Dolores Umbridge 21 страница

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 tan- gled mess for a sword hilt, a ruby, she moved weirdly: He saw it out of the corner of his eye; panic made him turn and horror paralyzed him as he saw the old body collapsing and the great snake pouring from the place where her neck had been.

The snake struck as he raised his wand: The force of the bite to his forearm sent the wand spinning up toward the ceiling; its light swung dizzyingly around the room and was extinguished: Then a powerful blow from the tail to his midriff knocked the breath out of him: He fell backward onto the dressing table, into the mound of filthy clothing —

He rolled sideways, narrowly avoiding the snake’s tail, which thrashed down upon the table where he had been a second earlier: Fragments of the glass surface rained upon him as he hit the floor. From below he heard Hermione call, “Harry? ”

He could not get enough breath into his lungs to call back: Then a heavy smooth mass smashed him to the floor and he felt it slide over him, powerful, muscular —

“No! ” he gasped, pinned to the floor.

“ Yes, ” whispered the voice. “ Yesss. . . hold you. . . hold you. . . ”

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“ 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 fly- ing, 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 Hermione dived aside with a shriek; her deflected curse hit the curtained window, which shattered. Fro- zen air filled the room as Harry ducked to avoid another shower of broken glass and his foot slipped on a pencil-like something — his wand —

He bent and snatched it up, but now the room was full of the snake, its tail thrashing; Hermione was nowhere to be seen and for a moment Harry thought the worst, but then there was a loud bang and a flash of red light, and the snake flew into the air, smacking Harry hard in the face as it went, coil after heavy coil rising up to the ceiling. Harry raised his wand, but as he did so, his scar seared more painfully, more powerfully than it had done in years.

“He’s coming! Hermione, he’s coming! ”

As he yelled the snake fell, hissing wildly. Everything was chaos: It smashed shelves from the wall, and splintered china flew every- where as Harry jumped over the bed and seized the dark shape he knew to be Hermione —

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She shrieked with pain 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 —

The snake lunged as he took a running leap, dragging Hermione

with him; as it struck, Hermione screamed, “ Confringo! ” and her spell

flew around the room, exploding the wardrobe mirror and ricochet- ing 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, pulling Hermi- one with him, he leapt from bed to 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 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 wad- dling 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

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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 be- neath 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 destina- tion 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 slith- ering 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 try-

ing 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! ”

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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, clutch-

ing the bars of his crib, and he looked up into the intruder’s face with a

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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 ter- ror, 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, im- mersed 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.

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“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. ”

“Yes, ” said Hermione. “I had to use a Hover Charm to get you into your bunk, I couldn’t lift you. You’ve been. . . Well, you haven’t been quite. . . ”

There were purple shadows under her brown eyes and he noticed a small sponge in her hand: She had been wiping his face. “You’ve been ill, ” she finished. “Quite ill. ”

“How long ago did we leave? ”

“Hours ago. It’s nearly morning. ”

“And I’ve been. . . what, unconscious? ”

“Not exactly, ” said Hermione uncomfortably. “You’ve been shout- ing and moaning and. . . things, ” she added in a tone that made Harry feel uneasy. What had he done? Screamed curses like Volde- mort, cried like the baby in the crib?

“I couldn’t get the Horcrux off you, ” Hermione said, and he knew she wanted to change the subject. “It was stuck, stuck to your chest. You’ve got a mark; I’m sorry, 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. . . . ”

He 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.

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“Where’ve you put the Horcrux? ”

“In my bag. I think we should keep it off for a while. ” He lay back on his pillows and looked into her pinched gray face.

“We shouldn’t have gone to Godric’s Hollow. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault, Hermione, I’m sorry. ”

“It’s not your fault. I wanted to go too; I really thought Dumble- dore might have left the sword there for you. ”

“Yeah, well. . . we got that wrong, didn’t we? ” “What happened, Harry? 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? ”

He closed his eyes. He could still smell Bathilda’s house on him: It made the whole thing horribly vivid.

“Bathilda must’ve been dead a while. The snake was. . . was in- side her. 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? ”

He opened his eyes again: Hermione looked revolted, nauseated.

“Lupin said there would be magic we’d never imagined, ” Harry said. “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. . . ”

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He remembered the snake coming our of Bathilda’s neck: Hermi- one 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, no, I’m sure you ought to rest! ”

“You’re the one who needs sleep. No offense, but you look terrible. I’m fine. I’ll keep watch for a while. Where’s my wand? ”

She did not answer, she 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? ”

She reached down beside the bed and held it out to him. The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One frag- ile 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 Hermione.

“Mend it. Please. ”

“Harry, I don’t think, when it’s broken like this —” “Please, Hermione, try! ”

“ R-Reparo. ”

The dangling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.

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“ Lumos! ”

The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at Hermione.

“ Expelliarmus! ”

Hermione’s wand gave a little jerk, but did not leave her hand. 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 sitting beside his bed, desiring nothing more than to get away from her.

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he 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

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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 use- less objects to take any more. Harry’s hand brushed the old Snitch through the mokeskin and for a moment he had to fight the temp- tation 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 looked frightened that he might curse her with her own wand. Her face streaked with tears, she crouched down beside him, two cups of tea trembling in her hands and something bulky under her arm.

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“Thanks, ” he said, taking one of the cups.

“Do you mind if I talk to you? ”

“No, ” he said because he did not want to hurt her feelings. “Harry, you wanted to know who that man in the picture was. Well. . . I’ve got the book. ”

Timidly she pushed it onto his lap, a pristine copy of The Life and

Lies of Albus Dumbledore.

“Where — how —? ”

“It was 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 looked down upon Dumbledore’s face and experienced a surge of savage pleasure: Now he would know all the things that Dumbledore had never thought it worth telling him, whether Dum- bledore wanted him to or not.

“You’re still really angry at me, aren’t you? ” said Hermione; he looked up to see fresh tears leaking out of her eyes, and knew that his anger must have shown in his face.

“No, ” he said quietly. “No, Hermione, I know it was an accident. You were trying to get us out of there alive, and you were incredible. I’d be dead if you hadn’t been there to help me. ”

He tried to return her watery smile, then turned 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

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across the one he sought almost at once, the young Dumbledore and his handsome companion, roaring with laughter at some long- forgotten joke. Harry dropped his eyes to the caption.

Albus Dumbledore, shortly after his mother’s death,

with his friend Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry gaped at the last word for several long moments. Grindel- wald. His friend Grindelwald. He looked sideways at Hermione, who was still contemplating the name as though she could not be- lieve her eyes. Slowly she looked up at Harry.

“ Grindelwald? ”

Ignoring the remainder of the photographs, Harry searched the pages around them for a recurrence of that fatal name. He soon dis- covered it and read greedily, but became lost: It was necessary to go further back to make sense of it all, and eventually he found himself at the start of a chapter entitled “The Greater Good. ” Together, he and Hermione started to read:

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

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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 im- prisonment of his sister. For, though her first jailer had died, there was no change in the pitiful condition of Ariana Dumble- dore. 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 im-

pressed by his paper on trans-species transformation in Trans-

figuration Today. This initial contact led to acquaintance with

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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. ” Never- theless, 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 genera- tion later, to steal his crown. As Grindelwald never extended

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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.