[Part 15] "Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows" by Rowling J.K.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIX. THE LOST DIADEM
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
"Neville — what the — how —?"
But Neville had spotted Ron and Hermione, and with yells of delight was hugging them too.
The longer Harry looked at Neville, the worse he appeared: One of his eyes was swollen yellow and purple, there were gouge marks on his face, and his general air of unkemptness suggested that he had been living rough.
Nevertheless, his battered visage shone with happiness as he let go of Hermione and said again, “I knew you’d come! Kept telling Seamus it was a matter of time!”
“Neville, what’s happened to you?”
“What? This?” Neville dismissed his injuries with a shake of the head.
“This is nothing. Seamus is worse. You’ll see. Shall we get going then? Oh,” he turned to Aberforth, “Ab, there might be a couple more people on the way.”
“Couple more?” repeated Aberforth ominously.
“What d’you mean, a couple more, Longbottom? There’s a curfew and a Caterwauling Charm on the whole village!”
“I know, that’s why they’ll be Apparating directly into the bar,” said Neville.
“Just send them down the passage when they get here, will you? Thanks a lot.”
Neville held out his hand to Hermione and helped her to climb up onto the mantelpiece and into the tunnel; Ron followed, then Neville.
Harry addressed Aberforth.
“I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve saved our lives twice.”
“Look after ’em, then,” said Aberforth gruffly.
“I might not be able to save ’em a third time.”
Harry clambered up onto the mantelpiece and through the hole behind Ariana’s portrait.
There were smooth stone steps on the other side: It looked as though the passageway had been there for years.
Brass lamps hung from the walls and the earthy floor was worn and smooth; as they walked, their shadows rippled, fanlike, across the wall.
“How long’s this been here?” Ron asked as they set off.
“It isn’t on the Marauder’s Map, is it, Harry? I thought there were only seven passages in and out of school?”
“They sealed off all of those before the start of the year,” said Neville.
“There’s no chance of getting through any of them now, not with curses over the entrances and Death Eaters and dementors waiting at the exits.”
He started walking backward, beaming, drinking them in.
“Never mind that stuff . . . Is it true? Did you break into Gringotts? Did you escape on a dragon? It’s everywhere, everyone’s talking about it, Terry Boot got beaten up by Carrow for yelling about it in the Great Hall at dinner!”
“Yeah, it’s true,” said Harry.
Neville laughed gleefully.
“What did you do with the dragon?”
“Released it into the wild,” said Ron.
“Hermione was all for keeping it as a pet —”
“Don’t exaggerate, Ron —”
“But what have you been doing? People have been saying you’ve just been on the run, Harry, but I don’t think so. I think you’ve been up to something.”
“You’re right,” said Harry, “but tell us about Hogwarts, Neville, we haven’t heard anything.”
“It’s been . . . well, it’s not really like Hogwarts anymore,” said Neville, the smile fading from his face as he spoke.
“Do you know about the Carrows?”
“Those two Death Eaters who teach here?”
“They do more than teach,” said Neville.
“They’re in charge of all discipline. They like punishment, the Carrows.”
“Like Umbridge?”
“Nah, they make her look tame. The other teachers are all supposed to refer us to the Carrows if we do anything wrong. They don’t, though, if they can avoid it. You can tell they all hate them as much as we do.
“Amycus, the bloke, he teaches what used to be Defense Against the Dark Arts, except now it’s just the Dark Arts. We’re supposed to practice the Cruciatus Curse on people who’ve earned detentions —”
“What?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s united voices echoed up and down the passage.
“Yeah,” said Neville.
“That’s how I got this one,” he pointed at a particularly deep gash in his cheek, “I refused to do it. Some people are into it, though; Crabbe and Goyle love it. First time they’ve ever been top in anything, I expect.
“Alecto, Amycus’s sister, teaches Muggle Studies, which is compulsory for everyone. We’ve all got to listen to her explain how Muggles are like animals, stupid and dirty, and how they drove wizards into hiding by being vicious toward them, and how the natural order is being reestablished. I got this one,” he indicated another slash to his face, “for asking her how much Muggle blood she and her brother have got.”
“Blimey, Neville,” said Ron, “there’s a time and a place for getting a smart mouth.”
“You didn’t hear her,” said Neville.
“You wouldn’t have stood it either. The thing is, it helps when people stand up to them, it gives everyone hope. I used to notice that when you did it, Harry.”
“But they’ve used you as a knife sharpener,” said Ron, wincing slightly as they passed a lamp and Neville’s injuries were thrown into even greater relief.
Neville shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t want to spill too much pure blood, so they’ll torture us a bit if we’re mouthy but they won’t actually kill us.”
Harry did not know what was worse, the things that Neville was saying or the matter-of-fact tone in which he said them.
“The only people in real danger are the ones whose friends and relatives on the outside are giving trouble. They get taken hostage. Old Xeno Lovegood was getting a bit too outspoken in The Quibbler, so they dragged Luna off the train on the way back for Christmas.”
“Neville, she’s all right, we’ve seen her —”
“Yeah, I know, she managed to get a message to me.”
From his pocket he pulled a golden coin, and Harry recognized it as one of the fake Galleons that Dumbledore’s Army had used to send one another messages.
“These have been great,” said Neville, beaming at Hermione.
“The Carrows never rumbled how we were communicating, it drove them mad. We used to sneak out at night and put graffiti on the walls: Dumbledore’s Army, Still Recruiting, stuff like that. Snape hated it.”
“You used to?” said Harry, who had noticed the past tense.
“Well, it got more difficult as time went on,” said Neville.
“We lost Luna at Christmas, and Ginny never came back after Easter, and the three of us were sort of the leaders. The Carrows seemed to know I was behind a lot of it, so they started coming down on me hard, and then Michael Corner went and got caught releasing a first-year they’d chained up, and they tortured him pretty badly. That scared people off.”
“No kidding,” muttered Ron, as the passage began to slope upward.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t ask people to go through what Michael did, so we dropped those kinds of stunts. But we were still fighting, doing underground stuff, right up until a couple of weeks ago. That’s when they decided there was only one way to stop me, I suppose, and they went for Gran.”
“They what?” said Harry, Ron, and Hermione together.
“Yeah,” said Neville, panting a little now, because the passage was climbing so steeply, “well, you can see their thinking.
It had worked really well, kidnapping kids to force their relatives to behave.
I s’pose it was only a matter of time before they did it the other way around.
Thing was,” he faced them, and Harry was astonished to see that he was grinning, “they bit off a bit more than they could chew with Gran.
Little old witch living alone, they probably thought they didn’t need to send anyone particularly powerful.
Anyway,” Neville laughed, “Dawlish is still in St. Mungo’s and Gran’s on the run.
She sent me a letter,” he clapped a hand to the breast pocket of his robes, “telling me she was proud of me, that I’m my parents’ son, and to keep it up.”
“Cool,” said Ron.
“Yeah,” said Neville happily.
“Only thing was, once they realized they had no hold over me, they decided Hogwarts could do without me after all.
I don’t know whether they were planning to kill me or send me to Azkaban.
Either way, I knew it was time to disappear.”
“But,” said Ron, looking thoroughly confused, “aren’t — aren’t we heading straight back into Hogwarts?”
“’Course,” said Neville.
“You’ll see.
We’re here.”
They turned a corner and there ahead of them was the end of the passage.
Another short flight of steps led to a door just like the one hidden behind Ariana’s portrait.
Neville pushed it open and climbed through.
As Harry followed, he heard Neville call out to unseen people:
“Look who it is!
Didn’t I tell you?”
As Harry emerged into the room beyond the passage, there were several screams and yells: “HARRY!” “It’s Potter, it’s POTTER!” “Ron!” “Hermione!”
He had a confused impression of colored hangings, of lamps and many faces.
The next moment, he, Ron, and Hermione were engulfed, hugged, pounded on the back, their hair ruffled, their hands shaken, by what seemed to be more than twenty people: They might just have won a Quidditch final.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
“Okay, okay, calm down!” Neville called, and as the crowd backed away, Harry was able to take in their surroundings.
He did not recognize the room at all.
It was enormous, and looked rather like the interior of a particularly sumptuous tree house, or perhaps a gigantic ship’s cabin.
Multicolored hammocks were strung from the ceiling and from a balcony that ran around the dark wood-paneled and windowless walls, which were covered in bright tapestry hangings: Harry saw the gold Gryffindor lion, emblazoned on scarlet; the black badger of Hufflepuff, set against yellow; and the bronze eagle of Ravenclaw, on blue.
The silver and green of Slytherin alone were absent.
There were bulging bookcases, a few broomsticks propped against the walls, and in the corner, a large wooden-cased wireless.
“Where are we?”
“Room of Requirement, of course!” said Neville.
“Surpassed itself, hasn’t it?
The Carrows were chasing me, and I knew I had just one chance for a hideout: I managed to get through the door and this is what I found!
Well, it wasn’t exactly like this when I arrived, it was a load smaller, there was only one hammock and just Gryffindor hangings.
But it’s expanded as more and more of the D.A. have arrived.”
“And the Carrows can’t get in?” asked Harry, looking around for the door.
“No,” said Seamus Finnigan, whom Harry had not recognized until he spoke: Seamus’s face was bruised and puffy.
“It’s a proper hideout, as long as one of us stays in here, they can’t get at us, the door won’t open.
It’s all down to Neville.
He really gets this room.
You’ve got to ask it for exactly what you need — like, ‘I don’t want any Carrow supporters to be able to get in’ — and it’ll do it for you!
You’ve just got to make sure you close the loopholes!
Neville’s the man!”
“It’s quite straightforward, really,” said Neville modestly.
“I’d been in here about a day and a half, and getting really hungry, and wishing I could get something to eat, and that’s when the passage to the Hog’s Head opened up.
I went through it and met Aberforth.
He’s been providing us with food, because for some reason, that’s the one thing the room doesn’t really do.”
“Yeah, well, food’s one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration,” said Ron to general astonishment.
“So we’ve been hiding out here for nearly two weeks,” said Seamus, “and it just makes more hammocks every time we need them, and it even sprouted a pretty good bathroom once girls started turning up —”
“— and thought they’d quite like to wash, yes,” supplied Lavender Brown, whom Harry had not noticed until that point.
Now that he looked around properly, he recognized many familiar faces.
Both Patil twins were there, as were Terry Boot, Ernie Macmillan, Anthony Goldstein, and Michael Corner.
“Tell us what you’ve been up to, though,” said Ernie.
“There’ve been so many rumors, we’ve been trying to keep up with you on Potterwatch.”
He pointed at the wireless.
“You didn’t break into Gringotts?”
“They did!” said Neville.
“And the dragon’s true too!”
There was a smattering of applause and a few whoops; Ron took a bow.
“What were you after?” asked Seamus eagerly.
Before any of them could parry the question with one of their own, Harry felt a terrible, scorching pain in the lightning scar.
As he turned his back hastily on the curious and delighted faces, the Room of Requirement vanished, and he was standing inside a ruined stone shack, and the rotting floorboards were ripped apart at his feet, a disinterred golden box lay open and empty beside the hole, and Voldemort’s scream of fury vibrated inside his head.
With an enormous effort he pulled out of Voldemort’s mind again, back to where he stood, swaying, in the Room of Requirement, sweat pouring from his face and Ron holding him up.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Neville was saying.
“Want to sit down?
I expect you’re tired, aren’t — ?”
“No,” said Harry.
He looked at Ron and Hermione, trying to tell them without words that Voldemort had just discovered the loss of one of the other Horcruxes.
Time was running out fast: If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their chance.
“We need to get going,” he said, and their expressions told him that they understood.
“What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus.
“What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” repeated Harry.
He was exercising all his willpower to prevent himself succumbing again to Voldemort’s rage: His scar was still burning.
“Well, there’s something we — Ron, Hermione, and I — need to do, and then we’ll get out of here.”
Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore.
Neville looked confused.
“What d’you mean, ‘get out of here’?”
“We haven’t come back to stay,” said Harry, rubbing his scar, trying to soothe the pain.
“There’s something important we need to do —”
“What is it?”
“I — I can’t tell you.”
There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville’s brows contracted.
“Why can’t you tell us?
It’s something to do with fighting You-Know-Who, right?”
“Well, yeah —”
“Then we’ll help you.”
The other members of Dumbledore’s Army were nodding, some enthusiastically, others solemnly.
A couple of them rose from their chairs to demonstrate their willingness for immediate action.
“You don’t understand.” Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours.
“We — we can’t tell you.
We’ve got to do it — alone.”
“Why?” asked Neville.
“Because . . .”
In his desperation to start looking for the missing Horcrux, or at least to have a private discussion with Ron and Hermione about where they might commence their search, Harry found it difficult to gather his thoughts.
His scar was still searing.
“Dumbledore left the three of us a job,” he said carefully, “and we weren’t supposed to tell — I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the three of us.”
“We’re his army,” said Neville.
“Dumbledore’s Army.”
“We were all in it together, we’ve been keeping it going while you three have been off on your own —”
“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic, mate,” said Ron.
“I never said it had, but I don’t see why you can’t trust us.”
“Everyone in this room’s been fighting and they’ve been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting them down.”
“Everyone in here’s proven they’re loyal to Dumbledore — loyal to you.”
“Look,” Harry began, without knowing what he was going to say, but it did not matter: The tunnel door had just opened behind him.
“We got your message, Neville! Hello you three, I thought you must be here!”
It was Luna and Dean.
Seamus gave a great roar of delight and ran to hug his best friend.
“Hi, everyone!” said Luna happily.
“Oh, it’s great to be back!”
“Luna,” said Harry distractedly, “what are you doing here? How did you — ?”
“I sent for her,” said Neville, holding up the fake Galleon.
“I promised her and Ginny that if you turned up I’d let them know.”
“We all thought that if you came back, it would mean revolution.”
“That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows.”
“Of course that’s what it means,” said Luna brightly.
“Isn’t it, Harry?”
“We’re going to fight them out of Hogwarts?”
“Listen,” said Harry with a rising sense of panic, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we came back for.”
“There’s something we’ve got to do, and then —”
“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael Corner.
“No!” said Ron.
“What we’re doing will benefit everyone in the end, it’s all about trying to get rid of You-Know-Who —”
“Then let us help!” said Neville angrily.
“We want to be a part of it!”
There was another noise behind them, and Harry turned.
His heart seemed to fail: Ginny was now climbing through the hole in the wall, closely followed by Fred, George, and Lee Jordan.
Ginny gave Harry a radiant smile.
He had forgotten, or had never fully appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less pleased to see her.
“Aberforth’s getting a bit annoyed,” said Fred, raising his hand in answer to several cries of greeting.
“He wants a kip, and his bar’s turned into a railway station.”
Harry’s mouth fell open.
Right behind Lee Jordan came Harry’s old girlfriend, Cho Chang.
She smiled at him.
“I got the message,” she said, holding up her own fake Galleon, and she walked over to sit beside Michael Corner.
“So what’s the plan, Harry?” said George.
“There isn’t one,” said Harry, still disoriented by the sudden appearance of all these people, unable to take everything in while his scar was still burning so fiercely.
“Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favorite kind,” said Fred.
“You’ve got to stop this!” Harry told Neville.
“What did you call them all back for?”
“This is insane —”
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
“We’re fighting, aren’t we?” said Dean, taking out his fake Galleon.
“The message said Harry was back, and we were going to fight!”
“I’ll have to get a wand, though —”
“You haven’t got a wand — ?” began Seamus.
Ron turned suddenly to Harry.
“Why can’t they help?”
“What?”
“They can help.”
He dropped his voice and said, so that none of them could hear but Hermione, who stood between them, “We don’t know where it is.”
“We’ve got to find it fast.”
“We don’t have to tell them it’s a Horcrux.”
Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, who murmured, “I think Ron’s right.”
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for, we need them.”
And when Harry looked unconvinced, “You don’t have to do everything alone, Harry.”
Harry thought fast, his scar still prickling, his head threatening to split again.
Dumbledore had warned him against telling anyone but Ron and Hermione about the Horcruxes.
Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up, and Albus . . . he was a natural. . . .
Was he turning into Dumbledore, keeping his secrets clutched to his chest, afraid to trust?
But Dumbledore had trusted Snape, and where had that led?
To murder at the top of the highest tower . . .
“All right,” he said quietly to the other two.
“Okay,” he called to the room at large, and all noise ceased.
Fred and George, who had been cracking jokes for the benefit of those nearest, fell silent, and all of them looked alert, excited.
“There’s something we need to find,” Harry said.
“Something — something that’ll help us overthrow You-Know-Who.”
“It’s here at Hogwarts, but we don’t know where.”
“It might have belonged to Ravenclaw.”
“Has anyone heard of an object like that?”
“Has anyone ever come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?”
He looked hopefully toward the little group of Ravenclaws, to Padma, Michael, Terry, and Cho, but it was Luna who answered, perched on the arm of Ginny’s chair.
“Well, there’s her lost diadem.”
“I told you about it, remember, Harry?”
“The lost diadem of Ravenclaw?”
“Daddy’s trying to duplicate it.”
“Yeah, but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, “is lost, Luna.”
“That’s sort of the point.”
“When was it lost?” asked Harry.
“Centuries ago, they say,” said Cho, and Harry’s heart sank.
“Professor Flitwick says the diadem vanished with Ravenclaw herself.”
“People have looked, but,” she appealed to her fellow Ravenclaws, “nobody’s ever found a trace of it, have they?”
They all shook their heads.
“Sorry, but what is a diadem?” asked Ron.
“It’s a kind of crown,” said Terry Boot.
“Ravenclaw’s was supposed to have magical properties, enhance the wisdom of the wearer.”
“Yes, Daddy’s Wrackspurt siphons —”
But Harry cut across Luna.
“And none of you have ever seen anything that looks like it?”
They all shook their heads again.
Harry looked at Ron and Hermione and his own disappointment was mirrored back at him.
An object that had been lost this long, and apparently without trace, did not seem like a good candidate for the Horcrux hidden in the castle. . . .
Before he could formulate a new question, however, Cho spoke again.
“If you’d like to see what the diadem’s supposed to look like, I could take you up to our common room and show you, Harry?”
“Ravenclaw’s wearing it in her statue.”
Harry’s scar scorched again.
For a moment the Room of Requirement swam before him, and he saw instead the dark earth soaring beneath him and felt the great snake wrapped around his shoulders.
Voldemort was flying again, whether to the underground lake or here, to the castle, he did not know.
Either way, there was hardly any time left.
“He’s on the move,” he said quietly to Ron and Hermione.
He glanced at Cho and then back at them.
“Listen, I know it’s not much of a lead, but I’m going to go and look at this statue, at least find out what the diadem looks like.”
“Wait for me here and keep, you know — the other one — safe.”
Cho had got to her feet, but Ginny said rather fiercely, “No, Luna will take Harry, won’t you, Luna?”
“Oooh, yes, I’d like to,” said Luna happily, and Cho sat down again, looking disappointed.
“How do we get out?” Harry asked Neville.
“Over here.”
He led Harry and Luna to a corner, where a small cupboard opened onto a steep staircase.
“It comes out somewhere different every day, so they’ve never been able to find it,” he said. “Only trouble is, we never know exactly where we’re going to end up when we go out. Be careful, Harry, they’re always patrolling the corridors at night.”
“No problem,” said Harry. “See you in a bit.”
He and Luna hurried up the staircase, which was long, lit by torches, and turned corners in unexpected places.
At last they reached what appeared to be solid wall.
“Get under here,” Harry told Luna, pulling out the Invisibility Cloak and throwing it over both of them.
He gave the wall a little push.
It melted away at his touch and they slipped outside: Harry glanced back and saw that it had resealed itself at once.
They were standing in a dark corridor: Harry pulled Luna back into the shadows, fumbled in the pouch around his neck, and took out the Marauder’s Map.
Holding it close to his nose he searched, and located his and Luna’s dots at last.
“We’re up on the fifth floor,” he whispered, watching Filch moving away from them, a corridor ahead. “Come on, this way.”
They crept off.
Harry had prowled the castle at night many times before, but never had his heart hammered this fast, never had so much depended on his safe passage through the place.
Through squares of moonlight upon the floor, past suits of armor whose helmets creaked at the sound of their soft footsteps, around corners beyond which who knew what lurked, Harry and Luna walked, checking the Marauder’s Map whenever light permitted, twice pausing to allow a ghost to pass without drawing attention to themselves.
He expected to encounter an obstacle at any moment; his worst fear was Peeves, and he strained his ears with every step to hear the first, telltale signs of the poltergeist’s approach.
“This way, Harry,” breathed Luna, plucking his sleeve and pulling him toward a spiral staircase.
They climbed in tight, dizzying circles; Harry had never been up here before.
At last they reached a door.
There was no handle and no keyhole: nothing but a plain expanse of aged wood, and a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle.
Luna reached out a pale hand, which looked eerie floating in midair, unconnected to arm or body.
She knocked once, and in the silence it sounded to Harry like a cannon blast.
At once the beak of the eagle opened, but instead of a bird’s call, a soft, musical voice said, “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”
“Hmm . . . What do you think, Harry?” said Luna, looking thoughtful.
“What? Isn’t there just a password?”
“Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,” said Luna.
“What if you get it wrong?”
“Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,” said Luna. “That way you learn, you see?”
“Yeah . . . Trouble is, we can’t really afford to wait for anyone else, Luna.”
“No, I see what you mean,” said Luna seriously. “Well then, I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.”
“Well reasoned,” said the voice, and the door swung open.
The deserted Ravenclaw common room was a wide, circular room, airier than any Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts.
Graceful arched windows punctuated the walls, which were hung with blue-and-bronze silks: By day, the Ravenclaws would have a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains.
The ceiling was domed and painted with stars, which were echoed in the midnight-blue carpet.
There were tables, chairs, and bookcases, and in a niche opposite the door stood a tall statue of white marble.
Harry recognized Rowena Ravenclaw from the bust he had seen at Luna’s house.
The statue stood beside a door that led, he guessed, to dormitories above.
He strode right up to the marble woman, and she seemed to look back at him with a quizzical half smile on her face, beautiful yet slightly intimidating.
A delicate-looking circlet had been reproduced in marble on top of her head.
It was not unlike the tiara Fleur had worn at her wedding.
There were tiny words etched into it.
Harry stepped out from under the Cloak and climbed up onto Ravenclaw’s plinth to read them.
“‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.’”
“Which makes you pretty skint, witless,” said a cackling voice.
Harry whirled around, slipped off the plinth, and landed on the floor.
The sloping-shouldered figure of Alecto Carrow was standing before him, and even as Harry raised his wand, she pressed a stubby forefinger to the skull and snake branded on her forearm.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXX. THE SACKING OF SEVERUS SNAPE
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
The moment her finger touched the Mark, Harry’s scar burned savagely, the starry room vanished from sight, and he was standing upon an outcrop of rock beneath a cliff, and the sea was washing around him and there was triumph in his heart — They have the boy.
A loud bang brought Harry back to where he stood: Disoriented, he raised his wand, but the witch before him was already falling forward; she hit the ground so hard that the glass in the bookcases tinkled.
“I’ve never Stunned anyone except in our D.A. lessons,” said Luna, sounding mildly interested. “That was noisier than I thought it would be.”
And sure enough, the ceiling had begun to tremble. Scurrying, echoing footsteps were growing louder from behind the door leading to the dormitories: Luna’s spell had woken Ravenclaws sleeping above.
“Luna, where are you? I need to get under the Cloak!”
Luna’s feet appeared out of nowhere; he hurried to her side and she let the Cloak fall back over them as the door opened and a stream of Ravenclaws, all in their nightclothes, flooded into the common room.
There were gasps and cries of surprise as they saw Alecto lying there unconscious.
Slowly they shuffled in around her, a savage beast that might wake at any moment and attack them.
Then one brave little first-year darted up to her and prodded her backside with his big toe.
“I think she might be dead!” he shouted with delight.
“Oh, look,” whispered Luna happily, as the Ravenclaws crowded in around Alecto. “They’re pleased!”
“Yeah . . . great . . .”
Harry closed his eyes, and as his scar throbbed he chose to sink again into Voldemort’s mind . . . He was moving along the tunnel into the first cave . . . He had chosen to make sure of the locket before coming . . . but that would not take him long. . . .
There was a rap on the common room door and every Ravenclaw froze.
From the other side, Harry heard the soft, musical voice that issued from the eagle door knocker: “Where do Vanished objects go?”
“I dunno, do I? Shut it!” snarled an uncouth voice that Harry knew was that of the Carrow brother, Amycus.
“Alecto? Alecto? Are you there? Have you got him? Open the door!”
The Ravenclaws were whispering amongst themselves, terrified.
Then, without warning, there came a series of loud bangs, as though somebody was firing a gun into the door.
“ALECTO! If he comes, and we haven’t got Potter — d’you want to go the same way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!”
Amycus bellowed, shaking the door for all he was worth, but still it did not open.
The Ravenclaws were all backing away, and some of the most frightened began scampering back up the staircase to their beds.
Then, just as Harry was wondering whether he ought not to blast open the door and Stun Amycus before the Death Eater could do anything else, a second, most familiar voice rang out beyond the door.
“May I ask what you are doing, Professor Carrow?”
“Trying — to get — through this damned — door!” shouted Amycus.
“Go and get Flitwick! Get him to open it, now!”
“But isn’t your sister in there?” asked Professor McGonagall.
“Didn’t Professor Flitwick let her in earlier this evening, at your urgent request? Perhaps she could open the door for you? Then you needn’t wake up half the castle.”
“She ain’t answering, you old besom! You open it! Garn! Do it, now!”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” said Professor McGonagall, with awful coldness.
There was a genteel tap of the knocker and the musical voice asked again, “Where do Vanished objects go?”
“Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything,” replied Professor McGonagall.
“Nicely phrased,” replied the eagle door knocker, and the door swung open.
The few Ravenclaws who had remained behind sprinted for the stairs as Amycus burst over the threshold, brandishing his wand.
Hunched like his sister, he had a pallid, doughy face and tiny eyes, which fell at once on Alecto, sprawled motionless on the floor.
He let out a yell of fury and fear.
“What’ve they done, the little whelps?” he screamed.
“I’ll Cruciate the lot of ’em till they tell me who did it — and what’s the Dark Lord going to say?” he shrieked, standing over his sister and smacking himself on the forehead with his fist.
“We haven’t got him, and they’ve gorn and killed her!”
“She’s only Stunned,” said Professor McGonagall impatiently, who had stooped down to examine Alecto.
“She’ll be perfectly all right.”
“No she bludgering well won’t!” bellowed Amycus.
“Not after the Dark Lord gets hold of her! She’s gorn and sent for him, I felt me Mark burn, and he thinks we’ve got Potter!”
“‘Got Potter’?” said Professor McGonagall sharply.
“What do you mean, ‘got Potter’?”
“He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower, and to send for him if we caught him!”
“Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower? Potter belongs in my House!”
Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice, and affection for Minerva McGonagall gushed up inside him.
“We was told he might come in here!” said Carrow.
“I dunno why, do I?”
Professor McGonagall stood up and her beady eyes swept the room.
Twice they passed right over the place where Harry and Luna stood.
“We can push it off on the kids,” said Amycus, his piglike face suddenly crafty.
“Yeah, that’s what we’ll do.
We’ll say Alecto was ambushed by the kids, them kids up there” — he looked up at the starry ceiling toward the dormitories — “and we’ll say they forced her to press her Mark, and that’s why he got a false alarm. . . . He can punish them.
Couple of kids more or less, what’s the difference?”
“Only the difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice,” said Professor McGonagall, who had turned pale, “a difference, in short, which you and your sister seem unable to appreciate.
But let me make one thing very clear.
You are not going to pass off your many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts.
I shall not permit it.”
“Excuse me?”
Amycus moved forward until he was offensively close to Professor McGonagall, his face within inches of hers.
She refused to back away, but looked down at him as if he were something disgusting she had found stuck to a lavatory seat.
“It’s not a case of what you’ll permit, Minerva McGonagall.
Your time’s over.
It’s us what’s in charge here now, and you’ll back me up or you’ll pay the price.”
And he spat in her face.
Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand, and said, “You shouldn’t have done that.”
As Amycus spun around, Harry shouted, “Crucio!”
The Death Eater was lifted off his feet.
He writhed through the air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then, with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor.
“I see what Bellatrix meant,” said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, “you need to really mean it.”
“Potter!” whispered Professor McGonagall, clutching her heart.
“Potter — you’re here! What — ? How — ?”
She struggled to pull herself together.
“Potter, that was foolish!”
“He spat at you,” said Harry.
“Potter, I — that was very — very gallant of you — but don’t you realize — ?”
“Yeah, I do,” Harry assured her.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
Somehow her panic steadied him.
“Professor McGonagall, Voldemort’s on the way.”
“Oh, are we allowed to say the name now?” asked Luna with an air of interest, pulling off the Invisibility Cloak.
This appearance of a second outlaw seemed to overwhelm Professor McGonagall, who staggered backward and fell into a nearby chair, clutching at the neck of her old tartan dressing gown.
“I don’t think it makes any difference what we call him,” Harry told Luna.
“He already knows where I am.”
In a distant part of Harry’s brain, that part connected to the angry, burning scar, he could see Voldemort sailing fast over the dark lake in the ghostly green boat.
He had nearly reached the island where the stone basin stood.
“You must flee,” whispered Professor McGonagall.
“Now, Potter, as quickly as you can!”
“I can’t,” said Harry.
“There’s something I need to do. Professor, do you know where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”
“The d-diadem of Ravenclaw? Of course not — hasn’t it been lost for centuries?”
She sat up a little straighter.
“Potter, it was madness, utter madness, for you to enter this castle —”
“I had to,” said Harry.
“Professor, there’s something hidden here that I’m supposed to find, and it could be the diadem — if I could just speak to Professor Flitwick —”
There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was coming round.
Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand at the groggy Death Eater, and said, “Imperio.”
Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own.
Then he lay down on the floor beside Alecto.
Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows, binding them tightly together.
“Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb indifference to the Carrows’ predicament, “if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named does indeed know that you are here —”
As she said it, a wrath that was like physical pain blazed through Harry, setting his scar on fire, and for a second he looked down upon a basin whose potion had turned clear, and saw that no golden locket lay safe beneath the surface —
“Potter, are you all right?” said a voice, and Harry came back: He was clutching Luna’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Time’s running out, Voldemort’s getting nearer.
Professor, I’m acting on Dumbledore’s orders, I must find what he wanted me to find!
But we’ve got to get the students out while I’m searching the castle — it’s me Voldemort wants, but he won’t care about killing a few more or less, not now —”
Not now he knows I’m attacking Horcruxes, Harry finished the sentence in his head.
“You’re acting on Dumbledore’s orders?” she repeated with a look of dawning wonder.
Then she drew herself up to her fullest height.
“We shall secure the school against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named while you search for this — this object.”
“Is that possible?”
“I think so,” said Professor McGonagall dryly, “we teachers are rather good at magic, you know.
I am sure we will be able to hold him off for a while if we all put our best efforts into it.
Of course, something will have to be done about Professor Snape —”
“Let me —”
“— and if Hogwarts is about to enter a state of siege, with the Dark Lord at the gates, it would indeed be advisable to take as many innocent people out of the way as possible.
With the Floo Network under observation, and Apparition impossible within the grounds —”
“There’s a way,” said Harry quickly, and he explained about the passageway leading into the Hog’s Head.
“Potter, we’re talking about hundreds of students —”
“I know, Professor, but if Voldemort and the Death Eaters are concentrating on the school boundaries they won’t be interested in anyone who’s Disapparating out of the Hog’s Head.”
“There’s something in that,” she agreed.
She pointed her wand at the Carrows, and a silver net fell upon their bound bodies, tied itself around them, and hoisted them into the air, where they dangled beneath the blue-and-gold ceiling like two large, ugly sea creatures.
“Come.
We must alert the other Heads of House.
You’d better put that Cloak back on.”
She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her wand.
From the tip burst three silver cats with spectacle markings around their eyes.
The Patronuses ran sleekly ahead, filling the spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall, Harry, and Luna hurried back down.
Along the corridors they raced, and one by one the Patronuses left them.
Professor McGonagall’s tartan dressing gown rustled over the floor, and Harry and Luna jogged behind her under the Cloak.
They had descended two more floors when another set of quiet footsteps joined theirs.
Harry, whose scar was still prickling, heard them first.
He felt in the pouch around his neck for the Marauder’s Map, but before he could take it out, McGonagall too seemed to become aware of their company.
She halted, raised her wand ready to duel, and said, “Who’s there?”
“It is I,” said a low voice.
From behind a suit of armor stepped Severus Snape.
Hatred boiled up in Harry at the sight of him.
He had forgotten the details of Snape’s appearance in the magnitude of his crimes, forgotten how his greasy black hair hung in curtains around his thin face, how his black eyes had a dead, cold look.
He was not wearing nightclothes, but was dressed in his usual black cloak, and he too was holding his wand ready for a fight.
“Where are the Carrows?” he asked quietly.
“Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus,” said Professor McGonagall.
Snape stepped nearer, and his eyes flitted over Professor McGonagall into the air around her, as if he knew that Harry was there.
Harry held his wand up too, ready to attack.
“I was under the impression,” said Snape, “that Alecto had apprehended an intruder.”
“Really?” said Professor McGonagall.
“And what gave you that impression?”
Snape made a slight flexing movement of his left arm, where the Dark Mark was branded into his skin.
“Oh, but naturally,” said Professor McGonagall.
“You Death Eaters have your own private means of communication, I forgot.”
Snape pretended not to have heard her.
His eyes were still probing the air all about her, and he was moving gradually closer, with an air of hardly noticing what he was doing.
“I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors, Minerva.”
“You have some objection?”
“I wonder what could have brought you out of your bed at this late hour?”
“I thought I heard a disturbance,” said Professor McGonagall.
“Really?
But all seems calm.”
Snape looked into her eyes.
“Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have, I must insist—”
Professor McGonagall moved faster than Harry could have believed: Her wand slashed through the air and for a split second Harry thought that Snape must crumple, unconscious, but the swiftness of his Shield Charm was such that McGonagall was thrown off balance.
She brandished her wand at a torch on the wall and it flew out of its bracket: Harry, about to curse Snape, was forced to pull Luna out of the way of the descending flames, which became a ring of fire that filled the corridor and flew like a lasso at Snape —
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
Then it was no longer fire, but a great black serpent that McGonagall blasted to smoke, which re-formed and solidified in seconds to become a swarm of pursuing daggers: Snape avoided them only by forcing the suit of armor in front of him, and with echoing clangs the daggers sank, one after another, into its breast —
“Minerva!” said a squeaky voice, and looking behind him, still shielding Luna from flying spells, Harry saw Professors Flitwick and Sprout sprinting up the corridor toward them in their nightclothes, with the enormous Professor Slughorn panting along at the rear.
“No!” squealed Flitwick, raising his wand. “You’ll do no more murder at Hogwarts!”
Flitwick’s spell hit the suit of armor behind which Snape had taken shelter: With a clatter it came to life. Snape struggled free of the crushing arms and sent it flying back toward his attackers: Harry and Luna had to dive sideways to avoid it as it smashed into the wall and shattered.
When Harry looked up again, Snape was in full flight, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout all thundering after him: He hurtled through a classroom door and, moments later, he heard McGonagall cry, “Coward! COWARD!”
“What’s happened, what’s happened?” asked Luna.
Harry dragged her to her feet and they raced along the corridor, trailing the Invisibility Cloak behind them, into the deserted classroom where Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout were standing at a smashed window.
“He jumped,” said Professor McGonagall as Harry and Luna ran into the room.
“You mean he’s dead?” Harry sprinted to the window, ignoring Flitwick’s and Sprout’s yells of shock at his sudden appearance.
“No, he’s not dead,” said McGonagall bitterly. “Unlike Dumbledore, he was still carrying a wand . . . and he seems to have learned a few tricks from his master.”
With a tingle of horror, Harry saw in the distance a huge, batlike shape flying through the darkness toward the perimeter wall.
There were heavy footfalls behind them, and a great deal of puffing: Slughorn had just caught up.
“Harry!” he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath his emerald-green silk pajamas. “My dear boy . . . what a surprise . . . Minerva, do please explain. . . . Severus . . . what . . . ?”
“Our headmaster is taking a short break,” said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the window.
“Professor!” Harry shouted, his hands at his forehead. He could see the Inferi-filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt the ghostly green boat bump into the underground shore, and Voldemort leapt from it with murder in his heart —
“Professor, we’ve got to barricade the school, he’s coming now!”
“Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,” she told the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped; Slughorn let out a low groan. “Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore’s orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do.”
“You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?” squeaked Flitwick.
“But we can hold him up,” said Professor Sprout.
“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. “I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.”
“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. “I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.”
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, “Tentacula. Devil’s Snare. And Snargaluff pods . . . yes, I’d like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.”
“I can act from here,” said Flitwick, and although he could barely see out of it, he pointed his wand through the smashed window and started muttering incantations of great complexity. Harry heard a weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the power of the wind into the grounds.
“Professor,” Harry said, approaching the little Charms master, “Professor, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you got any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”
“— Protego Horribilis — the diadem of Ravenclaw?” squeaked Flitwick. “A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this situation!”
“I only meant — do you know where it is? Have you ever seen it?”
“Seen it? Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, boy!”
Harry felt a mixture of desperate disappointment and panic. What, then, was the Horcrux?
“We shall meet you and your Ravenclaws in the Great Hall, Filius!” said Professor McGonagall, beckoning to Harry and Luna to follow her.
They had just reached the door when Slughorn rumbled into speech.
“My word,” he puffed, pale and sweaty, his walrus mustache aquiver. “What a to-do! I’m not at all sure whether this is wise, Minerva. He is bound to find a way in, you know, and anyone who has tried to delay him will be in most grievous peril —”
“I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes, also,” said Professor McGonagall. “If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.”
“Minerva!” he said, aghast.
“The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties,” interrupted Professor McGonagall. “Go and wake your students, Horace.”
Harry did not stay to watch Slughorn splutter: He and Luna ran after Professor McGonagall, who had taken up a position in the middle of the corridor and raised her wand.
“Piertotum — oh, for heaven’s sake, Filch, not now —”
The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting, “Students out of bed! Students in the corridors!”
“They’re supposed to be, you blithering idiot!” shouted McGonagall. “Now go and do something constructive! Find Peeves!”
“P-Peeves?” stammered Filch as though he had never heard the name before.
“Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven’t you been complaining about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once!”
Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave of her senses, but hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering under his breath.
“And now — Piertotum Locomotor!” cried Professor McGonagall.
And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.
“Hogwarts is threatened!” shouted Professor McGonagall. “Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!”
Clattering and yelling, the horde of moving statues stampeded past Harry: some of them smaller, others larger, than life. There were animals too, and the clanking suits of armor brandished swords and spiked balls on chains.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
Now, Potter,” said McGonagall, “you and Miss Lovegood had better return to your friends and bring them to the Great Hall — I shall rouse the other Gryffindors.
They parted at the top of the next staircase, Harry and Luna running back toward the concealed entrance to the Room of Requirement.
As they ran, they met crowds of students, most wearing traveling cloaks over their pajamas, being shepherded down to the Great Hall by teachers and prefects.
“That was Potter!”
“Harry Potter!”
“It was him, I swear, I just saw him!”
But Harry did not look back, and at last they reached the entrance to the Room of Requirement.
Harry leaned against the enchanted wall, which opened to admit them, and he and Luna sped back down the steep staircase.
“Wh — ?”
As the room came into view, Harry slipped down a few stairs in shock.
It was packed, far more crowded than when he had last been in there.
Kingsley and Lupin were looking up at him, as were Oliver Wood, Katie Bell, Angelina Johnson and Alicia Spinnet, Bill and Fleur, and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.
“Harry, what’s happening?” said Lupin, meeting him at the foot of the stairs.
“Voldemort’s on his way, they’re barricading the school — Snape’s run for it — What are you doing here? How did you know?”
“We sent messages to the rest of Dumbledore’s Army,” Fred explained. “You couldn’t expect everyone to miss the fun, Harry, and the D.A. let the Order of the Phoenix know, and it all kind of snowballed.”
“What first, Harry?” called George. “What’s going on?”
“They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized,” Harry said. “We’re fighting.”
There was a great roar and a surge toward the foot of the stairs; he was pressed back against the wall as they ran past him, the mingled members of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army, and Harry’s old Quidditch team, all with their wands drawn, heading up into the main castle.
“Come on, Luna,” Dean called as he passed, holding out his free hand; she took it and followed him back up the stairs.
The crowd was thinning: Only a little knot of people remained below in the Room of Requirement, and Harry joined them.
Mrs. Weasley was struggling with Ginny. Around them stood Lupin, Fred, George, Bill, and Fleur.
“You’re underage!” Mrs. Weasley shouted at her daughter as Harry approached. “I won’t permit it! The boys, yes, but you, you’ve got to go home!”
“I won’t!”
Ginny’s hair flew as she pulled her arm out of her mother’s grip.
“I’m in Dumbledore’s Army —”
“A teenagers’ gang!”
“A teenagers’ gang that’s about to take him on, which no one else has dared to do!” said Fred.
“She’s sixteen!” shouted Mrs. Weasley. “She’s not old enough! What you two were thinking, bringing her with you —”
Fred and George looked slightly ashamed of themselves.
“Mum’s right, Ginny,” said Bill gently. “You can’t do this. Everyone underage will have to leave, it’s only right.”
“I can’t go home!” Ginny shouted, angry tears sparkling in her eyes. “My whole family’s here, I can’t stand waiting there alone and not knowing and —”
Her eyes met Harry’s for the first time. She looked at him beseechingly, but he shook his head and she turned away bitterly.
“Fine,” she said, staring at the entrance to the tunnel back to the Hog’s Head. “I’ll say good-bye now, then, and —”
There was a scuffling and a great thump: Someone else had clambered out of the tunnel, overbalanced slightly, and fallen.
He pulled himself up on the nearest chair, looked around through lopsided horn-rimmed glasses, and said, “Am I too late? Has it started? I only just found out, so I — I —”
Percy spluttered into silence. Evidently he had not expected to run into most of his family.
There was a long moment of astonishment, broken by Fleur turning to Lupin and saying, in a wildly transparent attempt to break the tension, “So — ’ow eez leetle Teddy?”
Lupin blinked at her, startled. The silence between the Weasleys seemed to be solidifying, like ice.
“I — oh yes — he’s fine!” Lupin said loudly. “Yes, Tonks is with him — at her mother’s —”
Percy and the other Weasleys were still staring at one another, frozen.
“Here, I’ve got a picture!” Lupin shouted, pulling a photograph from inside his jacket and showing it to Fleur and Harry, who saw a tiny baby with a tuft of bright turquoise hair, waving fat fists at the camera.
“I was a fool!” Percy roared, so loudly that Lupin nearly dropped his photograph. “I was an idiot, I was a pompous prat, I was a — a —”
“Ministry-loving, family-disowning, power-hungry moron,” said Fred.
Percy swallowed.
“Yes, I was!”
“Well, you can’t say fairer than that,” said Fred, holding out his hand to Percy.
Mrs. Weasley burst into tears. She ran forward, pushed Fred aside, and pulled Percy into a strangling hug, while he patted her on the back, his eyes on his father.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Percy said.
Mr. Weasley blinked rather rapidly, then he too hurried to hug his son.
“What made you see sense, Perce?” inquired George.
“It’s been coming on for a while,” said Percy, mopping his eyes under his glasses with a corner of his traveling cloak. “But I had to find a way out and it’s not so easy at the Ministry, they’re imprisoning traitors all the time. I managed to make contact with Aberforth and he tipped me off ten minutes ago that Hogwarts was going to make a fight of it, so here I am.”
“Well, we do look to our prefects to take a lead at times such as these,” said George in a good imitation of Percy’s most pompous manner. “Now let’s get upstairs and fight, or all the good Death Eaters’ll be taken.”
“So, you’re my sister-in-law now?” said Percy, shaking hands with Fleur as they hurried off toward the staircase with Bill, Fred, and George.
“Ginny!” barked Mrs. Weasley.
Ginny had been attempting, under cover of the reconciliation, to sneak upstairs too.
“Molly, how about this,” said Lupin. “Why doesn’t Ginny stay here, then at least she’ll be on the scene and know what’s going on, but she won’t be in the middle of the fighting?”
“I —”
“That’s a good idea,” said Mr. Weasley firmly. “Ginny, you stay in this room, you hear me?”
Ginny did not seem to like the idea much, but under her father’s unusually stern gaze, she nodded. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and Lupin headed off for the stairs as well.
“Where’s Ron?” asked Harry. “Where’s Hermione?”
“They must have gone up to the Great Hall already,” Mr. Weasley called over his shoulder.
“I didn’t see them pass me,” said Harry.
“They said something about a bathroom,” said Ginny, “not long after you left.”
“A bathroom?”
Harry strode across the room to an open door leading off the Room of Requirement and checked the bathroom beyond. It was empty.
“You’re sure they said bath — ?”
But then his scar seared and the Room of Requirement vanished: He was looking through the high wrought-iron gates with winged boars on pillars at either side, looking through the dark grounds toward the castle, which was ablaze with lights.
Nagini lay draped over his shoulders. He was possessed of that cold, cruel sense of purpose that preceded murder.