Faith .|. H. J. POTTER ✔

Chapter one-hundred-twenty-nine

"Harry, Faith, stop,"

"What's wrong?"

"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes,"

All three halted in their steps, holding onto each other. Faith peered past Harry's chest to spot Hermione nodded at but didn't see anything there.

"Are you sure?" Faith asked.

"I saw something move, I could have sworn I did ..."

Both Faith and Hermione let go of their comforting grip on Harry and laid their hands on the pockets where they hid their wands. 

"We look like random people," Harry reminded them. Hermione had redone the transfiguration enchantments on Harry's face earlier and Faith had morphed herself back into a random blonde girl. 

"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' graves! Harry, I'm sure there's someone over there!"

They all heard a rustle in the leaves of the bush Hermione meant. With squinted eyes, Faith could see a little bit of dislodged snow on the ground. 

"It's a cat," Harry said after a couple seconds of silence, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater, we'd be dead by now. But let's got out of here, and we can put the Cloak on,"

They walked over to a tree to hide behind. Harry put the Invisibility Cloak over him and Hermione, secretly wishing the Cloak was just a little bigger so Faith could fit under it too since he knew how exhausting it could be for her to camouflage herself every second. 

As invisible as they could be, they emerged from behind the tree again and started to walk towards the other end of the city, close to where the signpost said the restaurant and the gas station would be. They walked as quick as they could, not caring about the prints they left behind them in the fresh snow. 

"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" Hermione whispered, giving Faith a clue as to where her two friends were heading off to. "Harry? What do you think? Harry?"

From what Faith could hear, Harry wasn't paying attention to what Hermione was asking him and she had the faintest idea why. All the way on the other end of the row of houses they were walking past, was a big dark mass visible. When Faith looked in the distance at it, she could make up that it was a severely destroyed house. 

She quickly started to walk towards it, seeing Harry and Hermione's footsteps right beside her. 

"Harry -"

"Look ... look at it ..." Faith heard Harry whisper when they faced the house. 

"I don't ... oh!"

The hedge that surrounded the house was grown wild with plants, the grass on the lawn was almost waist length. Most of the cottage-like house looked still like a normal house if Faith ignored the ivy that had completely surrounded the walls, if it wasn't for the destroyed top floor. Faith assumed that was where the Killing Curse backfired. 

"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" Hermione said quietly as they all stared at it in awe. 

"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry suggested. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?"

Faith saw how Harry's hand slipped from under the Invisibility Cloak and grabbed onto the hedge. He didn't seem to want to go in, just touch a part of the house since it had been so long since he last lived there. 

"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might - oh, look!" 

Faith flinched from the startle when they saw a sign grow out of the ground in front of them. It was, like the house, covered in ivy and other weeds but the words that were engraved upon the wood was still clearly visible.