Change the Future

DH 14

And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Boy Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.

Good luck, Harry wherever you are.
If you read this, Harry, we're all behind you!
Long live Harry Potter.

"They shouldn't have written on the sign!" Hermione said, indignant. But Harry beamed at her.

"It's brilliant. I'm glad they did. I" He broke off. A heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them, silhouetted by the bright lights in the distant square. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping on the snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a half a few yards from the and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing
them. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see Hermione and him at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that
they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned. Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak, her arm pressed against his.

"How does she know?" He shook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. 

"You're not just going to follow some random woman are you" Molly asks looking between Harry and Hermione.

Finally Harry spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump. 

"Are you Bathilda?" The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again. Beneath the Cloak Harry and Hermione looked at each other. Harry raised his eyebrows Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod. They stepped toward the woman and, at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way they had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left. She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back to let them pass. She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house. Harry wrinkled his nose as they sidled past her and pulled off the Cloak. She closed the door behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into Harry's face. Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken in folds of transparent skin, and her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. 

"She looks dead" Sirius says resulting in a slap on the head from Euphemia for being rude.

The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.

"Bathilda?" Harry repeated. She nodded again. Harry became aware of the locket against his skin; the thing inside it that sometimes ticked or beat had woken; he could feel it pulsing through the cold gold. Bathilda shuffled past them, pushing Hermione aside as though she had not seen her, and vanished into what seemed to be a sitting room.

"Harry, I'm not sure about this," breathed Hermione. 

"Look at the size of her, I think we could overpower her if we had to," Harry said.