wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling; Harry felt
the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as, pulling Hermione with him,
he leapt from bed to broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window

into nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as they twisted in midair ...

And then his scar burst open and he was Voldemort and he was running across the fetid
bedroom, his long white hands clutching at the windowsill as he glimpsed the bald man
and the little woman twist and vanish, and he screamed with rage, a scream that mingled
with the girl's, that echoed across the dark gardens over the church bells ringing in
Christmas Day...

And his scream was Harry's scream, his pain was Harry's pain... that it could happen here,
where it had happened before... here, within sight of that house where he had come so
close to knowing what it was to die ... to die ... the pain was so terrible ... ripped from his
body ... But if he had no body, why did his head hurt so badly; if he was dead, how cold
he feel so unbearably, didn't pain cease with death, didn't it go ...

The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square
and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a
world in which they did not believe ... And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose
and power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occasions ... Not anger ...
that was for weaker souls than he ... but triumph, yes ... He had waited for this, he had
hoped for it ...

"Nice costume, mister!"

He saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the
cloak, saw the fear cloud his pained face: Then the child turned and ran away ... Beneath
the robe he fingered the handle of his wand ... One simple movement and the child would
never reach his mother ... but unnecessary, quite unnecessary ...

And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last,
the Fidelius Charm broken, though they did not know it yet ... And he made less noise
than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge,
and steered over it ...

They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the
tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand
for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. The child was
laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his small fist ...

A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he cold not hear, her long dark-red
hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the
mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning...

The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. His white
hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open...

He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he

had not even picked up his wand ...

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Hold him off, without a wand in his hand! ... He laughed before casting the curse ...

"Avada Kedavra!"

The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it
made the banisters glow like lighting rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose
strings were cut ...

He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was
sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear ... He climbed the steps, listening with faint
amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in ... She had no wand upon her either ...
How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that
weapons could be discarded even for moments...

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one
lazy wave of his wand ... and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him,
she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would
help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead ...

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl... stand aside, now."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead --"

"This is my last warning --"

"Not Harry! Please ... have mercy ... have mercy ... Not Harry! Not Harry! Please -- I'll
do anything ..."

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them
all ...

The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had
not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up
into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his
father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop
up any moment, laughing --

He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face: He wanted to see it happen, the

destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: It had seen that he
was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small
ones whining in the orphanage --

"Avada Kedavra!"

And then he broke. He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself,
not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped screaming, but far
away ... far away ...

"No," he moaned.

The s*** rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and he had killed the boy, and yet he was
the boy ...

"No..."

And now he stood at the broken window of Bathilda's house, immersed in memories of
his greatest loss, and at his feet the great s*** slithered over broken china and glass... He
looked down and saw something... something incredible...

"No..."

"Harry, it's all right, you're all right!"

He stooped down and picked up the smashed photograph. There he was, the unknown
thief, the thief he was seeking...

"No... I dropped it... I dropped it ..."

"Harry, it's okay, wake up, wake up!"

He was Harry... Harry, not Voldemort ... and the thing that was rustling was not a s*** ...
He opened his eyes.

"Harry," Hermione whispered. "Do you feel all -- all right?"

"Yes," he lied.

He was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a heap of blankets. He could
tell that it was almost dawn by the stillness and quality of the cold, flat light beyond the
canvas ceiling. He was drenched in sweat; he could feel it on the sheets and blankets.

"We got away."

"Yes," said Hermione. "I had to use a Hover Charm to get you into your bunk. I couldn't

lift you. You've been ... Well, you haven't been quite ..."

There were purple shadows under her brown eyes and he noticed a small sponge in her
hand: She had been wiping his face.

"You've been ill," she finished. "Quite ill."

"How long ago did we leave?"

"Hours ago. It's nearly morning."

"And I've been... what, unconscious?"

"Not exactly," said Hermione uncomfortably. "You've been shouting and moaning and ...
things," she added in a tone that made Harry feel uneasy. What had he done? Screamed
curses like Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib?

"I couldn't get the Horcrux off you," Hermione said, and he knew she wanted to change
the subject. "It was stuck, stuck to your chest. You've got a mark; I'm sorry, I had to use a
Severing Charm to get it away. The s*** hit you too, but I've cleaned the wound and put
some dittany on it ..."

He pulled the sweaty T-shirt he was wearing away from himself and looked down. There
was a scarlet oval over his heart where the locket had burned him. He could also see the
half healed puncture marks to his forearm.

"Where've you put the Horcrux?"

"In my bag. I think we should keep it off for a while."

He lay back on his pillows and looked into her pinched gray face.

"We shouldn't have gone to Godric's Hollow. It's my fault, it's all my fault. Hermione, I'm
sorry."

"It's not you fault. I wanted to go too; I really thought Dumbledore might have left the
sword there for you."

"Yeah, well ... we got that wrong, didn't we?"

"What happened, Harry? What happened when she took you upstairs? Was the s***
hiding somewhere? Did it just come out and kill her and attack you?"

"No." he said. "She was the s*** ... or the s*** was her ... all along."

"W-what?"


He closed his eyes. He could still smell Bathilda's house on him; it made the whole thing
horribly vivid.

"Bathilda must've been dead a while. The s*** was ... was inside her. You-Know-Who
put it there in Godric's Hollow, to wait. You were right. He knew I'd go back."

"The s*** was inside her?"

He opened his eyes again. Hermione looked revolted, nauseated.

"Lupin said there would be magic we'd never imagined." Harry said. "She didn't want to
talk in front of you, because it was Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn't realize,
but of course I could understand her. Once we were up in the room, the s*** sent a
message to You-Know-Who, I heard it happen inside my head, I felt him get excited, he
said to keep me there ... and then ..."

He remembered the s*** coming out of Bathilda's neck: Hermione did not need to know
the details.

"...she changed, changed into the s***, and attacked."

He looked down at the puncture marks.

"It wasn't supposed to kill me, just keep me there till You-Know-Who came."

If he had only managed to kill the s***, it would have been worth it, all of it ... Sick at
heart, he sat up and threw back the covers.

"Harry, no, I'm sure you ought to rest!"

"You're the one who needs sleep. No offense, but you look terrible. I'm fine. I'll keep
watch for a while. Where's my wand?"

She did not answer, she merely looked at him.

"Where's my wand, Hermione?"

She was biting her lip, and tears swam in her eyes.

"Harry ..."

"Where's my wand?"

She reached down beside the bed and held it out to him.


The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One fragile strand of phoenix
feather kept both pieces hanging together. The wood had splintered apart completely.
Harry took it into his hands as though it was a living thing that had suffered a terrible
injury. He could not think properly: Everything was a blur of panic and fear. Then he
held out the want to Hermione.

"Mend it. Please."

"Harry, I don't think, when it's broken like this --"

"Please, Hermione, try!"

"R-Reparo."

The dangling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.

"Lumos!"

The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at Hermione.

"Expelliarmus!"

Hermione's wand gave a little jerk, but did not leave her hand. The feeble attempt at
magic was too much for Harry's wand, which split into two again. He stared at it, aghast,
unable to take in what he was seeing ... the wand that had survived so much ...

"Harry." Hermione whispered so quietly he could hardly hear her. "I'm so, so sorry. I
think it was me. As we were leaving, you know, the s*** was coming for us, and so I
cast a Blasting Curse, and it rebounded everywhere, and it must have -- must have hit --"

"It was an accident." said Harry mechanically. He felt empty, stunned. "We'll -- we'll find
a way to repair it."

"Harry, I don't think we're going to be able to," said Hermione, the ears trickling down
her face. "Remember ... remember Ron? When he broke his wand, crashing the car? It
was never the same again, he had to get a new one."

Harry thought of Ollivander, kidnapped and held hostage by Voldemort; of Gregorovitch,
who was dead. How was he supposed to find himself a new wand?

"Well," he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice, "well, I'll just borrow yours for now,
then. While I keep watch."

Her face glazed with tears, Hermione handed over her wand, and he left her sitting beside
his bed, desiring nothing more than to get away from her.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Eighteen
The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore
The sun was coming up: The pure, colorless vastness of the sky stretched over
him, indifferent to him and his suffering. Harry sat down in the tent entrance and took a
deep breath of clean air. Simply to be alive to watch the sun rise over the sparkling snowy
hillside ought to have been the greatest treasure on earth, yet he could not appreciate it:
His senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his want. He looked out over a
valley blanketed in snow, distant church bells chiming through the glittering silence.
Without realizing it, he was digging his fingers into his arms as if he were trying
to resist physical pain. He had spilled his own blood more times than he could count; he
had lost all bones in his right arm once; this journey had already given him scars to his
chest and forearm to join those on his hand and forehead, but never, until this moment,
had he felt himself to be fatally weakened, vulnerable, and ***d, as though the best part
of his magical power had been torn from him. He knew exactly what Hermione would
say if he expressed any of this: The wand is only as good as the wizard. But she was
wrong, his case was different. She had not felt the wand spin like the needle of a compass
and shoot golden flames at his enemy. He had lost the protection of the twin cores, and
only now that it was gone did he realize how much he had been counting on it.
He pulled the pieces of the broken wand out of his pocket and, without looking at
them, tucked them away in Hagrid’s pouch around his neck. The pouch was now too full
of broken and useless objects to take any more. Harry’s hand brushed the old Snitch
through the mokeskin and for a moment he had to fight the temptation to pull it out and
throw it away. Impenetrable, unhelpful, useless, like everything else Dumbledore had left
behind ---
And his fury at Dumbledore broke over him now like lava, scorching him inside,
wiping out every other feeling. Out of sheer desperation they had talked themselves into
believing that Godric’s Hollow held answers, convinced themselves that they were
supposed to go back, that it was all part of some secret path laid out for them by
Dumbledore: but there was no map, no plan. Dumbledore had left them to grope in the
darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided: Nothing
was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and now, Harry had no
wand. And he had dropped the photograph of the thief, and it would surely be easy now
for Voldemort to find out who he was . . .
Voldemort had all the information now . . .
“Harry?”
Hermione looked frightened that he might curse her with her own wand. Her face
streaked with tears, she crouched down beside him, two cups of tea trembling in her
hands and something bulky under her arm.
“Thanks,” he said, taking one of the cups.
“Do you mind if I talk to you?”
“No,” he said because he did not want to hurt her feelings.
“Harry, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was. Well . . . I’ve got
the book.”
Timidly she pushed it onto his lap, a pristine copy of The Life and Lies of Albus
Dumbledore.

“Where --- how --- ?”
“It was in Bathilda’s sitting room, just lying there. . . . This note was sticking out
of the top of it.”
Hermione read the few lines of spiky, acid-green writing aloud.
“ ‘Dear Bally, Thanks for your help. Here’s a copy of the book, hope you like it.
You said everything, even if you don’t remember it. Rita.’ I think it must have arrived
while the real Bathilda was alive, but perhaps she wasn’t in any fit state to read it?”
“No, she probably wasn’t.”
Harry looked down upon Dumbledore’s face and experienced a surge of savage
pleasure: Now he would know if all the things that Dumbledore had never thought it
worth telling him, whether Dumbledore wanted him to or not.
“You’re still really angry at me, aren’t you?” said Hermione; he looked up to see
fresh tears leaking out of her eyes, and knew that his anger must have shown in his face.
“No,” he said quietly. “No, Hermione, I know it was an accident. You were trying
to get us out of there alive, and you were incredible. I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there
to help me.”
He tried to return her watery smile, then turned his attention to the book. Its spine
was stiff; it had clearly never been opened before. He riffled through the pages, looking
for photographs. He came across the one he sought almost at once, the young
Dumbledore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some long-forgotten
joke. Harry dropped his eyes to the caption.

Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother’s death,
With his friend Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry gaped at the last word for several long moments. Grindelwald. His friend
Grindelwald. He looked sideways at Hermione, who was still contemplating the name as
though she could not believe her eyes. Slowly she looked up at Harry.
“Grindelwald!”
Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the pages around them
for a recurrence of that fatal name. He soon discovered it and read greedily, but became
lost: It was necessary to go farther back to make sense of it all, and eventually he found
himself at the start of a chapter entitled “The Greater Good.” Together, he and Hermione
started to read:

Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left Hogwarts in a blaze
of glory --- Head Boy, Prefect, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for
Exceptional Spell-Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot,
Gold Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International
Alchemical Conference in Cairo. Dumbledore intended, next, to take a Grand
Tour with Elphias “Dogbreath” Doge, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he
had picked up at school.
The two young men were staying at the Leaky Cauldron in London,
preparing to depart for Greece the following morning, when an owl arrived
bearing news of Dumbledore’s mother’s death. “Dogbreath” Doge, who refused
to be interviewed for this book, has given the public his own sentimental

version of what happened next. He represents Kendra’s death as a tragic blow,
and Dumbledore’s decision to give up his expedition as an act of noble self-
sacrifice.
Certainly Dumbledore returned to Godric’s Hollow at once, supposedly to
“care” for his younger brother and sister. But how much care did he actually
give them?
“He were a head case, that Aberforth,” said Enid Smeek, whose family lived
on the outskirts of Godric’s Hollow at that time. “Ran wild. ‘Course, with his
mum and dad gone you’d have felt sorry for him, only he kept chucking goat
dung at my head. I don’t think Albus was fussed about him. I never saw them
together, anyway.”
So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The
answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued imprisonment of his sister. For
though her first jailer had died, there was no change in the pitiful condition of
Ariana Dumbledore. Her very existence continued to be known only to those
few outsiders who, like “Dogbreath” Doge, could be counted upon to believe in
the story of her “ill health.”
Another such easily satisfied friend of the family was Bathilda Bagshot, the
celebrated magical historian who has lived in Godric’s Hollow for many years.
Kendra, of course, had rebuffed Bathilda when she first attempted to welcome
the family to the village. Several years later, however, the author sent an owl to
Albus at Hogwarts, having been favorably impressed by his paper on trans-
species transformation in Transfiguration Today. This initial contract led to
acquaintance with the entire Dumbledore family. At the time of Kendra’s death,
Bathilda was the only person in Godric’s Hollow who was on speaking terms
with Dumbledore’s mother.
Unfortunately, the brilliance that Bathilda exhibited earlier in her life has
now dimmed. “The fire’s lit, but the cauldron’s empty,” as Ivor Dillonsby put it
to me, or, in Enid Smeek’s slightly earthier phrase, “She’s nutty as squirrel
poo.” Nevertheless, a combination of tried-and-tested reporting techniques
enabled me to extract enough nuggets of hard fact to string together the whole
scandalous story.
Like the rest of the Wizarding world, Bathilda puts Kendra’s premature death
down to a backfiring charm, a story repeated by Albus and Aberforth in later
years. Bathilda also parrots the family line on Ariana, calling her “frail” and
“delicate.” On one subject, however, Bathilda is well worth the effort I put into
procuring Veritaserum, for she, and she alone, knows the full story of the best-
kept secret of Albus Dumbledore’s life. Now revealed for the first time, it calls
into question everything that his admirers believed of Dumbledore: his
supposed hatred of the Dark Arts, his opposition into the oppression of Muggles,
even his devotion to his own family.
The very same summer that Dumbledore went home to Godric’s Hollow,
now an orphan and head of the family, Bathilda Bagshot agreed to accept into
her home her great-nephew, Gellert Grindelwald.
The name of Grindelwald is justly famous: In a list of Most Dangerous Dark
Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-

Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never
extended his campaign of terror to Britain, however, the details of his rise to
power are not widely known here.
Educated at Durmstrang, a school famous even then for its unfortunate
tolerance of the Dark Arts, Grindelwald showed himself quite as precociously
brilliant as Dumbledore. Rather than channel his abilities into the attainment of
awards and prizes, however, Gellert Grindelwald devoted himself no other
pursuits. At sixteen years old, even Durmstrang felt it could no longer turn a
blind eye to the twisted experiments of Gellert Grindelwald, and he was
expelled.
Hitherto, all that has been known of Grindelwald’s next movements is that he
“traveled around for some months.” It can now be revealed that Grindelwald
chose to visit his great-aunt in Godric’s Hollow, and that there, intensely
shocking though it will be for many to hear it, he struck up a close friendship
with none other than Albus Dumbledore.
“He seemed a charming boy to me,” babbles Bathilda, “whatever he became
later. Naturally I introduced him to poor Albus, who was missing the company
of lads his own age. The boys took to each other at once.”
They certainly did. Bathilda shows me a letter, kept by her that Albus
Dumbledore sent Gellert Grindelwald in the dead of night.
“Yes, even after they’d spent all day in discussion --- both such brilliant
young boys, they got on like a cauldron on fire --- I’d sometimes hear an owl
tapping at Gellert’s bedroom window, delivering a letter from Albus! An idea
would have struck him and he had to let Gellert know immediately!”
And what ideas they were. Profoundly shocking though Albus Dumbledore’s
fans will find it, here are the thoughts of their seventeen-year-old hero, as
relayed to his new best friend. (A copy of the original letter may be seen on
page 463.)

Gellert ---
Your point about Wizard dominance being FOR THE MUGGLES’
OWN GOOD --- this, I think, is the crucial point. Yes, we have been given
power and yes, that power gives us the right to rule, but it also gives us
responsibilities over the ruled. We must stress this point, it will be the
foundation stone upon which we build. Where we are opposed, as we
surely will be, this must be the basis of all our counterarguments. We seize
control FOR THE GREATER GOOD. And from this it follows that where
we meet resistance, we must use only the force that is necessary and no
more. (This was your mistake at Durmstrang! But I do not complain,
because if you had not been expelled, we would never have met.)
Albus

Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter
constitutes the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles.
What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-
borns’ greatest champion! How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights

seem in the light of this damning new evidence! How despicable does Albus
Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been
mourning his mother and caring for his sister!
No doubt those determined to keep Dumbledore on his crumbling pedestal
will bleat that he did not, after all, put his plans into action, that he must have
suffered a change of heart, that he came to his senses. However, the truth seems
altogether more shocking.
Barely two months into their great new friendship, Dumbledore and
Grindelwald parted, never to see each other again until they met for their
legendary duel (for more, see chapter 22). What caused this abrupt rupture? Had
Dumbledore come to his senses? Had he told Grindelwald he wanted no more
part in his plans? Alas, no.
“It was poor little Ariana dying, I think, that did it,” says Bathilda. “It came
as an awful shock. Gellert was there in the house when it happened, and he
came back to my house all of a dither, told me he wanted to go home the next
day. Terribly distressed, you know. So I arranged a Portkey and that was the last
I saw of him.
“Albus was beside himself at Ariana’s death. It was so dreadful for those two
brothers. They had lost everybody except for each other. No wonder tempers
ran a little high. Aberforth blamed Albus, you know, as people will under these
dreadful circumstances. But Aberforth always talked a little madly, poor boy.
All the same, breaking Albus’s nose at the funeral was not decent. It would have
destroyed Kendra to see her sons fighting like that, across her daughter’s body.
A shame Gellert could not have stayed for the funeral. . . . He would have been
a comfort to Albus, at least. . . .
This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few who attended
Ariana Dumbledore’s funeral, raises several questions. Why exactly did
Aberforth Dumbledore blame Albus for his sister’s death? Was it, as “Batty”
pretends, a mere effusion of grief? Or could there have been some more
concrete reason for his fury? Grindelwald, expelled from Durmstrang for the
near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the country hours after the girl’s
death, and Albus (out of shame or fear?) never saw him again, not until forced
to do so by the pleas of the Wizarding world.
Neither Dumbledore nor Grindelwald ever seems to have referred to this
brief boyhood friendship in later life. However, there can be no doubt that
Dumbledore delayed, for some five years of turmoil, fatalities, and
disappearances, his attack upon Gellert Grindelwald. Was it lingering affection
for the man or fear of exposure as his once best friend that caused Dumbledore
to hesitate? Was it only reluctantly that Dumbledore set out to capture the man
he was once so delighted he had met?
And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the inadvertent victim of
some Dark rite? Did she stumble across something she ought not to have done,
as the two young men sat practicing for their attempt at glory and domination?
Is it possible that Ariana Dumbledore was the first person to die “for the greater
good”?


The chapter ended here and Harry looked up. Hermione had reached the bottom
of the page before him. She tugged the book out of Harry’s hands, looking a little
alarmed by his expression, and closed it without looking at it, as though hiding something
indecent.
“Harry ---”
But he shook his head. Some inner certainty had crashed down inside him; it was
exactly as he had felt after Ron left. He had trusted Dumbledore, believed him the
embodiment of goodness and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose?
Ron, Dumbledore, the phoenix wand . . .
“Harry.” She seemed to have heard his thoughts. "Listen to me. It --- it doesn't
make a very nice reading ---"
"Yeah, you could say that ---"
"--- but don't forget, Harry, this is Rita Skeeter writing."
"You did read that letter to Grindelwald, didn't you?"
"Yes, I --- I did." She hesitated, looking upset, cradling her tea in her cold hands.
"I think that's the worst bit. I know Bathilda thought it was all just talk, but 'For the
Greater Good' became Grindelwald's slogan, his justification for all the atrocities he
committed later. And . . . from that . . . it looks like Dumbledore gave him the idea. They
say 'For the Greater Good' was even carved over the entrance to Nurmengard."
"What's Nurmengard?"
"The prison Grindelwald had built to hold his opponents. He ended up in there
himself, once Dumbledore had caught him. Anyway, it's --- it’s an awful thought that
Dumbledore's ideas helped Grindelwald rise to power. But on the other hand, even Rita
can't pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when
they were both really young, and ---"
"I thought you'd say that," said Harry. He did not want to let his anger spill out at
her, but it was hard to keep his voice steady. "I thought you'd say 'They were young.'
They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the
Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to
power over the Muggles."
His temper would not remain in check much longer: He stood up and walked
around, trying to work some of it off.
"I'm not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote," said Hermione. "All that 'right
to rule' rubbish, it's 'Magic Is Might' all over again. But Harry, his mother had just died,
he was stuck alone in the house ---"
"Alone? He wasn't alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib
sister he was keeping locked up ---"
"I don't believe it," said Hermione. She stood up too. "Whatever was wrong with that
girl, I don't think she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have
allowed---"
"The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn't want to conquer Muggles by force!"
Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose
into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.
"He changed, Harry, he changed! It's as simple as that! Maybe he did believe
these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to
fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who

always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle born rights, who fought You-Know-
Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him down!"
Rita's book lay on the ground between them, so that the face of Albus
Dumbledore smiled dolefully at both.
"Harry, I'm sorry, but I think the real reason you're so angry is that Dumbledore
never told you any of this himself."
"Maybe I am!" Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly
knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of
his own disillusionment. "Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry!
And again! And again! And don't expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly,
trust that I know what I'm doing, trust me even though I don't trust you! Never the whole
truth! Never!"
His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at each other in the
whiteness and emptiness, and Harry felt they were as insignificant as insects beneath that
wide sky.
"He loved you," Hermione whispered. "I know he loved you."
Harry dropped his arms.
"I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn't love, the
mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with
Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me."
Harry picked up Hermione's wand, which he had dropped in the snow, and sat
back down in the entrance of the tent.
"Thanks for the tea. I'll finish the watch. You get back in the warm."
She hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She picked up the book and then walked
back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with
her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch, and hated himself for wishing that what she
said was true: that Dumbledore had really cared.

三英战大蛇

Chapter Nineteen
The Silver Doe

It was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch at midnight. Harry's
dreams were confused and disturbing: Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a
wreath of Christmas roses. He woke repeatedly, panicky, convinced that somebody had
called out to him in the distance, imagining that the wind whipping around the tent was
footsteps or voices.
Finally he got up in the darkness and joined Hermione, who was huddled in the
entrance to the tent reading A History of Magic by the light of her wand. The snow was
falling thickly, and she greeted with relief his suggestion of packing up early and moving
on.
"We'll somewhere more sheltered," she agreed, shivering as she pulled on a
sweatshirt over her pajamas. "I kept thinking I could hear people moving outside. I even
though I saw somebody one or twice."

Harry paused in the act of pulling on a jumper and glanced at the silent,
motionless Sneakoscope on the table.
"I'm sure I imagined it," said Hermione, looking nervous. "The snow the dark, it
plays tricks on your eyes.... But perhaps we ought to Disapparate under the Invisibility
Cloak, just in case?"
Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry wearing the Horcrux, and
Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disapparated. The usual tightness engulfed
them; Harry's feet parted company with the snowy ground, then slammed hard onto what
felt like frozen earth covered in leaves.
"Where are we?" he asked, peering around at the fresh mass of trees as Hermione
opened the beaded bag and began tugging out the tent poles.
"The Forest of Dean," she said, "I came camping here once with my mum and
dad."
Here too snow lay on the trees all around and it was bitterly cold, but they were at
least protected from the wind. They spent most of the day inside the tent, huddled for
warmth around the useful bright blue flames that Hermione was adept at producing, and
which could be scooped up and carried in a jar. Harry felt as though he was recuperating
from some brief but severe, an impression reinforced by Hermione's solicitousness. That
afternoon fresh flakes drifted down upon them, so that even their sheltered clearing had a
fresh dusting of powdery snow.
After two nights of little sleep, Harry's senses seemed more alert than usual.
Their escape from Godric's Hollow had been so narrow that Voldemort seemed somehow
closer than before, more threatening. As darkness drove in again Harry refused
Hermione's offer to keep watch and told her to go to bed.
Harry moved an old cushion into the tent mouth and sat down, wearing all the
sweaters he owned but even so, still shivery. The darkness deepened with the passing
hours until it was virtually impenetrable. He was on the point of taking out the
Marauder's Map, so as to watch Ginny's dot for a while, before he remembered that it was
the Christmas holidays and that she would be back at the Burrow.
Every tiny movement seemed magnified in the vastness of the forest. Harry knew
that it must be full of living creatures, but he wished they would all remain still and silent
so that he could separate their innocent scurryings and prowlings from noises that might
proclaim other, sinister movements. He remembered the sound of a cloak slithering over
dead leaves many years ago, and at once thought he heard it again before mentally
shaking himself. Their protective enchantments had worked for weeks; why should they
break now? And yet he could no throw off the feeling that something was different
tonight.
Several times he jerked upright, his neck aching because he had fallen asleep,
slumped at an awkward angle against the side of the tent. The night reached such a depth
of velvety blackness that he might have been suspended in limbo between Disapparation
and Apparation. He had just held a hand in front of his face to see whether he could
make out his fingers when it happened.
A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees.
Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward
him.

He jumped to his feet, his voice frozen in his throat, and raised Hermione's wand.
He screwed up his eyes as the light became blinding, the trees in front of it pitch black in
silhouette, and still the thing came closer....
And then the source of the light stepped out from behind an oak. It was a silver
white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking her way over the ground, still silent, and
leaving no hoofprints in the fine powdering of snow. She stepped toward him, her
beautiful head with its wide, long-lashed eyes held high.
Harry stared at the creature, filled with wonder, not at her strangeness, but her
inexplicable familiarity. He felt that he had been waiting for her to come, but that he had
forgotten, until this moment, that they had arranged to meet. His impulse to shout for
Hermione, which had been so strong a moment ago, had gone. He knew, he would have
staked his life on it, that she had come for him, and him alone.
They gazed at each other for several long moments and then she turned and
walked away.
"No," he said, and his voice was cracked with lack of use. "Come back!"
She continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon he brightness was
striped by their thick black trunks. For one trembling second he hesitated. Caution
murmured it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him
that this was not Dark Magic. He set off in pursuit.
Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the doe made no noise as she passed through
the trees, for she was nothing but light. Deeper and deeper into the forest she led him,
and Harry walked quickly, sure that when she stopped, she would allow him to approach
her properly. And then she would speak and the voice would tell him what he needed to
know.
At last she came to a halt. She turned her beautiful head toward him once more,
and he broke into a run, a question burning in him, but as he opened his lips to ask it, she
vanished.
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still
imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids,
disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety.
"Lumos!" he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited.
The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there,
listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs, soft swishes of snow.
Was he about to be attacked? Had she enticed him into an ambush? Was he imagining
that somebody stood beyond the reach of the wandlight, watching him?
He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst
from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?
Something gleamed in the light of the wand, and Harry spun about, but all that
was there was a small, frozen pool, its black, cracked surface glittering as he raised his
wand higher to examine it.
He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The ice reflected his
distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray
carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross...
His heart skipped into his mouth: He dropped to his knees at the pool's edge and
angled the wand so as to flood the bottom of the pool with as much light as possible. A

glint of deep red...It was a sword with glittering rubies in its hilt....The sword of
Gryffindor was lying at the bottom of the forest pool.
Barely breathing, he stared down at it. How was this possible? How could it
have come to be lying in a forest pool, this close to the place where they were camping?
Had some unknown magic drawn Hermione to this spot, or was the doe, which he had
taken to be a Patronus, some kind of guardian of the pool? Or had the sword been put
into the pool after they had arrived, precisely because they were here? In which case,
where was the person who wanted to pass it to Harry? Again he directed the wand at the
surrounding trees and bushes, searching for a human outline, for the glint of an eye, but
he could not see anyone there. All the same, a little more fear leavened his exhilaration
as he returned his attention to the sword reposing upon the bottom of the frozen pool.
He pointed the wand at the silvery shape and murmured, "Accio Sword."
It did not stir. He had not expected it to. If it had been that easy the sword would
have lain on the ground for him to pick up, not in the depths of a frozen pool. He set off
around the circle of ice, thinking hard about the last time the sword had delivered itself to
him. He had been in terrible danger then, and had asked for help.
"Help," he murmured, but the sword remained upon the pool bottom, indifferent,
motionless.
What was it, Harry asked himself (walking again), that Dumbledore had told him
the last time he had retrieved the sword? Only a true Gryffindor could have pulled that
out of the hat. And what were the qualities that defined a Gryffindor? A small voice
inside Harry's head answered him: Their daring nerve and chivalry set Gryffindor apart.
Harry stopped walking and let out a long sigh, his smoky breath dispersing
rapidly upon the frozen air. He knew what he had to do. If he was honest with himself,
he had thought it might come to this from the moment he had spotted the sword through
the ice.
He glanced around at the surrounding trees again, but was convinced now that
nobody was going to attack him. They had had their chance as he walked alone through
the forest, had had plenty of opportunity as he examined the pool. The only reason to
delay at this point was because the immediate prospect was so deeply uninviting.
With fumbling fingers Harry started to remove his many layers of clothing.
Where "chivalry" entered into this, he thought ruefully, he was not entirely sure, unless it
counted as chivalrous that he was not calling for Hermione to do it in his stead.
An owl hooted somewhere as he stripped off, and he thought with a pang of
Hedwig. He was shivering now, his teeth chattering horribly, and yet he continued to
strip off until at last he stood there in his underwear, barefooted in the snow. He placed
the pouch containing his wand, his mother's letter, the shard of Sirius's mirror, and the old
Snitch on top of his clothes, then he pointed Hermione's wand at the ice.
"Diffindo."
It cracked with a sound like a bullet in the silence. The surface of the pool broke
and chunks of dark ice rocked on the ruffled water. As far as Harry could judge, it was
not deep, but to retrieve the sword he would have to submerge himself completely.
Contemplating the task ahead would not make it easier or the water warmer. He
stepped to the pool's edge and placed Hermione's wand on the ground still lit. Then,
trying not to imagine how much colder he was about to become or how violently he
would soon be shivering, he jumped.

Every pore of his body screamed in protest. The very air in his lungs seemed to
freeze solid as he was submerged to his shoulders in the frozen water. He could hardly
breathe: trembling so violently the water lapped over the edges of the pool, he felt for the
blade with his numb feet. He only wanted to dive once.
Harry put off the moment of total submersion from second to second, gasping and
shaking, until he told himself that it must be done, gathered all his courage, and dived.
The cold was agony: It attacked him like fire. His brain itself seemed to have
frozen as he pushed through the dark water to the bottom and reached out, groping for the
sword. His fingers closed around the hilt; he pulled it upward.
Then something closed tight around his neck. He thought of water weeds, though
nothing had brushed him as he dived, and raised his hand to free himself. It was not
weed: The chain of the Horcrux had tightened and was slowly constricting his windpipe.
Harry kicked out wildly, trying to push himself back to the surface, but merely
propelled himself into the rocky side of the pool. Thrashing, suffocating, he scrabbled at
the strangling chain, his frozen fingers unable to loosen it, and now little lights were
popping inside his head, and he was going to drown, there was nothing left, nothing he
could do, and the arms that closed around his chest were surely Death's....
Choking and retching, soaking and colder than he had ever been in his life, he
came to facedown in the snow. Somewhere, close by, another person was panting and
coughing and staggering around, as she had come when the s*** attacked....Yet it did
not sound like her, not with those deep coughs, no judging by the weight of the
footsteps....
Harry had no strength to lift his head and see his savior's identity. All he could do
was raise a shaking hand to his throat and feel the place where the locket had cut tightly
into his flesh. It was gone. Someone had cut him free. Then a panting voice spoke from
over his head.
"Are -- you -- mental?"
Nothing but the shock of hearing that voice could have given Harry the strength to
get up. Shivering violently, he staggered to his feet. There before him stood Ron, fully
dressed but drenched to the skin, his hair plastered to his face, the sword of Gryffindor in
one hand and the Horcrux dangling from its broken chain in the other.
"Why the hell," panted Ron, holding up the Horcrux, which swung backward and
forward on its shortened chain in some parody of hypnosis, "didn't you take the thing off
before you dived?"
Harry could not answer. The silver doe was nothing, nothing compared with
Ron's reappearance; he could not believe it. Shuddering with cold, he caught up the pile
of clothes still lying at the water's edge and began to pull them on. As he dragged
sweater after sweater over his head, Harry stared at Ron, half expecting him to have
disappeared every time he lost sight of him, and yet he had to be real: He had just dived
into the pool, he had saved Harry's life.
"It was y-you?" Harry said at last, his teeth chattering, his voice weaker than usual
due to his near-strangulation.
"Well, yeah," said Ron, looking slightly confused.
"Y-you cast that doe?"
"What? No, of course not! I thought it was you doing it!"
"My Patronus is a stag."

"Oh yeah. I thought it looked different. No antlers."
Harry put Hagrid's pouch back around his neck, pulled on a final sweater, stooped
to pick up Hermione's wand, and faced Ron again.
"How come you're here?"
Apparently Ron had hoped that this point would come up later, if at all.
"Well, I've -- you know -- I've come back. If --" He cleared his throat. "You
know. You still want me."
There was a pause, in which the subject of Ron's departure seemed to rise like a
wall between them. Yet he was here. He had returned. He had just saved Harry's life.
Ron looked down at his hands. He seemed momentarily surprised to see the
things he was holding.
"Oh yeah, I got it out," he said, rather unnecessarily, holding up the sword for
Harry's inspection. "That's why you jumped in, right?"
"Yeah," said Harry. "But I don't understand. How did you get here? How did
you find us?"
"Long story," said Ron. "I've been looking for you for hours, it's a big forest, isn't
it? And I was just thinking I'd have to go kip under a tree and wait for morning when I
saw that dear coming and you following."
"You didn't see anyone else?"
"No," said Ron. "I --"
But he hesitated, glancing at two trees growing close together some yards away.
"I did think I saw something move over there, but I was running to the pool at the
time, because you'd gone in and you hadn't come up, so I wasn't going to make a detour
to -- hey!"
Harry was already hurrying to the place that Ron had indicated. The two oaks
grew close together; there was a gap of only a few inches between the trunks at eye level,
an ideal place to see but not be seen. The ground around the roots, however, was free of
snow, and Harry could see no sign of footprints. He walked back to where Ron stood
waiting, still holding the sword and the Horcrux.
"Anything there?" Ron asked.
"No," said Harry.
"So how did the sword get in that pool?"
"Whoever cast the Patronus must have put it there."
They both looked at the ornate silver sword, its rubied hilt glinting a little in the
light from Hermione's wand.
"You reckon this is the real one?" asked Ron.
"One way to find out, isn't there?" said Harry.
The Horcrux was still swinging from Ron's hand. The locket was twitching
slightly. Harry knew that the thing inside it was agitated again. It had sensed the
presence of the sword and had tried to kill Harry rather than let him possess it. Now was
not the time for long discussions; now was the moment to destroy once and for all. Harry
looked around, holding Hermione's wand high, and saw the place: a flattish rock lying in
the shadow of a sycamore tree.
"Come here." he said and he led the way, brushed snow from the rock's surface,
and held out his hand for the Horcrux. When Ron offered the sword, however, Harry
shook his head.

"No you should do it."
"Me?" said Ron, looking shocked. "Why?"
"Because you got the sword out of the pool. I think it's supposed to be you."
He was not being kind or generous. As certainly as he had known that the doe
was benign, he knew that Ron had to be the one to wield the sword. Dumbledore had at
least taught Harry something about certain kinds of magic, of the incalculable power of
certain acts.
"I'm going to open it," said Harry, "and you will stab it. Straightaway okay?
Because whatever's in there will put up a fight. The bit of Riddle in the Diary tried to kill
me."
"How are you going to open it?" asked Ron. He looked terrified
"I'm going to ask it to open, using Parseltongue," said Harry. The answer came so
readily to his lips that thought that he had always known it deep down: Perhaps it had
taken his recent encounter with Nagini to make him realize it. He looked at the
serpentine S, inlaid with glittering green stones: It was easy to visualize it as a miniscule
s***, curled upon the cold rock.
"No!" said Ron. "Don't open it! I'm serious!"
"Why not?" asked Harry. "Let's get rid of the damn thing, it's been months --"
"I can't, Harry, I'm serious -- you do it --"
"But why?"
"Because that thing's bad for me!" said Ron, backing away from the locket on the
rock. "I can't handle it! I'm not making excuses, for what I was like, but it affects me
worse than it affects you and Hermione, it made me think stuff -- stuff that I was thinking
anyway, but it made everything worse. I can't explain it, and then I'd take it off and I'd
get my head straight again, and then I'd have to put the effing thing back on -- I can't do it
Harry!"
He had backed away, the sword dragging at his side, shaking his head.
"You can do it," said Harry, "you can! You've just got the sword, I know it's
supposed to be you who uses it. Please just get rid of it Ron."
The sound of his name seemed to act like a stimulant. Ron swallowed, then still
breathing hard through his long nose, moved back toward the rock.
"Tell me when," he croaked.
"On three," said Harry, looking back down at the locket and narrowing his eyes,
concentrating on the letter S, imagining a serpent, while the contents of the locket rattled
like a trapped ***roach. It would have been easy to pity it, except that the cut around
Harry's neck still burned.
"One . . . two . . . three . . .open."
The last word came as a hiss and a snarl and the golden doors of the locket swung
wide open with a little click.
Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome
as Tom Riddle's eyes had been before he turned them scarlet and slit-pupiled
"Stab," said Harry, holding the locket steady on the rock.
Ron raised the sword in his shaking hands: The point dangled over the frantically
swiveling eyes, and Harry gripped the locket tightly, bracing himself, already imagining
blood pouring from the empty windows.
Then a voice hissed from out the Horcrux.

"I have seen your heart, and it is mine."
"Don't listen to it!" Harry said harshly. "Stab it!"
"I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley, and I have seen your fears. All you
desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible...."
"Stab!" shouted Harry, his voice echoed off the surrounding trees, the sword point
trembled, and Ron gazed down into Riddle's eyes.
"Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter . . . Least loved, now,
by the girl who prefers your friend . . . Second best, always, eternally overshadowed . . ."
"Ron, stab it now!" Harry bellowed: He could feel the locket quivering in the grip and
was scared of what was coming. Ron raised the sword still higher, and as he did so,
Riddle's eyes gleamed scarlet.

Out of the locket's two windows, out of the eyes, there bloomed like two grotesque
bubbles, the heads of Harry and Hermione, weirdly distorted.

Ron yelled in shock and backed away as the figures blossomed out of the locket, first
chests, then waists, then legs, until they stood in the locket, side by side like trees with a
common root, swaying over Ron and the real Harry, who had ***ed his fingers away
from the locket as it burned, suddenly, white-hot.

"Ron!" he shouted, but the Riddle-Harry was now speaking with Voldemort's voice and
Ron was gazing, mesmerized, into its face.

"Why return? We were better without you, happier without you, glad of your absence....
We laughed at your stupidity, your cowardice, your presumption--"

"Presumption!" echoed the Riddle-Hermione, who was more beautiful and yet more
terrible than the real Hermione: She swayed, cackling, before Ron, who looked horrified,
yet transfixed, the sword hanging pointlessly at his side. "Who could look at you, who
would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you ever done, compared with
the Chosen One? What are you, compared with the Boy Who Lived?"

"Ron, stab it, STAB IT!" Harry yelled, but Ron did not move. His eyes were wide, and
the Riddle-Harry and the Riddle-Hermione were reflected in them, their hair swirling like
flames, their eyes shining red, their voices lifted in an evil duet.

"Your mother confessed," sneered Riddle-Harry, while Riddle-Hermione jeered, "that she
would have preferred me as a son, would be glad to exchange..."

"Who wouldn't prefer him, what woman would take you, you are nothing, nothing,
nothing to him," crooned Riddle-Hermione, and she stretched like a s*** and entwined
herself around Riddle-Harry, wrapping him in a close embrace: Their lips met.

On the ground in front of them, Ron's face filled with anguish. he raised the sword high,
his arms shaking.


"Do it, Ron!" Harry yelled.

Ron looked toward him, and Harry thought he saw a trace of scarlet in his eyes.

"Ron --?"

The sword flashed, plunged: Harry threw himself out of the way, there as a clang of metal
and a long, drawn-out scream. Harry whirled around, slipping in the snow, wand held
ready to defend himself, but there was nothing to fight.

The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron,
standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered
remains of the locket on the flat rock.

Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing
heavily: His eyes were no longer red at all, but their normal blue: they were also wet.

Harry stooped, pretending he had not seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had
pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle's eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of
the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished;
torturing Ron had been its final act. The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to
his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry
crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand
cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it off.

"After you left," he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron's face was hidden,
"she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn't want me to see. There were loads
of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone..."

He could not finish; it was now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how
much his absence had cost them.

"She's like my sister," he went on. "I love her like a sister and I reckon that she feels the
same way about me. It's always been like that. I thought you knew."

Ron did not respond, but turned his face away from Harry and wiped his nose noisily on
his sleeve. Harry got to his feet again and walked to where Ron's enormous rucksack lay
yards away, discarded as Ron had run toward the pool to save Harry from drowning. He
hoisted it onto his own back and walked back to Ron, who clambered to his feet as Harry
approached, eyes bloodshot but otherwise composed.

"I'm sorry," he said in a thick voice. "I'm sorry I left. I know I was a -- a --"

He looked around at the darkness, as if hoping a bad enough word would swoop down
upon him and claim him.


"You've sort of made up for it tonight," said Harry. "Getting the sword. Finishing off the
Horcrux. Saving my life."

"That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was," Ron mumbled.

"Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was" said Harry. "I've been trying to
tell you that for years."

Simultaneously they walked forward and hugged, Harry gripping the still-sopping back
of Ron's jacket.

"And now," said Harry as they broke apart, "all we've got to do is find that tent again."

But it was not diffi***. Though the walk through the dark forest with the doe had seemed
lengthy, with Ron by his side, the journey back seemed to take a surprisingly short time.
Harry could not wait to wake Hermione, and it was with quickening excitement that he
entered the tent, Ron lagging a little behind him.

It was gloriously warm after the pool and the forest, the only illumination the bluebell
flames still shimmering in a bowl on the floor. Hermione was fast asleep, curled up under
her blankets, and did not move until Harry had said her name several times.

"Hermione!"

She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her face.

"What's wrong? Harry? Are you all right?"

"It's okay, everything's fine. More than fine, I'm great. There's someone here."

"What do you mean? Who --?"

She saw Ron, who stood there holding the sword and dripping onto the threadbare carpet.
Harry backed into a shadowy corner, slipped off Ron's rucksack, and attempted to blend
in with the canvas.

Hermione slid out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker toward Ron, her eyes upon
his pale face. She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide.
Ron gave a weak hopeful smile and half raised his arms.

Hermione launched herself forward and started punching every inch of him that she could
reach.

"Ouch -- ow -- gerroff! What the --? Hermione -- OW!"


"You -- complete -- arse -- Ronald -- Weasley!"

She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as
Hermione advanced.

"You -- crawl -- back -- here -- after -- weeks -- and -- weeks -- oh, where's my wand?"

She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry's hands and he reacted instinctively.

"Protego!"

The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione. The force of it knocked her
backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she lept up again.

"Hermione!" said Harry. "Calm --"

"I will not calm down!" she screamed. Never before had he seen her lose control like this;
she looked quite demented. "Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!"

"Hermione, will you please --"

"Don't you tell me what do, Harry Potter!" she screeched. "Don't you dare! Give it back
now! And YOU!"

She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not
blame Ron for retreating several steps.

"I cam running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back"

"I know," Ron said, "Hermione, I'm sorry, I'm really --"

"Oh, you're sorry!"

She laughed a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but
Harry merely grimaced his helplessness.

"You came back after weeks -- weeks -- and you think it's all going to be all right if you
just say sorry?"

"Well, what else can I say?" Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back.

"Oh, I don't know!" yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. "Rack your brains, Ron, that
should only take a couple of seconds --"

"Hermione," interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, "he just saved my --"


"I don't care!" she screamed. "I don't care what he's done! Weeks and weeks, we could
have been dead for all he knew --"

"I knew you weren't dead!" bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and
approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. "Harry's all over
the Prophet, all over the radio, they're looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and
mental stories, I knew I'd hear straight off if you were dead, you don't know what it's
been like --"

"What it's been like for you??

Her voice was not so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a
level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his
opportunity.

"I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of
Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn't go anywhere!"

"A gang of what?" asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her
arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for
several years.

"Snatchers," said Ron. "They're everywhere -- gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up
Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there's a reward from the Ministry for everyone
captured. I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited,
thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to
the Ministry."

"What did you say to them?"

"Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of."

"And they believed that?"

"They weren't the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell of him...."

Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of
humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs.

"Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic to be
honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me, and they'd taken my wand.
Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit
the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine,
and Disapparated. I didn't do it so well. Splinched myself again" -- Ron held up his right
hand to show two missing fingernails: Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly -- "and I

came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank
where we'd been ... you were gone."

"Gosh, what a gripping story," Hermione said in the lofty voice she adopted when
wishing to wound. "You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric's
Hollow and, let's think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who's s***
turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and
missed us by about a second."

"What?" Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione ignored him.

"Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective,
doesn't it?"

"Hermione," said Harry quietly, "Ron just saved my life."

She appeared not to have heard him.

"One thing I would like to know, though," she said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over
Ron's head. "How exactly did you find us tonight? That's important. Once we know, we'll
be able to make sure we're not visited by anyone else we don't want to see."

Ron glared at her, then pulled a small silver object from his jeans pocket.

"This."

She had to look at Ron to see what he was showing them.

"The Deluminator?" she asked, so surprised she forgot to look cold and fierce.

"It doesn't just turn the lights on and off," said Ron. "I don't know how it works or why it
happened then and not any other time, because I've been wanting to come back ever since
I left. But I was listening to the radio really early on Christmas morning and I heard ... I
heard you."

He was looking at Hermione.

"You heard me on the radio?" she asked incredulously.

"No, I heard you coming out of my pocket. Your voice," he held up the Deluminator
again, "came out of this."

"And what exactly did I say?" asked Hermione, her tone somewhere between skepticism
and curiosity.

"My name. 'Ron.' And you said ... something about a wand...."


Hermione turned a fiery shade of scarlet. Harry remembered: it had been the first time
Won's name had been said aloud by either of them since the day he had left; Hermione
had mentioned it when talking about repairing Harry's wand.

"So I took it out," Ron went on, looking at the Deluminator, "and it didn't seem different
or anything, but I was sure I'd heard you. So I clicked it. And the light went out in my
room, but another light appeared right outside the window."

Ron raised his empty hand and pointed in front of him, his eyes focused on something
neither Harry nor Hermione could see.

"It was a ball of light, kind of pulsing, and bluish, like that light you get around a Portkey,
you know?"

"Yeah," said Harry and Hermione together automatically.

"I knew this was it," said Ron. "I grabbed my stuff and packed it, then I put on my
rucksack and went out into the garden.

"The little ball of light was hovering there, waiting for me, and when I came out it
bobbed along a bit and I followed it behind the shed and then it ... well, it went inside
me."

"Sorry?" said Harry, sure he had not heard correctly.

"It sort of floated toward me," said Ron, illustrating the movement with his free index
finger, "right to my chest, and then -- it just went straight through. It was here," he
touched a point close to his heard, "I could feel it, it was hot. And once it was inside me, I
knew what I was supposed to do. I knew it would take me where I needed to go. So I
Disapparated and came out on the side of a hill. There was snow everywhere...."

"We were there," said Harry. "We spent two nights there, and the second night I kept
thinking I could hear someone moving around in the dark and calling out!"

"Yeah, well, that would've been me," said Ron. "Your protective spells work, anyway,
because I couldn't see you and I couldn't hear you. I was sure you were around, though,
so in the end I got in my sleeping bag and waited for one of you to appear. I thought
you'd have to show yourselves when you packed up the tent."

"No, actually," said Hermione. "We've been Disapparating under the Invisibility Cloak as
an extra precaution. And we left really early, because as Harry says, we'd heard
somebody blundering around."

"Well, I stayed on that hill all day," said Ron. "I kept hoping you'd appear. But when it
started to get dark I knew I must have missed you, so I clicked the Deluminator again, the

blue light came out and went inside me, and I Disapparated and arrived here in these
woods. I still couldn't see you, so I just had to hope one of you would show yourselves in
the end -- and Harry did. Well, I saw the doe first, obviously."

"You saw the what?" said Hermione sharply.

They explained what had happened and as the story of the silver doe and the sword in the
pool unfolded, Hermione frowned form one to the other of them, concentrating so hard
she forgot to keep her limbs locked together.

"But it must have been a Patronus!" she said. "Couldn't you see who was casting it?
Didn't you see anyone? And it led you to the sword! I can't believe this! Then what
happened?"

Ron explained how he had watched Harry jump into the pool, and had waited for him to
resurface; how he had realized that something was wrong, dived in, and saved Harry,
then returned for the sword. He got as far as the opening of the locket, then hesitated, and
Harry cut in.

"-- and Ron stabbed it with the sword."

"And ... and it went? Just like that?" she whispered.

"Well, it -- it screamed," said Harry with half a glance at Ron. "Here."

He threw the locket into her lap; gingerly she picked it up and examined its punctured
windows.

Deciding that it was at last safe to do so, Harry removed the Shield Charm with a wave of
Hermione's wand and turned to Ron.

"Did you just say now that you got away from the ***ers with a spare wand?"

"What?" said Ron, who had been watching Hermione examining the locket. "Oh -- oh
yeah."

He tugged open a buckle on his rucksack and pulled a short dark wand out of his pocket.
"Here, I figured it's always handy to have a backup."

"You were right," said Harry, holding out his hand. "Mine's broken."

"You're kidding?" Ron said, but at that moment Hermione got to her feet, and he looked
apprehensive again.

Hermione put the vanquished Horcrux into the beaded bag, then climbed back into her
bed and settled down without another word.


Ron passed Harry the new wand.

"About the best you could hope for, I think," murmured Harry.

"Yeah," said Ron. "Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?"

"I still haven't ruled it out," came Hermione's muffled voice from beneath her blankets,
but Harry saw Ron smiling slightly as he pulled his maroon pajamas out of his rucksack

三英战大蛇

Chapter Twenty
Xenophilius Lovegood

Harry had not expected Hermione's anger to abate over night and was
therefore unsurprised that she communicated mainly by dirty looks and
pointed silences the next morning. Ron responded by maintaining an
unnaturally somber demeanor in her presence as an outward sign of continuing
remorse. In fact, when all three of them were together Harry felt like the
only non-mourner at a poorly attended funeral. During those few moments he
spent alone with Harry, however (collecting water and searching the
undergrowth for mushrooms). Ron became shamelessly cheery.

"Someone helped us," he kept saying, "Someone sent that doe, Someone's on
our side, One Horcrux down, mate!"

Bolstered by the destruction of the locket they set to debating the possible
locations of the other Horcruxes and even though they had discussed the
matter so often before. Harry felt optimistic, certain that more
breakthroughs would succeed the first. Hermione's sulkiness could not mar
his buoyant spirits; The sudden upswing in their fortunes, the appearance of
the mysterious due, the recovery of Gryffindor’s sword, and above all, Ron's
return made Harry so happy that it was quite diffi*** to maintain a
straight face.

Late in the afternoon he and Ron escaped Hermione's baleful presence again
and under the pretense of scouring the bare hedges for nonexistent
blackberries, they continued their ongoing exchange of news. Harry had
finally managed to tell Ron the whole story of his and Hermione's various
wanderings, right up to the full story of what had happened at Godric's
Hollow; Ron was now filling Harry in on everything he had discovered about
the wider Wizarding world during his weeks away.


"... and how did you find out about the Taboo?" he asked Harry after
explaining the many desperate attempts of Muggle-borns to evade the
Ministry."

"The what?"

"You and Hermione have stopped saying You-Know-Who's name!"

"Oh, yeah, Well, it's just a bad habit we've slipped into," said Harry. "But
I haven't got a problem calling him V ---"

"NO!" roared Ron, causing Harry to jump into the hedge and Hermione (nose
buried in a book at the tent entrance) to scowl over at them. "Sorry," said
Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the brambles, "but the name's been jinxed,
Harry, that's how they track people! Using his name breaks protective
enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance --- it's how they
found us in Tottenham Court Road!"

"Because we used his *name*?"

"Exactly! You've got to give them credit, it makes sense. It was only people
who were serious about standing up to him, like Dumbledore, who even dared
use it. Now they've put a Taboo on it, anyone who says it is trackable ---
quick-and-easy way to find Order members! They nearly got Kingsley ---"

"You're kidding?"

"Yeah, a bunch of Death Eaters cornered him, Bill said but he fought his way
out. He's on the run now just like us." Ron scratched his chin
thoughtfully with
the end of his wand. "You don't reckon Kingsley could have sent that doe?"

"His Patronus is a lynx, we saw it at the wedding, remember?"

"Oh yeah..."

They moved farther along the hedge, away from the tent and Hermione.

"Harry... you don't reckon it could've been Dumbledore?"

"Dumbledore what?"

Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice, "Dumbledore ... the
doe? I mean," Ron was watching Harry out of the corners of his eyes, "he had
the real sword last, didn't he?


Harry did not laugh at Ron, because he understood too well the longing
behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had managed to come back to
them, that he was watching over them, would have inexpressibly comforting.
He shook his head.

"Dumbledore’s dead," he said. "I saw it happen, I saw the body. He's
definitely gone. Anyway his Patronus was a phoenix, not a doe"

"Patronuses can change, though can't they?" said Ron, "Tonks’s changed
didn't it?"

Yeah, but if Dumbledore was alive, why wouldn't he show himself? Why
wouldn't he just hand us the sword?

"Search me," said Ron. "Same reason he didn't give it to you while he was
alive? Same reason he left you an old Snitch and Hermione a book of kid's
stories?"

"Which is what?" asked Harry, turning to look Ron full in the face desperate
for the answer.

"I dunno," said Ron. "Sometimes I've thought, when I've been a bit hacked
off, he was having a laugh or --- or he just wanted to make it more
diffi***, But I don't think so, not anymore. He knew what he was doing when
he gave me the Deluminator, didn't he? He -- well," Ron's ears turned bright
red and he became engrossed in a tuft of grass at his feet, which he prodded
with his toe, "he must've known I'd run out on you."

"No," Harry corrected him. "He must've known you'd always want to come
back."

Ron looked grateful, but still awkward. Partly to change the subject, Harry
said, "Speaking of Dumbledore, have you heard what Skeeter wrote about him?"

"Oh yeah," said Ron at once, "people are talking about it quite a lot.
'Course, if things were different it'd be huge news, Dumbledore being pals
with Grindelwald, but now it's just something to laugh about for people who
didn't like Dumbledore, and a bit of a slap in the face for everyone who
thought he was such a good bloke. I don't know that it's such a big deal,
though. He was really young when they --"

"Our age," said Harry, just as he had retorted to Hermione, and something in
his face seemed to decide Ron against pursuing the subject.

A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles. Harry
took aim at it with the wand Ron had given him the previous night, which

Hermione had since condescended to examine, and had decided was made of
blackthorn.

"*Engorgio*"

"The spider gave a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web. Harry tried
again. This time the spider grew slightly larger.

"Stop that," said Ron sharply, " I'm sorry I said Dumbledore was young,
okay?"

Harry had forgotten Ron's hatred of spiders.

"Sorry --- *Reducio*"

The spider did not shrink. Harry looked down at the blackthorn wand. Every
minor spell he had cast with it so far that day had seemed less powerful
than those he had produced with his phoenix wand. The new one felt
intrusively unfamiliar, like having somebody else's hand sewn to the end of
his arm.

"You just need to practice," said Hermione, who had approached them
noiselessly from behind and had stood watching anxiously as Harry tried to
enlarge and reduce the spider. "It’s all a matter of confidence Harry."

He knew why she wanted it to be all right; She still felt guilty about
breaking his wand. He bit back the retort that sprung to his lips, that she
could take the blackthorn wand if she thought it made no difference, and he
would have hers instead. Keen for them all to be friends again, however, he
agreed; but when Ron gave Hermione a tentative smile, she stalked off and
vanished behind her book once more.

All three of them returned to the tent when darkness fell, and Harry took
first watch. Sitting in the entrance, he tried to make the blackthorn wand
levitate small stones at his feet; but his magic still seemed clumsier and
less powerful than it had done before. Hermione was lying on her bunk
reading, while Ron, after many nervous glances up at her, had taken a small
wooden wireless out of his rucksack and started to try to tune it.

"There's this one program," he told Harry in a low voice, "that tells the
news like it really is. All the others are on You-Know-Who's side and are
following the Ministry line, but this one ... you wait till you hear it, it's
great. Only they can't do it every night, they have to keep changing
locations in case they're raided and you need a password to tune in ...
Trouble is, I missed the last one..."


He drummed lightly on the top of the radio with his wand muttering random
words under his breath. He threw Hermione many covert glances, plainly
fearing an angry outburst, but for all the notice she took of him he might
not have been there. For ten minutes or so Ron tapped and muttered, Hermione
turned the pages of her book, and Harry continued to practice with the
blackthorn wand.

Finally Hermione climbed down from her bunk. Ron ceased his tapping at once.

"If it's annoying you, I'll stop!" he told Hermione nervously.

Hermione did not deign to respond, but approached Harry.

"We need to talk," she said.

He looked at the book still clutched in her hand. It was * The Life and Lies
of Albus Dumbledore.*

"What?" he said apprehensively. It flew through his mind that there was a
chapter on him in there; he was not sure he felt up to hearing Rita's
version of his relationship with Dumbledore. Hermione's answer however, was
completely unexpected.

"I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood."

He stared at her.

"Sorry?"

“Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna’s father. I want to go and talk to him!”
“er – why?”
She took a deep breath, as though bracing herself, and said, “It’s that mark, the
mark in Beedle the Bard. Look at this!”
She thrust The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore under Harry’s unwilling eyes
and saw a photograph of the original letter that Dumbledore had written Grindelwald,
with Dumbledore’s familiar thin, slanting handwriting. He hated seeing absolute proof
that Dumbledore really had written those words, that they had not been Rita’s invention.
“The signature,” said Hermione. “Look at the signature, Harry!”
He obeyed. For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about, but, looking
more closely with the aid of his lit wand, he saw that Dumbledore had replaced the A of
Albus with a tiny version of the same triangular mark inscribed upon The Tales of Beedle
the Bard.
“Er – what are you -- ?” said Ron tentatively, but Hermione quelled him with a
look and turned back to Harry.
“It keeps cropping up, doesn’t it?” she said. “I know Viktor said it was
Grindelwald’s mark, but it was definitely on that old grave in Godric’s Hollow, and the

dates on the headstone were long before Grindelwald came along! And now this! Well,
we can’t ask Dumbledore or Grindelwald what it means – I don’t even know whether
Grindelwald’s still alive – but we can ask Mr. Lovegood. He was wearing the symbol at
the wedding. I’m sure this is important, Harry!”
Harry did not answer immediately. He looked into her intense, eager face and
then out into the surrounding darkness, thinking. After a long pause he said, “Hermione,
we don’t need another Godric’s Hollow. We talked ourselves into going there, and –”
“But it keeps appearing, Harry! Dumbledore left me The Tales of Beedle the Bard,
how do you know we’re not supposed to find out about the sign?”
“Here we go again!” Harry felt slightly exasperated. “We keep trying to convince
ourselves Dumbledore left us secret signs and clues –“
“The Deluminator turned out to be pretty useful,” piped up Ron. “I think
Hermione’s right, I think we ought to go and see Lovegood.”
Harry threw him a dark look. He was quite sure that Ron’s support of Hermione
had little to do with a desire to know the meaning of the triangular rune.
“It won’t be like Godric’s Hollow,” Ron added, “Lovegood’s on your side, Harry,
The Quibbler’s been for you all along, it keeps telling everyone they’ve got to help you!”
“I’m sure this is important!” said Hermione earnestly.
“But don’t you think if it was, Dumbledore would have told me about it before he
died?”
“Maybe . . . maybe it’s something you need to find out for yourself,” said
Hermione with a faint air of clutching at straws.
“Yeah,” said Ron sycophantically, “that makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” snapped Hermione, “but I still think we ought to talk to Mr.
Lovegood. A symbol that links Dumbledore, Grindelwald, and Godric’s Hollow? Harry,
I’m sure we ought to know about this!”
“I think we should vote on it,” said Ron. “Those in favor of going to see Love
good –”
His hand flew into the air before Hermione’s. Her lips quivered suspiciously as
she raised her own.
“Outvoted, Harry, sorry,” said Ron, clapping him on the back.
“Fine,” said Harry, half amused, half irritated. “Only, once we’ve seen Lovegood,
let’s try and look for some more Horcruxes, shall we? Where do the Lovegood’s live,
anyway? Do either of you know?
“Yeah, they’re not far from my place,” said Ron. “I dunno exactly where, but
Mum and Dad always point toward the hills whenever they mention them. Shouldn’t be
hard to find.”
When Hermione had returned to her bunk, Harry lowered his voice.
“You only agreed to try and get back in her good books.”
“All’s fair in love and war,” said Ron brightly, “and this is a bit of both. Cheer up,
it’s the Christmas holidays, Luna’ll be home!”
They had an excellent view of the village of Ottery St. Catchopole from the
breezy hillside to which they Disapparated next morning. From their high vantage point
the village looked like a collection of toy houses in the great slanting shafts of sunlight
stretching to earth in the breaks between clouds. They stood for a minute or two looking
toward the Burrow, their hands shadowing their eyes, but all they could make out were

the high hedges and trees of the orchard, which afforded the crooked little house
protection from Muggle eyes.
“It’s weird, being this near, but not going to visit,” said Ron.
“Well, it’s not like you haven’t just seen them. You were there for Christmas,”
said Hermione coldly.
“I wasn’t at the Burrow!” said Ron with an incredulous laugh. “Do you think I
was going to go back there and tell them all I’d walked out on you? Yeah, Fred and
George would’ve been great about it. And Ginny, she’d have been really understanding.”
“But where have you been, then?” asked Hermione, surprised.
“Bill and Fleur’s new place. Shell cottage. Bill’s always been decent to me. He –
he wasn’t impressed when he heard what I’d done, but he didn’t go on about it. He knew
I was really sorry. None of the rest of the family know I was there. Bill told Mum he and
Fleur weren’t going home for Christmas because they wanted to spend it alone. You
know, first holiday after they were married. I don’t think Fleur minded. You know how
much she hates Celestina Warbeck.”
Ron turned his back on the Burrow.
“Let’s try up here,” he said, leading the way over the top of the hill.
They walked for a few hours, Harry, at Hermione’s insistence, hidden beneath the
Invisibility Cloak. The cluster of low hills appeared to be uninhabited apart from one
small cottage, which seemed deserted.
“Do you think it’s theirs, and they’ve gone away for Christmas?” said Hermione,
peering through the window at a neat little kitchen with geraniums on the windowsill.
Ron snorted.
“Listen, I’ve got a feeling you’d be able to tell who lived there if you looked
through the Lovegoods’ window. Let’s try the next lot of hills.”
So they Disapparated a few miles farther north.
“Aha!” shouted Ron, as the wind whipped their hair and clothes. Ron was
pointing upward, toward the top of the hill on which they had appeared, where a most
strange-looking house rose vertically against the sky, a great black cylinder with a
ghostly moon hanging behind it in the afternoon sky. “That’s got to be Luna’s house,
who else would live in a place like that? It looks like a giant rook!”
“It’s nothing like a bird,” said Hermione, frowning at the tower.
“I was talking about a chess rook,” said Ron. “A castle to you.”
Ron’s legs were the longest and he reached the top of the hill first. When Harry
and Hermione caught up with him, panting and clutching stitches in their sides, they
found him grinning broadly.
“It’s theirs,” said Ron. “Look.”
Three hand-painted signs had been tacked to a broke-down gate. The first read,
THE QUIBBLER. EDITOR, X. LOVEGOOD

the second,
PICK YOUR OWN MISTLETOE

the third,
KEEP OFF THE DIRIGIBLE PLUMS


The gate creaked as they opened it. The zigzagging path leading to the front door
was overgrown with a variety of odd plants, including a bush covered in orange
radishlike fruit Luna sometimes wore as earrings. Harry thought he recognized a
Snargaluff and gave the wizened stump a wide berth. Two aged crab apple trees, bent
with the wind, stripped of leaves but still heavy with berry-sized red fruits and bushy
crowns of white beaded mistletoe, stood sentinel on either side of the front door. A little
owl with a slightly flattened hawklike head peered down at them from one of the
branches.
“You’d better take off the Invisibility Cloak, Harry,” said Hermione. “It’s you Mr.
Lovegood wants to help, not us.”
He did as she suggested, handing her the Cloak to stow in the beaded bag. She
then rapped three times on the thick black door, which was studded with iron nails and
bore a knocker shaped like an eagle.
Barely ten seconds passed, then the door was flung open and there stood
Xenophilius Lovegood, barefoot and wearing what appeared to be a stained
nightshirt. His long white candyfloss hair was dirty and unkempt. Xenophilius
had been positively dapper at Bill and Fleur's wedding by comparison.
"What? What is it? Who are you? What do you want?" he cried in a
high-pitched, querulous voice, looking first at Hermione, then at Ron, and
finally at Harry, upon which his mouth fell open in a perfect, comical O.
"Hello, Mr. Lovegood," said Harry, holding out his hand, "I'm Harry,
Harry Potter."
Xenophilius did not take Harry's hand, although the eye that was not
pointing inward at his nose slid straight to the scar on Harry's forehead.
"Would it be okay if we came in?" asked Harry. "There's something we'd
like to ask you."
"I . . . I'm not sure that's advisable," whispered Xenophilius, He
swallowed and cast a quick look around the garden. "Rather a shock . . . My
word . . . I . . . I'm afraid I don't really think I ought to ---"
"It wont take long" said Harry, slightly disappointed by this
less-than-warm welcome.
"I --- oh, all right then. Come in, quickly, Quickly!"
They were barely over the threshold when Xenophilius slammed the door
shut behind them, They were standing in the most peculiar kitchen Harry had
ever seen. The room was perfectly circular, so that he felt like being
inside a giant pepper pot. Everything was curved to fit the walls - the
stove, the sink, and the cupboards - and all of it had been painted with
flowers, insects, and birds in bright primary colors. Harry thought he
recognized Luna's styles. The effect in such and enclosed space, was
slightly overwhelming.
In the middle of the floor, a wrought-iron spiral staircase ld to the
upper levels. There was a great deal of clattering and banging coming from
overhead: Harry wondered what Luna could be doing.
"You'd better come up." said Xenophilius, still looking extremely
uncomfortable, and he led the way.
The room above seemed to be a combination of living room and workplace,

and as such, was even more cluttered than the kitchen. Though much smaller
and entirely round, the room somewhat resembled the Room of Requirement on
the unforgettable occasion that it had transformed itself into a gigantic
labyrinth comprised of centuries of hidden objects. There were piles upon
piles of books and papers on every surface. Delicately made models of
creatures Harry did not recognize, all flapping wings or snapping jaws, hung
from the ceiling.
Luna was not there: The thing that was making such a racket was a wooden
object covered in magically turning cogs and wheels, It looked like the
bizarre offspring of a workbench and a set of shelves, but after a moment
Harry deduced that it was an old-fashioned printing press, due to the fact
that it was churning out Quibblers.
"Excuse me," said Xenophilius, and he strode over to the machine, seized
grubbily tablecloth from beneath an immense number of books and papers,
which all tumbled onto the floor, and threw it over the press, somewhat
muffling the loud bangs and clatters. He then faced Harry.
"Why have you come here?"
Before Harry could speak, however, Hermione let out a small cry of shock.
"Mr. Lovegood - what's that?"
See was pointing at an enormous, gray spiral horn, not unlike that of a
unicorn, which had been mounted on the wall, protruding several feet into
the room.
"It is the horn of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack," said Xenophilius.
"No it isn't!" said Hermione.
"Hermione," muttered Harry, embarrassed, "now's not the moment -"
"But Harry, it's an Erumpent horn! It's a Class B Tradeable Material and
it's an extraordinary dangerous thing to have in a house!"
"How'd you know it's an Erumpent horn?" asked Ron, edging away from the
horn as fast as he could, given the extreme clutter of the room.
"There's a description in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them! Mr.
Lovegood, you need to get rid of it straightaway, don't you know it can
explode at the slightest touch?"
"The Crumple Horned Snorkack" said Xenophilius very clearly, a mulish
look upon his face, “is a shy and highly magical creature, and it's horn -"
"Mr. Lovegood. I recognize the grooved markings around the base, that's
an Erumpent horn and it's incredibly dangerous - I don't know where you got
it-"
"I bought it," said Xenophilius dogmatically. "Two weeks ago, from a
delightful young wizard who knew my interest in the exquisite Snorkack. A
Christmas surprise for my Luna. Now," he said, turning to Harry, "why
exactly have you come here, Mr. Potter?"
"We need some help," said Harry, before Hermione could start again.
"Ah," said Xenophilius, "Help, Hmm."
His good eye moved again to Harry's scar. He seemed simultaneously
terrified and mesmerized.
"Yes. The thing is ... helping Harry Potter ... rather dangerous..."

"Aren't you the one who keeps telling everyone it's their first duty to
help Harry?" said Ron. "In that magazine of yours?"
Xenophilius glanced behind him at the concealed printing press, still
banging and clattering beneath the tablecloth.
"Er - yes, I have expressed that view. however -"
"That's for everyone else to do, not you personally?" said Ron.
Xenophilius did not answer. He kept swallowing, his eyes darting between
the three of them. Harry had the impression that he was undergoing some
painful internal struggle.
"Where's Luna?" asked Hermione. "Let's see what she thinks."
Xenophilius gulped. He seemed to be steeling himself. Finally he said in
a shaky voice diffi*** to hear over the noise of the printing press, "Luna
is down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater Plimpies. She...she will like
to see you. I'll go and call her and then - yes, very well. I shall try to
help you."
He disappeared down the spiral staircase and they heard the front open
and close. They looked at each other.
"Cowardly old wart," said Ron. "Luna's got ten times his guts."
"He's probably worried about what'll happen to them if the Death Eaters
find out I was here" said Harry.
"Well, I agree with Ron, " said Hermione, "Awful old hypocrite, telling
everyone else to help you and trying to worm our of it himself. And for
heaven's sake keep away from that horn."
Harry crossed to the window on the far side of the room. He could see a
stream, a thin, glittering ribbon lying far below them at the base of the
hill. They were very high up; a bird fluttered past the window as he stared
in the direction of the Burrow, now invisible beyond another line of hills.
Ginny was over there somewhere. They were closer to each other today than
they had been since Bill and Fleur's wedding, but she could have no idea he
was gazing toward her now, thinking of her. He suppose he ought to be glad
of it; anyone he came into contact with was in danger, Xenophilius's attitude
proved that.
he turned away from the windows and his gaze fell upon another peculiar
object standing upon the cluttered, curved slide board; a stone but of a
beautiful but austere-looking witch wearing a most bizarre-looking
headdress. Two objects that resembled golden ear trumpets curved out from
the sides. A tiny pair of glittering blue wing was stuck to a leather strap
that ran over the top of her head, while one of the orange radishes had been
stuck to a second strap around her forehead.
"Look at this," said Harry.
"Fetching," said Ron. "Surprised he didn't hear that to the wedding."
They heard the front door close, and a moment later Xenophilius climbed
back up the spiral staircase into the room, his thin legs now encase in
Wellington boots, bearing a tray of ill-assorted teacups and a steaming
teapot.
"Ah, you have spotted my pet invention," he said, shoving the tray into

Hermione's arms and joining Harry at the statue's side.
"Modeled, fittingly enough, upon the head of the beautiful Rowens Ravenclaw,
'Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure!'"
He indicated the objects like ear trumpets.
"These are the Wrackpurt siphons - to remove all sources of distraction
from the thinker's immediate area. Here, "he pointed out the tiny wings, "a
billywig propeller, to induce an elevated frame of mind. Finally, "he
pointed to the orange radish, "the dirigible Plum, so as to enhance the
ability to accept the extraordinary."
Xenophilius strode back to the tea tray, which Hermione had managed to
balance precariously on one of the cluttered side tables.
"May I offer you all an infusion of Gurdyroots?" said Xenophilius. "We
make it ourselves." As he started to pour out the drink, which was as deeply
purple as beetroot juice, he added, "Luna is down beyond Bottom Bridge, she
is most excited that you are here She ought not to be too long, she has
caught nearly enough Plumpies to make soup for all of us. Do sit down and
help yourselves to sugar.
"Now," he remove a tottering pile of papers from an armchair and sat
down, his Wellingtoned legs crossed, "how may I help you, Mr. Potter?"
"Well," said Harry, glancing at Hermione, who nodded encouragingly,
"it's about that symbol you were wearing around your neck at Bill and
Fleur's wedding, Mr. Lovegood. We wondered what it meant."
Xenophilius raised his eyebrows.
"Are you referring to the sign of the Deathly Hallows?"

三英战大蛇

Chapter Twenty-One
The Tale of the Three Brothers

Harry turned to look at Ron and Hermione. Neither of them seemed to have
understood what Xenophilius had said either.
"The Deathly Hallows?"
"That's right," said Xenophilius. "You haven't heard of them? I'm not surprised.
Very, very few wizards believe. Witness that knuckle-headed young man at your
brother's wedding," he nodded at Ron, "who attacked me for sporting the symbol of a
well-known Dark wizard! Such ignorance. There is nothing Dark about the Hallows – at
least not in that crude sense. One simply uses the symbol to reveal oneself to other
believers, in the hope that they might help one with the Quest."
He stirred several lumps of sugar into his Gurdyroot infusion and drank some.
"I'm sorry," said Harry, "I still don't really understand."
To be polite, he took a sip from his cup too, and almost gagged: The stuff was
quite disgusting, as though someone had liquidized bogey-flavored Every Flavor Beans.

"Well, you see, believers seek the Deathly Hallows," said Xenophilius, smacking
his lips in apparent appreciation of the Gurdyroot infusion.
"But what are the Deathly Hallows?" asked Hermione.
Xenophilius set aside his empty teacup.
"I assume that you are familiar with 'The Tale of the Three Brothers'?"
Harry said, "No," but Ron and Hermione both said, "Yes." Xenophilius nodded
gravely.
"Well, well, Mr. Potter, the whole thing starts with 'The Tale of the Three
Brothers' . . . I have a copy somewhere . . ."
He glanced vaguely around the room, at the piles of parchment and books, but
Hermione said, "I've got a copy, Mr. Lovegood, I've got it right here."
And she pulled out The Tales of Beedle the Bard from the small, beaded bag.
"The original?" inquired Xenophilius sharply, and when she nodded, he said,
"Well then, why don't you read it out aloud? Much the best way to make sure we all
understand."
"Er. . . all right," said Hermione nervously. She opened the book, and Harry saw
that the symbol they were investigating headed the top of the page as she gave a little
cough, and began to read.
"'There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely, winding road
at twilight –'"
"Midnight, our mum always told us," said Ron, who had stretched out, arms
behind his head, to listen. Hermione shot him a look of annoyance.
"Sorry, I just think it's a bit spookier if it's midnight!" said Ron.
"Yeah, because we really need a bit more fear in our lives," said Harry before he
could stop himself. Xenophilius did not seem to be paying much attention, but was
staring out of the window at the sky. "Go on, Hermione."
"In time, the brothers reached a river too deep to wade through and too
dangerous to swim across. However, these brothers were learned in the magical arts, and
so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous
water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded
figure.
"'And Death spoke to them –'"
"Sorry," interjected Harry, "but Death spoke to them?"
"It's a fairy tale, Harry!"
"Right, sorry. Go on."
"'And Death spoke to them. He was angry that he had been cheated out of the
three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. He
pretended to congratulate the three brothers upon their magic, and said that each had
earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade him.
"'So the oldest brother, who was a combative man, asked for a wand more
powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand
worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the
banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and gave it to the
oldest brother.
"'Then the second brother, who was an arrogant man, decided that he wanted to
humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death. So

Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second brother, and told
him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead.
"'And then Death asked the third and youngest brother what he would like. The
youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not
trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place
without being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over his own
Cloak of Invisibility.'"
"Death's got an Invisibility Cloak?" Harry interrupted again.
"So he can sneak up on people," said Ron. "Sometimes he gets bored of running at
them, flapping his arms and shrieking . . . sorry, Hermione."
"'Then Death stood aside and allowed the three brothers to continue on their way,
and they did so talking with wonder of the adventure they had had and admiring Death's
gifts.
"'In due course the brothers separated, each for his own destination.
"'The first brother traveled on for a week more, and reaching a distant village,
sought out a fellow wizard with whom he had a quarrel. Naturally, with the Elder Wand
as his weapon, he could not fail to win the duel that followed. Leaving his enemy dead
upon the floor the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted loudly of the
powerful wand he had ***ed from Death himself, and of how it made him invincible.
"'That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay, wine-
sodden upon his bed. The thief took the wand and for good measure, slit the oldest
brother's throat.
"'And so Death took the first brother for his own.
"'Meanwhile, the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone.
Here he took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in
his hand. To his amazement and his delight, the figure of the girl he had once hoped to
marry, before her untimely death, appeared at once before him.
"'Yet she was sad and cold, separated from him as by a veil. Though she had
returned to the mortal world, she did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally the
second brother, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed himself so as to truly join her.
"'And so Death took the second brother from his own.
"'But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never
able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother
finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And the he greeted Death
as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.'"
Hermione closed the book. It was a moment or two before Xenophilius seemed to
realize that she had stopped reading; then he withdrew his gaze from the window and
said: "Well, there you are."
"Sorry?" said Hermione, sounding confused.
"Those are the Deathly Hallows," said Xenophilius.
He picked up a quill from a packed table at his elbow, and pulled a torn piece of
parchment from between more books.
"The Elder Wand," he said, and drew a straight vertical line upon the parchment.
"The Resurrection Stone," he said, and added a circle on top of the line. "The Cloak of
Invisibility," he finished, enclosing both line and circle in a triangle, to make the symbols
that so intrigued Hermione. "Together," he said, "the Deathly Hallows."

"But there's no mention of the words 'Deathly Hallows' in the story," said
Hermione.
"Well, of course not," said Xenophilius, maddeningly smug. "That is a children's
tale, told to amuse rather than to instruct. Those of us who understand these matters,
however, recognize that the ancient story refers to three objects, or Hallows, which, if
united, will make the possessor master of Death."
There was a short silence in which Xenophilius glanced out of the window.
Already the sun was low in the sky.
"Luna ought to have enough Plimpies soon," he said quietly.
"When you say 'master of Death' –"said Ron.
"Master," said Xenophilius, waving an airy hand. "Conqueror. Vanquisher.
Whichever term you prefer."
"But then . . . do you mean . . ." said Hermione slowly, and Harry could tell that
she was trying to keep any trace of skepticism out of her voice, "that you believe these
objects – these Hallows – really exist?"
Xenophilius raised his eyebrows again.
"Well, of course."
"But," said Hermione, and Harry could hear her restraint starting to crack, "Mr.
Lovegood, how can you possibly believe – ?"
"Luna has told me all about you, young lady," said Xenophilius. "You are, I
gather, not unintelligent, but painfully limited. Narrow. Close-minded."
"Perhaps you ought to try on the hat, Hermione," said Ron, nodding toward the
ludicrous headdress. His voice shook with the strain of not laughing.
"Mr. Lovegood," Hermione began again, "We all know that there are such things
as Invisibility Cloaks. They are rare, but they exist. But –"
"Ah, but the Third Hallow is a true Cloak of Invisibility, Miss Granger! I mean to
say, it is not a traveling cloak imbued with a Disillusionment Charm, or carrying a
Bedazzling Hex, or else woven from Demiguise hair, which will hide one initially but
fade with the years until it turns opaque. We are talking about a cloak that really and truly
renders the wearer completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving constant and
impenetrable concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it. How many cloaks have
you ever seen like that, Miss Granger?"
Hermione opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, looking more
confused than ever. She, Harry and Ron glanced at one another, and Harry knew that they
were all thinking the same thing. It so happened that a cloak exactly like the one
Xenophilius had just described was in the room with them at that very moment.
"Exactly," said Xenophilius, as if he had defeated them all in reasoned argument.
"None of you have ever seen such a thing. The possessor would be immeasurably rich,
would he not?"
He glanced out of the window again. The sky was now tinged with the faintest
trace of pink.
"All right," said Hermione, disconcerted. "Say the Cloak existed. . . what about
that stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?"
"What of it?"
"Well, how can that be real?"
"Prove that is not," said Xenophilius.

Hermione looked outraged.
"But that's – I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove
it doesn't exist? Do you expect me to get hold of – of all the pebbles in the world and test
them? I mean, you could claim that anything's real if the only basis for believing in it is
that nobody's proved it doesn't exist!"
"Yes, you could," said Xenophilius. "I am glad to see that you are opening your
mind a little."
"So the Elder Wand," said Harry quickly, before Hermione could retort, "you
think that exists too?"
"Oh, well, in that case there is endless evidence," said Xenophilius. "The Elder
Wand is the Hallow that is most easily traced, because of the way in which it passes from
hand to hand."
"Which is what?" asked Harry.
"Which is that the possessor of the wand must capture it from its previous owner,
if he is to be truly master of it," said Xenophilius. "Surely you have heard of the way the
wand came to Egbert the Egregious, after his slaughter of Emeric the Evil? Of how
Godelot died in his own cellar after his son, Hereward, took the wand from him? Of the
dreadful Loxias, who took the wand from Baraabas Deverill, whom he had killed? The
bloody trail of the Elder Wand is splattered across the pages of Wizarding history."
Harry glanced at Hermione. She was frowning at Xenophilius, but she did not
contradict him.
"So where do you think the Elder Wand is now?" asked Ron.
"Alas, who knows?" said Xenophilius, as he gazed out of the window. "Who
knows where the Elder Wand lies hidden? The trail goes cold with Arcus and Livius.
Who can say which of them really defeated Loxias, and which took the wand? And who
can say who may have defeated them? History, alas, does not tell us."
There was a pause. Finally Hermione asked stiffly, "Mr. Lovegood, does the
Peverell family have anything to do with the Deathly Hallows?"
Xenophilius looked taken aback as something shifted in Harry's memory, but he
could not locate it. Peverell. . . he had heard that name before. . .
"But you have been misleading me, young woman!" said Xenophilius, now sitting
up much straighter in his chair and goggling at Hermione. "I thought you were new to the
Hallows Quest! Many of us Questers believe that the Peverells have everything –
everything! – to do with the Hallows!"
"Who are the Peverells?" asked Ron.
"That was the name on the grave with the mark on it, in Godric's Hollow," said
Hermione, still watching Xenophilius. "Ignotus Peverell."
"Exactly!" said Xenophilius, his forefinger raised pedantically. "The sign of the
Death Hallows on Ignotus's grave is conclusive proof!"
"Of what?" asked Ron.
"Why, that the three brothers in the story were actually the three Peverell brothers,
Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus! That they were the original owners of the Hallows!"
With another glance at the window he got to his feet, picked up the tray, and
headed for the spiral staircase.
"You will stay for dinner?" he called, as he vanished downstairs again.
"Everybody always requests our recipe for Freshwater Plimply soup."

"Probably to show the Poisoning Department at St. Mungo's," said Ron under his
breath.
Harry waited until they could hear Xenophilius moving about in the kitchen
downstairs before speaking.
"What do you think?" he asked Hermione.
"Oh, Harry," she said wearily, "it's a pile of utter rubbish. This can't be what the
sign really means. This must just be his weird take on it. What a waste of time."
"I s'pose this is the man who brought us Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," said Ron.
"You didn't believe it either?" Harry asked him.
"Nah, that story's just one of those things you tell kids to teach them lessons, isn't
it? 'Don't go looking for trouble, don't go pick fights, don't go messing around with stuff
that's best left alone! Just keep your head down, mind your own business, and you'll be
okay. Come to think of it," Ron added, "maybe that story's why elder wands are supposed
to be unlucky."
"What are you talking about?"
"One of those superstitions, isn't it? 'May-born witches will marry Muggles.' 'Jinx
by twilight, undone by midnight.' 'Wand of cider, never prosper.' You must have heard
them. My mum's full of them."
"Harry and I were raised by Muggles," Hermione reminded him. "We were taught
different superstitions." She sighed deeply as a rather pungent smell drifted up from the
kitchen. The one good thing about her exasperation with Xenophilius was that it seemed
to have made her forget that she was annoyed at Ron. "I think you're right," she told him.
"It's just a morality tale, it's obvious which gift is best, which one you'd choose –"
The three of them spoke at the same time: Hermione said, "the Cloak," Ron said,
"the wand," and Harry said, "the stone."
They looked at each other, half surprised, half amused.
"You're supposed to say the Cloak," Ron told Hermione, "but you wouldn't need
to be invisible if you had the wand. An unbeatable wand, Hermione, come on!"

"We've already got an Invisibility Cloak," said Harry, "And it's helped us rather a lot, in
case you hadn't noticed!" said Hermione. "Whereas the wand would be bound to attract
trouble--"
"Only if you shouted about it," argued Ron. "Only if you were prat enough to go dancing
around waving it over your head, and singing, 'I've got an unbeatable want, come and
have a go if you think you're hard enough.' As long as you kept your trap shut --"
-Yes, but could you keep your trap shut?" said Hermione, looking skeptical. "You know
the only true thing he said to us was that there have been stories about extra-powerful
wands for hundreds of years."
"There have?" asked Harry.
Hermione looked exasperated: The expression was so endearingly familiar that Harry and
Ron grinned at each other.
"The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, they crop up under different names through the
centuries, usually in the possession of some Dark wizard who’s boasting about them.
Professor Binns mentioned some of them, but -- oh it's all nonsense. Wands are only as
powerful as the wizards who use them. Some wizards just like to boast that theirs are
bigger and better than other people's"

"But how do you know," said Harry, "that those wants -- the Deathstick, and the Wand of
Destiny -- aren't the same want, surfacing over the centuries under different names?"
"What if they're all really the Elder Wand, made by Death?" said Ron.
Harry laughed: The strange idea that had occurred to him was after all, ridiculous. His
wand, he reminded himself, had been of holly, not elder, and it had been made by
Ollivander, whatever it had done that night Voldemort had pursued him across the skies
and if it had been unbeatable, how could it have been broken?
"So why would you take the stone?" Ron asked him.
"Well, if you could bring people back, we could have Sirius...Mad-
Eye...Dumbledore...my parents..."
Neither Ron nor Hermione smiled.
"But according to Beedle the Bard, they wouldn't want to come back, would they?" said
Harry, thinking about the tail they had just heard. "I don't suppose there have been loads
of other stories about a stone that can raise the dead, have there?: he asked Hermione.
"No," she replied sadly. "I don't think anyone except Mr. Lovegood could kid themselves
that's possible. Beedle probably took the idea from the Sorcerer's Stone; you know,
instead of a stone to make you immortal, a stone to reverse death."
The smell from the kitchen was getting stronger. It was something like burning
underpants. Harry wondered whether it would be possible to eat enough of whatever
Xenophilius was cooking to spare his feelings.
"What about the Cloak, though?" said Ron slowly. "Don't you realize, he's right? I've got
so used to Harry's Cloak and how good it is, I never stopped to think. I've never heard of
one like Harry's. It's infallible. We've never been spotted under it --"
"Of course not -- we're invisible when we're under it, Ron!"
"But all the stuff he said about other cloaks, and they're not exactly ten a Knut, you know,
is true! It's never occurred to me before but I've heard stuff about charms wearing off
cloaks when they get old, or them being ripped apart by spells so they've got holes,
Harry's was owned by his dad, so it's not exactly new, is it, but it's just ... perfect!"
"Yes, all right, but Ron, the stone..."
As they argued in whispers, Harry moved around the room, only half listening. Reaching
the spiral stair, he raised his eyes absently to the next level and was distracted at once.
His own face was looking back at him from the ceiling of the room above. After a
moment's bewilderment, he realized that it was not a mirror, but a painting. Curious, he
began to clime the stairs.
"Harry, what are you doing? I don't think you should look around when he's not here!"
But Harry had already reached the next level. Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling
with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They
were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about
them all the same. Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be a fine golden chains
wove around the pictures linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or
so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one work repeated a thousand times in
golden ink: friends... friends... friends...
Harry felt a great rush of affection for Luna. He looked around the room. There was a
large photograph beside the bed, of a young Luna and a woman who looked very like her.
They were hugging. Luna looked rather better-groomed in this picture than Harry had
ever seen her in life. The picture was dusty. This struck Harry as slightly odd. He stared

around. Something was wrong. The pale blue carpet was also thick with dust. There were
no clothes in the wardrobe, whose doors stood ajar. The bed had a cold, unfriendly look,
as though it had not been slept in for weeks. A single cobweb stretched over the nearest
window across the blood red sky.
"What's wrong?" Hermione asked as Harry descended the staircase, but before he could
respond, Xenophilius reached the top of the stairs from the kitchen, now holding a tray
laden with bowls.
"Mr. Lovegood," said Harry. "Where's Luna?"
"Excuse me?"
"Where's Luna?"
Xenophilius halted on the top step.
"I -- I've already told you. She is down at the Botions Bridge fishing for Plimpies."
"So why have you only laid that tray for four?"
Xenophilius tried to speak, but no sound came out. The only noise was the continued
chugging of the printing press, and a slight rattle from the tray as Xenophilius's hands
shook.
"I don't think Luna's been here for weeks." said Harry. "Her clothes are gone, her bed
hasn't been slept in. Where is she? and why do you keep looking out of the window?"
Xenophilius dropped the tray. The bowls bounced and smashed Harry, Ron, and
Hermione drew their wands. Xenophilius froze his hand about to enter his pocket. At that
moment the printing press have a huge bank and numerous Quibblers came streaming
across the floor from underneath the tablecloth, the press fell silent at last. Hermione
stooped down and picked up one of the magazines, her wand still pointing at Mr.
Lovegood.
"Harry, look at this" He strode over to her as quickly as he could through all the clutter.
The front of the Quibbler carried his own picture, emblazoned with the words
"Undesirable Number One" and captioned with the reward money.
"The Quibbler's going for a new angle, then?: Harry asked coldly, his mind working very
fast. "Is that what you were doing when you went into the garden, Mr. Lovegood?
Sending an owl to the Ministry?
Xenophilius licked his lips
"They took my Luna," he whispered, "Because of what I've been writing. They took my
Luna and I don't know where she is, what they've done to her. But they might give her
back to me if I -- If I--"
"Hand over Harry?" Hermione finished for him.
"No deal." said Ron flatly. "Get out of the way, we're leaving."
Xenophilius looked ghastly, a century old, his lips drawn back into a dreadful leer.
"They will be here any moment. I must save Luna. I cannot lose Luna. You must not
leave."
He spread his arms in front of the staircase, and Harry had a sudden vision of his mother
doing the same thing in front of his crib.
"Don't make us hurt you," Harry said. "Get out of the way, Mr. Lovegood."
"HARRY!" Hermione screamed.
Figures on broomsticks were flying past the windows. As the three of them looked away
from him. Xenophilius drew his wand. Harry realized their mistake just in time. He
launched himself sideways, shoving Ron and Hermione out of harm's way as

Xenophilius's Stunning Spell soared across the room and hit the Erumpent horn.
There was a colossal explosion. The sound of it seemed to blow the room apart.
Fragments of wood and paper and rubble flew in all directions, along with an
impenetrable cloud of thick white dust. Harry flew through the air, then crashed to the
floor, unable to see as debris rained upon him, his arms over his head. He heard
Hermione's scream, Ron's yell, and a series of sickening metallic thuds which told him
that Xenophilius had been blasted off his feet and fallen backward down the spiral stairs.
Half buried in rubble, Harry tried to raise himself. He could barely breathe or see for dust.
Half of the ceiling had fall in and the end of Luna's bead was hanging through the hole.
The bust of Rowena Ravenclaw lay beside him with half its face missing fragments of
torn parchment were floating through the air, and most of the printing press lay on its side,
blocking the top of the staircase to the kitchen. Then another white shape moved close by,
and Hermione, coated in dust like a second statue, pressed his finger to her lips.
The door downstairs crashed open.
"Didn't I tell you there was no need to hurry, Travers?" said a rough voice. "Didn't I tell
you this nutter was just raving as usual?" There was a bang and a scream of pain from
Xenophilius.
"No...no...upstairs...Potter!"
"I told you last week Lovegood, we weren't coming back for anything less than some
solid information! Remember last week? When you wanted to swap your daughter for
that stupid bleeding headdress? And the week before" -- Another bang, another squeal --
"When you thought we'd give her back if you offered us proof there are Cumple" -- Bang
-- "Headed"--bang--"Snorkacks?"
"No -- no -- I beg of you!" sobbed Xenophilius. "It really is Potter, Really!"
"And now it turns out you only called us here to try and blow us up!" roared the Death
Eater, and there was a volley of bangs interspersed with squeals of agony from
Xenophilius.
"The place looks like it's about to fall in, Selwyn," said a cool second voice, echoing up
the mangled staircase. "The stairs are completely blocked. Could try clearing it? Might
bring the place down."
"You lying piece of filth." shouted the wizard named Selwyn.
"You have never seen Potter in your life, have you? Thought you'd lure us here to kill us,
did you? And you think you'll get your girl back like this?"
"I swear...I swear...Potter's upstairs!"
"Homenum revelio." said the voice at the foot of the stairs. Harry heard Hermione gasp,
and he had the odd sensation something was swooping low over him, immersing his body
in its shadow.
"There's someone up there all right, Selwyn," said the second man sharply.
"It's Potter, I tell you, it's Potter!" sobbed Xenophilius. "Please...please...give me Luna,
just let me have Luna..."
"You can have your little girl, Lovegood," said Selwyn, "if you get up those stairs and
bring me down Harry Potter. But if this is a plot, if it's a trick, if you've got an accomplice
waiting up there to ambush us, we'll see if we can spare a bit of your daughter for you to
bury."
Xenophilius gave a wail of fear and despair. There were scurryings and scrapings.
Xenophilius was trying to get through the debris on the stairs.

"Come on," Harry whispered, "we've got to get out of here."
He started to dig himself out under cover of all the noise Xenophilius was making on the
staircase. Ron was buried the deepest. Harry and Hermione climbed, as quietly as they
could, over all the wreckage to where he lay, trying to prise a heavy chest of drawers off
his legs. While Xenophilius banging and scraping drew nearer and nearer, Hermione
managed to free Ron with the use of a Hover Charm.
"All right." breathed Hermione, as the broken printing press blocking the top of the stairs
begin to tremble. Xenophilius was feet away from them. She was still white with dust.
"Do you trust me Harry?"
Harry nodded.
"Okay then." Hermione whispered. "give me the invisibility Cloak. Ron, you're going to
put it on."
"Me? But Harry --"
"Please, Ron! Harry, hold on tight to my hand, Ron grab my shoulder."
Harry held out his left hand. Ron vanished beneath the Cloak. The printing press blocking
the stairs was vibrating. Xenophilius was trying to shift it using a Hover Charm. Harry
did not know what Hermione was waiting for.
"Hold tight" she whispered. "Hold tight...any second..."
Xenophilius's paper-white face appeared over the top of the sideboard.
"Obliviate!" cried Hermione, pointing her want first into his face then at the floor beneath
them. "Deprimo!"
She had blasted a hole in the sitting room floor. They fell like boulders. Harry still
holding onto her hand for dear life, there was a scream from below, and he glimpsed two
men trying to get out of the way as vast quantities of rubble and broken furniture rained
all around them from the shattered ceiling. Hermione twisted in midair and thundering of
the collapsing house rang in Harry's ears as she dragged him once more into darkness.
　

三英战大蛇

Chapter Twenty-Two
The Deathly Hallows

Harry fell, panting, onto grass and scrambled up at once. They seemed to have
landed in the corner of a field at dusk; Hermione was already running in a circle around
them, waving her wand.
“Protego Totalum…Salvio Hexia…”
“That treacherous old bleeder.” Ron panted, emerging from beneath the
Invisibility Cloak and throwing it to Harry. “Hermione you’re a genius, a total genius. I
can’t believe we got out of that.”
“Cave Inimicum…Didn’t I say it was an Frumpent horn, didn’t I tell him? And
now his house has been blown apart!”
“Serves him right,” said Ron, examining his torn jeans and the cuts to his legs,
“What’d you reckon they’ll do to him?”
“Oh I hope they don’t kill him!” groaned Hermione, “That’s why I wanted the
Death Eaters to get a glimpse of Harry before we left, so they knew Xenophilius hadn’t
been lying!”

“Why hide me though?” asked Ron.
“You’re supposed to be in bed with spattergrolt, Ron! They’ve kidnapped Luna
because her father supported Harry! What would happen to your family if they knew
you’re with him?”
“But what about your mum and dad?”
“They’re in Australia,” said Hermione, “They should be all right. They don’t
know anything.”
“You’re a genius,” Ron repeated, looking awed.
Yeah, you are, Hermione,” agreed Harry fervently. “I don’t know what we’d do
without you.”
She beamed, but became solemn at once.
“What about Luna?”
“Well, if they’re telling the truth and she’s still Alive ---“ began Ron.
“Don’t say that, don’t say it!” squealed Hermione. “She must be alive, she must!”
“Then she’ll be in Azkaban, I expect,” said Ron. “Whether she survives the place,
though…Loads don’t…”
“She will,” said Harry. He could not bear to contemplate the alternative. “She’s
tough, Luna, much tougher than you’d think. She’s probably teaching all the inmates
about Wrackspurts and Nargles.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Hermione. She passed a hand over her eyes. “I’d feel
so sorry for Xenophilius if ---“
“---if he hadn’t just tried to sell us to the Death Eaters, yeah,” said Ron.
They put up the tent and retreated inside it, where Ron made them tea. After their
narrow escape, the chilly, musty old place felt like home: safe, familiar, and friendly.
“Oh, why did we go there?” groaned Hermione after a few minutes’ silence.
“Harry, you were right, it was Godric’s Hollow all over again, a complete waste of time!
The Deathly Hallows…such rubbish…although actually,” a sudden thought seemed to
have struck her, “he might have made it all up, mightn’t he? He probably doesn’t believe
in the Deathly Hallows at all, he just wanted to keep us talking until the Death Eaters
arrived!”
“I don’t think so,” said Ron. “It’s a damn sight harder making stuff up when
you’re under stress than you’d think. I found that out when the Snatchers caught me. It
was much easier pretending to be Stan, because I knew a bit about him, than inventing a
whole new person. Old Lovegood was under loads of pressure, trying to make sure we
stayed put. I reckon he told us the truth, or what he thinks is the truth, just to keep us
talking.”
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters,” sighed Hermione. “Even if he was being
honest, I never heard such a lot of nonsense in all my life.”
“Hang on, though,” said Ron. “The Chamber of Secrets was supposed to be a
myth, wasn’t it?”
“But the Deathly Hallows can’t exist, Ron!”
“You keep saying that, but one of them can,” said Ron. “Harry’s Invisibility
Cloak ---“
“The Tale of the Three Brothers’ is a story,” said Hermione firmly. “A story about
how humans are frightened of death. If surviving was as simple as hiding under the
Invisibility Cloak, we’d have everything we need already!”

“I don’t know. We could do with an unbeatable wand,” said Harry, turning the
blackthorn wand he so disliked over in his fingers.
“There’s no such thing, Harry!”
“You said there have been loads of wands --- the Deathstick and whatever they
were called ---“
“All right, even if you want to kid yourself the Elder Wand’s real, what about the
Resurrection Stone?” Her fingers sketched quotation marks around the name, and her
tone dripped sarcasm. “No magic can raise the dead, and that’s that!”
“When my wand connected with You-Know-Who’s, it made my mum and dad
appear…and Cedric…”
“But they weren’t really back from the dead, were they?” said Hermione. “Those
kind of ---of pale imitations aren’t the same as truly bringing someone back to life.”
“But she, the girl in the tale, didn’t really come back, did she? The story says that
once people are dead, they belong with the dead. But the second brother still got to see
her and talk to her, didn’t he? He even lived with her for a while…”
He saw concern and something less easily definable in Hermione’s expression.
Then, as she glanced at Ron, Harry realized that it was fear: He had scared her with his
talk of living with dead people.
“So that Peverell bloke who’s buried in Godric’s Hollow,” he said hastily, trying
to sound robustly sane, “you don’t know anything about him, then?”
“No,” she replied, looking relieved at the change of subject. “I looked him up
after I saw the mark on his grave; if he’d been anyone famous or done anything important,
I’m sure he’d be in one of our books. The only place I’ve managed to find the name
‘Peverell’ Is Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. I borrowed it from Kreacher,”
she explained as Ron raised his eyebrows. “It lists the pure-blood families that are now
extinct in the male line. Apparently the Peverells were one of the earliest families to
vanish.”
“Extinct in the male line?” repeated Ron.
“It means the name died out,” said Hermione, “centuries ago, in the case of the
Peverells. They could still have descendents, though, they’d just be called something
different.”
And then it came to Harry in one shining piece, the memory that had stirred at the
sound of the name “Peverell”: a filthy old man brandishing an ugly ring in the face of a
Ministry official, and he cried aloud, “Marvolo Gaunt!”
“Sorry said Ron and Hermione together.
“Marvolo Gaunt! You-Know-Who’s grandfather! In the Pensieve! With
Dumbledore! Marvolo Gaunt said he was descended from the Peverells!”
Ron and Hermione looked bewildered.
“The ring, the ring that became the Horcrux, Marvolo Gaunt said it had the
Peverell coat of arms on it! I saw him waving it in the bloke from the Ministry’s face, he
nearly shoved it up his nose!”
“The Peverell coat of arms?” said Hermione sharply. “Could you see what it
looked like?”
“Not really,” said Harry, trying to remember. “There was nothing fancy on there,
as far as I could see; maybe a few scratches. I only ever saw it really close up after it had
been cracked open.”

Harry saw Hermione’s comprehension in the sudden widening of her eyes. Ron
was looking from one to the other, astonished.
“Blimey…You reckon it was this sign again? The sign of the Hallows?
“Why not said Harry excitedly, “Marvolo Gaunt was an ignorant old git who lived
like a pig, all he cared about was his ancestry. If that ring had been passed down through
the centuries, he might not have known what it really was. There were no books in that
house, and trust me, he wasn’t the type to read fairy tales to his kids. He’d have loved to
think the scratches on the stone were a coat of arms, because as far as he was concerned,
having pure blood made you practically royal.”
“Yes…and that’s all very interesting,” said Hermione cautiously, “but Harry, if
you’re thinking what I think you’re think ---“
“Well, why not? Why not? said Harry, abandoning caution. “It was a stone,
wasn’t it?” He looked at Ron for support. “What if it was the Resurrection Stone?”
Ron’s mouth fell open.
“Blimey --- but would it still work if Dumbledore broke --- ?”
“Work? Work? Ron, it never worked! There’s no such thing as a Resurrection
Stone!”
Hermione leapt to her feet, looking exasperated and angry. Harry you’re trying to
fit everything into the Hallows story ---“
“Fit everything in?” he repeated. “Hermione, it fits of its own accord! I know the
sign of the Deathly Hallows was on that stone! Gaunt said he was descended from the
Peverells!”
“A minute ago you told us you never saw the mark on the stone properly!”
“Where’d you reckon the ring is now?” Ron asked Harry. “What did Dumbledore
do with it after he broke it open?”
“But Harry’s imagination was racing ahead, far beyond Ron and Hermione’s…
Three objects, or Hallows, which, if united, will make the possessor master of
Death…Master…Conqueror…Vanquisher…The last enemy that shall be destroyed is
death…
And he saw himself, possessor of the Hallows, facing Voldemort, whose
Horcruxes were no match…Neither can live while the other survives…Was this the
answer? Hallows versus Horcruxes? Was there a way after all, to ensure that he was the
one who triumphed? If he were the master of the Deathly Hallows, would he be safe?
“Harry?”
But he scarcely heard Hermione: He had pulled out his Invisibility Cloak and was
running it through his fingers, the cloth supple as water, light as air. He had never seen
anything to equal it in his nearly seven years in the Wizarding world. The Cloak was
exactly what Xenophilius had described: A cloak that really and truly renders the wearer
completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving constant and impenetrable
concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it…
And then, with a gasp, he remembered—
“Dumbledore had my Cloak the night my parents died!”
His voice shook and he could feel the color in his face, but he did not care.
“My mum told Sirius that Dumbledore borrowed the Cloak! This is why! He
wanted to examine it, because he thought it was the third Hallow! Ignotus Peverell is
buried in Godric’s Hollow…” Harry was walking blindly around the tent, feeling as

though great new vistas of truth were opening all around him. “He’s my ancestor. I’m
descended from the third brother! It all makes sense!”
“He felt armed in certainty, in his belief in the Hallows, as if the mere idea of
possessing them was giving him protection, and he felt joyous as he turned back to the
other two.
“Harry,” said Hermione again, but he was busy undoing the pouch around his
neck, his fingers shaking hard.
“Read it,” he told her, pushing his mother’s letter into her hand. “Read it!
Dumbledore had the Cloak, Hermione! Why else would he want it? He didn’t need a
Cloak, he could perform a Disillusionment Charm so powerful that he made himself
completely invisible without one!”
Something fell to the floor and rolled, glittering, under a chair: He had dislodged
the Snitch when he pulled out the letter. He stooped to pick it up, and then the newly
tapped spring of fabulous discoveries threw him another gift, and shock and wonder
erupted inside him so that he shouted out.
“IT’S IN HERE! He left me the ring – it’s in the Snitch!”
“You --- you reckon?”
He could not understand why Ron looked taken aback. It was so obvious, so clear
to Harry. Everything fit, everything…His Cloak was the third Hallow, and when he
discovered how to open the Snitch he would have the second, and then all he needed to
do was find the first Hallow, the Elder Wand, and then ---
But it was as though a curtain fell on a lit stage: All his excitement, all his hope
and happiness were extinguished at a stroke, and he stood alone in the darkness, and the
glorious spell was broken.
“That’s what he’s after.”
The change in his voice made Ron and Hermione look even more scared.
“You-Know-Who’s after the Elder Wand.”
He turned his back on their strained, incredulous faces. He knew it was the truth.
It all made sense, Voldemort was not seeking a new wand; he was seeking an old wand, a
very old wand indeed. Harry walked to the entrance of the tent, forgetting about Ron and
Hermione as he looked out into the night, thinking…
Voldemort had been raised in a Muggle orphanage. Nobody could have told him
The Tales of Beedle the Bard when he was a child, any more than Harry had heard them.
Hardly any wizards believed in the Deathly Hallows. Was it likely that Voldemort knew
about them?
Harry gazed into the darkness…If Voldemort had known about the Deathly
Hallows, surely he would have sought them, done anything to possess them: three objects
that made the possessor master of Death? If he had known about the Deathly Hallows, he
might not have needed Horcruxes in the first place. Didn’t the simple fact that he had
taken a Hallow, and turned it into a Horcrux, demonstrate that he did not know this last
great Wizarding secret?
Which meant that Voldemort sought the Elder Wand without realizing its full
power, without understanding that it was one of three…for the wand was the Hallow that
could not be hidden, whose existence was best known…The bloody trail of the Elder
Wand is splattered across the pages of Wizarding history…

Harry watched the cloudy sky, curves of smoke-gray and silver sliding over the
face of the white moon. He felt lightheaded with amazement at his discoveries.
He turned back into the tent. It was a shock to see Ron and Hermione standing
exactly where he had left them, Hermione still holding Lily’s letter, Ron at her side
looking slightly anxious. Didn’t they realize how far they had traveled in the last few
minutes?
“This is it?” Harry said, trying to bring them inside the glow of his own
astonished certainty, “This explains everything. The Deathly Hallows are real and I’ve
got one --- maybe two ---“
He held up the Snitch.
“--- and You-Know-Who’s chasing the third, but he doesn’t realize…he just
thinks it’s a powerful wand ---“
“Harry,” said Hermione, moving across to him and handing him back Lily’s letter,
“I’m sorry, but I think you’ve got this wrong, all wrong.”
“But don’t you see? It all fits ---“
“Not, it doesn’t,” she said. “It doesn’t. Harry, you’re just getting carried away.
Please,” she said as she started to speak, “please just answer me this: If the Deathly
Hallows really existed, and Dumbledore knew about them, knew that the person who
possessed all of them would be master of Death --- Harry, why wouldn’t he have told
you? Why?”
He had his answer ready.
“But you said it, Hermione! You’ve got to find out about them for yourself! It’s a
Quest!”
“But I only said that to try and persuade you to come to the Lovegoods’!” cried
Hermione in exasperation. “I didn’t really believe it!”
Harry took no notice.
“Dumbledore usually let me find out stuff for myself. He let me try my strength,
take risks. This feels like the kind of thing he’d do.”
“Harry, this isn’t a game, this isn’t practice! This is the real thing, and
Dumbledore left you very clear instructions: Find and destroy the Horcruxes! That
symbol doesn’t mean anything, forget the Deathly Hallows, we can’t afford to get
sidetracked ---“
Harry was barely listening to her. He was turning the Snitch over and over in his
hands, half expecting it to break open, to reveal the Resurrection Stone, to prove to
Hermione that he was right, that the Deathly Hallows were real.
She appealed to Ron.
“You don’t believe in this, do you?”
Harry looked up, Ron hesitated.
“I dunno…I mean…bits of it sort of fit together,” said Ron awkwardly, “But
when you look at the whole thing…” He took a deep breath. “I think we’re supposed to
get rid of Horcruxes, Harry. That’s what Dumbledore told us to do. Maybe…maybe we
should forget about this Hallows business.”
“Thank you, Ron,” said Hermione. “I’ll take first watch.”
And she strode past Harry and sat down in the tent entrance bringing the action to
a fierce full stop.

But Harry hardly slept that night. The idea of the Deathly Hallows had taken
possession of him, and he could not rest while agitating thoughts whirled through his
mind: the wand, the stone, and the Cloak, if he could just possess them all…
I open at the close…But what was the close? Why couldn’t he have the stone
now? If only he had the stone, he could ask Dumbledore these questions in person…and
Harry murmured words to the Snitch in the darkness, trying everything, even
Parseltongue, but the golden ball would not open…
And the wand, the Elder Wand, where was that hidden? Where was Voldemort
searching now? Harry wished his scar would burn and show him Voldemort’s thoughts,
because for the first time ever, he and Voldemort were united in wanting the very same
thing…Hermione would not like that idea, of course…But then, she did not
believe….Xenophilius had been right, in a way…Limited, Narrow, Close-minded. The
truth was that she was scared of the idea of the Deathly Hallows, especially of the
Resurrection Stone…and Harry pressed his mouth again to the Snitch, kissing it, nearly
swallowing it, but the cold medal did not yield…
It was nearly dawn when he remembered Luna, alone in a cell in Azkaban,
surrounded by dementors, and he suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He had forgotten all
about her in his feverish contemplation of the Hallows. If only they could rescue her, but
dementors in those numbers would be virtually unassailable. Now he came to think about
it, he had not tried casting a Patronus with the blackthorn wand…He must try that in the
morning…
If only there was a way of getting a better wand…
And desire for the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, unbeatable, invincible, swallowed
him once more…
They packed up the tent next morning and moved on through a dreary shower of
rain. The downpour pursued them to the coast, where they pitched the tent that night, and
persisted through the whole week, through sodden landscapes that Harry found bleak and
depressing. He could think only of the Deathly Hallows. It was as though a flame had
been lit inside him that nothing, not Hermione’s flat disbelief nor Ron’s persistent doubts,
could extinguish. And yet the fiercer the longing for the Hallows burned inside him, the
less joyful it made him. He blamed Ron and Hermione: Their determined indifference
was as bad as the relentless rain for dampening his spirits, but neither could erode his
certainty, which remained absolute. Harry’s belief in and longing for the Hallows
consumed him so much that he felt isolated from the other two and their obsession with
the Horcruxes.
“Obsession?” said Hermione in a low fierce voice, when Harry was careless
enough to use the word one evening, after Hermione had told him off for his lack of
interest in locating more Horcruxes. “We’re not the one with an obsession, Harry! We’re
the ones trying to do what Dumbledore wanted us to do!”
But he was impervious to the veiled criticism. Dumbledore had left the sign of the
Hallows for Hermione to decipher, and he had also, Harry remained convinced of it, left
the Resurrection Stone hidden in the golden Snitch. Neither can live while the other
survives…master of Death…Why didn’t Ron and Hermione understand?
“’The last enemy shall be destroyed is death,’” Harry quoted calmly.
“I thought it was You-Know-Who we were supposed to be fighting?” Hermione
retorted, and Harry gave up on her.

Even the mystery of the silver doe, which the other two insisted on discussing,
seemed less important to Harry now, a vaguely interesting sideshow. The only other thing
that mattered to him was that his scar had begun to prickle again, although he did all he
could to hide this fact from the other two. He sought solitude whenever it happened, but
was disappointed by what he saw. The visions he and Voldemort were sharing had
changed in quality; they had become blurred, shifting as though they were moving in and
out of focus. Harry was just able to make out the indistinct features of an object that
looked like a skull, and something like a mountain that was more shadow than substance.
Used to images sharp as reality, Harry was disconcerted by the change. He was worried
that the connection between himself and Voldemort had been damaged, a connection that
he both feared and, whatever he had told Hermione, prized. Somehow Harry connected
these unsatisfying, vague images with the destruction of his wand, as if it was the
blackthorn wand’s fault that he could no longer see into Voldemort’s mind as well as
before.
As the weeks crept on, Harry could not help but notice, even through his new self-
absorption, that Ron seemed to be taking charge. Perhaps because he was determined to
make up for having walked out on them, perhaps because Harry’s descent into
listlessness galvanized his dormant leadership qualities, Ron was the one now
encouraging and exhorting the other two into action.
“Three Horcruxes left,” he kept saying. “We need a plan of action, come on!
Where haven’t we looked? Let’s go through it again. The orphanage…”
Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, the Riddle House, Borgin and Burkes, Albania, every
place that they knew Tom Riddle had ever lived or worked, visited or murdered, Ron and
Hermione raked over them again, Harry joining in only to stop Hermione pestering him.
He would have been happy to sit alone in silence, trying to read Voldemort’s thoughts, to
find out more about the Elder Wand, but Ron insisted on journeying to ever more
unlikely places simply, Harry was aware, to keep them moving.
“You never know,” was Ron’s constant refrain. “Upper Flagley is a Wizarding
village, he might’ve wanted to live there. Let’s go and have a poke around.”
These frequent forays into Wizarding territory brought them within occasional
sight of Snatchers.
“Some of them are supposed to be as bad as Death Eaters,” said Ron. “The lot that
got me were a bit pathetic, but Bill recons some of them are really dangerous. They said
on Potterwatch ---“
“On what?” said Harry.
“Potterwatch, didn’t I tell you that’s what it was called? The program I keep
trying to get on the radio, the only one that tells the truth about what’s going on! Nearly
all of the programs are following You-Know-Who’s line, all except Potterwatch, I really
want you to hear it, but it’s tricky tuning in…”
Ron spent evening after evening using his wand to beat out various rhythms on
top of the wireless while the dials whirled. Occasionally they would catch ***es of
advice on how to treat dragonpox, and once a few bars of “A Cauldron Full of Hot,
Strong Love.” While he taped, Ron continued to try to hit on the correct password,
muttering strings of random words under his breath.
“They’re normally something to do with the Order,” he told them. “Bill had a real
knack for guessing them. I’m bound to get one in the end…”

“But not until March did luck favor Ron at last. Harry was sitting in the tent
entrance, on guard duty, staring idly at a clump of grape hyacinths that had forced their
way through the chilly ground, when Ron shouted excitedly from inside the tent.
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it! Password was ‘Albus’! Get in here, Harry.”
Roused for the first time in days from his contemplation of the Deathly Hallows,
Harry hurried back inside the tent to find Ron and Hermione kneeling on the floor beside
the little radio. Hermione, who had been polishing the sword of Gryffindor just for
something to do, was sitting open-mouthed, staring at the tiny speaker, from which a
most familiar voice was issuing.
“…apologize for our temporary absence from the airwaves, which was due to a
number of house calls in our area by those charming Death Eaters.”
“But that’s Lee Jordan!” said Hermione.
“I know!” beamed Ron. “Cool, eh?”
“…now found ourselves another secure location,” Lee was saying, and I’m
pleased to tell you that two of our regular contributors have joined me here this evening.
Evening, boys!”
“Hi.”
“Evening, River.”
“’River’” that’s Lee,” Ron explained. “They’ve all got code names, but you can
usually tell ---“
“Shh!” said Hermione.
“But before we hear from Royal and Romulus,” Lee went on, “let’s take a
moment to report those deaths that the Wizarding Wireless Network News and Daily
Prophet don’t think important enough to mention. It is with great regret that we inform
our listeners of the murders of Ted Tonks and Dirk Cresswell.”
Harry felt a sick, swooping in his belly. He, Ron, and Hermione gazed at one
another in horror.
“A goblin by the name of Gornuk was also killed. It is believed that Muggle-born
Dean Thomas and a second goblin, both believed to have been traveling with Tonks,
Cresswell, and Gornuk, may have escaped. If Dean is listening, or if anyone has any
knowledge of his whereabouts, his parents and sisters are desperate for news.
“Meanwhile, in Gaddley, a Muggle family of five has been found dead in their
home. Muggle authorities are attributing their deaths to a gas leak, but members of the
Order of the Phoenix inform me that it was the Killing Curse --- more evidence, as if it
were needed, of the fact that Muggle slaughter is becoming little more than a recreational
sport under the new regime.
“Finally, we regret to inform our listeners that the remains of Bathilda Bagshot
have been discovered in Godric’s Hollow. The evidence is that she died several months
ago. The Order of the Phoenix informs us that her body showed unmistakable signs of
injuries inflicted by Dark Magic.
“Listeners, I’d like to invite you now to join us in a minute’s silence in memory of
Ted Tonks, Dirk Cresswell, Bathilda Bagshot, Gornuk, and the unnamed, but no less
regretted, Muggles murdered by the Death Eaters.”
Silence fell, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione did not speak. Half of Harry yearned
to hear more, half of him was afraid of what might come next. It was the first time he had
felt fully connected to the outside world for a long time.

“Thank you,” said Lee’s voice. “And now we can return to regular contributor
Royal, for an update on how the new Wizarding order is affecting the Muggle world.”
“Thanks, River,” said an unmistakable voice, deep, measured, reassuring.
“Kingsley!” burst out Ron.
“We know!” said Hermione, hushing him.
“Muggles remain ignorant of the source of their suffering as they continue to
sustain heavy casualties,” said Kingsley. “However, we continue to hear truly
inspirational stories of wizards and witches risking their own safety to protect Muggle
friends and neighbors, often without the Muggles’ knowledge. I’d like to appeal to all our
listeners to emulate their example, perhaps by casting a protective charm over any
Muggle dwellings in your street. Many lives could be saved if such simple measures are
taken.”
“And what would you say, Royal, to those listeners who reply that in these
dangerous times, it should be ‘Wizards first’? asked Lee.
“I’d say that it’s one short step from ‘Wizards first’ to ‘Purebloods first,’ and then
to ‘Death Eaters,’” replied Kingsley. “We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is
worth the same, and worth saving.”
“Excellently put, Royal, and you’ve got my vote for Minister of Magic if we ever
get out of this mess,” said Lee. “And now, over to Romulus for our popular feature ‘Pals
of Potter.’”
“Thanks, River,” said another very familiar voice. Ron started to speak, but
Hermione forestalled him in a whisper.
“We know it’s Lupin!”
“Romulus, do you maintain, as you have every time you’ve appeared on our
program, that Harry Potter is still alive?”
“I do,” said Lupin firmly. “There is no doubt at all in my mind that his death
would be proclaimed as widely as possible by the Death Eaters if it had happened,
because it would strike a deadly blow at the morale of those resisting the new regime.
‘The Boy Who Lived’ remains a symbol of everything for which we are fighting: the
triumph of good, the power of innocence, the need to keep resisting.”
A mixture of gratitude and shame welled up in Harry. Had Lupin forgiven him,
then, for the terrible things he had said when they had last met?
“And what would you say to Harry if you knew he was listening, Romulus?”
“I’d tell him we’re all with him in spirit,” said Lupin, then hesitated slightly,
“And I’d tell him to follow his instincts, which are good and nearly always right.”
Harry looked at Hermione, whose eyes were full of tears.
“Nearly always right,” she repeated.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” said Ron in surprise. “Bill told me Lupin’s living with
Tonks again! And apparently she’s getting pretty big too…”
“…and our usual update on those friends of Harry Potter’s who are suffering for
their allegiance?” Lee was saying.
“Well, as regular listeners will know, several of the more outspoken supporters of
Harry Potter have now been imprisoned, including Xenophilius Lovegood, erstwhile
editor of The Quibbler,” said Lupin.
“At least he’s still alive!” muttered Ron.

“We have also heard within the last few hours that Rubeus Hagrid” – all three of
them gasped, and so nearly missed the rest of the sentence -- “well-known gamekeeper at
Hogwarts School, has narrowly escaped arrest within the grounds of Hogwarts, where he
is rumored to have hosted a ‘Support Harry Potter’ party in his house. However, Hagrid
was not taken into custody, and is, we believe, on the run.”
“I suppose it helps, when escaping from Death Eaters, if you’ve got a sixteen-
foot-high half brother?” asked Lee.
“It would tend to give you an edge,” agreed Lupin gravely. “May I just add that
while we here at Potterwatch applaud Hagrid’s spirit, we would urge even the most
devoted of Harry’s supporters against following Hagrid’s lead. ‘Support Harry Potter’
parties are unwise in the present climate.”
“Indeed they are, Romulus,” said Lee, “so we suggest that you continue to show
your devotion to the man with the lightning scar by listening to Potterwatch! And now
let’s move to news concerning the wizard who is proving just as elusive as Harry Potter.
We like to refer to him as the Chief Death Eater, and here to give his views on some of
the more insane rumors circulating about him, I’d like to introduce a new correspondent.
Rodent?”
“’Rodent’?” said yet another familiar voice, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione cried
out together:
“Fred!”
“No – is it George?”
“It’s Fred, I think,” said Ron, leaning in closer, as whichever twin it was said,
“I’m not being ‘Rodent,’ no way, I told you I wanted to be ‘Rapier’!”
“Oh, all right then, ‘Rapier,’ could you please give us your take on the various
stories we’ve been hearing about the Chief Death Eater?”
“Yes, River, I can,” said Fred. “As our listeners will know, unless they’ve taken
refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or somewhere similar, You-Know-Who’s strategy
of remaining in the shadows is creating a nice little climate of panic. Mind you, if all the
alleged sightings of him are genuine, we must have a good nineteen You-Know-Whos
running around the place.”
“Which suits him, of course,” said Kingsley. “The air of mystery is creating more
terror than actually showing himself.”
“Agreed,” said Fred. “So, people, let’s try and calm down a bit. Things are bad
enough without inventing stuff as well. For instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who
can kill people with a single glance from his eyes. That’s a basilisk, listeners. One simple
test: Check whether the thing that’s glaring at you has got legs. If it has, it’s safe to look
into its eyes, although if it really is You-Know-Who, that’s still likely to be the last thing
you ever do.”
For the first time in weeks and weeks, Harry was laughing: He could feel the
weight of tension leaving him.
“And the rumors that he keeps being sighted abroad?” asked Lee.
“Well, who wouldn’t want a nice little holiday after all the hard work he’s been
putting in?” asked Fred. “Point is, people, don’t get lulled into a false sense of security,
thinking he’s out of the country. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, but the fact remains he can
move faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo when he wants to, so don’t

count on him being a long way away if you’re planning to take any risks. I never thought
I’d hear myself say it, but safety first!”
“Thank you very much for those wise words, Rapier,” said Lee. ”Listeners, that
brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don’t know when it will be possible to
broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: The
next password will be ‘Mad-Eye.’ Keep each other safe: Keep faith. Good night.”
The radio’s dial twirled and the lights behind the tuning panel went out. Harry,
Ron, and Hermione were still beaming. Hearing familiar, friendly voices was an
extraordinary tonic; Harry had become so used to their isolation he had nearly forgotten
that other people were resisting Voldemort. It was like waking from a long sleep.
“Good, eh?” said Ron happily.
“Brilliant,” said Harry.
“It’s so brave of them,” sighed Hermione admiringly. “If they were found …”
“Well, they keep on the move, don’t they?” said Ron. “Like us.”
“But did you hear what Fred said?” asked Harry excitedly; now the broadcast was
over, his thoughts turned around toward his all consuming obsession. “He’s abroad! He’s
still looking for the Wand, I knew it!”
“Harry—“
“Come on, Hermione, why are you so determined not to admit it? Vol –“
“HARRY, NO!”
“—demort’s after the Elder Wand!”
“The name’s Taboo!” Ron bellowed, leaping to his feet as a loud crack sounded
outside the tent. “I told you, Harry, I told you, we can’t say it anymore – we’ve got to put
the protection back around us – quickly – it’s how they find –“
But Ron stopped talking, and Harry knew why. The Sneakoscope on the table had
lit up and begun to spin; they could hear voices coming nearer and nearer: rough, excited
voices. Ron pulled the Deluminator out of his pocket and clicked it: Their lamps went out.
“Come out of there with your hands up!” came a rasping voice through the
darkness. “We know you’re in there! You’ve got half a dozen wands pointing at you and
we don’t care who we curse!”