The Cave

Disclaimer: I'm not Rowling.

'Kat, you're sure you want to come?' said Harry climbing out of the portrait hole hurriedly.

'Harry please don't ask me again if I want to come or not!' said Kitty.

Dumbledore was waiting beside the oaken front doors. He turned as Harry and Kitty came skidding out on to the topmost stone step, panting hard.

'I would like you both to wear your Cloak, please,' said Dumbledore, and he waited until Harry had thrown it on over the two of them before saying, 'Very good. Shall we go?'

Dumbledore set off at once down the stone steps, his own travelling cloak barely stirring in the still summer air. Harry and Kitty hurried alongside him under the Invisibility Cloak, still panting and sweating rather a lot.

'But what will people think when they see you leaving, Professor?' Harry asked, his mind on Malfoy and Snape.

'That I am off into Hogsmeade for a drink,' said Dumbledore lightly. 'I sometimes offer Rosmerta my custom, or else visit the Hog's Head ... or I appear to. It is as good a way as any of disguising one's true destination.'

They made their way down the drive in the gathering twilight. The air was full of the smells of warm grass, lake water and wood smoke from Hagrid's cabin. It was difficult to believe that they were heading for anything dangerous or frightening.

'Professor,' said Harry quietly, as the gates at the bottom of the drive came into view, 'will we be Apparating?'

'Yes,' said Dumbledore.

They turned out of the gates into the twilit, deserted lane to Hogsmeade. Darkness descended fast as they walked and by the time they reached the High Street night was falling in earnest. Lights twinkled from windows over shops and as they neared the Three Broomsticks they heard raucous shouting.

'-and stay out!' shouted Madam Rosmerta, forcibly ejecting a grubby-looking wizard. 'Oh, hello, Albus ... you're out late ...'

'Good evening, Rosmerta, good evening ... forgive me, I'm off to the Hog's Head ... no offence, but I feel like a quieter atmosphere tonight...'

A minute later they turned the corner into the side street where the Hog's Head's sign creaked a little, though there was no breeze. In contrast to the Three Broomsticks, the pub appeared to be completely empty.

'It will not be necessary for us to enter,' muttered Dumbledore, glancing around. 'As long as nobody sees us go ... now place your hand upon my arm, both of you. On the count of three-one ... two ... three ...'

Kitty turned. At once, there was that horrible sensation that she was being squeezed through a thick rubber tube; she could not draw breath, every part of her was being compressed almost past endurance and then, just when she thought she must suffocate, the invisible bands seemed to burst open, and she was standing in cool darkness, breathing in lungfuls of fresh, salty air.

Kitty could smell salt and hear rushing waves; a light, chilly breeze ruffled her hair as she looked out at moonlit sea and star-strewn sky. They were standing upon a high outcrop of dark rock, water foaming and churning below them. She glanced over her shoulder. A towering cliff stood behind them, a sheer drop, black and faceless. A few large chunks of rock, such as the one upon which Harry, Kitty and Dumbledore were standing, looked as though they had broken away from the cliff face at some point in the past. It was a bleak, harsh view, the sea and the rock unrelieved by any tree or sweep of grass or sand.

'What do you think?' asked Dumbledore.

'They brought the kids from the orphanage here?' asked Harry, who could not imagine a less cozy spot for a day trip.

'Not here, precisely,' said Dumbledore. 'There is a village of sorts about halfway along the cliffs behind us. I believe the orphans were taken there for a little sea air and a view of the waves. No, I think it was only ever Tom Riddle and his youthful victims who visited this spot. No Muggle could reach this rock unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers, and boats cannot approach the cliffs, the waters around them are too dangerous. I imagine that Riddle climbed down; magic would have served better than ropes. And he brought two small children with him, probably for the pleasure of terrorizing them. I think the journey alone would have done it, don't you?'

Kitty looked up at the cliff again and felt goose bumps.

'But his final destination-and ours-lies a little farther on. Come.'

Dumbledore beckoned Harry and Kitty to the very edge of the rock where a series of jagged niches made footholds leading down to boulders that lay half-submerged in water and closer to the cliff. It was a treacherous descent and Dumbledore, hampered slightly by his withered hand, moved slowly. The lower rocks were slippery with seawater.

'Lumos,' said Dumbledore, as he reached the boulder closest to the cliff face. 'You see?' said Dumbledore quietly, holding his wand a little higher. Kitty saw a fissure in the cliff into which dark water was swirling.

'You will not object to getting a little wet?'

'No,' said Harry and Kitty.

'Then take off your Invisibility Cloak-there is no need for it now-and let us take the plunge.'

And with the sudden agility of a much younger man, Dumbledore slid from the boulder, landed in the sea, and began to swim, with a perfect breaststroke, toward the dark slit in the rock face, his lit wand held in his teeth. Harry and Kitty pulled off his cloak and followed.

The water was icy; Kitty's waterlogged clothes billowed around her and weighed her down. Taking deep breaths that filled her nostrils with the tang of salt and seaweed, she struck out for the shimmering, shrinking light now moving deeper into the cliff. The fissure soon opened into a dark tunnel that Kitty could tell would be filled with water at high tide. The slimy walls were barely three feet apart and glimmered like wet tar in the passing light of Dumbledore's wand. A little way in, the passageway curved to the left, and Kitty saw that it extended far into the cliff. She continued to swim in Dumbledore's wake, the tips of her benumbed fingers brushing the rough, wet rock.

Then she saw Dumbledore rising out of the water ahead, his silver hair and dark robes gleaming. When Kitty reached the spot she found steps that led into a large cave. She clambered up them, water streaming from her soaking clothes, and emerged, shivering uncontrollably, into the still and freezing air.

Dumbledore was standing in the middle of the cave, his wand held high as he turned slowly on the spot, examining the walls and ceiling.

'Yes, this is the place,' said Dumbledore.

'How can you tell?' Harry spoke in a whisper.

'It has known magic,' said Dumbledore simply. 'This is merely the antechamber, the entrance hall. We need to penetrate the inner place... now it is Lord Voldemort's obstacles that stand in our way, rather than those nature made...'

Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave and caressed it with his blackened fingertips, murmuring words in a strange tongue that Kitty did not understand. Twice Dumbledore walked right around the cave, touching as much of the rough rock as he could, occasionally pausing, running his fingers backward and forward over a particular spot, until finally he stopped, his hand pressed flat against the wall.

'Here,' he said. 'We go on through here. The entrance is concealed.'

Kitty pointed her wand at her wet clothes and muttered a spell. Her clothes became warm and dry as though they had been hanging in front of a blazing fire. Kitty did the same thing with Harry's clothes.

'Thanks, Kat,' said Harry gratefully, 'it was worthwhile bringing you. I have never yet mastered that charm.'

Dumbledore stood there staring at the cave wall intently, as though something extremely interesting was written on it. Then, after two solid minutes, Dumbledore said quietly, 'Oh, surely not. So crude.'

'What is it, Professor?'

'I rather think,' said Dumbledore, putting his uninjured hand inside his robes and drawing out a short silver knife of the kind Kitty used to chop potion ingredients, 'that we are required to make payment to pass.'

'Payment?' said Harry. 'You've got to give the door something?'

'Yes,' said Dumbledore. 'Blood, if I am not much mistaken.'

'Blood?' Kitty whimpered.

'I said it was crude,' said Dumbledore, who sounded disdainful, even disappointed, as though Voldemort had fallen short of higher standards Dumbledore expected. 'The idea, as I am sure you will have gathered, is that your enemy must weaken him- or herself to enter. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury.'

'Yeah, but still, if you can avoid it...' said Harry, who had experienced enough pain not to be keen for more.

'Sometimes, however, it is unavoidable,' said Dumbledore, shaking back the sleeve of his robes and exposing the forearm of his injured hand.

'Professor!' protested Harry, hurrying forward as Dumbledore raised his knife. 'I'll do it, I'm –'

He did not know what he was going to say-younger, fitter? But Dumbledore merely smiled. There was a flash of silver, and a spurt of scarlet; the rock face was peppered with dark, glistening drops.

'You are very kind, Harry,' said Dumbledore, now passing the tip of his wand over the deep cut he had made in his own arm, so that it healed instantly, just as Snape had healed Malfoy's wound, 'But your blood is worth more than mine. Ah, that seems to have done the trick, doesn't it?'

The blazing silver outline of an arch had appeared in the wall once more, and this time it did not fade away: the blood-spattered rock within it simply vanished, leaving an opening into what seemed total darkness.

'After me, I think,' said Dumbledore, and he walked through the archway with Harry and Kitty on his heels, lighting their own wands hastily as they went.

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