Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...continued

he stood, swaying, in the Room of Requirement, sweat pouring from his face and Ron
holding him up.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Neville was saying. “What to sit down? I expect
you’re tired, aren’t -- ?”

“No,” said Harry. He looked at Ron and Hermione, trying to tell them without
words that Voldemort had just discovered the loss of one of the other Horcruxes. Time
was running out fast: If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their
chance.

“We need to get going,” he said, and their expressions told him that they
understood.

“What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus. “What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” repeated Harry. He was exercising all his willpower to prevent himself
succumbing again to Voldemort’s rage: His scar was still burning. “Well, there’s
something we – Ron, Hermione, and I – need to do, and then we’ll get out of here.”

Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked confused.

“What d’you mean, ‘get out of here’?”

“We haven’t come back to stay,” said Harry, rubbing his scar, trying to soothe the
pain. “There’s something important we need to do – “

“What is it?”

“I – I can’t tell you.”

There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville’s brows contracted.

“Why can’t you tell us? It’s something to do with fighting You-Know-Who,
right?”

“Well, yeah – “

“Then we’ll help you.”

The other members of Dumbledore’s Army were nodding, some enthusiastically,
others solemnly. A couple of them rose from their chairs to demonstrate their willingness
for immediate action.

“You don’t understand,” Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours.
“We – we can’t tell you. We’ve got to do it – alone.”

“Why?” asked Neville.

“Because … “ In his desperation to start looking for the missing Horcrux, or at
least have a private discussion with Ron and Hermione about where they might
commence their search. Harry found it difficult to gather his thoughts. His scar was still
searing. “Dumbledore left the three of us a job,” he said carefully, “and we weren’t
supposed to tell – I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the three of us.”

“We’re his army,” said Neville. “Dumbledore’s Army. We were all in it together,
we’ve been keeping it going while you three have been off on your own –“


“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic, mate,” said Ron.

“I never said it had, but I don’t see why you can’t trust us. Everyone in this
room’s been fighting and they’ve been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting
them down. Everyone in here’s proven they’re loyal to Dumbledore – loyal to you.”

“Look,” Harry began, without knowing what he was going to say, but it did not
matter. The tunnel door had just opened behind him.

“We got your message, Neville! Hello you three, I thought you must be here!”

It was Luna and Dean. Seamus gave a great roar of delight and ran to hug his best
friend.

“Hi, everyone!” said Luna happily. “Oh, it’s great to be back!”

“Luna,” said Harry distractedly, “what are you doing here? How did you -- ?”

“I sent for her,” said Neville, holding up the fake Galleon. “I promised her and
Ginny that if you turned up I’d let them know. We all thought that if you came back, it
would mean revolution. That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows.”

“Of course that’s what it means,” said Luna brightly. “Isn’t it, Harry? We’re
going to fight them out of Hogwarts?”

“Listen,” said Harry with a rising sense of panic, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what
we came back for. There’s something we’ve got to do, and then –“

“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael Cornet.

“No!” said Ron. “What we’re doing will benefit everyone in the end, it’s all about
trying to get rid of You-Know-Who – “

“Then let us help!” said Neville angrily. “We want to be a part of it!”

There was another noise behind them, and Harry turned. His heart seemed to fall:
Ginny was now climbing through the hole in the wall, closely followed by Fred, George,
and Lee Jordan. Ginny gave Harry a radiant smile: He had forgotten, he had never fully
appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less pleased to see her.

“Aberforth’s getting a bit annoyed,” said Fred, raising his hand in answer to
several cries of greeting. “He wants a kip, and his bar’s turned into a railway station.”

Harry’s mouth fell open. Right behind Lee Jordan came Harry’s old girlfriend,
Cho Chang. She smiled at him.

“I got the message,” she said, holding up her own fake Galleon and she walked
over to sit beside Michael Corner.

“So what’s the plan, Harry?” said George.

“There isn’t one,” said Harry, still disoriented by the sudden appearance of all
these people, unable to take everything in while his scar was still burning so fiercely.

“Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favorite kind,” said Fred.

“You’ve got to stop this!” Harry told Neville. “What did you call them all back
for? This is insane – “

“We’re fighting, aren’t we?” said Dean, taking out his fake Galleon. “The
message said Harry was back, and we were going to fight! I’ll have to get a wand, though
–“

“You haven’t got a wand--?” began Seamus.

Ron turned suddenly to Harry.

“Why can’t they help?”

“What?”


“They can help.” He dropped his voice and said, so that none of them could hear
but Hermione, who stood between them, “We don’t know where it is. We’ve got to find it
fast. We don’t have to tell them it’s a Horcrux.”

Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, who murmured, “I think Ron’s right. We
don’t even know what we’re looking for, we need them.” And when Harry looked
unconvinced, “You don’t have to do everything alone, Harry.”

Harry thought fast, his scar still prickling, his head threatening to split again.
Dumbledore had warned him against telling anyone but Ron and Hermione about the
Horcruxes. Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up, and Albus … he was a natural …
Was he turning into Dumbledore, keeping his secrets clutched to his chest, afraid to trust?
But Dumbledore had trusted Snape, and where had that led? To murder at the top of the
highest tower …

“All right,” he said quietly to the other two. “Okay,” he called to the room at large,
and all noise ceased: Fred and George, who had been cracking jokes for the benefit of
those nearest, fell silent, and all of the looked alert, excited.

“There’s something we need to find,” Harry said. “Something – something that’ll
help us overthrow You-Know-Who. It’s here at Hogwarts, but we don’t know where. It
might have belonged to Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone
come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?”

He looked hopefully toward the little group of Ravenclaws, to Padma, Michael,
Terry, and Cho, but it was Luna who answered, perched on the arm of Ginny’s chair.

“Well, there’s her lost diadem. I told you about it, remember, Harry? The lost
diadem of Ravenclaw? Daddy’s trying to duplicate it.”

“Yeah, but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, “is lost, Luna.
That’s sort of the point.”

“When was it lost?” asked Harry.

“Centuries ago, they say,” said Cho, and Harry’s heart sank. “Professor Flitwick
says the diadem vanished with Ravenclaw herself. People have looked, but,” she
appealed to her fellow Ravenclaws. “Nobody’s ever found a trace of it, have them?”

They all shook their heads.

“Sorry, but what is a diadem?” asked Ron.

“It’s a kind of crown,” said Terry Boot. “Ravenclaw’s was supposed to have
magical properties, enhance the wisdom of the wearer.”

“Yes, Daddy’s Wrackspurt siphons – “

But Harry cut across Luna.

“And none of you have ever seen anything that looks like it?

They all shook their heads again. Harry looked at Ron and Hermione and his own
disappointment was mirrored back at him. An object that had been lost this long, and
apparently without trace, did not seem like a good candidate for the Horcrux hidden in
the castle … Before he could formulate a new question, however, Cho spoke again.

“If you’d like to see what the diadem’s supposed to look like, I could take you up
to our common room and show you, Harry. Ravenclaw’s wearing it in her statue.”

Harry’s scar scorched again: For a moment the Room of Requirement swam
before him, and he saw instead the dark earth soaring beneath him and felt the great
snake wrapped around his shoulders. Voldemort was flying again, whether to the


underground lake or here, to the castle, he did not know: Either way, there was hardly
any time left.

“He’s on the move,” he said quietly to Ron and Hermione. He glanced at Cho and
then back at them. “Listen, I know it’s not much of a lead, but I’m going to go look at
this statue, at least find out what the diadem looks like. Wait for me here and keep, you
know – the other one – safe.”

Cho had got to her feet, but Ginny said rather fiercely, “No, Luna will take Harry,
won’t you, Luna?”

“Oooh, yes, I’d like to,” said Luna happily, as Cho sat down again, looking
disappointed.

“How do we get out?” Harry asked Neville.

“Over here.”

“He led Harry and Luna to a corner, where a small cupboard opened onto a steep
staircase. “It comes out somewhere different every day, so they’ve never been able to
find it,” he said. “Only trouble is, we never know exactly where we’re going to end up
when we go out. Be careful, Harry, they’re always patrolling the corridors at night.”

“No problem,” said Harry. “See you in a bit.”

He and Luna hurried up the staircase, which was long, lit by torches, and turned
corners in unexpected places. At last they reached what appeared to be solid wall.

“Get under here,” Harry told Luna, pulling out the Invisibility Cloak and throwing
it over both of them. He gave the wall a little push.

It melted away at his touch and they slipped outside. Harry glanced back and saw
that it had resealed itself at once. They were standing in a dark corridor. Harry pulled
Luna back into the shadows, fumbled in the pouch around his neck, and took out the
Marauder’s Map. Holding it close to his nose he searched, and located his and Luna’s
dots at last.

“We’re up on the fifth floor,” he whispered, watching filch moving away from
them, a corridor ahead. “Come on, this way.”

They crept off.

Harry had prowled the castle at night many times before, but never had his heart
hammered that fast, never had so much depended on his safe passage through the place.
Through squares of moonlight upon the floor, past suits of armor whose helmets creaked
at the sound of their soft footsteps, around corners beyond which who knew what lurked.
Harry and Luna walked, checking the Marauder’s Map whenever light permitted, twice
pausing to allow a ghost to pass without drawing attention to themselves. He expected to
encounter an obstacle at any moment; his worst fear was Peeves, and he strained his ears
with every step to hear the first, telltale signs of the poltergeist’s approach.

“The way, Harry,” breathed Luna, plucking his sleeve and pulling him toward a
spiral staircase.

They climbed in tight, dizzying circles; Harry had never been up here before. At
last they reached a door. There was no handle and no keyhole: nothing but a plain
expanse of aged wood, and a bronze knocker in the shape an eagle.

Luna reached out a pale hand, which looked eerie floating in midair, unconnected
to arm or body. She knocked once, and in the silence it sounded to Harry like a cannon
blast. At once the beak of the eagle opened, but instead of a bird’s called, a soft, musical
voice said, “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”


“Hmm … What do you think, Harry?” said Luna, looking thoughtful.

“What? Isn’t there a password?”

“Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,” said Luna.

“What if you get it wrong?”

“Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,” said Luna. “That way
you learn, you see?”

“Yeah … Trouble is, we can’t really afford to wait for anyone else, Luna.”

“No, I see what you mean,” said Luna seriously. “Well then, I think the answer is
that a circle has no beginning.”

“Well reasoned,” said the voice, and the door swung open.

The deserted Ravenclaw common room was a wide, circular room, airier than any
Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. Graceful arched windows punctuated the walls, which
were hung with blue-and-bronze silks. By day, the Ravenclaws would have a spectacular
view of the surrounding mountains. The ceiling was domed and painted with stars, which
were echoed in the midnight-blue carpet. There were tables, chairs, and bookcases, and in
a niche opposite the door stood a tall statue of white marble.

Harry recognized Rowena Ravenclaw from the bust he had seen at Luna’s house.
The statue stood beside a door that led, he guessed, to dormitories above. He strode right
up to the marble woman, and she seemed to look back at him with a quizzical half smile
on her face, beautiful yet slightly intimidating. A delicate-looking circlet had been
reproduced in marble on top of her head. It was not unlike the tiara Fleur had worn at her
wedding. There were tiny words etched into it. Harry stepped out from under the Cloak
and climbed up onto Ravenclaw’s plinth to read them.

“’Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.’”

“Which makes you pretty skint, witless,” said a cackling voice.

Harry whirled around, slipped off the plinth, and landed on the floor. The sloping-
shouldered figure of Alecto Carrow was standing before him, and even as Harry raised
his wand, she pressed a stubby forefinger to the skull and snake branded on her forearm.

Chapter Thirty

The Sacking of Severus Snape

The moment her finger touched the Mark, Harry's scar burned savagely, the starry
room vanished from sight, and he was standing upon an outcrop of rock beneath a cliff,
and the sea was washing around him and there was a triumph in his heart – They have the
boy.

A loud bang brought Harry back to where he stood. Disoriented, he raised his
wand, but the witch before him was already falling forward; she hit the ground so hard
that the glass in the bookcases tinkled.

“I've never Stunned anyone except in our D.A. lessons,” said Luna, sounding
mildly interested. “That was noisier than I though it would be.”

And sure enough, the ceiling had begun to tremble Scurrying, echoing footsteps
were growing louder from behind the door leading to the dormitories. Luna's spell had
woken Ravenclaws sleeping above.

“Luna, where are you? I need to get under the Cloak!”


Luna's feet appeared out of nowhere,; he hurried to her side and she let the Cloak
fall back over them as the door opened and a stream of Ravenclaws, all in their
nightclothes, flooded into the common room. there were gasps and cries of surprise as
they saw Alecto lying there unconscious. Slowly they shuffled in around her, a savage
beast that might wake at any moment and attack them. Then one brave little first-year
darted up to her and prodded her backside with his big toe.

“I think she might be dead!” he shouted with delight.

“Oh look,” whispered Luna happily, as the Ravenclaws crowded in around Alecto.
“They're pleased!”

“Yeah... great... “

Harry closed his eyes, and as his scar throbbed he chose to sink again into
Voldemort's mind.... He was moving along the tunnel into the first cave.... He had
chosen to make sure of the locker before coming...but that would not take him long....

There was a rap on the common room door and every Ravenclaw froze. From the
other side, Harry heard the soft, musical voice that issued from the eagle door knocker:
“Where do Vanished objects go?”

“I dunno, do I? Shut it!” snarled an uncouth voice that Harry knew was that of
the Carrow brother , Amycus, “Alecto? Alecto? Are you there? Have you got him?
Open the door!”

The Ravenclaws were whispering amongst themselves, terrified. Then without
warning, there came a series of loud bangs, as though somebody was firing a gun into the
door.

“ALECTO! If he comes, and we haven't got Potter --d'you want to go the same
way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!” Amycus bellowed, shaking the door for all he
was worth, but still it did not open. The Ravenclaws were all backing away, and some of
the most frightened began scampering back up the stair case to their beds. Then, just as
Harry was wondering whether he ought not to blast open the door and Stun Amycus
before the Death Eater could do anything else, a second, most familiar voice rang out
beyond the door.

“May I ask what you are doing, Professor Carrow?”

“Trying—to get-- through this damned-- door!” shouted Amycus. “Go and get
Flitwick! Get him to open it, now!”

“But isn't your sister in there” asked Professor McGonagall. “Didn't Professor
Flitwick let her in earlier this evening, at your urgent request? Perhaps she could open
the door for you? Then you needn't wake up half the castle.”

“She ain't answering, you old besom! You open it! Garn! Do it, now!”

“Certainly, if you wish it,” said Professor McGonagall, with awful coldness,
There was a genteel tap of the knocker and the musical voice asked again.

“Where do Vanished objects go?”

“Into non being, which is to say, everything,” replied Professor McGonagall.

“Nicely phrased,” replied the eagle door knocker, and the door swung open.

The few Ravenclaws who had remained behind sprinted for the stairs as Amycus
burst over the threshold, brandishing his wand. Hunched like his sister, he had a pallid,
doughy face and tiny eyes, which fell at once on Alecto, sprawled motionless on the floor.
He let out a yell of fury and fear.


“What've they done, the little whelps?” he screamed. “I'll Cruciate the lot of 'em
till they tell me who did it---and what's the Dark Lord going to say?” he shrieked,
standing over his sister and smacking himself on the forehead with his fist, “We haven't
got him, and they've gone and killed her!”

“She's only Stunned,” said Professor McGonagall impatiently, who had stooped
down to examine Alecto. “She'll be perfectly all right.”

“No she bludgering well won't!” bellowed Amycus. “Not after the Dark Lord
gets hold of her! She's gone and sent for him, I felt me Mark burn, and he thinks we've
got Potter!”

“'Got Potter'?” said Professor McGonagall sharply, “What do you mean, 'got
Potter'?”

“He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower, and to send for him
if we caught him!”

“Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower! Potter belongs in
my House!”

Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice
and affection for Minerva McGonagall gushed up inside him.

“We was told he might come in here!” said Carrow. “I dunno why, do I?”

Professor McGonagall stood up and her beady eyes swept the room. Twice they
passed right over the place where Harry and Luna stood.

“We can push it off on the kids,” said Amycus, his pig like face suddenly crafty.
“Yeah, that's what we'll do. We'll say Alecto was ambushed by the kids, them kids up
there” -- he looked up at the starry ceiling toward the dormitories -- “ and we'll say they
forced her to pres her Mark, and that's why he got a false alarm.... He can punish them.
Couple of kids more or less, what's the difference?”

“Only the difference between truth and lied, courage and cowardice,” said
Professor McGonagall, who had turned pale, “a difference, in short, which you and your
sister seem unable to appreciate. But let me make one thing very clear. You are not
going to pass off y9our many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts. I shall not permit
it.”

“Excuse me?”

Amycus moved forward until he was offensively close to Professor McGonagall,
his face within inches of hers. She refused to back away, but looked down at him as if he
were something disgusting she had found stuck to the lavatory seat.

“It's not a case of what you'll permit, Minerva McGonagall. Your time's over. It's
us what's in charge here now, and you'll back me up or you'll pay the price.”

And he spat in her face.

Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, “You shouldn't
have done that.”

As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, “Crucio!”

The Death Eater was lifted off his feet. He writhed through the air like a
drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then, with a crunch and a shattering of
glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.

“I see what Bellatrix meant,” said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, “you
need to really mean it.”


“Potter!” whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart. “Potter--- you're
here! What---? How---?” She struggled to pull herself together. “Potter, that was
foolish!”

“He spat at you,” said Harry.

“Potter, I --- that was very --- gallant of you --- but don't you realize --?”

“Yeah, I do,” Harry assured her. Somehow her panic steadied him. “Professor
McGonagall, Voldemort's on the way.”

“Oh, are we allowed to say the name now?” asked Luna with an air of interest,
pulling off the Invisibility Cloak. The appearance of a second outlaw seemed to
overwhelm Professor McGonagall, who staggered backward and fell into a nearby chair,
clutching at the neck of her old tartan dressing gown.

“I don't think it makes any difference what we call him,” Harry told Luna. “He
already knows where I am.”

In a distant part of Harry's brain, that part connected to the angry, burning scar, he
could see Voldemort sailing fast over the dark lake in the ghostly green boat.... He had
nearly reached the island where the stone basin stood....

“You must flee,” whispered Professor McGonagall, “Now Potter, as quickly as
you can!”

“I can't,” said Harry, “There's something I need to do. Professor, so you know
where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”

“The d-diadem of Ravenclaw? Of course not --- hasn't it been lost for
centuries?” She sat up a little straighter “Potter, it was madness, utter madness, for you
to enter this castle---”

“I had to,” said Harry. “Professor, there's something hidden here that I'm
supposed to find, and it could be the diadem--- if I could just speak to Professor Flitwick-
--”

There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass. Amycus was coming round.
Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand
at the groggy Death Eater, and said, “Imperio.”

Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled
obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own. Then he lay
down on the floor beside Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a
length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows,
binding them tightly together.

“Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb
indifference to the Carrows' predicament. “if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named does indeed
know that you are here---”

As she said it, a wrath that was like physical pain blazed through Harry, setting
his scar on fire, and for a second he looked down upon a basin whose potion had turned
clear, and saw that no golden locket lay safe beneath the surface---.

“Potter, are you all right.” said a voice, and Harry came back. He was clutching
Luna's shoulder to steady himself.

“Time's running out, Voldemort's getting nearer, Professor, I'm acting on
Dumbledore's orders, I must find what he wanted me to find! But we've got to get the
students out while I'm searching the castle--- It's me Voldemort wants, but he won't care


about killing a few more or less, not now---” not now he knows I'm attacking Horcruxes,
Harry finished the sentence in his head.

“You're acting on Dumbledore's orders?” she repeated with a look of dawning
wonder. Then she drew herself up to her fullest height.

“We shall secure the school against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while you
search for this --- this object.”

“Is that possible?”

“I think so,” said Professor McGonagall dryly, “we teachers are rather good at
magic, you know. I am sure we will be able to hold him off for a while if we all put our
best efforts into it. Of course, something will have to be done about Professor Snape---”

“Let me ---”

“---and if Hogwarts is about to enter a state of siege, with the Dark Lord at the
gates, it would indeed be advisable to take as many innocent people out of the way as
possible. With the Floo Network under observation, and Apparition impossible within
the grounds---”

“There's a way,” said Harry quickly, and he explained about the passageway
leading into the Hog's Head.

“Potter, we're talking about hundreds of students---”

“I know, Professor, but if Voldemort and the Death Eaters are concentrating on
the school boundaries they won't be interested in anyone who's Disapparating out of
Hog's Head.”

“There's something in that,” she agreed. She pointed her wand at the Carrows,
and a silver net fell upon their bound bodies, tied itself around them, and hoisted them
into the air, where they dangled beneath the blue-and-gold ceiling like two large, ugly sea
creatures. “Come. We must alert the other Heads of House. You'd better put that Cloak
back on.”

She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her wand. From the tip
burst three silver cats with spectacle markings around their eyes. the Patronuses ran
sleekly ahead, filling the spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall,
Harry, and Luna hurried back down.

Along the corridors they raced, and one by one the Patronuses left them. Professor
McGonagall's tartan dressing gown rustled over the floor, and Harry and Luna jogged
behind her under the Cloak.

They had descended two more floors when another set of quiet joined theirs.
Harry, whose scar was still prickling, heard them first. He felt in the pouch around his
neck for the Marauder's Map, but before he could take it our, McGonagall too seemed to
become aware of their company. She halted, raised her wand ready to duel, and said,
“Who's there?”

“It is I,” said a low voice.

From behind a suit of armor stepped Severus Snape.

Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him. He had forgotten the details of
Snape's appearance in the magnitude of his crimes, forgotten how his greasy black hair
hung in curtains around his thin face, how his black eyes had a dead, cold look. He was
not wearing nightclothes, but was dressed in his usual black cloak, and he too was
holding his wand ready for a fight.

“Where are the Carrows?” he asked quietly.


“Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus,” said Professor McGonagall.

Snape stepped nearer, and his eyes flitted over Professor McGonagall into the air
around her, as if he knew that Harry was there. Harry held his wand up too, ready to
attack.

“I was under the impression,” said Snape, “That Alecto had apprehended an
intruder.”

“Really?” said Professor McGonagall. “And what gave you that impression?”

Snape mad a slight flexing movement of his left arm, where the Dark Mark was
branded into his skin.

“Oh, but naturally,” said Professor McGonagall. “You Death Eaters have your
own private means of communication, I forgot.”

Snape pretended not to have heard her. His eyes were still probing the air all
about her, and he was moving gradually closer, with an air of hardly noticing what he
was doing.

“I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors Minerva.”

“You have some objection?”

“I wonder what could have brought you out of our bed at this late hour?”

“I thought I heard a disturbance,” said Professor McGonagall.

“Really? But all seems calm.”

Snape looked into her eyes.

“Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have. I must insist---”

Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have believed. Her wand
slashed through the air and for a split second Harry thought that Snape must crumple,
unconscious, but the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was
thrown off balance. =She brandished her wand at a touch on the wall and it flew out of
its bracket. Harry, about to curse Snape, was forced to pull Luna out of the way of the
descending flames, which became a ring of fire that filled the corridor and flew like a
lasso at Snape---

Then it was no longer fire, but a great black serpent that McGonagall blasted to
smoke, which re-formed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing
daggers. Snape avoided them only by forcing the suit of armor in front of him, and with
echoing clangs the daggers sank, one after another, into its breast---

“Minerva!” said a squeaky voice, and looking behind him, still shielding Luna
from flying spells, Harry saw Professors Flitwick and Sprout sprinting up the corridor
toward them in their nightclothes, with the enormous Professor Slughorn panting along at
the rear.

“No!” squealed Flitwick, raising his wand. “You'll do no more murder at
Hogwarts!”

Flitwick's spell hit the suit of armor behind which Snape had taken shelter. With
a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free of the crushing arms and sent it flying back
toward his attackers. Harry and Luna had to dive sideways to avoid it as it smashed into
the wall and shattered. When Harry looked up again, Snape was in full flight,
McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all thundering after him. He hurtled through a
classroom door and, moments later, he heard McGonagall cry, “Coward! COWARD!”

“What's happened, what's happened?” asked Luna.


Harry dragged her to her feet and they raced along the corridor, trailing the
Invisibility Cloak behind them, into the deserted classroom where Professors
McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were standing at a smashed window.

“He jumped,” said Professor McGonagall as Harry and Luna ran into the room.

“You mean he's dead?” Harry sprinted to the window, ignoring Flitwick's and
Sprout's yells of shock at his sudden appearance.

“No, he's not dead,” said McGonagall bitterly. “Unlike Dumbledore, he was still
carrying a wand... and he seems to have learned a few tricks from his master.”

With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, bat like shape flying
through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.

There were heavy footfalls behind them, and a great deal of puffing. Slughorn
had just caught up.

“Harry!” he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath his emerald-green silk
pajamas. “My dear boy... what a surprise...Minerva, do please
explain...Severus...what...?”

“Our headmaster is taking a short break,” said Professor McGonagall, pointing at
the Snape-shaped hole in the window.

“Professor!” Harry shouted his hand on his forehead, He could see the Inferi-
filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt a ghostly green boat bump into the
underground shore, and Voldemort lept from it with murder in his heart---

“Professor, we've got to barricade the school, he's coming now!”

“Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,” she told the other teachers.
Sprout and Flitwick gasped. Slughorn let out a low groan. “Potter has work to do in the
castle on Dumbledore's orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are
capable while Potter does what he needs to do.”

“You realize , of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-
Who indefinitely?” squeaked Flitwick.

“But we can hold him up.” said Professor Sprout.

“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches
there passed a look of grim understanding. I suggest we establish basic protection
around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be
evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they
ought to be given the chance.”

“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. “I shall meet
you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.”

And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, “Tentacula, Devil's
Snare. And Snargaluff pods...yes, I'd like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.”

I can act from here,” said Flitwick, and although he could barely see out of it, he
pointed his wand through the smashed window and started muttering incantations of great
complexity. Harry heard a weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the
power of the wind into the grounds.

“Professor,” Harry said, approaching the little Charms master. “Professor, I'm
sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you got any idea where the diadem of
Ravenclaw is?”


“---Protego Horribillis---the diadem of Ravenclaw?” squeaked Flitwick. “A little
extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this
situation!”

“I only meant --- do you know where it is? Have you ever seen it?”

“Seen it” Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, boy.”

Harry felt a mixture of desperate disappointment and panic. What, then, was the
Horcrux?

“We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall, Filius!” said
Professor McGonagall, beckoning to Harry and Luna to follow her.

They had just reached the door when Slughorn rumbled into speech.

“My word,” he puffed, pale and sweaty, his walrus mustache aquiver. “What a
to-do! I'm not at all sure whether this is wise, Minerva. He is bound to find a way in,
you know, and anyone who has tried to delay him will be in the most grievous peril---”

“I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes also.”
said Professor McGonagall. “If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop
you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us
within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.”

“Minerva!” he said, aghast.

“The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties,” interrupted
Professor McGonagall. “Go and wake your students, Horace.”

Harry did not stay to watch Slughorn splutter. He and Luna stayed after Professor
McGonagall, who had taken up a position in the middle of the corridor and raised her
wand.

“Piertotum---oh, for heaven's sake, Filch, not now---”

The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting “Students out of
bed! Students in the corridors!”

“They're supposed to be you blithering idiot!” shouted McGonagall. “Now go
and do something constructive! Find Peeves!”

'P-Peeves?” stammered Filch as though he had never heard the name before.

“Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven't you been complaining about him for a
quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once.

Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave of her senses, but
hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering under his breath.

“And now---Piertotum Locomator!” cried Professor McGonagall. And all along
the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the
echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows
throughout the castle had done the same.

“Hogwarts is threatened!” shouted Professor McGonagall. “Man the boundaries,
protect us, do your duty to our school!”

Clattering and yelling, the horde of moving statues stampeded past Harry, some of
them smaller, others larger than life. There were animals too, and the clanking suits of
armor brandished swords and spiked balls on chains.

“Now, Potter,” said McGonagall., “you and Miss Lovegood had better return to
your friends and bring them to the Great Hall --- I shall rouse the other Gryffindors.”

They parted at the top of the next staircase, Harry and Luna turning back toward
the concealed entrance to the Room of Requirement. As they ran, they met crowds of


students, most wearing traveling cloaks over their pajamas, being shepherded down to the
Great Hall by teachers and prefects.

“That was Potter!”

“Harry Potter!”

“It was him, I swear, I just saw him!”

“But Harry did not look back, and at last they reached the entrance to the Room of
Requirement, Harry leaned against the enchanted wall, which opened to admit them, and
he and Luna sped back down the steep staircase.

“Wh--?”

As the room came into view, Harry slipped down a few stairs in shock. It was
packed, far more crowded than when he had last been in there. Kingsley and Lupin were
looking up at him, as were Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson and Alicia
Spinnet, Bill and Fleur, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.

“Harry, what's happening?” said Lupin, meeting him at the foot of the stairs.

“Voldemort's on his way, they're barricading he school---Snape's run for it---What
are you doing here? How did you know?

“We sent messages to the rest of Dumbledore's Army,” Fred explained. “You
couldn't expect everyone to miss the fun, Harry, and the D.A. let the Order of the Phoenix
know, and it all kind of snowballed.”

“What first, Harry?” called George. “What's going on?”

“They're evacuating the younger kids and everyone's meeting in the Great Hall to
get organized,” Harry said. “We're fighting.”

There was a great roar and a surge toward the stairs, he was pressed back against
he wall as they ran past hi, the mingled members of the Order of the Phoenix,
Dumbledore's Army, and Harry's old Quidditch team, all with their wands drawn,
heading up into the main castle.

“Come on, Luna,” Dean called as he passed, holding out his free hand, she took it
and followed him back up the stairs.

The crowd was thinning. Only a little knot of people remained below in the
Room of Requirement, and Harry joine3d them. Mrs. Weasley was struggling with
Ginny. Around them stood Lupin, Fred, George, Bill and Fleur.

“You're underage!” Mrs. Weasley shouted at her daughter as Harry approached
“I won't permit it! The boys, yes, but you, you've got to go home!”

“I won't!”

“Ginny's hair flew as she pulled her arm out of her mother's grip.

“I'm in Dumbledore's Army---”

“A teenagers' gang!”

“A teenagers' gang that's about to take him on, which no one else has dared to
do!” said Fred.

“She's sixteen!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “She's not old enough! What you two
were thinking bringing her with you—-”

Fred and George looked slightly ashamed of themselves.

Mom's right, Ginny,” said Bill gently. “You can't do this. Everyone underage
will have to leave, it's only right.”

“I can't go home!” Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her eyes. “my whole
family's here, I can't stand waiting there alone and not knowing and --”


Her eyes met Harry's for the first time. She looked at him beseechingly, but he
shook his head and she turned away bitterly.

“Fine,” she said, staring at the entrance to the tunnel back to the Hog's Head. “I'll
say good-by now, then, and---”

There was a scuffling and a great thump. Someone else had clambered out of the
tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen. He pulled himself up no the nearest chair,
looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, “Am I too late? Has it
started. I only just found out, so I --- I ---”

Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of
his family. There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin
and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension. “So--- 'ow eez leetle
Teddy?”

Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be
solidifying, like ice.

“I --- oh yes--- he's fine!” Lupin said loudly. “yes, Tonks is with him--- at her
mother's ---”

Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.

“Here, I've got a picture?” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his
jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw a tiny baby with a tuft of bright
turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera.

“I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph.
“I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a – a --”

“Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,” said Fred.

Percy swallowed.

“Yes, I was!”

“Well, you can't say fairer than that,” said Fred, holding his hand out to Percy.

Mrs. Weasley burst into tears,. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled
Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.

“I'm sorry, Dad,” Percy said.

Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.

“What made you see sense, Perce?” inquired George.

“It's been coming on for a while,” said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses
with a corner of his traveling cloak. “But I had to find a way out and it's not so easy at
the Ministry, they're imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with
Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight
of it, so here I am.”

“Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these,” said
George in a good imitation of Percy's most pompous manner. “Now let's get upstairs and
fight, or all the good Death Eaters'll be taken.”

“So, you're my sister in-law now?” Said Percy, shaking hands with Fleur as they
hurried off toward the staircase with Bill, Fred, and George.

“Ginny!” barked Mrs. Weasley.

Ginny had been attempting, under cover of the reconciliations to sneak upstairs
too.


“Molly, how about this,” said Lupin. “Why doesn't Ginny stay here , then at least
she'll be on the scene and know what's going on, but she won't be in the middle of the
fighting?”

“I---”

“That's a good idea,” said Mr. Weasley firmly, “ Ginny, you stay in this room,
you hear me?”

Ginny did not seem to like the idea much, but under her father's unusually stern
gaze, she nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Lupin headed off to the stairs as well.

“Where's Ron?” asked Harry, “Where's Hermione?”

“They must have gone up the Great Hall already,” Mr. Weasley called over his
shoulder.

“ I didn't see them pass me,” said Harry.

“They said something about a bathroom,” said Ginny, “not long after you left.”

“A bathroom?”

Harry strode across the room to an open door leading off the Room of
Requirement and checked the bathroom beyond. It was empty.

“You're sure they said bath---?”

But then his scar seared and the Room of Req1uirement vanished. He was
looking through the high wrought-iron gates with winged boats on pillars at either side,
looking through the dark grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights. Nagini
lay draped over his shoulders. He was possessed of that cold, cruel sense of purpose that
preceded murder.



Chapter Thirty-One

The Battle of Hogwarts



The enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was dark and scattered with stars, and
below it the four long House tables were lined with disheveled students, some in
traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns. Here and there shone the pearly white figures
of the school ghosts. Every eye, living and dead was fixed upon Professor McGonagall,
who was speaking from the raised platform at the top of the Hall. Behind her stood the
remaining teaches, including the palomino centaur, Firenze, and the members of the
Order of the Phoenix who had arrived to fight.



"...evacuation will be overseen by Mr. Filch and Madame Pomfrey. Prefects,
when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges in orderly
fashion to the evacuation point.



Many of the students looked petrified. However, as Harry skirted the walls,
scanning the Gryffindor table for Ron and Hermione, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the
Hufflepuff table and shouted; "And what if we want to stay and fight?"



There was a smattering of applause.




"If you are of age, you may stay." said Professor McGonagall.



"What about our things?" called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. "Our trunks, our
owls?"



"We have no time to collect possessions." said Professor McGonagall. "The
important thing is to get you out of here safely."



"Where's Professor Snape?" shouted a girl from the Slytherin table.



"He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk." replied Professor McGonagall
and a great cheer erupted from the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws.



Harry moved up the Hall alongside the Gryffindor table, still looking for Ron and
Hermione. As he passed, faces turned in his direction, and a great deal of whispering
broke out in his wake.



"We have already placed protection around the castle," Professor McGonagall
was saying, "but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you,
therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects -"



But her final words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall.
It was high, cold, and clear. There was no telling from where it came. It seemed to issue
from the walls themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might have lain
dormant there for centuries.



"I know that you are preparing to fight." There were screams amongst the
students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of
the sound. "Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I
have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood."



There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that presses against the
eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls.



"Give me Harry Potter," said Voldemort's voice, "and they shall not be harmed.
Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and
you will be rewarded.



"You have until midnight."



The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place
seemed to have found Harry, to hold him forever in the glare of thousands of invisible
beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as
she raised a shaking arm and screamed, "But he's there! Potter's there. Someone grab
him!"




Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in
front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the
Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their
backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awestruck and
overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from
under sleeves.



"Thank you, Miss Parkinson." said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice.
"You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow."



Harry heard the grinding of the benches and then the sound of the Slytherins
trooping out on the other side of the Hall.



"Ravenclaws, follow on!" cried Professor McGonagall.



Slowly the four tables emptied. The Slytherin table was completely deserted, but
a number of older Ravenclaws remained seated while their fellows filed out; even more
Hufflepuffs stayed behind, and half of Gryffindor remained in their seats, necessitating
Professor McGonagall's descent from the teachers' platform to chivvy the underage on
their way.



"Absolutely not, Creevey, go! And you, Peakes!"



Harry hurried over to the Weasleys, all sitting together at the Gryffindor table.



"Where are Ron and Hermione?"



"Haven't you found -?" began Mr. Weasley, looking worried.



But he broke off as Kingsley had stepped forward on the raised platform to
address those who had remained behind.



"We've only got half an half an hour until midnight, so we need to act fast. A
battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the
Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout and McGonagall are going to take groups of
fighters up to the three highest towers - Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryffindor - where
they'll have good overview, excellent positions from which to work spells. Meanwhile
Remus" - he indicated Lupin - "Arthur" - he pointed toward Mr. Weasley, sitting at the
Gryffindor table - "and I will take groups into the grounds. We'll need somebody to
organize defense of the entrances or the passageways into the school -"



"Sounds like a job for us." called Fred, indicating himself and George, and
Kingsley nodded his approval.



"All right, leaders up here and we'll divide up the troops!"




"Potter," said Professor McGonagall, hurrying up to him, as students flooded the
platform, jostling for position, receiving instructions, "Aren't you supposed to be looking
for something?"



"What? Oh," said Harry, "oh yeah!"



He had almost forgotten about the Horcrux, almost forgotten that the battle was
being fought so that he could search for it: The inexplicable absence of Ron and
Hermione had momentarily driven every other thought from his mind.



"Then go, Potter, go!"



"Right - yeah -"



He sensed eyes following him as he ran out of the Great Hall again, into the
entrance hall still crowded with evacuating students. He allowed himself to be swept up
the marble staircase with them, but at the top he hurried off along a deserted corridor.
Fear and panic were clouding his thought processes. He tried to calm himself, to
concentrate on finding the Horcrux, but his thoughts buzzed as frantically and fruitlessly
as wasps trapped beneath a glass. Without Ron and Hermione to help him he could not
seem to marshal his ideas. He slowed down, coming to a halt halfway along a passage,
where he sat down on the plinth of a departed statue and pulled the Marauder's Map out
of the pouch around his neck. He could not see Ron's of Hermione's names anywhere on
it, though the density of the crowd of dots now making its way to the Room of
Requirement might, he thought, be concealing them. He put the map away, pressed his
hands over his face, and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate.



Voldemort thought I'd go to Ravenclaw Tower.



There it was, a solid fact, the place to start. Voldemort had stationed Alecto
Carrow in the Ravenclaw common room, and there could be only one explanation;
Voldemort feared that Harry already knew his Horcrux was connected to that House.



But the only object anyone seemed to associate with Ravenclaw was the lost
diadem... and how could the Horcrux be the diadem? How was it possible that
Voldemort, the Slytherin, had found the diadem that had eluded generations of
Ravenclaws? Who could have told him where to look, when nobody had seen the diadem
in living memory?



In living memory...



Beneath his fingers, Harry's eyes flew open again. He leapt up from the plinth
and tore back the way he had come, now in pursuit of his one last hope. The sound of
hundreds of people marching toward the Room of Requirement grew louder and louder
as he returned to the marble stairs. Prefects were shouting instructions, trying to keep
track of the students in their own houses, there was much pushing and shouting; Harry


saw Zacharias Smith bowling over first years to get to the front of the queue, here and
there younger students were in tears, while older ones called desperately for friends or
siblings.



Harry caught sight of a pearly white figure drifting across the entrance hall below
and yelled as loudly as he could over the clamor.



"Nick! NICK! I need to talk to you!"



He forced his way back through the tide of students, finally reaching the bottom
of the stairs, where Nearly Headless Nick, ghost of Gryffindor Tower, stood waiting for
him.



"Harry! My dear boy!"



Nick made to grasp Harry's hands with both of his own; Harry felt as though they
had been thrust into icy water.



"Nick, you've got to help me. Who's the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?"



Nearly Headless Nick looked surprised and a little offended.



"The Gray Lady, of course; but if it is ghostly services you require -?"



"It's got to be her - d'you know where she is?"



"Let's see..."



Nick's head wobbled a little on his ruff as he turned hither and thither, peering
over the heads of the swarming students.



"That's her over there, Harry, the young woman with the long hair."



Harry looked in the direction of Nick's transparent, pointing finger and saw a tall
ghost who caught sight of Harry looking at her, raised her eyebrows, and drifted away
through a solid wall.



Harry ran after her. Once through the door of the corridor into which she had
disappeared, he saw her at the very end of the passage, still gliding smoothly away from
him.



"hey - wait - come back!"



She consented to pause, floating a few inches from the ground. Harry supposed
that she was beautiful, with her waist-length hair and floor-length cloak, but she also


looked haughty and proud. Close in, he recognized her as a ghost he had passed several
times in the corridor, but to whom he had never spoken.



"You're the Gray Lady?"



She nodded but did not speak.



"The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?"



"That is correct."



Her tone was not encouraging.



"Please, I need some help. I need to know anything you can tell me about the lost
diadem."



A cold smile curved her lips.



"I am afraid," she said, turning to leave, "that I cannot help you."



"WAIT!"



He had not meant to shout, but anger and panic were threatening to overwhelm
him. He glanced at his watch as she hovered in front of him. It was a quarter to midnight.



"This is urgent." he said fiercely. "If that diadem's at Hogwarts, I've got to find it,
fast."



"You are hardly the first student to covet the diadem." she said disdainfully.
"Generations of students have badgered me -"



"This isn't about trying to get better marks!" Harry shouted at her, "It's about
Voldemort - defeating Voldemort - or aren't you interested in that?"



She could not blush, but her transparent cheeks became more opaque, and her
voice was heated as she replied, "Of course I - how dare you suggest -?"



"Well, help me then!"



Her composure was slipping.



"It - it is not a question of -" she stammered. My mother's diadem -"



"Your mother's?"



She looked angry with herself.




"When I lived," she said stiffly, "I was Helena Ravenclaw."



"You're her daughter? But then, you must know what happed to it."





"While the diadem bestows wisdom," she said with an obvious effort to pull
herself together, "I doubt that it would greatly increase you chances of defeating the
wizard who calls himself Lord -"



Haven't I told you, I'm not interested in wearing it!" Harry said fiercely. "There's
no time to explain - but if you care about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort
finished, you've got to tell me anything you know about the diadem!"



She remained quite still, floating in midair, staring down at him, and a sense of
hopelessness engulfed Harry. Of course, if she had known anything, she would have told
Flitwick of Dumbledore, who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his
head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.



"I stole the diadem from my mother."



"You - you did what?"



"I stole the diadem." repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a whisper. "I sought to make
myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it."



He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence and did not ask, he
simply listened, hard, as she went on.



"My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended
that she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other
founders of Hogwarts.



"Then my mother fell ill - fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to
see me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his
advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so."



Harry waited. She drew a deep breath and threw back her head.



"He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with
him, he became violent. The baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my
refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me."



"The Baron? You mean -?"




"he Bloody Baron, yes," said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she
wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. When he saw what he had done,
he was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used
it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence ... as
he should." she added bitterly.



"And - and the diadem?"



"It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the
forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree."



"A hollow tree?" repeated Harry. "What tree? Where was this?"



"A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother's
reach."



"Albania," repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously from confusion,
and now he understood why she was telling him what she had denied Dumbledore and
Flitwick. "You've already told someone this story, haven't you? Another student?"



She closed her eyes and nodded.



"I had... no idea... He was flattering. He seemed to... understand... to
sympathize..."



Yes, Harry thought. Tom Riddle would certainly have understood Helena
Ravenclaw's desire to possess fabulous objects to which she had little right.



"Well, you weren't the first person Riddle wormed things out of." Harry muttered.
"He could be charming when he wanted..."



So, Voldemort had managed to wheedle the location of the lost diadem out of the
Gray Lady. He had traveled to that far-flung forest and retrieved the diadem from its
hiding place, perhaps as soon as he left Hogwarts, before he even started work at Borgin
and Burkes.



And wouldn't those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an excellent refuge
when, so much later, Voldemort and needed a place to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long
years?



But the diadem, once it became his precious Horcrux, had not been left in that
lowly tree. . . . No, the diadem had been returned secretly to its true home, and Voldemort
must have put it there –

“—the night he asked for a job!” said Harry, finishing his thought.

“I beg your pardon?”


“He hid the diadem in the castle, the night he asked Dumbledore to let him
teach!” said Harry. Saying it out loud enabled him to make sense of it all. “He must’ve
hidden the diadem on his way up to, or down from, Dumbledore’s office! But it was well
worth trying to get the job – then he might’ve got the chance to nick Gryffindor’s sword
as well – thank you, thanks!”

Harry left her floating there, looking utterly bewildered. As he rounded the corner
back into the entrance hall, he checked his watch. It was five minutes until midnight, and
though he now knew what the last Horcrux was, he was no closer to discovering where it
was. . .

Generations of students had failed to find the diadem; that suggested that it was
not in Ravenclaw Tower – but if not there, where? What hiding place had Tom Riddle
discovered inside Hogwarts Castle, that he believed would remain secret forever?

Lost in desperate speculation, Harry turned a corner, but he had taken only a few
steps down the new corridor when the window to his left broke open with a deafening,
shattering crash. As he leapt aside, a gigantic body flew in through the window and hit
the opposite wall.

Something large and furry detached itself, whimpering, from the new arrival and flung
itself at Harry.

“Hagrid!” Harry bellowed, fighting off Fang the boarhound’s attentions as the
enormous bearded figure clambered to his feet “What the --?”

“Harry, yer here! Yer here!”

Hagrid stooped down, bestowed upon Harry a cursory and rib-cracking hug, then
ran back to the shattered window.

“Good boy, Grawpy!” he bellowed through the hole in the window. “I’ll se yer in
a moment, there’s a good lad!”

Beyond Hagrid, out in the dark night, Harry saw bursts of light in the distance and
heard a weird, keening scream. He looked down at his watch: It was midnight. The battle
had begun.

“Blimey, Harry,” panted Hagrid, “this is it, eh? Time ter fight?”

“Hagrid, where have you come from?”

“Heard You-Know-Who from up in our cave,” said Hagrid grimly. “Voice carried,
didn’t it? ‘Yet got till midnight ter gimme Potter.’ Knew yeh mus’ be here, knew that
mus’ be happenin’. Get down, Fang. So we come ter join in, me an’ Grawpy an’ Fang.
Smashed our way through the boundary by the forest, Grawpy was carryin’ us, Fang an’
me. Told him ter let me down at the castle, so he shoved me through the window, bless
him. Not exactly what I meant, bu’ – where’s Ron an’ Hermione?”

“That,” said Harry, “is a really good question. Come on.”

They hurried together along the corridor, Fang lolloping beside them. Harry could
hear movement through the corridors all around: running footsteps, shouts; through the
windows, he could see more flashes of light in the dark grounds.

“Where’re we goin’?” puffed Hagrid, pounding along at Harry’s heels, making
the floorboards quake.

“I dunno exactly,” said Harry, making another random turn, “but Ron and
Hermione must be around here somewhere. . . .”

The first casualties of the battle were already strewn across the passage ahead:
The two stone gargoyles that usually guarded the entrance to the staffroom had been


smashed apart by a jinx that had sailed through another broken window. Their remains
stirred feebly on the floor, and as Harry leapt over one of their disembodied heads, it
moaned faintly. “Oh, don’t mind me . . . I’ll just be here and crumble. . . .”

Its ugly stone face made Harry think suddenly of the marble bust of Rowena
Ravenclaw at Xenophilius’s house, wearing that mad headdress – and then of the statue
in Ravenclaw Tower, with the stone diadem upon her white curls. . . .

And as he reached the end of the passage, the memory of a third stone effigy
came back to him: that of an ugly old warlock, onto whose head Harry himself had
placed a wig and a battered old hat. The shock shot through Harry with the heat of
firewhisky, and he nearly stumbled.

He knew, at least, where the Horcrux sat waiting for him. . . .

Tom Riddle, who confided in no one and operated alone, might have been
arrogant enough to assume that he, and only he, had penetrated the deepest mysteries of
Hogwarts Castle. Of course, Dumbledore and Flitwick, those model pupils, had never set
foot in that particular place, but he, Harry, had strayed off the beaten track in his time at
school – here at least was a secret area he and Voldemort knew, that Dumbledore had
never discovered –

He was roused by Professor Sprout, who was thundering past followed by Neville
and half a dozen others, all of them wearing earmuffs and carrying what appeared to be
large potted plants.

“Mandrakes!” Neville bellowed at Harry over his shoulder as he ran. “Going to
lob them over the walls – they won’t like this!”

Harry knew now where to go. He sped off, with Hagrid and Fang galloping
behind him. They passed portrait after portrait, and the painted figures raced alongside
them, wizards and witches in ruffs and breeches, in armor and cloaks, cramming
themselves into each others’ canvases, screaming news from other parts of the castle. As
they reached the end of this corridor, the whole castle shook, and Harry knew, as a
gigantic vase blew off its plinth with explosive force, that it was in the grip of
enchantments more sinister than those of the teachers and the Order.

“It’s all righ’, Fang – it’s all righ’!” yelled Hagrid, but the great boarhound had
taken flight as slivers of china flew like shrapnel through the air, and Hagrid pounded off
after the terrified dog, leaving Harry alone.

He forged on through the trembling passages, his wand at the ready, and for the
length of one corridor the little painted knight, Sir Cadrigan, rushed from painting to
painting beside him, clanking along in his armor, screaming encouragement, his fat little
pony cantering behind him.

“Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out, Harry Potter, see
them off!”

Harry hurtled around a corner and found Fred and a small knot of students,
including Lee Jordan and Hannah Abbott, standing beside another empty plinth, whose
statue had concealed a secret passageway. Their wands were drawn and they were
listening at the concealed hole.

“Nice night for it!” Fred shouted as the castle quaked again, and Harry sprinted by,
elated and terrified in equal measure. Along yet another corridor he dashed, and then
there were owls everywhere, and Mrs. Norris was hissing and trying to bat them with her
paws, no doubt to return them to their proper place. . . .


“Potter!”

Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his wand held ready.

“I’ve had hundreds of kids thundering through my pub, Potter!”
“I know, we’re evacuating,” Harry said, “Voldemort’s –“

“– attacking because they haven’t handed you over, yeah,” said Aberforth. “I’m
not deaf, the whole of Hogsmeade heard him. And it never occurred to any of you to keep
a few Slytherins hostage? There are kids of Death Eaters you’ve just sent to safety.
Wouldn’t it have been a bit smarter to keep ‘em here?”
“It wouldn’t stop Voldemort,” said Harry, “and your brother would never have
done it.”
Aberforth grunted and tore away in the opposite direction.

Your brother would never have done it. . . . Well, it was the truth, Harry thought
as he ran on again: Dumbledore, who had defended Snape for so long, would never have
held students ransom. . . .

And then he skidded around a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and
fury he saw them: Ron and Hermione; both with their arms full of large, curved, dirty
yellow objects, Ron with a broomstick under his arms.

“Where the hell have you been?” Harry shouted.

“Chamber of Secrets,” said Ron.

“Chamber – what?” said Harry, coming to an unsteady halt before them.

“It was Ron, all Ron’s idea!” said Hermione breathlessly. “Wasn’t it absolutely
brilliant? There we were, after we left, and I said to Ron, even if we find the other one,
how are we going to get rid of it? We still hadn’t got rid of the cup! And then he thought
of it! The basilisk!”

“What the – ?”

“Something to get rid of Horcruxes,” said Ron simply.

Harry’s eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Ron and Hermione’s arms: great
curved fangs; torn, he now realized, from the skull of a dead basilisk.

“But how did you get in there?” he asked, staring from the fangs to Ron. “You
need to speak Parseltongue!”
“He did!” whispered Hermione. “Show him, Ron!”
Ron made a horrible strangled hissing noise.

“It’s what you did to open the locket,” he told Harry apologetically. “I had to have
a few goes to get it right, but,” he shrugged modestly, “we got there in the end.”
“He was amazing!” said Hermione. “Amazing!”

“So . . .” Harry was struggling to keep up. “So . . .”

“So we’re another Horcrux down,” said Ron, and from under his jacket he pulled
the mangled remains of Hufflepuff’s cup. “Hermione stabbed it. Thought she should. She
hasn’t had the pleasure yet.”
“Genius!” yelled Harry.

“It was nothing,” said Ron, though he looked delighted with himself. “So what’s
new with you?”

As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: All three of them looked up
as dust fell from the ceiling and they heard a distant scream.

“I know what the diadem looks like, and I know where it is,” said Harry, talking
fast. “He hid it exactly where I had my old Potions book, where everyone’s been hiding


stuff for centuries. He thought he was the only one to find it. Come on.”
As the walls trembled again, he led the other two back through the concealed
entrance and down the staircase into the Room of Requirement. It was empty except for
three women: Ginny, Tonks and an elderly witch wearing a moth-eaten hat, whom Harry
recognized immediately as Neville’s grandmother.

“Ah, Potter,” she said crisply as if she had been waiting for him. “You can tell us
what’s going on.”
“Is everyone okay?” said Ginny and Tonks together.

“’S far as we know,” said Harry. “Are there still people in the passage to the
Hog’s Head?”

He knew that the room would not be able to transform while there were still users
inside it.

“I was the last to come through,” said Mrs. Longbottom. “I sealed it, I think it
unwise to leave it open now Aberforth has left his pub. Have you seen my grandson?”

“He’s fighting,” said Harry.

“Naturally,” said the old lady proudly. “Excuse me, I must go and assist him.”
With surprising speed she trotted off toward the stone steps.

Harry looked at Tonks.

“I thought you were supposed to be with Teddy at your mother’s?”
“I couldn’t stand not knowing –“ Tonks looked anguished. “She’ll look after him
– have you seen Remus?”
“He was planning to lead a group of fighters into the grounds –“

Without another word, Tonks sped off.

“Ginny,” said Harry, “I’m sorry, but we need you to leave too. Just for a bit. Then
you can come back in.”

Ginny looked simply delighted to leave her sanctuary.

“And then you can come back in!” he shouted after her as she ran up the steps
after Tonks. “You’ve got to come back in!”

“Hang on a moment!” said Ron sharply. “We’ve forgotten someone!”
“Who?” asked Hermione.

“The house-elves, they’ll all be down in the kitchen, won’t they?”
“You mean we ought to get them fighting?” asked Harry.

“No,” said Ron seriously, “I mean we should tell them to get out. We don’t want
anymore Dobbies, do we? We can’t order them to die for us –“

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms.
Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron
threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such
enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.

“Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except
that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he
raised his voice. “Oi! There’s a war going on here!”
Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.

“I know, mate,” said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the
back of the head with a Bludger, “so it’s now or never, isn’t it?”

“Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?” Harry shouted. “D’you think you
could just – just hold it in until we’ve got the diadem?”


“Yeah – right – sorry –“ said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up
fangs, both pink in the face.

It was clear, as the three of them stepped back into the corridor upstairs, that in
the minutes that they had spent in the Room of Requirement the situation within the
castle had deteriorated severely: The walls and ceiling were shaking worse than ever;
dust filled the air, and through the nearest window, Harry saw bursts of green and red
light so close to the foot of the castle that he knew the Death Eaters must be very near to
entering the place. Looking down, Harry saw Grawp the giant meandering past, swinging
what looked like a stone gargoyle torn from the roof and roaring his displeasure.

“Let’s hope he steps on some of them!” said Ron as more screams echoed from
close by.

“As long as it’s not any of our lot!” said a voice: Harry turned and saw Ginny and
Tonks, both with their wands drawn at the next window, which was missing several
panes. Even as he watched, Ginny sent a well-aimed jinx into a crowd of fighters below.

“Good girl!” roared a figure running through the dust toward them, and Harry saw
Aberforth again, his gray hair flying as he led a small group of students past. “They look
like they might be breaching the north battlements, they’ve brought giants of their own.”

“Have you seen Remus?” Tonks called after him.

“He was dueling Dolohov,” shouted Aberforth, “haven’t seen him since!”
“Tonks,” said Ginny, “Tonks, I’m sure he’s okay –“

But Tonks had run off into the dust after Aberforth.

Ginny turned, helpless, to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

“They’ll be all right,” said Harry, though he knew they were empty words.
“Ginny, we’ll be back in a moment, just keep out of the way, keep safe – come on!” he
said to Ron and Hermione, and they ran back to the stretch of wall beyond which the
Room of Requirement was waiting to do the bidding of the next entrant.

I need the place where everything is hidden. Harry begged of it inside his head,
and the door materialized on their third run past.

The furor of the battle died the moment they crossed the threshold and closed the
door behind them: All was silent. They were in a place the size of a cathedral with the
appearance of a city, its towering walls built of objects hidden by thousands of long-gone
students.

“And he never realized anyone could get in?” said Ron, his voice echoing in the
silence.

“He thought he was the only one,” said Harry. “Too bad for him I’ve had to hide
stuff in my time . . . this way,” he added. “I think it’s down here. . . .”
They sped off up adjacent aisles; Harry could hear the others’ footsteps echoing
through the towering piles of junk, of bottles, hats, crates, chairs, books, weapons,
broomsticks, bats. . . .

“Somewhere near here,” Harry muttered to himself. “Somewhere . . .
somewhere . . .”

Deeper and deeper into the labyrinth he went, looking for objects he recognized
from his one previous trip into the room. His breath was loud in his ears, and then his
very soul seemed to shiver. There it was, right ahead, the blistered old cupboard in which
he had hidden his old Potions book, and on top of it, the pockmarked stone warlock
wearing a dusty old wig and what looked like an ancient discolored tiara.


He had already stretched out his hand, though he remained few feet away, when a
voice behind him said, “Hold it, Potter.”

He skidded to a halt and turned around. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind
him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right at Harry. Through the small space
between their jeering faces he saw Draco Malfoy.

“That’s my wand you’re holding, Potter,” said Malfoy, pointing his own through
the gap between Crabbe and Goyle.

“Not anymore,” panted Harry, tightening his grip on the hawthorn wand.
“Winners, keepers, Malfoy. Who’s lent you theirs?”

“My mother,” said Draco.

Harry laughed, though there was nothing very humorous about the situation. He
could not hear Ron or Hermione anymore. They seemed to have run out of earshot,
searching for the diadem.

“So how come you three aren’t with Voldemort?” asked Harry.

“We’re gonna be rewarded,” said Crabbe. His voice was surprisingly soft for such
an enormous person: Harry had hardly ever heard him speak before. Crabbe was speaking
like a small child promised a large bag of sweets. “We ‘ung back, Potter. We decided not
to go. Decided to bring you to ‘im.”

“Good plan,” said Harry in mock admiration. He could not believe that he was
this close, and was going to be thwarted by Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. He began edging
slowly backward toward the place where the Horcrux sat lopsided upon the bust. If he
could just get his hands on it before the fight broke out . . .

“So how did you get in here?” he asked, trying to distract them.

“I virtually lived in the Room of Hidden Things all last year,” said Malfoy, his
voice brittle. “I know how to get in.”

“We was hiding in the corridor outside,” grunted Goyle. “We can do Diss-lusion
Charms now! And then,” his face split into a gormless grin, “you turned up right in front
of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! What’s a die-dum?”

“Harry?” Ron’s voice echoed suddenly from the other side of the wall to Harry’s
right. “Are you talking to someone?”

With a whiplike movement, Crabbe pointed his wand at the fifty foot mountain of
old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books and robes and unidentifiable junk, and
shouted, “Descendo!”

The wall began to totter, then the top third crumbled into the aisle next door
where Ron stood.

“Ron!” Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione screamed, and
Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the floor on the other side of the destabilized
wall: He pointed his wand at the rampart, cried, “Finite!” and it steadied.

“No!” shouted Malfoy, staying Crabbe’s arm as the latter made to repeat his spell.
“If you wreck the room you might bury this diadem thing!”

“What’s that matter?” said Crabbe, tugging himself free. “It’s Potter the Dark
Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?”

“Potter came in here to get it,” said Malfoy with ill-disguised impatience at the
slow-wittedness of his colleagues. “so that must mean –“

“’Must mean’?” Crabbe turned on Malfoy with undisguised ferocity. “Who cares
what you think? I don’t take your orders no more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.”


“Harry?” shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk wad. “What’s going
on?”

“Harry?” mimicked Crabbe. “What’s going on – no, Potter! Crucio!”

Harry had lunged for the tiara; Crabbe’s curse missed him but hit the stone bust,
which flew into the air; the diadem soared upward and then dropped out of sight in the
mass of objects on which the bust had rested.

“STOP!” Malfoy shouted at Crabbe, his voice echoing through the enormous
room. “The Dark Lord wants him alive –“

“So? I’m not killing him, am I?” yelled Crabbe, throwing off Malfoy’s restraining
arm. “But if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants him dead anyway, what’s the diff – ?”

A jet of scarlet light shot past Harry by inches: Hermione had run around the
corner behind him and sent a Stunning Spell straight at Crabbe’s head. It only missed
because Malfoy pulled him out of the way.

“It’s that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra!”

Harry saw Hermione dive aside, and his fury that Crabbe had aimed to kill wiped
all else from his mind. He shot a Stunning Spell at Crabbe, who lurched out of the way,
knocking Malfoy’s wand out of his hand; it rolled out of sight beneath a mountain of
broken furniture and bones.

“Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!” Malfoy yelled at Crabbe and Goyle, who
were both aiming at Harry: Their split second’s hesitation was all Harry needed.

“Expelliarmus!”

Goyle’s wand flew out of his hand and disappeared into the bulwark of objects
beside him; Goyle leapt foolishly on the spot, trying to retrieve it; Malfoy jumped out of
range of Hermione’s second Stunning Spell, and Ron, appearing suddenly at the end of
the aisle, shot a full Body-Bind Curse at Crabbe, which narrowly missed.

Crabbe wheeled around and screamed, “Avada Kedavra!” again. Ron leapt out of
sight to avoid the jet of green light. The wand-less Malfoy cowered behind a three-legged
wardrobe as Hermione charged toward them, hitting Goyle with a Stunning Spell as she
came.

“It’s somewhere here!” Harry yelled at her, pointing at the pile of junk into which
the old tiara had fallen. “Look for it while I go and help R –“

“HARRY!” she screamed.

A roaring, billowing noise behind him gave him a moment’s warning. He turned
and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as hard as they could up the aisle toward them.

“Like it hot, scum?” roared Crabbe as he ran.

But he seemed to have no control over what he had done. Flames of abnormal size
were pursuing them, licking up the sides of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to
soot at their touch.

“Aguamenti!” Harry bawled, but the jet of water that soared from the tip of his
wand evaporated in the air.

“RUN!”

Malfoy grabbed the Stunned Goyle and dragged him along; Crabbe outstripped all
of them, now looking terrified; Harry, Ron, and Hermione pelted along in his wake, and
the fire pursued them. It was not normal fire; Crabbe had used a curse of which Harry had
no knowledge. As they turned a corner the flames chased them as though they were alive,
sentient, intent upon killing them. Now the fire was mutating, forming a gigantic pack of


fiery beasts: Flaming serpents, chimaeras, and dragons rose and fell and rose again, and
the detritus of centuries on which they were feeding was thrown up into the air into their
fanged mouths, tossed high on clawed feet, before being consumed by the inferno.

Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle had vanished from view: Harry, Ron and Hermione
stopped dead; the fiery monsters were circling them, drawing closer and closer, claws and
horns and tails lashed, and the heat was solid as a wall around them.

“What can we do?” Hermione screamed over the deafening roars of the fire.
“What can we do?”

“Here!”

Harry seized a pair of heavy-looking broomsticks from the nearest pile of junk
and threw one to Ron, who pulled Hermione onto it behind him. Harry swung his leg
over the second broom and, with hard kicks to the ground, they soared up in the air,
missing by feet the horned beak of a flaming raptor that snapped its jaws at them. The
smoke and heat were becoming overwhelming: Below them the cursed fire was
consuming the contraband of generations of hunted students, the guilty outcomes of a
thousand banned experiments, the secrets of the countless souls who had sought refuge in
the room. Harry couldnot see a trace of Malfoy, Crabbe, or Goyle anywhere. He swooped
as low as he dare over the marauding monsters of flame to try to find them, but there was
nothing but fire: What a terrible way to die. . . . He had never wanted this. . . .

“Harry, let’s get out, let’s get out!” bellowed Ron, though it was impossible to see
where the door was through the black smoke.

And then Harry heard a thin, piteous human scream from amidst the terrible
commotion, the thunder of devouring flame.

“It’s – too – dangerous – !” Ron yelled, but Harry wheeled in the air. His glasses
giving his eyes some small protection from the smoke, he raked the firestorm below,
seeking a sign of life, a limb or a face that was not yet charred like wood. . . .

And he saw them: Malfoy with his arms around the unconscious Goyle, the pair
of them perched on a fragile tower of charred desks, and Harry dived. Malfoy saw him
coming and raised one arm, but even as Harry grasped it he knew at once that it was no
good. Goyle was too heavy and Malfoy’s hand, covered in sweat, slid instantly out of
Harry’s –

“IF WE DIE FOR THEM, I’LL KILL YOU, HARRY!” roared Ron’s voice, and,
as a great flaming chimaera bore down upon them, he and Hermione dragged Goyle onto
their broom and rose, rolling and pitching, into the air once more as Malfoy clambered up
behind Harry.

“The door, get to the door, the door!” screamed Malfoy in Harry’s ear, and Harry
sped up, following Ron, Hermione, and Goyle through the billowing black smoke, hardly
able to breathe: and all around them the last few objects unburned by the devouring
flames were flung into the air, as the creatures of the cursed fire cast them high in
celebration: cups and shields, a sparkling necklace, and an old, discolored tiara –

“What are you doing, what are you doing, the door’s that way!” screamed Malfoy,
but Harry made a hairpin swerve and dived. The diadem seemed to fall in slow motion,
turning and glittering as it dropped toward the maw of a yawning serpent, and then he
had it, caught it around his wrist –

Harry swerved again as the serpent lunged at him; he soared upward and straight
toward the place where, he prayed, the door stood open; Ron, Hermione and Goyle had


vanished; Malfoy was screaming and holding Harry so tightly it hurt. Then, through the
smoke, Harry saw a rectangular patch on the wall and steered the broom at it, and
moments later clean air filled his lungs and they collided with the wall in the corridor
beyond.

Malfoy fell off the broom and lay facedown, gasping, coughing, and retching.
Harry rolled over and sat up: The door to the Room of Requirement had vanished, and
Ron and Hermione sat panting on the floor beside Goyle, who was still unconscious.

“C-Crabbe,” choked Malfoy as soon as he could speak. “C-Crabbe . . .”

“He’s dead,” said Ron harshly.

There was silence, apart from panting and coughing. Then a number of huge
bangs shook the castle, and a great cavalcade of transparent figures galloped past on
horses, their heads screaming with bloodlust under their arms. Harry staggered to his feet
when the Headless Hunt had passed and looked around: The battle was still going on all
around him. He could hear more scream than those of the retreating ghosts. Panic flared
within him.

“Where’s Ginny?” he said sharply. “She was here. She was supposed to be going
back into the Room of Requirement.”

“Blimey, d’you reckon it’ll still work after that fire?” asked Ron, but he too got to
his feet, rubbing his chest and looking left and right. “Shall we split up and look – ?”

“No,” said Hermione, getting to her feet too. Malfoy and Goyle remained
slumped hopelessly on the corridor floor; neither of them had wands. “Let’s stick
together. I say we go – Harry, what’s that on your arm?”

“What? Oh yeah –“

He pulled the diadem from his wrist and held it up. It was still hot, blackened with
soot, but as he looked at it closely he was just able to make out the tiny words etched
upon it; WIT BEYOND MEASURE IS MAN’S GREATEST TREASURE.

A bloodlike substance, dark and tarry, seemed to be leaking from the diadem.
Suddenly Harry felt the thing vibrate violently, then break apart in his hands, and as it did
so, he thought he heard the faintest, most distant scream of pain, echoing not from the
grounds or the castle, but from the thing that had just fragmented in his fingers.

“It must have been Fiendfyre!” whimpered Hermione, her eyes on the broken
piece.

“Sorry?”

“Fiendfyre – cursed fire – it’s one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I
would never, ever have dared use it, it’s so dangerous – how did Crabbe know how to –
?”

“Must’ve learned from the Carrows,” said Harry grimly.

“Shame he wasn’t concentrating when they mentioned how to stop it, really,” said
Ron, whose hair, like Hermione’s, was singed, and whose face was blackened. “If he
hadn’t tried to kill us all, I’d be quite sorry he was dead.”

“But don’t you realize?” whispered Hermione. “This means, if we can just get the
snake –“

But she broke off as yells and shouts and the unmistakable noises of dueling filled
the corridor. Harry looked around and his heart seemed to fail: Death Eaters had
penetrated Hogwarts. Fred and Percy had just backed into view, both of them dueling
masked and hooded men.


Harry, Ron, and Hermione ran forward to help: Jets of light flew in every
direction and the man dueling Percy backed off, fast: Then his hood slipped and they saw
a high forehead and streaked hair –

“Hello, Minister!” bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who
dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort.
“Did I mention I’m resigning?”

“You’re joking, Perce!” shouted Fred as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed
under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground
with tiny spikes erupting all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea
urchin. Fred looked at Percy with glee.

“You actually are joking, Perce. . . . I don’t think I’ve heard you joke since you
were –“

The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred,
and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in
that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent
apart, Harry felt himself flying through the air, and all he could do was hold as tightly as
possible to that thin stick of wood that was his one and only weapon, and shield his head
in his arms: He heard the screams and yells of his companions without a hope of knowing
what had happened to them –

And then the world resolved itself into pain and semidarkness: He was half buried
in the wreckage of a corridor that had been subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told
him that the side of the castle had been blown away, and hot stickiness on his cheek told
him that he was bleeding copiously. Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides,
that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up,
swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he
had been in his life. . . .

And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three redheaded
men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed
Hermione’s hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood.

“No – no – no!” someone was shouting. “No! Fred! No!”

And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred’s eyes
stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.






Chapter Thirty-Two

The Elder Wand


The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle
fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms?
Harry's mind was in free fall, spinning out of control, unable to
grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead,
the evidence of all his senses must be lying--
And then a body fell past the hole blown into the side of the


school and curses flew in at them from the darkness, hitting the
wall behind their heads.
"Get down!" Harry shouted, as more curses flew through the night:
He and Ron had both grabbed Hermione and pulled her to the floor,
but Percy lay across Fred's body, shielding it from further harrm,
and when Harry shouted "Percy, come on, we've got to move!" he
shook his head.
"Percy!" Harry saw tear tracks streaking the grime coating ron's
face as he sezied his elder brother's shoulders and pulled, but
Percy would not budge. "Percy, you can't do anything for him! We're
going to--"
Hermione screamed, and Harry, turning, did not need to ask why. A
monstrous spider the size of a small car was trying to climb
through the huge hole in the wall. one of Aragog's descendants had
joined the fight.
Ron and Harry shouted together; their spells collided and the
monster was blown backward, its legs jerking horribly, and vanished
into the darkness.
"It brought friends!" Harry called to the others, glancing over the
edge of the castle through the hole in the wall the curses had
blasted. More giant spiders were climbing the side of the building,
liberated from the Forbidden Forest, into which the Death Eaters
must have penetrated. Harry fired Stunning Spells down upon them,
knocking the lead monster into its fellows, so that they rolled
back down the building and out of sight. Then more curses came
soaring over Harry's head, so close he felt the force of them blow
his hair.
"Let's move, NOW!"
Pushing Hermione ahead of him with ron, Harry stooped to seize
Fred's body under the armpit. Percy, realizing what Harry was
trying to do, stopped clinging to the body and helped: together,
crouching low to avoid the curses flying at them from the grounds,
they hauled Fred out of the way.
"Here," said Harry, and they placed him in a niche where a suit of
armor had stood earlier. He could not bear to look at Fred a second
longer than he had to, and after making sure that the body was well-
hidden, he took off after ron and Hermione. Malfoy and Goyle had
vanished but at the end of the corridor, which was now full of dust
and falling masonry, glass long gone from windows, he saw many
people running backward and forward, whether friends or foes he
could not tell. Rounding the corner, Percy let out a bull-like
roar: "ROOKWOOD!" and sprinted off in the direction of a tall man,
who was pursuing a couple of students.
"Harry, in here!" Hermione screamed.
She had pulled Ron behind a tapestry. They seemed to be wrestling
together, and for one mad second Harry thought that they were


embracing again; then hhe saw that Hermione was trying to restrain
Ron, to stop him running after Percy.
"Listen to me--LISTEN RON!"
"I wanna help--I wanna kill Death Eaters--"
His face was contorted, smeared with dust and smoke, and he was
shaking with rage and grief.
"ron, we're the only ones who can end it! Please--ron--we need the
snake, we've got to kill the snake!" said Hermione.
But Harry knew how Ron felt: Pursuing another Horcrux could not
bring the satisfaction of revenge; he too wanted to fight, to
punish them, the people who had killed Fred, and he wanted to find
the other Weasleys, and above all make sure, make quite sure, that
Ginny was not--but he could not permit that idea to form in his
mind--
"We will fight!" Hermione said. "We'll have to, to reach the snake!
But let's not lose sight now of what we're supposed to be d-doing!
We're the only ones who can end it!"
She was crying too, and she wiped her face on her torn and singed
sleeve as she spoke, but she took great heaving breaths to calm
herself as, still keeping a tight hold on ron, she turned to Harry.
"You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he'll have the
snake with him, won't he? Do it, Harry--look inside him!"
Why was it so easy? Because his scar had been burning for hours,
yearning to show him Voldemort's thoughts? He closed his eyes on
her command, and at once, the screams and bangs and all the
discordant sounds of the battle were drowned until they became
distant, as though he stood far, far away from them...
He was standing in the middle of a desolate but strangely familiar
room, with peeling paper on the walls and all the windows boarded
up except for one. The sounds of the assault on the castle were
muffled and distant. The single unblocked window revealed distant
bursts of light where the castle stood, but inside the room was
dark except for a solitary oil lamp.
He was rolling his wand between his figners, watching it, his
thoughts on the room in the castle, the secret room only he had
ever found, the room, like the chamber, that you had to be clever
and cunning and inquisitive to discover...He was confident that the
boy would not find the diadem...although Dumbledore's puppet had
come much farther than he ever expected...too far...
"My Lord," said a voice, desperate and cracked. He turned: there
was Lucius Malfoy sitting in the darkest corner, ragged and still
bearing the marks of the punishment he had received after the boy's
last escape. One of his eyes remained closed and puffy. "My
Lord...please...my son..."
"If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come
and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins. Perhaps he has


decided to befriend Harry Potter?"
"No--never," whispered Malfoy.
"You must hope not."
"Aren't--aren't you afraid, my Lord that Potter might die at
another hand but yours?" asked Malfoy, his voice shaking. "Wouldn't
it be...forgive me...more prudent to call off this battle, enter
the castle, and seek him y-yourself?"
"Do not pretend Lucius. You wish the battle to cease so that you
can discover what has happened to your son. And i do not need to
seek Potter. Before the night is out, Potter will have come to find
me."
Voldemort dropped his gaze once more to the wand in his fingers. It
troubled him...and those things that troubled Lord Voldemort needed
to be rearranged...
"Go and fetch Snape."
"Snape, m-my Lord?"
"Snape. Now. I need him. There is a --service--I require from him.
Go."
Frightened, stumbling a little through the gloom, Lucius left the
room. Vodlemort continued to stand there, twirling the wand between
his fingers, staring at it.
"It is the only way, Nagini," he whispered, and he looked around,
and there was the great thick snake, now suspended in midair,
twisting gracefully within the enchanted, protected space he had
made for her, a starry, transparent sphere somewhere between a
glittering cage and a tank.
With a gasp, Harry pulled back and opened his yees at the same
moment his ears were assaulted with the screeches and cries, the
smashes and bangs of battle.
"He's in the Shrieking Shack. The snake's with him, it's got some
sort of magical protection around it. He's just sent Lucius Malfoy
to find Snape."
"voldemort's sitting in the shrieking Shack?" said Hermione,
outraged. "He's not--he's not even FIGHTING?"
"He doesn't think he needs to fight," said Harry. "He thinks I'm
going to go to him."
"But why?"
"He knows I'm after Horcruxes--he's keeping Nagini close beside him-
-obviously I'm going to have to go to him to get near the thing--"
"Right," said Ron, squaring his shoulders. "So you can't go, that's
what he wants, what he's expecting. You stay here and look after
Hermione, and I'll go and get it--"
Harry cut across Ron.
"You two stay here, I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as
soon as I--"
"No," said Hermione,, "it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak


and--"
"Don't even think about it," Ron snarled at her.
before Hermione could get farther than "Ron, I'm just as capable --
" the tapestry at the top of the staircase on which they stood was
ripped open.
"POTTER!"
Two masked Death Eaters stood there, but even before their wands
were fully raised, Hermione shouted "Glisseo!"
The stairs beneath their feet flatteneed into a chute and she,
Harry, and Ron hurtled down it, unable to control their speed but
so fast that the Death Eaters' Stunning Spells flew far over their
heads. They shot through the concealing tapestry at the bottom and
spun onto the floor, hitting the opposite wall.
"Duro!" cried Hermione, pointing her wand at the tapestry, and
there were two loud, sickening crunches as the tapestry turned to
stone and the Death Eaters pursuing them crumpled against it.
"Get back!" shouted Ron, and he, Harry, and Hermione hurled
themselves against a door as a herd of galloping desks thundered
past, shepherdd by a sprinting Professor McGonagall. She appeared
not to notice them. Her hair had come down and there was a gash on
her cheek. As she turned the corner, they heard her scream,
"CHARGE!"
"Harry, you get the Cloak on," said Hermione. "Never mind us--"
But he threw it over all three of them; large though they were he
doubted anyone would see their disembodied feet through the dust
that clogged the air, the falling stone, the shimmer of spells.
they ran down the next staircase and found themselves in a corridor
full of duelers. The portraits on either side of the fighters were
crammed with figures screaming advice and encouragement, while
Death Eaters, both masked and unmasked, dueled students and
teachers. Dean had won himself a wand, for he was face-to-face with
Dolohov, Parvati with Travers. Harry, ron and Hermione raised their
wands at once, ready to strike, but the duelers were weaving and
darting so much that there was a strong likelihood of hurting on of
their own side if they cast curses. Even as they stood braced,
looking for the opportunity to act, there came a great "Wheeeeee!"
and looking up, Harry saw Peeves zoomign over them, dropping
Snargaluff pods down onto the Death Eaters, whose heads were
suddenly engulfed in wriggling green tubers like fat worms.
"ARGH!"
A fistful of tubers had hit the Cloak over Ron's head; the damp
green roots were suspended improbably in midair as Ron tried to
shake them loose.
"Someone's invisible there!" shouted a masked Death Eater, pointing.
Dean made the most of the Death Eater's momentary distraction,
knocking him out with a stunning Spell; Dolohov attempted to


retaliate, and Parvati shot a Body Bind Curse at him.
"LET'S GO!" Harry yelled, and he, Ron, and Hermione gathered the
Cloak tightly around themselves and pelted, heads down, through the
midst of the fighters, slipping a little in pools of Snargaluff
juice, toward the top of the marble staircase into the entrance
hall.
"I'm Draco Malfoy, I'm Draco, I'm on your side!"
Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with anoter masked Death
Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed. Malfoy looked
around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him from under the
Cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the Death Eater, his mouth
bleeding, utterly bemused.
"And that's the second time we've saved your life tonight, you two-
faced bastard!" Ron yelled.
There were more duelers all over the stairs and in the hall. Death
Eaters everywhere Harry looked: Yaxley, close to the front doors,
in combat with Flitwick, a masked Death Eater dueling Kingsley
right beside them. Students ran in every direction; some carrying
or dragging injured friends. Harry directed a Stunnning Spell
toward the masked Death Eater; it missed but nearly hit Neville,
who had emerged from nowhere brandishing armfuls of Venomous
Tentacula, which looped itself happily around the nearest Death
Eater and began reeling him in.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione sped won the marble staircase: glass
shattered on the left, and the Slytherin hourglass that had
recorded House points spilled its emeralds everywhere, so that
people slipped and staggered as they ran. Two bodies fell from the
balcony overhead as they reached the ground a gray blur that Harry
took for an animal sped four-legged across the hall to sink its
teeth into one of the fallen.
"NO!" shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her wand,
Fenrir Greyback was thrown backward from the feebly struggling body
of Lavender Brown. He hit the marble banisters and struggled to
return to his feet. Then, with a bright white flash and a crack, a
crystal ball fell on top of his head, and he crumpled to the ground
and did not move.
"I have more!" shrieked Professor Trelawney from over the
banisters. "More for any who want them! Here--"
And with a move likea tennis serve, she heaved another enormous
crystal sphere from her bag, waved her wand through the air, and
caused the ball to speed across the hall and smash through a
window. At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst
open, and more of the gigantic spiders forced their way into the
front hall.
Screams of terror rent the air: the fighters scattered, Death
Eaters and Hogwartians alike, and red and green jets of light flew


into the midst of the oncoming monsters, which shuddered and
reared, more terrifying than ever.
"How do we get out?" yelled ron over all the screaming, but before
either Harry or Hermione could answer they were bowled aside;
Hagrid had come thundering down the stairs, brandishing his flowery
pink umbrella.
"Don't hurt 'em, don't hurt 'em!" he yelled.
"HAGRID, NO!"
Harry forgot everything else: he sprinted out from under the cloak,
running bent double to avoid the curses illuminating the whole hall.
"HAGRID, COME BACK!"
But he was not even halfway to Hagrid when he saw it happen: Hagrid
vanished amongst the spiders, and with a great scurrying, a foul
swarming movement, they retreated under the onslaught of spells,
Hagrid buried in their midst.
"HAGRID!" Harry heard someone calling his own name, whether friend
or foe he did not care: He was springint down the front steps into
the dark grounds, and the spiders were swarming away with their
prey, and he could see nothing of Hagrid at all.
"HAGRID!"
He thought he could make out an enormous arm waving from the mdist
of the spider swarm, but as he made to chase after them, his way
was impeded by a monumental foot, which swung down out of the
darkness and made the ground on which he stood shudder. He looked
up: A giant stood before him, twenty feet high, its head ihidden in
shadow, nothing but its treelike, hairy shins illuminated by light
from the castle doors. With one brutal, fluid movement, it smashed
a massive fist through an upper window, and glass rained down upon
Harryk, forcing him back under the shelter of the doorway.
"Oh my--!" shrieked Hermione, as she and ron caught up with Harry
and gazed upward at the giant now trying to seize people through
the window above.
"DON'T!" ron yelled, grabbing Hermione's hand as she raised her
wand. "Stun him and he'll crush half the castle--"
"HAGGER?"
Grawp came lurching around the corner of the castle; only dnow did
Harry realzie that Grawp was, indeed, an undersized giant. The
gargantuan monster trying to crush people on the upper floors
turned around and let out a rorar. The stone steps tremebled as he
stomped toward his smaller kin, and Grawp's lopsided mouth fell
open, showing yellow, half brick-sized teeth; and then they
launched themselves at each other with the savagery of lions.
"RUN!" Harry roared; the ngiht was full of hideous yells and blows
as the giants wrestled, and he seized Hermione's hand and tore down
the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear. Harry had not
lost hope of finding and saving Hagrid; he ran so fast that they


were halfway toward the forest before they were brought up short
again.
The air around them had frozen: Harry's breath caught and
solidified in his chest. Shapes moved out in the darkness, swirling
figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave towards
the castles, their faces hooded and their breath rattling...
ron and Hermione closed in beside him as the sounds of fighting
behind them grew suddenly muted, deadened, because a silence only
dementors could bring was falling thickly through the night, and
Fred was gone, and Hagrid was suurely dying or already dead...
"come on, Harry!" said Hermione's voice from a very long way away.
"Patronuses, Harry, come on!"
he raised his wand, but a dull hopelessness was spreading
throughout him: How many more lay dead that he did not yet know
about? He felt as though his soul had already half left his body....
"HARRY, COME ON!" screamed Hermione.
A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward them, sucking
their way closer to Harry's despair, which was like a promise of a
feast...
He saw Ron's silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and
expire; he saw Hermione's otter twist in midair and fade, and his
own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming
oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling...
And then a silver hare, a boar, and fox soared past Harry, Ron, and
Hermione's heads: the dementors fell back before the creatures'
approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to
stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continuing to cast
Patronuses: Luna, Ernie, and Seamus.
"That's right," said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back in
the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice for the
D.A., "That's right, Harry...come on think of something happy..."
'something happy?" he said, his voice cracked.
"We're all still here," she whispered, "we;re still fighting. Come
on, now...."
There was a silver spark, then a wavering light, and then, with the
greatest effort it had ever cost him the stag burst from the end of
Harry's wand. It cantered forward, and now the dementors scattered
in earnest, and immediately the night was mild again, but the
sounds of the surrounding battle were loud in his ears.
"Can't thank you enough," said ron shakily, turning to Luna, Ernie,
and Seamus "you just saved--"
With a roar and an earth-quaking tremor, another giant came
lurching out of the darkness from the direction of the forest,
brandishing a club taller than any of them.
"RUN!" Harry shouted again, but the others needed no telling; They
all scattered, and not a second too soon, for the next moment the


creature's vast foot had fallen exactly where they had been
standing. Harry looked round: ron and Hermione were following him,
but the other three had vanished back into the battle.
"Let's get out of range!" yelled Ron as the giant swung its club
again and its bellows echoed through the night, across the grounds
wehere bursts of red and green light continued to illuminate the
darkness.
"The Whomping willow," said Harry, "go!"
Somehow he walled it all up in his mind, crammed it into a small
space into which he could not look now: thoughts of Fred and
Hagrid, and his terror for all the people he loved, scattered in
and outside the castle, must all wait, because they had to run, had
to reach the snake and Voldemort, because that was, as Hermione
said, the only way to end it--
He sprinted, half-believing he could outdistance death itself,
ignoring the jets of light flying in the darkness all around him,
and the sound of hte lake crashing like the sea, and the creaking
of the Forbidden Forest though the night was windless; through
grounds that seemed themselves to have risen in rebellion, he ran
faster than he had ever moved in his life, and it was he who saw
the great tree first, the Willow that protected the secret at its
roots with whiplike, slashing branches.
Panting and gasping, Harry slowed down, skirting the willow's
swiping branches, peering through the darkness toward its tick
trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree
that would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up, Hermione so out
of breath that she could not speak.
"How--how're we going to get in?" panted ron. "I can--see the palce-
-if we jsut had--Crookshanks again--"
"Crookshanks?" wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her chest.
"Are you a wizard, or what?"
"Oh--right--yeah--"
Ron looked around, then directed his wand at a twig on the ground
and said "Winguardium Leviosa!" The twig flew up from the gruond,
spun through the air as if caught by a gust of wind, then zoomed
directly at the trunk through the Willow's ominously swaying
branches. It jabbed at a place near the roots, and at once, the
writhing tree became still.
"Perfect!" panted Hermione.
"Wait."
For one teetering second, while the crashes and booms of the battle
filled the air, Harry hesitated. Voldemort wanted him to do this,
wanted him to come...Was he leading Ron and Hermione into a trap?
But the reality seemed to close upon him, cruel and plain: the only
way forward was to kill the snake, and the snake was where
Voldemort was, and voldemort was at the end of this tunnel...


"Harry, we're coming, just get in there!" said Ron, pushing him
forward.
Harry wriggled into the earthy passage hidden in the tree's roots.
It was a much tighter squeeze than it had been the last time they
had entered it. The tunnel was low-ceilinged: they had had to
double up to move throuhgh it nearly four years previously; now
there was nothing for it but to crawl. Harry went first, his wand
illuminated, expecting at any moment to meet barriers, but none
came. They moved in silence, Harry's gaze fixed upon the swinging
beam of the wand held in his fist. At last, the tunnel began to
slope upward and Harry saw a sliver of light ahead. Hermione tugged
at his ankle.
"The Cloak!" she whispered. "Put the Cloak on!"
He groped behind him and she forced the bundle of slippery cloth
into his free hand. With difficulty he dragged it over himself,
murmered, "Nox," extinguishing his wandlight, and continued on his
hands and knees, as silently as possible, all his senses straining,
expecting every second to be discovered, to hear a cold clear
voice, see a flash of green light.
and then he heard voices coming from the room directly ahead of
them, only slightly muffled by the fact that the opening at the
endo fht etuunnel had been blocked up by what looked like an old
crate. Hardly daring to breathe, Harry edged right up tot he
opening and peered through a tiny gap left between crate and wall.
The room beyond was dimly lit, but he could see Nagini, swirlign
and coiling like a serpent underwater, safe in her enchanted,
starry sphere, which floated unsupported in midair. He could see
the edge of a table, and a long-fingered white hand toying with a
wand.
Then Snape spoke, and Harry's heart lurched: Snape was inches away
from where he crouched, hidden.
"...my Lord, their resistance is crumbling--"
"--and it is doing so without your help," said Voldemort in his
high, clear voice. "Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do
not think you will make much difference now. We are almost
there...almost."
"Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find
him, my Lord. Please."
Snape strode past the gap, and Harry drew back a little, keeping
his eyes fixed upon Nagini, wondering whether there was any spell
that might penetrate the protection surrounding her, but he could
not think of anything. One failed attempt, and he would give away
his position...
Voldemort stood up. Harry could see him now, see the red eyes, the
flattened, serpentine face, the pallor of him gleaming slightly in
the semidarkness.


"I have a problem, Severus," said Voldemort softly.
"My Lord?" said Snape.
Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, holding it as delicately and
precisely as a conductor's baton.
"Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"
In the silence Harry imagined he could hear the snake hissing
slightly as it coiled and uncoiled--or was it Voldemort's sibilant
sigh lingering on the air?
"My--my lord?" said Snape blankly. "I do not understand. You--you
have performed extraordinary magic with that wand."
"No," said Voldemort. "I have performed my usual magic. I am
extraordinary, but this wand...no. It has not revealed the wonders
it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one
I procured from Ollivander all those years ago."
Voldemort's tone was musing, calm, but Harry's scar had begun to
throb and pulse: Pain was building in his forehead, and he could
feel that controlled sense of fury building inside Voldemort.
"No difference," said Voldemort again.
Snape did not speak. Harry could not see his face. He wondered
whether Snape sensed danger, was trying to find the right words to
reassure his master.
Voldemort started to move around the room: Harry lost sight of him
for seconds as he prowled, speaking in that same measured voice,
while the pain and fury mounted in Harry.
"I have thought long and hard, Severus...do you know why I have
called you back from battle?"
And for a moment Harry saw Snape's profile. His eyes were fixed
upon the coiling snake in its enchanted cage.
"No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."
"You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do.
He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I knew his
weakness you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the
others struck down around him, knwoing that it is for him that it
happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."
"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by someone other than
yourself--"\
"My instructions to the Death Eaters have been perfectly clear.
Capture Potter. Kill his friends--the more, the better--but do not
kill him.
"But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry
Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."
"My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But--let me go and find
the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can--"
"I have told you, no!" said Voldemort, and Harry caught the lgint
of red in his eyes as he turned again, and the swishing of his
cloak was like the slithering of a snake, and he felt Voldemort's


impatience in his burning scar. "My concern at the moment, Severus,
is what will happen when I finally meet the boy!"
"My Lord, there can be no question, surely--?"
"--but there is a question, Severus. There is."
Voldemort halted, and Harry could see him plainly again as he slid
the Elder Wand through his white fingers, staring at Snape.
"Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry
Potter?"
"I--I cannot answer that, my Lord."
"Can't you?"
The stab of rage felt like a spike driven through Harry's head: he
forced his own fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying out
in pain. He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was Voldemort, looking
into Snape's pale face.
"My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except
to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under
torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did
so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."
"I--I have no explanation, my Lord."
Snape was not looking at Voldemort now. His dark eyes were still
fixed upon the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.
"I sought a third wand, Severus. the Elder Wand, the Wand of
Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took
it from the grfave of Albus Dumbledore."
And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape's face was like a
death mask. it was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it
was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.
"My Lord--let me go to the boy--"
"all this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat
here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper,
"wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it
ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for
its rightful owner...and I think I have the answer."
Snape did not speak.
"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all,
Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret
what must happen."
"My Lord--"
"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not
its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed
its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live,
Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine."
"My Lord!" Snape protested, raising his wand.
"It cannot be any other way," said Voldemort. "I must master the
wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."
And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to


Sanpe, who for a split second seemed to think he had been
reprieved: but then Voldemort's intention became clear. The snake's
cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do
anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders,
and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.
"Kill."
There was a terrible scream. Harry saw Snape's face losing the
little color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as
the snake's fangs pierced his neck, as he failed to push the
enchanted cage off himself, as his knees gave way and he fell to
the floor.
"I regret it," said Voldemort coldly.
He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. It was
time to leave this shack and take charge, with a wand that would
now do his full bidding. He pointed it at the starry cage holding
the snake, which drifted upward, off snape, who fell sideways onto
the floor, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort
swept from the room without a backward glance, and the great
serpent floated after him in its huge protective sphere.
Back in the tunnel and his own mind, Harry opened his eyes; He had
drawn blood biting down on his knuckles in an effort not to shout
out. Now he was looking through the tiny crack between crate and
wall, watching a foot in a black boot trembling on the floor.
"Harry!" breathed Hermione behind him, but he had already pointed
his wand at the crate blocking his view. It lifted an inch into the
air and drifted sideways silently. As quietly as he could, he
pulled himself up into the room.
He did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the
dying man: he did not know what he felt as he saw Snape's white
face, adn the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound at his
neck. Harry took off the invisibility cloak and looked down upon
the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry as he cried
to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the front of his
robes and pulled him close.
A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat.
"Take...it...Take...it..."
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue,
neither gas nor liquid, it gushed form his mouth and his ears and
his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what to do--
A flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking hand
by Hermione. Harry lfited the silvery substance into it with his
wand. When the falsk was full to the brim, and Snape looked as
though there was no blood left in him, his grip on Harry's robes
slackened.
"Look...at....me..." he whispered.
The green eyes found the black, but after a second, something in


the depths of the dark pari seemed to vanish, leaving them fixed,
blank, and empty. The hand holding Harry thudded to the floor, and
Snape moved no more.



Chapter Thirty-Three

The Prince’s Tale



Harry remained kneeling at Snape’s side, simply staring down at him, until quite
suddenly a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Harry jumped on his feet, the
flask gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that Voldemort had reentered the room.

Voldemort’s voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and Harry realized that
he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the surrounding area, that the residents of
Hogsmeade and all those still fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he
stood beside them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.

“You have fought,” said the high, cold voice, “valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows
how to value bravery.

“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all
die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a
loss and a waste.

“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately.

“You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to
die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest.
If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then
battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find
you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you
from me. One hour.”

Both Ron and Hermione shook their heads frantically, looking at Harry.

“Don’t listen to him,” said Ron.

“It’ll be all right,” said Hermione wildly. “Let’s – let’s get back to the castle, if
he’s gone to the forest we’ll need to think of a new plan – ”

She glanced at Snape’s body, then hurried back to the tunnel entrance. Ron
followed her. Harry gathered up the Invisibility Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He
did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason
for which it had been done…

They crawled back through the tunnel, none of them talking, and Harry wondered
whether Ron and Hermione could still hear Voldemort ringing in their heads as he could.

You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I
shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest…One hour…

Small bundles seemed to litter the lawn at the front of the castle (?). It could only
be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch-black. The three of them hurried toward the
stone steps. A lone dog, the size of a small boat, lay abandoned in front of them. There
was no other sign of Grawp or of his attacker.


The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of light now, no bangs or
screams or shouts. The flagstones of the deserted entrance hall were stained with blood.
Emeralds were still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and splintered
wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away.

“Where is everyone?” whispered Hermione.

Ron led the way to the Great Hall. Harry stopped in the doorway.

The House tables were gone and the room was crowded. The survivors stood in
groups, their arms around each other’s necks. The injured were being treated upon the
raised platform by Madam Pomfrey and a group of helpers. Firenze was amongst the
injured; his flank poured blood and he shook where he lay, unable to stand.

The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry could not see Fred’s body,
because his family surrounded him. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs. Weasley was
lying across Fred’s chest, her body shaking. Mr. Weasley stroking her hair while tears
cascaded down his cheeks.

Without a word to Harry, Ron and Hermione walked away. Harry saw Hermione
approach Ginny, whose face was swollen and blotchy, and hug her. Ron joined Bill, Fleur,
and Percy, who flung an arm around Ron’s shoulders. As Ginny and Hermione moved
closer to the rest of the family, Harry had a clear view of the bodies lying next to Fred.
Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark,
enchanted ceiling.

The Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, shrink, as Harry reeled
backward from the doorway. He could not draw breath. He could not bear to look at any
of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him. He could not bear to join the
Weasleys, could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in the first
place, Fred might never have died…

He turned away and ran up the marble staircase. Lupin, Tonks… He yearned not
to feel… He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming
inside him…

The castle was completely empty; even the ghosts seemed to have joined the mass
mourning in the Great Hall. Harry ran without stopping, clutching the crystal flask of
Snape’s last thoughts, and he did not slow down until he reached the stone gargoyle
guarding the headmaster’s office.

“Password?”

“Dumbledore!” said Harry without thinking, because it was he whom he yearned
to see, and to his surprise the gargoyle slid aside revealing the spiral staircase behind.

But when Harry burst into the circular office he found a change. The portraits that
hung all around the walls were empty. Not a single headmaster or headmistress remained
to see him; all, it seemed, had flitted away, charging through the paintings that lined the
castle so that they could have a clear view of what was going on.

Harry glanced hopelessly at Dumbledore’s deserted frame, which hung directly
behind the headmaster’s chair, then turned his back on it. The stone Pensieve lay in the
cabinet where it had always been. Harry heaved it onto the desk and poured Snape’s
memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the edge. To escape into
someone else’s head would be a blessed relief… Nothing that even Snape had left him
could be worse than his own thoughts. The memories swirled, silver white and strange,


and without hesitating, with a feeling of reckless abandonment, as though this would
assuage his torturing grief, Harry dived.

He fell headlong into sunlight, and his feet found warm ground. When he
straightened up, he saw that he was in a nearly deserted playground. A single huge
chimney dominated the distant skyline. Two girls were swinging backward and forward,
and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair was
overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a
shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.

Harry moved closer to the boy. Snape looked no more than nine or ten years old,
sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised greed in his thin face as he watched the
younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.

“Lily, don’t do it!” shrieked the elder of the two.

But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the
air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and
instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through
the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.

“Mummy told you not to!”

Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals on the ground,
making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up, hands on hips.

“Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!”

“But I’m fine,” said Lily, still giggling. “Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can
do.”

Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart from themselves and,
though the girls did not know it, Snape. Lily had picked up a fallen flower from the bush
behind which Snape lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and
disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a clear view, then held
out her palm. The flower sat there, opening and closing its petals, like some bizarre,
many-lipped oyster.

“Stop it!” shrieked Petunia.

“It’s not hurting you,” said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and
threw it back to the ground.

“It’s not right,” said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the
ground and lingered upon it. “How do you do it?” she added, and there was definite
longing in her voice.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Snape could no longer contain himself, but had jumped
out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but
Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his
appearance. A dull flush of color mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at Lily.

“What’s obvious?” asked Lily.

Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now
hovering beside the swings, he lowered his voice and said, “I know what you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re…you’re a witch,” whispered Snape.

She looked affronted.

“That’s not a very nice thing to say to somebody!”

She turned, nose in the air, and marched off toward her sister.


“No!” said Snape. He was highly colored now, and Harry wondered why he did
not take off the ridiculously large coat, unless it was because he did not want to reveal the
smock beneath it. He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.

The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding on to one of the
swing poles, as though it was the safe place in tag.

“You are,” said Snape to Lily. “You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a
while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.”

Petunia’s laugh was like cold water.

“Wizard!” she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had recovered from
the shock of his unexpected appearance. “I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy!
They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” she told Lily, and it was evident from her
tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation. “Why have you been spying
on us?”

“Haven’t been spying,” said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and dirty-haired in the
bright sunlight. “Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,” he added spitefully, “you’re a Muggle.”

Though Petunia evidently did not understand the word, she could hardly mistake
the tone.

“Lily, come on, we’re leaving!” she said shrilly. Lily obeyed her sister at once,
glaring at Snape as she left. He stood watching them as they marched through the
playground gate, and Harry, the only one left to observe him, recognized Snape’s bitter
disappointment, and understood that Snape had been planning this moment for a while,
and that it had all gone wrong…

The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed around him. He was
now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks.
The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing
each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed his coat now; his odd smock
looked less pecular in the half light.

“…and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get
letters.”

“But I have done magic outside school!”

“We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid
and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,” he nodded importantly, “and they start
training you, then you’ve got to go careful.”

There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air,
and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig,
leaned in toward the boy, and said, “It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says you’re
lying to me. Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real, isn’t it?”

“It’s real for us,” said Snape. “Not for her. But we’ll get the letter, you and me.”

“Really?” whispered Lily.

“Definitely,” said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd clothes, he
struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his
destiny.

“And will it really come by owl?” Lily whispered.

“Normally,” said Snape. “But you’re Muggle-born, so someone from the school
will have to come and explain to your parents.”

“Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?”


Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale
face, the dark red hair.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

“Good,” said Lily, relaxing. It was clear that she had been worrying.

“You’ve got loads of magic,” said Snape. “I saw that. All the time I was watching
you…”

His voice trailed away; she was not listening, but had stretched out on the leafy
ground and was looking up at the canopy of leaves overhead. He watched her as greedily
as he had watched her in the playground.

“How are things at your house?” Lily asked.

A little crease appeared between his eyes.

“Fine,” he said.

“They’re not arguing anymore?”

“Oh yes, they’re arguing,” said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began
tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. “But it won’t be that long
and I’ll be gone.”

“Doesn’t your dad like magic?”

“He doesn’t like anything, much,” said Snape.

“Severus?”

A little smile twisted Snape’s mouth when she said his name.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me about the dementors again.”

“What d’you want to know about them for?”

“If I use magic outside school – ”

“They wouldn’t give you to the dementors for that! Dementors are for people who
do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up
in Azkaban, you’re too – ”

He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind
Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree, had lost her footing.

“Tuney!” said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to
his feet.

“Who’s spying now?” he shouted. “What d’you want?”

Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Harry could see her struggling
for something hurtful to say.

“What is that you’re wearing, anyway?” she said, pointing at Snape’s chest.
“Your mum’s blouse?”

There was a crack. A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen. Lily screamed. The
branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears.

“Tuney!”

But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape.

“Did you make that happen?”

“No.” He looked both defiant and scared.

“You did!” She was backing away from him. “You did! You hurt her!”

“No – no, I didn’t!”

But the lie did not convince Lily. After one last burning look, she ran from the
little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused…


And the scene re-formed. Harry looked around. He was on platform nine and
three quarters, and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced,
sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four a
short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their parents. Lily seemed to
be pleading with her sister. Harry moved closer to listen.

“…I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen – ” She caught her sister’s hand and held
tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. “Maybe once I’m there – no, listen,
Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade
him to change his mind!”

“I don’t – want – to – go!” said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her
sister’s grasp. “You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a – a…”

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’
arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some
already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else
greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

“ – you think I want to be a – a freak?”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

“I’m not a freak,” said Lily. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“That’s where you’re going,” said Petunia with relish. “A special school for
freaks. You and that Snape boy…weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re
being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.”

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an
air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister,
and her voice was low and fierce.

“You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster
and begged him to take you.”

Petunia turned scarlet.

“Beg? I didn’t beg!”

“I saw his reply. It was very kind.”

“You shouldn’t have read – ” whispered Petunia, “that was my private – how
could you – ?”

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape stood nearby.
Petunia gasped.

“That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!”

“No – not sneaking – ” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the
envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all!
He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of
– ”

“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” said Petunia, now as pale
as she had been flushed. “Freak!” she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her
parents stood…

The scene dissolved again. Snape was hurrying along the corridor of the
Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. He had already changed into his
school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle
clothes. At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of rowdy boys were


talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was Lily, her face pressed against
the windowpane.

Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at
him and then looked back out of the window. She had been crying.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said in a constricted voice.

“Why not?”

“Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.”

“So what?”

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

“So she’s my sister!”

“She’s only a – ” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her
eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

“But we’re going!” he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. “This
is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!”

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

“You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a
little.

“Slytherin?”

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily
or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been
focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his father: slight, black-haired like
Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that
Snape so conspicuously lacked.

“Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” James asked the
boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius.
Sirius did not smile.

“My whole family have been in Slytherin,” he said.

“Blimey,” said James, “and I thought you seemed all right!”

Sirius grinned.

“Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?”

James lifted an invisible sword.

“‘Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ Like my dad.”

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.

“Got a problem with that?”

“No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be
brawny than brainy – ”

“Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?” interjected Sirius.

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to
Sirius in dislike.

“Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.”

“Oooooo…”

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

“See ya, Snivellus!” a voice called, as the compartment door slammed…

And the scene dissolved once more…

Harry was standing right behind Snape as they faced the candlelit House tables,
lined with rapt faces. Then Professor McGonagall said, “Evans, Lily!”


He watched his mother walk forward on trembling legs and sit down upon the
rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto her head, and barely a
second after it had touched the dark red hair, the hat cried, “Gryffindor!”

Harry heard Snape let out a tiny groan. Lily took off the hat, handed it back to
Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she
glanced back at Snape, and there was a sad little smile on her face. Harry saw Sirius
move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize
him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned her back on him.

The roll call continued. Harry watched Lupin, Pettigrew, and his father join Lily
and Sirius at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be
sorted, Professor McGonagall called Snape.

Harry walked with him to the stool, watched him place the hat upon his head.
“Slytherin!” cried the Sorting Hat.

And Severus Snape moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from Lily, to
where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge
gleaming upon his chest, patted Snape on the back as he sat down beside him…

And the scene changed…

Lily and Snape were walking across the castle courtyard, evidently arguing. Harry
hurried to catch up with them, to listen in. As he reached them, he realized how much
taller they both were. A few years seemed to have passed since their Sorting.

“…thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying, “Best friends?”

“We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m
sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s
creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?”

Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow
face.

“That was nothing,” said Snape. “It was a laugh, that’s all – ”

“It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny – ”

“What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?” demanded Snape. His color
rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

“What’s Potter got to do with anything?” said Lily.

“They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does
he keep going?”

“He’s ill,” said Lily. “They say he’s ill – ”

“Every month at the full moon?” said Snape.

“I know your theory,” said Lily, and she sounded cold. “Why are you so obsessed
with them anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?”

“I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think
they are.”

The intensity of his gaze made her blush.

“They don’t use Dark Magic, though.” She dropped her voice. “And you’re being
really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that
tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and James Potter saved you from whatever’s down
there – ”


Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he
was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too! You’re not going to –
I won’t let you – ”

“Let me? Let me?”

Lily’s bright green eyes were slits. Snape backtracked at once.

“I didn’t m ean – I just don’t want to see you made a fool of – He fancies you,
James Potter fancies you!” The words seemed wrenched from him against his will. “And
he’s not…everyone thinks…big Quidditch hero – ” Snape’s bitterness and dislike were
rendering him incoherent, and Lily’s eyebrows were traveling farther and farther up her
forehead.

“I know James Potter’s an arrogant toerag,” she said, cutting across Snape. “I
don’t need you to tell me that. But Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil,
Sev. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them.”

Harry doubted that Snape had even heard her strictures on Mulciber and Avery.
The moment she had insulted James Potter, his whole body had relaxed, and as they
walked away there was a new spring in Snape’s step…

And the scene dissolved…

Harry watched again as Snape left the Great Hall after sitting his O.W.L. in
Defense Against the Dark Arts, watched as he wandered away from the castle and strayed
inadvertently close to the place beneath the beech tree where James, Sirius, Lupin, and
Pettigrew sat together. But Harry kept his distance this time, because he knew what
happened after James had hoisted Severus into the air and taunted him; he knew what had
been done and said, and it gave him no pleasure to hear it again… He watched as Lily
joined the group and went to Snape’s defense. Distantly he heard Snape shout at her in
his humiliation and his fury, the unforgivable word: “Mudblood.”

The scene changed…

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not interested.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Save your breath”

It was nighttime. Lily, who was wearing a dressing gown, stood with her arms
folded in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady, at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

“I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here.”

“I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just – ”

“Slipped out?” There was no pity in Lily’s voice. “It’s too late. I’ve made excuses
for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and
your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even
deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You-Know-Who, can
you?”

He opened his mouth, but closed it without speaking.

“I can’t pretend anymore. You’ve chosen your way, I’ve chosen mine.”

“No – listen, I didn’t mean – ”

“ – to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus.
Why should I be any different?”

He struggled on the verge of speech, but with a contemptuous look she turned and
climbed back through the portrait hole…


The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed
to fly through shifting shapes and colors until his surroundings solidified again and he
stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the
branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his
wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone… His fear
infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over
his shoulder, wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for –

Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air. Harry thought of
lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand.

“Don’t kill me!”

“That was not my intention.”

Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the
wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his robes whipping around him, and his
face was illuminated from below in the light cast by his wand.

“Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?”

“No – no message – I’m here on my own account!”

Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black
hair flying around him.

“I – I come with a warning – no, a request – please – ”

Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the
night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced each other.

“What request could a Death Eater make of me?”

“The – the prophecy…the prediction…Trelawney…”

“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore. “How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?”

“Everything – everything I heard!” said Snape. “That is why – it is for that reason
– he thinks it means Lily Evans!”

“The prophecy did not refer to a woman,” said Dumbledore. “It spoke of a boy
born at the end of July – ”

“You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down
– kill them all – ”

“If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord Voldemort will
spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?”

“I have – I have asked him – ”

“You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much
contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little, “You do not care, then, about the
deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?”

Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

“Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Keep her – them – safe. Please.”

“And what will you give me in return, Severus?”

“In – in return?” Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest,
but after a long moment he said, “Anything.”

The hilltop faded, and Harry stood in Dumbledore’s office, and something was
making a terrible sound, like a wounded animal. Snape was slumped forward in a chair
and Dumbledore was standing over him, looking grim. After a moment or two, Snape
raised his face, and he looked like a man who had lived a hundred years of misery since
leaving the wild hilltop.


“I thought…you were going…to keep her…safe…”

“She and James put their faith in the wrong person,” said Dumbledore. “Rather
like you, Severus. Weren’t you hoping that Lord Voldemort would spare her?”

Snape’s breathing was shallow.

“Her boy survives,” said Dumbledore.

With a tiny jerk of the head, Snape seemed to flick off an irksome fly.

“Her son lives. He has her eyes, precisely her eyes. You remember the shape and
color of Lily Evans’s eyes, I am sure?”

“DON’T!” bellowed Snape. “Gone…dead…”

“Is this remorse, Severus?”

“I wish…I wish I were dead…”

“And what use would that be to anyone?” said Dumbledore coldly. “If you loved
Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear.”

Snape seemed to peer through a haze of pain, and Dumbledore’s words appeared
to take a long time to reach him.

“What – what do you mean?”

“You know how and why she died. Make sure it was not in vain. Help me protect
Lily’s son.”

“He does not need protection. The Dark Lord has gone – ”

“The Dark Lord will return, and Harry Potter will be in terrible danger when he
does.”

There was a long pause, and slowly Snape regained control of himself, mastered
his own breathing. At last he said, “Very well. Very well. But never – never tell,
Dumbledore! This must be between us! Swear it! I cannot bear…especially Potter’s
son…I want your word!”

“My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?” Dumbledore sighed,
looking down into Snape’s ferocious, anguished face. “If you insist…”

The office dissolved but re-formed instantly. Snape was pacing up and down in
front of Dumbledore.

“ – mediocre, arrogant as his father, a determined rule-breaker, delighted to find
himself famous, attention-seeking and impertinent – ”

“You see what you expect to see, Severus,” said Dumbledore, without raising his
eyes from a copy of Transfiguration Today. “Other teachers report that the boy is modest,
likable, and reasonably talented. Personally, I find him an engaging child.”

Dumbledore turned a page, and said, without looking up, “Keep an eye on
Quirrell, won’t you?”

A whirl of color, and now everything darkened, and Snape and Dumbledore stood
a little apart in the entrance hall, while the last stragglers from the Yule Ball passed them
on their way to bed.

“Well?” murmured Dumbledore.

“Karkaroff’s Mark is becoming darker too. He is panicking, he fears retribution;
you know how much help he gave the Ministry after the Dark Lord fell.” Snape looked
sideways at Dumbledore’s crooked-nosed profile. “Karkaroff intends to flee if the Mark
burns.”

“Does he?” said Dumbledore softly, as Fleur Delacour and Roger Davies came
giggling in from the grounds. “And are you tempted to join him?”


“No,” said Snape, his black eyes on Fleur’s and Roger’s retreating figures. “I am
not such a coward.”

“No,” agreed Dumbledore. “You are a braver man by far than Igor Karkaroff.
You know, I sometimes think we Sort too soon…”

He walked away, leaving Snape looking stricken…

And now Harry stood in the headmaster’s office yet again. It was nighttime, and
Dumbledore sagged sideways in the thronelike chair behind the desk, apparently
semiconscious. His right hand dangled over the side, blackened and burned. Snape was
muttering incantations, pointing his wand at the wrist of the hand, while with his left
hand he tipped a goblet full of thick golden potion down Dumbledore’s throat. After a
moment or two, Dumbledore’s eyelids fluttered and opened.

“Why,” said Snape, without preamble, “why did you put on that ring? It carries a
curse, surely you realized that. Why even touch it?”

Marvolo Gaunt’s ring lay on the desk before Dumbledore. It was cracked; the
sword of Gryffindor lay beside it.

Dumbledore grimaced.

“I…was a fool. Sorely tempted…”

“Tempted by what?”

Dumbledore did not answer.

“It is a miracle you managed to return here!” Snape sounded furious. “That ring
carried a curse of extraordinary power, to contain it is all we can hope for; I have trapped
the curse in one hand for the time being – ”

Dumbledore raised his blackened, useless hand, and examined it with the
expression of one being shown an interesting curio.

“You have done very well, Severus. How long do you think I have?”

Dumbledore’s tone was conversational; he might have been asking for a weather
forecast. Snape hesitated, and then said, “I cannot tell. Maybe a year. There is no halting
such a spell forever. It will spread eventually, it is the sort of curse that strengthens over
time.”

Dumbledore smiled. The news that he had less than a year to live seemed a matter
of little or no concern to him.

“I am fortunate, extremely fortunate, that I have you, Severus.”

“If you had only summoned me a little earlier, I might have been able to do more,
buy you more time!” said Snape furiously. He looked down at the broken ring and the
sword. “Did you think that breaking the ring would break the curse?”

“Something like that…I was delirious, no doubt…” said Dumbledore. With an
effort he straightened himself in his chair. “Well, really, this makes matters much more
straightforward.”

Snape looked utterly perplexed. Dumbledore smiled.

“I refer to the plan Lord Voldemort is revolving around me. His plan to have the
poor Malfoy boy murder me.”

Snape sat down in the chair Harry had so often occupied, across the desk from
Dumbledore. Harry could tell that he wanted to say more on the subject of Dumbledore’s
cursed hand, but the other held it up in polite refusal to discuss the matter further.
Scowling, Snape said, “The Dark Lord does not expect Draco to succeed. This is merely


punishment for Lucius’s recent failures. Slow torture for Draco’s parents, while they
watch him fail and pay the price.”

“In short, the boy has had a death sentence pronounced upon him as surely as I
have,” said Dumbledore. “Now, I should have thought the natural successor to the job,
once Draco fails, is yourself?”

There was a short pause.

“That, I think, is the Dark Lord’s plan.”

“Lord Voldemort foresees a moment in the near future when he will not need a
spy at Hogwarts?”

“He believes the school will soon be in his grasp, yes.”

“And if it does fall into his grasp,” said Dumbledore, almost, it seemed, as an
aside, “I have your word that you will do all in your power to protect the students at
Hogwarts?”

Snape gave a stiff nod.

“Good. Now then. Your first priority will be to discover what Draco is up to. A
frightened teenage boy is a danger to others as well as to himself. Offer him help and
guidance, he ought to accept, he likes you – ”

“ – much less since his father has lost favor. Draco blames me, he thinks I have
usurped Lucius’s position.”

“All the same, try. I am concerned less for myself than for accidental victims of
whatever schemes might occur to the boy. Ultimately, of course, there is only one thing
to be done if we are to save him from Lord Voldemort’s wrath.”

Snape raised his eyebrows and his tone was sardonic as he asked, “Are you
intending to let him kill you?”

“Certainly not. You must kill me.”

There was a long silence, broken only by an odd clicking noise. Fawkes the
phoenix was gnawing a bit of cuttlebone.

“Would you like me to do it now?” asked Snape, his voice heavy with irony. “Or
would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?”

“Oh, not quite yet,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “I daresay the moment will present
itself in due course. Given what has happened tonight,” he indicated his withered hand,
“we can be sure that it will happen within a year.”

“If you don’t mind dying,” said Snape roughly, “why not let Draco do it?”

“That boy’s soul is not yet so damaged,” said Dumbledore. “I would not have it
ripped apart on my account.”

“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”

“You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain
and humiliation,” said Dumbledore. “I ask this one great favor of you, Severus, because
death is coming for me as surely as the Chudley Cannons will finish bottom of this year’s
league. I confess I should prefer a quick, painless exit to the protracted and messy affair it
will be if, for instance, Greyback is involved – I hear Voldemort has recruited him? Or
dear Bellatrix, who likes to play with her food before she eats it.”

His tone was light, but his blue eyes pierced Snape as they had frequently pierced
Harry, as though the soul they discussed was visible to him. At last Snape gave another
curt nod.

Dumbledore seemed satisfied.


“Thank you, Severus…”

The office disappeared, and now Snape and Dumbledore were strolling together
in the deserted castle grounds by twilight.

“What are you doing with Potter, all these evenings you are closeted together?”
Snape asked abruptly.

Dumbledore looked weary.

“Why? You aren’t trying to give him more detentions, Severus? The boy will
soon have spent more time in detention than out.”

“He is his father over again – ”

“In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his mother’s. I spend
time with Harry because I have things to discuss with him, information I must give him
before it is too late.”

“Information,” repeated Snape. “You trust him…you do not trust me.”

“It is not a question of trust. I have, as we both know, limited time. It is essential
that I give the boy enough information for him to do what he needs to do.”

“And why may I not have the same information?”

“I prefer not to put all of my secrets in one basket, particularly not a basket that
spends so much time dangling on the arm of Lord Voldemort.”

“Which I do on your orders!”

“And you do it extremely well. Do not think that I underestimate the constant
danger in which you place yourself, Severus. To give Voldemort what appears to be
valuable information while withholding the essentials is a job I would entrust to nobody
but you.”

“Yet you confide much more in a boy who is incapable of Occlumency, whose
magic is mediocre, and who has a direct connection into the Dark Lord’s mind!”

“Voldemort fears that connection,” said Dumbledore. “Not so long ago he had
one small taste of what truly sharing Harry’s mind means to him. It was pain such as he
has never experienced. He will not try to possess Harry again, I am sure of it. Not in that
way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Lord Voldemort’s soul, maimed as it is, cannot bear close contact with a soul
like Harry’s. Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flame – ”

“Souls? We were talking of minds!”

“In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is to speak of the
other.”

Dumbledore glanced around to make sure that they were alone. They were close
by the Forbidden Forest now, but there was no sign of anyone near them.

“After you have killed me, Severus – ”

“You refuse to tell me everything, yet you expect that small service of me!”
snarled Snape, and real anger flared in the thin face now. “You take a great deal for
granted, Dumbledore! Perhaps I have changed my mind!”

“You gave me your word, Severus. And while we are talking about services you
owe me, I thought you agreed to keep a close eye on our young Slytherin friend?”

Snape looked angry, mutinous. Dumbledore sighed.

“Come to my office tonight, Severus, at eleven, and you shall not complain that I
have no confidence in you…”


They were back in Dumbledore’s office, the windows dark, and Fawkes sat silent
as Snape sat quite still, as Dumbledore walked around him, talking.

“Harry must not know, not until the last moment, not until it is necessary,
otherwise how could he have the strength to do what must be done?”

“But what must he do?”

“That is between Harry and me. Now listen closely, Severus. There will come a
time – after my death – do not argue, do not interrupt! There will come a time when Lord
Voldemort will seem to fear for the life of his snake.”

“For Nagini?” Snape looked astonished.

“Precisely. If there comes a time when Lord Voldemort stops sending that snake
forth to do his bidding, but keeps it safe beside him under magical protection, then, I
think, it will be safe to tell Harry.”

“Tell him what?”

Dumbledore took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Tell him that on the night Lord Voldemort tried to kill him, when Lily cast her
own life between them as a shield, the Killing Curse rebounded upon Lord Voldemort,
and a fragment of Voldemort’s soul was blasted apart from the whole, and latched itself
onto the only living soul left in that collapsed building. Part of Lord Voldemort lives
inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes, and a
connection with Lord Voldemort’s mind that he has never understood. And while that
fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to and protected by Harry,
Lord Voldemort cannot die.”

Harry seemed to be watching the two men from one end of a long tunnel, they
were so far away from him, their voices echoing strangely in his ears.

“So the boy…the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly.

“And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.”

Another long silence. Then Snape said, “I thought…all those years…that we were
protecting him for her. For Lily.”

“We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him,
to let him try his strength,” said Dumbledore, his eyes still tight shut. “Meanwhile, the
connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth. Sometimes I have
thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when
he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end of Voldemort.”

Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified.

“You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?”

“Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?”

“Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Snape. He stood up. “You have
used me.”

“Meaning?”

“I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you.
Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have
been raising him like a pig for slaughter – ”

“But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to
care for the boy, after all?”

“For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!”


From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on the office floor,
bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her
fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of
tears.

“After all this time?”

“Always,” said Snape.

And the scene shifted. Now, Harry saw Snape talking to the portrait of
Dumbledore behind his desk.

“You will have to give Voldemort the correct date of Harry’s departure from his
aunt and uncle’s,” said Dumbledore. “Not to do so will raise suspicion, when Voldemort
believes you so well informed. However, you must plant the idea of decoys; that, I think,
ought to ensure Harry’s safety. Try Confunding Mundungus Fletcher. And Severus, if
you are forced to take part in the chase, be sure to act your part convincingly…I am
counting upon you to remain in Lord Voldemort’s good books as long as possible, or
Hogwarts will be left to the mercy of the Carrows…”

Now Snape was head to head with Mundungus in an unfamiliar tavern,
Mundungus’s face looking curiously blank, Snape frowning in concentration.

“You will suggest to the Order of the Phoenix,” Snape murmured, “that they use
decoys. Polyjuice Potion. Identical Potters. It’s the only thing that might work. You will
forget that I have suggested this. You will present it as your own idea. You understand?”

“I understand,” murmured Mundungus, his eyes unfocused…

Now Harry was flying alongside Snape on a broomstick through a clear dark
night: He was accompanied by other hodded Death Eaters, and ahead were Lupin and a
Harry who was really George… A Death Eater moved ahead of Snape and raised his
wand, pointing it directly at Lupin’s back.

“Sectumsempra!” shouted Snape.

But the spell, intended for the Death Eater’s wand hand, missed and hit George
instead –

And next, Snape was kneeling in Sirius’s old bedroom. Tears were dripping from
the end of his hooked nose as he read the old letter from Lily. The second page carried
only a few words:



could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind’s going,
personally!



Lots of love,

Lily



Snape took the page bearing Lily’s signature, and her love, and tucked it inside
his robes. Then he ripped in two the photograph he was also holding, so that he kept the
part from which Lily laughed, throwing the portion showing James and Harry back onto
the floor, under the chest of drawers…

And now Snape stood again in the headmaster’s study as Phineas Nigellus came
hurrying into his portrait.

“Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean! The Mudblood – ”

“Do not use that word!”


“ – the Granger girl, then, mentioned the place as she opened her bag and I heard
her!”

“Good. Very good!” cried the portrait of Dumbledore behind the headmaster’s
chair. “Now, Severus, the sword! Do not forget that it must be taken under conditions of
need and valor – and he must not know that you give it! If Voldemort should read
Harry’s mind and see you acting for him – ”

“I know,” said Snape curtly. He approached the portrait of Dumbledore and
pulled at its side. It swung forward, revealing a hidden cavity behind it from which he
took the sword of Gryffindor.

“And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the
sword?” said Snape as he swung a traveling cloak over his robes.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. “He will know what to do with
it. And Severus, be very careful, they may not take kindly to your appearance after
George Weasley’s mishap – ”

Snape turned at the door.

“Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said coolly. “I have a plan…”

And Snape left the room. Harry rose up out of the Pensieve, and moments later he
lay on the carpeted floor in exactly the same rooms Snape might just have closed the door.



Chapter Thirty-Four

The Forest Again



Finally, the truth. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office
where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at
last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s
welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to
life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a
wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done
in Godric’s Hollow would be finished. Neither would live, neither could survive.

He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of
death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop,
and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and
walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?

Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding
inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to
happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had
always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to
try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the
thing itself: dying.

If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had left number four,
Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix feather wand had saved him! If he
could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened!
Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved . . . He
envied even his parents’ deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction


would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made
an effort to control them, although no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were
all empty.

Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware
of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he
was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone . . . or at least, he would be
gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely
dry, but so were his eyes.

Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger
plan: Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never
questioned his own assumption that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that his
life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes.
Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had
continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life! How
neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy
who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity,
but another blow against Voldemort.

And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep
going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble to get to know
him, hadn’t he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone
else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it. The images of
Fred, Lupin, and Tonks lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind’s
eye, and for a moment he could hardly breathe. Death was impatient . . .

But Dumbledore had overestimated him. He had failed: The snake survived. One
Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the earth, even after Harry had been killed. True,
that would mean an easier job for somebody. He wondered who would do it . . . Ron and
Hermione would know what needed to be done, of course . . . That would have been why
Dumbledore wanted him to confide in two others . . . so that if he fulfilled his true destiny
a little early, they could carry on . . .

Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of
the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must die. I must die. It must end.

Ron and Hermione seemed a long way away, in a far-off country; he felt as
though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no
explanations, he was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together,
and the attempts they would make to stop him would waste valuable time. He looked
down at the battered gold watch he had received on his seventeenth birthday. Nearly half
of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his surrender had elapsed.

He stood up. His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it
knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime’s beats before
the end. He did not look back as he closed the office door.

The castle was empty. He felt ghostly striding through it alone, as if he had
already died. The portrait people were still missing from their frames; the whole place
was eerily still, as if all its remaining lifeblood were concentrated in the Great Hall where
the dead and the mourners were crammed.

Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself and descended through the floors,
at last walking down the marble staircase into the entrance hall. Perhaps some tiny part of


him hoped to be sensed, to be seen, to be stopped, but the Cloak was, as ever,
impenetrable, perfect, and he reached the front doors easily.

Then Neville nearly walked into him. He was one half of a pair that was carrying
a body in from the grounds. Harry glanced down and felt another dull blow to his
stomach: Colon Creevey, though underage, must have sneaked back just as Malfoy,
Crabbe, and Goyle had done. He was tiny in death.

“You know what? I can manage him alone, Neville,” said Oliver Wood, and he
heaved Colin over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him into the Great Hall.

Neville leaned against the door frame for a moment and wiped his forehead with
the back of his hand. He looked like an old man. Then he set off on the steps again into
the darkness to recover more bodies.

Harry took one glance back at the entrance of the Great Hall. People were moving
around, trying to comfort each other, drinking, kneeling beside the dead, but he could not
see any of the people he loved, no hint of Hermione, Ron, Ginny, or any of the other
Weasleys, no Luna. He felt he would have given all the time remaining to him for just
one last look at them; but then, would he ever have the strength to stop looking? It was
better like this.

He moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was nearly four in the
morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds felt as though they were holding their
breath, waiting to see whether he could do what he must.

Harry moved toward Neville, who was bending over another body.

“Neville.”

“Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure!”

Harry had pulled off the Cloak: The idea had come to him out of nowhere, born
out of a desire to make absolutely sure.

“Where are you going, alone?” Neville asked suspiciously.

“It’s all part of the plan,” said Harry. “There’s someting I’ve got to do. Listen ---
Neville ---“

“Harry!” Neville looked suddenly scared. “Harry, you’re not thinking of handing
yourself over?”

“No,” Harry lied easily. “’Course not . . . this is something else. But I might be
out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort’s snake. Neville? He’s got a huge snake . . .
Calls it Nagini . . .”

“I’ve heard, yeah . . . What about it?”

“It’s got to be killed. Ron and Hermione know that, but just in case they ---“

The awfulness of that possibility smothered him for a moment, made it impossible
to keep talking. But he pulled himself together again: This was crucial, he must be like
Dumbledore, keep a cool head, make sure there were backups, others to carry on.
Dumbledore had died knowing that three people still knew about the Horcruxes; now
Neville would take Harry’s place: There would still be three in the secret.

“Just in case they’re --- busy --- and you get the chance ---“

“Kill the snake?”

“Kill the snake,” Harry repeated.

“All right, Harry. You’re okay, are you?”

“I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.”

But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to move on.


“We’re all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?”

“Yeah, I ---“

The suffocating feeling extinguished the end of the sentence; he could not go on.
Neville did not seem to find it strange. He patted Harry on the shoulder, released him,
and walked away to look for more bodies.

Harry swung the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Someone else was
moving not far away, stooping over another prone figure on the ground. He was feet
away from her when he realized it was Ginny.

He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for
her mother.

“It’s all right,” Ginny was saying. “It’s ok. We’re going to get you inside.”

“But I want to go home,” whispered the girl. “I don’t want to fight anymore!”

“I know,” said Ginny, and her voice broke. “It’s going to be all right.”

Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night,
he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going.
He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home. . . .

But he was home. Hogwards was the first and best home he had known. He and
Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here. . . .

Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge
effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and
wondered whether she had sensed someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he
did not look back.

Hagrid’s hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights, no sound of Fang
scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the
gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and rock cakes and giant grubs, and his great
bearded face, and Ron vomiting slugs, and Hermione helping him save Norbert . . .

He moved on, and now he reached the edge of the forest, and he stopped.

A swarm of dementors was gliding amongst the trees; he could feel their chill,
and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely through it. He had not strength left
for a Patronus. He could no longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy
to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so
precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it
dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would
not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had
been caught, it was time to leave the air. . . .

The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his
neck and he pulled it out.

I open at the close.

Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as
slowly as possible, he seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it
seemed to have bypassed though. This was the close. This was the moment.

He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, “I am about to die.”

The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco’s wand
beneath the Cloak, and murmured, “Lumos.”

The black stone with is jagged crack running down the center sat in the two
halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line


representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone
were still discernible.

And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about
bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They
were fetching him.

He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times.

He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around him that
suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthy, twig-strewn ground that
marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.

They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They resembled most
closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory
made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they
moved toward him. And on each face, there was the same loving smile.

James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which
he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided,
like Mr. Weasley’s.

Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life.
He loped with an easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.

Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker.
He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent
wanderings.

Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew closer to
him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would
never be able to look at him enough.

“You’ve been so brave.”

He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to
stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.

“You are nearly there,” said James. “Very close. We are . . . so proud of you.”

“Does it hurt?”

The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

“Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

“And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over,” said Lupin.

“I didn’t want you to die,” Harry said. These words came without his volition.
“Any of you. I’m sorry ---“

He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him.

“--- right after you’d had your son . . . Remus, I’m sorry ---“

“I am sorry too,” said Lupin. “Sorry I will never know him . . . but he will know
why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could
live a happier life.”

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair
at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his
decision.

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Until the very end,” said James.

“They won’t be able to see you?” asked Harry.

“We are part of you,” said Sirius. “Invisible to anyone else.”


Harry looked at his mother.

“Stay close to me,” he said quietly.

And he set of. The dementors’ chill did not overcome him; he passed through it
with his companions, and they acted like Patronuses to him, and together they marched
through the old trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots
gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the
darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly
Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound,
walked James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason
he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without
conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to
leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him
now than the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the
ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward
Voldemort . . .

A thud and a whisper: Some other living creature had stirred close by. Harry
stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening, and his mother and father, Lupin and
Sirius stopped too.

“Someone there,” came a rough whisper close at hand. “He’s got an Invisibility
Cloak. Could it be --- ?”

Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree: Their wands flared, and Harry
saw Yaxley and Dolohov peering into the darkness, directly at the place Harry, his
mother and father and Sirius and Lupin stood. Apparently they could not see anything.

“Definitely heard something,” said Yaxley. “Animal, d’you reckon?”

“That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here,” said Dolohov,
glancing over his shoulder.

Yaxley looked down at his watch.

“Time’s nearly up. Porter’s had his hour. He’s not coming.”

“Better go back,” said Yaxley. “Find out what the plan is now.”

He and Dolohov turned and walked deeper into the forest. Harry followed them,
knowing that they would lead him exactly where he wanted to go. He glanced sideways,
and his mother smiled at him, and his father nodded encouragement.

They had traveled on mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead, and Yaxley and
Dolohov stepped out into a clearing that Harry knew had been the place where the
monstrous Aragog had once lived. The remnants of his vast web were there still, but the
swarms of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death Eaters, to fight
for their cause.

A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and its flickering light fell over a
crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters. Some of them were still masked and
hooded; others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, casting
massive shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like rock. Harry saw
Fenrir, skulking, chewing his long nails; the great blond Rowle was dabbing at his
bleeding lip. He saw Lucius Malfoy, who looked defeated and terrified, and Narcissa,
whose eyes were sunken and full of apprehension.


Every eye was fixed upon Voldemort, who stood with his head bowed, and his
white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, or
else counting silently in his mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene,
though absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind his head, still
swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a
monstrous halo.

When Dolohov and Yaxley rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.

“No sign of him, my Lord,” said Dolohov.

Voldemort’s expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the
firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers.

“My Lord ---“

Bellatrix had spoken: She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled, her face a little
bloody but otherwise unharmed.

Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak another word, but
eyed him in worshipful fascination.

“I thought he would come,” said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on
the leaping flames. “I expected him to come.”

Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now throwing
itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside.
His hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his
robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.

“I was, it seems . . . mistaken,” said Voldemort.

“You weren’t.”

Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster: He did not
want to sound afraid. The Resurrection Stone slipped from between his numb fingers, and
out of the corner of his eyes he saw his parents, Sirius, and Lupin vanish as he stepped
forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It
was just the two of them.

The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death
Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had
frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared as Harry moved
toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.

Then a voice yelled: “HARRY! NO!”

He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body
shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.

“NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT’RE YEH --- ?”

“QUIET!” shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand, Hagrid was silenced.

Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry,
her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling
and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.

Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He
knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at
Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each
other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing
before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.


“Harry Potter,” he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting
fire. “The Boy Who Lived.”

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting.
Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of
Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his ---

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious
child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red
eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost
control, before he betrayed fear ---

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.



Chapter Thirty-Five

King’s Cross

He lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was
watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must
be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some
surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that
he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it
did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see.
In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before.
His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet
formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm
nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing
glasses anymore.

Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him:
the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful
noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was
eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away.
He took them and pulled them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary
how they had appeared just like that, the moment he had wanted them. . . .

He stood up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of Requirement? The
longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great domed glass roof glittered high
above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those
odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist. . . .

Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent
themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than
the Great Hall, with that clear domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only
person there, except for –


He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form
of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and
it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight,
struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want
to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment.
Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like
a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

“You cannot help.”

He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him, sprightly and
upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.

“Harry.” He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and
undamaged. “You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.”

Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child
lay whimpering, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some
distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them,
and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old headmaster’s face. Dumbledore’s long
silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked
nose: Everything was as he had remembered it. And yet . . .

“But you’re dead,” said Harry.

“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.

“Then . . . I’m dead too?”

“Ah,” said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. “That is the question, isn’t it?
On the whole, dear boy, I think not.”

They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.

“Not?” repeated Harry.

“Not,” said Dumbledore.

“But . . .” Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar. It did not
seem to be there. “But I should have died – I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill
me!”

“And that,” said Dumbledore, “will, I think, have made all the difference.”

Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light; like fire: Harry had
never seen the man so utterly, so palpably content.

“Explain,” said Harry.

“But you already know,” said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.

“I let him kill me,” said Harry. “Didn’t I?”

“You did,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Go on!”

“So the part of his soul that was in me . . .”

Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a broad
smile of encouragement on his face.

“. . . has it gone?”

“Oh yes!” said Dumbledore. “Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and
completely your own, Harry.”

“But then . . .”

Harry trembled over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled
under the chair.


“What is that, Professor?”

“something that is beyond either of our help,” said Dumbledore.

“But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse,” Harry started again, “and nobody died
for me this time – how can I be alive?”

“I think you know,” said Dumbledore. “Think back. Remember what he did, in
his ignorance, in his greed and his cruelty.”

Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If it was indeed a
palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of
railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore and the stunted creatures under the
chair were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort.

“He took my blood,” said Harry.

“Precisely!” said Dumbledore. “He took your blood and rebuilt his living body
with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily’s protection inside both of you! He thethered
you to life while he lives!”

“I live . . . while he lives? But I thought . . . I thought it was the other way around!
I thought we both had to die? Or is it the same thing?”

He was distracted by the whimpering and thumping of the agonized creature
behind them and glanced back at it yet again.

“Are you sure we can’t do anything?”

“There is no help possible.”

“Then explain . . . more,” said Harry, and Dumbledore smiled.

“You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He
had rendered his soul so unstable that it broke apart when he committed those acts of
unspeakable evil, the murder of your parents, the attempted killing of a child. But what
escaped from that room was even less than he knew. He left more than his body behind.
He left part of himself latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived.

“And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which
Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and
children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands
nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach
of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.

“He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a
tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body
keeps her sacrafice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you and so does
Voldemort’s one last hope for himself.”

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.

“And you knew this? You knew – all along?”

“I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good,” said Dumbledore happily,
and they sat in silence for what seemed like a long time, while the creature behind them
continued to whimper and tremble.

“There’s more,” said Harry. “There’s more to it. Why did my wand break the
wand he borrowed?”

“As to that, I cannot be sure.”

“Have a guess, then,” said Harry, and Dumbledore laughed.

“What you must understand, Harry, is that you and Lord Voldemort have
journeyed together into realms of magic hitherto unknown and untested. But here is what


I think happened, and it is unprecedented, and no wandmaker could, I think, ever have
predicted or explained it to Voldemort.

“Without meaning to, as you now know, Lord Voldemort doubled the bond
between you when he returned to a human form. A part of his soul was still attached to
yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother’s sacrafice into
himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice,
he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch your blood. . . . But then, if he had been able
to understand, he could not be Lord Voldemort, and might never have murdered at all.

“Having ensured this two-fold connection, having wrapped your destinies
together more securely than ever two wizards were joined in history, Voldemort
proceeded to attack you with a wand that shared a core with yours. And now something
very strange happened, as we know. The cores reacted in a way that Lord Voldemort,
who never knew that your wand was a twin of his, had ever expected.

“He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even
embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do.
Your courage won, your wand overpowered his. And in doing so, something happened
between those wands, something that echoed the relationship between their masters.

“I believe that your wand imbibed some of the power and qualities of
Voldemort’s wand that night, which is to say that it contained a little of Voldemort
himself. So your wand recognized him when he pursued you, recognized a man who was
both kin and mortal enemy, and it regurgitated some of his own magic against him, magic
much more powerful than anything Lucius’s wand had ever performed. Your wand now
contained the power of your enormous courage and of Voldemort’s own deadly skill:
What chance did that poor stick of Lucius Malfoy’s stand?”

“But if my wand was so powerful, how come Hermione was able to break it?”
asked Harry.

“My dear boy, its remarkable effects were directed only at Voldemort, who had
tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic. Only toward him was that
wand abnormally powerful. Otherwise it was a wand like any other . . . though a good
one, I am sure,” Dumbledore finished kindly.

Harry sat in thought for a long time, or perhaps seconds. It was very hard to be
sure of things like time, here.

“He killed me with your wand.”

“He failed to kill you with my wand,” Dumbledore corrected Harry. “I think we
can agree that you are not dead – though, of course,” he added, as if fearing he had been
discourteous, “I do not minimize your sufferings, which I am sure were severe.”

“I feel great at the moment, though,” said Harry, looking down at his clean,
unblemished hands. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Well, I was going to ask you that,” said Dumbledore, looking around. “Where
would you say that we are?”

Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that
he had an answer ready to give.

“It looks,” he said slowly, “like King’s Cross station. Except a lo cleaner and
empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see.”

“King’s Cross station!” Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. “Good
gracious, really?”


“Well, where do you think we are?” asked Harry, a little defensively.

“My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.”

Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being infuriating. He glared
at him, then remembered a much more pressing question than that of their current
location.

“The Deathly Hallows,” he said, and he was glad to see that the words wiped the
smile from Dumbledore’s face.

“Ah, yes,” he said. He even looked a little worried.

“Well?”

For the first time since Harry had met Dumbledore, he looked less than an old
man, much less. He looked fleetingly like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.

“Can you forgive me?” he said. “Can you forgive me for not trusting you? For not
telling you? Harry, I only feared that you would fail as I had failed. I only dreaded that
you would make my mistakes. I crave your pardon, Harry. I have known, for some time
now, that you are the better man.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Harry, startled by Dumbledore’s tone, by the
sudden tears in his eyes.

“The Hallows, the Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore. “A desperate man’s
dream!”

“But they’re real!”

“Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools,” said Dumbledore. “And I was such a
fool. But you know, don’t you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know.”

“What do I know?”

Dumbledore turned his whole body to face Harry, and tears still sparkled in the
brilliantly blue eyes.

“Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than
Voldemort?”

“Of course you were,” said Harry. “Of course – how can you ask that? You never
killed if you could avoid it!”

“True, true,” said Dumbledore, and he was like a child seeking reassurance. “Yet
I too sought a way to conquer death, Harry.”

“Not the way he did,” said Harry. After all his anger at Dumbledore, how odd it
was to sit here, beneath the high, vaulted ceiling, and defend Dumbledore from himself.
“Hallows, not Horcruxes.”

“Hallows,” murmured Dumbledore, “not Horcruxes. Precisely.”

There was a pause. The creature behind them whimpered, but Harry no longer
looked around.

“Grindelwald was looking for them too?” he asked.

Dumbledore closed his eyes for a moment and nodded.

“It was the thing, above all, that drew us together,” he said quietly. “Two clever,
arrogant boys with a shared obsession. He wanted to come to Godric’s Hollow, as I am
sure you have guessed, because of the grave of Ignotus Peverell. He wanted to explore
the place the third brother had died.”

“So it’s true?” asked Harry. “All of it? The Peverell brothers –”

“—were the three brothers of the tale,” said Dumbledore, nodding. “Oh yes, I
think so. Whether they met Death on a lonely road . . . I think it more likely that the


Peverell brothers were simply gifted, dangerous wizards who succeeded in creating those
powerful objects. The story of them being Death’s own Hallows seems to me the sort of
legend that might have sprung up around such creations.

“The Cloak, as you know now, traveled down through the ages, father to son,
mother to daughter, right down to Ignotus’s last living descendant, who was born, as
Ignotus was, in the village of Godric’s Hollow.”

Dumbledore smiled at Harry.

“Me?”

“You. You have guessed,, I know, why the Cloak was in my possession on the
night your parents died. James had showed it to me just a few days previously. It
explained much of his undetected wrongdoing at school! I could hardly believe what I
was seeing. I asked to borrow it, to examine it. I had long since given up my dream of
uniting the Hallows, but I could not resist, could not help taking a closer look. . . . It was
a Cloak the likes of which I had never seen, immensely old, perfect in every respect . . .
and then your father died, and I had two Hallows at last, all to myself!”

His tone was unbearably bitter.

“The Cloak wouldn’t have helped them survive, though,” Harry said quickly.
“Voldemort knew where my mum and dad were. The Cloak couldn’t have made them
curse-proof.”

“true,” sighed Dumbledore. “True.”

Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak, so he prompted him.

“So you’d given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the Cloak?”

“Oh yes,” said Dumbledore faintly. It seemed that he forced himself to meet
Harry’s eyes. “You know what happened. You know. You cannot despise me more than I
despise myself.”

“But I don’t despise you –”

“Then you should,” said Dumbledore. He drew a deep breath. “You know the
secret of my sister’s ill health, what those Muggles did, what she became. You know how
my poor father sought revenge, and paid the price, died In Azkaban. You know how my
mother gave up her own life to care for Ariana.

“I resented it, Harry.”

Dumbledore stated it baldly, coldly. He was looking now over the top of Harry’s
head, into the distance.

“I was gifted, I was brilliant. I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted glory.

“Do not misunderstand me,” he said, and pain crossed the face so that he looked
ancient again. “I loved them, I loved my parents, I loved my brother and my sister, but I
was selfish, Harry, more selfish than you, who are a remarkably selfless person, could
possibly imagine.

“So that, when my mother died, and I was left the responsibility of a damaged
sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village in anger and bitterness. Trapped
and wasted, I thought! And then of course, he came. . . .”

Dumbledore looked directly into Harry’s eyes again.

“Grindelwald. You cannot imagine how his ideas caught me, Harry, inflamed me.
Muggles forced into subservience. We wizards triumphant. Grindelwald and I, the
glorious young leaders of the revolution.


“Oh, I had a few scruples. I assuaged my conscience with empty words. It would
all be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid a hundredfold in benefits
for wizards. Did I know, in my heart of hearts, what Gellert Grindelwald was? I think I
did, but I closed my eyes. If the plans we were making came to fruition, all my dreams
would come true.

“And at the heart of our schemes, the Deathly Hallows! How they fascinated him,
how they fascinated both of us! The unbeatable wand, the weapon that would lead us to
power! The Resurrection Stone – to him, though I pretended not to know it, it meant an
army of Inferi! To me, I confess, it meant the return of my parents, and the lifting of all
responsibility from my shoulders.

“And the Cloak . . . somehow, we never discussed the Cloak much, Harry. Both
of us could conceal ourselves well enough without the Cloak, the true magic of which, of
course, is that it can be used to protect and shield others as well as its owner. I thought
that, if we ever found it, it might be useful in hiding Ariana, but our interest in the Cloak
was mainly that it completed the trio, for the legend said that the man who had united all
three objects would then be truly master of death, which we took to mean ‘invincible.’

“Invincible masters of death, Grindelwald and Dumbledore! Two months of
insanity, of cruel dreams, and neglect of the only two members of my family left to me.

“And then . . . you know what happened. Reality returned in the form of my rough,
unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he
shouted at me. I did not want to hear that I could not set forth and seek Hallows with a
fragile and unstable sister in tow.

“The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always
sensed in him, though I pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana . . .
after all my mother’s care and caution . . . lay dead upon the floor.”

Dumbledore gave a little gasp and began to cry in earnest. Harry reached out and
was glad to find that he could touch him: He gripped his arm tightly and Dumbledore
gradually regained control.

“Well, Grindelwald fled, as anyone but I could have predicted. He vanished, with
his plans for seizing power, and his schemes for Muggle torture, and his dreams of the
Deathly Hallows, dreams in which I had encouraged him and helped him. He ran, while I
was left to bury my sister, and learn to live with my guilt and my terrible grief, the price
of my shame.

“Years passed. There were rumors about him. They said he had procured a wand
of immense power. I, meanwhile, was offered the post of Minister of Magic, not once,
but several times. Naturally, I refused. I had learned that I was not to be trusted with
power.”

“But you’d have been better, much better, than Fudge or Scimgeour!” burst out
Harry.

“Would I?” asked Dumbledore heavily. “I am not so sure. I had proven, as a very
young man, that power was my weakness and my temptation. It is a curious thing, Harry,
but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those
who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they
must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

“I was safer at Hogwarts. I think I was a good teacher –”

“You were the best ---”


“--- you are very kind, Harry. But while I busied myself with the training of
young wizards, Grindelwald was raising an army. They say he feared me, and perhaps he
did, but less, I think, than I feared him.

“Oh, not death,” said Dumbledore, in answer to Harry’s questioning look. “Not
what he could do to me magically. I knew that we were evenly matched, perhaps that I
was a shade more skillful. It was the truth I feared. You see, I never knew which of us, in
that last, horrific fight, had actually cast the curse that killed my sister. You may call me
cowardly: You would be right, Harry. I dreaded beyond all things the knowledge that it
had been I who brought about her death, not merely through my arrogance and stupidity,
but that I actually struck the blow that snuffed out her life.

“I think he knew it, I think he knew what frightened me. I delayed meeting him
until finally, it would have been too shameful to resist any longer. People were dying and
he seemed unstoppable, and I had to do what I could.

“Well, you know what happened next. I won the duel. I won the wand.”

Another silence. Harry did not ask whether Dumbledore had ever found out who
struck Ariana dead. He did not want to know, and even less did he want Dumbledore to
have to tell him. At last he knew what Dumbledore would have seen when he looked in
the mirror of Erised, and why Dumbledore had been so understanding of the fascination it
had exercised over Harry.

They sat in silence for a long time, and the whipmerings of the creature behind
them barely disturbed Harry anymore.

At last he said, “Grindelwald tried to stop Voldemort going after the wand. He
lied, you know, pretended he had never had it.”

Dumbledore nodded, looking down at his lap, tears still glittering on the crooked
nose.

“They say he showed remorse in later years, alone in his cell at Nurmengard. I
hope that is true. I would like to think that he did feel the horror and shame of what he
had done. Perhaps that lie to Voldemort was his attempt to make amends . . . to prevent
Voldemort from taking the Hallow . . .”

“. . .or maybe from breaking into your tomb?” suggested Harry, and Dumbledore
dabbed his eyes.

After another short pause Harry said, “You tried to use the Resurrection Stone.”

Dumbledore nodded.

“When I discovered it, after all those years, buried in the abandoned home of the
Gaunts --- the Hallow I had craved most of all, though in my youth I had wanted it for
very different reasons --- I lost my head, Harry. I quite forgot that I was not a Horcrux,
that the ring was sure to carry a curse. I picked it up, and I put it on, and for a second I
imagined that I was about to see Ariana, and my mother, and my father, and to tell them
how very, very sorry, I was. . . .

“I was such a fool, Harry. After all those years I had learned nothing. I was
unworthy to unite the Deathly Hallows, I had proved it time and again, and here was final
proof.”

“Why?” said Harry. “It was natural! You wanted to see them again. What’s wrong
with that?”

“Maybe a man in a million could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was fit only to
possess the meanest of them, the least extraordinary. I was fit to own the Elder Wand,


and not boast of it, and not to kill with it. I was permitted to tame and use it, because I
took it, not for gain, but to save others from it.

“But the Cloak, I took out of vain curiousity, and so it could never have worked
for me as it works for you, its true owners. The stone I would have used in an attempt to
drag back those who are at peace, rather than enable my self-sacrafice, as you did. You
are the worthy possessor of the Hallows.”

Dumbledore patted Harry’s hand, and Harry looked up at the old man and smiled;
he could not help himself. How coul dhe remain angry with Dumbledore now?

“Why did you have to make it so difficult?”

Dumbledore’s smile was tremulous.

“I am afraid I counted on Miss Granger to slow you up, Harry. I was afraid that
your hot head might dominate your good heart. I was scared that, if presented outright
with the facts about those tempting objects, you might seize the Hallows as I did, at the
wrong time, for the wrong reasons. If you laid hands on them, I wanted you to possess
them safely. You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to
run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far
worse things in the living world than dying.”

“And Voldemort never knew about the Hallows?”

“I do not think so, because he did not recognize the Resurrection Stone he turned
into a Horcrux. But even if he had known about them, Harry. I doubt that he woul dhave
been interested in any except the first. He would not think that he needed the Cloak, and
as for the stone, whom would he want to bring back from the dead? He fears the dead. He
does not love.”

“But you expected him to go after the wand?”

“I have been sure that he would try, ever since your wand beat Voldemort’s in the
graveyard of Little Hangleton. At first, he was afraid that you had conquered him by
superior skill. Once he had kidnapped Ollivander, however, he discovered the existence
of the twin cores. He thought that explained everything. Yet the borrowed wand did no
better against yours! So Voldemort, instead of asking himself what quality it was in you
that had made your wand so strong, what gift you possessed that he did not, naturally set
out to find the one wand that, they said, would beat any other. For him, the Elder Wand
has become an obsession to rival his obsession with you. He believes that the Elder Wand
removes his last weakness and makes him truly invincible. Poor Severus . . .”

“If you planned your death with Snape, you meant him to end up with the Elder
Wand, didn’t you?”

“I admit that was my intention,” said Dumbledore, “but it did not work as I
intended, did it?”

“No,” said Harry. “That bit didn’t work out.”

The creature behind them jerked and moaned, and Harry and Dumbledore sate
without talking for the longest time yet. The realization of what would happen next
settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.

“I’ve got to go back, haven’t I?”

“That is up to you.”

“I’ve got a choice?”

“Oh yes,” Dumbledore smiled at him. “We are in King’s Cross you say? I think
that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to . . . let’s say . . . board a train.”


“And where would it take me?”

“On,” said Dumbledore simply.

Silence again.

“Voldemort’s got the Elder Wand.”

“True. Voldemort has the Elder Wand.”

“But you want me to go back?”

“I think,” said Dumbledore, “that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he
may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have less
to fear from returning here than he does.”

Harry glanced again at the raw looking thing that trembled and choked in the
shadow beneath the distant chair.

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live
without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families
are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, they we saw good-bye for the present.”

Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as
walking into the forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he
knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss. He stood up, and
Dumbledore did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other’s faces.

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry, “Is this real? Or has this been happening
inside my head?”

Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry’s
ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that
mean it is not real?”







Chapter Thirty-Six

The Flaw in the Plan





He was flying facedown on the grond again. The smell of the forest filled his nostrils. He
could feel

the cold hard ground beneath his cheek, and the hinge of his glasses which have been
knocked sideways

by the fall cutting into his temple. Every inch of him ached, and the place where Killing
Curse had hit him

felt like the bruise of an iron-clad punch. He did not stir, but he remained exactly where
he had fallen, with

his left arm bent out at an akward angle and his mouth gaping.

He had expected to hear cheer of triumph and jubilation at his death, but instead
hurried footsteps,

whispers, and solicitous murmurs filled the air.

"My Lord... my Lord..."


It was Bellatrix's voice, and she spoke as if to a lover. Harry did not dare open his
eyes, but allowed

his other senses to explore his predicament. He knew that his wand was still stowed
beneath his robes because

he could feel it pressed between his chest and the ground. A slight cushioning effect in
the area of his stomach

told him that the Invisibility Cloak was also there, stuffed out of sight.

"My Lord..."

"That will do," said Voldemort's voice.

More footsteps. Several people were backing away from the same spot. Desperate
to see what was

happening and why, Harry opened his eyes by a milimeter.

Voldemort seemed to be getting to his feet. Various Death Eaters were hurrying
away from him,

returning to the crowd lining the clearing. Bellatrix alone remained behind, kneeling
beside Voldemort.

Harry closed his eyes again and considered what he had seen. The Death Eaters
have been buddled

around Voldemort, who seem to have fallen to the ground. Something had happened
when he had hit Harry with

the Killing Curse. Had Voldemort too collapsed? It seemed like it. And both of them had
briefly fallen unconcious

and both of them had now returned. . .

"My Lord, let me --"

"I do not require assitance," said Voldemort coldly, and though he could not see it,
Harry pictured

Bellatrix withdrawing a helpful hand. "The boy . . . Is he dead?"

There was a complete silence in the clearing. Nobody approached Harry, but he
felt their concentraded

gaze; it seemed to press him harder into the ground, and he was terrified a finger or an
eyelid might twitch.

"You," said Voldemort, and there was a bang and a small shrick of pain.
"Examine him. Tell me whether he is dead."

Harry did not know who had been sent to verify. He could only lie there, with his
heart thumping traitorously, and wait to be

examined, but at the same time nothing, small comfort through it was, that Voldemort
was wary of approaching him, that Voldemort

suspected that all had not gone to plan . . . .

Hands, softer than he had been expecting, touched Harry's face, and felt his heart.
He could hear the woman's fast breathing,

her pounding of life against his ribs.

"Is Draco alive? Is he in the castle?"

The whisper was barely audible, her lips were an inch from his car, her head bent
so low that her long hair shielded his face

from the onlookers.

"Yes," he breathed back.


He felt the hand on his chest contract: her nails pierced him. Then it was
withdrawn. She had sat up.

"He is dead!" Narcissa Malfoy called to the watchers.

And now they shouted, now they yelled in triumph and stamped their feet, and
through his eyelids, Harry saw bursts of red

and silver light shoot into the air in celebration.

Still feigning death on the ground, he understood. Narcissa knew that the only
way she would be permitted to enter Hogwarts,

and find her son, was as part of the conquering army. She no longer cared whether
Voldemort won.

"You see?" screeched Voldemort over the tumult. "Harry Potter is dead by my
hand, and no man alive can threaten me now!

Watch! Crucio!"

Harry had been expecting it, knew his body would not be allowed to remain
unsullied upon the forest floor; it must be subjected

to humiliation to prove Voldemort's victory. He was lifted into the air, and it took all his
determination to remain limp, yet the pain he

expected did not come. He was thrown once, twice, three times into the air. His glasses
flew off and he felt his wand slide a little beneath

his robes, but he kept himself floppy and lifeless, and when he fell no ground for the last
time, the clearing echoed with jeers and shrieks

of laughter.

"Now," said Voldemort, "we go to the castle, and show them what has become of
their hero. Who shall drag the body? No - Wait - "

There was a fresh outbreak of laughter, and after a few moments Harry felt the
ground trembling beneath him.

"You carry him," Voldemort said. "He will be nice and visible in your arms, will
he not? Pick up your little friend, Hagrid. And the

glasses - put on the glasses - he must be recognizable - "

Someone slammed Harry's glasses back onto his face with deliberate force, but
the enormous hands that lifted him into the air

were exceedingly gentle. Harry could feel Hagrid's arms trembling with the force of his
heaving sobs; great tears splashed down upon him

as Hagrid cradled Harry in his arms, and Harry did not dare, by movement or word, to
intimate to Hagrid that all was not, yet, lost.

"Move," said Voldemort, and Hagrid stumbled forward, forcing his way through
the close-growing trees, back through the forest.

Branches caught at Harry's hair and robes, but he lay quiescent, his mouth lolling open,
his eyes shut, and in the darkness, while the

Death Eaters croed all around them, and while Hagrid sobbed blindly, nobody looked to
see whether a pulse beat in the exposed neck of

Harry Potter. . . .

The two giants crashed along behind the Death Eaters; Harry could hear trees
creaking and falling as they passed; they made so

much din that birds toes shrieking into the sky, and even the jeers of the Death Eaters
were drowned. The victorious procession marched


on toward the open ground, and after a while Harry could tell, by the lightening of the
darkness through his closed eyelids, that the trees

were beginning to thin.

"BANE!"

Hagrid's unexpected bellow nearly forced Harry's eyes open. "Happy now, are
yeh, that yeh didn't fight, yeh cowardly bunch o' nags?

Are yeh happy Harry Potter's - d-dead . . . ?"

Hagrid could not continue, but broke down in fresh tears. Harry wondered how
many centaurs were watching their procession pass;

he dared not open his eyes to look. Some of the Death Eaters called insults at the centaurs
as they left them behind. A little later, Harry

sensed, by a freshening of the air, that they had reached the edge of the forest.

"Stop."

Harry thought that Hagrid must have been forced to obey Voldemort's command,
because he lurched a little. And now a chill settled

over them where they sood, and Harry heard the rasping breath of the dementors that
patrolled the other trees. They would not affect him now.

The fact of his own survival burned inside him, a talisman against them, as though his
father's stag kept guardian in his heart.

Someone passed close by Harry, and he knew that it was Voldemort himself
because he spoke a moment later, his voice magically

magnified so that it swelled through the ground, crashing upon Harry's eardrums.

"Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while
you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his

body as proof that your hero is gone.

"The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters
outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must

be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be
slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the

castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your
brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will

join me in the new world we shall build togheter."

There was silence in the grounds and from the castle. Voldemort was so close to
him that Harry did not dare open his eyes again.

"Come," said Voldemort, and Harry heard him move ahead, and Hagrid was
forced to follow. Now Harry opened his eyes a fraction, and saw

Voldemort striding in front them, wearing the great snake Nagini around his shoulders,
now free of her enchanted cage. But Harry had no possibility

of extracting the wand concealed under his robes without being noticed by the Death
Eaters, who marched on the either side of them through the

slowly lightening darkness . . . .

"Harry," sobbed Hagrid. "Oh, Harry . . . Harry . . ."

Harry shut his eyes tight again. He knew that they were approaching the castle
and strained his ears to distinguish, above the gleeful voices

of the Death Eaters and their tramping footsteps, signs of life from those within.

"Stop."


The Death Eaters camte to a halt; Harry heard them spreading out in a line facing
the opne front doors of the school. He could see, even

though his closed lids, the teddish glow that meant light streamed upon him from the
entrance hall. He waited. Any moment, the people for whom

he had tried to die would see him, lying apparently dead, in Hagrid's arms.

"NO!"

The scream was the more terrible because he had never expected or dreamed that
Professor McGonagall could make such a sound. He heard

another women laughing nearby, and knew that Bellatrix gloried in McGonagall's despair.
He squinted again for a single second and saw the open

doorway filling with people, as the survivors of the battle came out onto the front steps
to face their vanquishers and see the truth of Harry's death for

themselves. He saw Voldemort standing a little in front of him, stroking Nagini's head
with a single white finger. He closed his eyes again.

"No!"

"No!"

"Harry! HARRY!"

Ron's, Hermione's, and Ginny's voices were worse than McGonagall's; Harry
wanted nothing more than to call back, yet he made himself lie

silent, and their cries acted like a trigger; the crowd of survivors took up the cause,
screaming and yelling abuse at the Death Eathers, until -

"SILENCE!" cried Voldemort, and there was a bang and a flash of bright light,
and silence was forced upn them all. "It is over! Set him down,

Hagrid, at my feet, where he belongs!"

Harry felt himself lowered onto the grass.

"You see? said Voldemort, and Harry felt him striding backward and forward
right beside the place where he lay. "Harry Potter is dead! Do you

understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to
sacrifice themselves for him!"

"He beat you!" yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the defenders of Hogwarts
were shouting and screaming again until a second, more

powerful bang extinguished their voices once more.

"He was killed while trying to sneak out of the castle grounds," said Voldemort,
and there was a relish in his voice for the lie. "killed while trying

to save himself - "

But Voldemort broke off: Harry heard a scuffle and a shout, then another bang, a
flash of light, and grunt of pain; he opened his eyes an infinitesimal

amount. Someone had broken free of the crowd and charged at Voldemort: Harry saw the
figure hit the ground. Disarmed, Voldemort throwing the challenger's

wand aside and laughing.

"And who is this?" he said in his soft snake's hiss. "Who has volunteered to
demonstrate what happens to those who continue to fight when the

battle is lost?"

Bellatrix gave a delighted laugh.

"It is Neville Longbottom, my Lord! The boy who has been giving the Carrows so
much trouble! The son of the Aurors, remember?"


"Ah, yes, I remember," said Voldemort, looking down at Neville, who was
struggling back to his feet, unarmed and unproctected, standing in the

no-man's-land between the survivors and the Death Eaters. "But you are a pureblood,
aren't you, my brave boy? Voldemort asked Neville, who stood facing him,

his empty hands curled in fists.

"So what if I am?" said Neville loudly.

"You show spirit and bravery, and you come of noble stock. You will make a very
valuable Death Eater. We need your kind, Neville Longbottom."

"I'll join you when hell freezes over," said Neville. "Dumbledore's Army!" he
shouted, and there was an answering cheer from the crowd, whom

Voldemort's Silencing Charms seemed unable to hold.

"Very well," said Voldemort, and Harry heard more danger in the silkiness of his
voice than in the most powerful curse. "If that is your choice, Longbottom,

we revert to the original plan. On your head," he said quietly, "be it."

Still watching through his lashes, Harry saw Voldemort wave his wand. Seconds
later, out of one of the castle's shattered windows, something that looked like a
misshapen bird flew through the half light and landed in Voldemort's hand. He shook the
mildewed object by its pointed end and it dangled, emtpy and ragged: the Sorting Hat.

"There will be no more Sorting at Hogwarts School," said Voldemort. "There will
be no more Houses. The emblem, sheild and colors of my noble ancestor, Salazar
Slythering, will suffice everyone. Won't they, Neville Longbottom?"

He pointed his wand at Neville, who grew rigid and still, then forced the hat onto
Neville's head, so thta it slipped down below his eyes. There were movements from the
watching crowd in front of the castle, and as one, the Death Eaters raised their wands,
holding the fighters of Hogwarts at bay.

"Neville here is now going to demonstrate what happens to anyone foolish
enough to continue to oppose me," said Voldemort, and with a flick of his wand, he
caused the Sorting Hat to burst into flames.

Screams split the dawn, and Neville was a flame, rooted to the spot, unable to
move, and Harry could not bear it: He must act -

And then many things happened at the same moment.

They heard uproar from the distant boundary of the school as what sounded like
hundreds of people came swarming over the out-of-sight walls and pelted toward the
castle, uttering lowd war cries. At the same time, Grawp came lumbering around the side
of the castel and yelled, "HAGGER!" His cry was answered by roars from Voldemort's
giants: They ran at Grawp like bull elephants making the earth quake. Then came hooves
and the twangs of bows, and arrows were suddenly falling amongst the Death Eaters, who
broke ranks, shouting their surprise. Harry pulled the Invisibilty Cloak from inside his
robes, swunt it over himself, and sprang to his feet, as Neville moved too.

In one swift, fluid motin, Neville broke free of the Body-Bind Curse upon him;
the flaming har fell off him and he drew from its depths something silver, with a
glittering, rubied handle -

The slash of the silver blade could not be heard over the roar of the oncoming
crowd or the sounds of the clashing giants or of te stampending centaurs, and yet, it
seemd to draw every eye. With a single stroke Neville sliced off the great snake's head,
which spun high into the air, gleaming in the light flooding from the entrance hall, and


Voldemort's mouth was open in a scream of fury that nobody could hear, and the snake's
body thudded to the ground at his feet-

Hidden beneath the Invisibilty Cloak, Harry cast a Shield Charm between Neville
and Voldemort before the latter could raise his stamps of the battling giants, Hagrid's yell
came loudets of all.

"HARRY!" Hagrid shouted. "HARRY - WHERE'S HARRY?"

Chaos reigned. The charging centaurs were scattering the Death Eaters, everyone
was feeling the giants' stamping feet, and nearer and nearar thundered the reinforcements
that had come from who knew where; Harry saw great winget creatues soaring the heads
of Voldemort's giants, thestrals and Buckbeak the hippogriff scratching at their eyes
while Grawp punched and pummeled them and now the wizards, defenders of Hogwarts
and Death Eaters alike were being forced back into the castle. Harry was shooting jinxes
and curses at any Death Eater he could see, and they crumpled, not knowing what or who
had hit them, and their bodies were trampled by the retreating crowd. Still hidden beneath
the Invisibility Cloak, Harry was buffered into the entrance hall: He was searching for
Voldemort and saw him across the room, firing spells from his wand as he backed into
the Great Hall, still screaming instructions to his followers as he sent curses flying left
and right; Harry cast more Shield Charms, and Voldemort's would-be victims. Seamus
Finnigan and Hannah Abbott, datted past him into the Great Hall, where they joined the
fight already flourishing inside it.

And now there were more, even more people storming up the front steps, and
Harry saw Charlie Weasly overtaking Horace Slughorn, who was still wearing his emeral
pijamas. They seemed to have returned at the head of what looked like the families and
friends of every Hogwarts student who had remained to fight along with the shopkeeps
and homeowners of Hogsmeade. The centaurs Bane, Ronan and Magorian burst into the
hall with a great clatter of hooves, as behind Harry the door that led to the kitchens was
blasted off its hinges.

The house-elves of Hogwarts swarmed intot he entrance hall, screaming and
waving carving knives and cleaver, and at their head, the locker of Regulus Black
bouncing on his chest, was Kreacher, his bullfrog's voice audible even above this din:
"Fight! Fight! Fight for my Master, defender of house-elves! Fight the Dark Lord, in the
name of brave Regulus! Fight!"

They were hacking and stabbing at the ankles and shim of Death Eaters their tiny
faces alive with malice, and everywhere Harry looked Death Eaters were folding under
sheer weight of numbers, overcome by spells, dragging arrows from wounds, stabbed in
the leg by elves, or else simply attempting to escape, but swallowed by the oncoming
horde.

But it was not over yet: Harry sped between duelers, past atruggling prosoners,
and into he Great Hall.

Voldemort was in the center of the battle, and he was striking and smiting al
within reach. Harry could not get a clear shot, but fought his way nearer, still invisible,
and the Great Hall became more and more crowded as everyone who could walk forced
their way inside.

Harry saw Yaxley slammed tot he floor by George and Lee Jordan, saw Dolohov
fall with a scream at Flitwick's hands, saw Walden Macnair thrown across the room by
Hagrid, hit the stone wall opposite, and slide unconscious to the ground. He saw Ron and


Neville bringing down Fenrir Greyback. Aberforth Stunning Rookwood, Arthur and
Percy flooting Thicknesse, and Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy running through the crowd,
not even attempting to fight, screaming for their son.

Voldemort was now dueling McGonagall, Slughorn, Kingsley all at once, and
there was a cold hatred in his face as they wove and ducked around him, unable to finish
him -

Bellatrix was still fighing too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her
master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny and Luna, all battling their hardest, but
Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry's attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so
close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch -

He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had
gone a few steps he was knocked sideways.

"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"

Mrs. Weasley threw off her cloak as she ran, freeing her arms, Bellatrix spun on
the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of the new challenger.

"OUT OF MY WAY!" shouted Mrs. Weasley to the three girls, and with a simple
swipe of her wand she began to duel. Harry watched with terror and elation as Molly
Weasley's wand slashed and twisted, and Bellatrix Lestrange's smile faltered and became
a snarl. Jets of light flew from both wands, the floor around the withces' feet became bot
and cracked; both woman were fighting to kill.

"No!" Mrs. Weasley cried as a few students ran forward, trying to come to her aid.
"Get back! Get back! She is mine!"

Hundreds of people now lined the walls, watching the two fights, Voldemort and
his three opponents, Bellatrix and Molly, and Harry stood, invisible, torn between both,
wanting to attack and yet to protect, unable to be sure that he would not hit the innocent.

"What will happen to your children when I've killed you?" taunted Bellatrix, as
mad as her master, capering as Molly's curses danced around her. "When Mummy's gone
the same way as Freddie?"

"You - will - never - touch - our - children - again!" screamed Mrs. Weasley.

Bellatrix laughed the same exhilarated laugh her cousin Sirius had given as he
toppled backward through the veil, and suddenly Harry knew what was going to happen
before it did.

Molly's curse soared beneath Bellatrix's constreched arm and hit her squarely in
the chest, directly over her heart.

Bellatrix's glounting smile froze, her eyes seemd to bulge: For the tiniest space of
time she knew what had happened, and then she toppled, and the watching crowd roared,
and Voldemord screamed.

Harry felt as though he turned into slow motin: he saw McGonagall, Kingsley and
Slughorn blasted backward, flailing and writhing through the air, as Voldemort's fury at
the fall of his last, best leutenant exploded with the force of a bomb, Voldemort raised his
wand and directed it at Molly Weasley.

"Protego!" roared Harry, and the Shield Charm expanded in the middle of the
Hall, and Voldemort stared around for the source as Harry pulled off the Invisibility
Cloak at last.

The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of :"Harry!" "HE'S
ALIVE!" were stifled at once. The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and


completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment,
to circle each other.

"I don't want anyone else to help," Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his
voice carried like a trumpet call. "It's got to be like this. It's got to be me."

Voldemort hissed.

"Potter doesn't mean that," he said, his red eyes wide. "This isn't how he works, is
it? Who are you going to use as a shield today, Potter?"

"Nobody," said Harry simply. "There are no more Horcruxes. It's just you and me.
Neither can live while the other survives, and one of us is about to leave for good. . . ."

"One of us?" jeered Voldemort, and his wholy body was taut and his red eyes
stared, a snake that was about to strike. "You think it will be you, do you, the boy who
has survived by accident, and because Dumbledore was pulling the strings?"

"Accident, was it, when my mother died to save me?" asked Harry. They were
still moving sideways, both of them, in that perfect circle, maintaining the same distance
from each other, and for Harry no face existed but Voldemort's. "Accident, when I
decided to fight in that graveyard? Accident, that I didn't defend myself tonight, and still
survived, and returned to fight again?"

"Accidents!" screamed Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and the watching
crowd was frozen as if Petrified, and of the hundreds in the Hall, nobody seemed to
breathe but they two. "Accident and chance and the fact that you crouched and sniveled
behind the skirts of greater men and women, and permitted me to kill them for you!"

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry as they circled, and stared
into each other's eyes, green into red. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again.
Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people - "

"But you did not!"

" - I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did. They're
protected from you. Haven't you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are
binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your
mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

"You dare -"

"Yes, I dare," said Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom Riddle. I know
lots of important things that you don't. Want to hear some, before you make another big
mistake?"

Voldemort did not speak, but powled in a circle, and Harry knew that he kept him
temporarily mesmerized at bay, held back by the faintest possibility that Harry might
indeed know a final secret. . . .

"Is it love again?" said Voldemort, his snake's face jeering. "Dumbledore favorite
solution, love, which he claimed conqered death, though love did not stop him falling
from the tower and breaking like and old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me
stamping out your Modblood mother like a cockroack, Potter - and nobody seems to love
you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now
when I strike?"

"Just one thing," said Harry, and still they circled each other, wrapped in each
other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.

"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe
that you have magic that i do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"


"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snakelike face,
though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more
frightening than his screams; humorles and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.

"You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, than Lord
Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

"Oh he dreamed of it," said Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not
to do what you've done."

"You mean he was weak!" screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to
take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry, "a better wizard, a better man."

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."

For the frist time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the
walls drew breath as one.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as in the marble
tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed.
He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole
thing with the man you thought was your servant."

"What chldish dream is this?" said Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and his
red eyes did not waver from Harry's.

"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's.
Dumbledore's from the moment you starting hunting down my mother. And you never
realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a
Patronus, did you, Riddle?"

Voldemort did not answer. They continued to circle each other like wolves about
to tear each other apart.

"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as my mother's, because he
loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should
have realized," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her
life, didn't he?"
"He desired her, that was all," sneered Voldemort, "but when she had gone, he
agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worhier of him - "

"Of course he told you that," said Harry, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the
moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore
was already dying when Snape finished him!"

"It matters not!" shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt
attention, but now let out a cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was
mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed
them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love! Oh, but it all makes sense,
Potter, and in ways that you do not understand!

"Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that
Snape should be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy - I
reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you
caught up. I killed Severus Snape three hours ago, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick,
the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's last plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"


"Yeah, it did." said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise
you think what you've done . . . . Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle. . . ."

"What is this?"

Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt,
nothing had socked Voldemort like this. Harry saw is pupils contract to thin slits, saw the
skin around his eyes whiten.

"It's your one last chance," said Harry, "it's all you've got left. . . . I've seen what
you'll be otherwise. . . . Be a man. . . try. . . Try for some remorse. . . ."

“You dare --- ?” said Voldemort again.

“Yes, I dare,” said Harry, “because Dumbledore’s last plan hasn’t backfired on
me at all. It’s backfired on you, Riddle.”

Voldemort’s hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco’s
very tightly. The moment, he knew, was seconds away.

“That wand still isn’t working properly for you because you murdered the wrong
person. Severus Snape was never the true master of the Elder Wand. He never defeated
Dumbledore.”

“He killed --- ”

“Aren’t you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore’s death was
planned between them! Dumbledore instended to die, undefeated, the wand’s last true
master! If all had gone as planned, the wand’s power would have died with him, because
it had never been won from him!”

“But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!” Voldemort’s voice
shook with malicious pleasure. “I stole the wand from its last master’s tomb! I removed it
against the last master’s wishes! Its power is mine!”

“You still don’t get it, Riddle, do you? Possessing the wand isn’t enough! Holding
it, using it, doesn’t make it really yours. Didn’t you listen to Ollivander? The wand
chooses the wizard . . . The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore
died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from
Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the
world’s most dangerous wand had given him its allegiance . . .”

Voldemort’s chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming,
feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.

“The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy.”

Blank shock showed in Voldemort’s face for a moment, but then it was gone.

“But what does it matter?” he said softly. “Even if you are right, Potter, it makes
no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill
alone . . . and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy . . .”

“But you’re too late,” said Harry. “You’ve missed your chance. I got there first. I
overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took his wand from him.”

Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and he felt the eyes of everyone in the Hall
upon it.

“So it all comes down to this, doesn’t it?” whispered Harry. “Does the wand in
your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does . . . I am the true master
of the Elder Wand.”

A red-glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of
dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces


at the same time, so that Voldemort’s was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high
voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand:

“Avada Kedavra!”

“Expelliarmus!”

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between
them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the
spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort’s green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand
fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling like the head of
Nagini, spinning through the air toward the master it would not kill, who had come to
take full possession of it at last. And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught
the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the
scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body
feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing.
Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two
wands in his hand, staring down at his enemy’s shell.

One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the
tumult broke around Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers
rent the air. The fierce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and
the first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped
around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him. The Ginny, Neville, and
Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall
and Flitwick and Sprout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, not
tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, hundreds
of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it
was over at last ---

The sun rose steadily over Hogwarts, and the Great Hall blazed with life and light.
Harry was an indispensible part of the mingled outpourings of jubilation and mourning,
of grief and celebration. They wanted him there with them, their leader and symbol, their
savior and their guide, and that he had not slept, that he craved the company of only a few
of them, seemed to occur to no one. He must speak to the bereaved, clasp their hands,
witness their tears, receive their thanks, hear the news now creeping in from every quarter
as the morning drew on; that the Imperiused up and down the country had come back to
themselves, that Death Eaters were fleeing or else being captured, that the innocent of
Azkaban were being released at that very moment, and that Kingsley Shacklebolt had
been named temporary Minister of Magic.

They moved Voldemort’s body and laid it in a chamber off the Hall, away form
the bodies of Fred, Tonks, Lupin, Colin Creevey, and fifty others who had died fighting
him. McGonagall had replaced the House tables, not nobody was sitting according to
House anymore: All were jumbled together, teachers and pupils, ghosts and parents,
centaurs and house-elves, and Firenze lay recovering in the corner, and Grawp peered in
through a smashed window, and people were throwing food into his laughing mouth.
After a while, exhausted and drained, Harry found himself sitting on a bench beside Luna.

“I’d want some peace and quiet, if it were me,” she said.

“I’d love some,” he replied.

“I’ll distract them all,” she said. “Use your cloak.”

And before he could say a word, she had cried, “Oooh, look, a Blibbering


Humdinger!” and pointed out the window. Everyone who heard looked around, and
Harry slid the Cloak up over himself, and got to his feet.

Now he could move through the Hall without interference. He spotted Ginny two
tables away; she was sitting with her head on her mother’s shoulder: There would be time
to talk later, hours and days and maybe years in which to talk. He saw Neville, the sword
of Gryffindor lying beside his plate as he ate, surrounded by a knot of fervent admirers.
Along the aisle between the tables he walked, and he spotted the three Malfoys, huddled
together as though unsure whether or not they were supposed to be there, but nobody was
paying them any attention. Everywhere he looked, he saw families reunited, and finally,
he saw the two whose company he craved most.

“It’s me,” he muttered, crouching down between them. “Will you come with
me?”

They stood up at once, and together he, Ron and Hermione left the Great Hall.
Great chunks were missing from the marble staircase, part of the balustrade gone, and
rubble and bloodstains occurred ever few steps as their climbed.

Somewhere in the distance they could hear Peeves zooming through the
corridors singing a victory song of his own composition:



We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one,

And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!



“Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn’t it?” said
Ron, pushing open a door to let Harry and Hermione through.

Happiness would come, Harry though, but at the moment it was muffled by
exhaustion, and the pain of losing Fred and Lupin and Tonks pierced him like a physical
wound every few steps. Most of all he felt the most stupendous relief, and a longing to
sleep. But first he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck with him for
so long, and who deserved the truth. Painstakingly he recounted what he had seem in the
Pensieve and what had happened in the forest, and they had not even begun to express all
their shock and amazement, when at last they arrived at the place to which they had been
walking, though none of them had mentioned their destination.

Since he had last seen it, the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the headmaster’s
study had been knocked aside; it stood lopsided, looking a little punch-drunk, and Harry
wondered whether it would be able to distinguish passwords anymore.

“Can we go up?” he asked the gargoyle.

“Feel free,” groaned the statue.

They clambered over him and onto the spiral stone staircase that moved slowly
upward like an escalator. Harry pushed open the door at the top.

He had one, brief glimpse of the stone Pensieve on the desk where he had left it,
and then an earsplitting noise made him cry out, thinking of curses and returning Death
Eaters and the rebirth of Voldemort ---

But it was applause. All around the walls, the headmasters and headmistresses of
Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation; they waved their hats and in some cases
their wigs, they reached through their frames to grip each other’s hands; they danced up
and down on their chairs in which they have been painted: Dilys Derwent sobbed
unashamedly; Dexter Fortescue was waving his ear-trumpet; and Phineas Niggelus called,


in his high, reedy voice, “And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our
contribution not be forgotten!”

But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest portrait directly
behind the headmaster’s chair. Tears were sliding down from behind the half-moon
spectacles into the long silver beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him
filled Harry wit h the same balm as phoenix song.

At last, Harry held up his hands, and the portraits fell respectfully silent, beaming
and mopping their eyes and waiting eagerly for him to speak. He directed his words at
Dumbledore, however, and chose them with enormous care. Exhausted and bleary-eyed
though he was, he must make one last effort, seeking one last piece of advice.

“The thing that was hidden in the Snitch,” he began, “I dropped it in the forest. I
don’t exactly here, but I’m not going to go looking for it again. Do you agree?”

“My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, while his fellow pictures looked confused
and curious. “A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of
you. Does anyone know else know where it fell?”

“No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded his satisfaction.

“I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though,” said Harry, and Dumbledore
beamed.

“But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!”

“And then there’s this.”

Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked at it with a
reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived state, Harry did not like to see.

“I don’t want it.” said Harry.

“What?” said Ron loudly. “Are you mental?”

“I know it’s powerful,” said Harry wearily. “But I was happier with mine. So . . .”

He rummaged in the pouch hung around his neck, and pulled out the two halves
of holly tstill just connected by the finest threat of phoenix feather. Hermione had said
that they could not be repaired, that the damage was too severe. All he knew was that if
this did not work, nothing would.

He laid the broken wand upon the headmaster’s desk, touched it with the very tip
of the Elder Wand, and said, “Reparo.”

As his wand resealed, red sparks flew out of its end. Harry knew that he had
succeeded. He picked up the holly and phoenix wand and felt a sudden warmth in his
fingers, as though wand and hand were rejoicing at their reunion.

“I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with
enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a
natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will
never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.

Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other.

“Are you sure?” said Ron. There was the faintest trace of longing in his voice as
he looked at the Elder Wand.

“I think Harry’s right,” said Hermione quietly.

“That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth.” said Harry. “And quite honestly,” he
turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying
waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a
sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”




Epilogue

Nineteen Years Later





Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first of September was
crisp as an apple, and as the little family bobbed across the rumbling road toward the
great sooty station, the fumes of car exhausts and the breath of pedestrians sparkled like
cobwebs in the cold air. Two large cages tattled on top of the laden trolleys the parents
were pushing; the owls inside them hooted indignantly, and the redheaded girl trailed
fearfully behind here brothers, clutching her father's arm.

"It won't be long, and you'll be going too," Harry told her.

"Two years," sniffed Lily. "I want to go now!"

The commuters stared curiously at the owls as the family wove its way toward the
barrier between platforms nine and ten, Albus's voice drifted back to Harry over the
surrounding clamor; his sons had resumed the argument they had started in the car.

"I won't! I won't be a Slytherin!"

"James, give it a rest!" said Ginny.

"I only said he might be," said James, grinning at his younger brother. "There's
nothing wrong with that. He might be in Slytherin"

But James caught his mother's eye and fell silent. The five Potters approached the
barrier. With a slightly cocky look over his shoulder at his younger brother, James took
the trolley from his mother and broke into a run. A moment later, he had vanished.

"You'll write to me, won't you?" Albus asked his parents immediately,
capitalizing on the momentary absence of his brother.

"Every day, of you want us to," said Ginny.

"Not every day," said Albus quickly, "James says most people only get letters
from home about once a month."

"We wrote to James three times a week last year," said Ginny.

"And you don't want to believe everything he tells you about Hogwarts," Harry
put in. "He likes a laugh, your brother."

Side by side, they pushed the second trolley forward, gathering speed. As they
reached the barrier, Albus winced, but no collision came. Instead, the family emerged
onto platform nine and three-quarters, which was obscured by thick white steam that was
pouring from the scarlet Hogwarts Express. Indistinct figures were swarming through the
mist, into which James had already disappeared.

"Where are they?" asked Albus anxiously, peering at the hazy forms they passed
as they made their way down the platform.

"We'll find them," said Ginny reassuringly.

But the vapor was dense, and it was difficult to make out anybody's faces.
Detached from their owners, voices sounded unnaturally loud, Harry thought he head
Percy discoursing loudly on broomstick regulations, and was quite glad of the excuse not
to stop and say hello. . . .

"I think that's them, Al," said Ginny suddenly.


A group of four people emerged from the mist, standing alongside the very last
carriage. Their faces only came into focus when Harry, Ginny, Lily, and Albus had drawn
right up to them.

"Hi," said Albus, sounding immensely relieved.

Roses, who was already wearing her brand-new Hogwarts robes, beamed at him.

"Parked all right, then?" Ron asked Harry. "I did. Hermione didn't believe I could
pass a Muggle driving test, did you? She thought I'd have to Confound the examiner."

"No, I didn't," said Hermione, "I had complete faith in you."

"As a matter of fact, I did Confund him," Ron whispered to Harry, as together
they lifted Albus's trunk and owl onto the train. "I only forgot to look in the wing mirror,
and let's face it, I can use a Supersensory Charm for that."

Back on the platform, they found Lily and Hugo, Rose's younger brother, having
an animated discussion about which House they would be sorted into when they finally
went to Hogwarts.

"If you're not in Gryffindor, we'll disinherit you," said Ron, "but no pressure."

"Ron!"

Lily and Hugo laughed, but Albus and Rose looked solemn.

"He doesn't mean it," said Hermione and Ginny, but Ron was no longer paying
attention. Catching Harry's eye, he nodded covertly to a point some fifty yards away. The
steam had thinned for a moment, and three people stood in sharp relief against the
shifting mist.

"Look who it is."

Draco Malfoy was standing there with his wife and son, a dark coat buttoned up
to his throat. His hair was receding somewhat, which emphasized the pointed chin. The
new boy resembled Draco as much as Albus resembled Harry. Draco caught sight of
Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny staring at him, nodded curtly, and turned away again.

"So that's little Scorpius," said Ron under his breath. "Make sure you beat him in
every test, Rosie. Thank God you inherited your mother's brains."

"Ron, for heaven's sake," said Hermione, half stern, half amused. "Don't try to
turn them against each other before they've even started school!"

"You're right, sorry," said Ron, but unable to help himself, he added, "Don't get
too friendly with him, though, Rosie. Granddad Weasley would never forgive you if you
married a pureblood."

"Hey!"

James had reappeared; he had divested himself of his trunk, owl, and trolley, and
was evidently bursting with news.

"Teddy's back there," he said breathlessly, pointing back over his shoulder into
the billowing clouds of steam. "Just seen him! And guess what he's doing? Snogging
Victoire!"

He gazed up at the adults, evidently disappointed by the lack of reaction.

"Our Teddy! Teddy Lupin! Snogging our Victoire! Our cousin! And I asked teddy
what he was doing --"

"You interrupted them?" said Ginny. "You are so like Ron --"

"-- and he said he'd come to see her off! And then he told me to go away. He's
snogging her!" James added as though worried he had not made himself clear.


"Oh, it would be lovely if they got married!" whispered Lily ecstatically. "Teddy
would really be part of the family then!"

"He already comes round for dinner about four times a week," said Harry "Why
don't we just invite him to live with is and have done with it?"

"Yeah!" said James enthusiastically. "I don't mind sharing with Al--Teddy could
have my room!"

"No," said Harry firmly, "you and Al will share a room only when I want the
house demolished."

He checked the battered old watch that had once been Fabian Prewett's.

"It's nearly eleven, you'd better get on board."

"Don't forget to give Neville our love!" Ginny told James as she hugged him.

"Mum! I can't give a professor love!"

"But you know Neville--"

James rolled his eyes.

"Outside, yeah, but at school he's Professor Longbottom, isn't he? I can't walk into
Herbology and give him love. . . ."

Shaking his head at his mother's foolishness, he vented his feelings by aiming a
kick at Albus.

"See you later, Al. Watch out for the thestrals."

"I thought they were invisible? You said they were invisible!"

but James merely laughed, permitted his mother to kiss him, gave his father a
fleeting hug, then leapt onto the rapidly filling train. They saw him wave, then sprint
away up the corridor to find his friends.

"Thestrals are nothing to worry about," Harry told Albus. "They're gentle things,
there's nothing scare about them. Anyway, you won't be going up to school in the
carriages, you'll be going in the boats."

Ginny kissed Albus good-bye.

"See you at Christmas."

"Bye, Al," said Harry as his son hugged him. "Don't forget Hagrid's invited you to
tea next Friday. Don't mess with Peeves. Don't duel anyone till you're learned how. And
don't let James wind you up."

"What if I'm in Slytherin?"

The whisper was for his father alone, and Harry knew that only the moment of
departure could have forced Albus to reveal how great and sincere that fear was.

Harry crouched down so that Albus's face was slightly above his own. Alone of
Harry's three children, Albus had inherited Lily's eyes.

"Ablus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she
was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to rose, who was now on the train, "you were
named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was
probably the bravest man I ever knew."

"But just say--"

"--then Slytherin House will have gained an excellent student, won't it? It doesn't
matter to us, Al. But if it matter to you, you'll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin.
The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account."

"Really?"

"It did for me," said Harry.


He had never told any of his children that before, and he saw the wonder in
Albus's face when he said it. But how the doorsr were slamming all along the scarlet train,
and the blurred outlines of parents swarming forward for final kisses, last-minute
reminders, Albus jumped into the carriage and ginny closed the door behind him.
Students were hanging from the windows nearest them. A great number of faces, both on
the train and off, seemed to be turned toward Harry.

"Why are they all staring?" demanded Albus as he and rose craned around to look
at the other students.

"Don't let it worry you," said Ron. "It's me, I'm extremely famous."

Albus, Rose, Hugo, and Lily laughed. The train began to more, and Harry walked
alongside it, watching his son's thin face, already ablaze with excitement. Harry kept
smiling and waving, even though it was like a little bereavement, watching his son glide
away from him. . . .

The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air. The train rounded a corner.
Harry's hand was still raised in farewell.

"He'll be alright," murmured Ginny.

As Harry looked dat her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the
lightning scar on his forehead.

"I know he will."

The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.