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156[@more@]half healed puncture marks to his forearm. "Where've you put the Horcrux?" "In my bag. I think we should keep it off for a while." He lay back on his pillows and looked into her pinched gray face. "We shouldn't have gone to Godric's Hollow. It's my fault, it's all my fault. Hermione, I'm sorry." "It's not you fault. I wanted to go too; I really thought Dumbledore might have left the sword there for you." "Yeah, well ... we got that wrong, didn't we?" "What happened, Harry? Wh

155[@more@]not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing -- He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face: He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry: It had seen that he was not Jame

154[@more@]and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe ... And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occasions ... Not anger ... that was for weaker souls than he ... but triumph, yes ... He had waited for this, he had hoped for it ... "Nice costume, mister!" He saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cl

153[@more@]He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake's tail, which thrashed down upon the table where he had been a second earlier. Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him as he hit the floor. From below he heard Hermione call, "Harry?" He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular -- "No!" he gasped, pinned to the floor. "Yes," whispered the voice. "Yesss... hold

151[@more@]He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda's house to check whether she was coping. She seemed to have forgotten that she could do magic, too, for she lit the candles clumsily by hand, her trailing lace cuff in constant danger of catching fire. "Let me do that," offered Harry, and he took the matches from her. She stood watching him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously on stacks of books and

152[@more@]old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise. "Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only to me?" "Do you really think she knows who you are?" "Yes," said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon his own. "I think she does." "Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry." "Lead the way," Harry told Bathilda. She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around him toward the door. Harry glanced back at Hermione with a reassuring smile, but he was not

150[@more@]ruin. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see Hermione and him at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned. Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak, her arm pressed against his. "How does she know?" He shook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Harry could think of man

149[@more@]"Harry --" "Look ... Look at it, Hermione ..." "I don't ... oh!" He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in the dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired.

148[@more@]from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them. Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, t

146[@more@]Dumbledore wearing a bonnet he had won in a cracker, of Ron in a hand-knitted sweater. . . . There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lay deep and untouched. They moved off through the snow, carving deep trenches behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows. Behind

147[@more@]“What?” “Look at this!” The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could hardly make out the name. Hermione showed him the symbol beneath it. “Harry, that’s the mark in the book!” He peered at the place she indicated: The stone was so worn that it was hard to make out what was engraved there, though there did seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible name. “Yeah . . . it could be. . . .” Hermione lit her wand and pointed it at the name

144[@more@]“What?” he said, half angry, half relieved. “What did you do that for? I thought you’d seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least –“ “Harry, what if Bathilda’s got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?” Harry considered this possibility. Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she was “gaga.” Was it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, Harry felt that Dumbledore had left

145[@more@]decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the center of the village. “All this snow!” Hermione whispered beneath the cloak. “Why didn’t we think of snow? After all our precautions, we’ll leave prints! We’ll just have to get rid of them – you go in front, I’ll do it –“ Harry did not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse, trying to keep themselves concealed while magically covering their traces

143[@more@]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 m

142[@more@]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

141[@more@]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 depar

140[@more@]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 Hermi

139[@more@]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 Hermio

138[@more@]“Well, you’ve obviously got a problem,” said Harry. “Spit it out, will you?” Ron swung his long legs off the bed and sat up. He looked mean, unlike himself. “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

137[@more@]“Well, good night to you,” he said a little waspishly, and he began to move out of sight again. Only the edge of his hat brim remained in view when Harry gave a sudden shout. “Wait! Have you told Snape you saw this?” Phineas Nigellus stuck his blindfolded head back into the picture. “Professor Snape has more important things on his mind that the many eccentricities of Albus Dumbledore. Good-bye, Potter!” And with that, he vanished completely, leaving behind him nothin