Chapter 14:
Normal Pov
They had been flying for hours. Over mountains and rivers and lakes and cities and towns. Lower and lower the dragon flew, in great spiraling circles, honing in, it seemed, upon one of the smaller lakes.
"I say we jump when it gets low enough!" Harry called back to the others. "Straight into the water before it realizes we're here!"
They agreed, Hermione a little faintly, and now Harry could see the dragon's wide yellow underbelly rippling in the surface of the water.
"NOW!"
He slithered over the side of the dragon and plummeted feet first toward the surface of the lake; the drop was greater than he had estimated and he hit the water hard, plunging like a stone into a freezing, green, reed-filled world. He kicked toward the surface and emerged, panting, to see enormous ripples emanating in circles from the places where Ron and Hermione had fallen. The dragon did not seem to have noticed anything; it was already fifty feet away, swooping low over the lake to scoop up water in its scarred snout. As Ron and Hermione emerged, spluttering and gasping, from the depths of the lake, the dragon flew on, its wings beating hard, and landed at last on a distant bank.
Harry, Ron and Hermione struck out for the opposite shore. The lake did not seem to be deep. Soon it was more a question of fighting their way through reeds and mud than swimming, and at last they flopped, sodden, panting, and exhausted, onto slippery grass.
Hermione collapsed, coughing and shuddering. Though Harry could have happily lain down and slept, he staggered to his feet, drew out his wand, and started casting the usual protective spells around them. It had been three weeks since Tyler and Juliunna had left. They had just robbed the Lestranges vault and succeeded in getting their horcrux. Harry opened his mouth to cast the first protective spell but then there was a loud yell.
"wait!" Wait a minute!" He heard. Everyone looked up. "Bella!" Harry shouted out. He ran forward at the small brunette, running across the land. "Potter what's up?!" Bella chortled, jumping into his arms.
"We're fine. We just got another horcrux! Bella, Bella how'd you find us? Where did you go? Did you hear about Juliunna?"
"Yes, come down guys. I'm going to tell you guys everything. Let's all discuss it together. Calm yourself Potter, and put me down." Bella said. "Oops." Harry said. Harry put her down and she and him ran back Hermione and Ron. "Guys, your going to love this. Mungos took the hex off. And your going to be happy to know that Juliunna, Tyler, and Tyler jr. are alright!" Bella said with a squeal. Ron frowned.
"Um whose… Who's Tyler Jr.-!'
"She was pregnant?!" Hermione squealed happily. Bella nodded. "Yeah. She's three months along. She and Tyler are so excited." Bella said, pulling out a tiny piece of paper out of her pocket. She handed it to Harry, whom was frowning.
"Mate, are you jealous?" Ron chuckled. Harry looked down to the picture. Her stomach was flat and healthy. But there was the tiniest bump laying underneath her diaphragm. "No. Nah… I was just thinking of how… well Juliunna and I had relations around the same time she became pregnant. And I didn't use protection-!"
"Shit." Bella said, sitting back. "That's got to suck." She added. Harry took a deep breath. "Alright. We can always worry about that later…"
"Hey, just curious. Are you hoping the baby's yours? Like a tiny Harry? Baby Potter?" Bella asked him.
"Baby Potter," Harry smiled tilting his head to the side. "Wait no! No." Harry lied, not able to fight off the smile.
"Alright dude, let's just hurry up and get this horcrux and stuff over with. I'm supposed to pop in and check on you guys, make sure both know what your doing, and help you with what your doing. Then I've got to report to Jules that everything is alright." Bella said. "I just can't believe Voldem-!"
Ron tackled Bella to the ground, shoving his fingers down her throat in an attempt to muffle her words. "Shut up! The word is jinxed!" He said. Bella pushed him off of her with a glare. "Fine." She snapped. She kicked Ron in the knee hard. "Get off me! And if you ever try and do that again, I'll cut your penis off in your sleep." She snarled, and Ron jumped off of her, frightened. Hermione giggled at her.
"So, tell me what happened to you three." Bella said with a laugh. She was glancing awkwardly at the injured figures of the Golden Trio group.
At Bella's words, he glanced around at Ron and Hermione. It was the first time that he had seen them properly since escaping from the vault. Both had angry red burns all over their faces and arms, and their clothing was singed away in places. They were wincing as they dabbed essence of dittany onto their many injuries. Hermione handed Harry the bottle, then pulled out four bottles of pumpkin juice she had brought from Shell Cottage and clean, dry robes for all of them. They changes and then gulped down the juice.
"Well, on the upside," said Ron finally, who was sitting watching the skin on his hands re grow, "We got the Horcrux. On the downside-"
"No sword," said Harry through gritted teeth, as he dripped dittany through the singed hole in his jeans onto the angry burn beneath.
"No sword," repeated Ron. "That double-crossing little scab..."
Harry pulled the Horcrux from the pocket of the wet jacket he had just taken off and set it down on the grass in front of them. Glinting in the sun, it drew their eyes as they swigged their bottles of juice.
"At least we can't wear it this time, that'd look a bit weird hanging around our necks," said Ron, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Yeah I get it. The locket." Bella said.
Hermione looked across the lake to the far bank where the dragon was still drinking.
"What'll happen to it, do you think?" she asked, "Will it be alright?"
"You sound like Hagrid," said Ron, "It's a dragon, Hermione, it can look after itself. It's us we need to worry about."
"What do you mean?"
"Well I don't know how to break this to you," said Ron, "but I think they might have noticed we broke into Gringotts."
All four of them started to laugh, and once started, it was difficult to stop. Harry's ribs ached, he felt lightheaded with hunger, but he lay back on the grass beneath the reddening sky and laughed until his throat was raw.
"What are we going to do, though?" said Hermione finally, hiccupping herself back to seriousness. "He'll know, won't he? You-Know-Who will know we know about his Horcruxes!"
"Maybe they'll be too scared to tell him!" said Ron hopefully, "Maybe they'll cover it up."
The sky, the smell of the lake water, the sound of Ron's voice were extinguished. Pain cleaved Harry's head like a sword stroke.
He was standing in a dimly lit room, and a semicircle of wizards faced him, and on the floor at his feet knelt a small, quaking figure.
"What did you say to me?" His voice was high and cold, but fury and fear burned inside him. The one thing that he had dreaded, but it could not be true, he could not see how...
The goblin was trembling, unable to meet the red eyes high above his.
"Say it again!" murmured Voldemort. "Say it again!"
"M-my Lord," stammered the goblin, its black eyes wide with terror, "m-my Lord... we t-tried to st-stop them... Im-impostors, my Lord... broke -broke into the-! Into the Lestranges' vault..."
"Impostors? What impostors? I thought Gringotts had ways of revealing impostors? Who were they?"
"It was... it was... the P-Potter b-boy and the t-two accomplices..."
"And they took?" he said, his voice rising, a terrible fear gripping him, "Tell me! What did they take?"
"A... a s-small golden c-cup m-my Lord..."
The scream of rage, of denial left him as if it were a stranger's. He was crazed, frenzied, it could not be true, it was impossible, nobody had known. How was it possible that the boy could have discovered his secret?
The Elder Wand slashed through the air and green light erupted through the room; the kneeling goblin rolled over dead; the watching wizards scattered before him, terrified. Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy threw others behind them in their race for the door, and again and again his wand fell, and those who were left were slain, all of them, for bringing him this news, for hearing about the golden cup - Alone amongst the dead he stomped up and down, and they passed before him in vision: his treasures, his safeguards, his anchors to immortality, the diary was destroyed and the cup was stolen. What if, what if, the boy knew about the others? Could he know, had he already acted, had he traced more of them? Was Dumbledore at the root of this? Dumbledore, who had always suspected him; Dumbledore, dead on his orders; Dumbledore, whose wand was his now, yet who reached out from the ignominy of death through the boy, the boy-!
But surely if the boy had destroyed any of his Horcruxes, he, Lord Voldemort, would have known, would have felt it? He, the greatest wizard of them all; he, the most powerful; he, the killer of Dumbledore and of how many other worthless, nameless men. How could Lord Voldemort not have known, if he, himself, most important and precious, had been attacked, mutilated?
True, he had not felt it when the diary had been destroyed, but he had thought that was because he had no body to fell, being less than ghost... No, surely, the rest were safe... The other Horcruxes must be intact...
But he must know, he must be sure... He paced the room, kicking aside the goblin's corpse as he passed, and the pictures blurred and burned in his boiling brain: the lake, the shack, and Hogwarts -
A modicum of calm cooled his rage now. How could the boy know that he had hidden the ring in the Gaunt shack? No one had ever known him to be related to the Gaunts, he had hidden the connection, the killings had never been traced to him. The ring, surely, was safe.
And how could the boy, or anybody else, know about the cave or penetrate its protection? The idea of the locket being stolen was absurd...
As for the school: He alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumed the deepest secrets of that place...
And there was still Nagini, who must remain close now, no longer sent to do his bidding, under his protection...
But to be sure, to be utterly sure, he must return to each of his hiding places, he must redouble protection around each of his Horcruxes... A job, like the quest for the Elder Wand, that he must undertake alone...
Which should he visit first, which was in most danger? An old unease flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle name... Dumbledore might have made the connection with the Gaunts... Their abandoned home was, perhaps, the least secure of his hiding places, it was there that he would go first...
The lake, surely impossible... though was there a slight possibility that Dumbledore might have known some of his past misdeeds, through the orphanage.
And Hogwarts... but he knew the his Horcrux there was safe; it would be impossible for Potter to enter Hogsmeade without detection, let alone the school. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to alert Snape to the fact that the boy might try to reenter the castle... To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy. Didn't their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was ever to trust?
He would visit the Gaunt shack first, then, and take Nagini with him. He would not be parted from the snake anymore... and he strode from the room, through the hall, and out into the dark garden where the fountain played; he called the snake in Parseltongue and it slithered out to join him like a long shadow...
Harry's eyes flew open as he wrenched himself back to the present. He was lying on the bank of the lake in the setting sun, and Ron and Hermione were looking down at him. Judging by their worried looks, and by the continued pounding of his scar, his sudden excursion into Voldemort's mind had not passed unnoticed. He struggled up, shivering, vaguely surprised that he was still wet to his skin, and saw the cup lying innocently in the grass before him, and the lake, deep blue shot with gold in the falling sun.
"He knows." His own voice sounded strange and low after Voldemort's high screams. "He knows and he's going to check where the others are, and the last one," he was already on his feet, "is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it."
"What?"
Ron was gaping at him; Hermione sat up, looking worried. "What?" Bella said, confused as she looked towards the others.
"But what did you see? How do you know?"
"I saw him find out about the cup, I- I was in his head, he's!" Harry remembered the killings. "He's seriously angry, and scared too, he can't understand how we knew, and now he's going to check the others are safe, the ring first. He things the Hogwarts one is safest, because Snape's there, because it'll be so hard not to be seen getting in. I think he'll check that one last, but he could still be there within hours-! "
"Did you see where in Hogwarts it is?" asked Ron, now scrambling to his feet too.
"No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn't think about exactly where it is-! "
"Wait, wait!" cried Hermione as Ron caught up to the Horcrux and Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak again. "We can't just go, we haven't got a plan, we need to get going-!"
"We need to get going," said Harry firmly. He had been hoping to sleep, looking forward to getting into the new tent, but that was impossible now, "Can you imagine what he's going to do once he realizes the ring and the locket are gone? What if he moves the Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn't safe enough?"
"Don't know about you Potter, but I'm not filled in." Bella said, standing up.
"But how are we going to get in?"
"We'll go to Hogsmeade," said Harry, "and try to work something out once we see what the protection around the school's like. Get under the Cloak, Hermione, I want to stick together this time. Bella, are you going to come with us?"
"Yeah dude, seems important." Bella said with a smile.
"But we don't really fit-! "
"It'll be dark, no one's going to notice our feet."
The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water. The dragon had drunk its fill and risen into the air. They paused in their preparations to watch it climb higher and higher, now black against the rapidly darkening sky, until it vanished over a nearby mountain. Then Hermione walked forward and took her place between the other two, Harry pulled the Cloak down as far as it would go. "Bella, your not being hunted, you can go cloakless, right?" Harry asked. Bella nodded. Together they turned on the spot into the crushing darkness.
Harry's feet touched the road. He saw the achingly familiar Hogsmeade High Street: dark shop fronts, and the mist line of black mountains beyond the village and the curve in the road ahead that led off toward Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broomsticks, and with a lurch of the hear, he remembered with piercing accuracy, how he had landed here nearly a year before, supporting a desperately weak Dumbledore, all this in a second, upon landing and then, even as he relaxed his grip upon Ron's and Hermione's arms, it happened.
The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Voldemort's when he had realized the cup had been stolen: It tore at every nerve in Harry's body, and he knew that their appearance had caused it.
Even as he looked at the other two beneath the Cloak, and Bella looking around, confused, the door of the Three Broomsticks burst open and a dozen cloaked and hooded Death Eaters dashed into the streets, their wands aloft.
Harry seized Ron's wrist as he raised his wand; there were too many of them to run. Even attempting it would have give away their position. One of the Death Eaters raised his wand, and the scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.
"Accio Cloak!" roared one of the Death Eaters Harry seized his folds, but it made no attempt to escape. The Summoning Charm had not worked on it.
"Not under your wrapper, then, Potter?" yelled the Death Eater who had tried the charm and then to his fellows. "Spread now. He's here."
Six of the Death Eaters ran toward them: Bella walked backwards and behind a large sign, disappearing behind the sign, the Death Eaters went right pass her. With a slight nod to Harry, Ron and Hermione, thy got the hint and backed as quickly as possible down the nearest side street, and the Death Eaters missed them by inches. They waited in the darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams of light flying along the street from the Death Eaters' searching wands.
"Let's just leave!" Hermione whispered. "Disapparate now!"
"Don't." Bella breathed. Harry nodded.
"They were ready for us," whispered Harry. "They set up that spell to tell them we'd come. I reckon they've done something to keep us here, trap us."
"What about dementors?" called another Death Eater. "Let'em have free rein, they'd find him quick enough!"
"The Dark Lord wants Potter dead by no hands but his."
"-! Ah dementors won't kill him! The Dark Lord wants Potter's life, nor his soul. He'll be easier to kill if he's been Kissed first!"
There were noises of agreement. Dread filled Harry: To repel dementors they would have to produce Patronuses which would give them away immediately.
"We're going to have to try to Disapparate, Harry!" Hermione whispered.
Even as she said it, he felt the unnatural cold being spread over the street. Light was sucked from the environment right up to the stars, which vanished. In the pitch blackness, he felt Hermione take hold of his arm and together, they turned on the spot.
The air through which they needed to move, seemed to have become solid: They could not Disapparate; the Death Eaters had cast their charms well. The cold was biting deeper and deeper into Harry's flesh. He, Ron and Hermione retreated down the side street, groping their way along the wall trying not to make a sound. Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly, came dementors, ten or more of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks and their scabbed and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity? Harry was sure of it: They seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths he detested, tasting despair in the air, closing in - He raised his wand: He could not, would not suffer the Dementor's Kiss, whatever happened afterward. It was of Ron and Hermione that he thought as he whispered "Expecto Patronum!"
The silver stag burst from his wand and charged: The Dementors scattered and there was a triumphant yell from somewhere out of sight
"It's him, down there, down there, I saw his Patronus, it was a stag!" The Death Eater's snapped. Bella appeared in front of the trio but she had ran fast.
The Dementors have retreated, the stars were popping out again and the footsteps of the Death Eaters were becoming louder; but before Harry in his panic could decide what to do, there was a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-side of the narrow street, and a rough voice said: "Bella, in here, quick!"
He obeyed without hesitation, the four of them hurried through the open doorway.
"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" muttered a tall figure, passing them on his way into the street and slammed the door behind him.
Harry had had no idea where they were, but now he saw, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust bar of the Hog's Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through a second doorway, which led to a trickery wooden staircase, that they climbed as fast as they could. The stairs opened into a sitting room with a durable carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single large oil painting of a blonde girl who gazed out at the room with a kind of a vacant sweetness.
Shouts reached from the streets below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak on, they hurried toward the grimy window and looked down. Their savior, whom Harry now recognized as the Hog's Head's barman, was the only person not wearing a hood.
"So what?" he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send dementors down my street, I'll send a Patronus back at'em! I'm not having'em near me, I've told you that. I'm not having it!"
"That wasn't your Patronus," said a Death Eater. "That was a stag. It was Potter's!"
"Stag!" roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. "Stag! You idiot! Expecto Patronum!"
Something huge and horned erupted from the wand. Head down, it charged toward the High Street, and out of sight.
"That's not what I saw" said the Death Eater, though was less certainly "Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of his companions told the barman. "Someone was out on the streets against regulations. "
"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!"
"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"
"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Dark Marks, and summoned him. He's not going to like being called here, for me and my old cat, is he, now?"
"Don't worry about us." said one of the Death Eaters, "worry about yourself, breaking curfew!"
"And where will you lot traffic potions and poisons when my pub's closed down? What will happen to your little sidelines then?"
"Are you threatening-!?"
"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"
"I still say I saw a stag Patronus!" shouted the first Death Eater.
"Stag?" roared the barman. "It's a goat, idiot!"
"All right, we made a mistake," said the second Death Eater. "Break curfew again and we won't be so lenient!"
The Death Eaters strode back towards the High Street. Hermione moaned with relief, wove out from under the Cloak, and sat down on a wobble-legged chair. Harry drew the curtains then pulled the Cloak off himself and Ron. They could hear the barman down below, rebolting the door of the bar, then climbing the stairs. Bella snickered to herself.
Harry's attention was caught by something on the mantelpiece: a small, rectangular mirror, propped on top of it, right beneath the portrait of the girl.
The barman entered the room.
"You bloody fools," he said gruffly, looking from one to the other of them. "What were you thinking, coming here?"
"Thank you," said Harry. "We can't thank you enough. You saved our lives!"
The barman grunted. Harry approached him looking up into the face: trying to see past the long, stringy, wire-gray hair beard. He wore spectacles. Behind the dirty lenses, the eyes were a piercing, brilliant blue.
"It's your eye I've been seeing in the mirror."
There was a silence in the room. Harry and the barman looked at each other.
"You sent Dobby."
The barman nodded and looked around for the elf.
"Thought he'd be with you. Where've you left him?"
"He's dead," said Harry, "Bellatrix Lestrange killed him."
The barman face was impassive. After a few moments he said, "I'm sorry to hear it, I liked that elf."
He turned away, lightning lamps with prods of his wand, not looking at any of them.
"You're Aberforth," said Harry to the man's back.
He neither confirmed or denied it, but bent to light the fire.
"How did you get this?" Harry asked, walking across to Sirius's mirror, the twin of the one he had broken nearly two years before.
"Bought it from Dung 'bout a year ago," said Aberforth. "Albus told me what it was. Been trying to keep an eye out for you."
Ron gasped.
"The silver doe," he said excitedly, "Was that you too?"
"What are you talking about?" asked Aberforth.
"Someone sent a doe Patronus to us!"
"Brains like that, you could be a Death Eater, son. Haven't I just prove my Patronus is a goat?"
"Oh," said Ron, "Yeah... well, I'm hungry!" he added defensively as his stomach gave an enormous rumble.
"I got food," said Aberforth, and he sloped out of the room, reappearing moments later with a large loaf of bread, some cheese, and a pewter jug of mead, which he set upon a small table in front of the fire.
Ravenous, they ate and drank, and for a while there was sound of chewing.
"Right then," said Aberforth when the had eaten their fill and Harry and Ron sat slumped dozily in their chairs. "We need to think of the best way to get you out of here. Can't be done by night, you heard what happens if anyone moves outdoors during darkness: Caterwauling Charm's set off, they'll be onto you like bowtruckles on doxy eggs. I don't reckon I'll be able to pass of a stag as a goat a second time. Wait for daybreak when curfew lifts, then you can put your Cloak back on and set out on foot. Get right out of Hogsmeade, up into the mountains, and you'll be able to Disapparate there. Might see Hagrid. He's been hiding in a cave up there with Grawp ever since they tried to arrest him."
"We're not leaving," said Harry. "We need to get into Hogwarts."
"Don't be stupid, boy," said Aberforth.
"We've got to," said Harry.
"What you've got to do," said Aberforth, leaning forward, "is to get as far from here as from here as you can."
"You don't understand. There isn't much time. We've got to get into the castle. Dumbledore, I mean, your brother, wanted us to." Harry said.
The firelight made the grimy lenses of Aberforth's glasses momentarily opaque, a bright flat white, and Harry remembered the blind eyes of the giant spider, Aragog.
"My brother Albus wanted a lot of things," said Aberforth, "and people had a habit of getting hurt while he was carrying out his grand plans. You get away from this school, Potter, and out of the country if you can. Forget my brother and his clever schemes. He's gone where none of this can hurt him, and you don't owe him anything."
"You don't understand." said Harry again.
"Oh, don't I?" said Aberforth quietly. "You don't think I understood my own brother? Think you know Albus better than I did?"
"I didn't mean that," said Harry, whose brain felt sluggish with exhaustion and from the surfeit of food and wine. "It's... he left me a job." He said, and Bella nodded. "He's right Dumbles." Bella said, nodding.
"Did he now?" said Aberforth. "Nice job, I hope? Pleasant? Easy? Sort of thing you'd expect an unqualified wizard kid to be able to do without overstretching themselves?"
Ron gave a rather grim laugh. Hermione was looking strained.
"I-it's not easy, no," said Harry. "But I've got to-!"
"Got to? Why got to? He's dead, isn't he?" said Aberforth roughly. "Let it go, boy, before you follow him! Save yourself!"
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I…" Harry felt overwhelmed; he could not explain, so he took the offensive instead. "But you're fighting too, you're in the Order of the Phoenix-!"
"I was," said Aberforth. "The Order of the Phoenix is finished. You-Know-Who's won, it's over, and anyone who's pretending deferent's kidding themselves. It'll never be safe for you here, Potter, he wants you too badly. So go abroad, go into hiding, save yourself. Best take these two with you." He jerked a thumb at Ron and Hermione.
"They'll be in danger long as they live now everyone knows they've been working with you."
"I can't leave," said Harry. "I've got a job-!"
"Give it to someone else!"
"I can't. It's got to be me, Dumbledore explained it all-!"
"Oh, did he now? And did he tell you everything, was he honest with you?"
Harry wanted him with all his heart to say "Yes," but somehow the simple word would not rise to his lips, Aberforth seemed to know what he was thinking.
"I knew my brother, Potter. He learned secrecy at our mother's knee. Secrets and lies, that's how we grew up, and Albus... he was a natural."
The old man's eyes traveled to the painting of the girl over the mantelpiece. It was, now Harry looked around properly, the only picture in the room. There was no photograph of Albus Dumbledore, nor of anyone else.
"Mr. Dumbledore" said Hermione rather timidly. "Is that your sister? Ariana?"
"Yes." said Aberforth tersely. "Been reading Rita Skeeter, have you, missy?"
Even by the rosy light of the fire it was clear that Hermione had turned red.
"Elphias Doge mentioned her to us," said Harry, trying to spare Hermione.
"That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did. Well, so did plenty of people, you three included, by the looks of it. No idea about you Bella." Aberforth.
"Do you two know each other?" Ron asked.
"Yeah. We were both in the Order of Phoenix you dunce." Bella said, rolling her eyes.
Harry kept quiet. He did not want to express the doubts and uncertainties about Dumbledore that had riddled him for months now. He had made his choice while he dug Dobby's grave, he had decided to continue along the winding, dangerous path indicated for him by Albus Dumbledore, to accept that he had not been told everything that he wanted to know, but simply to trust. He had no desire to doubt again; he did not want o hear anything that would deflect him from his purpose. He met Aberforth's gaze, which was so strikingly like his brothers': The bright blue eyes gave the same impression that they were X-raying the object of their scrutiny, and Harry thought that Aberforth knew what he was thinking and despised him for it.
"Professor Dumbledore cared about Harry, very much," said Hermione in a low voice.
"Did he now?" said Aberforth. "Funny thing how many of the people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state than if he'd left 'em well alone."
"What do you mean?" asked Hermione breathlessly.
"Never you mind," said Aberforth.
"But that's a really serious thing to say!" said Hermione. "Are you…are you talking about your sister?"
Aberforth glared at her: His lips moved as if he were chewing the words he was holding back. Then he burst into speech.
"When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, by three Muggle boys. They'd seen her doing magic, spying through the back garden hedge: She was a kid, she couldn't control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw, scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when she couldn't show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it."
Hermione's eyes were huge in the firelight; Ron looked slightly sick. Aberforth stood up, tall as Albus, and suddenly terrible in his anger and the intensity of his pain.
"It destroyed her, what they did: She was never right again. She wouldn't use magic, but she couldn't get rid of it; it turned inward and drove her mad, it exploded out of her when she couldn't control it, and at times she was strange and dangerous. But mostly she was sweet and scared and harmless."
"And my father went after the bastards that did it," said Aberforth, "and attacked them. And they locked him up in Azkaban for it. He never said why he'd done it, because the Ministry had known what Ariana had become, she'd have been locked up in St. Mungo's for good. They'd have seen her as a serious threat to the International Statute of Secrecy, unbalanced like she was, with magic exploding out of her at moments when she couldn't keep it in any longer."
"We had to keep her safe and quiet. We moved house, put it about she was ill, and my mother looked after her, and tried to keep her calm and happy."
"I was her favorite," he said, and as he said it, a grubby schoolboy seemed to look out through Aberforth's wrinkles and wrangled beard. "Not Albus, he was always up in his bedroom when he was home, reading his books and counting his prizes, keeping up with his correspondence with the most notable magical names of the day,"
Aberforth succored. "He didn't want to be bothered with her. She liked me best. I could get her to eat when she wouldn't do it for my mother, I could calm her down, when she was in one of her rages, and when she was quiet, she used to help me feed the goats."
"Then, when she was fourteen... See, I wasn't there." said Aberforth. "If I'd been there, I could have calmed her down. She had one of her rages, and my mother wasn't as young as she was, and... it was an accident. Ariana couldn't control it. But my mother was killed."
Harry felt a horrible mixture of pity and repulsion; he did not want to hear any more, but Aberforth kept talking, and Harry wondered how long it had been since he had spoken about this; whether, in fact, he had ever spoken about it.
"So that put paid to Albus's trip round the world with little Doge. The pair of 'em came home for my mother's funeral and then Doge went off on his own, and Albus settled down as head of the family. Ha!"
Aberforth spat into the fire.
"I'd have looked after her, I told him so, I didn't care about school, I'd have stayed home and done it.
He told me I had to finish my education and he'd take over from my mother. Bit of a comedown for Mr. Brilliant, there's no prizes for looking after your half-mad sister, stopping her blowing up the house every other day. But he did all right for a few weeks... till he came."
And now a positively dangerous look crept over Aberforth's face.
"Grindelwald. And at last, my brother had an equal to talk to someone just as bright and talented he was. And looking after Ariana took a backseat then, while they were hatching all their plans for a new Wizarding order and looking for Hallows, and whatever else it was they were so interested in. Grand plans for the benefit of all Wizard kind, and if one young girl neglected, what did that matter, when Albus was working for the greater good?"
"But after a few weeks of it, I'd had enough, I had. It was nearly time for me to go hack to Hogwarts, so I told 'em, both of 'em, face-to-face, like I am to you, now," and Aberforth looked downward Harry, and it took a little imagination to see him as a teenager, wiry and angry, confronting his elder brother. "I told him, you'd better give it up now. You can't move her, she's in no fit state, you can't take her with you, wherever it is you're planning to go, when you're making your clever speeches, trying to whip yourselves up a following. He didn't like that." said Aberforth, and his eyes were briefly occluded by the firelight on the lenses of his glasses: They turned white and blind again. "Grindelwald didn't like that at all. He got angry. He told me what a stupid little boy I was, trying to stand in the way of him and my brilliant brother... Didn't I understand, my poor sister wouldn't have to be hidden once they'd changed the world, and led the wizards out of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?"
"And there was an argument... and I pulled my wand, and he pulled out his, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my brother's best friend, and Albus was trying to stop him, and then all three of us were dueling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set her off, she couldn't stand it. "
The color was draining from Aberforth's face as though he had suffered a mortal wound.
"-! and I think she wanted to help, but she didn't really know what she was doing, and I don't know which of us did it, it could have been any of us, and she was dead."
His voice broke on the last word and he dropped down into the nearest chair. Hermione's face was wet with tears, and Ron was almost as pale as Aberforth. Harry felt nothing but revulsion: He wished he had not heard it, wished he could wash is mind clean of it. Bella was raising an eyebrow, trying not to grimace out of sadness.
"I'm so... I'm so sorry," Hermione whispered.
"Gone," croaked Aberforth. "Gone forever."
He wiped his nose on hiss cuff and cleared his throat.
" 'Course, Grindelwald scampered. He had a bit of a track record already, back in his own country, and he didn't want Ariana set to his account too. And Albus was free, wasn't he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the-! "
"He was never free," said Harry.
"I beg your pardon?" said Aberforth.
"Never," said Harry. "The night that your brother died, he drank a potion that drove him out of his mind. He started screaming, pleading with someone who wasn't there. 'Don't hurt them, please... hurt me instead.' "
Ron and Hermione were staring at Harry. He had never gone into details about what had happened on the island on the lake.
The events that had taken place after he and Dumbledore had returned to Hogwarts had eclipsed it so thoroughly.
"He thought he was back there with you and Grindelwald, I know he did," said Harry, remembering Dumbledore whispering, pleading.
"He thought he was watching Grindelwald hurting you and Ariana... It was torture to him, if you'd seen him then, you wouldn't say he was free."
Aberforth seemed lost in contemplation of his own knotted and veined hands. After a long pause he said. "How can you be sure, Potter, that my brother wasn't more interested in the greater good than in you? How can you be sure you aren't dispensable, just like my little sister?"
A shard of ice seemed to pierce Harry's heart.
"I don't believe it. Dumbledore loved Harry," said Hermione.
"Why didn't he tell him to hide, then?" shot back Aberforth. "Why didn't he say to him, 'Take care of yourself, here's how to survive'?"
"Because," said Harry before Hermione could answer, "sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you've got to think about the greater good! This is war!"
"You're seventeen, boy!"
"I'm of age, and I'm going to keep fighting even if you've given up!"
"Who says I've given up?"
"The Order of the Phoenix is finished," Harry repeated, "You-Know-Who's won, it's over, and anyone who's pretending different's kidding themselves."
"I don't say I like it, but it's the truth!"
"No, it isn't." said Harry. "Your brother knew how to finish You-Know-Who and he passed the knowledge on to me. I'm going to keep going until I succeed or I die. Don't think I don't know how this might end. I've known it for years."
He waited for Aberforth to jeer or to argue, but he did not. He merely moved.
"We need to get into Hogwarts," said Harry again. "If you can't help us, we'll wait till daybreak, leave you in peace, and try to find a way in ourselves. If you can help us well, now would be a great time to mention it."
Aberforth remained fixed in his chair, gazing at Harry with the eyes that were so extraordinarily like his brother's. At last he cleared his throat, got to his feet, walked around the little table, and approached the portrait of Ariana.
"You know what to do," he said.
She smiled, turned, and walked away, not as people in portraits usually did, one of the sides of their frames, but along what seemed to be a long tunnel painted behind her. They watched her slight figure retreating until finally she was swallowed by the darkness.
"Err, what…?" began Ron.
"There's only one way in now," said Aberforth. "You must know they've got all the old secret passageways covered at both ends, dementors all around the boundary walls, regular patrols inside the school from what my sources tell me. The place has never been so heavily guarded.
How you expect to do anything once you get inside it, with Snape in charge and the Carrows as his deputies... well, that's your lookout, isn't it? You say you're prepared to die."
"But what...?" said Hermione, frowning at Ariana's picture.
A tiny white dot reappeared at the end of the painted tunnel, and now Ariana was walking back toward them, growing bigger and bigger as she came. But there was somebody else with her now, someone taller than she was, who was limping along, looking excited. His hair was longer than Harry had ever seen. He appeared and torn. Larger and larger the two figures grew, until only their heads and shoulders filled the portrait.
Then the whole thing swang forward on the wall like a little door, and the entrance to a real tunnel was revealed. And out of it, his hair overgrown, his face cut, his robes ripped, clambered the real Neville Longbottom, who gave a roar of delight, leapt down from the mantelpiece and yelled.
"I knew you'd come! I knew it, Harry!"
Neville, what the, how?"
But Neville had spotted Ron and Hermione, and with yells of delight was hugging them too. The longer Harry looked at Neville, the worse he appeared: One of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he had been living enough. Nevertheless, his battered visage shone with happiness as he let go of Hermione and instead grabbed Bella, who's eyebrows shot up out of anger. "Who are you?" Neville said. Bella brandished her wand like a knife. "I will cut your penis off. Right here. Right now. I don't do hugs, stranger." Neville leapt back and smiled at Harry. He said again and again.
"I knew you'd come! Kept telling Seamus said it was only a matter of time!"