Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hp-7 Read online

  “Don’t take it personally, she’s rude to everyone,” said Ron.

  “Talking about Muriel?” inquired George, reemerging from the marquee with Fred. “Yeah, she’s just told me my ears are lopsided. Old bat. I wish old Uncle Bilius was still with us, though; he was a right laugh at weddings.”

  “Wasn’t he the one who saw a Grim and died twenty-four hours later?” asked Hermione.

  “Well, yeah, he went a bit odd toward the end,” conceded George.

  “But before he went loopy he was the life and soul of the party,” said Fred. “He used to down an entire bottle of firewhisky, then run onto the dance floor, hoist up his robes, and start pulling bunches of flowers out of his—”

  “Yes, he sounds a real charmer,” said Hermione, while Harry roared with laughter.

  “Never married, for some reason,” said Ron.

  “You amaze me,” said Hermione.

  They were all laughing so much that none of them noticed the latecomer, a dark-haired young man with a large, curved nose and thick black eyebrows, until he held out his invitation to Ron and said, with his eyes on Hermione, “You look vunderful.”

  “Viktor!” she shrieked, and dropped her small beaded bag, which made a loud thump quite disproportionate to its size. As she scrambled, blushing, to pick it up, she said, “I didn’t know you were—goodness—it’s lovely to see—how are you?”

  Ron’s ears had turned bright red again. After glancing at Krum’s invitation as if he did not believe a word of it, he said, much too loudly, “How come you’re here?”

  “Fleur invited me,” said Krum, eyebrows raised.

  Harry, who had no grudge against Krum, shook hands; then feeling that it would be prudent to remove Krum from Ron’s vicinity, offered to show him his seat.

  “Your friend is not pleased to see me,” said Krum, as they entered the now packed marquee. “Or is he a relative?” he added with a glance at Harry’s red curly hair.

  “Cousin,” Harry muttered, but Krum was not really listening. His appearance was causing a stir, particularly amongst the veela cousins: He was, after all, a famous Quidditch player. While people were still craning their necks to get a good look at him, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and George came hurrying down the aisle.

  “Time to sit down,” Fred told Harry, “or we’re going to get run over by the bride.”

  Harry, Ron and Hermione took their seats in the second row behind Fred and George. Hermione looked rather pink and Ron’s ears were still scarlet. After a few moments he muttered to Harry, “Did you see he’s grown a stupid little beard?”

  Harry gave a noncommittal grunt.

  A sense of jittery anticipation had filled the warm tent, the general murmuring broken by occasional spurts of excited laughter. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley strolled up the aisle, smiling and waving at relatives; Mrs. Weasley was wearing a brand-new set of amethyst colored robes with a matching hat.

  A moment later Bill and Charlie stood up at the front of the marquee, both wearing dress robes, with larger white roses in their buttonholes; Fred wolf-whistled and there was an outbreak of giggling from the veela cousins. Then the crowd fell silent as music swelled from what seemed to be the golden balloons.

  “Ooooh!” said Hermione, swiveling around in her seat to look at the entrance.

  A great collective sigh issued from the assembled witches and wizards as Monsieur Delacour and Fleur came walking up the aisle, Fleur gliding, Monsieur Delacour bouncing and beaming. Fleur was wearing a very simple white dress and seemed to be emitting a strong, silvery glow. While her radiance usually dimmed everyone else by comparison, today it beautified everybody it fell upon. Ginny and Gabrielle, both wearing golden dresses, looked even prettier than usual and once Fleur had reached for him, Bill did not look as though he had ever met Fenrir Greyback.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a slightly singsong voice, and with a slight shock, Harry saw the same small, tufty-haired wizard who had presided at Dumbledore’s funeral, now standing in front of Bill and Fleur. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two faithful souls…”

  “Yes, my tiara set off the whole thing nicely,” said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. “But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.”

  Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to the afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…

  “Do you, William Arthur, take Fleur Isabelle…?”

  In the front row, Mrs. Weasley and Madame Delacour were both sobbing quietly into scraps of lace. Trumpetlike sounds from the back of the marquee told everyone that Hagrid had taken out one of his own tablecloth-sized handkerchiefs. Hermione turned around and beamed at Harry; her eyes too were full of tears.

  “…then I declare you bonded for life.”

  The tufty-haired wizard waved his hand high over the heads of Bill and Fleur and a shower of silver stars fell upon them, spiraling around their now entwined figures. As Fred and George led a round of applause, the golden balloons overhead burst. Birds of paradise and tiny golden bells flew and floated out of them, adding their songs and chimes to the din.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” called the tufty-haired wizard. “If you would please stand up!”

  They all did so, Auntie Muriel grumbling audibly; he waved his wand again. The seats on which they had been sitting rose gracefully into the air as the canvas walls of the marquee vanished, so that they stood beneath a canopy supported by golden poles, with a glorious view of the sunlit orchard and surrounding countryside. Next, a pool of molten gold spread from the center of the tent to form a gleaming dance floor; the hovering chairs grouped themselves around small, white-clothed tables, which all floated gracefully back to earth round it, and the golden-jacketed hand trooped toward a podium.

  “Smooth,” said Ron approvingly as the waiters popped up on all sides, some hearing silver trays of pumpkin juice, butterbeer, and firewhisky, others tottering piles of tarts and sandwiches.

  “We should go and congratulate them!” said Hermione, standing on tiptoe to see the place where Bill and Fleur had vanished amid a crowd of well-wishers.

  “We’ll have time later,” shrugged Ron, snatching three butterbeers from a passing tray and handing one to Harry. “Hermione, cop hold, let’s grab a table… Not there! Nowhere near Muriel—”

  Ron led the way across the empty dance floor, glancing left and right as he went; Harry felt sure that he was keeping an eye out for Krum. By the time they had reached the other side of the marquee, most of the tables were occupied: The emptiest was the one where Luna sat alone.

  “All right if we join you?” asked Ron.

  “Oh yes,” she said happily. “Daddy’s just gone to give Bill and Fleur our present.”

  “What is it, a lifetime’s supply of Gurdyroots?” asked Ron.

  Hermione aimed a kick at him under the table, but caught Harry instead. Eyes watering in pain, Harry lost track of the conversation for a few moments.

  The band had begun to play, Bill and Fleur took to the dance floor first, to great applause; after a while, Mr. Weasley led Madame Delacour onto the floor, followed by Mr. Weasley and Fleur’s father.

  “I like this song,” said Luna, swaying in time to the waltzlike tune, and a few seconds later she stood up and glided onto the dance floor, where she revolved on the spot, quite alone, eyes closed and waving her arms.

  “She’s great, isn’t she?” said Ron admiringly. “Always good value.”

  But the smile vanished from his face at once: Viktor Krum had dropped into Luna’s vacant seat. Hermione looked pleasurably flustered but this time Krum had not come to compliment her. With a scowl on his face he said, “Who is that man in the yellow?”
r />   “That’s Xenophilius Lovegood, he’s the father of a friend of ours,” said Ron. His pugnacious tone indicated that they were not about to laugh at Xenophilius, despite the clear provocation. “Come and dance,” he added abruptly to Hermione.

  She looked taken aback, but pleased too, and got up. They vanished together into the growing throng on the dance floor.

  “Ah, they are together now?” asked Krum, momentarily distracted.

  “Er—sort of,” said Harry.

  “Who are you?” Krum asked.

  “Barny Weasley.”

  They shook hands.

  “You, Barny—you know this man Lovegood well?”

  “No, I only met him today. Why?”

  Krum glowered over the top of his drink, watching Xenophilius, who was chatting to several warlocks on the other side of the dance floor.

  “Because,” said Krum, “If he vus not a guest of Fleur’s I vould dud him, here and now, for veering that filthy sign upon his chest.”

  “Sign?” said Harry, looking over at Xenophilius too. The strange triangular eye was gleaming on his chest. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “Grindelvald. That is Grindelvald’s sign.”

  “Grindelwald… the Dark wizard Dumbledore defeated?”

  “Exactly.”

  Krum’s jaw muscles worked as if he were chewing, then he said, “Grindelvald killed many people, my grandfather, for instance. Of course, he vos never powerful in this country, they said he feared Dumbledore—and rightly, seeing how he vos finished. But this”—he pointed a finger at Xenophilius—“this is his symbol, I recognized it at vunce: Grindelvald carved it into a vall at Durmstrang ver he vos a pupil there. Some idiots copied it onto their books and clothes thinking to shock, make themselves impressive—until those of us who had lost family members to Grindelvald taught them better.”

  Krum cracked his knuckles menacingly and glowered at Xenophilius. Harry felt perplexed. It seemed incredibly unlikely that Luna’s father was a supporter of the Dark Arts, and nobody else in the tent seemed to have recognized the triangular, finlike shape.

  “Are you—er—quite sure it’s Grindelwald’s—?”

  “I am not mistaken,” said Krum coldly. “I walked past that sign for several years, I know it vell.”

  “Well, there’s a chance,” said Harry, “that Xenophilius doesn’t actually know what the symbol means, the Lovegoods are quite… unusual. He could have easily picked it up somewhere and think it’s a cross section of the head of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack or something.”

  “The cross section of a vot?”

  “Well, I don’t know what they are, but apparently he and his daughter go on holiday looking for them…”

  Harry felt he was doing a bad job explaining Luna and her father.

  “That’s her,” he said, pointing at Luna, who was still dancing alone, waving her arms around her head like someone attempting to beat off midges.

  “Vy is she doing that?” asked Krum.

  “Probably trying to get rid of a Wrackspurt,” said Harry, who recognized the symptoms.

  Krum did not seem to know whether or not Harry was making fun of him. He drew his wand from inside his robe and tapped it menacingly on his thighs; sparks flew out of the end.

  “Gregorovitch!” said Harry loudly, and Krum started, but Harry was too excited to care; the memory had come back to him at the sight of Krum’s wand: Ollivander taking it and examining it carefully before the Triwizard Tournament.

  “Vot about him?” asked Krum suspiciously.

  “He’s a wandmaker!”

  “I know that,” said Krum.

  “He made your wand! That’s why I thought—Quidditch—”

  Krum was looking more and more suspicious.

  “How do you know Gregorovitch made my vand?”

  “I… I read it somewhere, I think,” said Harry. “In a—a fan magazine,” he improvised wildly and Krum looked mollified.

  “I had not realized I ever discussed my vand with fans,” he said.

  “So… er… where is Gregorovitch these days?”

  Krum looked puzzled.

  “He retired several years ago. I was one of the last to purchase a Gregorovitch vand. They are the best—although I know, of course, that your Britons set much store by Ollivander.”

  Harry did not answer. He pretended to watch the dancers, like Krum, but he was thinking hard. So Voldemort was looking for a celebrated wandmaker and Harry did not have to search far for a reason. It was surely because of what Harry’s wand had done on the night that Voldemort pursued him across the skies. The holly and phoenix feather wand had conquered the borrowed wand, some thing that Ollivander had not anticipated or understood. Would Gregorovitch know better? Was he truly more skilled than Ollivander, did he know secrets of wands that Ollivander did not?

  “This girl is very nice-looking,” Krum said, recalling Harry to his surroundings. Krum was pointing at Ginny, who had just joined Luna. “She is also a relative of yours?”

  “Yeah,” said Harry, suddenly irritated, “and she’s seeing someone. Jealous type. Big bloke. You wouldn’t want to cross him.”

  Krum grunted.

  “Vot,” he said, draining his goblet and getting to his feet again, “is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?”

  And he strode off leaving Harry to take a sandwich from a passing waiter and make his way around the edge of the crowded dance floor. He wanted to find Ron, to tell him about Gregorovitch, but he was dancing with Hermione out in the middle of the floor. Harry leaned up against one of the golden pillars and watched Ginny, who was now dancing with Fred and George’s friend Lee Jordan, trying not to feel resentful about the promise he had given Ron.

  He had never been to a wedding before, so he could not judge how Wizarding celebrations differed from Muggle ones, though he was pretty sure that the latter would not involve a wedding cake topped with two model phoenixes that took flight when the cake was cut, or bottles of champagne that floated unsupported through the crowd. As the evening drew in, and moths began to swoop under the canopy, now lit with floating golden lanterns, the revelry became more and more uncontained. Fred and George had long since disappeared into the darkness with a pair of Fleur’s cousins; Charlie, Hagrid, and a squat wizard in a purple porkpie hat were singing “Odo the Hero” in the corner.

  Wandering through the crowd so as to escape a drunken uncle of Ron’s who seemed unsure whether or not Harry was his son, Harry spotted an old wizard sitting alone at a table. His cloud of white hair made him look rather like an aged dandelion clock and was topped by a moth-eaten fez. He was vaguely familiar. Racking his brains, Harry suddenly realized that this was Elphias Doge, member of the Order of the Phoenix and the writer of Dumbledore’s obituary.

  Harry approached him.

  “May I sit down?”

  “Of course, of course,” said Doge; he had a rather high-pitched, wheezy voice.

  Harry leaned in.

  “Mr. Doge, I’m Harry Potter.”

  Doge gasped.

  “My dear boy! Arthur told me you were here, disguised… I am so glad, so honored!”

  In a flutter of nervous pleasure Doge poured Harry a goblet of champagne.

  “I thought of writing to you,” he whispered, “after Dumbledore… the shock… and for you, I am sure…”

  Doge’s tiny eyes filled with sudden tears.

  “I saw the obituary you wrote for the Daily Prophet,” said Harry. “I didn’t realize you knew Professor Dumbledore so well.”

  “As well as anyone,” said Doge, dabbing his eyes with a napkin. “Certainly I knew him longest, if you don’t count Aberforth—and somehow, people never do seem to count Aberforth.”

  “Speaking of the Daily Prophet… I don’t know whether you saw, Mr. Doge—?”

  “Oh, please call me Elphias, dear boy.”

  “Elphias, I don’t know whether you saw the interview Rita Skeeter ga
ve about Dumbledore?”

  Doge’s face flooded with angry color.

  “Oh yes, Harry, I saw it. That woman, or vulture might be a more accurate term, positively pestered me to talk to her, I am ashamed to say that I became rather rude, called her an interfering trout, which resulted, as you my have seen, in aspersions cast upon my sanity.”

  “Well, in that interview,” Harry went on, “Rita Skeeter hinted that Professor Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts when he was young.”

  “Don’t believe a word of it!” said Doge at once. “Not a word, Harry! Let nothing tarnish your memories of Albus Dumbledore!”

  Harry looked into Doge’s earnest, pained face, and felt, not reassured, but frustrated. Did Doge really think it was that easy, that Harry could simply choose not to believe? Didn’t Doge understand Harry’s need to be sure, to know everything?

  Perhaps Doge suspected Harry’s feelings, for he looked concerned and hurried on, “Harry, Rita Skeeter is a dreadful—”

  But he was interrupted by a shrill cackle.

  “Rita Skeeter? Oh, I love her, always read her!”

  Harry and Doge looked up to see Auntie Muriel standing there, the plumes dancing on her hair, a goblet of champagne in her hand. “She’s written a book about Dumbledore, you know!”

  “Hello, Muriel,” said Doge, “Yes, we were just discussing—”

  “You there! Give me your chair, I’m a hundred and seven!”

  Another redheaded Weasley cousin jumped off his seat, looking alarmed, and Auntie Muriel swung it around with surprising strength and plopped herself down upon it between Doge and Harry.

  “Hello again, Barry or whatever your name is,” she said to Harry, “Now what were you saying about Rita Skeeter, Elphias? You know, she’s written a biography of Dumbledore? I can’t wait to read it. I must remember to place an order at Flourish and Blotts!”

  Doge looked stiff and solemn at this but Auntie Muriel drained her goblet and clicked her bony fingers at a passing waiter for a replacement. She took another large gulp of champagne, belched and then said, “There’s no need to look like a pair of stuffed frogs! Before he became so respected and respectable and all that tosh, there were some mighty funny rumors about Albus!”