Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hp-7 Page 15

  The two workmen made identical movements, and Harry mirrored them without conscious thought: All three of them drew their wands. Ron, a few seconds late in realizing what was going on, lunged across the table, pushing Hermione sideways onto her bench. The force of the Death Eaters’ spells shattered the tiled wall where Ron’s head had just been, as Harry, still invisible, yelled, “Stupefy!”

  The great blond Death Eater was hit in the face by a jet of red light: He slumped sideways, unconscious. His companion, unable to see who had cast the spell, fired another at Ron: Shining black ropes flew from his wand-tip and bound Ron head to foot—the waitress screamed and ran for the door—Harry sent another Stunning Spell at the Death Eater with the twisted face who had tied up Ron, but the spell missed, rebounded on the window, and hit the waitress, who collapsed in front of the door.

  “Expulso!” bellowed the Death Eater, and the table behind which Harry was standing blew up: The force of the explosion slammed him into the wall and he felt his wand leave his hand as the Cloak slipped off him.

  “Petrificus Totalus!” screamed Hermione from out of sight, and the Death Eater fell forward like a statue to land with a crunching thud on the mess of broken china, table, and coffee. Hermione crawled out from underneath the bench, shaking bits of glass ashtray out of her hair and trembling all over.

  “D-diffindo,” she said, pointing her wand at Ron, who roared in pain as she slashed open the knee of his jeans, leaving a deep cut. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Ron, my hand’s shaking! Diffindo!”

  The severed ropes fell away. Ron got to his feet, shaking his arms to regain feeling in them. Harry picked up his wand and climbed over all the debris to where the large blond Death Eater was sprawled across the bench.

  “I should’ve recognized him, he was there the night Dumbledore died,” he said. He turned over the darker Death Eater with his foot; the man’s eyes moved rapidly between Harry, Ron and Hermione.

  “That’s Dolohov,” said Ron. “I recognize him from the old wanted posters. I think the big one’s Thorfinn Rowle.”

  “Never mind what they’re called!” said Hermione a little hysterically. “How did they find us? What are we going to do?”

  Somehow her panic seemed to clear Harry’s head.

  “Lock the door,” he told her, “and Ron, turn out the lights.”

  He looked down at the paralyzed Dolohov, thinking fast as the lock clicked and Ron used the Deluminator to plunge the café into darkness. Harry could hear the men who had jeered at Hermione earlier, yelling at another girl in the distance.

  “What are we going to do with them?” Ron whispered to Harry through the dark; then, even more quietly, “Kill them? They’d kill us. They had a good go just now.”

  Hermione shuddered and took a step backward. Harry shook his head.

  “We just need to wipe their memories,” said Harry. “It’s better like that, it’ll throw them off the scent. If we killed them it’d be obvious we were here.”

  “You’re the boss,” said Ron, sounding profoundly relieved. “But I’ve never down a Memory Charm.”

  “Nor have I,” said Hermione, “but I know the theory.”

  She took a deep, calming breath, then pointed her wand at Dolohov’s forehead and said, “Obliviate.”

  At once, Dolohov’s eyes became unfocused and dreamy.

  “Brilliant!” said Harry, clapping her on the back. “Take care of the other one and the waitress while Ron and I clear up.”

  “Clear up?” said Ron, looking around at the partly destroyed café. “Why?”

  “Don’t you think they might wonder what’s happened if they wake up and find themselves in a place that looks like it’s just been bombed?”

  “Oh right, yeah…”

  Ron struggled for a moment before managing to extract his wand from his pocket.

  “It’s no wonder I can’t get it out, Hermione, you packed my old jeans, they’re tight.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” hissed Hermione, and as she dragged the waitress out of sight of the windows, Harry heard her mutter a suggestion as to where Ron could stick his wand instead.

  Once the café was restored to its previous condition, they heaved the Death Eaters back into their booth and propped them up facing each other.

  “But how did they find us?” Hermione asked, looking from one inert man to the other. “How did they know where we were?”

  She turned to Harry.

  “You—you don’t think you’ve still got your Trace on you, do you, Harry?”

  “He can’t have,” said Ron. “The Trace breaks at seventeen, that’s Wizarding law, you can’t put it on an adult.”

  “As far as you know,” said Hermione. “What if the Death Eaters have found a way to put it on a seventeen-year-old?”

  “But Harry hasn’t been near a Death Eater in the last twenty-four hours. Who’s supposed to have put a Trace back on him?”

  Hermione did not reply. Harry felt contaminated, tainted: Was that really how the Death Eaters had found them?

  “If I can’t use magic, and you can’t use magic near me, without us giving away our position—” he began.

  “We’re not splitting up!” said Hermione firmly.

  “We need a safe place to hide,” said Ron. “Give us time to think things through.”

  “Grimmauld Place,” said Harry.

  The other two gaped.

  “Don’t be silly, Harry, Snape can get in there!”

  “Ron’s dad said they’ve put up jinxes against him—and even if they haven’t worked,” he pressed on as Hermione began to argue, “so what? I swear, I’d like nothing better than to meet Snape!”

  “But—”

  “Hermione, where else is there? It’s the best chance we’ve got. Snape’s only one Death Eater. If I’ve still got the Trace on me, we’ll have whole crowds of them on us wherever else we go.”

  She could not argue, though she looked as if she would have liked to. While she unlocked the café door, Ron clicked the Deluminator to release the café’s light. Then, on Harry’s count of three, they reversed the spells upon their three victims, and before the waitress or either of the Death Eaters could do more than stir sleepily, Harry, Ron and Hermione had turned on the spot and vanished into the compressing darkness once more.

  Seconds later Harry’s lungs expanded gratefully and he opened his eyes: They were now standing in the middle of a familiar small and shabby square. Tall, dilapidated houses looked down on them from every side. Number twelve was visible to them, for they had been told of its existence by Dumbledore, its Secret-Keeper, and they rushed toward it, checking every few yards that they were not being followed or observed. They raced up the stone steps, and Harry tapped the front door once with his wand. They heard a series of metallic clicks and the clatter of a chain, then the door swung open with a creak and they hurried over the threshold.

  As Harry closed the door behind them, the old-fashioned gas lamps sprang into life, casting flickering light along the length of the hallway. It looked just as Harry remembered it: eerie, cobwebbed, the outlines of the house-elf heads on the wall throwing odd shadows up the staircase. Long dark curtains concealed the portrait of Sirius’s mother. The only thing that was out of place was the troll’s leg umbrella stand, which was lying on its side as if Tonks had just knocked it over again.

  “I think somebody’s been in here,” Hermione whispered, pointing toward it.

  “That could’ve happened as the Order left,” Ron murmured back.

  “So where are these jinxes they put up against Snape?” Harry asked.

  “Maybe they’re only activated if he shows up?” suggested Ron.

  Yet they remained close together on the doormat, backs against the door, scared to move farther into the house.

  “Well, we can’t stay here forever,” said Harry, and he took a step forward.

  “Severus Snape?”

  Mad-Eye Moody’s voice whispered out of the darkness, making all three of them j
ump back in fright. “We’re not Snape!” croaked Harry, before something whooshed over him like cold air and his tongue curled backward on itself, making it impossible to speak. Before he had time to feel inside his mouth, however, his tongue had unraveled again.

  The other two seemed to have experienced the same unpleasant sensation. Ron was making retching noises; Hermione stammered, “That m-must have b-been the T-Tongue-Tying Curse Mad-Eye set up for Snape!”

  Gingerly Harry took another step forward. Something shifted in the shadows at the end of the hall, and before any of them could say another word, a figure had risen up out of the carpet, tall, dust-colored, and terrible; Hermione screamed and so did Mrs. Black, her curtains flying open; the gray figure was gliding toward them, faster and faster, its waist-length hair and beard streaming behind it, its face sunken, fleshless, with empty eye sockets: Horribly familiar, dreadfully altered, it raised a wasted arm, pointing at Harry.

  “No!” Harry shouted, and though he had raised his wand no spell occurred to him. “No! It wasn’t us! We didn’t kill you—”

  On the word kill, the figure exploded in a great cloud of dust: Coughing, his eyes watering, Harry looked around to see Hermione crouched on the floor by the door with her arms over her head, and Ron, who was shaking from head to foot, patting her clumsily on the shoulder and saying, “It’s all r-right… It’s g-gone…”

  Dust swirled around Harry like mist, catching the blue gaslight, as Mrs. Black continued to scream.

  “Mudbloods, filth, stains of dishonor, taint of shame on the house of my fathers—”

  “SHUT UP!” Harry bellowed, directing his wand at her, and with a bang and a burst of red sparks, the curtains swung shut again, silencing her.

  “That… that was…” Hermione whimpered, as Ron helped her to her feet.

  “Yeah,” said Harry, “but it wasn’t really him, was it? Just something to scare Snape.”

  Had it worked, Harry wondered, or had Snape already blasted the horror-figure aside as casually as he had killed the real Dumbledore? Nerves still tingling, he led the other two up the hall, half-expecting some new terror to reveal itself, but nothing moved except for a mouse skittering along the skirting board.

  “Before we go any farther, I think we’d better check,” whispered Hermione, and she raised her wand and said, “Homenum revelio.”

  Nothing happened.

  “Well, you’ve just had a big shock,” said Ron kindly. “What was that supposed to do?”

  “It did what I meant it to do!” said Hermione rather crossly. “That was a spell to reveal human presence, and there’s nobody here except us!”

  “And old Dusty,” said Ron, glancing at the patch of carpet from which the corpse-figure had risen.

  “Let’s go up,” said Hermione with a frightened look at the same spot, and she led the way up the creaking stairs to the drawing room on the first floor.

  Hermione waved her wand to ignite the old gas lamps, then, shivering slightly in the drafty room, she perched on the sofa, her arms wrapped tightly around her. Ron crossed to the window and moved the heavy velvet curtains aside an inch.

  “Can’t see anyone out there,” he reported. “And you’d think, if Harry still had a Trace on him, they’d have followed us here. I know they can’t get in the house, but—what’s up, Harry?”

  Harry had given a cry of pain: His scar had burned against as something flashed across his mind like a bright light on water. He saw a large shadow and felt a fury that was not his own pound through his body, violent and brief as an electric shock.

  “What did you see?” Ron asked, advancing on Harry. “Did you see him at my place?”

  “No, I just felt anger—he’s really angry—”

  “But that could be at the Burrow,” said Ron loudly. “What else? Didn’t you see anything? Was he cursing someone?”

  “No, I just felt anger—I couldn’t tell—”

  Harry felt badgered, confused, and Hermione did not help as she said in a frightened voice, “Your scar, again? But what’s going on? I thought that connection had closed!”

  “It did, for a while,” muttered Harry; his scar was still painful, which made it hard to concentrate. “I—I think it’s started opening again whenever he loses control, that’s how it used to—”

  “But then you’ve got to close your mind!” said Hermione shrilly. “Harry, Dumbledore didn’t want you to use that connection, he wanted you to shut it down, that’s why you were supposed to use Occlumency! Otherwise Voldemort can plant false images in your mind, remember—”

  “Yeah, I do remember, thanks,” said Harry through gritted teeth; he did not need Hermione to tell him that Voldemort had once used this selfsame connection between them to lead him into a trap, nor that it had resulted in Sirius’s death. He wished that he had not told them what he had seen and felt; it made Voldemort more threatening, as though he were pressing against the window of the room, and still the pain in his scar was building and he fought it: It was like resisting the urge to be sick.

  He turned his back on Ron and Hermione, pretending to examine the old tapestry of the Black family tree on the wall. Then Hermione shrieked: Harry drew his wand again and spun around to see a silver Patronus soar through the drawing room window and land upon the floor in front of them, where it solidified into the weasel that spoke with the voice of Ron’s father.

  “Family safe, do not reply, we are being watched.”

  The Patronus dissolved into nothingness. Ron let out a noise between a whimper and a groan and dropped onto the sofa: Hermione joined him, gripping his arm.

  “They’re all right, they’re all right!” she whispered, and Ron half laughed and hugged her.

  “Harry,” he said over Hermione’s shoulder, “I—”

  “It’s not a problem,” said Harry, sickened by the pain in his head. “It’s your family, ’course you were worried. I’d feel the same way.” He thought of Ginny. “I do feel the same way.”

  The pain in his scar was reaching a peak, burning as it had back in the garden of the Burrow. Faintly he heard Hermione say “I don’t want to be on my own. Could we use the sleeping bags I’ve brought and camp in here tonight?”

  He heard Ron agree. He could not fight the pain much longer. He had to succumb.

  “Bathroom,” he muttered, and he left the room as fast as he could without running.

  He barely made it: Bolting the door behind him with trembling hands, he grasped his pounding head and fell to the floor, then in an explosion of agony, he felt the rage that did not belong to him possess his soul, saw a long room lit only by firelight, and the giant blond Death Eater on the floor, screaming and writhing, and a slighter figure standing over him, wand outstretched, while Harry spoke in a high, cold, merciless voice.

  “More, Rowle, or shall we end it and feed you to Nagini? Lord Voldemort is not sure that he will forgive this time… You called me back for this, to tell me that Harry Potter has escaped again? Draco, give Rowle another taste of our displeasure… Do it, or feel my wrath yourself!”

  A log fell in the fire: Flames reared, their light darting across a terrified, pointed white face—with a sense of emerging from deep water, Harry drew heaving breaths and opened his eyes.

  He was spread-eagled on the cold black marble floor, his nose inches from one of the silver serpent tails that supported the large bathtub. He sat up. Malfoy’s gaunt, petrified face seemed burned on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort.

  There was a sharp rap on the door, and Harry jumped as Hermione’s voice rang out.

  “Harry, do you want your toothbrush? I’ve got it here.”

  “Yeah, great, thanks,” he said, fighting to keep his voice casual as he stood up to let her in.

  10. KREACHER’S TALE

  Harry woke early next morning, wrapped in a sleeping bag on the drawing room floor. A chink of sky was visible between the heavy curtains. It was
the cool, clear blue of watered ink, somewhere between night and dawn, and everything was quiet except for Ron and Hermione’s slow, deep breathing. Harry glanced over at the dark shapes they made on the floor beside him. Ron had had a fit of gallantry and insisted that Hermione sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so that her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm curved to the floor, her fingers inches from Ron’s. Harry wondered whether they had fallen asleep holding hands. The idea made him feel strangely lonely.

  He looked up at the shadowy ceiling, the cobwebbed chandelier. Less than twenty-four hours ago, he had been standing in the sunlight at the entrance to the marquee, waiting to show in wedding guests. It seemed a lifetime away. What was going to happen now? He lay on the floor and he thought of the Horcruxes, of the daunting complex mission Dumbledore had left him… Dumbledore…

  The grief that had possessed him since Dumbledore’s death felt different now. The accusations he had heard from Muriel at the wedding seemed to have nested in his brain like diseased things, infecting his memories of the wizard he had idolized. Could Dumbledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley, content to watch neglect and abuse as long as it did not affect him? Could he have turned his back on a sister who was being imprisoned and hidden?

  Harry thought of Godric’s Hollow, of graves Dumbledore had never mentioned there; he thought of mysterious objects left without explanation in Dumbledore’s will, and resentment swelled in the darkness. Why hadn’t Dumbledore told him? Why hadn’t he explained? Had Dumbledore actually cared about Harry at all? Or had Harry been nothing more than a tool to be polished and honed, but not trusted, never confided in?

  Harry could not stand lying there with nothing but bitter thoughts for company. Desperate for something to do, for distraction, he slipped out of his sleeping bad, picked up his wand, and crept out of the room. On the landing he whispered, “Lumos,” and started to climb the stairs by wandlight.

  On the second landing was the bedroom in which he and Ron had slept last time they had been here; he glanced into it. The wardrobe doors stood open and the bedclothes had been ripped back. Harry remembered the overturned troll leg downstairs. Somebody had searched the house since the Order had left. Snape? Or perhaps Mundungus, who had pilfered plenty from this house both before and after Sirius died? Harry’s gaze wandered to the portrait that sometimes contained Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius’s great-great grandfather, but it was empty, showing nothing but a stretch of muddy backdrop. Phineas Nigellus was evidently spending the night in the headmaster’s study at Hogwarts.