The Deathly Hallows Read online

  ‘Well, he’s taken,’ said Harry. ‘But Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle are more than up to the job –’

  ‘If we’d even seen CVs …’ began Uncle Vernon, but Harry lost patience. Getting to his feet, he advanced on his uncle, now pointing at the TV set himself.

  ‘These accidents aren’t accidents – the crashes and explosions and derailments and whatever else has happened since we last watched the news. People are disappearing and dying and he’s behind it – Voldemort. I’ve told you this over and over again, he kills Muggles for fun. Even the fogs – they’re caused by Dementors, and if you can’t remember what they are, ask your son!’

  Dudley’s hands jerked upwards to cover his mouth. With his parents’ and Harry’s eyes upon him, he slowly lowered them again and asked, ‘There are … more of them?’

  ‘More?’ laughed Harry. ‘More than the two that attacked us, you mean? Of course there are, there are hundreds, maybe thousands by this time, seeing as they feed off fear and despair –’

  ‘All right, all right,’ blustered Vernon Dursley. ‘You’ve made your point –’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Harry, ‘because once I’m seventeen, all of them – Death Eaters, Dementors, maybe even Inferi, which means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark wizard – will be able to find you and will certainly attack you. And if you remember the last time you tried to outrun wizards, I think you’ll agree you need help.’

  There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years. Aunt Petunia was looking at Uncle Vernon; Dudley was staring at Harry. Finally Uncle Vernon blurted out, ‘But what about my work? What about Dudley’s school? I don’t suppose those things matter to a bunch of layabout wizards –’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ shouted Harry. ‘They will torture and kill you like they did my parents!’

  ‘Dad,’ said Dudley in a loud voice, ‘Dad – I’m going with these Order people.’

  ‘Dudley,’ said Harry, ‘for the first time in your life, you’re talking sense.’

  He knew that the battle was won. If Dudley was frightened enough to accept the Order’s help, his parents would accompany him: there could be no question of being separated from their Diddykins. Harry glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘They’ll be here in about five minutes,’ he said, and when none of the Dursleys replied, he left the room. The prospect of parting – probably forever – from his aunt, uncle and cousin was one that he was able to contemplate quite cheerfully, but there was nevertheless a certain awkwardness in the air. What did you say to one another at the end of sixteen years’ solid dislike?

  Back in his bedroom, Harry fiddled aimlessly with his rucksack, then poked a couple of owl nuts through the bars of Hedwig’s cage. They fell with dull thuds to the bottom, where she ignored them.

  ‘We’re leaving soon, really soon,’ Harry told her. ‘And then you’ll be able to fly again.’

  The doorbell rang. Harry hesitated, then headed back out of his room and downstairs: it was too much to expect Hestia and Dedalus to cope with the Dursleys on their own.

  ‘Harry Potter!’ squeaked an excited voice, the moment Harry had opened the door; a small man in a mauve top hat was sweeping him a deep bow. ‘An honour, as ever!’

  ‘Thanks, Dedalus,’ said Harry, bestowing a small and embarrassed smile upon the dark-haired Hestia. ‘It’s really good of you to do this … they’re through here, my aunt and uncle and cousin …’

  ‘Good day to you, Harry Potter’s relatives!’ said Dedalus happily, striding into the living room. The Dursleys did not look at all happy to be addressed thus; Harry half expected another change of mind. Dudley shrank nearer to his mother at the sight of the witch and wizard.

  ‘I see you are packed and ready. Excellent! The plan, as Harry has told you, is a simple one,’ said Dedalus, pulling an immense pocket watch out of his waistcoat and examining it. ‘We shall be leaving before Harry does. Due to the danger of using magic in your house – Harry being still under-age, it could provide the Ministry with an excuse to arrest him – we shall be driving, say ten miles or so, before Disapparating to the safe location we have picked out for you. You know how to drive, I take it?’ he asked Uncle Vernon politely.

  ‘Know how to –? Of course I ruddy well know how to drive!’ spluttered Uncle Vernon.

  ‘Very clever of you, sir, very clever, I personally would be utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs,’ said Dedalus. He was clearly under the impression that he was flattering Vernon Dursley, who was visibly losing confidence in the plan with every word Dedalus spoke.

  ‘Can’t even drive,’ he muttered under his breath, his moustache rippling indignantly, but fortunately neither Dedalus nor Hestia seemed to hear him.

  ‘You, Harry,’ Dedalus continued, ‘will wait here for your guard. There has been a little change in the arrangements –’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Harry at once. ‘I thought Mad-Eye was going to come and take me by Side-Along-Apparition?’

  ‘Can’t do it,’ said Hestia tersely. ‘Mad-Eye will explain.’

  The Dursleys, who had listened to all of this with looks of utter incomprehension on their faces, jumped as a loud voice screeched: ‘Hurry up!’ Harry looked all around the room before realising that the voice had issued from Dedalus’s pocket watch.

  ‘Quite right, we’re operating to a very tight schedule,’ said Dedalus, nodding at his watch and tucking it back into his waistcoat. ‘We are attempting to time your departure from the house with your family’s Disapparition, Harry; thus, the charm breaks at the moment you all head for safety.’ He turned to the Dursleys. ‘Well, are we all packed and ready to go?’

  None of them answered him: Uncle Vernon was still staring, appalled, at the bulge in Dedalus’s waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Perhaps we should wait outside in the hall, Dedalus,’ murmured Hestia: she clearly felt that it would be tactless for them to remain in the room while Harry and the Dursleys exchanged loving, possibly tearful farewells.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Harry muttered, but Uncle Vernon made any further explanation unnecessary by saying loudly, ‘Well, this is goodbye, then, boy.’

  He swung his right arm upwards to shake Harry’s hand, but at the last moment seemed unable to face it, and merely closed his fist and began swinging it backwards and forwards like a metronome.

  ‘Ready, Diddy?’ asked Aunt Petunia, fussily checking the clasp of her handbag so as to avoid looking at Harry altogether.

  Dudley did not answer, but stood there with his mouth slightly ajar, reminding Harry a little of the giant, Grawp.

  ‘Come along, then,’ said Uncle Vernon.

  He had already reached the living-room door when Dudley mumbled, ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t you understand, Popkin?’ asked Aunt Petunia, looking up at her son.

  Dudley raised a large, ham-like hand to point at Harry.

  ‘Why isn’t he coming with us?’

  Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia froze where they stood, staring at Dudley as though he had just expressed a desire to become a ballerina.

  ‘What?’ said Uncle Vernon loudly.

  ‘Why isn’t he coming too?’ asked Dudley.

  ‘Well, he – he doesn’t want to,’ said Uncle Vernon, turning to glare at Harry and adding, ‘you don’t want to, do you?’

  ‘Not in the slightest,’ said Harry.

  ‘There you are,’ Uncle Vernon told Dudley. ‘Now come on, we’re off.’

  He marched out of the room: they heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt Petunia stopped too.

  ‘What now?’ barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the doorway.

  It seemed that Dudley was struggling with concepts too difficult to put into words. After several moments of apparently painful internal struggle, he said, ‘But where’s he going to go?’

&nbs
p; Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the silence.

  ‘But … surely you know where your nephew is going?’ she asked, looking bewildered.

  ‘Certainly we know,’ said Vernon Dursley. ‘He’s off with some of your lot, isn’t he? Right, Dudley, let’s get in the car, you heard the man, we’re in a hurry.’

  Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow.

  ‘Off with some of our lot?’

  Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before: witches and wizards seemed stunned that his closest living relatives took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Harry assured her. ‘It doesn’t matter, honestly.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter?’ repeated Hestia, her voice rising ominously. ‘Don’t these people realise what you’ve been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?’

  ‘Er – no, they don’t,’ said Harry. ‘They think I’m a waste of space, actually, but I’m used to –’

  ‘I don’t think you’re a waste of space.’

  If Harry had not seen Dudley’s lips move, he might not have believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken; for one thing, Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself.

  ‘Well … er … thanks, Dudley.’

  Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts too unwieldy for expression before mumbling, ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Harry. ‘It was your soul the Dementor would have taken …’

  He looked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no contact during this summer or last, as Harry had come back to Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at all. Although rather touched, he was nevertheless quite relieved that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence.

  Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look which changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forwards and embraced Dudley rather than Harry.

  ‘S – So sweet, Dudders …’ she sobbed into his massive chest, ‘s – such a lovely b – boy … s – saying thank you …’

  ‘But he hasn’t said thank you at all!’ said Hestia indignantly. ‘He only said he didn’t think Harry was a waste of space!’

  ‘Yeah, but coming from Dudley that’s like “I love you”,’ said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petunia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from a burning building.

  ‘Are we going or not?’ roared Uncle Vernon, reappearing yet again at the living-room door. ‘I thought we were on a tight schedule!’

  ‘Yes – yes, we are,’ said Dedalus Diggle, who had been watching these exchanges with an air of bemusement and now seemed to pull himself together. ‘We really must be off. Harry –’

  He tripped forwards and wrung Harry’s hand with both of his own.

  ‘– good luck. I hope we meet again. The hopes of the wizarding world rest upon your shoulders.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harry, ‘right. Thanks.’

  ‘Farewell, Harry,’ said Hestia, also clasping his hand. ‘Our thoughts go with you.’

  ‘I hope everything’s OK,’ said Harry, with a glance towards Aunt Petunia and Dudley.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we shall end up the best of chums,’ said Diggle brightly, waving his hat as he left the room. Hestia followed him.

  Dudley gently released himself from his mother’s clutches and walked towards Harry, who had to repress an urge to threaten him with magic. Then Dudley held out his large, pink hand.

  ‘Blimey, Dudley,’ said Harry, over Aunt Petunia’s renewed sobs, ‘did the Dementors blow a different personality into you?’

  ‘Dunno,’ muttered Dudley. ‘See you, Harry.’

  ‘Yeah …’ said Harry, taking Dudley’s hand and shaking it. ‘Maybe. Take care, Big D.’

  Dudley nearly smiled, then lumbered from the room. Harry heard his heavy footfalls on the gravelled drive, and then a car door slammed.

  Aunt Petunia, whose face had been buried in her handkerchief, looked round at the sound. She did not seem to have expected to find herself alone with Harry. Hastily stowing her wet handkerchief into her pocket she said, ‘Well – goodbye,’ and marched towards the door without looking at him.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Harry.

  She stopped and looked back. For a moment Harry had the strangest feeling that she wanted to say something to him: she gave him an odd, tremulous look and seemed to teeter on the edge of speech, but then, with a little jerk of her head, she bustled out of the room after her husband and son.

  — CHAPTER FOUR —

  The Seven Potters

  Harry ran back upstairs to his bedroom, arriving at the window just in time to see the Dursleys’ car swinging out of the drive and off up the road. Dedalus’s top hat was visible between Aunt Petunia and Dudley in the back seat. The car turned right at the end of Privet Drive, its windows burned scarlet for a moment in the now setting sun, and then it was gone.

  Harry picked up Hedwig’s cage, his Firebolt and his rucksack, gave his unnaturally tidy bedroom one last sweeping look and then made his ungainly way back downstairs to the hall, where he deposited cage, broomstick and bag near the foot of the stairs. The light was fading rapidly now, the hall full of shadows in the evening light. It felt most strange to stand here in the silence and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time. Long ago, when he had been left alone while the Dursleys went out to enjoy themselves, the hours of solitude had been a rare treat: pausing only to sneak something tasty from the fridge he had rushed upstairs to play on Dudley’s computer, or put on the television and flicked through the channels to his heart’s content. It gave him an odd, empty feeling to remember those times; it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost.

  ‘Don’t you want to take a last look at the place?’ he asked Hedwig, who was still sulking with her head under her wing. ‘We’ll never be here again. Don’t you want to remember all the good times? I mean, look at this doormat. What memories … Dudley puked on it after I saved him from the Dementors … Turns out he was grateful after all, can you believe it? … And last summer, Dumbledore walked through that front door …’

  Harry lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment and Hedwig did nothing to help him retrieve it, but continued to sit with her head under her wing. Harry turned his back on the front door.

  ‘And under here, Hedwig –’ Harry pulled open a door under the stairs ‘– is where I used to sleep! You never knew me then – blimey, it’s small, I’d forgotten …’

  Harry looked around at the stacked shoes and umbrellas, remembering how he used to wake every morning looking up at the underside of the staircase, which was more often than not adorned with a spider or two. Those had been the days before he had known anything about his true identity; before he had found out how his parents had died or why such strange things often happened around him. But Harry could still remember the dreams that had dogged him, even in those days: confused dreams involving flashes of green light and, once – Uncle Vernon had nearly crashed the car when Harry had recounted it – a flying motorbike …

  There was a sudden, deafening roar from somewhere nearby. Harry straightened up with a jerk and smacked the top of his head on the low door frame. Pausing only to employ a few of Uncle Vernon’s choicest swear words, he staggered back into the kitchen, clutching his head and staring out of the window into the back garden.

  The darkness seemed to be rippling, the air itself quivering. Then, one by one, figures began to pop into sight as their Disillusionm
ent Charms lifted. Dominating the scene was Hagrid, wearing a helmet and goggles and sitting astride an enormous motorbike with a black sidecar attached. All around him other people were dismounting from brooms and, in two cases, skeletal, black winged horses.

  Wrenching open the back door, Harry hurtled into their midst. There was a general cry of greeting as Hermione flung her arms around him, Ron clapped him on the back and Hagrid said, ‘All righ’, Harry? Ready fer the off?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Harry, beaming around at them all. ‘But I wasn’t expecting this many of you!’

  ‘Change of plan,’ growled Mad-Eye, who was holding two enormous, bulging sacks and whose magical eye was spinning from darkening sky to house to garden with dizzying rapidity. ‘Let’s get undercover before we talk you through it.’

  Harry led them all back into the kitchen where, laughing and chattering, they settled on chairs, sat themselves upon Aunt Petunia’s gleaming work-surfaces or leaned up against her spotless appliances: Ron, long and lanky; Hermione, her bushy hair tied back in a long plait; Fred and George, grinning identically; Bill, badly scarred and long-haired; Mr Weasley, kind-faced, balding, his spectacles a little awry; Mad-Eye, battle-worn, one-legged, his bright blue magical eye whizzing in its socket; Tonks, whose short hair was her favourite shade of bright pink; Lupin, greyer, more lined; Fleur, slender and beautiful, with her long, silvery blonde hair; Kingsley, bald, black, broad-shouldered; Hagrid, with his wild hair and beard, standing hunchbacked to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling, and Mundungus Fletcher, small, dirty and hangdog, with his droopy, basset hound’s eyes and matted hair. Harry’s heart seemed to expand and glow at the sight: he felt incredibly fond of all of them, even Mundungus, whom he had tried to strangle the last time they had met.

  ‘Kingsley, I thought you were looking after the Muggle Prime Minister?’ he called across the room.