Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hp-7 Read online

  “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 difficult. 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 Bar
d, 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 Lovegood—”

  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 Lovegoods 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 an enclosed space, was slightly overwhelming.

  In the middle of the floor, a wrought-iron spiral staircase led 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—”