"Y/n, Harry, stop." Hermione said.
"What's wrong?" Harry asked. They had only just reached the grave of the unknown Abbott.
"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes."
Y/n moved his hand from Harry's back as the three stood quite still, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Y/n could not see anything.
"Are you certain?" Y/n asked Hermione
"I saw something move, I could have sworn I did..."
Y/n moved to draw his wand.
"We look like Muggles." Harry pointed out.
"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' grave!" Hermione said back. "Harry, I'm sure there's someone over there!"
Harry thought of A History of Magic, the graveyard was supposed to be haunted, what if... But then he heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow.
"It's a cat." said Harry, after a second or two. "Or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be dead by now."
"It could be an Animagus..." Y/n said. "Let us get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on."
They glanced back repeatedly as they made their way out of the graveyard. Harry, who did not feel as sanguine as he had pretended when reassuring Hermione, was glad to reach the gate and the slippery pavement. They pulled the Invisibility Cloak back over themselves. The pub was fuller than before. Many voices inside it were now singing the carol that they had heard as they approached the church. For a moment Harry considered suggesting they take refuge inside it, but before he could say anything Hermione murmured. "Let's go this way." and pulled them down the dark street leading out of the village in the opposite direction from which they had entered. Harry could make out the point where the cottages ended and the lane turned into open country again. They walked as quickly as they dared, past more windows sparkling with multicolored lights, the outlines of Christmas trees dark through the curtains.
"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" asked Hermione, who was shivering a little and kept glancing back over her shoulder.
"I am not sure, and it is not as if we can just ask the local residents without causing suspicion." Y/n sighed.
"Harry? What do you think? Harry?" Hermione asked but when he did not respond she tugged at his arm, but Harry was not paying attention. He was looking toward the dark mass that stood at the very end of this row of houses. Next moment he had sped up, dragging Y/n and Hermione along with him, she slipped a little on the ice as Y/n caught her.
"Slow down..." Y/n said to Harry.
"Look...Look at it, Y/n, Hermione..."
"I don't...oh!" Hermione said sadly and Y/n looked ahead.
He could see it, the Fidelius Charm must have died with James and Lily for he could see the cottage they had died in.
The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Hagrid had taken Harry from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart, that, Y/n was sure, was where the curse had backfired. He, Hermione and Harry stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it.
"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione.
"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" Harry replied. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?"
"No..." Y/n said. "I think it has been left this way out of respect."
Harry slipped a hand from beneath the Cloak and grasped the snowy and thickly rusted gate, not wishing to open it, but simply to hold some part of the house.
"You're not going to go inside? It looks unsafe, it might...oh, Harry, look!"
His touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of them, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said.
'On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.'
And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Boy Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink, others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.
'Good luck, Harry, wherever you are. If you read this, Harry, we're all behind you!'
'Long live Harry Potter.'
"They shouldn't have written on the sign!" said Hermione, indignant.
But Harry beamed at her. "It's brilliant. I'm glad they did. I..."
He broke off as he felt Y/n tapping his shoulder. Harry and Hermione turned to see a heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them, silhouetted by the bright lights in the distant square. Harry thought, though it was hard to judge, that the figure was a woman. She was moving slowly, possibly frightened of slipping on the snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a halt a few yards from them and simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them.
He did not need Hermione's pinch to his arm. There was next to no chance that this woman was a Muggle. She was standing there gazing at a house that ought to have been completely invisible to her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch, however, it was odd behavior to come out on a night this cold, simply to look at an old ruin. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see Hermione, Y/n and him at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that they were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion, she raised a gloved hand and beckoned.
Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak. "How does she know?" She asked.
"I do not know...but I am not sure we have any other choice but to follow for now." Y/n said hesitantly.
The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Y/n could think of many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet his suspicions about her identity were growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street.
Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these long months? That Dumbledore had told her to wait, and that Harry would come in the end? Was it not likely that it was she who had moved in the shadows in the graveyard and had followed them to this spot? Even her ability to sense them suggested some Dumbledore-ish power that he had never encountered before.
Finally Harry spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump.
"Are you Bathilda?"
The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again.
Beneath the Cloak Harry, Y/n and Hermione looked at each other. Harry raised his eyebrows in question, Y/n would accept what decision they made even if he was wary and finally Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod.
They stepped toward the woman and, at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way they had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left. She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back to let them pass.
She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house. Y/n wrinkled his nose as they sidled past her and pulled off the Cloak. Now that were close to her, he realized how tiny she was, bowed down with age, she came barely level with Harry's chest. She closed the door behind them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into Harry's face. Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken into folds of transparent skin, and her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. He wondered whether she could make Harry out at all, even if she could, it was the balding Muggle whose identity he had stolen that she would see.
The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as she unwound a moth-eaten black shawl, revealing a head of scant white hair through which the scalp showed clearly.
"Bathilda?" Harry repeated.
She nodded again then Bathilda shuffled past them, pushing Hermione aside as though she had not seen her, and vanished into what seemed to be a sitting room.
"Y/n, Harry, I'm not sure about this." breathed Hermione.
"Neither am I." Y/n said.
"Look at the size of her, I think we could overpower her if we had to." said Harry. "Listen, I should have told you, I knew she wasn't all there. Muriel called her 'gaga.'"
"Come!" called Bathilda from the next room.
Hermione jumped and clutched Y/n's arm.
"It's okay." said Harry reassuringly, and he led the way into the sitting room.
Bathilda was tottering around the place lighting candles, but it was still very dark, not to mention extremely dirty. Thick dust crunched beneath their feet, and Harry's nose detected, underneath the dank and mildewed smell, something worse, like meat gone bad. He wondered when was the last time anyone had been inside Bathilda's house to check whether she was coping. She seemed to have forgotten that she could do magic, too, for she lit the candles clumsily by hand, her trailing lace cuff in constant danger of catching fire.
"Let me do that." offered Harry, and he took the matches from her. She stood watching him as he finished lighting the candle stubs that stood on saucers around the room, perched precariously on stacks of books and on side tables crammed with cracked and moldy cups.
The last surface on which Harry spotted a candle was a bow-fronted chest of drawers on which there stood a large number of photographs. When the flame danced into life, its reflection wavered on their dusty glass and silver. He saw a few tiny movements from the pictures. As Bathilda fumbled with logs for the fire, he muttered "Tergeo". The dust vanished from the photographs, and he saw at once that half a dozen were missing from the largest and most ornate frames. He wondered whether Bathilda or somebody else had removed them. Then the sight of a photograph near the back of the collection caught his eye, and he snatched it up.
It was the golden-haired, merry-faced thief, the young man who had perched on Gregorovitch's windowsill, smiling lazily up at Harry out of the silver frame. And it came to Harry instantly where he had seen the boy before, in The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, arm in arm with the teenage Dumbledore, and that must be where all the missing photographs were, in Rita's book.
"Mrs...Miss...Bagshot?" he said, and his voice shook slightly. "Who is this?"
Bathilda was standing in the middle of the room watching Y/n light the fire for her.
"Miss Bagshot?" Harry repeated, and he advanced with the picture in his hands as the flames burst into life in the fireplace. Bathilda looked up at his voice, and the Horcrux beat faster upon his chest.
"Who is this person?" Harry asked her, pushing the picture forward.
She peered at it solemnly, then up at Harry.
"Do you know who this is?" he repeated in a much slower and louder voice than usual. "This man? Do you know him? What's he called?"
Bathilda merely looked vague. Harry felt an awful frustration. How had Rita Skeeter unlocked Bathilda's memories?
"Who is this man?" he repeated loudly.
"Harry, what are you doing?" asked Y/n.
"This picture, Y/n, it's the thief, the thief who stole from Gregorovitch! Please!" he said to Bathilda. "Who is this?"
But she only stared at him.
"Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs...Miss...Bagshot?" asked Hermione, raising her own voice. "Was there something you wanted to tell us?"
Giving no sign that she had heard Hermione, Bathilda now shuffled a few steps closer to Harry. With a little jerk of her head she looked back into the hall.
"You want us to leave?" he asked.
She repeated the gesture, this time pointing firstly at him, then at herself, then at the ceiling.
"Oh, right... Y/n, Hermione, I think she wants me to go upstairs with her."
"All right." said Hermione. "Let's go."
But when Hermione moved first, Bathilda shook her head with surprising vigor, once more pointing first at Harry, then to herself.
"She wants me to go with her, alone."
"Why?" asked Y/n, his voice rang out sharp and clear in the candlelit room, the old lady shook her head a little at the loud noise.
"Maybe Dumbledore told her to give the sword to me, and only to me?" Harry suggested.
"Do you really think she knows who you are?" Hermione asked him.
"Yes." said Harry, looking down into the milky eyes fixed upon his own. "I think she does."
"Well, okay then, but be quick, Harry." Hermione said not liking this at all.
"Lead the way," Harry told Bathilda.
She seemed to understand, because she shuffled around him toward the door. Harry glanced back at Hermione with a reassuring smile, but he was not sure she had seen it; she stood hugging herself in the midst of the candlelit squalor, looking toward the bookcase. As Harry walked out of the room, unseen by both Hermione and Bathilda, he slipped the silver-framed photograph of the unknown thief inside his jacket. Y/n had seen it however and it gave him an idea.
"Draw your wand and help me search the house." He whispered to Hermione once they were alone. "Something here is not right."
Hermione nodded and quickly drew her wand. "I don't like this at all."
The stairs were steep and narrow. Harry was half tempted to place his hands on stout Bathilda's back to ensure that she did not topple over backward on top of him, which seemed only too likely. Slowly, wheezing a little, she climbed to the upper landing, turned immediately right, and led him into a low-ceilinged bedroom.
It was pitch-black and smelled horrible. Harry had just made out a chamber pot protruding from under the bed before Bathilda closed the door and even that was swallowed by the darkness.
"Lumos." said Harry, and his wand ignited. He gave a start. Bathilda had moved close to him in those few seconds of darkness, and he had not heard her approach.
"You are Potter?" she whispered.
"Yes, I am."
She nodded slowly, solemnly. Harry felt the Horcrux beating fast, faster than his own heart. It was an unpleasant, agitating sensation.
"Have you got anything for me?" Harry asked, but she seemed distracted by his lit wand-tip.
"Have you got anything for me?" he repeated.
Then she closed her eyes and several things happened at once. Harry's scar prickled painfully, the Horcrux twitched so that the front of his sweater actually moved, the dark, fetid room dissolved momentarily. He felt a leap of joy and spoke in a high, cold voice. 'Hold him!'
Harry swayed where he stood: The dark, foul-smelling room seemed to close around him again, he did not know what had just happened.
"Have you got anything for me?" he asked for a third time, much louder.
"Over here." she whispered, pointing to the corner. Harry raised his wand and saw the outline of a cluttered dressing table beneath the curtained window.
This time she did not lead him. Harry edged between her and the unmade bed, his wand raised. He did not want to look away from her.
"What is it?" he asked as he reached the dressing table, which was heaped high with what looked and smelled like dirty laundry.
"There." she said, pointing at the shapeless mass.
And in the instant that he looked away, his eyes raking the tangled mess for a sword hilt, a ruby, she moved weirdly. He saw it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn and horror paralyzed him as he saw the old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been.
The snake struck as he raised his wand. The force of the bite to his forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling, its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was extinguished. Then a powerful blow from the tail to his midriff knocked the breath out of him. He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing...
He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake's tail, which thrashed down upon the table where he had been a second earlier. Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him as he hit the floor. From below he heard Hermione call, "Harry?" and he heard the thundering footsteps that could only be Y/n's on the floorboards below.
He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular...
"No!" he gasped, pinned to the floor.
"Yes." whispered the voice. "Yesss...hold you...hold you..."
"Accio...Accio Wand..."
But nothing happened and he needed his hands to try to force the snake from him as it coiled itself around his torso, squeezing the air from him, pressing the Horcrux hard into his chest, a circle of ice that throbbed with life, inches from his own frantic heart, and his brain was flooding with cold, white light, all thought obliterated, his own breath drowned, distant footsteps, everything going...
A metal heart was banging outside his chest, and now he was flying, flying with triumph in his heart, without need of broomstick or Thestral.
He was abruptly awake in the sour-smelling darkness, Nagini had released him. He scrambled up and saw the snake outlined against the landing light. It struck, and Y/n dived aside with a grunt as he just about avoided the snake.
Hermione had cast with her wand only for her curse to be deflected and hit the curtained window, which shattered. Frozen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid another shower of broken glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like something...his wand...
He bent and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the snake, its tail thrashing, He could only see the snake and Y/n who was nearby. Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for a moment Harry thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Harry raised his wand, but as he did so, his scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.
"He's coming! Y/n, Hermione, he's coming!"
As he yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos, It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew everywhere. Y/n grabbed Harry's arm and pulled him over to the bed and seized a dark shape he knew to be Hermione.
She shrieked with shock as he pulled her back across the bed. The snake reared again, but Harry knew that worse than the snake was coming, was perhaps already at the gate, his head was going to split open with the pain from his scar...
"Got no other choice..." He heard Y/n say.
The snake lunged as Y/n took a running leap, dragging Hermione and Harry with him, as it struck, Hermione screamed. "Confringo!" and her spell flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricocheting back at them, bouncing from floor to ceiling. Harry felt the heat of it sear the back of his hand. Glass cut his cheek as Y/n pulled him and Hermione with him, he leapt from bed to a broken dressing table and then straight out of the smashed window into nothingness, her scream reverberating through the night as they twisted in midair...
And then his scar burst open and he was Voldemort and he was running across the fetid bedroom, his long white hands clutching at the windowsill as he glimpsed the skinny black haired man, the bald man and the little woman twist and vanish, and he screamed with rage, a scream that mingled with the girl's, that echoed across the dark gardens over the church bells ringing in Christmas Day.
And his scream was Harry's scream, his pain was Harry's pain...that it could happen here, where it had happened before.. here, within sight of that house where he had come so close to knowing what it was to die...to die...The pain was so terrible...ripped from his body... But if he had no body, why did his head hurt so badly, if he was dead, how could he feel so unbearably, didn't pain cease with death, didn't it go...
The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe. And he was gliding along, that sense of purpose and power and rightness in him that he always knew on these occasions...Not anger...that was for weaker souls than he... but triumph, yes...He had waited for this, he had hoped for it...
"Nice costume, mister!"
He saw the small boy's smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face. Then the child turned and ran away...Beneath the robe he fingered the handle of his wand...One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother...but unnecessary, quite unnecessary...
And along a new and darker street he moved, and now his destination was in sight at last, the Fidelius Charm broken, though they did not know it yet...And he made less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement as he drew level with the dark hedge, and stared over it...
They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired boy in his blue pajamas. The child was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in his small fist.
A door opened and the mother entered, saying words he could not hear, her long dark-red hair falling over her face. Now the father scooped up the son and handed him to the mother. He threw his wand down upon the sofa and stretched, yawning.
The gate creaked a little as he pushed it open, but James Potter did not hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open.
He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had not even picked up his wand.
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
Hold him off, without a wand in his hand!...He laughed before casting the curse...
"Avada Kedavra!"
The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut...
He could hear her screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear...He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in...She had no wand upon her either...How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments.
He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the sight of him, she dropped her son into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead...
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"
"Stand aside, you silly girl...stand aside, now."
"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead..."
"This is my last warning..."
"Not Harry! Please...have mercy...have mercy...Not Harry! Not Harry! Please... I'll do anything..."
"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"
He could have forced her away from the crib, but it seemed more prudent to finish them all.
The green light flashed around the room and she dropped like her husband. The child had not cried all this time. He could stand, clutching the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder's face with a kind of bright interest, perhaps thinking that it was his father who hid beneath the cloak, making more pretty lights, and his mother would pop up any moment, laughing.
He pointed the wand very carefully into the boy's face. He wanted to see it happen, the destruction of this one, inexplicable danger. The child began to cry, It had seen that he was not James. He did not like it crying, he had never been able to stomach the small ones whining in the orphanage...
"Avada Kedavra!"
And then he broke. He was nothing, nothing but pain and terror, and he must hide himself, not here in the rubble of the ruined house, where the child was trapped and screaming, but far away ...far away...
"No." he moaned.
The snake rustled on the filthy, cluttered floor, and he had killed the boy, and yet he was the boy.
"No..."
And now he stood at the broken window of Bathilda's house, immersed in memories of his greatest loss, and at his feet the great snake slithered over broken china and glass... He looked down and saw something...something incredible...
"No..."
"Harry, it's all right, you're all right!"
He stooped down and picked up the smashed photograph. There he was, the unknown thief, the thief he was seeking.
"No...I dropped it...I dropped it..."
"Harry, it's okay, wake up, wake up!"
He was Harry...Harry, not Voldemort...and the thing that was rustling was not a snake...He opened his eyes.
"Harry." Hermione whispered. "Do you feel all...all right?"
"Yes." he lied.
He was in the tent, lying on one of the lower bunks beneath a heap of blankets. He could tell that it was almost dawn by the stillness and the quality of the cold, flat light beyond the canvas ceiling. He was drenched in sweat; he could feel it on the sheets and blankets.
"We got away..."
"Only just..." said Y/n. "I had to carry you into your bunk."
"My bunk?" Harry said.
"Harry you've been...Well, you haven't been quite..." There were purple shadows under Hermione's brown eyes and Y/n own brown and silver ones. He noticed a small sponge in Hermione's hand, she had been wiping his face.
"You've been ill." she finished. "Quite ill."
"How long ago did we leave?" Harry asked.
"A good few hours ago. It is nearly morning." Y/n told him.
"And I've been...what, unconscious?"
"Not exactly." said Hermione uncomfortably. "You've been shouting and moaning and...things." she added in a tone that made Harry feel uneasy. What had he done? Screamed curses like Voldemort, cried like the baby in the crib?
"Listen Harry, Hermione and I could not get the Horcrux off you." Y/n said, and Harry knew he wanted to change the subject. "It was stuck, stuck to your chest. You have got a mark, I am sorry, But I had to use a Severing Charm to get it away."
"The snake bit you too, but I've cleaned the wound and put some dittany on it..." Hermione added.
Harry pulled the sweaty T-shirt he was wearing away from himself and looked down. There was a scarlet oval over his heart where the locket had burned him. He could also see the half-healed puncture marks to his forearm.
"Where've you put the Horcrux?" He asked them both.
"In my bag. I think we should keep it off for a while." Hermione said.
Harry lay back on his pillows and looked up at the two. "We shouldn't have gone to Godric's Hollow. It's my fault, it's all my fault, Y/n, Hermione, I'm sorry."
"It is not your fault Harry, We knew the risks in going." Y/n told him.
"And I wanted to go too, I really thought Dumbledore might have left the sword there for you." Hermione said.
"Yeah, well...we got that wrong, didn't we?" Harry scoffed.
"What happened, Harry?" Y/n asked now. "What happened when she took you upstairs? Was the snake hiding somewhere? Did it just come out and kill her and attack you?"
"No." he said. "She was the snake...or the snake was her...all along."
"W-what?" Hermione said shocked.
Harry just closed his eyes. He could still smell Bathilda's house on him. It made the whole thing horribly vivid.
"Bathilda must have been dead for quite some while." Y/n sighed.
"The snake was...was inside her." Harry started again. "You-Know-Who put it there in Godric's Hollow, to wait. You were right. He knew I'd go back."
"The snake was inside her?" Hermione asked and Y/n saw she looked revolted, nauseated.
"Lupin said there would be magic we could never have imagined." Y/n said. It had been months since he had fought with the man but right now he would not deny he missed his company.
"She didn't want to talk in front of you, because it was Parseltongue, all Parseltongue, and I didn't realize, but of course I could understand her. Once we were up in the room, the snake sent a message to You-Know-Who, I heard it happen inside my head, I felt him get excited, he said to keep me there...and then..."
He remembered the snake coming out of Bathilda's neck, Y/n and Hermione did not need to know the details.
"...she changed, changed into the snake, and attacked."
He looked down at the puncture marks. "It wasn't supposed to kill me, just keep me there till You-Know-Who came."
If he had only managed to kill the snake, it would have been worth it, all of it...Sick at heart, he sat up and threw back the covers.
"Harry, You really should rest." Y/n said.
"You're the two who need sleep. No offense, but you guys look terrible. I'm fine. I'll keep watch for a while. Where's my wand?"
Hermione and Y/n did not answer, Hermione merely looked at him.
"Where's my wand, Hermione?"
She was biting her lip, and tears swam in her eyes.
"Harry...."
"Where's my wand?"
Y/n reached down beside the bed and held it out to him.
The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One fragile strand of phoenix feather kept both pieces hanging together. The wood had splintered apart completely. Harry took it into his hands as though it was a living thing that had suffered a terrible injury. He could not think properly. Everything was a blur of panic and fear. Then he held out the wand to Y/n.
"Mend it. Please."
"Harry, When a wand is broken like this..."
"Please, Y/n, try!" Harry pleaded.
Y/n sighed and drew his wand holding it above Harry's broken one. "Reparo..."
The dangling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.
"Lumos!"
The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at Y/n.
"Expelliarmus!"
Y/n's wand didn't give even the slightest jerk. The feeble attempt at magic was too much for Harry's wand, which split into two again. He stared at it, aghast, unable to take in what he was seeing...the wand that had survived so much...
"Harry." Hermione whispered so quietly he could hardly hear her. "I'm so, so sorry. I think it was me. As we were leaving, you know, the snake was coming for us, and so I cast a Blasting Curse, and it rebounded everywhere, and it must have... must have hit..."
"It was an accident." said Harry mechanically. He felt empty, stunned. "We'll...we'll find a way to repair it."
"Harry, I don't think we're going to be able to." said Hermione, the tears trickling down her face. "Remember...remember Ron? When he broke his wand, crashing the car? It was never the same again, he had to get a new one."
Harry thought of Ollivander, kidnapped and held hostage by Voldemort, of Gregorovitch, who was dead. How was he supposed to find himself a new wand?
"Well." he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice. "Well, I'll just borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch."
Her face glazed with tears, Hermione handed over her wand, and he left her and Y/n sitting beside his bed, desiring nothing more than to get away from them for now.
Harry exited the tent as only Hermione's sniffles started to sound out.
Y/n put an arm around her shoulder. "It was an accident Hermione. Harry knows that." He told her.
"But I broke his wand..." Hermione sniffled.
"It is not ideal no..." Y/n could not lie. "But we will find a way to work around this. You and I cast the best magic of the three of us and spells have not helped us destroy the Horcrux so far. We need that sword remember." Y/n tried to cheer her up. "Harry was right however we could do with some rest, especially you. Harry will come round with some time."
"I...I took that book from Bathilda's...I'm going to give it to Harry." Hermione said as she took out a book from within her jacket.
"Alright..." Y/n nodded. Secretly he wasn't sure if he wanted to read the book himself but he knew Harry would not be able to resist and would tell them its contents regardless.
"I am going to make up our bed." Y/n told Hermione now.
"I'll make us some tea first, then we can give the book to Harry." Hermione told him.
Outside the tent the sun was coming up. The pure, colorless vastness of the sky stretched over him, indifferent to him and his suffering. Harry sat down in the tent entrance and took a deep breath of clean air. Simply to be alive to watch the sun rise over the sparkling snowy hillside ought to have been the greatest treasure on earth, yet he could not appreciate it. His senses had been spiked by the calamity of losing his wand. He looked out over a valley blanketed in snow, distant church bells chiming through the glittering silence.
Without realizing it, he was digging his fingers into his arms as if he were trying to resist physical pain. He had spilled his own blood more times than he could count, he had lost all the bones in his right arm once, this journey had already given him scars to his chest and forearm to join those on his hand and forehead, but never, until this moment, had he felt himself to be fatally weakened, vulnerable, and naked, as though the best part of his magical power had been torn from him. He knew exactly what Hermione would say if he expressed any of this, The wand is only as good as the wizard. But she was wrong, his case was different. She had not felt the wand spin like the needle of a compass and shoot golden flames at his enemy. He had lost the protection of the twin cores, and only now that it was gone did he realize how much he had been counting upon it.
He pulled the pieces of the broken wand out of his pocket and, without looking at them, tucked them away in Hagrid's pouch around his neck. The pouch was now too full of broken and useless objects to take any more. Harry's hand brushed the old Snitch through the mokeskin and for a moment he had to fight the temptation to pull it out and throw it away. Impenetrable, unhelpful, useless, like everything else Dumbledore had left behind...
And his fury at Dumbledore broke over him now like lava, scorching him inside, wiping out every other feeling. Out of sheer desperation they had talked themselves into believing that Godric's Hollow held answers, convinced themselves that they were supposed to go back, that it was all part of some secret path laid out for them by Dumbledore. but there was no map, no plan. Dumbledore had left them to grope in the darkness, to wrestle with unknown and undreamed-of terrors, alone and unaided. Nothing was explained, nothing was given freely, they had no sword, and now, Harry had no wand. And he had dropped the photograph of the thief, and it would surely be easy now for Voldemort to find out who he was... Voldemort had all the information now.
"Harry?" Hermione's voice called out and Harry turned to see Y/n with a cup of tea in one of his hands with Hermione who looked frightened that Harry might curse her with her own wand. Her face was streaked with tears, both crouched down beside him, Hermione two cups of tea trembling in her hands and something bulky under her arm.
"Thanks." Harry said, taking one of the cups.
"Do you mind if we talk to you?" Y/n asked.
"No." Harry said because he did not want to hurt Hermione's feelings.
"Harry, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was. Well... I've got the book." Timidly she held up a pristine copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
"Where...how..."
"Y/n noticed it in Bathilda's sitting room, just lying there....This note was sticking out of the top of it." Hermione read the few lines of spiky, acid-green writing aloud. "'Dear Batty, Thanks for your help. Here's a copy of the book, hope you like it. You said everything, even if you don't remember it. Rita.' I think it must have arrived while the real Bathilda was alive, but perhaps she wasn't in any fit state to read it?"
"No, she probably wasn't." Harry said idily.
Y/n took the book from Hermione's hand now and he looked down upon Dumbledore's face and experienced a surge of savage pleasure and slight hesitation. Now he would know all the things that Dumbledore had never thought it worth telling him, whether Dumbledore wanted him to or not.
He began to open the book.
"You're still really angry at me, aren't you?" He heard Hermione say to Harry.
"No." Harry said quietly. "No, Hermione, I know it was an accident. You were trying to get us out of there alive, and you were incredible. If it weren't for you and Y/n I'd be dead."
Y/n kept his attention to the book. Its spine was stiff, it had clearly never been opened before. He riffled through the pages, looking for photographs. He came across the one that had two figures he recognized immediately. With wide eyes he quickly handed a surprised Hermione his cup of tea and grabbed the book with both hands now to give it his full attention.
On the page in front of him was a young Dumbledore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some long-forgotten joke.
"This...this cannot be..." Y/n uttered as he looked at the caption now.
'Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother's death, with his friend Gellert Grindelwald.'
"What is it Y/n?" Hermione asked.
Y/n could not say a word as he just thrust the book to Harry unable to look at it anymore.
Harry looked down at the photograph in the book now.
"But this is the thief I keep seeing..." Harry said and then his eyes caught the caption and his eyes gaped at the last word for several long moments. Grindelwald. His friend Grindelwald. He looked sideways at Hermione, and titled the book for her to see.
As soon as Hermione saw it she turned to Y/n while still contemplating the name as though she could not believe her eyes.
"Grindelwald?"
Y/n's brow was furrowed with rare fury as he sat unmoving. "Read out whatever it is she wrote." He said to Harry.
Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the pages around them for a recurrence of that fatal name and eventually he found himself at the start of a chapter entitled 'The Greater Good.' he started to read outloud.
"Now approaching his eighteenth birthday, Dumbledore left Hogwarts in a blaze of glory. Head Boy, Prefect, Winner of the Barnabus Finkley Prize for Exceptional Spell-Casting, British Youth Representative to the Wizengamot, Gold Medal-Winner for Ground-Breaking Contribution to the International Alchemical Conference in Cairo. Dumbledore intended, next, to take a Grand Tour with Elphias "Dogbreath" Doge, the dim-witted but devoted sidekick he had picked up at school.
The two young men were staying at the Leaky Cauldron in London, preparing to depart for Greece the following morning, when an owl arrived bearing news of Dumbledore's mother's death. "Dogbreath" Doge, who refused to be interviewed for this book, has given the public his own sentimental version of what happened next. He represents Kendra's death as a tragic blow, and Dumbledore's decision to give up his expedition as an act of noble self-sacrifice.
Certainly Dumbledore returned to Godric's Hollow at once, supposedly to "care" for his younger brother and sister. But how much care did he actually give them?
'He were a head case, that Aberforth.'" says Enid Smeek, whose family lived on the outskirts of Godric's Hollow at that time. 'Ran wild. Course, with his mum and dad gone you'd have felt sorry for him, only he kept chucking goat dung at my head. I don't think Albus was fussed about him, I never saw them together, anyway.'
So what was Albus doing, if not comforting his wild young brother? The answer, it seems, is ensuring the continued imprisonment of his sister. For, though her first jailer had died, there was no change in the pitiful condition of Ariana Dumbledore. Her very existence continued to be known only to those few outsiders who, like "Dogbreath" Doge, could be counted upon to believe in the story of her "ill health."
Another such easily satisfied friend of the family was Bathilda Bagshot, the celebrated magical historian who has lived in Godric's Hollow for many years. Kendra, of course, had rebuffed Bathilda when she first attempted to welcome the family to the village. Several years later, however, the author sent an owl to Albus at Hogwarts, having been favorably impressed by his paper on trans-species transformation in Transfiguration Today. This initial contact led to acquaintance with the entire Dumbledore family. At the time of Kendra's death, Bathilda was the only person in Godric's Hollow who was on speaking terms with Dumbledore's mother.
Unfortunately, the brilliance that Bathilda exhibited earlier in her life has now dimmed. "The fire's lit, but the cauldron's empty," as Ivor Dillonsby put it to me, or, in Enid Smeek's slightly earthier phrase, "She's nutty as squirrel poo." Nevertheless, a combination of tried-and-tested reporting techniques enabled me to extract enough nuggets of hard fact to string together the whole scandalous story.
Like the rest of the Wizarding world, Bathilda puts Kendra's premature death down to a backfiring charm, a story repeated by Albus and Aberforth in later years. Bathilda also parrots the family line on Ariana, calling her "frail" and "delicate." On one subject, however, Bathilda is well worth the effort I put into procuring Veritaserum, for she, and she alone, knows the full story of the best-kept secret of Albus Dumbledore's life. Now revealed for the first time, it calls into question everything that his admirers believed of Dumbledore, his supposed hatred of the Dark Arts, his opposition to the oppression of Muggles, even his devotion to his own family.
The very same summer that Dumbledore went home to Godric's Hollow, now an orphan and head of the family, Bathilda Bagshot agreed to accept into her home her great-nephew, Gellert Grindelwald.
The name of Grindelwald is justly famous, In a list of Most Dangerous Dark Wizards of All Time, he would miss out on the top spot only because You-Know-Who arrived, a generation later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never extended his campaign of terror to Britain, however, the details of his rise to power are not widely known here.
Educated at Durmstrang, a school famous even then for its unfortunate tolerance of the Dark Arts, Grindelwald showed himself quite as precociously brilliant as Dumbledore. Rather than channel his abilities into the attainment of awards and prizes, however, Gellert Grindelwald devoted himself to other pursuits. At sixteen years old, even Durmstrang felt it could no longer turn a blind eye to the twisted experiments of Gellert Grindelwald, and he was expelled.
Hitherto, all that has been known of Grindelwald's next movements is that he 'traveled abroad for some months.' It can now be revealed that Grindelwald chose to visit his great-aunt in Godric's Hollow, and that there, intensely shocking though it will be for many to hear it, he struck up a close friendship with none other than Albus Dumbledore.
'He seemed a charming boy to me.' babbles Bathilda. 'Whatever he became later. Naturally I introduced him to poor Albus, who was missing the company of lads his own age. The boys took to each other at once.'
They certainly did. Bathilda shows me a letter, kept by her, that Albus Dumbledore sent Gellert Grindelwald in the dead of night.
'Yes, even after they'd spent all day in discussion... both such brilliant young boys, they got on like a cauldron on fire. I'd sometimes hear an owl tapping at Gellert's bedroom window, delivering a letter from Albus! An idea would have struck him, and he had to let Gellert know immediately!'
And what ideas they were. Profoundly shocking though Albus Dumbledore's fans will find it, here are the thoughts of their seventeen-year-old hero, as relayed to his new best friend. A copy of the original letter may be seen on page 463.
'Gellert
Your point about Wizard dominance being FOR THE MUGGLES' OWN GOOD... this, I think, is the crucial point. Yes, we have been given power and yes, that power gives us the right to rule, but it also gives us responsibilities over the ruled. We must stress this point, it will be the foundation stone upon which we build. Where we are opposed, as we surely will be, this must be the basis of all our counterarguments. We seize control FOR THE GREATER GOOD. And from this it follows that where we meet resistance, we must use only the force that is necessary and no more. This was your mistake at Durmstrang! But I do not complain, because if you had not been expelled, we would never have met.
Albus'
Astonished and appalled though his many admirers will be, this letter constitutes proof that Albus Dumbledore once dreamed of overthrowing the Statute of Secrecy and establishing Wizard rule over Muggles. What a blow for those who have always portrayed Dumbledore as the Muggle-borns' greatest champion! How hollow those speeches promoting Muggle rights seem in the light of this damning new evidence! How despicable does Albus Dumbledore appear, busy plotting his rise to power when he should have been mourning his mother and caring for his sister!
No doubt those determined to keep Dumbledore on his crumbling pedestal will bleat that he did not, after all, put his plans into action, that he must have suffered a change of heart, that he came to his senses. However, the truth seems altogether more shocking.
Barely two months into their great new friendship, Dumbledore and Grindelwald parted, never to see each other again until they met for their legendary duel (for more, see chapter 22). What caused this abrupt rupture? Had Dumbledore come to his senses? Had he told Grindelwald he wanted no more part in his plans? Alas, no.
'It was poor little Ariana dying, I think, that did it.' says Bathilda. 'It came as an awful shock. Gellert was there in the house when it happened, and he came back to my house all of a dither, told me he wanted to go home the next day. Terribly distressed, you know. So I arranged a Portkey and that was the last I saw of him.'
'Albus was beside himself at Ariana's death. It was so dreadful for those two brothers. They had lost everybody except each other. No wonder tempers ran a little high. Aberforth blamed Albus, you know, as people will under these dreadful circumstances. But Aberforth always talked a little madly, poor boy. All the same, breaking Albus's nose at the funeral was not decent. It would have destroyed Kendra to see her sons fighting like that, across her daughter's body. A shame Gellert could not have stayed for the funeral... He would have been a comfort to Albus, at least...'
This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few who attended Ariana Dumbledore's funeral, raises several questions. Why exactly did Aberforth Dumbledore blame Albus for his sister's death? Was it, as "Batty" pretends, a mere effusion of grief? Or could there have been some more concrete reason for his fury? Grindelwald, expelled from Durmstrang for near-fatal attacks upon fellow students, fled the country hours after the girl's death, and Albus (out of shame or fear?) never saw him again, not until forced to do so by the pleas of the Wizarding world.
Neither Dumbledore nor Grindelwald ever seems to have referred to this brief boyhood friendship in later life. However, there can be no doubt that Dumbledore delayed, for some five years of turmoil, fatalities, and disappearances, his attack upon Gellert Grindelwald. Was it lingering affection for the man or fear of exposure as his once best friend that caused Dumbledore to hesitate? Was it only reluctantly that Dumbledore set out to capture the man he was once so delighted he had met?
And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the inadvertent victim of some Dark rite? Did she stumble across something she ought not to have done, as the two young men sat practicing for their attempt at glory and domination? Is it possible that Ariana Dumbledore was the first person to die "for the greater good"?
The chapter ended here and Harry stopped reading aloud as he looked up. Hermione tugged the book out of Harry's hands, looking a little alarmed by his and Y/n's expressions, and closed it without looking at it, as though hiding something indecent.
"Y/n, Harry..."
But Harry shook his head. Some inner certainty had crashed down inside him, it was exactly as he had felt after Ron left. He had trusted Dumbledore, believed him the embodiment of goodness and wisdom. All was ashes: How much more could he lose? Ron, Dumbledore, the phoenix wand...
"Listen to me both of you. It...it doesn't make very nice reading..." Hermione began.
"Yeah, you could say that..." Harry angrily scoffed.
"But don't forget, Harry, this is Rita Skeeter writing." Hermione said.
"You did read that letter to Grindelwald, didn't you?"
"Yes, I...I did." She hesitated, looking upset, cradling her tea in her cold hands. "I think that's the worst bit. I know Bathilda thought it was all just talk, but 'For the Greater Good' became Grindelwald's slogan, his justification for all the atrocities he committed later. And... from that... it looks like Dumbledore gave him the idea. They say 'For the Greater Good' was even carved over the entrance to Nurmengard."
"He is a coward..." Y/n spoke now with pure venom clear in his voice "He spent years running from a fight because of a short friendship...While we have had to abandon everything to complete a mission that he has gave us with no clues towards it other than the basics! And on top of that I have had to resolve myself into accepting that I have to kill my own brother whom I grew up with on his words of a so called prophecy!" Y/n said angrily.
Hermione went very quiet as tears leaked out of her eyes and Harry felt fear rising in his chest. This sounded rather like Ron before he had left. Would Y/n leave them now too?
"It's...it's an awful thought that Dumbledore's ideas helped Grindelwald rise to power." Hermione quickly began. "But on the other hand, even Rita can't pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when they were both really young, and..."
"I thought you'd say that." said Harry. He did not want to let his own anger spill out at her, but it was hard to keep his voice steady. "I thought you'd say 'They were young.' They were the same age as we are now. Y/n's right, here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the Muggles."
His temper would not remain in check much longer. He stood up and walked around, trying to work some of it off.
"I'm not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote." said Hermione. "All that 'right to rule' rubbish, it's 'Magic Is Might' all over again. But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in the house..."
"Alone? He wasn't alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up..."
"I don't believe it." said Hermione. She stood up too. "Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don't think she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have allowed..."
"The Dumbledore we thought we knew also did not want to conquer Muggles by force!" Y/n said angrily, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.
"He changed, Y/n, he changed! It's as simple as that! Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped your great uncle Grindelwald, the one who always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle-born rights, who fought You-Know-Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him down!"
Rita's book lay on the ground between them, so that the face of Albus Dumbledore smiled dolefully at the three.
"Y/n, Harry, I'm sorry, but I think the real reason you're so angry is that Dumbledore never told you any of this himself."
"Possibly!" Y/n said beyond mad. "Maybe it would have been easier to take this news if he told me himself. But he did not...and that is the point Hermione. He told us nothing!"
Y/n stood up now and Hermione looked up at him. "I am going to bed..." He said turning around and entering the tent alone.
"He loved you both." Hermione whispered. "I know he loved you. both."
Harry dropped his arms. "I don't know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never us. This isn't love, the mess he's left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me and to not tell Y/n, a relative of the person he shared the most with...someone that deserved to know what he had done even if they had to keep it a secret. Y/n and I have every reason to be angry."
Harry picked up Hermione's wand, which he had dropped in the snow, and sat back down in the entrance of the tent.
"Thanks for the tea. I'll finish the watch. You get back in the warm and take care of Y/n."
Hermione hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She put down Y/n's cup of tea and picked up the book putting it under her arm, then she picked the cup back up again and walked back past Harry back into the tent.
When Hermione entered the tent she could see Y/n was still angry as he threw down his coat and got prepared for bed.
"Y/n..." Hermione stared.
"I do not want to talk about him anymore for now." Y/n said kindly indicating he wanted to drop the topic.
"Alright..." Hermione nodded.
"Are you going to join me?" He asked her sitting down on their bed.
Hermione nodded again and put down the two teacups in her hands near the kitchen, they could wash them later. Exhaustion was creeping over her now as she took off her own jacket and put it down on top of Y/n's.
Y/n lay down on their bed as he pulled the covers back for her and Hermione climbed into bed to lie down beside him.
She instantly felt his arm sneak around her waist and pull her close to him as he held her.
"I am not going anywhere..." He said as if knowing her fears deep down. "As angry as I am, I am not going to abandon you or Harry."
Hermione didn't need to say any words. She just put her hand on top of Y/n's slipping her fingers into his as both closed their eyes to let sleep finally overtake them.