Godric's Hollow
Hermione doesn’t look at him when he enters the kitchen area, nor does she say anything by way of greeting. Harry feels another twinge of guilt as he glimpses her puffy, red eyes. It’s the only thing that keeps him from mentioning his… Dream?
But, no. That’s the problem isn’t it? he thinks and slides into his usual seat at the kitchen table, his heart hammering a steady rhytm under his ribs and he moves slowly, with care, as if a sudden movement might frighten the nervous beast inside his ribcage and cause it to rip its way out of his body and flee. He shakes his head minutely to himself at the silly thought, keenly aware of Hermoine watching him discreetly through the corner of her eye.
If only he could tell her. He’s dying to. Somehow, if he doesn’t say it aloud, he’s worried it’s never going to be really real. Then it might just has well have been a dream after all.
But he can’t. How can he when she is struggling through her own heartbreak, and Harry is the cause of it?
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat and drops his gaze onto his plate of porridge when Hermione places it in front of him.
They eat in silence. Then start to pack up their things, as per their usual routine — except this time Hermione is dawdling and Harry knows why. He catches her look up hopefully several times, sure she’s convinced herself she’s heard approaching footsteps through the spattering of heavy rain. But no red-haired figure appears amongst the trees.
Finally, when she’s re-packed her beaded handbag three times already, Hermoine heaves a heavy sigh and grasps Harry’s hand and in the next moment they’ve Disapparated.
As soon as their feet touch ground on the windswept hillside, Hermione drops Harry’s hand again and walks away from him. He watches her sink down on a rock and drop her head to her knees, and within seconds her whole back is shaking with what he knows must be sobs.
He doesn’t approach her. Even though, if their roles had been reversed, he knows Hermione would never leave him alone. But that’s different, he knows. For one thing, Hermione always knew what to say to him when he was upset so her approaching him would actually help.
And Hermoine’s never been the reason I’m upset in the first place, he thinks dully.
He turns away to have a look around their new surroundings and starts putting up the Protective Shields around the new campsite, then erects the tent. He takes his time, glancing over at Hermione’s slumped form every once in a while. She seems to have stopped crying finally, but she makes no move to join Harry by the tent. He sighs to himself and goes inside.
Unpacking his bag, he pulls out the Marauder’s Map to check and see if Ron’s dot has joined those of their classmates in Gryffindor Tower, mulishly convinced that the boy would have returned by now and is safe and sound within the castle’s walls, his pureblood status assuring it.
”I solemnly swear that I am up to no good…”
He scans the Map fervently, but he can’t find Ron anywhere. He checks all the classrooms as well, his heart leaping uncomfortably at the sight of Draco Malfoy sitting in Charms like it’s a normal school year like any other… And then, with bated breath, Harry lets his gaze flicker over to the Headmaster’s Office — a small part of him hoping to see Professor McGonagall’s dot now residing in the Office that Harry will always think of as Dumbledore’s — but it isn’t McGonagall’s dot that’s pacing the floor of Dumbledore’s office…
”No”, he breathes out in disbelief. ”No way…”
Severus Snape
He’s vaguely aware of the tent door flapping open and Hermione stepping inside, but he doesn’t look up to greet her. He stares at the tiny dot marked Severus Snape until his sight goes blurry, his heart seems to have found a new rhytm now and it seems to be chanting through his blood… Snape, Snape, Snape… Harry draws a shaky breath when his head starts to get light and he realises he’s forgot to breathe.
”Harry?” Hermione murmurs next to him, a note of anxiety in her voice. ”Is he there?”
”Yes”, Harry gasps, then realises she must mean Ron, he quickly tears his eyes away from the Map finally and turns to her. ”No! No, not Ron — sorry — I didn’t —”
”It’s okay”, she mutters. ”Who were you looking at —?”
Harry clamps his mouth shut and just shakes his head. He can’t bring himself to say it. He’s been dying to tell her all day, but now that the opportunity has presented itself he can’t bring himself to shape the first S even. Instead he holds the Map up and points at Dumbledore’s — No, the Headmaster’s Office, Snape’s office — and watches silently as she looks and waits for the outrage to appear in her face, hoping that it might anchor him, but it never comes. She just nods grimly.
”Yeah, I thought he might”, she mutters and gives the Map back to Harry.
”But —”
Hermione’s eyes flicker up to meet his and Harry realises with a jolt that it’s the first time they’ve actually looked at each other ever since they were talking about the Sword of Gryffindor, before the fight with Ron, before he left… Hermione’s eyes seem to bore into Harry now, and instinctively he puts his shields up, even though he knows rationally that Hermoine doesn’t even know how to legilimens, and yet she frowns at him as though she has seen something in his mind.
”Harry, what it is?” she says suspisciously.
He swallows thickly, then decides to show her. Bending back down over his bag on the floor, he digs out the Potions book that he shoved to the bottom when he was packing up, to deal with later… Well, I guess it’s later, he thinks and places it with a thump on the table.
Hermione’s frown deepens, ”But I thought —?”
”I did”, Harry says quickly.
”You went back for it after all?” she says angrily.
Harry scoffs, shaking his head, ”No. Hermione — I didn’t go back for it!”
”Then how did you get — ” she cuts herself off and stares in horror at him, the outrage he’d been hoping for slowly taking form in her face. ”Harry, how did you get it?”
”It was just there this morning, next to my bed — and I — well, I’d had this dream…”
”Dream?”
”Well, I thought it was a dream —”
Hermione’s eyes widen in horror.
”Not a vision!” he assures her quickly. ”It was… different…”
”Harry, what’s going on —?”
”It was Snape”, he says and then heaves in a deep breath as if uttering the man’s name out loud had winded him. ”Snape left the book for me.”
”Snape?” Hermione hisses.
”I was dreaming, I was dreaming about him, about that night, and then he was there — I thought I was still dreaming! — But then he muttered something, a spell, and I felt really heavy and I guess I must have fallen back asleep because the next thing I know, it was morning and then I found this on the floor next to my bed…”
Hermione’s eyes have widen comically by the end of his rushed story and she looks completely white in the face.
”There’s more”, he says, intent on getting it all out at once. ”Open it… Go on, first page…”
Hermione gasps.
”I know”, Harry says. ”That certainly wasn’t there when I last saw the book… But I don’t understand. The Map never lies and he’s there, look… He’s in Hogwarts… So how —”
”It’s been hours”, Hermione says dismissively. ”Dumbledore left Hogwarts all the time… But how did he find us?”
”I don’t know”, Harry says, unease coiling in his stomach once more. ”Maybe Phineas? I don’t know.”
”Well, it’s a good thing we left”, Hermione says, her lower lip trembling slightly but she doesn’t start crying again, she looks determined.
”Yeah”, Harry agrees. ”And let’s be more careful with that portrait from now on, just to be sure…”
Hermione nods in agreement, and the conversation tapers off after that although there is one more question that they haven’t asked themselves and Harry doesn’t even want to think about it himself, because when he does he starts thinking all sorts of treacherously hopeful things… and he can’t afford to be that weak, he tells himself. But all the same, the question remains, as a nagging ache at the back of his mind, coming out to taunt him late at night when it’s his turn to sleep… If Snape found them, why didn’t he capture them? Why didn’t he bring Harry to Voldemort?
They don’t mention either Snape or Ron again for the next few days, in some unspoken agreement. Instead they devote their days to trying to determine possible locations for the Sword of Gryffindor, but the more they talk about it, the more far-fetched and ridiculous their speculations become; Harry can’t remember Dumbledore ever mentioning a hiding place of any sort…
We thought you knew what you were doing, Ron’s words come back to mock him. We thought Dumbledore must have told you something. We thought you had a real plan!
Harry doesn’t know if he’s angrier with Ron or with Dumbledore anymore, but Ron had been right and Harry can’t deny it to himself anymore. Dumbledore had left him with virtually nothing to go on. All those meetings in his office, all those memories in the Pensieve, and for what? Why didn’t he just tell Harry everything he knew already? Instead of wasting time —
Harry clamps his hands over his head and forces those thoughts out.
But the facts still remain, no matter how hard he clutches at his head. He knows nothing, he has no ideas, and he is on constant alert for any sign that Hermione might be about to leave him as well and it’s exhausting.
They spend their evenings in near silence, partly because Hermione has taken to propping up the empty portrait of Phineas Nigellus on a chair as if to fill the void left by Ron and they don’t want to give away anything about their location, but partly as well because they didn’t really have much to say to each other anymore. Both of them lost in their own torturous thoughts of people that have betrayed and left them…
*
With his heart beating in his throat, Harry opens his eyes. They’re standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under the dark blue sky, with cottages lining the narrow road and Christmas decorations twinkling here and there.
”All this snow”, Hermione moans quietly next to him. ”Why didn’t we think of the snow! After all our precautions, and now we’ll leave footprints! Okay, okay, we’ll just have to get rid of them as we go — Harry — you go in front and I’ll —”
But Harry had no wish to enter his birthplace for the first time walking like a pantomime horse beneath his Invisibility Cloak, too caught up with trying to stay concealed and at the same time covering their tracks to really take in his surroundings. He wants to focus entirely on the place itself. He wants to walk into the village with his head held high — even though thanks to the Polyjuice, he’s wearing someone else’s head at the moment…
”Let’s just take off the Cloak”, he says and at Hermione’s frightened look he adds, ”Come on, we don’t even look like ourselves and there’s no-one around anyway…”
Hermione finally agrees, and Harry stows the Cloak into his pocket. They walk silently down the road. Harry lets his gaze travel over each of the cottages they pass, thinking any one of these might be the one in which James and Lily Potter, and he for the first year of his life, had lived… and any one of them can be the one in which Bathilda Bagshot lives now…
Muffled laughter can be heard as a pub door opens briefly, then it dies again as the door slams shut. A carol can be heard from a nearby little church, and Hermione clutches his arm suddenly.
”Harry, I think it’s Christmas Eve!”
Harry follows her line of sight and nods in realisation. Weeks have gone by since he lost track of time, and travelling up and down the country didn’t help to keep track of the season either. His gaze falls on the small graveyard next to the church and his stomach lurches.
”They’re in there, I suppose”, he says. ”My mum and dad.”
Hermione reaches for his hand again, and for a second Harry is worried she’s about to Disapparate them out of their already. But instead she tugs on his arm gently and leads the way over to the graveyard. The singing grows louder as they get nearer the church, Harry can just make out the words… joyful and triumphant… oh come ye, oh come ye to Beth-le-hem… and he smiles a little to himself, remembering a slightly modified version of the same hymn — Oh come all ye faithful Hippogriffs — that he first heard sung by Sirius when they celebrated Christmas together that one time in Grimmauld Place… That feels like an entire lifetime ago now, several lifetimes, he thinks and the smile slips away again.
They side-step the entrance of the church and continue on to the graveyard behind it. Rows upon rows of snow-capped tomb stones protrude from the blanket of snow and Harry squeezes his wand in his pocket as he carefully steps up to the one nearest. Hermione finally lets go of his hand and moves two rows down. They wade deeper and deeper into the graveyard, leaving large tracks behind them and stooping to peer at the words on each headstone. Hermione finds the grave of Dumbledore’s mother and sister, and somehow it makes a lump grow in Harry’s throat looking at the name… not because it reminds him of the Headmaster that is now also dead, but because it reminds him that he hadn’t really known the man at all, not like he thought he did…
”Harry, come here for a moment!” Hermione calls out again, just as he’d managed to retrace his steps to where he’d left off his search the last time she’d called him over and grudgingly makes his way back to her again.
”What?”
”Look at this…”
The grave is extremely old, and on the weathered front of it Harry can just make out the outlines of a name, but the dates have completely faded. Then there’s a symbol underneath, and it’s that symbol that Hermione is pointing to.
”It’s the mark again! The mark from Beedle the Bard —!” he whispers excitedly.
Harry squints at the symbol, it does indeed look like a triangel but it’s difficult to tell if it’s excatly like the mark in Beedle the Bard, that Krum seemed to think was the mark of Grindelwald.
”Yeah… it could be”, Harry says uncertainly.
Hermione lit her wand tip with a lumos spell and leaned closer, peering at the name above the mark.
”I’m going to keep looking for my parents, alright?” Harry says, allowing a slight edge to be heard in his voice and hoping that she’ll let him search in peace now.
He wades deeper and deeper into the graveyard, when suddenly everything seems to go dark and quiet and he whirls around, half expecting to see Dementors to be descending on them, but then he realises that the carol singers have just stopped singing and the muffled chatter of the church-goers have faded away as they’ve left the church, that now stands dark and silent next to them.
”Harry!” Hermione calls out again, and he’s gripped by annoyance until she adds, ”They’re here!”
Harry hurries over to where she is standing now, feeling as if something is pressing his ribs together and weighing down on his heart as he gets closer… The headstone is only two rows behind Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore’s grave and made of white marble, which makes it easier to read as it seems to shine in the darkness.
James Potter
born 27 March 1960, died 31 October 1981
Lily Potter
born 30 January 1960, died 31 October 1981
The last enemy that shall be
destroyed is death
He repeats the last words to himself, feeling suddenly horror-struck.
”Isn’t that a Death Eater idea?” he says roughly. ”Why is that there?”
”It doesn’t mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry”, Hermione reassures him. ”It just mean… you know… living beyond death, living after death.”
But they aren’t living, Harry thinks. They’re gone. Their remains lie rotting benath his feet, unknowing of the horrors that their son have seen and has yet to see, unknowing, indifferent, just gone… and there is nothing that will change that.
Tears well up before he knows it and spill hot onto his cheeks before immediately freezing, chilling his face further. He doesn’t bother hiding it, what’s the point?
Hermione has taken his hand again and is squeezing it gently. He doesn’t look at her, but squeezes back. She raises her wand and conjures up a small wreath of Christmas roses that she hands him and he crouches down and places it on the grave, propped up against the marble stone.
”Harry”, Hermione whispers, her voice wary suddenly. ”There’s someone there, watching us. There, over by the bushes.”
Harry straightens up again and follows her line of sight, but can’t make out any figure in the darkness.
”Are you sure?”
”I saw something move, I’m sure I did.”
She scrambles to get her wand out again from where she’d stuck it into her pocket and points it at the bushes.
”We look like muggles”, Harry reminds her in an undertone.
”Muggles who have just put flowers on your parents grave, Harry!” she hisses back. ”I’m sure there’s someone there!”
He hears a rustle, then a bit of wet snow dislodges from the bushes that Hermione holds at wand-point and drips onto the ground. Harry’s heartbeat stutters.
”It’s a cat”, he says hopefully. ”Or a bird… Look, if it was Death Eater we’d be dead by now. But let’s just get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on…”
They start moving away from the graveyard and the church, throwing looks over their shoulders as they go, and as soon as they reach the village square, they slip behind the corner of the pub and Harry pulls the Invisibility Cloak over them.
”Let’s go this way”, Hermione whispers and leads the way down a dark side road going in the opposite direction that they’d come from.
”How are we going to find Bathilda Bagshot’s house?” Hermione whispers, shivering next to him. ”Harry, what do you think? Harry—?”
But Harry isn’t paying attention, he’s staring at the end of this row of houses; he can see it. The Fidelius must have ended when his parents died after all, because it was right there. Harry speeds up, dragging Hermione along with him, ignoring her yelp as she almost slips on the ice and doesn’t stop until they’re standing right outside the gate.
”Oh”, Hermione whispers in a small voice. ”Harry…”
Most of the cottage is still standing, but the right side of the top floor has been blown apart, probably from when Killing Curse rebounded, Harry suspects.
He has no intention of going inside, but he reaches out a hand and grabs the gate, just to feel it, to make sure it’s real — as if on cue, a sign with a golden plaque erupts from the snowy ground like some fast-growing crocus — Harry startles slightly, but leans closer to the gate to peer at the text on the plaque:
”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.”
It feels absurd to Harry, like a tourist information board, the plaque summarises his parents death like it’s just another fascinating piece of local trivia.
He suddenly becomes alerted to a figure hobbling up the lane towards them, silhouetted by the bright lights of the now distant square. Harry squints, trying to make out any features, thinking the small hunched-over figure looks like a woman, but can’t be sure. She — if it is indeed a woman — is moving very slowly and carefully, probably wary of slipping on the icy ground. Her stooping posture and shuffling gait all give the indication that, woman or not, this was a very old person. Nevertheless, Harry reaches into his pocket and grabs his wand carefully.
Finally, she comes to a halt only a few yards away from them and just stands there. It’s definitely a woman, and Harry feels sure somehow that she isn’t a muggle, but that’s all he can be sure of. She doesn’t speak, just stands there staring at them as though able to see them through the Invisibility Cloak.
Then the woman lifts one of her gloved hands and beckons them.
Hermione presses closer to him, clutching his arm, ”How does she know?” she whispers.
He shakes his head.
The woman beckons again, more insistantly this time. And Harry’s suspiscions of her identity grow stronger.
”Are you Bathilda?” he says loudly, and Hermione gasps next to him.
The woman nods, and beckons them again.
Looking at each other, Harry and Hermione come to an unspoken agreement and start walking towards the woman who turn and starts walking back the same way they’d come. She leads them into one of the gardens they’d passed and fumbles with the key to the front door of the house, as they catch up to her.
Once inside, Harry pulls the Cloak off Hermoine and himself, looking around cautiously at the dark house. The woman — Bathilda Bagshot — walks up to him and up-close he realises how very tiny she is, hunched over she barely reaches his chest.
”Bathilda?”
She nods again, taking off her moth-eaten shawl and revealing a head of scant white hair. Her eyes thick with cataracts peer up into Harry’s face and he wonders briefly if he can even see him at all.
Feeling suddenly aware of the locket around his neck, Harry realises that the thing inside that would sometimes tick or beat has awoken and he can feel it pulse slightly through the gold. Maybe it senses the Sword, the thing that can destroy it, is near? Harry thinks.
Bathilda shuffles past them both, pushing Hermoine aside as though she didn’t see her and then disappears into the next room.
”Harry, I’m not sure about this”, Hermione whispers.
”Look at the size of her”, Harry says. ”I’m sure we can overpower her if we have to… Anyway, I should have told you, Muriel told me at the wedding that Bathilda isn’t all there, she called her ’gaga’…”
”Come!” the old woman calls from the other room, and Hermione jumps and clutches Harry’s arm.
”It’s okay”, he tells her reassuringly and leads the way into what is revealed to be a sitting room where Bathilda is busying herself with lighting candles.
Even with the candles, the room is still very dark. And positively filthy, Harry notes and wonders how long it’s been since anyone has been inside this house to check and see how Bathilda is coping. A surge of pity rising in his chest as he eyes her. Apparently she’s forgotten that she can use magic, because she’s fumbling with a box of matches instead of lighting the candles with her wand and her lace cuff comes dangerously close to going up in flames.
”Let me do that!” Harry says quickly and walks over to her.
Once he’s finished lighting all the remaining candle stubs spread out across the room, with Bathilda watching him silently the whole time, he notices a chest of drawers upon which several framed photographs stand cramped together. One picture in particular catches his eye and he lifts it up from its spot at the back: it’s the golden-haired boy from the vision of Voldemort invading Gregorovitch’s mind, the thief who’d perched on the wandmaker’s window sill, smiling in triumph… and now Harry knows where else he’s seen the boy. In The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore there had been a picture of this boy, arm in arm with a teenage Dumbledore, both of them grinning just like the boy is doing in this photograph.
”Mrs — Miss — Bagshot?” Harry says shakily. ”Who is this?”
Bathilda is standing in the middle of the room, watching Hermione light the fireplace for her now and gives no sign that she’s heard Harry’s question.
”Miss Bagshot?” he repeats louder and walks over to the woman, showing her the framed photograph. ”Who is this person?”
Bathilda peers at the picture solemnly, then looks up at Harry again. The Horcrux pulses faster against his chest.
”Do you know who this person is? This man? What’s his name?”
Feeling frustration flare up as the woman merely looks at him vaguely, Harry takes a deep breath and then speaks even louder and clearer, ”Who — is — this — man?”
”Harry, what are you doing?” Hermione says.
”This is the thief, Hermoine! The thief who stole from Gregorovitch! And he knew Dumbledore, I saw his picture in Rita Skeeter’s book — please!” he turns back to Bathilda. ”Who is this?”
”Why did you ask us to come with you, Mrs — Miss — Bagshot?” Hermione says raising her own voice. ”Was there something you wanted to tell us? Or… show us?”
Bathilda doesn’t seem to have heard Hermione at all, but she takes a couple of shuffling steps closer to Harry and jerks her head a little, indicating the hall.
”You want us to leave?”
She shakes her head and points fitst to herself, then to Harry and throws a look towards the ceiling.
”Oh, right”, Harry says. ”I think she wants us to go upstairs with her…”
”Alright”, Hermione says. ”Let’s go—”
But Bathilda immediately shakes her head vigourously, then again points to herself and Harry.
”I think she wants me to go with her. Just me.”
”Why?” Hermione says sharply, squinting suspisciously at the woman now.
”Maybe Dumbledore told her to only give the sword to me?”
”You really think she has the sword? And you think she knows it’s really you?”
”Yeah, she knows it’s me”, Harry says with confidence.
”Oh, all right, but be quick, Harry”, Hermione says, wringing her hands nervously.
Following Bathilda up the steep and narrow stairs, Harry grasps his wand nervously. She leads him into a small bedroom that smells even worse than the sitting room and when she shuts door behind him it goes completely pitch black.
”Lumos”, Harry mutters, then gives a start when Bathilda appears a lot closer to him than he’d realised she was.
”You are Potter?” she whispers.
”Yes, I am.”
The Horcrux beats fast against his chest, faster even than his own heart, creating a disjointed rhythm that is disconcerting him slightly. Bathilda is nodding solemnly, but seems a bit distracted by his lit wand-tip.
”Have you got anything for me?” he asks her clearly.
Bathilda closes her eyes then, and suddenly several things happen at once: Harry’s scar prickles painfully, the Horcrux twitches so wildly that it actually makes the front of his sweater move for a second, and as the dark room seems to dissolve for a moment, Harry feels a surge of pure joy and a high, cold voice rings out in his head: hold him!
Harry sways as the vision, for it must have been a vision, he thinks distractedly, vanishes and the dark bedroom with its foul, arid smells seems to close in on him once more.
”Have — have you got anything for me?” he asks again, louder.
”Over there”, she whispers and points to the corner of the room.
”What is it?” he says uncertainly, holding his wand aloft and hoping to catch a glimpse of gold or ruby red, but all he can see is a dresser with what appears to be a pile of dirty laundry on it.
”There”, she says again, pointing.
Harry edges between her and the unmade bed, careful not to upset the full chamber pot sticking out from underneath it. He feels reluctant to let the woman out of his sight, but finally turns to the dressing table and quickly scans the pile of clothes.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees the woman move weirdly, then suddenly collapse to the floor and he whirls back around in panic and stares in horror as the giant snake Nagini pours out of the neck of the dress where Bathilda’s head had been only seconds before.
Harry raises his wand, but the snake strikes him before he’s had a chance to utter a spell. Its teeth dig into Harry’s forearm and he loses the grip on his wand, it goes flying up towards the ceiling, its light swinging around the room before going out, leaving the room in complete darkness —
He’s suddenly hit by the fat tail, hard across his midriff and it knocks the breath out of him. He falls back against the dressing table and tumble to the floor. The snake coiling on top of him, pushing down, squeezing the air out of his body.
”No”, he gasps faintly.
”Yes… Hold you…” the snake replies in a hiss.
Darkness envelops him, and he’s flying… flying without broom or Thestral… triumph thumping in his heart…
Then suddenly the weight of Nagini is lifted from Harry’s body and he gasps, the vision of Voldemort leaving him again, he scrambles up, gasping, as Nagini strikes at Hermione when she bursts through the door… Hermione dives to the side with a scream, her deflected curse hitting the window and breaking the glass… Harry feels around desperately for his wand and as soon as his fingers close around it he tries to take aim, but it seems as though the whole room is filled with snake, everywhere he looks, its muscular body is coiling, thrasing…
Hermione is nowhere to be seen and for a terrifying second Harry fears the worst, but then there’s a loud bang and a jet of red light that can only come from his friend… Nagini flies into the air, smacking Harry across the face as she soars past, coil after coil rising to the ceiling.
Harry’s scar sears even more painfully, more powerfully than it’s done in years.
”He’s coming! Hermione, he’s coming!”
Everything is chaos. Nagini falls hissing to the floor, smashing shells off the walls and splintered china goes flying everywhere. Harry jumps over the bed and seizes Hermione from her hiding place in the dark corner, dragging her with him back across the bed as the snake rears to attack once more… but Harry knows that worse than the snake is coming, is perhaps already at the gate… His scar feels as though it might split his head in two… He’s close, he’s really close…
”Confingo!” Hermione yells as the snake lunges again.
The spell ricochets off the wardrobe and bounces around the room, narrowingly missing Harry’s hand, while simultaneously a piece of glass from the broken wardrobe mirror cuts his cheek… He pulls Hermione close to his body and leaps from the bed to the broken dressing table and then straight out the smashed window, diving into the cold nothingness of the night… they twist in mid-air —
Harry’s scar bursts open and he’s Voldemort; he’s running across the bedroom and hurls himself at the window, his long, white hands clutching the sill as he catches a glimpse of the two figures twist and vanish — he screams with rage