Dolores Umbridge 38 страница

Malfoy fell off the broom and lay facedown, gasping, coughing, and retching. Harry rolled over and sat up: The door to the Room of Requirement had vanished, and Ron and Hermione sat panting on the floor beside Goyle, who was still unconscious.

“C-Crabbe, ” choked Malfoy as soon as he could speak. “C- Crabbe. . . ”

“He’s dead, ” said Ron harshly.

There was silence, apart from panting and coughing. Then a num- ber of huge bangs shook the castle, and a great cavalcade of trans- parent figures galloped past on horses, their heads screaming with bloodlust under their arms. Harry staggered to his feet when the Headless Hunt had passed and looked around: The battle was still going on all around him. He could hear more screams than those of the retreating ghosts. Panic flared within him.

“Where’s Ginny? ” he said sharply. “She was here. She was sup- posed to be going back into the Room of Requirement. ” “Blimey, d’you reckon it’ll still work after that fire? ” asked Ron, but he too got to his feet, rubbing his chest and looking left and right. “Shall we split up and look —? ”

“No, ” said Hermione, getting to her feet too. Malfoy and Goyle

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remained slumped hopelessly on the corridor floor; neither of them had wands. “Let’s stick together. I say we go — Harry, what’s that on your arm? ”

“What? Oh yeah —”

He pulled the diadem from his wrist and held it up. It was still hot, blackened with soot, but as he looked at it closely he was just able to make out the tiny words etched upon it: Wit beyond mea- sure is man’s greatest treasure.

A bloodlike substance, dark and tarry, seemed to be leaking from the diadem. Suddenly Harry felt the thing vibrate violently, then break apart in his hands, and as it did so, he thought he heard the faintest, most distant scream of pain, echoing not from the grounds or the castle, but from the thing that had just fragmented in his fingers.

“It must have been Fiendfyre! ” whimpered Hermione, her eyes on the broken pieces.

“Sorry? ”

“Fiendfyre — cursed fire — it’s one of the substances that destroy Horcruxes, but I would never, ever have dared use it, it’s so danger- ous — how did Crabbe know how to —? ”

“Must’ve learned from the Carrows, ” said Harry grimly. “Shame he wasn’t concentrating when they mentioned how to stop it, really, ” said Ron, whose hair, like Hermione’s, was singed, and whose face was blackened. “If he hadn’t tried to kill us all, I’d be quite sorry he was dead. ”

“But don’t you realize? ” whispered Hermione. “This means, if we can just get the snake —”

But she broke off as yells and shouts and the unmistakable noises of dueling filled the corridor. Harry looked around and his heart

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seemed to fail: Death Eaters had penetrated Hogwarts. Fred and Percy had just backed into view, both of them dueling masked and hooded men.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione ran forward to help: Jets of light flew in every direction and the man dueling Percy backed off, fast: Then his hood slipped and they saw a high forehead and streaked hair —

“Hello, Minister! ” bellowed Percy, sending a neat jinx straight at Thicknesse, who dropped his wand and clawed at the front of his robes, apparently in awful discomfort. “Did I mention I’m resigning? ”

“You’re joking, Perce! ” shouted Fred as the Death Eater he was battling collapsed under the weight of three separate Stunning Spells. Thicknesse had fallen to the ground with tiny spikes erupt- ing all over him; he seemed to be turning into some form of sea urchin. Fred looked at Percy with glee.

“You actually are joking, Perce. . . . I don’t think I’ve heard you

joke since you were —”

The air exploded. They had been grouped together, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, and Percy, the two Death Eaters at their feet, one Stunned, the other Transfigured; and in that fragment of a moment, when danger seemed temporarily at bay, the world was rent apart. Harry felt himself flying through the air, and all he could do was hold as tightly as possible to that thin stick of wood that was his one and only weapon, and shield his head in his arms: He heard the screams and yells of his companions without a hope of knowing what had happened to them —

And then the world resolved itself into pain and semidarkness: He was half buried in the wreckage of a corridor that had been

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subjected to a terrible attack. Cold air told him that the side of the castle had been blown away, and hot stickiness on his cheek told him that he was bleeding copiously. Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his life. . . .

And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three redheaded men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood.

“No — no — no! ” someone was shouting. “No! Fred! No! ” And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred’s eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

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he world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the

castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down

their arms? Harry’s mind was in free fall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossibility, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying —

And then a body fell past the hole blown into the side of the school, and curses flew in at them from the darkness, hitting the wall behind their heads.

“Get down! ” Harry shouted, as more curses flew through the night: He and Ron had both grabbed Hermione and pulled her to the floor, but Percy lay across Fred’s body, shielding it from fur- ther harm, and when Harry shouted, “Percy, come on, we’ve got to move! ” he shook his head.

“Percy! ” Harry saw tear tracks streaking the grime coating Ron’s face as he seized his elder brother’s shoulders and pulled, but Percy

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would not budge. “Percy, you can’t do anything for him! We’re go- ing to —”

Hermione screamed, and Harry, turning, did not need to ask why. A monstrous spider the size of a small car was trying to climb through the huge hole in the wall: One of Aragog’s descendants had joined the fight.

Ron and Harry shouted together; their spells collided and the monster was blown backward, its legs jerking horribly, and vanished into the darkness.

“It brought friends! ” Harry called to the others, glancing over the edge of the castle through the hole in the wall the curses had blasted: More giant spiders were climbing the side of the building, liberated from the Forbidden Forest, into which the Death Eaters must have penetrated. Harry fired Stunning Spells down upon them, knock- ing the lead monster into its fellows, so that they rolled back down the building and out of sight. Then more curses came soaring over Harry’s head, so close he felt the force of them blow his hair.

“Let’s move, NOW! ”

Pushing Hermione ahead of him with Ron, Harry stooped to seize Fred’s body under the armpits. Percy, realizing what Harry was trying to do, stopped clinging to the body and helped; together, crouching low to avoid the curses flying at them from the grounds, they hauled Fred out of the way.

“Here, ” said Harry, and they placed him in a niche where a suit of armor had stood earlier. He could not bear to look at Fred a sec- ond longer than he had to, and after making sure that the body was well hidden, he took off after Ron and Hermione. Malfoy and Goyle had vanished, but at the end of the corridor, which was now full

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of dust and falling masonry, glass long gone from the windows, he saw many people running backward and forward, whether friends or foes he could not tell. Rounding the corner, Percy let out a bull- like roar: “ROOKWOOD! ” and sprinted off in the direction of a tall man, who was pursuing a couple of students.

“Harry, in here! ” Hermione screamed.

She had pulled Ron behind a tapestry: They seemed to be wres- tling together, and for one mad second Harry thought that they were embracing again; then he saw that Hermione was trying to restrain Ron, to stop him running after Percy.

“Listen to me — LISTEN, RON! ”

“I wanna help — I wanna kill Death Eaters —” His face was contorted, smeared with dust and smoke, and he was shaking with rage and grief.

“Ron, we’re the only ones who can end it! Please — Ron — we need the snake, we’ve got to kill the snake! ” said Hermione.

But Harry knew how Ron felt: Pursuing another Horcrux could not bring the satisfaction of revenge; he too wanted to fight, to punish them, the people who had killed Fred, and he wanted to find the other Weasleys, and above all make sure, make quite sure, that Ginny was not — but he could not permit that idea to form in his mind —

“We will fight! ” Hermione said. “We’ll have to, to reach the snake!

But let’s not lose sight now of what we’re supposed to be d-doing! We’re the only ones who can end it! ”

She was crying too, and she wiped her face on her torn and singed sleeve as she spoke, but she took great heaving breaths to calm herself as, still keeping a tight hold on Ron, she turned to Harry.

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“You need to find out where Voldemort is, because he’ll have the snake with him, won’t he? Do it, Harry — look inside him! ” Why was it so easy? Because his scar had been burning for hours, yearning to show him Voldemort’s thoughts? He closed his eyes on her command, and at once, the screams and the bangs and all the discordant sounds of the battle were drowned until they became distant, as though he stood far, far away from them. . . .

He was standing in the middle of a desolate but strangely familiar room, with peeling paper on the walls and all the windows boarded except for one. The sounds of the assault on the castle were muffled and distant. The single unblocked window revealed distant bursts of light where the castle stood, but inside the room it was dark except for a solitary oil lamp.

He was rolling his wand between his fingers, watching it, his thoughts on the room in the castle, the secret room only he had ever found, the room, like the Chamber, that you had to be clever and cunning and inquisitive to discover. . . . He was confident that the boy would not find the diadem. . . although Dumbledore’s puppet had come much farther than he had ever expected. . . too far. . . . “My Lord, ” said a voice, desperate and cracked. He turned: There was Lucius Malfoy sitting in the darkest corner, ragged and still bearing the marks of the punishment he had received after the boy’s last escape. One of his eyes remained closed and puffy. “My Lord. . . please. . . my son. . . ”

“If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault. He did not come and join me, like the rest of the Slytherins. Perhaps he has decided to befriend Harry Potter? ”

“No — never, ” whispered Malfoy.

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“You must hope not. ”

“Aren’t — aren’t you afraid, my Lord, that Potter might die at an- other hand but yours? ” asked Malfoy, his voice shaking. “Wouldn’t it be. . . forgive me. . . more prudent to call off this battle, enter the castle, and seek him y-yourself? ”

“Do not pretend, Lucius. You wish the battle to cease so that you can discover what has happened to your son. And I do not need to seek Potter. Before the night is out, Potter will have come to find me. ” Voldemort dropped his gaze once more to the wand in his fingers. It troubled him. . . and those things that troubled Lord Voldemort needed to be rearranged. . . .

“Go and fetch Snape. ” “Snape, m-my Lord? ”

“Snape. Now. I need him. There is a — service — I require from him. Go. ”

Frightened, stumbling a little through the gloom, Lucius left the room. Voldemort continued to stand there, twirling the wand between his fingers, staring at it.

“It is the only way, Nagini, ” he whispered, and he looked around, and there was the great thick snake, now suspended in midair, twist- ing gracefully within the enchanted, protected space he had made for her, a starry, transparent sphere somewhere between glittering cage and tank.

With a gasp, Harry pulled back and opened his eyes; at the same moment his ears were assaulted with the screeches and cries, the smashes and bangs of battle.

“He’s in the Shrieking Shack. The snake’s with him, it’s got some sort of magical protection around it. He’s just sent Lucius Malfoy to find Snape. ”

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“Voldemort’s sitting in the Shrieking Shack? ” said Hermione,

outraged. “He’s not — he’s not even fighting? ”

“He doesn’t think he needs to fight, ” said Harry. “He thinks I’m going to go to him. ”

“But why? ”

“He knows I’m after Horcruxes — he’s keeping Nagini close be- side him — obviously I’m going to have to go to him to get near the thing —”

“Right, ” said Ron, squaring his shoulders. “So you can’t go, that’s what he wants, what he’s expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I’ll go and get it —”

Harry cut across Ron.

“You two stay here, I’ll go under the Cloak and I’ll be back as soon as I —”

“No, ” said Hermione, “it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and —”

“Don’t even think about it, ” Ron snarled at her. Before Hermione could get farther than “Ron, I’m just as capa- ble —” the tapestry at the top of the staircase on which they stood was ripped open.

“POTTER! ”

Two masked Death Eaters stood there, but even before their

wands were fully raised, Hermione shouted, “ Glisseo! ”

The stairs beneath their feet flattened into a chute and she, Harry, and Ron hurtled down it, unable to control their speed but so fast that the Death Eaters’ Stunning Spells flew far over their heads. They shot through the concealing tapestry at the bottom and spun onto the floor, hitting the opposite wall.

“ Duro! ” cried Hermione, pointing her wand at the tapestry, and

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there were two loud, sickening crunches as the tapestry turned to stone and the Death Eaters pursuing them crumpled against it. “Get back! ” shouted Ron, and he, Harry, and Hermione flat- tened themselves against a door as a herd of galloping desks thun- dered past, shepherded by a sprinting Professor McGonagall. She appeared not to notice them: Her hair had come down and there was a gash on her cheek. As she turned the corner, they heard her scream, “CHARGE! ”

“Harry, you get the Cloak on, ” said Hermione. “Never mind us —”

But he threw it over all three of them; large though they were, he doubted anyone would see their disembodied feet through the dust that clogged the air, the falling stone, the shimmer of spells.

They ran down the next staircase and found themselves in a cor- ridor full of duelers. The portraits on either side of the fighters were crammed with figures screaming advice and encouragement, while Death Eaters, both masked and unmasked, dueled students and teachers. Dean had won himself a wand, for he was face-to-face with Dolohov, Parvati with Travers. Harry, Ron, and Hermione raised their wands at once, ready to strike, but the duelers were weaving and darting around so much that there was a strong likeli- hood of hurting one of their own side if they cast curses. Even as they stood braced, looking for the opportunity to act, there came a

great “Wheeeeeeeeeeee! ” and, looking up, Harry saw Peeves zooming

over them, dropping Snargaluff pods down onto the Death Eaters, whose heads were suddenly engulfed in wriggling green tubers like fat worms.

“Argh! ”

A fistful of tubers had hit the Cloak over Ron’s head; the slimy

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green roots were suspended improbably in midair as Ron tried to shake them loose.

“Someone’s invisible there! ” shouted a masked Death Eater, pointing.

Dean made the most of the Death Eater’s momentary distrac- tion, knocking him out with a Stunning Spell; Dolohov attempted to retaliate and Parvati shot a Body-Bind Curse at him.

“LET’S GO! ” Harry yelled, and he, Ron, and Hermione gath- ered the Cloak tightly around themselves and pelted, heads down, through the midst of the fighters, slipping a little in pools of Snar- galuff juice, toward the top of the marble staircase into the entrance hall.

“I’m Draco Malfoy, I’m Draco, I’m on your side! ” Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with another masked Death Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed: Mal- foy looked around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him from under the Cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the Death Eater, his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused.

“And that’s the second time we’ve saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard! ” Ron yelled.

There were more duelers all over the stairs and in the hall, Death Eaters everywhere Harry looked: Yaxley, close to the front doors, in combat with Flitwick, a masked Death Eater dueling Kingsley right beside them. Students ran in every direction, some carrying or dragging injured friends. Harry directed a Stunning Spell toward the masked Death Eater; it missed but nearly hit Neville, who had emerged from nowhere brandishing armfuls of Venomous Tentac- ula, which looped itself happily around the nearest Death Eater and began reeling him in.

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Harry, Ron, and Hermione sped down the marble staircase: Glass shattered to their left, and the Slytherin hourglass that had recorded House points spilled its emeralds everywhere, so that people slipped and staggered as they ran. Two bodies fell from the balcony over- head as they reached the ground, and a gray blur that Harry took for an animal sped four-legged across the hall to sink its teeth into one of the fallen.

“NO! ” shrieked Hermione, and with a deafening blast from her wand, Fenrir Greyback was thrown backward from the feebly stir- ring body of Lavender Brown. He hit the marble banisters and struggled to return to his feet. Then, with a bright white flash and a crack, a crystal ball fell on top of his head, and he crumpled to the ground and did not move.

“I have more! ” shrieked Professor Trelawney from over the ban- isters. “More for any who want them! Here —”

And with a movement like a tennis serve, she heaved another enormous crystal sphere from her bag, waved her wand through the air, and caused the ball to speed across the hall and smash through a window. At the same moment, the heavy wooden front doors burst open, and more of the gigantic spiders forced their way into the entrance hall.

Screams of terror rent the air: The fighters scattered, Death Eat- ers and Hogwartians alike, and red and green jets of light flew into the midst of the oncoming monsters, which shuddered and reared, more terrifying than ever.

“How do we get out? ” yelled Ron over all the screaming, but before either Harry or Hermione could answer they were bowled aside: Hagrid had come thundering down the stairs, brandishing his flowery pink umbrella.

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“Don’t hurt ’em, don’t hurt ’em! ” he yelled.

“HAGRID, NO! ”

Harry forgot everything else: He sprinted out from under the Cloak, running bent double to avoid the curses illuminating the whole hall.

“HAGRID, COME BACK! ”

But he was not even halfway to Hagrid when he saw it happen: Hagrid vanished amongst the spiders, and with a great scurrying, a foul swarming movement, they retreated under the onslaught of spells, Hagrid buried in their midst.

“HAGRID! ”

Harry heard someone calling his own name, whether friend or foe he did not care: He was sprinting down the front steps into the dark grounds, and the spiders were swarming away with their prey, and he could see nothing of Hagrid at all.

“HAGRID! ”

He thought he could make out an enormous arm waving from the midst of the spider swarm, but as he made to chase after them, his way was impeded by a monumental foot, which swung down out of the darkness and made the ground on which he stood shud- der. He looked up: A giant stood before him, twenty feet high, its head hidden in shadow, nothing but its treelike, hairy shins illuminated by light from the castle doors. With one brutal, fluid movement, it smashed a massive fist through an upper window, and glass rained down upon Harry, forcing him back under the shelter of the doorway.

“Oh my —! ” shrieked Hermione, as she and Ron caught up with Harry and gazed upward at the giant now trying to seize people through the window above.

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“DON’T! ” Ron yelled, grabbing Hermione’s hand as she raised her wand. “Stun him and he’ll crush half the castle —” “HAGGER? ”

Grawp came lurching around the corner of the castle; only now did Harry realize that Grawp was, indeed, an undersized giant. The gargantuan monster trying to crush people on the upper floors looked around and let out a roar. The stone steps trembled as he stomped toward his smaller kin, and Grawp’s lopsided mouth fell open, showing yellow, half-brick-sized teeth; and then they launched themselves at each other with the savagery of lions.

“RUN! ” Harry roared; the night was full of hideous yells and blows as the giants wrestled, and he seized Hermione’s hand and tore down the steps into the grounds, Ron bringing up the rear. Harry had not lost hope of finding and saving Hagrid; he ran so fast that they were halfway toward the forest before they were brought up short again. The air around them had frozen: Harry’s breath caught and so- lidified in his chest. Shapes moved out in the darkness, swirling figures of concentrated blackness, moving in a great wave toward the castle, their faces hooded and their breath rattling. . . .

Ron and Hermione closed in beside him as the sounds of fighting behind them grew suddenly muted, deadened, because a silence only dementors could bring was falling thickly through the night, and Fred was gone, and Hagrid was surely dying or already dead. . . . “Come on, Harry! ” said Hermione’s voice from a very long way away. “Patronuses, Harry, come on! ”

He raised his wand, but a dull hopelessness was spreading through him: How many more lay dead that he did not yet know about; he felt as though his soul had already half left his body. . . .

“HARRY, COME ON! ” screamed Hermione.

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A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward them, sucking their way closer to Harry’s despair, which was like a prom- ise of a feast. . . .

He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and ex- pire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in midair and fade; and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling. . . .

And then a silver hare, a boar, and a fox soared past Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s heads: The dementors fell back before the crea- tures’ approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continuing to cast their Patronuses: Luna, Ernie, and Seamus.

“That’s right, ” said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back in the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice for the D. A. “That’s right, Harry. . . come on, think of something happy. . . . ”

“Something happy? ” he said, his voice cracked. “We’re all still here, ” she whispered, “we’re still fighting. Come on, now. . . . ”

There was a silver spark, then a wavering light, and then, with the greatest effort it had ever cost him, the stag burst from the end of Harry’s wand. It cantered forward, and now the dementors scat- tered in earnest, and immediately the night was mild again, but the sounds of the surrounding battle were loud in his ears.

“Can’t thank you enough, ” said Ron shakily, turning to Luna, Ernie, and Seamus, “you just saved —”

With a roar and an earth-quaking tremor, another giant came lurching out of the darkness from the direction of the forest, bran- dishing a club taller than any of them.

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“RUN! ” Harry shouted again, but the others needed no telling: They all scattered, and not a second too soon, for next moment the creature’s vast foot had fallen exactly where they had been standing. Harry looked round: Ron and Hermione were following him, but the other three had vanished back into the battle.

“Let’s get out of range! ” yelled Ron as the giant swung its club again and its bellows echoed through the night, across the grounds where bursts of red and green light continued to illuminate the darkness. “The Whomping Willow, ” said Harry, “go! ”

Somehow he walled it all up in his mind, crammed it into a small space into which he could not look now: Thoughts of Fred and Hagrid, and his terror for all the people he loved, scattered in and outside the castle, must all wait, because they had to run, had to reach the snake and Voldemort, because that was, as Hermione said, the only way to end it —

He sprinted, half believing he could outdistance death itself, ig- noring the jets of light flying in the darkness all around him, and the sound of the lake crashing like the sea, and the creaking of the Forbidden Forest though the night was windless; through grounds that seemed themselves to have risen in rebellion, he ran faster than he had ever moved in his life, and it was he who saw the great tree first, the Willow that protected the secret at its roots with whiplike, slashing branches.

Panting and gasping, Harry slowed down, skirting the Willow’s swiping branches, peering through the darkness toward its thick trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree that would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up, Hermione so out of breath she could not speak.

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“How — how’re we going to get in? ” panted Ron. “I can — see the place — if we just had — Crookshanks again —” “Crookshanks? ” wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her

chest. “ Are you a wizard, or what? ”

“Oh — right — yeah —”

Ron looked around, then directed his wand at a twig on the

ground and said, “ Wingardium Leviosa! ” The twig flew up from

the ground, spun through the air as if caught by a gust of wind, then zoomed directly at the trunk through the Willow’s ominously swaying branches. It jabbed at a place near the roots, and at once, the writhing tree became still.

“Perfect! ” panted Hermione.

“Wait. ”

For one teetering second, while the crashes and booms of the battle filled the air, Harry hesitated. Voldemort wanted him to do this, wanted him to come. . . . Was he leading Ron and Hermione into a trap?

But then the reality seemed to close upon him, cruel and plain: The only way forward was to kill the snake, and the snake was where Voldemort was, and Voldemort was at the end of this tunnel. . . . “Harry, we’re coming, just get in there! ” said Ron, pushing him forward.

Harry wriggled into the earthy passage hidden in the tree’s roots. It was a much tighter squeeze than it had been the last time they had entered it. The tunnel was low-ceilinged: They had had to double up to move through it nearly four years previously; now there was nothing for it but to crawl. Harry went first, his wand illuminated, expecting at any moment to meet barriers, but none came. They