200[@more@]at his feet knelt a small, quaking figure.
"What did you say to me?" His voice was high and cold, but fury and fear
burned inside him. The one thing that he had dreaded - but it could not be
true, he could not see how...
The goblin was trembling, unable to meet the red eyes high above his.
"Say it again!" murmured Voldemort. "Say it again!"
"M-my Lord," stammered the goblin, its black eyes wide with terror,
"m-my Lord... we t-tried to st-stop them... Im-impostors, my Lord... broke - broke into the - into the Lestranges' vault..."
"Impostors? What impostors? I thought Gringotts had ways of revealing
impostors? Who were they?
"It was... it was... the P-Potter b-boy and the t-two accomplices..."
"And they took?" he said, his voice rising, a terrible fear gripping
him, "Tell me! What did they take?"
"A... a s-small golden c-cup m-my Lord..."
The scream of rage, of denial left him as if it were a stranger's. He
was crazed, frenzied, it could not be true, it was impossible, nobody had
known. How was it possible that the boy could have discovered his secret?
The Elder Wand slashed through the air and green light erupted through
the room; the kneeling goblin rolled over dead; the watching wizards
scattered before him, terrified. Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy threw others
behind them in their race for the door, and again and again his wand fell,
and those who were left were slain, all of them, for bringing him this news, for hearing about the golden cup -
Alone amongst the dead he stomped up and down, and they passed before him
in vision: his treasures, his safeguards, his anchors to immortality - the
diary was destroyed and the cup was stolen. What if, what if, the boy knew
about the others? Could he know, had he already acted, had he traced more of them? Was Dumbledore at the root of this? Dumbledore, who had always
suspected him; Dumbledore, dead on his orders; Dumbledore, whose wand was
his now, yet who reached out from the ignominy of death through the boy, the boy -
But surely if the boy had destroyed any of his Horcruxes, he, Lord
Voldemort, would have known, would have felt it? He, the greatest wizard of them all; he, the most powerful; he, the killer of Dumbledore and of how
many other worthless, nameless men. How could Lord Voldemort not have known, if he, himself, most important and precious, had been attacked, mutilated?
True, he had not felt it when the diary had been destroyed, but he had
thought that was because he had no body to fell, being less than ghost...
No, surely, the rest were safe... The other Horcruxes must be intact...
But he must know, he must be sure... He paced the room, kicking aside
the goblin's corpse as he passed, and the pictures blurred and burned in his boiling brain: the lake, the shack, and Hogwarts -
A modicum of calm cooled his rage now. How could the boy know that he
had hidden the ring in the Gaunt shack? No one had ever known him to be
related to the Gaunts, he had hidden the connection, the killings had never been traced to him. The ring, surely, was safe.
And how could the boy, or anybody else, know about the cave or penetrate
its protection? The idea of the locket being stolen was absurd...
As for the school: He alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the
Horcrux, because he alone had plumed the deepest secrets of that place...
And there was still Nagini, who must remain close now, no longer sent to
do his bidding, under his protection...
But to be sure, to be utterly sure, he must return to each of his hiding
places, he must redouble protection around each of his Horcruxes... A job,
like the quest for the Elder Wand, that he must undertake alone...
Which should he visit first, which was in most danger? An old unease
flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle name... Dumbledore
might have made the connection with the Gaunts... Their abandoned home was, perhaps, the least secure of his hiding places, it was there that he would
go first...
The lake, surely impossible... though was there a slight possibility
that Dumbledore might have known some of his past misdeeds, through the
orphanage.
And Hogwarts... but he knew the his Horcrux there was safe; it would be
impossible for Potter to enter Hogsmeade without detection, let alone the
school. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to alert Snape to the fact that
the boy might try to reenter the castle. ... To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust
Bellatrix and Malfoy. Didn't their stupidity and carelessness prove how
unwise it was ever to trust?
He would visit the Gaunt shack first, then, and take Nagini with him. He
would not be parted from the snake anymore ... and he strode from the room, through the hall, and out into the dark garden where the fountain played; he called the snake in Parseltongue and it slithered out to join him like a
long shadow. ...
Harry's eyes flew open as he wrenched himself back to the present. He
was lying on the bank of the lake in the setting sun, and Ron and Hermione
were looking down at him. Judging by their worried looks, and by the
continued pounding of his scar, his sudden excursion into Voldemort's mind
had not passed unnoticed. He struggled up, shivering, vaguely surprised that he was still wet to his skin, and saw the cup lying innocently in the grass before him, and the lake, deep blue shot with gold in the falling sun.
"He knows." His own voice sounded strange and low after Voldemort's high
screams. "He knows and he's going to check where the others are, and the
last one," he was already on his feet," is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew
it."
"What?"
Ron was gaping at him; Hermione sat up, looking worried.
"But what did you see? How do you know?"
"I saw him find out about the cup, I - I was in his head, he's" - Harry
remembered the killings - "he's seriously angry, and scared too, he can't
understand how we knew, and now he's going to check the others are safe, the ring first. He things the Hogwarts one is safest, because Snape's there,
because it'll be so hard not to be seen getting in. I think he'll check that one last, but he could still be there within hours -"
"Did you see where in Hogwarts it is?" asked Ron, now scrambling to his
feet too.
"No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn't think about
exactly where it is -"
"Wait, wait!" cried Hermione as Ron caught up to the Horcrux and Harry
pulled out the Invisibility Cloak again. "We can't just go, we haven't got a plan, we need to -"
"We need to get going," said Harry firmly. He had been hoping to sleep,
looking forward to getting into the new tent, but that was impossible now,
"Can you imagine what he's going to do once he realizes the ring and the
locket are gone? What if he moves the Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn't
safe enough?
"But how are we going to get in?"
"We'll go to Hogsmeade," said Harry, "and try to work something out once
we see what the protection around the school's like. Get under the Cloak,
Hermione, I want to stick together this time."
"But we don't really fit -"
"It'll be dark, no one's going to notice our feet."
The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water. The dragon
had drunk its fill and risen into the air. They paused in their preparations to watch it climb higher and higher, now black against the rapidly darkening sky, until it vanished over a nearby mountain. Then Hermione walked forward and took her place between the other two, Harry pulled the Cloak down as far as it would go, and together they turned on the spot into the crushing
darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Missing Mirror
Harry's feet touched the road. He saw the achingly familiar Hogsmeade High Street: dark shop
fronts, and the mist line of black mountains beyond the village and the curve in the road ahead that
led off toward Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broomsticks, and with a
lurch of the hear, he remembered with piercing accuracy, how he had landed here nearly a year before,
supporting a desperately weak Dumbledore, all this in a second, upon landing -- and then, even as he
relaxed his grip upon Ron's and Hermione's arms, it happened.
The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Voldemort's when he had realized the cup had
been stolen: It tore at every nerve in Harry's body, and he knew that their appearance had caused it.
Even as he looked at the other two beneath the Cloak, the door of the Three Broomsticks burst open
and a dozen cloaked and hooded Death Eaters dashed into the streets, their wands aloft. Harry seized Ron's wrist as he raised his wand; there were too many of them to run. Even
attempting it would have give away their position. One of the Death Eaters raised his wand, and the
scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.
"Accio Cloak!" roared one of the Death Eaters
Harry seized his folds, but it made no attempt to escape. The Summoning Charm had not
worked on it.
"Not under your wrapper, then, Potter?" yelled the Death Eater who had tried the charm and
then to his fellows. "Spread now. He's here."
Six of the Death Eaters ran toward them: Harry, Ron and Hermione backed as quickly as
possible down the nearest side street, and the Death Eaters missed them by inches. They waited
in the darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams of light flying along the street
from the Death Eaters' searching wands.
"Let's just leave!" Hermione whispered. "Disapparate now!"
"Great idea," said Ron, but before Harry could reply, a Death Eater shouted, "We know you are here, Potter, and there's no getting away! We'll find you!" "They were ready for us," whispered Harry. "They set up that spell to tell them we'd come.
I reckon they’ve done something to keep us here, trap us - "
"What about dementors?" called another Death Eater. "Let'em have free rein, they'd find him
quick enough!"
"The Dark Lord wants Potter dead by no hands but his - "
" 'an dementors won't kill him! The Dark Lord wants Potter's life, nor his soul. He'll be easier to
kill if he's been Kissed first!"
There were noises of agreement. Dread filled Harry: To repel dementors they would have to produce
Patronuses which would give them away immediately.
"We're going to have to try to Disapparate, Harry!" Hermione whispered.
Even as she said it, he felt the unnatural cold being spread over the street. Light was sucked from
the environment right up to the stars, which vanished. In the pitch blackness, he felt Hermione take hold
of his arm and together, they turned on the spot.
The air through which they needed to move, seemed to have become solid: They could not
Disapparate; the Death Eaters had cast their charms well. The cold was biting deeper and deeper
into Harry's flesh. He, Ron and Hermione retreated down the side street, groping their way along the wall
trying not to make a sound. Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly, came dementors, ten or more
of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks
and their scabbed and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity? Harry was sure of it: They
seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths he detested, tasting
despair in the air, closing in -
He raised his wand: He could not, would not suffer the Dementor's Kiss, whatever happened afterward.
It was of Ron and Hermione that he thought as he whispered "Expecto Patronum!"