Aurora | Harry Potter

chapter sixty-six

"Here, let me do that," Harry says as he takes a match from the shaking hands of Bathilda and then lights a small candle, which she slowly grasps. I stand with Hermione, now feeling slightly nervous, and just watch as Harry picks up a picture frame with a picture of a wizard inside.

"Miss Bagshot, who is this man?" Harry asks and gets no response from her, apart from a blank stare before she starts to walk upstairs, brushing past me slightly. Knowing him, Harry goes to follow her, so I grab his arm before he's able to leave the room, pulling his attention to me. 

"Harry, I have a really bad feeling about both her and this place," I whisper to him, even though I know that Bathilda can't hear me from upstairs. Hermione nods and in an attempt to calm us both down, he tells us that he knows what he's doing and then asks us to try and find anything that could be useful in our hunt for more Horcruxes. "Okay, if you're sure, Harry," Hermione replies as she starts to walk around the room, her wand emitting a small light across the room. 

He nods and presses a light kiss to my forehead before he walks back upstairs, following Bathilda. A nervous sigh leaves my lips as I start to walk around like Hermione and I pull out my wand, a small light sparking from the tip. 

"You sure you're okay, Aurora?" Hermione asks, to which I nod and give her what hopefully comes across as a confident smile. "I'm fine, this could be a really important part of our mission, so everything's fine." She nods back and we continue to look around the room. I see from across the room that she's found a small photo album and when I turn around to walk into a nearby corridor, I nearly crash into a large stack of books.

I pick the top one up to see 'Albus Dumbledore' by Rita Skeeter, with a small personal note from the Daily Prophet journalist clipped onto the front cover. Choosing to ignore the note, I carry on looking for anything useful. As I reach the end of the corridor, a distinctive smell enters my nose, coming from a small side room.

I raise my hand to open the door, but hesitate when I hear some muffled crashing sounds from upstairs. Thinking that it's probably just Bathilda bumping into something accidentally, I plant my hand on the doorknob and twist it. I slowly open the door and the first thing I see is a small batch of flies, which dash out from inside the room.

The second thing I see is the corpse of Bathilda and grotesque blood splatters all across the walls. Followed by a loud crash from upstairs and the sound of violent hissing.

"HARRY!" I scream as I sprint away from the door, back into the main living room area. Hermione looks slightly frightened from my scream as I rush in, so I grab her hand and try to pull her towards the stairs. "Bathilda's body was in there, so whoever's up there with Harry is not Bathilda," I quickly explain and horror transpires onto Hermione's face, so we both try to make our way upstairs.

But when we reach the top, a misfired spell hits a large mountain of books and sends them crashing down towards us. I manage to dodge them but Hermione is just too slow and takes the majority of the hardback books. Knowing she'll get up quickly, I rush upstairs to see Harry crash into a bedroom and hides behind the bed, holding his arm and groaning in pain. 

I sprint in, withdraw my wand and fire a strong spell at the snake, hitting it right in the stomach. As I watch the snake collapse through the floorboards, I realise that it's Nagini, Voldemort's snake, which means that she was sent here on purpose and Bathilda must have been murdered as part of the Dark Lord's plan. 

Hermione creeps into the room and when she sees Harry's discarded wand across on the floor, she reaches across and grabs it quickly, moving back behind the bed after. Slowly, I start to stand up, tightly gripping my wand in my right hand and holding onto Harry's shirt with my left.

Nagini sharply bursts up through the floorboards, so both Hermione and I fire an attacking spell and Hermione grabs onto both me and Harry, all of us Apparating out of Godric's Hollow through the nearby window. 

-

"Okay, that should be fully healed within a few days," I say as I secure the bandages around Harry's arm, a healing spell placed on his wound underneath. I pull down his jumper sleeve and when I look up at him, I see tired but loving eyes looking back at me. 

"Thank you," he whispers, his hands travelling to my cheeks, holding them lovingly. I smile back and lean into his chest, the familiar smell of cinnamon, treacle tart and wood bringing an old sense of comfort. I wrap my arms around his waist and for a minute or so, we both just stand there, holding each other close.

"Hermione really out-did herself this time, didn't she?" I ask, feeling Harry nod in response. "I can't believe what she did though, all to protect her parents from this war."

Earlier today when the three of us were sat outside, Hermione told us that she brought us to this winter forest - Forest of Dean - because she once came here with her parents in winter and was surprised that everything felt and looked practically exactly the same, like the trees and the river. 

Then she said that if she were to come here now, they wouldn't recognise the trees or the river or even her, as she made the irreversible decision to remove herself from her parent's minds so they wouldn't be in any danger during the war. 

She also said that she found out who the man in the photo was back in Godric's Hollow, the man that Harry wanted to know the identity of. Gellert Grindelwald, the thief that Harry saw a vision of stealing from the wand shop, which led to an apology from Hermione when asked where his wand was.

During the Apparation from Godric's Hollow to the forest, Harry's wand was broken into two pieces when Hermione cast a curse and it unfortunately rebounded. She said that she'd tried to fix it but wands are incredible intricate objects, meaning she was unsuccessful. So for now, Harry is sharing Hermione's wand with her.

As we part from our embrace, Hermione walks inside the tent, shivering slightly from reading her book outside in the cold. I give her a quick hug before I walk outside, Harry following close behind, Hermione's wand and the locket in his hands.