Harry was still reeling from what he just realized, but he knew he must not waste any time. He flew down to retrieve her dropped wand. Then he flew back through the open window of the Gryffindor boys' dormitory.

He shook Ron awake. Ron's eyelids fluttered.

"Wha- Harry? What's going on? Why've you got your Firebolt out? Is there a match today?"

"Maldora Lestrange was here, Ron!"

Ron struggled to sit up. "What?"

"She took your broom."

"What?" Ron was still unable to grasp what Harry was trying to say.

"She was here, in the Quidditch stadium! But Ron- she's not Maldora Lestrange!"

"But you just said-"

"Yes, but I didn't mean that she wasn't her, I meant that she was her and someone else, but I can't explain!" Harry threw down his Firebolt on Ron's bed and ran out of the dormitory.

He headed straight for the girls' room and pounded on the door. "Hermione! Hermione!"

The door opened, and Hermione in her white dressing-gown looked at him blearily. Behind her Harry could see Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil sitting up in bed, rubbing their eyes, and two cats, Crookshanks and Tigris, came and rubbed at Hermione's shins. "Harry, what is it?"

"Maldora Lestrange came to Hogwarts and took Ron's broom."

Hermione started. "I beg your pardon?"

"Maldora Lestrange! Hermione, we have to tell Professor Figg! Where's her room?"

"Oh- Harry, I don't know! But Professor McGonagall-she would know!"

Hermione rushed down the stairs and through the common room, with Harry close behind. They pushed out through the portrait hole into the corridor, where Hermione ducked behind a heavy tapestry hanging beside the sleeping Fat Lady. Harry followed her in, and found himself in a small stone chamber, longer than it was wide, with four identical portraits of a beautiful slumbering Roman goddess in full armour, holding a lance. Hermione went to the picture on the farthest left and shouted at the goddess, who awoke with a start.

"I want to see Professor McGonagall," Hermione said. "It's urgent!"

The portrait swung out and the head of Gryffindor in her tartan nightdress was glaring at them. "Do you know what time it is? What do you want?"

"Maldora Lestrange was here," Harry said. He did not know whether Professor McGonagall knew Maldora's real identity. "I have to talk to Professor Figg!"

For a moment Minerva McGonagall blanched and looked as if she was about to faint. Harry and Hermione sprang forward, but she grasped the portrait- hole frame to steady herself. She whispered, "Here? Her?" She faltered. "But that's impossible!"

"I saw her myself," Harry insisted. "I want to talk to Professor Figg!"

Professor McGonagall slowly recovered. "Miss Granger, please return to the Gryffindor common room. If anyone asks you what is going on, tell them nothing! Tell them to go back to bed. Go on, Miss Granger, if you please." Hermione rushed out. Professor McGonagall turned to one of the Roman goddesses in the portraits, who by now were all awake and alert. "One of you must run up to the Headmaster's room and wake him. Tell him Maldora Lestrange dropped by and met Harry Potter. Tell him also that I will be with Arabella Figg." The goddess on the far right scurried out of the frame, armour clinking. "Harry-this way. We will see Professor Figg."

They hurried through the cold, empty halls, Professor McGonagall's hand tight on Harry's shoulder, pushing him ahead.

"You know who Maldora Lestrange really is, don't you?" Harry asked.

The grip on his shoulder tensed. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You and Professor Figg are old friends, if she told anyone it would be you," Harry pressed. He remembered the stray cat that had occasionally visited Mrs. Figg's house during the summer. "Minnie?"

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. "All right, Potter, Minnie the cat was me. And I know that Maldora Lestrange is Arabella Figg's disowned daughter. But how did you know?"

"I figured it out on my own," Harry said.

"Solange was such a beautiful little girl," Professor McGonagall whispered, half to herself. "What went wrong?" Then she would not speak anymore.

They ran up two flights of stairs and found a dead end at the top of the steps. On the wall in front of them was a large painting of a set of glass beakers and containers, each holding an amount of liquid. Professor McGonagall drew out her wand and tapped on a beaker of purple liquid. Harry heard the glass chime clearly inside a chamber behind the painting.

"Bella!" Professor McGonagall called urgently. "Bella, you've got to wake up!"

"Minerva?" said Professor Figg sleepily from behind the painting.

"Bella, I'm coming in. Solange was here."

"What?" Professor Figg suddenly sounded panicked. "What did you say?"

"I'm coming in," repeated Professor McGonagall. She traced the outline of a beaker of orange liquid with the tip of her wand, and it popped out of the picture as a doorknob. Professor McGonagall turned the knob and the painting swung open to admit them both to Arabella Figg's living quarters.

It was a simple rectangular room, not very big but warm and cozy, and furnished much more elegantly than her home in Little Whinging. The walls were walnut panelled and decorated with large wizard photographs, whose subjects presently stirred from sleep and asked people in other pictures what the ruckus was all about. A lavish chandelier descended from the ceiling, and moonlight from the large windows on the long wall winked in each crystal. Along the wall, under the windows, were five empty pillow- lined baskets, cat beds. Loyola, an aging grey cat, sat atop a bookcase, watching them silently.

Arabella Figg was sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed. She had thrown the covers back and she was pulling on the pink slippers which matched her pink dressing-gown.

"She was here?" Professor Figg said to Professor McGonagall as she struggled to her feet, white-faced. "You saw her?"

"Potter saw her," Professor McGonagall said, pulling him forward. "And he knows she's Solange."

"Did she tell you?" Professor Figg asked him fretfully. "Did she say Solange was her name?"

"No, she said she was Maldora Lestrange. When I called her Solange she said 'No' and flew away."

Professor Figg turned away and leaned against the bedpost. "So now you know," she said softly. "Arabella Figg, Auror extraodinaire, lost my own daughter to the dark side. If anyone found out-the press, the Ministry, the magical community-I'd be ruined!" She put her face in her hands. "I brought that vile wretch into the world. It's my fault."

"It's not your fault," Professor McGonagall said, touching her shoulder. "You can't blame yourself."

"Minerva's right, Bella," said Dumbledore, stepping through the painting doorway. "She chose her own path."

Professor Figg shook her head sadly. "Oh, Albus. But we must hear Potter's story now. Potter, tell us what happened."

Harry told her about being woken up by Tibbles and seeing a witch tiptoeing across the lawn into the broom shed, and witnessing the theft of the Feather-Light broom. Professor Figg said nothing as he recounted the particulars of the midair battle, but she was interested when he said that Maldora had dropped her wand. She took both wands and examined them closely. At length she looked to Dumbledore, frowning.

"It's not the same wand she used to have. It couldn't be, of course, I burned that one myself soon after her imprisonment. This is a brand-new wand. Fortunately it's completely different from Potter's."

"What are you saying?" said Professor McGonagall.

"Well, Potter's wand is from Ollivander's, and Maldora's is from Gregorovitch. Thankfully Ollivander hasn't gone back to the other side, but now they've somehow got that Gregorovitch supplying the escaped Death Eaters with wands."

Dumbledore inspected the two wands together. "Bella is right. In the morning I'll place Phoenixes in Gregorovitch's town and organize a raid. He may have clues or information on the fugitives' whereabouts." Dumbledore looked grim.

"Potter, in which direction did she leave?" Professor Figg asked.

Harry thought hard. "West, I think. West is the shortest distance to the end of Hogwarts property, so she could get out of the grounds fastest going west and Apparate anywhere else."

"Good, Potter, good," Professor Figg said approvingly. Then she frowned. "Wait a minute. Potter, and this is very important, so think hard: which way did Maldora come from?"

Harry mentally replayed Maldora's movements, observed from his window. "I can't remember." Then his stomach lurched when he grasped her suspicion. "She had her back to me when she was walking across the lawn. I guess she came from the school."

There was a silence; and then Professor McGonagall said, "But that's impossible! Wouldn't we have been alerted if she tried to enter the castle?"

"Perhaps she found an alternate route," Dumbledore said.

"What if someone let her in?" Harry said. He meant Snape, but didn't think it wise to say the name in front of the three teachers. But Dumbledore cast him a swift look with his piercing blue eyes.

"No one let her in, Harry," he said. "It's possible she wasn't inside the school at all. Unless you distinctly saw her opening a door and stepping out, we have no proof that she hadn't just been near the castle and walked away when you saw her."

Professor Figg sighed. "I have a lot of work ahead of me. You three had better go. Potter, back to bed. I promise you she won't be back today. Minerva, you should go to bed as well. I'll wake you if I figure anything out. And Albus." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "Well, it's early morning in Gregorovitch's neck of the woods, if you want to have a talk with him."

"Quite right," Dumbledore said, checking his gold pocket watch against the wall clock. "Come along Minerva, Harry. Bella, you won't sleep, not even a few hours? I'll keep watch."

"I'd rather deal with this now," Professor Figg said. Harry had never seen her with this grim determination on her face. Gone was the sarcastic, dryly amused Arabella Figg who joked with her students and threw surprise birthday parties; here was an aged and weary witch who was being forced to work at 2 a.m. to catch an old rival - her own progeny. She caught him looking at her then, and suddenly smiled sadly at him. "I'll get her," she assured him; leaving unsaid, "before she gets me."