"I'm not coming back, I'm done something so terrible, I'm terrified to speak, but you'd expect that from me. I mixed up, I'll blunt." - Remembering Sunday, All Time Low
Early the next morning, before the other two are awake, Harry and I leave the tent to search the woods around us for the oldest, most gnarled, and resilient looking tree we can find. There in its shadow, we bury Mad-Eye Moody's eye and mark the spot by gouging a small cross in the bark with my wand. It isn't much, but I feel that Moody would have much preferred this to being stuck on Umbridge's door. Then we return to the tent to wait for the others to wake and discuss what our next move is.
Harry, Hermione, and I feel that it is best not to stay anywhere too long, and Ron agrees, with the sole proviso that our next move takes us within reach of a bacon sandwich. Hermione, therefore, removes the enchantments she has placed around the clearing, while Harry, Ron, and I obliterate all the marks and impressions on the ground that might show that we camped here. Then we Disapparate to the outskirts of a small market town.
Once we've pitched the tent in the shelter of a small copse of trees and surround it with freshly cast defensive enchantments, I venture out under the Invisibility Cloak to find sustenance. This, however, does not go to plan. I've barely entered the town when an unnatural chill, a descending mist, and a sudden darkening of the skies make me freeze where I stand.
"But you can make a brilliant Patronus!" Ron protests, when I arrive back at the tent empty-handed, out of breath, and mouthing a single word, dementors.
"I couldn't...make one," I pant, clutching the stitch in my side. "Wouldn't...come."
Their expressions of consternation and disappointment make me feel ashamed. I was a nightmarish experience, seeing the dementors gliding out of the mist in the distance and realizing, as the paralyzing cold choked my lungs and a distant screaming filled my ears, that I was not going to be able to protect myself. It had taken all my willpower to uproot myself from the spot and run, leaving the eyeless dementor to glide amongst the Muggles who might not be able to see them, but would assuredly feel the despair they cast wherever they go.
"So we still haven't got any food."
"Shut up, Ron," Harry snaps.
"Haylee, what happened?" Hermione then questions. "Why do you think you couldn't make your Patronus? You managed it perfectly yesterday?"
"I don't know."
I sit low in one of the armchairs, feeling more humiliated by the moment. I'm afraid that something has gone wrong within me. Yesterday seemed a long time ago: Today I might as well be thirteen years old again, collapsing on the Hogwarts Express.
Ron kicks a chair leg.
"What?" he snarls at us. "I'm starving! All I've had since I bled half to death is a couple of toadstools!"
"You go and fight your way through the dementors, then," I shoot back, feeling stung.
"I would, but my arm's in a sling, in case you hadn't noticed!"
"Very convenient."
"And what's that supposed to -?"
"Don't you start on her!" Harry snaps.
"Of course!" cries Hermione, clapping a hand to her forehead and startling us all into silence. "Haylee, give me the locket! Come on," she says impatiently, clicking her fingers at me when I do not react, "the Horcrux, Haylee, you're still wearing it!"
She holds out her hands, and I lift the golden chain over my head. The moment it parts contact with my skin I feel free and oddly light. I had not even realized that I was clammy or that there was a heavyweight pressing on my stomach until both sensations lift.
"Better?" asks Hermione.
"Yeah, loads better!"
"Haylee," she says, crouching down in front of me and using the kind of voice I associate with visiting the very sick, "you don't think you've been possessed, do you?"
Immediately, Harry is sitting on the armrest, his hands on my shoulders.
"What? No!" I say defensively. "I remember everything we've been doing while I was wearing it. I wouldn't know what I'd done if I'd been possessed, would I? Ginny and Asher said there were times when she couldn't remember anything."
"Hmm," says Hermione, looking down at the heavy gold locket. "Well, maybe we ought not to wear it. We can just keep it in the tent."
"We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around," Harry says firmly, taking the words from my mouth. "If we lose it, if it gets stolen --"
"Oh, all right, all right," says Hermione, and she places it around her own neck and tucks it out of sight down the front of her shirt. "But we'll take turns wearing it, so nobody keeps it on too long."
"Great," Ron says irritably, "and now we've sorted that out, can we please get some food?"
"Fine, but we'll go somewhere else to find it," Hermione says with a half-glance at Harry and I. "There's no point staying where we know dementors are swooping around."
In the end, we settle down for the night in a far-flung field belong to a lonely farm, from which we have managed to obtain eggs and bread.
"It's not stealing, is it?" Hermione asks in a troubled voice, as they devour scrambled eggs on toast. "Not if I left some money under the chicken coop?"
Ron rolls his eyes and said, with his cheeks bulging, "'Er-my-nee, 'oo worry 'oo much. 'Elax!"
And, indeed, it is much easier to relax when we're comfortably well-fed: the argument about the dementors is forgotten in laughter, and I feel cheerful, even hopeful, as I take the first of the four-night watches.
So it seems that a full stomach means good spirits, while an empty one means bickering and gloom. I'm not exactly surprised by this, Harry and I having suffered periods of near-starvation at the Dursleys. Hermione bears up reasonably well when we manage to scavenge nothing but berries or stale biscuits, but tempter perhaps a little shorter than usual and her silences rather dour. Ron, however, has always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger makes him both unreasonable and irascible. Whenever lack of food coincides with Ron's turn to wear the Horcrux, he becomes downright unpleasant.
"So where next?" is his constant refrain. He does not seem to have any plans himself but expects Harry, Hermione, and I to come up with plans while he sits and broods over the low food supplies. Accordingly, Harry, Hermione, and I spend fruitless hours trying to decide where we might find the other Horcruxes, and how to destroy the one that we already have, our conversations becoming increasingly repetitive as we have no new information.
As Dumbledore had told Harry and Haylee that he believed Voldemort had been hiding Horcruxes in places important to him, we keep reciting, in a sort of dreary litany, the locations we know Voldemort has been or visited. The orphanage where he was raised; Hogwarts, where he was educated; Borgin and Burkes, where he had worked after completing school; then Albania, where he spent his years of exile: These form the basis of our speculation.
"Yeah, let's go to Albania. Shouldn't take more than an afternoon to search an entire country," says Ron sarcastically.
"There can't be anything there. He'd already made five of his Horcruxes before he went into exile, and Dumbledore was certain the snake is the sixth," says Hermione. "We know the snake's not in Albania, it's usually with Vol -"
"Didn't I ask you to stop saying that?"
"Fine! The snake is with You-Know-Who -- happy?"
"Not particularly."
"I can't see him hiding anything at Borgin and Burkes," Harry says, both of us have made this point many times before, but I can tell he's simply speaking just to break the nasty silence. "Borgin and Burke were experts at Dark objects, they would've recognized a Horcrux straightaway."
Ron yawns pointlessly. Repressing the strong urge to scream at him, I plough on, "I still reckon he must have hidden something at Hogwarts."
Hermione sighs.
"But Dumbledore would have found it, Haylee!"
I repeat the argument I keep bringing out in favour of this theory.
"Dumbledore said in front of Harry and I that he never assumed he knew all of Hogwarts' secrets, I'm telling you, if there was one place Vol -"
"Oi!"
"YOU-KNOW-WHO, then!" I shout, goaded past endurance. "If there was one place that was really important to him, it was Hogwarts!"
"On, come on," Ron scoffs. "His school?"
"Yeah, his school!" Harry says. "If was his first real home, the place that meant he was special; it meant everything to him, and even after he left --"
"This is You-Know-Who we're talking about, right? Not you two?" Ron inquires. He is tugging at the chain of the Horcrux around his neck, and I resist the urge to seize it and throttle him.
"You told us that You-Know-who asked Dumbledore to give him a job after he left," says Hermione.
"That's right," I say.
"And Dumbledore thought he only wanted to come back to try and find something, probably another founder's object, to make into another Horcrux?"
"Yeah."
"But he didn't get the job, did he?" says Hermione. "So he never got the chance to find a founder's object there and hide it in the school!"
"Okay then," I say, defeated. "Forget Hogwarts."
Without any other leads, we travel into London and, hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak, search for the orphanage in which Voldemort was raised. Hermione stole into a library and discovered from their records that the place was demolished many years before. We visit its site and find a tower block of offices.
"We could try digging in the foundations?" Hermione suggests half-heartedly.
"He wouldn't have hidden a Horcrux here," Harry says. We knew it all along: The orphanage had been the place Voldemort had been determined to escape; he would never have hidden a part of his soul there. Dumbledore had shown Harry and I that Voldemort sought grandeur or mystique in his hiding places; this dismal grey corner of London is as far removed as you can get from Hogwarts or the Ministry of a building like Gringotts.
Even without any new ideas, we continue to move through the countryside, pitching the tent in a different place each night for security. Every morning we make sure that we've removed all clues to our presence, then set off to find another lonely and secluded spot, travelling by Apparition to more woods, to the shadowy crevices of cliffs, or purple moors, gorse-covered mountainsides, and once a sheltered and pebbly cove. Every twelve hours or so we pass the Horcrux between us as though we're playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where we dread the music stopping because the reward is twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety.
Our scars keep prickling. It happens most often, I notice, when one of us is wearing the Horcrux. Sometimes we can't stop ourselves from reacting to the pain.
"What? What did you see?" Ron demands, whenever he notices either of us wince.
"A face," we say every time. "The same face. The thief who stole from Gregorovitch. Dumbledore's friend."
And Ron turns away, making no effort to hide his disappointment. I know that he's hoping to hear news of his family or the rest of the Order, but Harry and I aren't television aerials; we can only see what Voldemort is thinking at the time, not tune in to whatever takes our fancy. Apparently Voldemort is dwelling endlessly on the unknown boy with the gleeful face, whose name and whereabouts, I feel sure, Voldemort knows no better than we do. As our scars continue to burn and the merry, blond-haired boy swims tantalizingly in my memory and dreams, Harry and I learn quickly to suppress any sign of discomfort, for the other two show nothing but impatience at the mention of the thief. I can't entirely blame them when they are so desperate for a lead on the Horcruxes.
As the days stretch into weeks, I begin to suspect that Ron and Hermione are having conversations without us, and about us. Several times they stop talking abruptly when Harry and I enter the tent, and twice we've come accidentally upon them, huddled a little distance away, heads together and talking fast; both times they fall silent when they realize Harry and I are approaching them and hasten to appear busy collecting wood or water.
I can't help but wonder whether they had only agreed to come on what now feels like a pointless and rambling journey because they thought we had some secret plan they would learn in due course. Ron is making no effort to hide his bad mood, and I'm starting to fear that Hermione too is disappointed by our poor leadership. In desperation, I try to think of further Horcrux locations, but the only one that continues to occur to us is Hogwarts, and as neither of the others thinks this is at all likely, we stop suggesting it.
Autumn rolls over the countryside as we move through it: We've now pitched the tent on mulches of fallen leaves. Natural mists join those cast by the Dementors; wind and rain add to our troubles. The fact that Hermione is getting better at identifying edible fungi can not altogether compensate for our continuing isolation, the lack of other peoples company, or our total ignorance of what is going on in the water against Voldemort.
"My mother," says Ron one night, as we sit in the tent on a riverbank in Wales, "can make food appear out of thin air."
He prods moodily at the lumps of charred grey fish on his plate. I automatically glance at his neck and see, as I had expected, the golden chain of the Horcrux glinting there. I manage to fight down the impulse to swear at him, knowing that his attitude will improve when the time comes to take off the locket.
"Your mother can't produce food out of thin air," says Hermione. "No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transgifur --"
"Oh, speak English can't you?" Ron says, prising a fishbone out from between his teeth.
"It's impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you already know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some --"
"Well, don't bother increasing this, it's disgusting," says Ron.
"Harry caught the fish and Haylee and I did our best with it! I notice we're always the one who ends up sorting out the food, because we're girls, I suppose!"
"No, it's because you're supposed to be the best at magic!" shoots back Ron.
Hermione jumps up and bits of roast pike slide off her tin plate onto the floor.
"You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ron, you can find the ingredients and try and charm them into something worth eating, and I'll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you --"
"Shut up!" Harry says, leaping to his feet and holding up both hands. "Shut up now!"
Hermione looks outraged, and I can't help but agree: Someone is finally having a go at Ron and Harry wants to stop it?
"How can you side with him, he hardly ever does the cook --"
"Hermione, be quiet, I can hear someone!"
I jump up immediately, listening hard as Harry warns us all not to talk. Over the rush and gush of the dark river beside us, I hear voices. I look around at the Sneakoscope. It is not moving.
"You cast the Muffliato charm over us, right?" I whisper to Hermione.
"I did everything," she whispers back, "Muffliato, Muggle-Repelling and Disillusionment Charms, all of it. They shouldn't be able to hear or see us, whoever they are."
Heavy scuffing and scraping noises, plus the sound of dislodged stones and twigs, tell us that several people are clambering down the steep, wooded slope that descends to the narrow bank where we've pitched the tent. We draw our wands, waiting. The enchantments we've cast around ourselves ought to be sufficient, in the near-total darkness, to shield us from the notice of Muggles and normal witches and wizards. If these are Death Eaters, then perhaps our defences are about to be tested by Dark Magic for the first time.
The voices become louder but no more intelligible as the group of men reach the bank. I estimate that their owners are fewer than twenty feet away, but the cascading river makes it impossible to tell for sure. Hermione snatches up the beaded bag and starts to rummage; after a moment she draws out four Extendable Ears and throws one each to Harry, Ron, and I, and we hastily insert the ends of the flesh-coloured strings into our ears.
Within seconds, I hear a weary male voice.
"There ought to be a few salmon in here, or d'you reckon it's too early in the season? Accio Salmon!"
There are several distinct splashes and then the slapping sounds of fish against flesh. Somebody grunts appreciatively. I press the Extendable Ear deeper into my own: Over the murmur of the river I can make our more voices, but they are not speaking English or any human language I've ever heard. It is a rough and unmelodious tongue, a string of rattling, guttural noises, and there seem to be two speakers, one with a slightly lower, slowly voice than the other.
A fire dances into life on the other side of the canvas; large shadows pass between the tent and flames. The delicious smell of baking salmon wafts tantalizingly in our direction. Then comes the clinking of cutlery on plates, and the first man speaks again.
"Here, Griphood, Gornuk."
Goblins! Hermione mouths, and Harry and I nod.
"Thank you," says the goblins together in English.
"So, you three have been on the run how long?" asks a new, mellow, and pleasant voice; it is vaguely familiar to me, and I picture a round-bellied, cheerful-faced man.
"Six weeks...seven...I forgot," says the tired man. "Met up with Griphook in the first couple of days and joined forces with Gornuk not long after. nice to have a bit of company." There is a pause, while knives scrape plates and tin mugs are picked up and replaced on the ground. "What made you leave, Ted?" continues the man.
"Knew they were coming for me," replies the mellow-voiced Ted, and I suddenly know who he is: Tonks' father. "Heard Death Eater's were in the area last week and decided I'd better run for it. Refused to register as a Muggle-Born on principle, see, so I knew it was a mtter of time, knew I'd have to leave in the end. My wife should be okay, she's pure-blood. And then I met Dean here, what, a few days ago, son?"
"Yeah," says another voice, and we all stare at each other, silent but besides ourselves with excitement, sure that we've recognized the voice of Dean Thomas, our fellow Gryffindor.
"Muggle-born, eh?" asks the first man.
"Not sure," says Dean. "My dad left my mum when I was a kid. I've got no proof he was a wizard, though."
There is silence for a while, except for the sounds of munching; then Ted speaks again.
"I've got to say, Dirk, I'm surprised to run into you. Pleased, but surprised. Word was you'd been caught."
"I was," says Dirk. "I was halfway to Azkaban when I made a break for it, Stunned Dawlish and nicked his broom. It was easier than you'd think; I don't reckon he's quite right at the moment. Might be Confunded. If so, I'd like to shake the hand of the witch or wizard who did it, probably saved my life."
There is another pause in which the fire crackles and the river rushes on. Then Ted says, "And where do you two fit in? I, er, had the impression the goblins were for You-Know-Who, on the whole."
"You had a false impression," says the higher-voiced of the goblins. "We take no sides. This is a wizards' war."
"How come you're in hiding, then?"
"I deemed it prudent," says the deeper-voiced goblin. "Having refused what I considered an impertinent request, I could see that my personal safety was in jeopardy."
"What did they ask you to do?" asks Ted.
"Duties ill-befitting the dignity of my race," replies the goblin, his voice rougher and less human as he says it. "I am not a house-elf."
"What about you, Griphook?"
"Similar reasons," says the higher-voiced goblin. "Gringotts is no longer under the sole control of my race. I recognize no Wizarding master."
He adds something under his breath in Gobbledegook, and Gornuk laughs.
"What's the joke?" asks Dean.
"He said," replies Dirk, "that there are things wizards don't recognize, either."
There is a short pause.
"I don't get it," says Dean.
"I had my small revenge before I left," says Griphook in English.
"Good man -- goblin, I should say," amends Ted hastily. "Didn't manage to lock a Death Eater up in one of the hold high-security vaults, I suppose."
"If I had, the sword would not have helped him break out," replies Griphook. Gornuk laughs again and even Dirk gives a dry chuckle.
"Dean and I are still missing something here," says Ted.
"So is Severus Snape, though he does not know it," says Griphook, and the two goblins roar with malicious laughter. Inside the tent, my breathing is shallow with excitement: Harry and I stare at each other, listening as hard as we can
"Didn't you hear about that, Ted?" asks Dirk. "About the kids who tried to steal Gryffindor's sword out of Snape's office at Hogwarts."
An electric current seems to course through my, jangling my every nerve as I stand rooted on the spot.
"Never heard a word," says Ted. "Not in the Prophet, was it?"
"Hardly," chortles Dirk. "Griphook here told me, he heard about it from Bill Weasley who works for the bank. One of the kids who tried to take the sword was Bill's younger sister."
I glance toward Hermione and Ron, both of whom are clutching the Extendable Ears as tightly as lifelines.
"She and a couple of friends got into Snape's office and smashed open the glass case where he was apparently keeping the sword. Snape caught them as they were trying to smuggle it down the staircase."
"Ah, God bless 'em," says Ted. "What did they think, that they'd be able to use to the sword on You-Know-Who? Or on Snape himself?"
"Well, whatever they thought they were going to do with it, Snape decided the sword wasn't safe where it was," says Dirk. "Couple of days later, once he's got the say-so from You-Know-Who, I imagine, he sent it down to be kept in Gringotts instead."
The goblins start to laugh again.
"I'm still not seeing the joke," says Ted.
"It's a fake," rasps Griphook.
"The sword of Gryffindor!"
"Oh yes. It is a copy -- an excellent copy, it is true -- but it was Wizard-made. The original was forged centuries ago by goblins and had certain properties only goblin-made armour possesses. Wherever the genuine sword of Gryffindor is, it is not in a vault at Gringotts bank."
"I see," says Ted. "And I take it you didn't bother telling the Death Eaters this?"
"I saw no reason to trouble them with the information," says Griphook smugly, and now Ted and Dean join in Gornuk and Dirk's laughter.
Inside the tent, Harry has closed his eyes, and I can tell he is willing someone to ask a certain question. After a minute, Dean obliges; after all, he too is an ex-boyfriend of Ginny's.
"What happened to Ginny and the others? The ones who tried to steal it?"
"Oh, they were punished, and cruelly," says Griphook indifferently.
"They're okay, though?" asks Ted quickly. "I mean, the Weasley's don't need any more of their kids injured, do they?"
"They suffered no serious injury, as far as I am aware," says Griphook.
"Lucky for them," says Ted. "With Snape's track record I suppose we should just be glad they're still alive."
"You believe that story, then, do you, Ted?" asks Dirk. "You believe Snape killed Dumbledore."
"'Course I do," says Ted. "You're not going to sit there and tell me you think the Potters had anything to do with it?"
"Hard to know what to believe these days," mutters Dirk.
"I know Harry and Haylee Potter," says Dean. "And I reckon they're the real thing -- the Chosen Ones, or whatever you want to call it."
"Yeah, there's a lot would like to believe they're that, son," says Dirk, "me included. But where are they? Run for it, by the looks of things. You'd think, if they knew anything we don't, or had anything special going for them, they'd be out there fighting, rallying resistance, instead of hiding. And you know, the Prophet made a pretty good case against them --"
"The Prophet?" Ted scoffs. "You deserve to be lied to if you're still reading that muck, Dirk. You want the facts, try the Quibbler."
There is a sudden explosion of choking and retching, plus a good deal of thumping; by the sounds of it, Dirk has swallowed a fishbone. At least he splutters, "The Quibbler? That lunatic rag of Xeno Lovegood's?"
"It's not so lunatic these days," says Ted. "You want to give it a look. Xeno is printing all the stuff the Prophet's ignoring, not a single mention of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the last issue. How long they'll let him get away with it, mind, I don't know. But Xeno says, the front page of every issue, that any wizard who's against You-Know-Who ought to make helping Harry and Haylee Potter their number one priority."
"Hard to help a boy and girl who's vanished off the face of the earth," says Dirk. "Even James Potter and Sirius Black have disappeared."
"Listen, the fact that they haven't caught them yet's one hell of an achievement," says Ted. "I'd take tips from them gladly; it's what we're trying to do, stay free, isn't it?"
"Yeah, well, you've got a point there," says Dirk heavily. "With the whole of the Ministry and all their informers looking for them, I'd have expected them to be caught by now. Mind, who's to say they haven't already got and killed them without publicizing it?"
"Ah, don't say that, Dirk," Ted murmurs.
There is a long pause filled with more clattering of knives and forks. When they speak again it is to discuss whether they ought to sleep on the bank or retreat back up the wooded slope. Deciding the trees would give better cover, they extinguish their fire, then clamber back up the incline, their voices fading away.
We reel in the Extendable Ears. Having found it difficult to remain silent the entire time we eavesdropped, I'm not speechless. Thankfully, Harry manages to say, "Ginny -- the sword --"
"I know!" says Hermione.
She lunges for the tiny beaded bag, this time sinking her arm in it right up to the armpit.
"Here...we...are...." she says between gritted teeth, and she pulls at something that is evidently in the depths of the bag. Slowly the edge of an ornate picture frame comes into sight. Harry and I hurry to help her. As we lift the empty portrait of Phineas Nigellus free of Hermione's bag, she keeps her wand pointing at it, ready to cast a spell at any moment.
"If somebody swapped the real sword for the fake while it was in Dumbledore's office," she pants, as we prop the painting against the side of the tent, "Phineas Nigellus would have seen it happen, he hangs right beside the case!"
"Unless he was asleep," I say, but I still hold my breath as Hermione kneels down in front of the empty canvas, her wand directed at its centre, clears her throat, and then says:
"Er -- Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?"
Nothing happens.
"Phineas Nigellus?" says Hermione again. "Professor Black? Please, could we take to you? Please?"
"'Please' always helps," says a cold, snide voice, and Phineas Nigellus slides into his portrait. At once, Hermione cries:
"Obscuro!"
A black blindfold appears over Phineas Nigelllus's clever, dark eyes, causing him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
"What -- how dare -- what are you -?"
"I'm very sorry, Professor Black," says Hermione, "but it's a necessary precaution!"
"Remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are ruining a great work of art! Where am I? What is going on?"
"Never mind where we are," says Harry, and Phineas Nigellus freezes, abandoning his attempts to peel off the painted blindfold.
"Can that possibly be the voice of the elusive Mr Potter? If so, assuredly, Miss Potter is close by also?"
"Maybe," I say, knowing that this will keep his interest. "We've got a couple of questions to ask you - about the sword of Gryffindor?"
"Ah," says Phineas Nigellus, now turning his head this way and that in an effort to catch Harry and me, "yes. That silly girl acted most unwisely there -"
"Shut up about my sister," says Ron roughly.
"Who else is here," Phineas asks, turning his head from side to side. "Your tone displeases me! The girl and her friend were foolhardy in the extreme. Thieving from the headmaster!"
"They weren't thieving," says Harry. "That sword isn't Snape's"
"It belongs to Professor Snape's school," says Phineas Nigellus. "Exactly what claim did the Weasley girl have upon it? She deserved her punishment, as did the idiot Longbottom and the Lovegood oddity!"
"Neville is not an idiot and Luna is not an oddity!" says Hermione.
"Where am I?" repeats Phineas Nigellus, starting to wrestle with the blindfold again. "Where have you brought me? Why have you removed me from the house of my forebears?"
"Never mind that! How did Snape punish Ginny, Neville, and Luna?" Harry asks urgently.
"Professor Snape sent them into the Forbidden Forest, to do some work for the oaf, Hagrid."
"Hagrid's not an oaf!" Hermione says shrilly.
"And Snape might've thought that was a punishment," I say, "but Ginny, Neville, and Luna probably had a good laugh with Hagrid. The Forbidden Forest....they've faced plenty worse than the Forbidden Forest!"
I feel relieved; my mind had led me to dark places. Draco casting the Cruciatus Curse, just as he had in our vision.
"What we really wanted to know, Professor Black, is whetheranyone else has, um, taken out the sword at all? Maybe it's beentaken away for cleaning or — or something?"
Phineas Nigellus pauses again in his struggles to free his eyesand sniggers.
"Muggle-borns," he says. "Goblin-made armour does not requirecleaning, simple girl. Goblins' silver repels mundane dirt, imbibingonly that which strengthens it."
"Don't call Hermione simple," I say.
"I grow weary of contradiction," says Phineas Nigellus. "Perhapsit is time for me to return to the headmaster's office?"
Still blindfolded, he begins to grope the side of his frame, tryingto feel his way out of his picture and back into the one at Hogwarts.
"Dumbledore! Can't you bring us Dumbledore?" Harry bursts out, clearly having a sudden burst of inspiration.
"I beg your pardon?" asks Phineas Nigellus.
"Professor Dumbledore's portrait — couldn't you bring himalong, here, into yours?"
Phineas Nigellus turns his face in the direction of Harry'svoice."Evidently it is not only Muggle-borns who are ignorant, Potter.The portraits of Hogwarts may commune with each other, but theycannot travel outside the castle except to visit a painting of themselves hanging elsewhere. Dumbledore cannot come here with me,and after the treatment I have received at your hands, I can assureyou that I shall not be making a return visit!"
Slightly crestfallen, I watch Phineas redouble his attemptsto leave his frame.
"Professor Black," says Hermione, "couldn't you just tell us, please when was the last time the sword was taken out of its case? BeforeGinny took it out, I mean?"
Phineas snorts impatiently."I believe that the last time I saw the sword of Gryffindor leaveits case was when Professor Dumbledore used it to break open aring."
Hermione whips around to look at Harry and I. None of us dare say more in front of Phineas Nigellus, who has at last managed to locate the exit.
"Well, good night to you," he says a little waspishly, and he begins to move out of sight again.
Only the edge of his hat brim remainedin view when Harry gives a sudden shout."Wait! Have you told Snape you saw this?"]
Phineas Nigellus sticks his blindfolded head back into thepicture."Professor Snape has more important things on his mind than themany eccentricities of Albus Dumbledore. Good-bye, Potter!"
And with that, he vanishes completely, leaving behind him nothing but his murky backdrop.
"Harry! Haylee!" Hermione cried.
"I know!" I shout. I'm so happy I could shout. Harry and I begin striding up and down the tent, and I feel as if I could run a mile; I don't even feel hungry anymore. Hermione is squashing Phineas Nigellus'sportrait back into the beaded bag; when she haw fastened the claspshe throws the bag aside and raises a shining face to Harry and I.
"The sword can destroy Horcruxes! Goblin-made blades imbibeonly that which strengthen them — Harry, Haylee that sword's impregnated with basilisk venom!"
"And Dumbledore didn't give it to us because he still needed it, he wanted to use it on the locket --"
"-- and he must have realized they wouldn't let you have it if he put it in his will --"
"-- so he made a copy --"
"-- and put a fake in the glass case --"
"-- and he left the real one -- where?"
We gaze at each other; I feel that the answer is dangling invisibly in the air above us, tantalizingly close. Why hadn't Dumbledore told us? Or had he, in fact, told us, but Harry and I didn't realize at the time?"
"Think!" Hermione whispers. "Think! Where would he have left it?"
"Not at Hogwarts," I say, as we resume our pacing.
"Somewhere in Hogsmeade?" Hermione suggests.
"The Shrieking Shack?" says Harry. "Nobody ever goes in there."
"But Snape knows how to get in, wouldn't that be a bit risky?"
"Dumbledore trusted Snape," I remind her. "But...but not enough to tell him that he had swapped the swords!"
"Yeah, you're right!" says Harry, and I feel even more cheered at the thought that Dumbledore had some reservations, however faint, about Snape's trustworthiness. "So, would he have hidden the sword well away from Hogsmeade, then? What d'you reckon, Ron? Ron?"
I look around. For one bewildering moment I think that Ron has left the tent, then I realize that Ron is lying in the shadow of a lower bunk, looking stony.
"Oh, remembered me, have you?"
"Excuse me?"
Ron snorts as he stares up at the underside of the upper bunk.
"You three carry on. Don't let me spoil your fun."
Perplexed, Harry and I look to Hermione for help, but she shakes her head, apparently as nonplussed as we are.
"What's the problem?" I ask, trying to remain calm.
"Problem? There's no problem," says Ron, still refusing to look at Harry and I. "Not according to you, anyway."
There are several plunks on the canvas over our heads. It has started to rain.
"Well," Harry says, moving protectively to my side, "you've obviously got a problem. Spit it out, will you?"
Ron swings his long legs off the bed and sits up. He looks mean, unlike himself.
"All right, I'll spit it out. Don't expect me skip up and down the tent because there's some other damn thing we've got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don't know."
"I don't know?" Harry repeats. "I don't know?"
Plunk, plunk, plunk. The rain is falling harder and heavier; it patters on the leaf-strewn bank all around us and into the river chattering through the dark. Dread douses my jubilation: Ron is saying exactly what I had suspected and feared him to be thinking.
"It's not like I'm not having the time of my life here," says Ron, "you know, with my arm all mangled and nothing to eat and freezing my backside off every night. I just hoped, you know, after we'd been running round a few weeks, we'd have achieved something."
"Ron," says Hermione, but in such a quiet voice that Ron can pretend not to have heard it over the loud tattoo the rain is now beating on the tent.
"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for," says Harry.
"Yeah, I thought I did too."
"So what part of this isn't living up to your expectations?" I demand, anger coming to my defence now. "Did you think we'd be staying in five-star hotels? Finding Horcruxes every other day? Did you think you'd be back to Mummy by Christmas?"
"We thought you two knew what you were doing!" Ron shouts, standing up, and his words pierce me like scalding knives. "We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan?"
"Ron!" says Hermione, this time clearly audible over the rain thundering on the tent roof, but again, he ignores her.
"Well, sorry to let you down," says Harry: unlike me, his voice is quite calm, but I bet he feels just as hollow and inadequate. "We've been straight with you from the start. We told you everything Dumbledore told us. And in case you haven't noticed, we've found one Horcrux --"
"Yeah, and we're about as near getting rid of it as we are to finding the rest of them -- nowhere fucking near, in other words!"
"Take off the locket, Ron," Hermione says, her voice unusually high. "Please take it off. You wouldn't be talking like this if you hadn't been wearing it all day."
"Bullshit," I snap, not wanting any excuses made for him. "He would. D'you think Harry and I haven't noticed the two of you whispering behind our backs! D'you think we didn't guess you were thinking this stuff?"
"Haylee, we weren't --"
"Don't lie!" Ron hurls at her. "You said it too, you said you were disappointed, you said you'd thought they had a bit more to go on than --"
"I didn't say it like that -- Harry, Haylee, I didn't!" she cries.
The rain is pounding the tent, tears are pouring down Hermione's face, and the excitement of a few minutes before has vanished as if it had never been, a short-lived firework that had flared and died, leaving everything dark, wet, and cold. The sword of Gryffindor is hidden we know not where, and we are four teenagers in a tent whose only achievement is not, yet, to be dead.
"So why are you still here?" Harry asks Ron.
"Search me," says Ron.
"Go home then," I say.
"Yeah, maybe I will!" Ron shouts, and he takes several steps towards Harry and me, and we do not back away. "Didn't you hear what they said about my sister? But you don't give a rat's fart, do you, it's only the Forbidden Forest, Harry and Haylee I've Faced-Worse Potter doesn't care what happens to her in there -- well, I do, all right, giant spiders and mental stuff --"
"That's not what I meant and you know it! I was only saying -- she was with the others and they were with Hagrid -"
"Yeah, I get it, you don't care! And what about the rest of my family, 'the Weasleys don't need another kid injured,' did you hear that?"
"Yeah, I --"
"Not bothered what it meant, though?"
"Ron!" says Hermione, forcing her way between us. "I don't think it means anything new as happened, anything we don't know about; think, Ron, Bill's already scarred, plenty of people must have seen that George has lost an ear by now, and you're supposed to be on your deathbed with spattergroit, I'm sure that's all he meant --"
"Oh, you're sure, are you? Right then, well, I won't bother myself about them. How do you think George lost his ear anyway?" He points his finger at me, so close he might as well be tapping my chest. "For her. Just for you to lead him on, when we all know you'll run straight back to Malfoy, anyway!"
"Fuck you!" I take a step towards him, but Harry grabs my wrist and pulls me back
"But it's all right for you three though, isn't it, with your parents safely out of the way --"
"Our mother is dead!" Harry bellows.
"And mine could be going the same way!" Ron yells. "You heard them before, Sirius and your dad have run away, and now my family are just in even more danger!"
"Then GO!" Harry roars: I'm so angry that I can't even form words. "Go back to them, pretend you've got over your spattergroit and Mummy'll be able to feed you up and --"
Ron makes a sudden movement: Harry and I react, but before any wands are clear of their owners pocket, Hermione has raised her own.
"Protego!" she cries, and an invisible shield expands us and Harry on the one side and Ron on the other, all of us are forced back a few steps by the strength of the spell, and Harry, Ron, and I glare from either side of the transparent barrier as though we're seeing each other clearly for the first time. I feel a corrosive hatred toward Ron: something has broken between us.
"Leave the Horcrux," I say, seething, "and get out."
Ron wrenches the chain from over his head and casts the locket into a nearby chair. He turns to Hermione.
"What are you doing?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are you staying, or what?"
"I..." She looks anguished. "Yes -- yes, I'm staying. Ron, we said we'd go with Harry and Haylee, we said we'd help --"
"I get it. You choose them."
"Ron, no -- please -- come back, come back!"
She is impeded by her own Shield charm; by the time she has removed it he has already stormed into the night. Harry and I stand quite still and silent, listening to her sobbing and calling Ron's name amongst the trees.
After a few minutes she returns, her sopping hair plastered to her face.
"He's g-g-gone! Disapparated!"
She throws herself into a chair, curls up, and starts to cry.
I feel dazed. I watch as Harry stoops down, picks up the Horcrux, and places it around his own neck. Shaking with rage, I drag the blankets off Ron's bunk and throw them over Hermione, before climbing into my bunk, my heart beating furiously alongside the pounding rain.