Chapter 4: The Glove
"How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty.
"Harry, why do you think you were able to see the goblet when we were in that room?" Hermione asked, referencing the strange episode in Godric's Hollow.
"No idea," Harry answered honestly, then he winced. He, Ron, and Hermione were sitting safely back in the Lion's Den, applying healing balm that stung as it cleaned their wounds and sealed them. Harry had just reached a particularly nasty bite. Hermione and Ron had taken the worst damage. Harry's stomach turned as he remembered their cries of pain as he dug up Hufflepuff's Goblet, which now sat on the small table in the living room. He glared at the gleaming, bejeweled cup, blaming the object for the pain he and his friends suffered for it.
"I had just been hearing and seeing parts of those dreams again, of the night when my parents died, and next thing I knew I was seeing those images of the house and the goblet," Harry said with a shrug.
"You said in fourth year that your parents had appeared and guarded you from Voldemort, when your wands connected," Ron offered.
"Priori Incantatem," Hermione added. "Do you think it might've been something like that, Harry? Did you get the sense of someone telling you where the goblet was?"
"Maybe," Harry said, his brow furrowed as he tried to recall the odd event. "I can't really remember." Hermione seemed to want to remain focused on the subject beyond that, but Ron's attention moved to the goblet.
"So what do we do with it?" He asked himself as much as the other two, "How do we destroy it?"
"Carefully," Hermione answered darkly. "Unless we want our hands to look like Dumbledore's did, after he destroyed the ring." The three friends let a silence pass between them as they thought of Dumbledore. Their three pairs of eyes stung with tears that never fell. Soon, the silence was broken, and they started listing possible spells and curses to use on the goblet. Eventually, Hermione thought of a fitting potion.
"It's similar to the Aging Potion Fred and George tried in fourth year," she said, carrying a particularly thick potions book over to the table and flipping through its pages until she reached a picture of a wizard pouring a thick, silvery liquid into a vat of fresh wine and serving it to his friends. "The difference is it doesn't work on anything living. It will age metal to a brittle rust, quickly age wine, turn new furniture into antique furniture—"
"And decompose a goblet made of sealed wood and jewels?" Harry asked. Hermione nodded and touched a paragraph in the middle of the page.
"A variation meant specifically for sealed wood," she pointed out. "It says here it takes about twenty-four hours to essentially disintegrate the wood, like common rot. As for the jewels, we can immerse them in a mineral dissolving solution if necessary. Destroying the wooden body of the goblet should be enough."
Hermione spent the rest of that day brewing the potion in a small cauldron on the kitchen stove, while Harry and Ron turned their attention to the next Horcruxes. "We know his snake, Nagini, is one," Harry said, studying their mission wall. "She should be saved for last, though. She'll probably be the most difficult one to reach, being Voldemort's pet. It'll also leave no mystery left to him about what we're doing. He still doesn't know anyone knows about the Horcruxes. We should keep it that way as long as possible."
"The other one is something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's?" Ron asked to confirm. Harry nodded.
"Most likely Ravenclaw's," Harry said. "We know Gryffindor's sword is safe. Dumbledore guarded it before, and now I have it." Ron raised a messy red eyebrow. Harry gestured to his bottomless bag. He got up and pulled out the old sorting hat that Fawkes had brought to him in the Chamber of Secrets, reached inside, he slowly drew out Godric Gryffindor's sword. "No one else knew the importance of guarding it," Harry explained. "I took the hat from Dumbledore's office before the school closed, so I could draw the sword through it." He handed the sword to Ron, who was gaping at it in awe. Hermione, too, left her cauldron to come see it herself. She ran her finger lightly across the inscription of Gryffindor's name and her eyes widened.
"Harry, I have to get back to the potion," she said, "but pull Hogwarts: A History out of my bag. I think I know what the Horcrux is!" Harry didn't need telling twice. As Hermione went back to her potion, he tackled her bag in his eagerness to find the answer, leaving Ron to further examine the sword. He pulled the book in question out of Hermione's bag and laughed when he saw the wear on its pages and binding.
"Hermione, how many times have you read this?"He asked incredulously.
"A few," Hermione quipped.
"A few hundred?" Ron mouthed to Harry, making him laugh again. Hermione didn't seem to notice.
"Chapter fifteen," she told Harry, and both boys bit back more laughter at her detailed familiarity with the book. Harry opened the book to the chapter she indicated: Pieces of Hogwarts History: Items that Immortalized the Founders. Harry scanned the contents of the chapter hungrily. The chapter described Gryffindor's sword, Hufflepuff's goblet, Slytherin's locket, and…
"Ravenclaw's glove," Harry read aloud, "often referred to as her spell bending glove for its enchanted capacity to manipulate pre-existing bewitchments, and its ability to alter active spells, even as they first issue from a given wand." It happened again. Harry's body tensed and the world around him blurred. He could hear a familiar voice in his head, telling him it was right. The glove was the Horcrux. He blinked when he realized Ron's hands were on his arms, shaking him lightly.
"It happened again?" Hermione asked anxiously as Ron released Harry and stepped back from him.
"Yeah," Harry answered, more shakily than intended. "There was definitely a voice this time. The voice told me the glove is the Horcrux, but I didn't see anything this time."
There was a violent rattling noise. Hermione jumped and sped back to the potion that was rapidly boiling and giving off a silvery light. Harry followed her into the kitchen, carrying Hogwarts: A History under his arm. Ron followed him, carrying Gryffindor's sword. "It's ready," she said, drawing her wand. "Accio goblet." Hufflepuff's goblet soared off the table and landed lightly in the sink beside Hermione. She lifted the cauldron carefully and poured the potion inside the goblet. She immediately used a Cleansing Charm on the cauldron and put a Shield Charm on the surfaces near the goblet so the potion could harm nothing else. Only then did she turn back to Harry, looking a little harassed.
"I read in an update of that book that Ravenclaw's glove disappeared twice," she said.
"Twice?" Ron prodded.
"Once, during the time when Voldemort was a seventh-year at Hogwarts," she said. "Probably when he took it and made it a Horcrux. A group of aurors found it and returned it to Hogwarts. A few years after Voldemort graduated, it was stolen again. That time, they knew the culprit. It was Canis Black. He was Sirius' great uncle, and a Squib."
"A Squib?" Ron asked, "But why would a Squib—"
"To keep up with his family," Harry answered Ron's unfinished question. "As prejudiced as most of the Black family is, and was then, he would want to use the glove to have the power he was born without. Then he would be able to keep up with his family's standards." Hermione nodded.
"He was caught, but he never gave up the location of the glove," she said. "He killed one wizard that came close to finding and taking it, and he was sent to Azkaban. He was there until he died, rather suddenly, in his late sixties. The glove was never found, but it was reported that strange things happened while he was in Azkaban. The dementors didn't seem to affect him, inspectors would come to find the bars of his cell bent and twisted…" Hermione trailed off as realization hit her, Harry, and Ron like an angry hippogriff.
"He took the glove with him into Azkaban," Harry said what they were all thinking. Ron stared out the window next to them, down the road, in the direction of the wooden door they had seen in the ground between two houses. The underground labyrinth that led to Azkaban prison. Harry remembered the maze from the Triwizard Tournament with a shudder. He dreaded the thought of reliving it, this time with Ron and Hermione beside him.
The trio timed their movements carefully. They left the Lion's Den shortly before the night guards left for their shift. They waited by the door to the tunnel for more guards to come, invisible under Disillusionment Charms that Hermione had cast on them. They were risking being caught, but they wanted to attempt to follow the guards through the maze, to avoid getting lost or running into any unnecessary danger.
Soon, five tall men and one shorter woman, all dressed in what looked like charcoal gray quidditch robes approached. Harry, Ron, and Hermione edged out of the way, careful not to disturb anything on the ground that a trained eye might notice, staying as close to the door as they could. The guards scanned the area before opening the wooden door and filing inside. The trio jumped in behind the guards, before they could close the door on them, and Hermione's hand flew up to her mouth to prevent her gasp of shock.
Entire stone walls were disappearing and reappearing in different places, in random order. What would've appeared to be normal stone tiles rose and fell in clusters, and ghosts—no—faceless, bodiless souls swam like patches of fog through the air. Harry's stomach plummeted sickeningly when he realized they had to be the souls of prisoners that the dementors had sucked out during their time as Azkaban's guards.
Harry realized the guards they had followed in were moving forward into the maze and gently pressed his fingers into Hermione's back to move her forward. She was still frozen, stunned by the spectacle before them. The three moved forward as fast as they could while keeping their steps as quiet as possible. While they recognized how dangerous the journey through the maze could be, taken alone and not knowing the correct route, they were relieved to be passing through without incident, behind the guards. They took mental notes of their path so they could find their way back through with as much ease.
About an hour after they entered the tunnel, they turned down one last metal tunnel that hummed with the sound of the water moving outside of it. At the end of that tunnel was another rock wall with a thick iron door. The guards pushed it open, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione leapt out behind them into a blast of cold, salty ocean air. They stood still for a tense moment, staring at the tall prison tower, as they waited for the guards to turn and walk away from them and proceed toward a smaller building to the right, where they would meet the leaving team of guards for a status report.
Harry waited until the guards were out of sight to dispel the Disillusionment Charms on himself and his friends, and they ran as fast as they could toward Azkaban, before the new guards could follow them. They plunged through the main doors and through the temporarily vacant reception room, into the stairwell that went up through the several floors of cellblocks. Hermione had remembered reading that Canis Black had been kept on the topmost floor, so they climbed up the stairwell quickly. They stepped through the doors at the top of the stairs and halted abruptly.
The eleven Death Eaters that had been caught attacking them, Neville, Ginny, and Luna, in the Department of Mysteries were staring at them through the bars of their cells. At first the Death Eaters gaped at them in equal surprise, then their faces contorted with rage. Eleven wizards crashed into the bars of their cells, shouting a resounding blur of insults and threats at the three teenagers they blamed above all else for their imprisonment.
At the first lull in the noise, Hermione strode forward and thrust her fist through the bars, punching Dolohov in the face. Dolohov and his cellmate, Jugson, growled in anger and launched themselves at Hermione, their arms twisting through the bars, trying to reach her. Harry and Ron rushed to Hermione's side, but she only took a single step back, unmoved by their attempts. She drew her wand and aimed it at Dolohov.
"A fist in the face is the least I owe you," she said coldly. "You can save yourself from worse by pointing us to Canis Black's old cell." Dolohov stared at her with a calculating expression on his face. Jugson tried to grab one of the three teens again, but Harry caught his wrist and twisted it around hard. Jugson wrenched his arm from Harry's grip and pulled it back inside the cell, where it remained. Hermione stepped forward again, keeping her wand at the level of Dolohov's chest, and Harry picked up the cue to play along.
"You'd better answer her, Dolohov," he said. "She's not one to hold back."
"Used her first Avada Kedavra yesterday with brilliant results," Ron pushed further. Dolohov and all the other Death Eaters laughed.
BANG!
Dolohov collided hard with the back wall of his and Jugson's cell, crashing through the flimsy bunk beds and shattering them. There was a long, shallow cut across his chest and a smaller one across his pockmarked nose. Hermione moved disinterestedly to the next cell over and glared at its occupants: Macnair and Rodolphus Lestrange. She aimed her wand at Rodolphus. "Which cell was Canis Black's?" She repeated.
Rodolphus glanced over at Dolohov before he turned his cold stare back on Hermione. "Why do you care anyway, Mudblood?" He growled at her, barely restraining himself from making a grab at her, knowing that would only provoke her two companions into sharing in her uncharacteristic recklessness. Looking around, Harry and Ron could tell some of the Death Eaters found it impressive, not that they would ever admit it. Hermione exchanged a glance with Harry.
"Just something we need of his so we can kill Voldemort."
The Death Eaters roared their disapproval, but amid the noise, Harry, Ron, and Hermione watched their eyes. Several of them briefly glanced over at an empty cell between the cells that housed Malfoy and Rabastan, and Nott and Rookwood. Ron laughed and ran into the cell, followed by Harry and Hermione.
They weren't looking long when Harry decided the flat pillow on one of the beds in the cell didn't look quite like the others and muttered, "Finite Incantatem," waving his wand at it. The pillow contracted. It shifted and writhed on the bed, as though alive, before it seized up and dissolved into a dark blue, elbow-length glove with brown leather straps around the wrist and a single, perfectly cut blue diamond positioned to sit on the back of the hand. The Death Eaters in surrounding cells all craned their necks to get a better look.
"Ravenclaw's spell bending glove," Harry said, picking it up and touching the Ravenclaw crest in the palm of the glove. Hermione and Ron smiled at him briefly, before an explosion sounded outside.
Ron rushed to one of the cell block's barred windows to locate the disturbance. He stiffened as another deafening boom erupted from below. "We've got trouble," he said tensely. Harry and Hermione went over to him to look out the window themselves. Harry's knuckles turned white as he gripped Ravenclaw's glove tightly.
Amid the flashes of all-too-familiar bright green light could be seen Azkaban guards being struck dead by a small army of masked, armed Death Eaters.
"They must be breaking the others out," Ron groaned. "Just our luck to have come here now." Harry stared out at the scene for another moment, not noticing Hermione's response to Ron's assessment. This couldn't be happening. Not here. Not now. Harry's daze was broken by Ron and Hermione pulling him away from the window. Hermione was still speaking urgently.
"... Should stay away from the window. If they saw us, it wouldn't take much to aim a curse through the window from below."
"There's no way to get out the same way we came," Ron said. "They're too close. We'd never make it. Harry?" Harry blinked at being addressed directly, still feeling affected by the surrealism of their situation. The feeling faded quickly. He had to focus. He, Ron, and Hermione had not come this far to be killed in an Azkaban breakout.
"That main entrance is the only way out," he said, willing any sound of fear or desperation in his voice to silence with relative success. "But there has to be a way we can slip around them while they're busy with the breakout." There was a boom of harsh laughter around them, reminding them that the very Death Eaters this breakout was meant to help were listening to their conversation.
"That easy is it?" One of them taunted.
"They don't know we're here," Hermione said loudly to Harry and Ron, ignoring their tormenters. "If we can at least make it to one of the lower cell blocks with no prisoners, they should pass right by us."
"While they're smashing cell bars, we can make a break for the tunnel," Ron added. Harry nodded.
"That's our best chance," he said.
"Then you've no chance," Lucius Malfoy hissed from behind Ron. "Six of you against twelve of us in the Department of Mysteries was one thing, Potter. You only survived by running until the Order came for you. Are you expecting their help again?"
"No," Hermione snapped. "So when you fail to stop us this time, no excuse will save you." Malfoy glowered at her, but before he could retort, there was another thunderous crash from below that shook the entire tower.
"They're inside," Harry said. "We've got to get to a different cellblock! RUN!" Hermione and Ron didn't even wait for a breath. They took off toward the stairs. Harry stuffed Ravenclaw's glove in his pocket and sped after them. As they ran, they could hear the voices of the Death Eaters. The ones below were shouting spells and curses that were followed by screams. The ones of the captive Death Eaters above were shouting warnings to their fellows of the trio's presence, so they could intercept them.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione descended past two floors, ducking inside the third cell block they reached. They waited in silence, barely daring to breathe. They gripped their wands tightly in their hands, should they be seen and have to fight. They held their breath completely when Bellatrix Lestrange's voice came from just outside the cellblock door.
"That guard can't get any more dead, Amycus! Hurry up! Alecto, Greyback, let's go! Draco!" Harry, Ron, and Hermione tensed as Draco Malfoy's voice answered Bellatrix.
"I'm right here, Aunt Bellatrix," Draco huffed as he ascended from the battle below. "Travers' Imperius Curse missed a guard and hit Yaxley. We had to stop him from strangling himself."
"Enough excuses, Draco," Bellatrix scolded. "Get upstairs to your father!" Draco and the other Death Eaters continued up the stairs, as the trio hoped they would, without looking in the empty cellblock where they hid.
As soon as Bellatrix rounded the corner of the next flight of stairs, the trio crept out of the cellblock and ran down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. They sidled through the rubble and bodies at the bottom of the tower and dashed outside, toward the tunnel. Ravenclaw's glove fell from Harry's pocket, yards from the tunnel entrance, and Harry wheeled around to go back for it. He grabbed the glove just as he heard a man shout, "Stupefy!" Harry jumped to the side and rolled away from the rocks that burst into pieces as the jet of red light smashed them. He looked up to see Greyback leaning out of the window Ron and Hermione had pulled him away from.
Greyback aimed another spell at Harry, but Ron and Hermione were faster. Two spells shot in Greyback's direction, causing the window frame around him to explode in a burst of rocks and splinters. Harry hoisted himself up and ran for the tunnel, just as three masked Death Eaters hurtled out of Azkaban's destroyed entrance. More spells shot after him, all of them deflected by Ron and Hermione. When Harry reached them, they all dove inside the tunnel, throwing the heavy door shut behind them and sealing it with a, "Colloportus!"
The trio froze as they faced the rest of the tunnel. They had an idea of how to get back through, but not with so many enemies on their tail. They admitted to themselves that Lucius Malfoy was right. They would never make it. They jumped as one when a loud crash sounded from just behind the iron door. Harry unconsciously gripped Ravenclaw's glove tighter, looking down at it. The glove was too small for his arm, but it might fit…
"Hermione! Put this glove on, quick!" Harry said, grabbing her right hand and helping her pull it on and fasten the strap. "We have to use the glove to control the tunnel!"
"What?!" Hermione said fearfully, "How?"
"I don't know," Harry said, "just think of it as an Imperius Curse! Think of what you want the tunnel to do! Tell the magic in the tunnel to stop and let us through!"
Hermione continued to stare at him wide-eyed, but stuttered, "A-Alright." Hermione closed her eyes tightly, trying to will her thoughts into the glove. Another crash that dented the door behind them broke her focus. Harry turned to Ron.
"Cast a Patronus against the door and hold it as long as you can!" Ron nodded and aimed his wand at the door.
"Expecto Patronum!" He yelled, and a shield of white light splashed across the door and held it shut.
"Hermione," Harry said, turning back to her, "focus! Tell the tunnel to open a straight path through for us!" Hermione's eyes snapped shut again and she faced the maze. Her brow furrowed in concentration, then she raised her gloved hand, grasping her wand tightly and aiming it at the maze. Harry shot a glance back at Ron to see his Patronus weakening. "C'mon, Hermione, you can do this!" He shouted. The diamond on the glove glistened and the glove radiated a blue glow that surrounded Hermione, then the aura contracted and shot from the tip of her wand in a glistening stream.
Hermione's eyes popped open. She and Harry watched in amazement as the shifting walls and floating souls that filled the maze parted, away from the blue light, clearing a straight and surprisingly short path to wooden door on the other side. The string of blue light clung to the glove Hermione still wore and seemed to move with her.
"Ron!" Harry shouted, "One more blast, then let it go!" Ron nodded, and a final surge of energy left his wand, pounding the iron door tightly shut. "Now, run!" Harry yelled. Ron sprinted down the open path. Harry grabbed Hermione's free hand and pulled her forward. As they ran, the string of blue light fed back into Ravenclaw's glove, allowing the area behind them to assume its original state.
They weren't running long when a boom that shook the ground enough to unbalance them signaled the Death Eaters' entrance through the no longer barricaded iron door behind them. The Death Eaters would have to struggle through the maze though, and Ron, Harry, and Hermione were already halfway to the other side. Still, they ran harder, mustering all the strength and energy they had to propel themselves forward. The last of the string of light streamed into the glove as they reached the wooden door. Ron pushed it open. Harry and Hermione leapt out behind him.
Hermione tore off Ravenclaw's glove as she, Harry, and Ron ran toward their hideout at the back of the village. Once there, they threw all their belongings into their bottomless bags, including the notes and pictures pinned to the wall. Harry retrieved the glove from Hermione and stored it in his own bag. With their cloaks and bags slung around their shoulders, they left the house they knew was no longer safe for them. The Azkaban guards that populated the village were dead. The Death Eaters would destroy the entire village searching for the three young Gryffindors. They had to run away again.
As they ran down the road, out of the village, they could hear more crashes and blasts in a chorus behind them. When they had run for a while and saw no shelter in sight, they grabbed each other's hands and Disapparated to the last place they would expect their hunters to search for them: Knockturn Alley.