Chapter 25 – The Fifth Horcrux
Harry felt a little uneasy being in Knockturn Alley at night. It wasn't deserted as Hermione and Ron had said it would be; there were cloaked figures lurking ominously in the shadows. Signposts creaked above long-deserted buildings, and the air smelled oddly stale. The street was nothing at all like the well populated vicinity it had been on their last trip to the same location just before Christmas. The unwelcoming surroundings and the unshakable feeling that they were being watched from the shadows rendered both Ron and Hermione noticeably uncomfortable, but Harry, not feeling any abnormal activity around his scar, was not so visibly concerned. He led the way to Borgin and Burke's, his footsteps echoing loudly, intrusively, across the cobbled street. Upon reaching his destination he stopped and turned to face Ron and Hermione.
"Okay," he said. "Get us in." He made way for Hermione to approach the door. Whilst she performed the necessary silencing and secrecy charms, Ron stood back a little, checking for any alarms or intruder curses of the type he had been expecting. Meanwhile, Harry peered up and down the dark, dank alley. A part of him knew that some of the cloaked figures may be watching as three teenagers broke into a dark artefacts store at night, but the greater part of him was not at all disquieted by this – he was sure that he and his friends could take on any witch or wizard foolish enough to try and stop them.
"Come on, then," Ron hissed. Harry turned to see both of them waiting for him.
Hurrying forward, Harry slipped the knife that Lupin had given him for Christmas out of his pocket, and ran it smartly all the way down the small gap between the door and its frame. There was a soft click, and the faded wooden door swung slowly an inch or two inwards. "After you," Harry said. Reluctantly, Ron pushed the door fully open and silently crept into the deserted building, Hermione following close behind. With a last look over his shoulder, Harry entered the shop and cast colloportus, locking the door after him.
The air inside the shop was cool and clammy. Harry lowered his hood and cast his eyes around the shelves – it seemed as though Borgin and Burke's had been out of business for quite some time, judging by the empty displays and coating of dust thick on the cabinets.
"What now?" Hermione whispered.
"Find the Horcrux," Harry said simply.
Oblivious to the bewildered glances his friends exchanged, Harry set off walking slowly around the small room. He didn't know precisely what he was looking for, but was hoping he would just be able to tell, the same way he had been able to locate the shack where Malfoy had been hiding, the same way Dumbledore had been able to tell how to get into Riddle's cave. Hermione and Ron watched Harry silently as he made his way slowly around the shopfront. Finding nothing, Harry pushed open the door leading to the stockroom, which creaked loudly on its hinges, emitting a low screech that did nothing to ease the mounting tension. Harry walked twice around this smaller and completely empty room while Ron and Hermione watched silently from the doorway.
"It's here," Harry said suddenly, startling the others. "I can't see anything, though." Hermione joined Harry in gazing at an apparently solid stone wall, empty and unadorned with the exception of one or two spider webs, part broken and long since unoccupied. Ron stood on Harry's other side.
"Lumos," Ron muttered. Their eyes had grown so used to the darkness that the soft light issuing from Ron's wand dazzled them. He cast the light over the wall, ceiling and floorboards, revealing nothing but bare and grimy surfaces. Hermione drew her wand and aimed it at the wall.
"Revelio!" she cast. Nothing happened. In the ensuing silence, Harry could tell from Hermione's wand movements that she was non-verbally casting every spell she could think of that might help. After a couple of minutes she growled in frustration. "Nothing works!" she declared, tucking her wand away in defeat and scowling at the wall as though it had caused her personal injury by refusing to reveal the Horcrux. It occurred to Harry at this point that at least his friends were beginning to believe him without questioning his theories, which, as with Dumbledore's famed theories, did usually happen to be right. It was certainly a warming thought, and somehow strangely empowering, too.
At that moment, a sudden burst of inspiration hit Harry. He concentrated hard on the wall and hissed, "Open" in parseltongue. This was Lord Voldemort's puzzle, after all, and this shared ability of theirs had assisted Harry in thwarting Riddle on one occasion before. To his sheer delight, the stones trembled, and then several vanished altogether, leaving in their stead a stone archway, not unlike the entrance into Diagon Alley. Harry smiled grimly as he peered down the dark, narrow passage now visible in front of him. He took out his wand and it ignited of its own accord, quite as if it was by now so in tune with its owner that it no longer required instruction. "Come on, then," Harry said. "I've got a feeling this could take a while." He set off down the walkway with his wand before him, although it did little to penetrate to all-encompassing gloom. Hermione lit her wand, too, and headed after Harry, with Ron bringing up the rear.
"I hope there are no spiders in here," Ron said after a while, and Harry felt the corners of his mouth twitch.
"I think spiders are the least of our worries, Ron." Harry replied.
They walked on in silence for several long minutes. The narrow stone passage was sloping very gradually downhill. Harry held his wand out in front of him to illuminate his path, unable to see more than a metre or so in front of him through the inky blackness. Harry lost track of the amount of time that had passed since leaving the stockroom at Borgin and Burke's, but he became aware that his throat was dry from the silence he had maintained. He cleared his throat, startling Hermione.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No," Harry replied. "Do you know how long we've been walking now?"
"About forty minutes, I think," Hermione offered. Harry sighed – he'd known this would be a long journey.
"We must be far underground now," Ron said. No sooner had he finished speaking, Harry suddenly stopped, causing Hermione to walk into him and Ron to walk into her.
"Sorry," Harry apologised to them. "The walls have stopped." The walls either side of him that had been guiding Harry through the passage had indeed stopped, and the meagre glow from their wands wasn't sufficient light to see why. "It must be crossroads or something. Shield your eyes." Harry silently cast lumos maxima to better see what lay ahead. The bright light now illuminated a wide cavern. Harry cautiously stepped forward into the centre of the chamber, his footsteps echoing on the solid stone floor. He raised his wand above his head and observed his surroundings: several stone corridors, each similar to the one he had just left, led out from this central chamber. Another look allowed Harry to notice torches held in brackets on the walls. Harry lit them, and then put out his wand - the cavern wall was now alight with the soft, flickering glow of the torchlight.
"Bloody hell!" Ron exclaimed, his voice echoing eerily off the damp walls. "What is this place?" Harry didn't know, but it reminded him of two things: the circular room with lots of doors in the Department of Mysteries, and the many underground tunnels in Gringotts wizarding bank.
"Uitweg!" Harry and Ron turned to see Hermione with her wand aimed at the tunnel from the shop, with the word EXIT now gleaming like silver above the stone archway.
"Good thinking," Harry congratulated her.
"Now what?" Ron asked. Harry didn't have an answer: there were seven other passages to choose from, and he didn't know which to take.
"Either of you two have a preference?" Harry asked them. "'Cause I don't have a clue." Ron shrugged and shook his head. Hermione chewed her bottom lip. There was silence for a couple of seconds before Hermione then spoke.
"Then we should follow the breadcrumbs," she said.
"Follow the what?" Ron asked loudly, not having been privy to Muggle fairytales.
"Pick a path and leave ourselves a trail so we can retrace our steps if we come to a dead end," she explained. When Ron nodded his understanding, Hermione swooped her wand in a wide circle; this action had caused the tip of her wand to glow fluorescent yellow. She aimed it at the floor and walked over to join Harry and Ron in the centre of the chamber, leaving a luminous trail on the ground behind her.
"You're a genius," Ron said admiringly, more than usually impressed.
"I know," Hermione replied loftily, although Harry noticed that she couldn't help but glow with pride, all the same.
Harry looked around him, trying to decide which path to follow. He chose the one directly to the right, reasoning that it would be sensible to at least try them in some sort of order. "This way," he said, and the three of them set off along another narrow tunnel; Harry and Ron with their lit wands aloft, and Hermione with hers pointed downwards, leaving a glowing trail behind them.
These tunnels were shorter than the first, and after about only five minutes of walking Harry stopped dead in his tracks. "What is it?" Hermione whispered from behind him.
"Nothing," Harry replied simply. "Just a dead end."
"How can you be sure it's not a trick wall or something?" Ron asked, thinking of all the secret passageways at Hogwarts, not to mention the deceptive wall that had revealed the original tunnel from Borgin and Burke's.
"I can just tell," Harry replied. The shivering sensation down his spine he had come to associate with magic, and the prickling in his scare that occurred whenever a Horcrux was nearby were good enough guides for Harry to know when to stop searching. "Turn around," he told them. "There's nothing here. Let's try another one."
One by one they tried each of the passages, Hermione leaving a trail so they know where they'd been. After five dead ends, two of which had caved in, Ron was becoming a little frustrated. "Are you absolutely positive that there's nothing behind any of those walls?" he asked again.
"Yes," Harry snapped at him, not voicing his own growing concern that he had been mistaken. "I just know that we're …" But what they were, Harry didn't say. He'd trailed off mid-sentence and now stood absolutely still.
"Wha-" Ron began, but Harry raised his hand for silence.
"Can you hear that?" Harry whispered.
Ron and Hermione remained silent, straining to hear any sound other than their own shallow breathing. After a moment or two, Hermione looked sharply up at Harry. "Hissing," she whispered. "Sounds like snakes." Despite the terrified look on Hermione's face, Harry almost smiled. If serpents were all that stood between them and the Horcrux then this was going to be a piece of cake. "Be careful, Harry," Hermione warned, as if reading his mind.
"I will," Harry replied, as he continued down the dark, damp corridor.
It wasn't long before there was an unnatural, ghostly light issuing from the end of the tunnel. Harry slowed his steps, moving more cautiously as the passage widened, finally opening up into a large stone chamber, easily the size of the entire of Harry's aunt and uncle's house. The whole space was alight with an eerie greenish glow, for which the source was not evident, and the sounds of hissing and slithering echoed off the high, rough stone walls. Searching for the source of the noise, Harry took several small steps into the chamber. He soon realized that the light emitted by his wand was not assisting him any, and he looked down to realize it had promptly extinguished itself, again without conscious command.
"What's in there? What can you see?" Ron called from the doorway.
Harry turned his head back to see Ron and Hermione both stood at the end of the tunnel, as if afraid to come any further. "Nothing yet," he told them. A couple more steps revealed something, though: in the very center of the room was an exceptionally deep pit. Harry carefully approached it. Standing about two feet from its crumbling edge, Harry peered into the crevice, and the location of the hundreds of hissing invertebrates was no longer a mystery. It was a good protective strategy, Harry mused. After all, in ordinary circumstances there would be no way he'd be hanging around a snake pit. Yet as it was, Harry was convinced that the Horcrux had to be in there somewhere. It was, in a way, utterly predictable for the Heir of Slytherin to use snakes as protection for his prized possessions. Unfortunately, Lord Voldemort had apparently not reckoned on whoever would come to find this Horcrux being a parselmouth.
"I've found the snakes," Harry called over to Ron and Hermione. "It's safe, come one over." He remained stationary, looking down into the sea of writhing scaly bodies as his friends approached. Hermione shivered involuntarily.
"How revolting," she said.
"They're not revolting," Harry protested, almost fondly. "Just misunderstood."
"Sounds like something Hagrid would say," Ron muttered to Hermione, so that Harry wouldn't hear. He needn't have lowered his voice, though; Harry had crouched down by the edge of the hollow and was speaking rapidly – at least that's what Ron assumed was happening, because he couldn't comprehend the series of hisses and spitting now issuing from his friend's mouth.
"It's sort of impressive, isn't it?" Hermione whispered, watching Harry with a mixture of awe and distaste.
Ron frowned. "Or just creepy," he said, eyeing Harry warily. "Just hope he's getting somewhere."
When Harry returned to his friends, he was grinning. "Sounds easy enough," he told them. "There's a bridge over the snakes, but it's totally invisible. So all you have to do is walk over the bridge and then a platform appears when you get to the middle. I'm assuming that's where the Horcrux is."
"On a platform by a bridge over a pit of snakes?" Ron summarised scathingly. Harry nodded. "Only a Slytherin would think that up." Hermione frowned, but Harry just chuckled in vaguely amused agreement.
"The Heir of Slytherin, no less," he reminded them. "Right, then. I'll go, shall I?" With a wink, Harry went back to the rim, and experimentally tried placing his foot over the edge. For a while he hit nothing but air, until, a short way around the side of the hole, he stepped on what could only be described as solid nothingness. "Found the bridge," Harry said. It felt like stone beneath his feet, and if Harry didn't look down, he could almost convince himself he was walking along a solid pavement, maybe in Diagon Alley, the street now perhaps a mile above them. Hesitant step after hesitant step, Harry progressed his way slowly across the overpass, climbing steadily up towards the dark ceiling of the chamber. On the ground below, Hermione had covered her face in her hands and was watching Harry ascend thin air through the gaps between her fingers. Ron, on the other hand, was watching the pit below Harry, in case something unexpected should happen there.
After several long minutes (although it felt like hours), Harry stood at the top of the bridge, directly over the centre of the abyss, and a good fourteen feet above his friends. "Now what?" he muttered to himself. He felt around him for any evidence of some platform, or any other object for that matter, but none came to him. "Reveal yourself," he said in parseltongue – after all, it had worked for every other obstacle so far. Sure enough, not far from where Harry was standing, a shimmering plateau materialised, and on it was the goblet for which Harry, Ron and Hermione had been so fruitlessly searching for several months.
"Harry! It's the cup!" Hermione called up to him.
"I can see that," Harry replied. But it was too easy – all he had to do was reach out and grab it. It just couldn't be that simple. "Accio Horcrux," Harry tried, but nothing happened. He stored his wand safely in his travelling clock pocket, and retrieved instead the pair of shield gloves he'd received from Fred and George for Christmas. Slipping the silk gloves onto his hands, Harry made sure of his footing, and then reached out towards the goblet. The air around it was sort of stiff, and reaching through it felt like pushing two repelling magnets together. Harry guessed that some charm was in place but the gloves had nullified it; he made a mental note to thank the Weasley twins more profusely when he next saw them.
Eventually, Harry's fingers touched the elaborate looped handle of the golden goblet. At that exact moment, several things happened all at once. The glove on Harry's hand burst into flame, and in the same second the invisible bridge beneath him disintegrated; Harry plummeted rapidly towards the snakes below, unable to prevent himself. Hermione screamed, and Harry thought he saw his life flash before him when suddenly he stopped moving, and was hanging upside down in mid air, suspended by his ankle.
"Hermione told you to be careful," Ron scolded, as he moved his wand gently, guiding Harry back to solid ground. "You did get the cup, right?"
"Yeah, I got it," Harry said. He had clenched the relic tightly in his hand, doing his best to ignore the flaming fabric of the shield glove, now burned and melted onto his skin.
Hermione hurried to take the Horcrux from Harry. "Oh Harry, your hand," she exclaimed, noticing his injury even while she placed the Hufflepuff Horcrux carefully and safely within her robes.
"It's okay," Harry lied. Where the silk glove had charred completely, Harry's exposed skin had begun to blister. Even the smallest wriggle of his fingers was excruciating. "Nothing that can't be fixed," he said confidently.
"I'm not sure the gloves were supposed to stand up to You-Know-Who's curses, Harry," Ron said, grinning, as he turned to leave.
"Well they did their job," Harry said, leaving the other glove where it was on his other hand, as the effort required to remove it would be too painful. "Hang on," he said suddenly, and ran back to the snakes. Hermione and Ron exchanged bewildered looks before Harry came sprinting back to them. "Er, I'm going to find them all homes in the countryside when we've killed Riddle," he said, his cheeks colouring quite dramatically. He hurried ahead of the other two, his wand igniting as he stepped back into the tunnel. Hermione smiled, barely stifling a laugh. Ron followed behind them, shaking his head in wonder, and muttering something that sounded oddly similar to 'nutter'.