Disclaimer: Everything you recognize is J.K. Rowling's. Except Jamie, Luka, and Ariana.
Chapter 12- Godric's Hollow
The next morning comes all too soon. When I pry my eyes open, it feels like I only went to sleep minutes before, but the sun on my face tells me differently. The memory of Ron walking away from us, and abandoning us is still fresh in my mind. The hurtful words that he spewed echo in my ears, but I shake my head, reminding myself that Ron didn't really mean them. At the time maybe, but it was mostly the Horcrux that made him say those things.
I change my pants and shirt having fallen asleep in my clothes from yesterday, and determine that I am going to at least attempt to get things done today instead of sit around and worry. After pulling my Weasley family sweater over my head, I adjust the necklace around my neck so that the comforting warmth hums against my sternum.
"Thank you Ari. You don't know how much you're helping me, even when you're not here." I whisper to it, kissing the metal, and grinning as heat flares up from it in response. She should be in class right about now, and not thinking of me, but the thought warms me from where I was so cold last night. I make my way into the kitchen to see a morose and silent Hermione, and a brooding Harry at the table.
I smile at each of them hoping to lighten the mood, but if anything the stony looks I receive in return, sucks all the air out of the room. I guess that I should keep my optimism to myself for today. Harry, Hermione, and I ate breakfast in silence. Hermione's eyes are puffy and red; she looks as if she has not slept.
They pack up our things, Hermione dawdling. I know why she wants to spin out our time on the riverbank; several times I see her look up eagerly, and I am sure she has deluded herself into thinking that she hears footsteps through the heavy rain, but no red-haired figure appears between the trees. I myself want Ron to come back so that I can know that he is at least safe, but he made his choice, and unfortunately this is the mission that needs to be done so that everyone can be back where they belong.
The muddy river beside us is rising rapidly and will soon spill over onto our bank. We have lingered a good hour after we would usually have departed our campsite. Finally having entirely repacked the beaded bag three times, Hermione seems unable to find any more reasons to delay: She, Harry, and I grasp hands and Disapparate, reappearing on a windswept heather-covered hillside.
The instant we arrive, Hermione drops Harry's and my hand and walks away from us, finally sitting down on a large rock, her face on her knees, shaking with what I know are sobs. Harry looks after her for a second before walking away and starting our circle of protective enchantments. I make my way over to Hermione slowly and sink down beside her.
I can practically feel the anguish rolling off her. I ache as well for the loss of Ron, but I know that there is something growing between the two of them, which has her torn up inside from having that big disagreement with him. I reach out my hand and lightly grasp hers, unsure what level of comfort she is wanting to have at the moment, but willing to give all that I have to her.
I may be stuck in my own problems but that's no excuse to ignore hers. Slowly Hermione returns the grip of my hand until its almost painful, and leans into my side. I don't say anything knowing that there is nothing that I can in fact say. A lump forms in my throat when I recognize the wetness on my shoulder. I wish that there was more that I could say or that I could do, but this is something that she needs to get out.
We do not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Harry seems determined never to mention his name again, and Hermione seems to know that it is no use forcing the issue, although sometimes at night when she thinks he is sleeping, I can hear her crying. Meanwhile Harry has started bringing out the Marauder's Map and examining it by wandlight.
I have looked over his shoulder a few times to check on the dots of Luka, Ginny, and Ariana. Just seeing them, sends relief through me, that at least they are not dead, and I am not being tricked or fooled by imagination.
By day, we devote ourselves to trying to determine the possible locations of Gryffindor's sword, but the more we talk about the places in which Dumbledore may have hidden it, the more desperate and far-fetched our speculation becomes. Cudgel his brains though he might, Harry cannot remember Dumbledore ever mentioning a place in which he might hide something. This was a major sore spot for him and for Hermione and I who can't help but share a glance that Dumbledore really didn't prepare any of us for this mission.
We are spending many evenings in near silence (not for lack of me trying to break the atmosphere), and Hermione takes to bringing out Phineas Nigellus's portrait and propping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Ron's departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit us again, Phineas Nigellus does not seem able to resist the chance to find out more about what Harry is up to, and consents to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so.
We relish any news about what is happening at Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus is not an ideal informer. He venerates Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself controlled the school, and we have to be careful not to criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape, or Phineas Nigellus will instantly leave his painting.
However, he does let drop certain snippets. Snape seems to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny has been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape has reinstated Umbridge's old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies.
It brings a happy little fire burning inside of me that it seems that Ginny, Luna, Luka, Ariana, and Neville have seemed to try and formed and kept up Dumbledore's Army again, the time for a resistance group once again needed. It also seemed that the painted man couldn't help himself with his curiosity about where Harry, Hermione, and I are.
Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasizes this fact by slipping in leading questions about Harry, Hermione's, and my whereabouts. Hermione shoves him back inside the beaded bag every time he does this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refuses to reappear for several days after these unceremonious good-byes. I always knew that the man was a little bit of a drama queen.
The weather grows colder and colder. We do not dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost is the worst of our worries, we continue to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounds the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent is flooded with chilly water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buries the tent in the night.
It also happens that I catch a cold, and Hermione being ever prepared as she is forces a Pepperup potion down my throat, forcing away the illness before it can drain me too much.
We have already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there comes an evening when Harry resolves to suggest, again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to us. We have just eaten an unusually good meal: Hermione and I went to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as we leave), and Harry seems to think that she may be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. He has also suggested that we take a few hours' break from wearing the Horcrux (it was my turn), which is now hanging over the end of the bunk beside Harry.
"Hermione? Jamie?" Harry finally gets up the nerve, to ask the question that I know has been bugging him for hours. I carefully set my pencil down on the letter that I have been crafting to Ariana. There is nothing much interesting to report, just some dreams and ideas that are in my head for a potential future.
"Hmm?" Hermione is curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I can't imagine how much more she can get out of the book, which is not, after all, very long; but evidently she is still deciphering something in it, because Spellman's Syllabary lays open on the arm of the chair.
Harry clears his throat. He looks too nervous to me for this suggestion of his to be any good, and I have the feeling that some danger may end up being involved.
"Hermione, Jamie, I've been thinking, and —"
"Harry, could you help me with something?"
Apparently Hermione has not been listening to him. She leans forward and holds out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
"Look at that symbol," she says, pointing to the top of a page. Above what I assumed is the title of the story (being unable to read runes, I cannot be sure), there is a picture of what looks like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
"I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione." Harry says.
"It doesn't look familiar from what I could tell when looking over Luka and Ariana's shoulders." I add, coming up blank on an answer for her.
"I know that, but it isn't a rune and it's not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don't think it is! It's been inked in, look, somebody's drawn it there it isn't really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?"
"No . . . No, wait a moment." Harry looks closer. "Isn't it the same symbol Luna's dad was wearing round his neck?"
"Well, that's what I thought too!"
"Then it's Grindelwald's mark." Harry says.
Hermione stares at him, openmouthed.
"What?"
"Krum told me . . ."
He recounts the story that Viktor Krum told him at the wedding. Hermione looks astonished.
"Grindelwald's mark?"
She looked from Harry to the weird symbol and then to me. "I've never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There's no mention of it in anything I've ever read about him."
"Well, like I said, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there."
She falls back into the old armchair, frowning.
"That's very odd. If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?"
"Not all children's stories are nice Hermione. You're the one that showed me those terrible 'fairy tales' as you called them. I'd hate to see a fairy read those stories." I say with a shudder.
"Yeah, it is weird," says Harry. "And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff."
"I know . . . Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the titles."
She does not speak, but continue to pore over the strange mark. Harry tries again.
"Guys?"
"Hmm?" Hermione hums noncommittally.
"I've been thinking. I — I want to go to Godric's Hollow."
She looks up at him, but her eyes are unfocused, and I am sure she is still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.
"Yes," she says. "Yes, I've been wondering that too. I really think we'll have to."
"Did you hear me right?" he asks.
"Of course I did. You want to go to Godric's Hollow. I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it's there."
"Er — what's there?" asks Harry.
At that, she looks just as bewildered as Harry.
"Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you'd want to go back there, and I mean, Godric's Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace —"
"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?" Harry asks.
"Seriously Harry! Did you not open your History of Magic textbook ever?" I ask with a fond chuckle.
"Erm," he says, smiling a little awkwardly. "I might've opened it, you know, when I bought it . . . just the once . . ."
"Well, as the village is named after him I'd have thought you might have made the connection," says Hermione. She sounds much more like her old self than she has of late; I half expect her to announce that she is off to the library. "There's a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait . . ."
She opens the beaded bag and rummages for a while, finally extracting her copy of our old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbs through until finding the page she wants.
"'Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworth in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric's Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries."
"You and your parents aren't mentioned," Hermione says, closing the book, "because Professor Bagshot doesn't cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Godric's Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor's sword; don't you think Dumbledore would have expected you to make the connection?"
"Oh yeah . . ." Harry says looking distracted still.
"It would also be nice to pay our respects to your mum and dad as well don't you think?" I say trying to get him back with us, and Hermione hurriedly nods her head along in agreement.
"Yeah." Harry says still sounding a little distracted, but better than before.
"Remember what Muriel said?" Harry asks eventually.
"Who?" Hermione questions.
"You know," he hesitates, "Ginny's great-aunt at the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles."
"Oh," says Hermione. It is a sticky moment: I know that she sensed Ron's name in the offing. Harry rushes on:
"She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric's Hollow."
"Bathilda Bagshot," murmurs Hermione, running her index finger over Bathilda's embossed name on the front cover of A History of Magic. "Well, I suppose —"
"You could maybe meet one of the authors of you favorite textbooks." I say nudging Hermione slightly trying to draw the happy excited air into our lives again.
"Harry, Jamie, what if Bathilda's got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?" Hermione asks so suddenly, that I'm lodged off of my place on the arm of Hermione's chair in shock from the loud utterance. After a few seconds of thinking it over Harry nods his head slowly in agreement.
"Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to go to Godric's Hollow?"
"Yes, but we'll have to think it through carefully, Harry." She is sitting up now, and I can tell that the prospect of having a plan again has lifted her mood as much as mine. "We'll need to practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case we'll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we'd better do that, Harry, Jamie, the thicker our disguises the better . . ."
I smile at the renewed sense of purpose that my friends have gotten, and return to the table to finish my newest letter to Ariana, now filling her in on the exciting new plan that we're about to embark on, and how I wish that she and the rest of my family were here to experience it with us.
Harry would gladly have had us set out for Godric's Hollow the following day, but Hermione has other ideas. Convinced as she is that Voldemort will expect Harry to return to the scene of his parents' deaths, she is determined that we will set off only after we have ensured that we have the best disguises possible. It is therefore a full week later — once we have surreptitiously obtained hairs from innocent Muggles who are Christmas shopping, and have practiced Apparating and Disapparating while underneath the Invisibility Cloak together (not an easy take let me tell you) — that Hermione agrees to allow us to make the journey.
Even though it isn't my hometown that we are going to, I feel a ball of excitement growing in my stomach at the adventure. I am actually really curious to see where Harry grew up as a small child.
We are to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it is late afternoon when we finally swallow Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife, and me into their put upon teenager. I won the battle of youth, for I argued that Harry and Hermione were the responsible ones of the group because of my bad temper. The beaded bag containing all of our possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry is wearing around his neck this time) is tucked into an inside pocket of Hermione's buttoned-up coat. Harry lowers the Invisibility Cloak over us then we turn into the suffocating darkness once again.
We are standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night's first stars are already glimmering feebly when I open my eyes. Cottages stand on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of us a glow of golden streetlights indicate the center of the village.
"All this snow!" Hermione whispers beneath the cloak. "Why didn't we think of snow? After all our precautions, we'll leave prints! We'll just have to get rid of them — you go in front, I'll do it —"
"Let's take off the Cloak," says Harry, and when Hermione looks frightened, "Oh, come on, we don't look like us and there's no one around."
"We've taken a lot of precautions Hermione, we should stay reasonable safe." I remind her softly. After a nerve wracking moment Hermione slowly nods her head in agreement.
Harry stows the Cloak under his jacket and we make our way forward unhampered, the icy air stinging our faces as we pass more cottages: Any one of them may have been the one in which James and Lily once lived in or where Bathilda lives now.
Strung all around with colored lights, there is what looks like a war memorial in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree. There are several shops, a post office, a pub, and a little church whose stained-glass windows are glowing jewel-bright across the square.
The snow here has become impacted: It is hard and slippery where people have trod on it all day. Villagers are crisscrossing in front of us, their figures briefly illuminated by streetlamps. We hear a snatch of laughter and pop music as the pub door opens and closes; then we heard a carol start up inside the little church.
"Jamie, Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve!" says Hermione.
"Is it?" Harry asks.
"How exciting! What great timing." I say with a wide smile on my face, still trying to get used to the girl's slightly higher pitch than my own.
"I'm sure it is," says Hermione, her eyes upon the church. "They . . . they'll be in there, won't they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it."
Harry looks half excited and afraid, so Hermione and I gently tug him in the direction of the cemetery, knowing that he needs to do this. Halfway across the square, however, we stop dead.
"Harry, look!" I say in awe.
I point at the war memorial. As we pass it, it transforms. Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there is a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother's arms. Snow lay upon all their heads, like fluffy white caps. I know in a heartbeat that those people are Harry's parents and he as a baby. The statue is a sad but touching monument.
"C'mon," says Harry, when he has looked his fill, and we turn again towards the church. As we cross the road, he glances over his shoulder.
The singing grows louder as we approach the church. It reminds me of happier times when we were all still blissfully unaware and relatively safe. There is a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushes it open as quietly as possible and we edge through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lays deep and untouched.
We move off through the snow, carving deep trenches behind us as we walk around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows.
Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protrude from a blanket of pale blue that is flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the snow. Keeping my hand closed tightly on the wand in my jacket pocket, I move toward a grave.
"Look at this, it's an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah's!" Harry says sounding shocked
"Keep your voice down," Hermione begs him.
We wade deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark tracks into the snow behind us, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that we are unaccompanied.
"Harry, Jamie, here!"
Hermione is two rows of tombstones away; I have to wade back to her, curious as to what she's found.
"Is it — ?" Harry asks looking breathless and pale.
"No, but look!"
She points to the dark stone. I stoop down and see, upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words KENDRA DUMBLEDORE and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, AND HER DAUGHTER ARIANA. There is also a quotation:
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore family did indeed live here, and part of it died here. I also am now positive how Ariana got her name.
"Are you sure he never mentioned — ?" Hermione begins looking like she wants to bring up Rita Skeeter's book.
"No," says Harry curtly, then, "let's keep looking," and he turns away.
"Here!" I cry a few moments later from out of the darkness. "Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter."
I rub at a crumbling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a frown forming on my face.
"Guys, come back a moment."
Harry looks like he really doesn't want to come and look, but regardless he plods back my way with Hermione by his side.
"What?" Harry demands.
"Look at this!" I say excited by my find.
The grave is extremely old, weathered so that I can hardly make out the name. I show them the symbol beneath it.
"That's the mark in the book!"
They peer at the place I indicate: The stone is so worn that it is hard to make out what is engraved there, though there does seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible name.
"Yeah . . . it could be . . ." Harry says.
Hermione lights her wand and points it at the name on the headstone.
"It says Ig — Ignotus, I think . . ."
"I'm going to keep looking for my parents, all right?" Harry tells us, a slight edge to his voice, and he sets off again, leaving us crouched beside the old grave.
"It was a good find." Hermione says softly as we rise from our crouched position and begin to search the darkness once again for the Potter graves.
It takes a few minutes before Hermione and I stumble across it. "Harry… they're here. Right here." Hermione says, and after a few moments Harry comes out of the darkness besides us looking nervous.
The headstone is only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It is made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this makes it easy to read, as it seems to shine in the dark. We do not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.
JAMES POTTER
BORN 27 MARCH 1960
DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981
LILY POTTER
BORN 30 JANUARY 1960
DIED 31 OCTOBER 1981
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death' . . ." A horrible thought comes to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," says Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death."
"It's meant to be a nice thing Harry. Be grateful that it was put on their stone." I say softly reaching out and giving his hand a squeeze. Harry's anguish is almost palpable and Hermione and I exchange a look, trying to figure out how to help. With a small nod Hermione raises her wand.
She moves it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossoms before us. Harry catches it and lays it on his parents' grave.
As soon as he stands up I can tell he wants to leave. Harry puts his arm around Hermione's shoulders, and she puts hers around his waist, before grabbing my hand and we turn in silence and walk away through the snow, past Dumbledore's mother and sister, back towards the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate.
I think of my own parents and the way that they died. I wonder how they are faring this lonely Christmas Eve. They have two children who don't visit their grave, and who are now a part of someone else's family. I know that they would be happy for us now, but I resolve then and there to go and visit their grave if I make it out of this alive, I'll drag Luka with me as well, and it can be a family affair. A smile lights my face, as well as the warmth along my collarbone.