The Potter Twins and the Deathly Hallows {7}

17. It's Quiet Uptown

I can't hide it from myself: Ron had been right. Dumbledore has left us with virtually nothing. We have discovered one Horcrux, but we have no means of destroying it: The others are as unattainable as they've ever been. Hopelessness threatens to engulf me. I'm staggered now to think of our own presumption in accepting our friends' offers to accompany us on this meaningless journey. We know nothing, we have no ideas, and we are constantly, painfully on the alert for any indication that Hermione too is about to tell us that she's had enough, that she's leaving. 

We're spending many evenings in silence, and Hermione has taken to bringing out Phineas Nigellus's portrait and propping it up in a chair, as thought he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Ron's departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit us again, Phineas Nigellus does not seem able to resist the urge to find our more about what Harry and I are up to, and consents to reappear, blindfolded, every few days or so. I'm glad to see him, because he is company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind. We relish any news about what is happening at Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus is not an ideal informer. He venerates Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself controlled the school, and we have to be extra careful not to criticise or ask impertinent questions about Snape, otherwise he will instantly leave his painting. 

However, he does let drop certain snippets. Snape seems to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny has been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape has reinstated Umbridge's old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies. 

From all of these things, I've deduced that Ginny, and probably Neville and Luna along with her, have been doing their best to continue Dumbledore's Army. This scant news makes me incredibly proud of our friends, but it also makes me think of Ron, and Dumbledore, and of Hogwarts itself, and the way things were just a short year ago. Indeed, as Phineas Nigellus talks about Snape's crackdown, I experience a spilt second of madness when I imagine simply going back to school to join the destabilisation of Snape's regime: Being fed, and having a soft bed, and other people being in charge, seems the most wonderful prospect in the world in that moment. But then I remember that we are Undesirable Number One and Two, and there is a ten-thousand Galleon price on our head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days is just as dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasised this fact by slipping in leading questions about our whereabouts. Hermione shoves him back inside the beaded bag every time he does this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refuses to reappear for several days after these unceremonious good-byes. 

The weather grows colder and colder. We don't dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of of England, where a hard ground frost is the worst of our worries, we continue to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside where sleet pounds the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent is flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buries the tent in the night. 

We've already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there comes an evening when Harry and I resort to suggest, again, what seems to be the only unexplored avenue left to us. We've just eaten an unusually good mean: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left), we think that she might be more persuadable on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. We've also had the foresight to suggest that we all take a few hours' break from wearing the Horcrux, which is hanging over the end of the bunk beside us. 

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" She is curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I can't imagine how much more she can get out of the book, which is not, after all, very long; but evidently she is still deciphering something in it, because Spellman's Syllabary lays open on the arm of the chair.