"What d'you reckon happened to the Cattermoles?"
"With any luck, they'll have got away," said Hermione, clutching her hot mug of tea for comfort. "As long as Mr. Cattermole had his wits about him, he'll have transported Mrs. Cattermole by Side-Along-Apparition and they'll be fleeing the country right now with their children. That's what Harry told her to do."
"Blimey, I hope they escaped," said Ron, leaning back on his pillows. The tea seemed to be doing him good; a little of his color had returned, finally, after the splinching. "I didn't get the feeling Reg Cattermole was all that quick-witted, though, the way everyone was talking to me when I was him. God, I hope they made it.... If they both end up in Azkaban because of us..."
I looked over at Hermione and the question I had been about to ask — about whether Mrs. Cattermole's lack of a wand would prevent her Apparating alongside her husband — died in my throat. Hermione was watching Ron fret over the fate of the Cattermoles.
"So, have you got it?" I asked her, partly to remind her that I was there too. The love birds were getting too close for my comfort.
"Got — got what?" she said with a little start.
"What did we just go through all that for? The locket! Where's the locket?"
"You got it?" shouted Ron, raising himself a little higher on his pillows. "No one tells me anything! Blimey, you could have mentioned it!"
"Well, we were running for our lives from the Death Eaters, weren't we?" said Hermione. "Here."
And she pulled the locket out of the pocket of her robes and handed it to Ron.
It was as large as a chicken's egg. An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones, glinted dully in the diffused light shining through the tent's canvas roof. And next to it, a plain sheet of gold, not even remotely bright as the locket itself, but seemingly even more dangerous- it lay there, in Ron's palm, and he looked at me doubtfully.
"I don't know what it is, either," I shrugged.
"That doesn't matter," Ron said, "but what's it saying?"
"What?" I frowned. "What's that-"
"Never mind," Ron blushed.
"Ron-"
"There isn't any chance someone's destroyed it since Kreacher had it?" asked Ron hopefully. "I mean, are we sure it's still a Horcrux?"
"I think so," said Hermione, taking it back from him and looking at it closely. "There'd be some sign of damage if it had been magically destroyed."
She passed it to me. I turned it around in my fingers, examining the locket.
The thing looked perfect, pristine. I remembered the mangled remains of the diary, and how the stone in the Horcrux ring had been cracked open when Dumbledore destroyed it.
"I reckon Kreacher's right," I said. "We're going to have to work out how to open this thing before we can destroy it."
Sudden awareness of what I was holding, of what lived behind the little golden doors, hit me. Even after all our efforts to find it, I felt a violent urge to fling the locket from me. Mastering myself again, I tried to prise the locket apart with my fingers, then attempted the charm Hermione had used to open Regulus's bedroom door. Neither worked. I handed the locket back to Ron and Hermione, each of whom did their best, but were no more successful at opening it than I had been.
"Can you feel it, though?" Ron asked in a hushed voice, as he held it tight in his clenched fist.
"What d'you mean?"
Ron passed the Horcrux to me. Something beating inside the locket, like a tiny metal heart- I felt it. And then I heard it- the whispers.
"What are they saying?" I asked Hermione.
"What?"
"You can hear it too?" Ron asked excitedly.
I nodded and looked at the locket carefully- no, it wasn't whispering, but the pendant sure was. For the first time, I looked at the pendant with interest. Was it another Horcrux? I wondered whether Umbridge had embarked on a quest like ours too, but it seemed impossible. The gold sheet of the pendant had something engraved on it. "It looks foreign," I told them, "can you read this, Hermione?"
Hermione took the pendant from me and looked at it hard. "I..." she stopped. "It's Greek."
Ron frowned. "How'd you know?"
Hermione's face paled. "Alex taught it to me," she said, "and the pendant says 'Ego'."
"Like, ego?" I asked. "Like, pride?"
"No," Hermione said, "it says 'Ego' as a noun- not a feeling. And it's saying something- Harry, do you reckon it's a Horcrux?"
I pulled my lips into a thin line as she passed me the necklace again. "The pendant whispers, but the locket does not. I don't think it's a Horcrux. But- it's something powerful. We can't throw it into the trash bin."
"What are we going to do with it?" Hermione asked.
"Keep it safe till we work out how to destroy it," I replied, and, little though I wanted to, I hung the chain around my neck, dropping the locket out of sight beneath my robes.
"I think we should take it in turns to keep watch outside the tent," I added to Hermione, standing up and stretching. "And we'll need to think about some food as well. You stay there," I added sharply, as Ron attempted to sit up and turned a nasty shade of green.
With the Sneakoscope Hermione had given me for my birthday set carefully upon the table in the tent, Hermione and I spent the rest of the day sharing the role of lookout. However, the Sneakoscope remained silent and still upon its point all day, and whether because of the protective enchantments and Muggle-repelling charms Hermione had spread around us, or because people rarely ventured this way, our patch of wood remained deserted, apart from occasional birds and squirrels.
I felt hungry, and a little light-headed. Hermione had not packed any food in her magical bag, as she had assumed that we would be returning to Grimmauld Place that night, so we had had nothing to eat except some wild mushrooms that Hermione had collected from amongst the nearest trees and stewed in a billycan. After a couple of mouthfuls Ron had pushed his portion away, looking queasy.
The surrounding silence was broken by odd rustlings and what sounded like crackings of twigs: I thought that they were caused by animals rather than people, yet I kept my wand held tight at the ready.
I had thought that I would feel elated if we managed to steal back the Horcrux, but somehow I did not; all I felt as I sat there, looking out at the darkness, of which my wand lit only a tiny part, was worry about what would happen next. It was as though I had been hurtling toward this point for weeks, months, maybe even years, but now I had come to an abrupt halt, run out of road.
I looked at the evening sky, and sighed. Sounds filled the air- hooting, growling, hissing, laughing. Wait- laughing.
Someone was laughing. My wand turned around, and I pointed it at the source of the sound- our tent.
I frowned. "What are you lot so happy about?"
Ron and Hermione stood at the entrance, and the former was trying to control his laughter, and Hermione, smiling, hit him on the shoulder. "Shut up, Ronald!" she instructed him, but Ron's laughter only increased contagiously, and Hermione smiled even wider.
"What happened?!" I asked.
"Harry-" Ron said in between his laughs, "your-" he stopped, laughing too hard.
"My- my what?" I asked, looking down at me. "MY WHAT?!"
Ron sniffed, "Your bum's glowing!!"
He and Hermione broke into laughter.
"What?!" I turned around in panic. "What the-" They were right. I fished into my back pocket and brought out the dagger that I had put there- the gift from Alex and her friends. Laughter stopped immediately.
"Is that knife- glowing?" Hermione asked, intrigued.
"Yeah," I said, staring at the faint blue glow, faint, and yet stronger than that of my wand, it's hilt settling in my hand comfortably. There was something about the dagger that made me feel- different. Comfortable- safe. Like everything was going to be okay as long as I had it in hand.
"Why's it glowing?" Ron asked.
"I dunno," I replied.
"Maybe it's enchanted," Hermione suggested.
"Maybe," I said, still mesmerized by the sheer beauty of the dagger.
"Is it gold?" Hermione took the dagger from me, and all of that hope that had been brewing in my heart seemed to crash. She rubbed the metal against her fingers, smelled it, and came to a conclusion. "It's not gold- but why does it glow?"
"Annabeth told me she lost it once, and it took her a lot of time to get it back," I recalled.
"But why would she need a knife?" Ron asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe because she's one of the Champions' descendants?" Hermione asked. "Maybe she's more prone to attacks?"
"Come to think of it," Ron nodded, "those five- all of them are a weird bunch. Going about with secrets-"
"Too powerful to a fault," Hermione said, examining the knife, "not really trusting-"
I bit my lip, trying not to shout at them. "Alex helped me at a time no one else was able to," I said, trying to maintain my calm. The scars of Umbridge's detention seemed to pulse angrily beneath my skin as I remembered the days when the girl had healed my wounds with ease. "Percy led everyone at the school when the Death Eaters attacked- Will healed so many people, and I know now that Jason and Annabeth lead the Order. If they didn't trust us-"
"I'm not saying that they hated us, Harry," Hermione said, "but they had their secrets. Some things that they never wanted to share with us."
Ron nodded. "And all of them had that tattoo they shared- SQPR, was it?"
"SPQR," Hermione corrected him. "I asked Percy about it, but he shut me out. It wasn't a tattoo. It was a brand. A fire brand.... Harry, do you think they were a part of some cult?"
"What?!" I laughed. "The Olympia line- in a cult? C'mon Hermione, listen to yourself. Those five were the most practical people we have seen-"
"And yet mysterious," Ron said. "There's a chance, mate."
"They'd never go against us," I said firmly. "I trust the five. Alex gave her life for us- for me. And I won't betray that trust."
Hermione and Ron sat next to me, tight lipped and unspoken, but exchanged nervous glances. I knew that they didn't agree with my words, but they thought better of it not to say it out loud. I nodded and stood up. Hermione fiddled with the knife, and I walked to the nearest tree, and sat down to watch guard.