—— ϟ ——
It was a few days later when Harry and Hermione decided that they were ready to delve into the magical village.
They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it was late afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife. The beaded bag containing all of their possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry was wearing around his neck) was tucked into an inside pocket of Hermione's buttoned-up coat. Harry lowered the Invisibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the suffocating darkness once again.
Heart beating in his throat, Harry opened his eyes. They were standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night's first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the center of the village.
"All this snow!" Hermione whispered beneath the cloak. "Why didn't we think of snow? After all our precautions, we'll leave prints! We'll just have to get rid of them — you go in front, I'll do it —"
Harry did not want to enter the village like a pantomime horse, trying to keep themselves concealed while magically covering their traces.
"Let's take off the Cloak," said Harry, and when she looked frightened, "Oh, come on, we don't look like us and there's no one around."
He stowed the Cloak under his jacket and they made their way forward unhampered, the icy air stinging their faces as they passed more cottages: Any one of them might have been the one in which James and Lily had once lived or where Bathilda lived now.
He was not even sure whether he would be able to see the cottage at all; he did not know what happened when the subjects of a Fidelius Charm died. Then the little lane along which they were walking curved to the left and the heart of the village, a small square, was revealed to them.
Strung all around with colored lights, there was what looked like a war memorial in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree.
"Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve!" said Hermione.
"Is it?" He had lost track of the date; they had not seen a newspaper for weeks. "I'm sure it is," said Hermione, her eyes upon the church. "They...they'll be in there, won't they? Your mum and dad? I can see the graveyard behind it."
Harry felt a thrill of something that was beyond excitement, more like fear. Now that he was so near, he wondered whether he wanted to see after all. Perhaps Hermione knew how he was feeling, because she reached for his hand and took the lead for the first time, pulling him forward. Halfway across the square, however, she stopped dead.
"Harry, look!" She was pointing at the war memorial. As they had passed it, it had transformed.
Instead of an obelisk covered in names, there was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother's arms. Snow lay upon all their heads, like fluffy white caps. Harry drew closer, gazing up into his parents' faces. He had never imagined that there would be a statue... How strange it was to see himself represented in stone, a happy baby without a scar on his forehead...
"C'mon," said Harry, when he had looked his fill, and they turned again toward the church. As they crossed the road, he glanced over his shoulder; the statue had turned back into the war memorial.
There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lay deep and untouched. They moved off through the snow, carving deep trenches behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows. Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the snow. Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his jacket pocket, Harry weaved through the graves.
They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, gouging dark tracks into the snow behind them, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that they were unaccompanied. "Harry, here!" Hermione was two rows of tombstones away; he had to wade back to her, his heart positively banging in his chest.
"Is it — ?"
"No, but look!" She pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw, upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, and her Daughter Ariana.
Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could not help thinking that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told him so, yet he had never thought to share the connection.
They could have visited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here with Dumbledore, of what a bond that would have been, of how much it would have meant to him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do. Hermione was looking at Harry, and he was glad that his face was hidden in shadow.
"No," said Harry curtly, then, "let's keep looking," and he turned away, wishing he had not seen the stone: He did not want his excited trepidation tainted with resentment.
"Here!" cried Hermione again a few moments later from out of the darkness. "Oh no, sorry! I thought it said Potter." She was rubbing at a crumbling, mossy stone, gazing down at it, a little frown on her face. "Harry, come back a moment."
He did not want to be sidetracked again, and only grudgingly made his way back through the snow toward her. "What?"
"Look at this!" The grave was extremely old, weathered so that Harry could hardly make out the name. Hermione showed him the symbol beneath it. "Harry, that's the mark in the book!" He peered at the place she indicated: The stone was so worn that it was hard to make out what was engraved there, though there did seem to be a triangular mark beneath the nearly illegible name.
"Yeah...it could be..." Hermione lit her wand and pointed it at the name on the headstone. "It says Ig — Ignotus, I think..."
"I'm going to keep looking for my parents, all right?" Harry told her, a slight edge to his voice, and he set off again, leaving her crouched beside the old grave.
Deeper and deeper amongst the graves he went, and every time he reached a new headstone he felt a little lurch of apprehension and anticipation. Somebody had turned off the lights in the church.
Then Hermione's voice came out of the blackness for the third time, sharp and clear from a few yards away. "Harry, they're here...right here."
And he knew by her tone that it was his mother and father this time: He moved toward her, feeling as if something heavy were pressing on his chest, the same sensation he had had right after Dumbledore had died, a grief that had actually weighed on his heart and lungs. The headstone was only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana's. It was made of white marble, just like Dumbledore's tomb, and this made it easy to read, as it seemed to shine in the dark. Harry did not need to kneel or even approach very close to it to make out the words engraved upon it.
James Potter Lily Potter
Born 27 March 1960 Born 30 January 1960
Died 31 October 1981 Died 31 October 1981
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death.
Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud. " 'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'..." A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic.
"Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means...you know...living beyond death. Living after death."
But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents' moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.
Hermione had taken his hand again and was gripping it tightly. He could not look at her, but returned the pressure, now taking deep, sharp gulps of the night air, trying to steady himself, trying to regain control. He should have brought something to give them, and he had not thought of it, and every plant in the graveyard was leafless and frozen. But Hermione raised her wand, moved it in a circle through the air, and a wreath of Christmas roses blossomed before them. Harry caught it and laid it on his parents' grave.
As soon as he stood up he wanted to leave: He did not think he could stand another moment there. He put his arm around Hermione's shoulders, and she put hers around his waist, and they turned in silence and walked away through the snow, past Dumbledore's mother and sister, back toward the dark church and the out-of-sight kissing gate.
"Harry, stop"
"What's wrong?" They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.
"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes." They stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry could not see anything. "Are you sure?"
"I saw something move, I could have sworn I did..." She broke from him to free her wand arm. "We look like Muggles," Harry pointed out.
"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' grave! Harry, I'm sure there's someone over there!" Harry thought of A History of Magic; the graveyard was supposed to be haunted: what if — ? But then he heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow.
"It's a cat," said Harry, after a second or two, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be dead by now. But let's get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on."
They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. Harry, who did not feel as sanguine as he had pretended when reassuring Hermione, was glad to reach the gate and the slippery pavement. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves.
"Let's go this way," Hermione murmured and pulled him down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicolored lights, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through the curtains.
"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" asked Hermione, who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her shoulder. "Harry? What do you think? Harry?" She tugged at his arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He was looking toward the dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. Next moment he had sped up, dragging Hermione along with him; she slipped a little on the ice. "Harry —"
"Look...Look at it, Hermione..."
I don't ... oh!"
He could see it; the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily.
The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; that, Harry was sure, was where the curse had backfired. He and Hermione stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it.
"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione.
"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry replied. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?"
He slipped a hand from beneath the Cloak and grasped the snowy and thickly rusted gate, not wishing to open it, but simply to hold some part of the house.
"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might — oh, Harry, look!"
His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:
On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.
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!" said Hermione, 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. Harry thought, though it was hard to judge, that the figure was a woman. 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.
At last she came to a halt a few yards from them and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them. He did not need Hermione's pinch to his arm. There was next to no chance that this woman was a Muggle: She was standing there gazing at a house that ought to have been completely invisible to her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch, however, it was odd behavior to come out on a night this cold, simply to look at an old ruin. 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. Harry could think of many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet his suspicions about her identity were growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street. Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these long months?
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.
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. Now that he was beside her, he realized how tiny she was; bowed down with age, she came barely level with his chest. She closed the door behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into Harry's face.
"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.
"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," said Harry. "Listen, I should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga.' "
"Come!" called Bathilda from the next room.
Hermione jumped and clutched Harry's arm. "It's okay," said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the sitting room. Thick dust crunched beneath their feet, and Harry's nose detected, underneath the dank and mildewed smell, something worse, like meat gone bad. He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda's house to check whether she was coping.
"Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs. — Miss — Bagshot?" asked Hermione, raising her own voice. "Was there something you wanted to tell us?"
Giving no sign that she had heard Hermione, Bathilda now shuffled a few steps closer to Harry. With a little jerk of her head she looked back into the hall. "You want us to leave?" he asked. She repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at him, then at herself, then at the ceiling. "Oh, right... Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her."
"All right," said Hermione, "let's go." But when Hermione moved, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigor, once more pointing first at Harry, then to herself. "She wants me to go with her, alone."
"Why?" asked Hermione, and her voice rang out sharp and clear in the candlelit room; the old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise.
"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only to me?" "Do you really think she knows who you are?"
"Yes," said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon his own, "I think she does."
"Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry."
"Lead the way," Harry told Bathilda. She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around him toward the door. The stairs were steep and narrow: Harry was half tempted to place his hands on stout Bathilda's backside to ensure that she did not topple over backward on top of him, which seemed only too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper landing, turned immediately right, and led him into a low-ceilinged bedroom. It was pitch-black and smelled horrible: Harry had just made out a chamber pot protruding from under the bed before Bathilda closed the door and even that was swallowed by the darkness.
"Lumos," said Harry, and his wand ignited. He gave a start: Bathilda had moved close to him in those few seconds of darkness, and he had not heard her approach.
"You are Potter?" she whispered.
"Yes, I am."
She nodded slowly, solemnly. Harry felt the Horcrux beating fast, faster than his own heart: It was an unpleasant, agitating sensation. "Have you got anything for me?" Harry asked, but she seemed distracted by his lit wand-tip.
"Have you got anything for me?" he repeated.
Then she closed her eyes and several things happened at once: Harry's scar prickled painfully; the Horcrux twitched so that the front of his sweater actually moved; the dark, fetid room dissolved momentarily. He felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice: Hold him! Harry swayed where he stood: The dark, foul-smelling room seemed to close around him again; he did not know what had just happened.
"Have you got anything for me?" he asked for a third time, much louder.
"Over here," she whispered, pointing to the corner. Harry raised his wand and saw the outline of a cluttered dressing table beneath the curtained window.
This time she did not lead him. Harry edged between her and the unmade bed, his wand raised. He did not want to look away from her.
"What is it?" he asked as he reached the dressing table.
"There," she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.
And in the instant that he looked away, his eyes raking the tangled mess for a sword hilt, a ruby, she moved weirdly: He saw it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn and horror paralyzed him as he saw the old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been.
The snake struck as he raised his wand: The force of the bite to his forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling; its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was extinguished: Then a powerful blow from the tail to his midriff knocked the breath out of him: He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing —
He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake's tail, which thrashed down upon the table where he had been a second earlier: Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him as he hit the floor. From below he heard Hermione call, "Harry?"
He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular — "No!" he gasped, pinned to the floor.
"Yes," whispered the voice. "Yesss... hold you...hold you..."
He was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness; Nagini had released him. He scrambled up and saw the snake outlined against the landing light: It struck, and Hermione dived aside with a shriek; her deflected curse hit the curtained window, which shattered. Frozen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid another shower of broken glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like something — his wand —
He bent and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the snake, its tail thrashing; Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for a moment Harry thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Harry raised his wand, but as he did so, his scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.
"He's coming! Hermione, he's coming!"
This is from chapters 16 and 17 from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows