The Deathly Hallows Read online

  ‘Here we go again, Harry, hold on!’ yelled Hagrid, and he jabbed at a second button. This time a great net burst from the bike’s exhaust, but the Death Eaters were ready for it. Not only did they swerve to avoid it, but the companion who had slowed to save their unconscious friend had caught up: he bloomed suddenly out of the darkness and now three of them were pursuing the motorbike, all shooting curses after it.

  ‘This’ll do it, Harry, hold on tight!’ yelled Hagrid, and Harry saw him slam his whole hand on to the purple button beside the speedometer.

  With an unmistakable bellowing roar, dragon fire burst from the exhaust, white-hot and blue, and the motorbike shot forwards like a bullet with a sound of wrenching metal. Harry saw the Death Eaters swerve out of sight to avoid the deadly trail of flame, and at the same time felt the sidecar sway ominously: its metal connections to the bike had splintered with the force of acceleration.

  ‘It’s all righ’, Harry!’ bellowed Hagrid, now thrown flat on to his back by the surge of speed; nobody was steering now, and the sidecar was starting to twist violently in the bike’s slipstream.

  ‘I’m on it, Harry, don’ worry!’ Hagrid yelled, and from inside his jacket pocket he pulled his flowery pink umbrella.

  ‘Hagrid! No! Let me!’

  ‘REPARO!’

  There was a deafening bang and the sidecar broke away from the bike completely: Harry sped forwards, propelled by the impetus of the bike’s flight, then the sidecar began to lose height –

  In desperation Harry pointed his wand at the sidecar and shouted, ‘Wingardium Leviosa!’

  The sidecar rose like a cork, unsteerable but at least still airborne: he had but a split second’s relief, however, as more curses streaked past him: the three Death Eaters were closing in.

  ‘I’m comin’, Harry!’ Hagrid yelled from out of the darkness, but Harry could feel the sidecar beginning to sink again: crouching as low as he could, he pointed at the middle of the oncoming figures and yelled, ‘Impedimenta!’

  The jinx hit the middle Death Eater in the chest: for a moment the man was absurdly spread-eagled in mid-air as though he had hit an invisible barrier: one of his fellows almost collided with him –

  Then the sidecar began to fall in earnest, and the remaining Death Eater shot a curse so close to Harry that he had to duck below the rim of the car, knocking out a tooth on the edge of his seat –

  ‘I’m comin’, Harry, I’m comin’!’

  A huge hand seized the back of Harry’s robes and hoisted him out of the plummeting sidecar; Harry pulled his rucksack with him as he dragged himself on to the motorbike’s seat and found himself back to back with Hagrid. As they soared upwards, away from the two remaining Death Eaters, Harry spat blood out of his mouth, pointed his wand at the falling sidecar, and yelled, ‘Confringo!’

  He knew a dreadful, gut-wrenching pang for Hedwig as it exploded; the Death Eater nearest it was blasted off his broom and fell from sight; his companion fell back and vanished.

  ‘Harry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ moaned Hagrid, ‘I shouldn’ta tried ter repair it meself – yeh’ve got no room –’

  ‘It’s not a problem, just keep flying!’ Harry shouted back, as two more Death Eaters emerged out of the darkness, drawing closer.

  As the curses came shooting across the intervening space again, Hagrid swerved and zigzagged: Harry knew that Hagrid did not dare use the dragon-fire button again, with Harry seated so insecurely. Harry sent Stunning Spell after Stunning Spell back at their pursuers, barely holding them off. He shot another blocking jinx at them: the closest Death Eater swerved to avoid it and his hood slipped, and by the red light of his next Stunning Spell, Harry saw the strangely blank face of Stanley Shunpike – Stan –

  ‘Expelliarmus!’ Harry yelled.

  ‘That’s him, it’s him, it’s the real one!’

  The hooded Death Eater’s shout reached Harry even above the thunder of the motorbike’s engine: next moment, both pursuers had fallen back and disappeared from view.

  ‘Harry, what’s happened?’ bellowed Hagrid. ‘Where’ve they gone?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  But Harry was afraid: the hooded Death Eater had shouted ‘it’s the real one’; how had he known? He gazed around at the apparently empty darkness and felt its menace. Where were they?

  He clambered round on the seat to face forwards and seized hold of the back of Hagrid’s jacket.

  ‘Hagrid, do the dragon fire thing again, let’s get out of here!’

  ‘Hold on tight, then, Harry!’

  There was a deafening, screeching roar again and the white-blue fire shot from the exhaust: Harry felt himself slipping backwards off what little of the seat he had, Hagrid flung backwards upon him, barely maintaining his grip on the handlebars –

  ‘I think we’ve lost ’em Harry, I think we’ve done it!’ yelled Hagrid.

  But Harry was not convinced: fear lapped at him as he looked left and right for pursuers he was sure would come … why had they fallen back? One of them had still had a wand … It’s him, it’s the real one … they had said it right after he had tried to Disarm Stan …

  ‘We’re nearly there, Harry, we’ve nearly made it!’ shouted Hagrid.

  Harry felt the bike drop a little, though the lights down on the ground still seemed remote as stars.

  Then the scar on his forehead burned like fire: as a Death Eater appeared on either side of the bike, two Killing Curses missed Harry by millimetres, cast from behind –

  And then Harry saw him. Voldemort was flying like smoke on the wind, without broomstick or Thestral to hold him, his snakelike face gleaming out of the blackness, his white fingers raising his wand again –

  Hagrid let out a bellow of fear and steered the motorbike into a vertical dive. Clinging on for dear life, Harry sent Stunning Spells flying at random into the whirling night. He saw a body fly past him and knew he had hit one of them, but then he heard a bang and saw sparks from the engine; the motorbike spiralled through the air, completely out of control –

  Green jets of light shot past them again. Harry had no idea which way was up, which down: his scar was still burning; he expected to die at any second. A hooded figure on a broomstick was feet from him, he saw it raise its arm –

  ‘NO!’

  With a shout of fury, Hagrid launched himself off the bike at the Death Eater; to his horror, Harry saw both Hagrid and the Death Eater falling out of sight, their combined weight too much for the broomstick –

  Barely gripping the plummeting bike with his knees, Harry heard Voldemort scream, ‘Mine!’

  It was over: he could not see or hear where Voldemort was; he glimpsed another Death Eater swooping out of the way and heard ‘Avada –’

  As the pain from Harry’s scar forced his eyes shut, his wand acted of its own accord. He felt it drag his hand round like some great magnet, saw a spurt of golden fire through his half-closed eyelids, heard a crack and a scream of fury. The remaining Death Eater yelled; Voldemort screamed, ‘No!’: somehow, Harry found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button: he punched it with his wand-free hand and the bike shot more flames into the air, hurtling straight towards the ground.

  ‘Hagrid!’ Harry called, holding on to the bike for dear life, ‘Hagrid – accio Hagrid!’

  The motorbike sped up, sucked towards the earth. Face level with the handlebars, Harry could see nothing but distant lights growing nearer and nearer: he was going to crash and there was nothing he could do about it. Behind him came another scream –

  ‘Your wand, Selwyn, give me your wand!’

  He felt Voldemort before he saw him. Looking sideways, he stared into the red eyes and was sure they would be the last thing he ever saw: Voldemort preparing to curse him once more –

  And then Voldemort vanished. Harry looked down and saw Hagrid spread-eagled on the ground below him: he pulled hard at the handlebars to avoid hitting him, groped for the brake, but with an ear-splitting, ground-trembling crash, he sm
ashed into a muddy pond.

  — CHAPTER FIVE —

  Fallen Warrior

  ‘Hagrid?’

  Harry struggled to raise himself out of the debris of metal and leather that surrounded him; his hands sank into inches of muddy water as he tried to stand. He could not understand where Voldemort had gone and expected him to swoop out of the darkness at any moment. Something hot and wet was trickling down his chin and from his forehead. He crawled out of the pond and stumbled towards the great, dark mass on the ground that was Hagrid.

  ‘Hagrid? Hagrid, talk to me –’

  But the dark mass did not stir.

  ‘Who’s there? Is it Potter? Are you Harry Potter?’

  Harry did not recognise the man’s voice. Then a woman shouted, ‘They’ve crashed, Ted! Crashed in the garden!’

  Harry’s head was swimming.

  ‘Hagrid,’ he repeated stupidly, and his knees buckled.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back on what felt like cushions, with a burning sensation in his ribs and right arm. His missing tooth had been regrown. The scar on his forehead was still throbbing.

  ‘Hagrid?’

  He opened his eyes and saw that he was lying on a sofa in an unfamiliar, lamplit sitting room. His rucksack lay on the floor a short distance away, wet and muddy. A fair-haired, big-bellied man was watching Harry anxiously.

  ‘Hagrid’s fine, son,’ said the man, ‘the wife’s seeing to him now. How are you feeling? Anything else broken? I’ve fixed your ribs, your tooth and your arm. I’m Ted, by the way, Ted Tonks – Dora’s father.’

  Harry sat up too quickly: lights popped in front of his eyes and he felt sick and giddy.

  ‘Voldemort –’

  ‘Easy, now,’ said Ted Tonks, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder and pushing him back against the cushions. ‘That was a nasty crash you just had. What happened, anyway? Something go wrong with the bike? Arthur Weasley overstretch himself again, him and his Muggle contraptions?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry, as his scar pulsed like an open wound. ‘Death Eaters, loads of them – we were chased –’

  ‘Death Eaters?’ said Ted sharply. ‘What d’you mean, Death Eaters? I thought they didn’t know you were being moved tonight, I thought –’

  ‘They knew,’ said Harry.

  Ted Tonks looked up at the ceiling as though he could see through it to the sky above.

  ‘Well, we know our protective charms hold, then, don’t we? They shouldn’t be able to get within a hundred yards of the place in any direction.’

  Now Harry understood why Voldemort had vanished; it had been at the point when the motorbike crossed the barrier of the Order’s charms. He only hoped they would continue to work: he imagined Voldemort, a hundred yards above them as they spoke, looking for a way to penetrate what Harry visualised as a great, transparent bubble.

  He swung his legs off the sofa; he needed to see Hagrid with his own eyes before he would believe that he was alive. He had barely stood up, however, when a door opened and Hagrid squeezed through it, his face covered in mud and blood, limping a little but miraculously alive.

  ‘Harry!’

  Knocking over two delicate tables and an aspidistra, he covered the floor between them in two strides and pulled Harry into a hug that nearly cracked his newly repaired ribs. ‘Blimey, Harry, how did yeh get out o’ that? I thought we were both goners.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. I can’t believe –’

  Harry broke off: he had just noticed the woman who had entered the room behind Hagrid.

  ‘You!’ he shouted, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, but it was empty.

  ‘Your wand’s here, son,’ said Ted, tapping it on Harry’s arm. ‘It fell right beside you, I picked it up. And that’s my wife you’re shouting at.’

  ‘Oh, I’m – I’m sorry.’

  As she moved forwards into the room, Mrs Tonks’s resemblance to her sister Bellatrix became much less pronounced: her hair was a light, soft brown and her eyes were wider and kinder. Nevertheless, she looked a little haughty after Harry’s exclamation.

  ‘What happened to our daughter?’ she asked. ‘Hagrid said you were ambushed; where is Nymphadora?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Harry. ‘We don’t know what happened to anyone else.’

  She and Ted exchanged looks. A mixture of fear and guilt gripped Harry at the sight of their expressions; if any of the others had died, it was his fault, all his fault. He had consented to the plan, given them his hair …

  ‘The Portkey,’ he said, remembering all of a sudden. ‘We’ve got to get back to The Burrow and find out – then we’ll be able to send you word, or – or Tonks will, once she’s –’

  ‘Dora’ll be OK, Dromeda,’ said Ted. ‘She knows her stuff, she’s been in plenty of tight spots with the Aurors. The Portkey’s through here,’ he added to Harry. ‘It’s supposed to leave in three minutes, if you want to take it.’

  ‘Yeah, we do,’ said Harry. He seized his rucksack, swung it on to his shoulders. ‘I –’

  He looked at Mrs Tonks, wanting to apologise for the state of fear in which he left her and for which he felt so terribly responsible, but no words occurred to him that did not seem hollow and insincere.

  ‘I’ll tell Tonks – Dora – to send word, when she … thanks for patching us up, thanks for everything. I –’

  He was glad to leave the room and follow Ted Tonks along a short hallway and into a bedroom. Hagrid came after them, bending low to avoid hitting his head on the door lintel.

  ‘There you go, son. That’s the Portkey.’

  Mr Tonks was pointing to a small, silver-backed hairbrush lying on the dressing table.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Harry, reaching out to place a finger on it, ready to leave.

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Hagrid, looking around. ‘Harry, where’s Hedwig?’

  ‘She … she got hit,’ said Harry.

  The realisation crashed over him: he felt ashamed of himself as the tears stung his eyes. The owl had been his companion, his one great link with the magical world whenever he had been forced to return to the Dursleys.

  Hagrid reached out a great hand and patted him painfully on the shoulder.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said gruffly. ‘Never mind. She had a great old life –’

  ‘Hagrid!’ said Ted Tonks warningly, as the hairbrush glowed bright blue, and Hagrid only just got his forefinger to it in time.

  With a jerk behind the navel as though an invisible hook and line had dragged him forwards, Harry was pulled into nothingness, spinning uncontrollably, his finger glued to the Portkey as he and Hagrid hurtled away from Mr Tonks: seconds later Harry’s feet slammed on to hard ground and he fell on his hands and knees in the yard of The Burrow. He heard screams. Throwing aside the no longer glowing hairbrush, Harry stood up, swaying slightly, and saw Mrs Weasley and Ginny running down the steps by the back door as Hagrid, who had also collapsed on landing, clambered laboriously to his feet.

  ‘Harry? You are the real Harry? What happened? Where are the others?’ cried Mrs Weasley.

  What d’you mean? Isn’t anyone else back?’ Harry panted.

  The answer was clearly etched in Mrs Weasley’s pale face.

  ‘The Death Eaters were waiting for us,’ Harry told her. ‘We were surrounded the moment we took off – they knew it was tonight – I don’t know what happened to anyone else. Four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us –’

  He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the plea for her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her sons, but –

  ‘Thank goodness you’re all right,’ she said, pulling him into a hug he did not feel he deserved.

  ‘Haven’t go’ any brandy, have yeh, Molly?’ asked Hagrid a little shakily. ‘Fer medicinal purposes?’

  She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back towards the crooked house Harry knew that she wanted to hide her face. H
e turned to Ginny and she answered his unspoken plea for information at once.

  ‘Ron and Tonks should have been back first, but they missed their Portkey, it came back without them,’ she said, pointing at a rusty oilcan lying on the ground nearby. ‘And that one,’ she pointed at an ancient plimsoll, ‘should have been Dad and Fred’s, they were supposed to be second. You and Hagrid were third and,’ she checked her watch, ‘if they made it, George and Lupin ought to be back in about a minute.’

  Mrs Weasley reappeared carrying a bottle of brandy, which she handed to Hagrid. He uncorked it and drank it straight down in one.

  ‘Mum!’ shouted Ginny, pointing to a spot several feet away.

  A blue light had appeared in the darkness: it grew larger and brighter, and Lupin and George appeared, spinning and then falling. Harry knew immediately that there was something wrong: Lupin was supporting George, who was unconscious and whose face was covered in blood.

  Harry ran forwards and seized George’s legs. Together, he and Lupin carried George into the house and through the kitchen to the sitting room, where they laid him on the sofa. As the lamplight fell across George’s head, Ginny gasped and Harry’s stomach lurched: one of George’s ears was missing. The side of his head and neck were drenched in wet, shockingly scarlet blood.

  No sooner had Mrs Weasley bent over her son than Lupin grabbed Harry by the upper arm and dragged him, none too gently, back into the kitchen, where Hagrid was still attempting to ease his bulk through the back door.

  ‘Oi!’ said Hagrid indignantly. ‘Le’ go of him! Le’ go of Harry!’

  Lupin ignored him.

  ‘What creature sat in the corner, the first time that Harry Potter visited my office at Hogwarts?’ he said, giving Harry a small shake. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘A – a Grindylow in a tank, wasn’t it?’

  Lupin released Harry and fell back against a kitchen cupboard.

  ‘Wha’ was tha’ about?’ roared Hagrid.

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry, but I had to check,’ said Lupin tersely. ‘We’ve been betrayed. Voldemort knew that you were being moved tonight and the only people who could have told him were directly involved in the plan. You might have been an impostor.’