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  “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 they 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 scarred, 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.

  “Protego!” 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.

  16. 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 grasped 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, they 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 Nigellus 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 bed, 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 rec
koned 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…”