Dolores Umbridge 22 страница

“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

? 356‘

THE LIFE AND LIES OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

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 cru-

cial 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 establish- ing 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

? 357‘

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

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, Dum- bledore 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 dread- ful 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 dread- ful 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. . . . ”

? 358‘

THE LIFE AND LIES OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

This dreadful coffin-side brawl, known only to those few who attended Ariana Dumbledore’s funeral, raises several ques- tions. Why exactly did Aberforth Dumbledore blame Albus for his sister’s death? Was it, as “Batty” pretends, a mere effu- sion 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. How- ever, 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 de- lighted he had met?

And how did the mysterious Ariana die? Was she the in- advertent 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 looked up. Hermione had reached the bottom of the page before him. She tugged the book out of Harry’s hands, looking a little alarmed by his expression,

? 359‘

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

and closed it without looking at it, as though hiding something indecent.

“Harry —”

But he 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. . .

“Harry. ” She seemed to have heard his thoughts. “Listen to me. It — it doesn’t make very nice reading —”

“Yeah, you could say that —”

“— but don’t forget, Harry, this is Rita Skeeter writing. ” “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 com- mitted 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. ”

“What’s Nurmengard? ”

“The prison Grindelwald had built to hold his opponents. He ended up in there himself, once Dumbledore had caught him. Any- way, it’s — it’s an awful thought that Dumbledore’s ideas helped Grindelwald rise to power. 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 anger spill out at her, but it was hard to keep his voice steady. “I

? 360‘

THE LIFE AND LIES OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

thought you’d say ‘They were young. ’ They were the same age as we are now. And 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 Hermi- one. “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 com- pany, 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 Dum- bledore we knew would never, ever have allowed —”

“The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer Muggles by force! ” Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.

“He changed, Harry, 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 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 both.

“Harry, I’m sorry, but I think the real reason you’re so angry is that Dumbledore never told you any of this himself. ”

? 361‘

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Maybe I am! ” Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment. “Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never! ”

His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at each other in the whiteness and the emptiness, and Harry felt they were as insignificant as insects beneath that wide sky.

“He loved you, ” Hermione whispered. “I know he loved you. ” Harry dropped his arms.

“I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. 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. ”

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. ”

She hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She picked up the book and then walked back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch, and hated himself for wishing that what she said was true: that Dumbledore had really cared.

? 362‘

C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N

THE SILVER DOE

t was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch

at midnight. Harry’s dreams were confused and disturbing: Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a gigantic, cracked ring, then through a wreath of Christmas roses. He woke repeat- edly, panicky, convinced that somebody had called out to him in the distance, imagining that the wind whipping around the tent was footsteps or voices.

Finally he got up in the darkness and joined Hermione, who was

huddled in the entrance to the tent reading A History of Magic by the

light of her wand. The snow was still falling thickly, and she greeted with relief his suggestion of packing up early and moving on. “We’ll go somewhere more sheltered, ” she agreed, shivering as she pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas. “I kept thinking I could hear people moving outside. I even thought I saw somebody once or twice. ”

? 363‘

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Harry paused in the act of pulling on a jumper and glanced at the silent, motionless Sneakoscope on the table.

“I’m sure I imagined it, ” said Hermione, looking nervous. “The snow in the dark, it plays tricks on your eyes. . . . But perhaps we ought to Disapparate under the Invisibility Cloak, just in case? ” Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry wearing the Hor- crux, and Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disapparated. The usual tightness engulfed them; Harry’s feet parted company with the snowy ground, then slammed hard onto what felt like frozen earth covered with leaves.

“Where are we? ” he asked, peering around at a fresh mass of trees as Hermione opened the beaded bag and began tugging out tent poles.

“The Forest of Dean, ” she said. “I came camping here once with my mum and dad. ”

Here too snow lay on the trees all around and it was bitterly cold, but they were at least protected from the wind. They spent most of the day inside the tent, huddled for warmth around the useful bright blue flames that Hermione was so adept at producing, and which could be scooped up and carried around in a jar. Harry felt as though he was recuperating from some brief but severe illness, an impression reinforced by Hermione’s solicitousness. That afternoon fresh flakes drifted down upon them, so that even their sheltered clearing had a fresh dusting of powdery snow.

After two nights of little sleep, Harry’s senses seemed more alert than usual. Their escape from Godric’s Hollow had been so narrow that Voldemort seemed somehow closer than before, more threaten- ing. As darkness drew in again Harry refused Hermione’s offer to keep watch and told her to go to bed.

? 364‘

THE SILVER DOE

Harry moved an old cushion into the tent mouth and sat down, wearing all the sweaters he owned but even so, still shivery. The dark- ness deepened with the passing hours until it was virtually impen- etrable. He was on the point of taking out the Marauder’s Map, so as to watch Ginny’s dot for a while, before he remembered that it was the Christmas holidays and that she would be back at the Burrow. Every tiny movement seemed magnified in the vastness of the forest. Harry knew that it must be full of living creatures, but he wished they would all remain still and silent so that he could sepa- rate their innocent scurryings and prowlings from noises that might proclaim other, sinister movements. He remembered the sound of a cloak slithering over dead leaves many years ago, and at once thought he heard it again before mentally shaking himself. Their protective enchantments had worked for weeks; why should they break now? And yet he could not throw off the feeling that some- thing was different tonight.

Several times he jerked upright, his neck aching because he had fallen asleep, slumped at an awkward angle against the side of the tent. The night reached such a depth of velvety blackness that he might have been suspended in limbo between Disapparition and Apparition. He had just held up a hand in front of his face to see whether he could make out his fingers when it happened.

A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward him.

He jumped to his feet, his voice frozen in his throat, and raised Hermione’s wand. He screwed up his eyes as the light became blind- ing, the trees in front of it pitch-black in silhouette, and still the thing came closer. . . .

? 365‘

CHAPTER NINETEEN

And then the source of the light stepped out from behind an oak. It was a silver-white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking her way over the ground, still silent, and leaving no hoofprints in the fine powdering of snow. She stepped toward him, her beautiful head with its wide, long-lashed eyes held high.

Harry stared at the creature, filled with wonder, not at her strangeness, but at her inexplicable familiarity. He felt that he had been waiting for her to come, but that he had forgotten, until this moment, that they had arranged to meet. His impulse to shout for Hermione, which had been so strong a moment ago, had gone. He knew, he would have staked his life on it, that she had come for him, and him alone.

They gazed at each other for several long moments and then she turned and walked away.

“No, ” he said, and his voice was cracked with lack of use. “Come back! ”

She continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon her brightness was striped by their thick black trunks. For one trembling second he hesitated. Caution murmured it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him that this was not Dark Magic. He set off in pursuit.

Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the doe made no noise as she passed through the trees, for she was nothing but light. Deeper and deeper into the forest she led him, and Harry walked quickly, sure that when she stopped, she would allow him to approach her properly. And then she would speak and the voice would tell him what he needed to know.

At last, she came to a halt. She turned her beautiful head toward

? 366‘

THE SILVER DOE

him once more, and he broke into a run, a question burning in him, but as he opened his lips to ask it, she vanished.

Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety.

“ Lumos! ” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited.

The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crack- les of twigs, soft swishes of snow. Was he about to be attacked? Had she enticed him into an ambush? Was he imagining that somebody stood beyond the reach of the wandlight, watching him?

He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?

Something gleamed in the light of the wand, and Harry spun about, but all that was there was a small, frozen pool, its cracked black surface glittering as he raised the wand higher to examine it. He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty gray carapace, something else glinted. A great silver cross. . .

His heart skipped into his mouth: He dropped to his knees at the pool’s edge and angled the wand so as to flood the bottom of the pool with as much light as possible. A glint of deep red. . . It was a sword with glittering rubies in its hilt. . . . The sword of Gryffindor was lying at the bottom of the forest pool.

Barely breathing, he stared down at it. How was this possible?

? 367‘

CHAPTER NINETEEN

How could it have come to be lying in a forest pool, this close to the place where they were camping? Had some unknown magic drawn Hermione to this spot, or was the doe, which he had taken to be a Patronus, some kind of guardian of the pool? Or had the sword been put into the pool after they had arrived, precisely because they were here? In which case, where was the person who had wanted to pass it to Harry? Again he directed the wand at the surrounding trees and bushes, searching for a human outline, for the glint of an eye, but he could not see anyone there. All the same, a little more fear leavened his exhilaration as he returned his attention to the sword reposing upon the bottom of the frozen pool.

He pointed the wand at the silvery shape and murmured, “ Accio

Sword. ”

It did not stir. He had not expected it to. If it had been that easy, the sword would have lain on the ground for him to pick up, not in the depths of a frozen pool. He set off around the circle of ice, thinking hard about the last time the sword had delivered itself to him. He had been in terrible danger then, and had asked for help. “Help, ” he murmured, but the sword remained upon the pool bottom, indifferent, motionless.

What was it, Harry asked himself (walking again), that Dumble-

dore had told him the last time he had retrieved the sword? Only a

true Gryffindor could have pulled that out of the hat. And what were the

qualities that defined a Gryffindor? A small voice inside Harry’s head

answered him: Their daring, nerve, and chivalry set Gryffindors apart.

Harry stopped walking and let out a long sigh, his smoky breath dispersing rapidly upon the frozen air. He knew what he had to do. If he was honest with himself, he had thought it might come to this from the moment he had spotted the sword through the ice.

? 368‘

THE SILVER DOE

He glanced around at the surrounding trees again, but was con- vinced now that nobody was going to attack him. They had had their chance as he walked alone through the forest, had had plenty of oppor- tunity as he examined the pool. The only reason to delay at this point was because the immediate prospect was so deeply uninviting.

With fumbling fingers Harry started to remove his many layers of clothing. Where “chivalry” entered into this, he thought ruefully, he was not entirely sure, unless it counted as chivalrous that he was not calling for Hermione to do it in his stead.

An owl hooted somewhere as he stripped off, and he thought with a pang of Hedwig. He was shivering now, his teeth chatter- ing horribly, and yet he continued to strip off until at last he stood there in his underwear, barefooted in the snow. He placed the pouch containing his wand, his mother’s letter, the shard of Sirius’s mirror, and the old Snitch on top of his clothes, then he pointed Hermione’s wand at the ice.

“ Diffindo. ”

It cracked with a sound like a bullet in the silence: The surface of the pool broke and chunks of dark ice rocked on the ruffled wa- ter. As far as Harry could judge, it was not deep, but to retrieve the sword he would have to submerge himself completely. Contemplating the task ahead would not make it easier or the water warmer. He stepped to the pool’s edge and placed Hermione’s wand on the ground, still lit. Then, trying not to imagine how much colder he was about to become or how violently he would soon be shivering, he jumped.

Every pore of his body screamed in protest: The very air in his lungs seemed to freeze solid as he was submerged to his shoulders in the frozen water. He could hardly breathe; trembling so violently

? 369‘

CHAPTER NINETEEN

the water lapped over the edges of the pool, he felt for the blade with his numb feet. He only wanted to dive once.

Harry put off the moment of total submersion from second to second, gasping and shaking, until he told himself that it must be done, gathered all his courage, and dived.

The cold was agony: It attacked him like fire. His brain itself seemed to have frozen as he pushed through the dark water to the bottom and reached out, groping for the sword. His fingers closed around the hilt; he pulled it upward.

Then something closed tight around his neck. He thought of wa- ter weeds, though nothing had brushed him as he dived, and raised his empty hand to free himself. It was not weed: The chain of the Horcrux had tightened and was slowly constricting his windpipe. Harry kicked out wildly, trying to push himself back to the sur- face, but merely propelled himself into the rocky side of the pool. Thrashing, suffocating, he scrabbled at the strangling chain, his frozen fingers unable to loosen it, and now little lights were pop- ping inside his head, and he was going to drown, there was nothing left, nothing he could do, and the arms that closed around his chest were surely Death’s. . . .

Choking and retching, soaking and colder than he had ever been in his life, he came to facedown in the snow. Somewhere close by, another person was panting and coughing and staggering around. Hermione had come again, as she had come when the snake at- tacked. . . . Yet it did not sound like her, not with those deep coughs, not judging by the weight of the footsteps. . . .

Harry had no strength to lift his head and see his savior’s identity. All he could do was raise a shaking hand to his throat and feel the place where the locket had cut tightly into his flesh. It was gone:

? 370‘

THE SILVER DOE

Someone had cut him free. Then a panting voice spoke from over his head.

“Are — you — mental? ”

Nothing but the shock of hearing that voice could have given Harry the strength to get up. Shivering violently, he staggered to his feet. There before him stood Ron, fully dressed but drenched to the skin, his hair plastered to his face, the sword of Gryffindor in one hand and the Horcrux dangling from its broken chain in the other.

“Why the hell, ” panted Ron, holding up the Horcrux, which

swung backward and forward on its shortened chain in some parody of hypnosis, “didn’t you take this thing off before you dived? ” Harry could not answer. The silver doe was nothing, nothing compared with Ron’s reappearance; he could not believe it. Shud- dering with cold, he caught up the pile of clothes still lying at the water’s edge and began to pull them on. As he dragged sweater after sweater over his head, Harry stared at Ron, half expecting him to have disappeared every time he lost sight of him, and yet he had to be real: He had just dived into the pool, he had saved Harry’s life. “It was y-you? ” Harry said at last, his teeth chattering, his voice weaker than usual due to his near-strangulation.

“Well, yeah, ” said Ron, looking slightly confused. “Y-you cast that doe? ”

“What? No, of course not! I thought it was you doing it! ” “My Patronus is a stag. ”

“Oh yeah. I thought it looked different. No antlers. ” Harry put Hagrid’s pouch back around his neck, pulled on a final sweater, stooped to pick up Hermione’s wand, and faced Ron again.

? 371‘

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“How come you’re here? ”

Apparently Ron had hoped that this point would come up later, if at all.

“Well, I’ve — you know — I’ve come back. If —” He cleared his throat. “You know. You still want me. ”

There was a pause, in which the subject of Ron’s departure seemed to rise like a wall between them. Yet he was here. He had returned. He had just saved Harry’s life.

Ron looked down at his hands. He seemed momentarily surprised to see the things he was holding.

“Oh yeah, I got it out, ” he said, rather unnecessarily, holding up the sword for Harry’s inspection. “That’s why you jumped in, right? ”

“Yeah, ” said Harry. “But I don’t understand. How did you get here? How did you find us? ”

“Long story, ” said Ron. “I’ve been looking for you for hours, it’s a big forest, isn’t it? And I was just thinking I’d have to kip under a tree and wait for morning when I saw that deer coming and you following. ”

“You didn’t see anyone else? ”

“No, ” said Ron. “I —”

But he hesitated, glancing at two trees growing close together some yards away.

“I did think I saw something move over there, but I was running to the pool at the time, because you’d gone in and you hadn’t come up, so I wasn’t going to make a detour to — hey! ”

Harry was already hurrying to the place Ron had indicated. The two oaks grew close together; there was a gap of only a few inches between the trunks at eye level, an ideal place to see but not be seen.

? 372‘

THE SILVER DOE

The ground around the roots, however, was free of snow, and Harry could see no sign of footprints. He walked back to where Ron stood waiting, still holding the sword and the Horcrux.

“Anything there? ” Ron asked.

“No, ” said Harry.

“So how did the sword get in that pool? ”

“Whoever cast the Patronus must have put it there. ” They both looked at the ornate silver sword, its rubied hilt glint- ing a little in the light from Hermione’s wand.

“You reckon this is the real one? ” asked Ron.

“One way to find out, isn’t there? ” said Harry. The Horcrux was still swinging from Ron’s hand. The locket was twitching slightly. Harry knew that the thing inside it was agitated again. It had sensed the presence of the sword and had tried to kill Harry rather than let him possess it. Now was not the time for long discussions; now was the moment to destroy the locket once and for all. Harry looked around, holding Hermione’s wand high, and saw the place: a flattish rock lying in the shadow of a sycamore tree.