37[@more@]"I KNOW!" Harry bellowed.
He felt beleaguered and blackmailed: Did they think he did not know what they had done for him, didn't they understand that it was for precisely that reason that he wanted to go now, before they had to suffer any more on his behalf? There was a long and awkward silence in which his scar continued to prickle and throb, and which was broken at last by Mrs. Weasley.
"Where's Hedwig, Harry?" she said coaxingly. "We can put her up with
Pidwidgeon and give her something to eat."
His insides clenched like a fist. He could not tell her the truth. He drank the last of his firewhisky to avoid answering.
"Wait till it gets out yeh did it again, Harry," said Hagrid. "Escaped him, fought him off when he was right on top of yeh!"
"It wasn't me," said Harry flatly. "It was my wand. My wand acted of its own accord."
After a few moments, Hermione said gently, "But that's impossible, Harry. You mean that you did magic without meaning to; you reacted instinctively."
"No," said Harry. "The bike was falling, I couldn't have told you where
Voldemort was, but my wand spun in my hand and found him and shot a spell at him, and it wasn't even a spell I recognized. I've never made gold flames appear before." "Often," said Mr. Weasley, "when you're in a pressured situation you can produce magic you never dreamed of. Small children often find, before they're trained –" "It wasn't like that," said Harry through gritted teeth. His scar was burning. He felt angry and frustrated; he hated the idea that they were all imagining him to have power to match Voldemort's.
No one said anything. He knew that they did not believe him. Now that he came to think of it, he had never heard of a wand performing magic on its own before. His scar seared with pain, it was all he could do not to moan aloud. Muttering about fresh air, he set down his glass and left the room.
As he crossed the yard, the great skeletal thestral looked up – rustled its enormous batlike wings, then resumed its grazing. Harry stopped at the gate into the garden, staring out at its overgrown plants, rubbing his pounding forehead and thinking of Dumbledore. Dumbledore would have believed him, he knew it. Dumbledore would have
known how and why Harry's wand had acted independently, because Dumbledore always had the answers; he had known about wands, had explained to Harry the strange connection that existed between his wand and Voldemort's . . . . But Dumbledore, like Mad-Eye, like Sirius, like his parents, like his poor owl, all were gone where Harry could never talk to them again. He felt a burning in his throat that had nothing to do with firewhisky. . . .
And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside his head.
"You told me the problem would be solved by using another's wand!"
And into his mind burst the vision of an emaciated old man lying in rags upon a stone floor, screaming, a horrible drawn-out scream, a scream of unendurable agony. . . . "No! No! I beg you, I beg you. . . ."
"You lied to Lord Voldemort, Ollivander!"
"I did not. . . . I swear I did not. . . ."
"You sought to help Potter, to help him escape me!"
"I swear I did not. . . . I believed a different wand would work. . . ."
"Explain, then, what happened. Lucius's wand is destroyed!"
"I cannot understand. . . . The connection . . . exists only . . between your two