Chapter 21
I Cannot Rest Long
With the same disguise he utilized the previous day, Draco Malfoy again entered the Hogshead Inn, believing that his luck would hold out at least another day. He still could come to no conclusion as to which bad option to select. His brain convinced him that he must surrender to the Ministry and cooperate to the extent that he could, but he realized that such a move, even viewed optimistically, meant years of confinement in Azkaban. That alone convinced the young wizard to delay at least one more day.
Remus Lupin stood against a wall of the pub seemingly in plain view, but Draco never noticed him. Aberforth Dumbledore, the barman at the Hogshead, had placed a disillusionment charm on the werewolf such that he blended into the dark walnut wall. Remus knew that the young man who just entered must be the wizard that Aberforth reported the previous day, and the briefest of nods by the white-haired wizard confirmed it.
In less than a minute, Remus saw through the disguise and recognized his former student, Draco Malfoy. Though the boy changed the color of his hair and added the glasses, which Remus could easily see resulted from an amateurish attempt at transfiguration, Malfoy could not alter his gait and his bearing. For some time, Remus observed Draco, allowing him to complete most of his meal. Clearly the boy had suffered hard times and devoured his food quickly. At first Draco's eyes flitted around the room warily, but soon he concentrated on his plate.
His heart nearly jumped out of his throat when suddenly a man sat down in a chair next to him, his wand pointing directly at Draco's chest.
"Hello, Draco," Remus calmly greeted him, "Why don't you give me your wand, and we'll have a little chat."
Draco's eyes widened to the size of galleons as he realized that his days of freedom had just ended. For five seconds he sat motionless, and Remus remained silent, understanding that the boy needed a moment to comprehend his predicament. Finally Draco slowly reached into the pocket of his robe, gently lifting his wand with the tips of two fingers, just as a gunfighter would have done in the old West when throwing down his revolver. He gently placed the wand on the table next to his plate. Remus calmly slipped it into his pocket and pulled his own wand back a foot. Draco still had not spoken a word.
"Did you leave Lord Voldemort?" Remus asked in little more than a whisper. Draco shuddered from hearing the dark lord's name, but he nodded. "You're lucky we found you before they did," Remus continued, "Don't say anything." He silently flicked his wand at his captive in an intricate pattern. "Don't try to apparate. It won't be a pleasant experience."
Draco nodded again. Mixed with his fear, he felt a tremendous sense of relief. He did not know whether Professor Lupin worked for the Ministry or some other organization, but he knew that Lupin was an enemy of the dark lord, and for the moment, he could ask for nothing more.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"You must rest, Master. Soon you will be well again. Last night required a great deal of effort."
Lord Voldemort lay in a large bed in an ornately carved wooden frame. A fire in the fireplace blazed and three thick blankets covered him, yet he still felt chilled. His eyes barely shone red, and his face almost seemed lifeless. More than once, Peter Pettigrew wondered if the dark lord in fact had died, for he remained motionless for extended lengths of time, and under the blankets, Peter could not easily determine whether he was breathing or not.
How his master managed to apparate back to their current hideout, Peter never knew, but clearly use of the heretofore unknown means of locating a death eater nearly killed him. The energy needed to torture and kill Snape and to apparate back only exacerbated his condition.
"I cannot rest long," Voldemort whispered, his eyes barely opened, "I will rest today. Then I must decide what to do. Allow me to sleep now, Wormtail."
"Certainly, master. I am sure you will feel much better by this evening." Voldemort did not hear Pettigrew's final words, already having fallen asleep. Peter gazed at him impassively for a minute before leaving the bed chamber. He knew, however, that he must return soon, for the dark lord would expect him to be nearby whenever he awoke. Deep down, he suppressed the desire that his master never wake again.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"My trunk is still in Little Whinging. I thought about apparating to my room and bringing it to the Burrow, but I couldn't stand the thought of being in that house again, even for half a minute."
Harry removed the few items from his rucksack and placed them in drawers while Ron did the same. They automatically returned to their same dormitory and beds above the Gryffindor House common room. At first Hermione and Ginny headed for the stairs to the girls' dormitories, but then they decided that it made no sense for them to stay so far away. Instead, they checked the other boy's quarters and decided that they preferred the fourth years' room best. Harry and Ron could distantly hear their voices as they unpacked.
Molly reluctantly allowed Ginny to leave with Harry, Ron and Hermione. At first she resisted, but after Harry explained and requested again, she relented. Somehow, she simply could not say no to the young wizard, almost as if he had a power over her. She clearly noticed that Harry had changed and emitted an aura that he did not possess in the past. And those eyes. Something had happened to those eyes. Harry always had been special to her, but now she could see that he was truly special. After they left in the morning, she shook her head, wondering why she could not resist a mere boy of seventeen. In any event, as Arthur assured her, Ginny would probably be safer at Hogwarts than at the Burrow.
"You could send Kreacher for it," Ron suggested while tossing a few socks in a drawer, "He is your house elf after all."
Harry frowned at the mention of his slave, whom he despised with all of his heart. Yet the use of a house elf made sense, but a different house elf.
"Dobby, could you . . ."
Before Harry could finish the summons, the diminutive house elf appeared before them, his face covered with soot from cleaning one of the many chimneys protruding from the roof of Hogwarts Castle Harry felt as much fondness for Dobby as he felt hatred for Kreacher, for Dobby had proven his dedication to Harry. Harry, of course, tricked Lucius Malfoy into freeing the elf after battling the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, more than four years previous, and thereby earned Dobby's unswerving loyalty. Given the heat of the summer and the dirty work, Dobby wore only one colorful woolen hat on his head instead of the usual half dozen.
"Harry Potter is at Hogwarts," Dobby exclaimed with surprise, a huge grin on his face, "How can I help Harry Potter?"
"Hello, Dobby," Harry replied graciously, chuckling at the sight of the black-faced elf, "You look well. How have you and the other house elves been this summer?"
"Hogwarts house elves have been very busy, Harry Potter. Headmistress McGonagall gives us many projects to prepare the castle for next year. House elves are happy being busy." Indeed, Harry thought that Dobby seemed quite content.
"I'm glad to hear that. Listen, Dobby, I wondered if you could do me a favor." Harry explained about his trunk.
"Certainly, Harry Potter. Dobby will go right now." With an almost silent pop, the house elf disappeared. Harry almost hoped that his Aunt Petunia happened to be in his room when the soot-faced house elf appeared out of nowhere. She would die of a heart attack on the spot.
Ron shrugged his shoulders and commented, "That was easy." Mere moments later, Dobby reappeared with the trunk in hand and a smile on his face.
"Thank you, Dobby. You are a great friend." Dobby blushed but smiled even more broadly, but as he stared at Harry, his smile faded and a puzzled expression replaced it.
"What has happened to your eyes, Harry Potter?"
"My eyes? Oh," Harry answered, somewhat perturbed that the change in them seemed to be so noticeable, "They just became a little brighter on my seventeenth birthday. I guess it happens to some wizards."
Dobby accepted the misleading explanation, but still gazed worryingly at Harry.
"I may need your help again, Dobby, if you don't mind."
"Of course not, Harry Potter. Dobby will be proud to work for the great Harry Potter. Just call my name when you need me." He apparated back to his work.
"Is it that noticeable?" Harry quietly asked Ron. Harry forgot his unpacking and sat on the edge of his bed, staring out the window.
Ron felt he had to answer honestly, "I'm afraid they are, mate. Normally they just seem a little brighter than before, but when they glow. . . Well, it's eerie."
Harry stared appraisingly at his best friend, but did not continue the discussion. Again, he stared out the window, trying not to appear overly concerned. Inside, however, he thought, I wonder what they'll look like when I absorb the next one.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"HOW CAN IT BE SO HARD!" yelled Minister Scrimgeour, red-faced, at several of his aides, "THE PROPHET HAS DOZENS OF EMPLOYEES. JUST FOLLOW THEM. A NEWSPAPER CAN'T HIDE." A former auror himself, the Minister could not understand why his forces could not track down the newspaper's hideout within an hour.
"We're doing just that, sir," one of the aides assured him, "We're putting Harrington and Singh on it. Give it a day or two. They'll find the new headquarters if they don't move again. Of course, if they're smart, they will."
"One more day," the Minister growled, "We're moving against the press tomorrow, whether or not we know where the Prophet is. We'll close down the rest of them. Understand?!"
"Yes, Minister," echoed the chorus of responses as Scrimgeour stormed out the door.
"Why can't I just have a nice easy mission," Evan Harrington groused to himself, "Just give me a few death eaters to duel. I never even liked hide-and-seek as a boy."
Yet he found himself on another wild goose chase, this time attempting to locate a hidden newspaper headquarters rather than a teen-aged boy. And again, he could find no justification for his orders. This time, however, he did not anguish over his assignment, for he had no intention to fulfill his responsibilities. To the contrary, he intended to assure the mission's failure.
The process may have been gradual, but now he could not turn back. Scrimgeour would consider him a traitor, worthy of years of incarceration in Azkaban; others would consider him a patriot, willing to risk all for his country. Evan preferred the latter interpretation, but a large part of him still agreed with Scrimgeour's view. An auror's vow is not granted lightly, and the decision to break that vow requires deep meditation. But that phase had ended, and Evan no longer suffered from the nerves that plagued him earlier. He had traveled too far up the road to turn around now.
His primary problem at the moment related to his partner on this mission, Veronica Singh, an auror of Indian heritage, though her family had lived in Britain for several generations. Ten years Evan's junior, he only knew her in passing, never having worked with her in the field. By reputation, she could be brilliant but lacked decisiveness, and more than a few of Evan's colleagues had complained about her failure to act quickly enough, at times with unfortunate consequences. Generally, her superiors assigned her to jobs where she could exercise her brain, and Evan clearly understood that he would be the muscle of this operation. Fine with him, except that he would have difficulty meeting and assisting Harry if he needed to be with Singh all the time.
He shook her hand, and the two aurors chatted amiably for a few minutes before turning to business. Veronica barely stood five feet tall, a little on the chubby side, exaggerated by her short stature. Though she proudly displayed a head of thick black hair down to her shoulder blades, all in all, she could not be considered a beauty.
Why are all the female aurors ugly? Evan groused, but he put the thought out of his mind, and they sat down to discuss how they would approach this new problem. While they reviewed sketchy intelligence reports and brain stormed, in the back of Evan's mind he had alternate thoughts in his mind.
I should make contact with that woman at the Prophet. What was her name? Goldsmith? I can keep her informed. When we get too close, they can move.
xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx
"It's not where it used to be," Ron advised the others after describing the award for special services given to Tom Riddle a half century before, a curved gold shield mounted on a base. The four friends stood nervously in the trophy alcove, just off one of the main corridors of the first floor of Hogwarts Castle. Hundreds of awards, plaques, trophies, medals and other memorabilia from a thousand years of school history lined numerous trophy cases and shelves. Though the alcove could be accessed by anyone, in general students paid it no attention. Of course, Harry and Ron knew the area better than most, having "enjoyed" several detentions polishing the awards. Ron, in fact, spent a great deal of effort in his second year at Hogwarts polishing Riddle's trophy itself.
Hermione and Ginny stepped past Ron, who continued to gaze into the case where he believed the Tom Riddle trophy sat when last they visited the alcove. The two girls shivered slightly, chilled by the coolness of the interior room of the stone castle. Up in Gryffindor Tower, the warmth of the summer afternoon heated the common room and dormitories, and they dressed lightly, in typical muggle shorts and sleeveless blouses. Now they wished that they had worn a sweater.
Harry did not shiver and already tuned out his three companions. He found the locket by feel, and he figured he would find the trophy the same way. Slowly he paced forward, freeing his mind from thought.
"Well, let's start looking then," Hermione instructed with a sigh after a brief search proved Ron right, "Let's split up. Lumos." The others followed suit, lighting their wands in the dim room, pointing the light at anything that remotely resembled the Riddle trophy.
After about five minutes with no luck, Ginny turned her head when Harry walked past her and then jumped from shock.
"Where'd you find it Harry? Why didn't you tell us?"
Indeed, Harry found the gold shield merely by walking between the cases and shelves, not trying to find anything. When he passed by one case, he suddenly and inexplicably knew that the trophy resided there. After lighting his wand to peer inside, he found the trophy within a few seconds. With Ginny's exclamation, Ron and Hermione abandoned their searches, and the three of them circled Harry and the award.
"Let's go," Harry decided, and before the others could respond, he strode ahead, back to the main corridor. Several minutes later they positioned themselves on the comfortable chairs near the unlit fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. The trophy rested on a low table among the chairs.
After a long silence, Hermione asked what was on all of their minds, "Are you going to use the hammer on this one too, Harry?" She stared at him anxiously, but the tone of her voice did not impart any disagreement with that course of action.
Harry pursed his lips and squinted in response to the question. The hammer worked well enough on the locket, but would it have worked on the diary or ring? Dumbledore never explained about the ring, of course, but the crack in it did not seem to Harry to be the result of a hammer blow. Moreover, a hammer could not have destroyed a diary. The trophy now in front of him could clearly be damaged by a hammer, but striking the horcrux would be difficult, as the curved shield provided no flat edges to smash. Certainly he could dent and mar the surface, but he did not believe that he could truly destroy it to the point of releasing the partial soul.
"I don't think so," he finally answered, "I don't think that will do the job."
"Why not?" asked Ron disbelievingly, "It worked well enough last time. Why not give it another try?"
"I just know, Ron," Harry retorted immediately, not in an angry voice but also indicating that he did not intend to discuss the issue further. "Each one is different."
Given Harry's sharp response to Ron's inquiry, the others decided to remain silent for the time being, and they watched Harry stare intently at the unassuming gold trophy, about two feet high and slightly tarnished. Ginny eyed him with a puzzled expression, as if trying to solve an especially clever riddle. Many things had happened to Harry in the past month and a half, yet she could not come to believe that she no longer knew him. Not like she thought she knew him before Dumbledore's funeral.
She had never felt closer to anyone in her short life, and she would have sworn that she understood Harry better than she understood herself. Now, that was a distant memory. In a strange way, Harry's transformation almost made her feel better. The old Harry, or as she often described him, the "real Harry," would not have discarded her as easily as a torn shirt. Perhaps she could come to accept that this new Harry no longer loved her, because she never loved him either. She loved the old Harry, the "real Harry."
Hermione tried to focus on the matter at hand, destruction of the new horcrux, yet she could not manage to look away from Harry either, at least not for more than a few seconds at a time. Her friend gazed serenely at Tom Riddle's trophy, apparently not in the least perturbed at the prospect of absorbing another horcrux. She certainly did not feel the same, for the realization that Harry would have to absorb another piece of Voldemort's soul frightened her. What would happen to him this time? After staring at the young wizard for a minute, she again forced herself to redirect her eyes
Suddenly Harry stood, a thin smile on his face, and he scooped up the trophy with his right hand.
"I think we should talk to Hagrid," he announced to the others' bewilderment, "He knows about destroying things. That's right up his alley." He casually but decisively stepped towards the portrait door, obviously on his way to Hagrid's cabin, either alone or with his friends. The decision was theirs. The three of them glanced at each other with raised eyebrows, but they quickly stood and rushed after him.
The half giant thrust his gigantic shovel into the newly turned earth some fifty yards from his cabin and briefly wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of this thin white undershirt, open at the neck. He had stripped his normal outer clothing off in the August heat, given the strenuous work of the day, but a nostalgic smile crept across his face as he saw the four students making their way down the hill. His emotions almost got the better of him, and he inhaled deeply several times to prevent the tears from falling.
At the same time, he noticed a difference in Harry Potter, at the lead of the small pack. He walked differently, carried himself with greater assurance. He had always been a talented, powerful wizard, Dumbledore assured Hagrid of the fact many times, but now the huge groundskeeper could see it for himself. Not many wizards would want to cross paths with the Harry Potter now approaching him. In fact, he remembered a classmate of his from many decades before who walked similarly: Tom Riddle. Hagrid put the thought out of his mind.
Harry waved from about one hundred yards away, and Hagrid returned the greeting. For the first time, he noted that Harry carried something in his hand.
"Harry!" he called once the boy turned the final corner, and Hagrid gave him a manly embrace which as usual nearly knocked the wind out of young wizard, "It's good to see yeh, Harry. After all tha's been happenin', it's right good t' see yeh."
Smiling genuinely in return, Harry agreed, "It's good to be back, Hagrid, It's great to feel safe again." Hagrid patted Harry's shoulder affectionately and then turned his attention to the others who arrived a few seconds later.
"Hermione, Ginny, Ron. I can' believe my luck. Awfully lonely 'roun' here durin' the summer, specially with ol' Dumbledore gone." His eyes suddenly widened as if about to burst into tears, but he quickly gathered himself again, the immediate shock of the headmaster's death finally behind him. "A great wizard, he was. He and I used t' talk a lot in the summer time. Tha's when I saw him most often." He saw the four teenagers stand awkwardly, not sure how to respond, but he made any response unnecessary. "But enough of tha', come on t' my cabin. I'll wash up a bit and put on a pot o' tea."
Harry, Ron and Hermione thoroughly enjoyed their conversation with their oversized friend, at home and at ease in his familiar cabin. Ginny never developed as close a relationship with Hagrid and as a result sat quietly most of the time, feeling slightly uncomfortable and out-of-place as she sipped her tea.
"Why'd yeh bring that trophy here, Harry? Nothin' of Riddle's is interestin' t' me."
Hagrid of course had more of a beef with Tom Riddle than most, the future Lord Voldemort having framed the half-giant decades earlier for a crime that in fact Tom committed. Harry reached over to hold the trophy in his hands, reading the inscription.
"There's dark magic in this trophy, Hagrid. We can't say any more than that. Somehow we need to destroy it, but we're not sure how to go about it. What do you think?"
"What d' I think?" repeated Hagrid, surprised that anyone would request his opinion. He stood and took the trophy from Harry's hand and considered the options. "'Course yeh can always smash it, though it's kind o' a funny shape. Maybe some potion, but I wouldn' know 'bout that. Not sure I can help here, Harry. Only thing I know is that when I have to get rid o' somethin', I mean really get rid o' it, there's just one way. Fire."
The four-letter word slapped Harry across the face. Fire. Yes, that had to be it! He knew it. He felt it.
"You're right, Hagrid. I don't know why I didn't think of that before." Hagrid handed the trophy back to Harry when the young wizard held out his hand. He looked at the horcrux again, and a thin smile crept across his lips. "We'll burn it. We'll melt it."
"Yeh'd need a mighty strong fire t' melt that thing, Harry. Yer not gonna do that in a fireplace," Hagrid advised, pointing at his own fireplace, currently unused in the warm summer weather.
Ron stood up and moved next to Harry, examining the trophy as well, as if trying to determine how hot of a fire would be required.
"Where could we build a fire hot enough to melt a gold trophy," he asked, "I don't think Hogwarts has a smelter."
"That's because you've never read Hogwarts, A History," Hermione interjected with just a hint of her old "know-it-all" voice. Normally Harry and Ron would roll their eyes at mention of the sleep-inducing tome, but this time they turned to her with great interest. "Hogwarts has a large furnace which used to be used as a smelter to fashion iron weapons and tools. It hasn't been used in decades, but it's still here."
Harry set the trophy back on Hagrid's rough-hewn wooden table and calmly returned to his chair.
"I guess we know what we're doing tonight."