The Heart of Gryffindor
by SJR0301
Chapter Twenty
Day after day, the ice fell. It coated the outside paths and made it impossible for students to walk to Herbology or Care of Magical Creatures without at least one nasty fall each day. The ice had coated the glass of the greenhouses so completely that Madam Sprout, who was known to be among the mildest of all the teachers, was heard to curse loudly as some of her cherished seedlings failed because the ice had blocked the sun from penetrating the glass properly. Nor did she apologize when the students gawked at her.
“Merlin shut up his tongue and make his liver fail!” she said as she tenderly wrapped the new pots with cuttings of mimbulus mimbletonia in woolen cozies. “May all his curses bounce back upon him, cursed poisonous wretch that he is!” she fumed as she sent up floating globes of golden light. “By all that’s magic,” she snarled, “let every deed of his come to naught; let him be as empty and full of woe as the Mam whose babe will not eat, as full of terror as the mouse before the lion!” Harry jumped when Madam Sprout ended up right in front of him. “No sun, day after day,” she said mournfully, “and the only decent green in the whole place is in your eyes.” She stared at him and said, “Just like your Mum’s they are, only she was never so pale and sad.”
Harry had no clue what to say to that. It was so very disconcerting when people departed from their usual behavior. And more so, when it was a teacher who did so. It was something to rely on, to make the world seem stable: Professor Sprout would be mild and jolly; Professor McGonagall, brisk and sharp; Professor Flitwick, cheerful and brilliant; and even Professor Snape would be nasty and demanding.
Yet the ice seemed to affect everyone. Professor Flitwick had resorted to teaching Charms that were outside the curriculum. They had learned a charm to produce soothing music, a charm to soothe anxiety, a charm to control nervous nail biting, and a charm for ensuring pleasant dreams. Unfortunately, the charm for pleasant dreams just didn't seem to work on Harry. He supposed that there must be some level at which his mind simply refused to believe that things were not other than they truly were; and what they were truly, was awful.
He had had better luck with the hair color charm for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Neville had been decent enough to let him try the charm and had suffered color changes from blue, to green to violet until Harry had really mastered it. Then he had managed to change Neville hair from its usual mousy brown to a pale shade of blond.
He had stared at Neville then and remarked, "That makes you look like you could be related to Malfoy."
Neville had given Harry a funny look and said, "I am related to Malfoy. Most all the pure bloods are related one way or the other."
He added with an irony that was most unusual for him, "Gran likes to pretend we're not related to the Malfoys. She says they're not half so good as they like to pretend and twice as bad as everyone thinks."
Harry thought about that for a minute and answered, "I think your Gran is a lot smarter than anyone thinks, too."
The price for getting Neville's help, though, was returning the favor. Neville was determined to do well for his NEWTs and he had begun to get very nervous about them now that the winter holidays were over.
Tonks had them working on other disguises and she had moved on to the camouflage spell that Harry vividly remembered having done to them once before. They had to practice disillusioning each other so that each of them would blend in with the background. Hermione had got the hang of it almost immediately and she had managed to make the icy trickle go right down his spine so that when he stood still, his body blended in perfectly with the old stone walls of the Defense classroom. Neville had had a difficult time with this part of the class.
Harry couldn’t help wondering why it was that Neville, who had gained much confidence and skill since he had gotten his own wand, should have trouble with this particular subject. He had not had the same difficulties with their section on curses, and Harry could only suppose that Neville’s confidence and focus were waning somewhat now that NEWTs were finally approaching.
“Go on, then,” Harry urged Neville. “You can do it. If you can do a patronus spell, you can surely do this.” Neville smiled at Harry fleetingly and screwed up his friendly round face in with a look of most ferocious concentration. His first attempt gave Harry’s clothes polka-dots, so that Harry appeared to be wearing robes in a vile combination of black and puce.
Tonks waved her wand to undo it and said encouragingly, “Try again, Neville. And don’t think about your Gran. She scares me and she’s only my third cousin.”
Neville flushed and said, “Do you mind, Harry?”
Harry shook his head bemused. He hadn’t realized that Neville and Tonks were related, too, though he should have done if he had thought about it. Trying to figure out how people were related gave him a headache, so he gave up. Neville’s second try gave Harry spots on his face. Big round polka dot kind of spots. Ron laughed and so did everyone else.
Harry glared at Ron and said, “You didn’t do so well on your first try either.”
That only made Ron laugh harder as his first attempt had left Hermione with braids all through her bushy brown hair. Hermione, of course, had not enjoyed this a bit, as she was rather sensitive about her hair, and she now gave Harry one of those looks that were so reminiscent of Professor McGonagall that he thought Hermione must be the Professor’s long-lost cousin.
Tonks waved her wand and the polka dots disappeared. Amazingly, she managed not to laugh, though she did have a suspiciously merry twinkle in her dark eyes. On Neville’s fourth try, Harry felt the icy trickle going down his spine, and saw that his body was once more looking like the old stone wall. He grinned at Neville, who sighed loudly in relief.
“Good one, Neville,” Tonks said. “Now,” she added, “the tricky part is doing this spell on yourself. You’ve got to have good enough coordination to be able to tap yourself in the center of your head. If you’re off a bit, the spell will likely go wrong, and if you’re in a situation where a disguise is important, you can’t afford to get it wrong, can you?’
That sobered everyone and even though they must have looked like total prats to any Muggle observer, they practiced tapping themselves on the top of the head with their wands, but without saying the words at first. Harry was surprised at how hard it was at first to identify the middle. But eventually he was able to get it exactly right and when they were told to try it for real, he was pleased to feel the icy trickle running down his spine.
“That is a real handy spell,” he commented to Ron afterwards.
“Yeah,” Ron said, “but don’t let it give you any ideas about using it any time soon.”
Harry raised his eyebrows and answered with some annoyance, “You talk as if I’m going to go off any minute on some hare-brained lark. You used to be all for having adventures. Now you’re starting to sound like Percy.”
Ron’s ears turned red as this was a low a blow as one could think of in the Weasley family. “I’m just trying to keep you from getting yourself killed prematurely, Harry. It’s no different than you telling Sirius to stay in his house.”
Harry opened his mouth and closed it with a snap. He knew what Ron said was only good common sense; but something about the constant hiss of the ice and the miserable cold that froze his fingers and turned his skin raw worked away at his own common sense and made him long to fling himself at Voldemort and overturn the great the stone cauldron he had dreamed about.
As the days passed, other problems developed on account of the weather. The simplest and least curable was the fact that the students were all affected by being cooped up inside the Castle so much. From the first years all the way up through the seventh, fights broke out in the corridors far more frequently than normal. There were some days where it took every ounce of control Harry had not to whip out his wand and curse Malfoy as he passed. Hermione and Ron spent extra time as Headboy and Headgirl sorting out arguments and giving as many detentions for wand use in the hallways as Filch might.
"That's the third fight Jonathan Prewett's got into this week," Ron said, as he collapsed onto his seat at the Gryffindor table one February afternoon. "I just hope the weather clears enough for us to get to Hogsmeade on Valentine's day. I'm going to go mad if I don't get out of here for a bit." He dug into his steak and kidney pie and waved a fully laden fork for emphasis. "No quidditch practice, no regular Care of Magical Creatures class and the only teacher who's not more difficult than normal is Snape."
Harry poked at his own pie gloomily and said sympathetically. "That's because Snape couldn't get any worse. He's already as horrible as it's possible for a teacher to be."
He thought broodingly about ways to go to Hogsmeade that Saturday. "What do you think if I use some of our disguise spells Saturday? Do you think I can get away with going to Hogsmeade?"
Hermione gave him an anxious glance and said, "Do you think you should? Have you asked Professor Dumbledore what he thinks?"
Harry shook his head. It wasn't pride that kept him from bothering the elderly wizard. Whenever he had seen Dumbledore lately, the elderly wizard had seemed more than elderly. Always before, he had seemed to have the energy of a young man and his gaze was clear and merry.
Lately, Dumbledore had seemed constantly abstracted when he showed up at dinner, and that wasn't often. And when he could be seen in the corridors about some school business, his shoulders were bowed and his walk more slow than it had been. And he had noticed Professor McGonagall watching Dumbledore as anxiously sometimes as Hermione was watching Harry himself just then. He poked some more at his food and felt as though he must somehow burst free of this confinement. Then seeing Hermione's worried frown, he knew, deep down, that it was no good.
"I suppose I'd better not," he said. He glanced at the Sytherin table where Malfoy had stopped eating and was watching Harry with a peculiar, almost apprasing look.
On Valentine's Day, the sun came up in a clear sky for the first time in weeks. Harry watched the others chatting happily about their plans for the day, and it seemed more than he could bear that he should have to be so confined whilst everyone else was free. After breakfast, he waited cannily for all of Ginny's friends to leave the table and walked over to where she was still sitting drinking her tea to reach casually for the last carafe of coffee.
Whispering softly in her ear, "I want to talk to you," he picked up the coffee pot and said more normally, "Thanks," before going back to his own place again. Hermione gave him a suspicious look, which he combatted by pouring himself his third cup of coffee for the moment.
Ron stood up and mumbled something about quidditch practice, but left off after a glance at Hermione. He stopped and said, "You know, I don't see why Harry shouldn't come today. I mean, there's no reason to think You Know...I mean, Voldemort, will show up there."
"There was no reason to think he'd show up at Gringotts either," Hermione replied sharply. "And Harry's just getting back to normal now."
Hermione gave him an anxious glance and he felt both guilty and annoyed and he wondered if that was how most people felt when their Mums wanted to keep them in and they wanted to go out.
"Go on," he said, "I'm fine." Hermione gave him another sharp look. He had been too emphatic about it, but he concentrated on drinking his coffee as though he were going nowhere.
"We'll bring back lots of butterbeer," Hermione said immediately.
"Yeah," Ron said, "and chocolate frogs and those new quills you wanted."
Harry said, "Thanks," and conjured up a smile for them so they would leave quickly.Harry waited until Ron and Hermione had gotten into line to leave the Castle before getting up and strolling past Ginny towards the stairs to the Gryffindor Tower. He climbed the several stairs, aware that she was following him, and ducked into an empty classroom at the first opportunity. He closed the door behind her when she followed in so they would have fair warning if anyone came by.
Ginny looked at him almost as anxiously as Hermione had and said, "What?" after a moment, when he only stared at her, but didn't speak.
He cleared his throat and asked, "Are you going into Hogsmeade?"
"With some of my friends," she answered. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.
"You're not going with Dean?" he asked.
"No," she said briefly. "I felt guilty, leading him on like that."
Relief swept through him, and something more and he stepped forward closing the space between them. "Good," he said. "Because I want to go. I want to go with you. It's the last chance I'll have to go to Hogsmeade on Valentine's Day with you."
"Oh," she said, "but...you've barely looked at me in weeks. I...are you sure?"
He reached out and took her hand and bent to kiss her lightly, quickly. "It's driving me mad," he said. "Day after day, the ice and the cold and pretending I don't want you."
He looked down at her and said fiercely, "It's not fair. I have no life. I'm like a prisoner, caged and confined and the only thing worse would be being stuck back at the Dursleys."
Ginny said, "Oh," again in an entirely different tone: this one clear, fluting, and happy, and she reached up on tiptoe to kiss him. Feeling as though the cage door had flown open, he kissed her back quite without restraint and stopped only to breathe before diving in for more and more again. The beckoning sun and blue sky called, however, and he lifted his face up to look at the light streaming in through a high dusty window.
"Come on," he said, "let's go. I want to sit in the Three Broomsticks and drink butterbeer, and go to Honeydukes and buy you chocolates and..." He stopped, though when he saw her face.
Ginny wrapped her arms around him and hid her face in his chest. Her voice was muffled and sad as she replied, "I want to go with you. You don't know how much I want to. But you can't, you mustn't go."
Harry lifted his face longingly to look at the light and said, "I'm perishing here. I want one day, just one day with you in the sun."
"Then we'll stay here," she answered. "I'll tell my friends I'm sick. I'll take one of Fred and George's puking pastilles and send them on without me."
"But..." he said; only she interrupted him, laying one hand on his cheek.
"You were right this summer, Harry," she said quietly, and you've been right all along. If you show your face, Voldemort will know in minutes you're out there unprotected and go after you. And I'm selfish enough to want you to live even if it means pretending you don't remember I exist. Even if it means missing this."
The happiness leaked out of him and he said, "You're right. I wasn't thinking."
He looked at her again and said, "No puking pastilles either. Go with your friends. There'll be other times." He held her hand for a long moment more and then released her, trying not to let her see the welling panic that this might be his last opportunity fled and gone before it was ever realized.
Unable to resist the sunshine, Harry walked over to Hagrid's Hut hoping to find some consolation there. But Hagrid did not answer, and Harry supposed that he must have taken the opportunity to go to Hogsmeade like the students had. He sat out by the lake and watched the light on the water fracture as the giant squid lifted a tentacle into the sky. First and second years, who were unable to go to Hogsmeade, chased each other in the sun, occasionally stopping to stare at Harry as though he were a rather scary exhibit in Madame Tussaud's, and then ran away again.
After a few too many stares, Harry wandered back inside and resolved to go to the Library to see if he could find anything more on magical spying methods. If he couldn't enjoy himself, he thought, he might as well do something that might help him defeat Voldemort someday. Not surprisingly, the Library was quiet and almost empty. Madam Pince was sorting through a stack of books that needed mending and a couple of first years were pouring over Quidditch Through the Ages. Harry smiled at that and then ambled into the stacks to look for something that would help.
As he was scanning the contents of All About Foe Glasses, which had what looked like a very difficult spell for actually turning an ordinary object into a foe glass, two low voices surreptitiously whispering caught his attention.
"I can't believe Draco went to Hogsmeade today," the first voice whispered.
"I know," replied the second voice. "He got the same warning we did. He must have."
"It's that Patil girl," the first voice said. "She must have put a spell on him. He wouldn't be so stupid otherwise."
"Wouldn't he though?" the second voice asked. "You have to admit, he's been acting weird lately. And your Dad did say we had to keep an eye on him."
"I don't get it, though," the first voice said. "You know he hates Potter. You know he'd be the first one to dance on his grave." Harry drew his wand and slid around the stack to face Crabbe and Goyle. They gawped at him incredulously and looked ready to flee. He pointed his wand at them though and they paled.
"You wouldn't dare use that here," Crabbe said.
"Wouldn't I?" Harry replied. "Why are you here? Why didn't you go to Hogsmeade like everyone else did? Why didn't your Dads want you to go?"
Crabbe and Goyle glanced at each other and grinned nastily. "If you'd been there, you'd have found out," Goyle said.
"Voldemort's coming then," Harry, said. Some of the horror broke through in his voice, for the two of them seemed to lose their fear. Goyle took a step toward Harry and Crabbe made as if to draw his wand. Harry stunned him before he could get it out of his pocket, but he didn't bother going after Goyle when the huge Slytherin ran. Instead, he ran himself, pell mell out of the library, so that Madam Pince called out something after him, but he didn't stop to listen to her words.
He pelted towards the Headmaster's office and ran flat into Snape, who was striding at a near run from the opposite direction. Harry grabbed Snape to keep him from falling and then the fury that lived inside him broke through. He fisted his hand into the Potions Master's robes and shook him.
"Death Eaters are coming to Hogsmeade! Voldemort's coming! Why didn't you know? Why didn't you warn Dumbledore?"
Snape shoved Harry away and said icily, "Control yourself, Potter. So far as I know, Voldemort is not coming."
“Then why were you running?" Harry flared. "And why're Crabbe and Goyle hiding out in the library where they never go instead of going to Hogsmeade to drink butterbeer and bully the younger students?"
Snape stopped dead and said, "Goyle said you stunned Crabbe without provocation."
"Without..?" Harry stopped and said, "I heard them talking. They admitted they knew there's to be an attack." He knocked on the statue guarding the stairs to the Headmaster's office and said, "Lemon drop! Chocolate Frog! Sugar Quill!"
Snape said, "Droobles Best Blowing Gum!" and the stairs opened up, but even as they did, Dumbledore came stepping out.
"The village is under attack," Dumbledore said. "Severus, you come with me. Harry, you stay here."
"No way," Harry said. "I'm coming. If Voldemort is here, he'll kill anyone in his way. If I go, he won't bother with anyone but me."
Dumbledore sighed and looked at Snape and Harry had no time to raise his wand to defend himself as he simply wasn't expecting it: darkness hit him faster than a candle blowing out as Snape's stunning spell blindsided him.
***
"You don't think Harry's going to try to bolt?" Ron asked as they walked down the High Street in Hogsmeade.
"I don't know," Hermione said anxiously. "He's got that look he gets when things start getting to him." Ron frowned and nodded.
"Yeah. Only there was a time when he'd have told us what he was thinking. Now he leaves us guessing cause he thinks it'll keep us out of danger."
Hermione started in the direction toward the Three Broomsticks, but a flash of silver-blond turning up a side street distracted her.
"I wonder what Malfoy's up to," she said absently.
"Malfoy?" Ron said. "What everyone else is today, probably. Going to Madam Puddifoot's. You know, that awful coffee shop."
"You think?" Hermione said. She reversed her direction and followed in the direction where the blond Slytherin had gone.
"Hermione!" Ron said. "You do know what Madam Puddifoot's is, don't you?" His face was flushed as it got when he was angry...or embarrassed.
She gave him The Look and said, "So. We can go there too. No one will think anything of it."
"This is not your kind of place," Ron said.
"It's everyone's kind of place when they're dating, Ron. Nobody has to know we're going there to follow Malfoy," she said softly.
"But Hermione," Ron protested. "Why in Merlin's name do we want to follow Malfoy?"
"He's been acting strange lately," she answered. "And I heard Parvati Patil talking about meeting him there."
"So," Ron said. "She's good looking. She's prettier than Pansy Parkinson by a mile. It's her lookout if she wants to date a jerk like Malfoy."
"Ye-es," Hermione admitted. "But I still don't get why he's dating her when he's got as big a fixation on blood purity as anyone we know."
Ron stared at her and shook his head. "You are so brilliant, Hermione. I can't believe you don't get it."
"Well, explain it to me, then," she said tartly. "There's something weird going on with Malfoy. We've known him for going on seven years now, and I've never seen him act this shifty and strange." Ron shook his head again.
"There's nothing strange about a guy wanting to date a really good looking girl, Hermione." She didn't bother to answer. Instead she pushed open the door to Madam Puddifoot's and stared transfixed at the horribly cute decor. It reminded her of Umbridge and her girlish, flowered robes that looked like they belonged on the curtains of a shop, well, like this.
"I told you," Ron whispered softly. She marched on in and found the one unoccupied table, which was in the opposite corner from where Malfoy was now sitting with Parvati Patil.
The proprietress came over and took their order. Hermione looked at the menu, which in honor of Valentine's day was dressed in lace and had such delicacies as Cupid's Cookies, Love's Lemonade, and Hearts of Chocolate.
"Coffee, please," Hermione said firmly. "No sugar and no cream." The proprietress looked hugely disappointed, but was well rewarded when Ron promptly ordered a plate of cookies and eclairs.
"You aren't going to eat that here?" she asked. No one else was eating anything. In fact, no one else was even drinking their tea or coffee or lemonade. At another table, Terry Boot was holding hands with one of the Ravenclaw girls who were friends with Padma Patil. And at another, Ernie Macmillan had shifted his chair close enough to whisper in Hannah Abbott's ear. And in the far corner, Malfoy was busily kissing Parvati.
Malfoy stopped to smirk at Parvati, who was looking quite pleased herself. He turned and caught sight of Hermione there, and seemed to be on the verge of saying something. Not wanting a confrontation and realizing now why Ron had been embarrassed to go there, she avoided Malfoy's gaze and leaned nearer to Ron.
"Kiss me," she said.
Ron gawped at her and said not quietly enough, "Here?" Then he turned red as he understood and leaned over to kiss her. She found her face heating up, as he was a shade more enthusiastic than she had expected. Afterwards, she thought with only the smallest embarrassment, she had been more enthusiastic herself then one might expect considering the location.
When a voice interrupted them, she thought at first it was Draco as it sounded so much like his. Then she opened her eyes and saw that the voice belonged to the father, not the son, and that he was accompanied by another hooded Death Eater.
"What are you doing here?" Lucius Malfoy said to his son. Everyone turned to gawk as Draco broke off kissing Parvati and stared at his fatehr in fury.
"What are you doing here?" Draco asked. Hermione stared incredulously. This was the same Draco who had boasted about his father and threatened everyone with his influence?
"Leave. Now." Lucius said. "We'll speak of your disobedience later."
"I haven't disobeyed you," Draco said. His tone was almost sulky, but not quite. He drawled, in fact, in just that same obnoxious tone he got when he was insulting Hermione or Harry or all the Weasleys at once.
"I sent you a letter. I warned you not to come to town today," Lucius Malfoy said. His voice, unlike his son's was now cold and openly angry.
"I don't read your letters anymore," Draco said. "I'm seventeen and I do what I like." The other Death Eater was getting impatient however.
His wand was out and he said, "Just stun him and let's get on with it."
Hermione had slid her wand out of her pocket and she saw that Ron had done the same.
"Get on with what?" Draco asked. For the first time, it seemed to hit him that his father was there for a reason other than to catch him dating a half-blood.
"Step away from the table, Draco," Lucius Malfoy said. "What do you care? She's a half-blood. You're not going to sully my line with any mixed bloods."
"Sully your line?" Draco asked. "You're joking. After what you've done?"
Hermione couldn't help staring at him. His usually pale face was now suffused with rage and though he was normally a bit of a coward, he seemed to have forgotten any fear of his father.
"Stand aside!" Lucius Malfoy repeated. His wand was raised and he was pointing it at Parvati, or trying to. But he couldn't get a clear shot at her because Draco was still in the way.
"And if I don't?" Draco asked. "Are you going to kill me? Your only son and heir?" The silver eyes were molten with a rage Hermione had never seen before. Everyone there was staring at Draco in complete astonishment. She stared from father to son trying to fathom the sudden hostility.
"If you kill me, you'll have no line to follow," Draco said, "because the thing Mum's carrying isn't yours, is it? And you agreed to it, didn't you?"
The older man raised his wand further and pointed it directly at his son, and for one moment, Hermione thought that he would do attack. The attack when it came was so unexpected it was shocking. It was Ron who struck first. His disarming spell knocked the elder Malfoy's wand clean across the room, and he followed it almost instantly with another at the second Death Eater.
The second one blocked it, however, and was aiming to kill when Hermione hit him with a stunning spell. From the street outside, a noise sounded. Running feet pounded toward them and just as Lucius Malfoy was pulling a second weapon from his robes, a voice sounded, "Stop!"
***
Harry opened his eyes and winced when the bright sunlight dazzled them. His head and body ached and when he tried to sit up, his head spun dizzily. Then he remembered what had gone before and he sat up faster trying to ignore the aches. He was on the couch in Dumbledore's office and Snape was sitting in one of the guest chairs watching him steadily.
"What?" Harry said. "How?" Then as the full remembrance struck him and he realized it had been Snape who knocked him out, he said furiously, "You! Why? why'd you stop me like that?"
Snape said calmly, "Unlike you, Potter, when the Headmaster gives me an order, I do as he says without discussion."
"But Voldemort..."
"Don't say his name!" Snape hissed. "I have told you this before."
Harry ignored that and said, "You shouldn't have stopped me." He paused and his stomach rolled with nausea. "How many did he kill?"
"The Dark Lord," Snape said coldly, "was not there." He paused and said unpleasantly, "But if you had gone and taken the bait, they would almost certainly have killed you."
"Dumbledore said there was an attack," Harry snapped. "Who got hurt?"
Snape stared at him for what felt like a full minute. His black eyes were unreadable. "No one," he said at length. "You see, you are not indispensable. There are others who are just as brave and just as capable as you are. They're just smart enough not to go out of their way to put themselves into danger like you do."
The door to the Headmaster's office opened and Dumbledore came in. Harry was relieved to see that the elderly wizard was looking full of his normal energy. His blue eyes were sparking though and Harry swallowed uncomfortably as he thought, at first, that Dumbledore's ire was directed at him. Dumbledore strode over to Harry and waved his wand over him and checked his pulse.
"I'm all right," Harry said with surprise.
"You've been unconscious for nearly two hours," Dumbledore said sharply. "Sit still."
"Two hours?" Harry repeated. "Stunning spells don't last that long, do they?"
"Not normally, no," the Headmaster answered. Harry turned his head to stare at Snape.
Snape returned the favor and said, "Why do you think the Headmaster did not want you going? If the Dark Lord had been there and if you had faced him, you would very likely be dead by now."
"He hasn't managed to kill me yet," Harry answered.
"Not because of any particular skill or brilliance of yours," Snape answered.
"Enough, Severus," Dumbledore said. He turned to Harry and asked, "How did you know about the attack?"
"I overheard Crabbe and Goyle talking," Harry answered. "When I confronted them, and said what I guessed, they virtually admitted it."
Dumbledore frowned and said, "Your scar didn't hurt? You didn't have a warning dream or vision?"
Harry looked at him in surprise and said, "No. That is, I didn't have any dreams or anything."
"Then your scar did hurt?" Dumbledore asked.
Harry shrugged and said, "It hurts all the time, now." And seeing the Headmaster's alarm, he elaborated, "it goes up and down. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, depending on Voldemort's mood." He shrugged impatiently again and added, "You know this. I ignore it. Or block it out."
"Were you blocking it out then?" Dumbledore asked.
Harry frowned, trying to recollect the exact events. "Maybe not actively," he answered. "I do it almost automatically now."
"If you are," Snape interrupted, "then why is it hurting...all the time? Or perhaps you're not really trying? Perhaps you think if you can follow his thoughts, you'll be able to warn us of each attack? Like today?"
"I see," Harry replied resentfully. "You think I'm trying to grandstand. Looking for attention. You think I'm looking for opportunities to confront him."
"No," Snape answered. "I think you are far too stupidly heroic for that." He added sourly, "No, you just think you can save the world if you poke your nose in far enough."
"I think you are missing the point, both of you," Dumbledore said. "This is not about Harry's personal character flaws or strengths. I want to know if this attack was one of Voldemort's planning, or a little frolic and detour by his lieutenants."
Harry stared at Dumbledore and said, "I dunno. I hadn't thought of that."
"Would you have known, if it was Voldemort's plan?" Dumbledore asked, so harshly that Harry was quite taken aback.
"No, sir," he said. "I told you, I don't know what he's thinking all the time. I get flashes of emotion. Like he's angry now." Harry paused then, because, in fact, the regular pain in his scar was increasing. The pain in his scar was growing sharper, and he thought, don't let me throw up here. Not now.
Dumbledore was saying something, but he couldn't focus on it, because it was taking all of his attention just to keep from rolling a ball and crying out. He tried to find the wall inside his mind and shore it up, but the pain was in his way.
A part of his mind remained detached, observing, noting all. The other was consumed, and the taste in his mouth was the metallic taste of rage or fear. Before him, Dumbledore bent over, his blue eyes full of anxiety; before him too, in a grey mist, a man lay prostrate, pleading, he knew, for mercy. A red light punctured the mist, and the prostrate man convulsed; he cried out, or perhaps Harry cried out. His scar seemed to split wide open and a river of pain scalded his veins.
It went on and on and on, until his sight narrowed down and both worlds collapsed into a darkness where the only sensation was the pain, which was alive, a dark creature eating him.
Time had ceased and he had no way of measuring the length of the dark. Only, when the blackness lifted and the rage left him as suddenly as it had clawed its way inside him, the pain lingered behind, echoes of the greater storm. His vision being singular again, that detached bit of him noted that there were two men now before him: one weeping with sorrow; the other simply horrorstruck. He swallowed and tried to speak only he found he was panting as though there was too little air in the room to breathe.
After a moment, he said hoarsely, "I guess we know the answer to your question, now, sir. He was punishing the one who did it...because he failed."
The late afternoon sunshine illuminated the Headmaster's office and made the elderly wizard's silvery-white hair shine more brightly. The light was too bright, dazzling his eyes, striking off the glass case in which the ruined Sword of Gryffindor lay at rest. Harry thought then, that the latest episode had done him some damage, as he failed to recognize the sudden keening rise of the wind for what it was. It rose, on an eerie whistling discordant note, like the moan of many howling for the dead. His skin crawled and the hair on his neck stood on end. And again, as a shadow came in fast and furious, he thought at first his sight was going again. But there was nothing wrong with his hearing or sight.
"What is that?" Snape asked. His sallow face was a sickly white and his black eyes were full of fear, a thing that struck Harry as terribly ominous, since he could never remember seeing Snape exhibit fear. The full fury of the strom broke and the windows rattled with the wind and the sound of the ice striking the glass panes was like gunshots, so loud were they.
"I see," Dumbledore said quietly. "A sunny day, a break in the gloom. Just the thing to lure everyone out. Just the thing to lure out a teen that's been cooped up inside too long. And now he's failed, as you stayed inside, and the storm returns, in full measure." Harry could only shiver as the icy cold now wiped out the previous scalding heat.
***
“Where is Harry?” Ron asked.
Hermione searched the Great Hall looking for an untidy black head and found none. Like Ron, she couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t down there asking questions about the day’s events. “Not here,” she said tensely.
Their Valentine’s Day trip to Hogsmeade had ended untimely and unpleasantly, but at least one Death Eater was in custody. She scowled as she recalled Lucius Malfoy’s instant escape upon Dumbledore’s entrance into the coffee shop. And Draco’s confrontation with his father had been for all them a thing of wonder. Who would have guessed?
“You don’t suppose he snuck out after all?” Ron said uneasily. But that question was answered when Ginny pushed through the other students who were milling about and chattering excitedly.
“Where’s Harry?” she demanded. “I can’t find him anywhere.”
Hermione shook her head and then stopped abruptly. He was coming down the stairs followed by Professor Dumbledore and Professor Snape. One of the professors had clearly said something to him, for he paused and turned back momentarily. Then he shook his head and continued on down the stairs, by which time, everyone in the Hall had turned to stare at him.
Hermione couldn’t help staring at him herself. His face was ashen and his scar seemed to leap off his face, it stood out so clearly from the rest. He scanned the crowd, and upon spotting Ron and Hermione and Ginny, his color came back enough so that he merely looked pale rather than on the verge of collapse.
“You’re all right then,” he said generally, and Hermione nodded, a new knot of worry forming in her throat.
“What happened?” he asked, but he was cut off before he could complete the question. The milling students had parted before the furious advance of Draco Malfoy. Malfoy seized Harry’s robes and yanked at him.
“Where were you, Potter?” he asked. “Hiding out while the rest of us fought your fight?”
Harry shoved him off and gawped at him. Then he said furiously, “What do you mean my fight? When did you ever fight anybody’s fight but your own? And why didn’t you warn anyone they were coming? You knew, didn’t you? Your Dad warned you, didn’t he? Like Crabbe and Goyle.”
“He didn’t know,” Hermione said quickly. “He stood up to his Dad. He got in their way when they would’ve killed Parvati.”
Harry stared in surprise again, but his hostility did not abate much; nor did Malfoy’s. Hermione noticed that Dumbledore and Snape had come down to the confrontation, but that Dumbledore gestured to Snape to stay back. Malfoy’s pale eyes narrowed.
“How did you know about the letters? And if you did, why didn’t you show up instead of leaving the rest of us to face down your killers?”
“You mean your Dad?” Harry shot back angrily.
“Yeah,” Malfoy said. “Him.”
Harry stared at him again and so did everyone there, such was the tone of loathing in Malfoy’s voice. It so far exceeded the usual spite he had when he talked to or spoke of Harry, that even after witnessing the confrontation between the Malfoys, Hermione was again astounded. The other students were now muttering, eyeing both Harry and Malfoy with open curiosity or loathing.
“Where were you, then?” Malfoy asked for the third time.
Unexpectedly, Harry flushed and glanced at Dumbledore and Snape. He opened his mouth; presumably to tell off Malfoy again, but then shut it without speaking. Instead, he looked at Malfoy steadily and intensely as though the Slytherin were a complex puzzle he could not solve. Malfoy also flushed under his examination and seemed ready to take fresh offense when Dumbledore cleared his throat and said mildly, “This antagonism is precisely what Lord Voldemort wants.”
Neither Harry nor Malfoy looked any the less hostile though and Dumbledore added, “Harry was unable to go to Hogsmeade because I prevented him from going.” Dumbledore surveyed the students with his light blue eyes and added somberly, “We have been very fortunate today that no one was hurt, largely because of the bravery of Mr. Malfoy, and Mr. Weasley, and Miss Granger. I would ask all of you to recognize that we were so fortunate because all of our houses stood united today and to put aside your differences in the face of Lord Voldemort’s continued war upon us all.” Dumbledore waited a moment for this to sink in, but he did not, as Hermione had thought he might, ask Malfoy and Harry to shake hands, as he had once done with Sirius and Snape.
However, he went on quite grimly, “As for Mr. Goyle and Mr. Crabbe, they have been expelled from Hogwarts for deliberately failing to report their knowledge of a pending Death Eater attack. Our policy is to tolerate differing points of view. But we will not tolerate students actively cooperating with the enemy.”
There was complete silence at that and Dumbledore added only, “I believe we could all benefit from a good hot meal and a good night’s rest.”
He strode forward to the head table and sat down calmly as if they were about to have any normal feast.
Snape followed behind without comment and the students slowly made their way to their various house tables. Only Harry remained standing, irresolute, and Hermione thought he would have liked to flee from all the watching eyes. And Malfoy, who had taken a step toward the Slytherin table and then stopped with an expression that looked like fear. He turned his head and looked at Parvati as if he were waiting for some gesture from her.
Ginny tugged at gently at Harry’s arm and said quietly, “You’re allowed to eat, you know. It’s not your fault they attacked. It’s not your fault Dumbledore stopped you coming when you found out.” Harry ignored her and frowned and he looked as though he’d got a nasty taste in his mouth, as if he’d bit down on something rotten or poisonous.
“That took guts,” he said to Malfoy, “standing up to your Dad. He’s a real scary guy, your father.” Malfoy stared at Harry. He seemed, for once, entirely bereft of words.
He looked again at Parvati, who had said absolutely nothing since the confrontation had taken place. She spoke finally and said in a very low voice, “I should thank you, I suppose. Only I don’t know if you stood up to him because you’re angry at him for something or because you care about me.”
Malfoy paled again and still he seemed unable to speak. The other students were once again watching, looking up from their food with renewed interest. Hermione thought, felt, that they stood at one of those strange moments in time when the right word or the wrong could change everything. She looked at Harry and tried to catch his eye.
She could not say why, but she felt that he alone would also understand how important this was. But he was not looking her way. His green eyes were deeply shadowed with fatigue and his face was pinched about the mouth as though he were in considerable pain. He had not sat down. He stood and looked from Malfoy to Parvati and at the rest of the gawking students, and pity and a great sadness softened his face.
“There’s room here to sit,” he said to Malfoy, “if you like.” Every fork paused in the air, every half-raised cup at the Gryffindor table hovered on its way to be sipped, and every head turned.
Hermione said sharply to Ron, “Budge over,” and when he didn’t immediately move, she poked him with her elbow. Malfoy turned to look at Harry. His face expressed nothing but disbelief.
“What about you?” he asked. Harry closed his eyes briefly and Hermione wondered just what was wrong with him. He moved stiffly however, and took a seat at the table on the other side of Ron. The fifth year prefect, Griffiths, moved hastily away and said, “Here, take my seat, I’m done eating.”
Then he left the table quickly along with another friend of his, leaving the space between Harry and Lavender Brown open. Lavender stared at Malfoy with her mouth wide open and Hermione thought uncharitably that she looked like a fish about to blow bubbles. Lavender got up too then, and said, “I’ve got to do my star chart for class on Monday,” and she left Parvati sitting on the other side of the gap at the table.
Malfoy looked once more at Parvati. She said nothing again at first and Hermione was reminded of an illustration in a childhood book of the furies, so cool and unforgiving was the pretty girl’s face. Then at a small move from Harry, an indrawn breath, Parvati said, “Come and sit then, and if you can stand to be seen with a half-blood.”
Malfoy sat at the empty space and looked almost wildly about as if he could not begin to understand how he had got where he was. “Don’t think this means we’re friends now,” he said warningly to Harry. Astonishingly, the hostile words produced the closest thing to a smile she’d seen from Harry all day.
“Course not,” he said and he started to lift the carafe of coffee to pour himself a cup, only his hand was trembling so badly he had to put it down again.
Malfoy said a rude word and commented, “What, you need to go to the hospital wing again? You didn’t even fight anyone today.”
Harry gave him a very sour look and said resentfully, “You’d be feeling a bit shaky too if you’d been blindsided by a stunning spell.”
“Dumbledore did that?” Ron blurted out. Harry started to reply but again stopped before saying anything. He shrugged then and picked up his fork and ate a bite of his shepherd’s pie.
The rest of the meal went by in a most peculiar fashion. Neither Harry nor Malfoy said anything further to each other and the only ones at the table unaffected by their discomfort were Ginny and Ron. Ginny chattered about the annoying load of work they had to do for their next week’s classes and Ron complained about the weather.
“Our only good day and we lose our chance to practice for the next quidditch game, and now the ice is back,” he said.
“How are we supposed to play in this?” Ginny wanted to know. “Who can fly with their brooms all full of ice? It’s dead depressing really.”
The wind, in fact, howled and moaned and continued through the night like a demented ghost. Freezing drafts of air whipped by them in the corridors and chased them all the way to the common room. And even in their dormitory, shadows prowled across the room like dark, hunched, misshapen creatures lying in wait.
Hermione wondered what reception Malfoy had got when he left the Gryffindor table to return to the Slytherin dormitory. She tried hard to feel sympathy for him, but years of dislike weighed down her thoughts and she was certain, that although extending the courtesy to Malfoy had been the right thing to do, his motive in standing against his father had nothing to do with a disaffection for Voldemort’s basic cause, and a lot more to do with those odd words he had spoken about the “thing” his mother carried.
She puzzled over that, but decided it was something better left alone. Some odd jealousy, she thought vaguely as she fell asleep, and that her Mum and Dad would probably have a Muggle name for the psychology behind it.
***
Harry slept badly. Phantom pains, after-shocks from the exposure to the curse through the connection of his scar, prodded him awake each time he came near to sleeping. And when he did sleep, his dreams were troubled by images of dead woods, encased in a permanent crust of ice, littered by the dead and dying bodies of unicorns and centaurs and by a circle of veela women, their eyes lakes of icy blue with dark craters in the center that would charm no one anymore, frozen into a sculptured frieze, like the ones carved in marble that hung on the walls of the museum.
He sat up with a gasp in the morning feeling he had escaped being frozen by only a small margin. He wrapped his woolen lion blanket around him for warmth and tried to think what it was that was bothering him. The room around him was quiet as none of the others were awake yet. Outside, the wind still wailed and the hiss of ice falling drove his spirits further down. A wisp of something tugged at his mind. A reminder of some resolution forgotten: something important, something dangerous. Then it came to him. The Death Eaters had been here in Hogsmeade. That was only a step away from Hogwarts itself, where Voldemort had attacked from the inside once before.
He sat up again and threw his blanket off. He washed and dressed absently, ignoring the pallor of his face reflected in the mirror and the faint shadow of a beard that had crept up. He didn’t bother doing the shaving spell. That could wait for later, or the next day. Instead, he climbed out of the portrait hole and made his way to Dumbledore’s office.
“Droobles Best Blowing Gum,” he said and the stairway opened before him. He paused at the door before knocking with the griffin doorknocker, but before he could lifted it up and knock, the door swung open and Dumbledore’s voice called out, “Come in, Harry.”
"You're early, Harry," Dumbledore said. The elderly wizard was fully dressed in rich purple robes, though it was Sunday morning and very early.
Dumbledore looked at him closely and said, "What's troubling you?" Harry started to explain, but Dumbledore raised a hand and said, "On second thought, you look as though a cup of hot cocoa would do you some good." He waved his wand and two steaming cups appeared.
"But, Professor," Harry said, "this is important."
Dumbledore observed Harry as he sipped his cup and said, "I'm sure it is. So is your health. Have you eaten this morning?"
Harry shook his head and said more urgently, "It's about Voldemort, sir."
Dumbledore said calmly, "Voldemort can wait a few moments...unless he's knocking at the door now?"
"No, sir," Harry replied, "but..."
"Drink, then," Dumbledore said, "and have a crumpet." At his wave, a plate appeared with toasted crumpets and butter and a side jar of marmalade. Dumbledore picked up a crumpet and took a bite. Harry felt it would be rude to refuse, but worry nudged at him and he ate quickly so that he could tell Dumbledore what was on his mind. Dumbledore drained his own cup and Harry was about to break into speech again when a shadow streamed across the wall and emerged into one of the portraits.
"Fudge is here," Armando Dippet said. "Stupid man. He's all provoked again, Dumbledore. Best send him packing quickly before he takes it into his head to appoint himself Headmaster."
“I’ll come back later,” Harry said. The last thing he wanted was to see Fudge again anytime soon. However, before he could leave, the doorknocker banged and in marched the Minister of Magic.
“Good morning, Cornelius,” Dumbledore said courteously. Harry backed away toward another corner of the room, hoping Fudge wouldn’t notice him.
Instead, Fudge said instantly, “Where were you yesterday, Potter?”
As Harry had no clue what to say to the Minister, he looked to Dumbledore for help.
Fudge merely continued without waiting for an answer and said, “I thought he was working for the Order, Dumbledore. Why wasn’t he sent to deal with the Death Eaters? You’ve been holding him back for months now, when the Dark Lord is attacking more freely than ever.”
Though Dumbledore’s expression did not change, Harry had the impression the old man was very angry. His blue eyes shone and he replied curtly, “If you will recall, Cornelius, it was only six weeks ago that Harry fought Voldemort directly. Do you expect a seventeen year old, no matter how talented and brave, to act as your personal one man army against all of the Death Eaters at once?”
“People could have been killed,” Fudge blustered. “Your students could have been killed.”
“Harry could have been killed as well had he been there,” Dumbledore answered. “Fortunately, he was not. If he had, it is likely the Death Eaters would have signaled their master and Voldemort would have come himself.”
“That’s all very well, Dumbledore,” Fudge answered, “but you gave your word you were training the boy and would make him available to fight the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters when necessary. The thing is already in the Daily Prophet and I look like a fool after I’ve assured people they were safe.”
Feeling unaccountably irked with Fudge, though he had been annoyed enough with Dumbledore the previous day for preventing him from going to fight, Harry cut in, “Nobody is safe when Voldemort is around.” He ignored Fudge’s wince at his use of Voldemort’s name and added testily, “Don’t worry, if he shows up again, I’ll make sure I’m there to fight him.”
Dumbledore made a movement as if he would have like to take back Harry’s words and he stood abruptly.“I appreciate your courage, Harry,” Dumbledore said calmly, “but being brave does not mean you don’t have to weigh whether a risk is acceptable or not.” He turned to Fudge and added, “Take the blinders off, Cornelius, and look at Harry without the filter of your personal ambitions and political needs. Voldemort has nearly murdered him twice in the last year and he is not recovered from the last incident.” Fudge stared at Harry, and Harry felt dreadfully embarrassed.
Sure enough, Fudge said, “You denied he was injured after that fight at Gringotts. He looks all right to me.”
Harry was astonished then, when Dumbledore lost his temper altogether. “You foolish, foolish man,” Dumbledore said. “Do you not see how ill he looks, how pale and thin?”
“He’s the one who can defeat the Dark Lord,” Fudge said stubbornly. “The Prophecy says so.”
“The Prophecy does not say he’ll defeat the Dark Lord when he’s weak and ill.” Dumbledore looked suddenly weary and he added, “It says he has the power to defeat the Dark Lord. It does not say that he will for a certainty, Cornelius.”
Fudge answered with annoyance, “Doesn’t it? Well, it’s very convenient that the full prophecy was never heard by anyone but you, Dumbledore. He looks all right to me,” Fudge repeated obstinately. “I’ve half a mind to pull him out of school and attach him to the special Task Force as I’ve been asked to do.”
“And I have reminded you before, Cornelius, that you do not have the power to do so,” Dumbledore answered. “Now, I will escort you out, and we can talk of how the Ministry of Magic and its aurors can deal with the situation, and since it seems necessary, I shall remind you that you spent an entire year refusing to believe that Voldemort returned and painting Harry as a liar and disturbed, while Voldemort entrenched himself in power all over again.” The door to the headmaster’s office swung back open again and Dumbledore led the Minister out.
Dumbledore turned as he was leaving and the full weight of his years seemed to rest in his eyes, darkening the blue to almost black. “Stay here, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “I’ll speak to you shortly.”
Harry sank down on the couch, which sat under the windows in the circular office. The sky outside was leaden and ice was misting from the dark clouds. Unlike a normal Sunday, not a creature stirred on the Hogwarts grounds. He turned his back on the gloomy view and looked at the fire, which was burning merrily. A draft of cold air drifted from a nearby corner and made the fire shiver and leap; but it did not go out.
He looked for the source of the draft, as it was not coming from the direction of the windows and noticed a light coming from behind a tapestry that decorated one of the walls. Curious, he rose and examined the tapestry, which was faded and old. The tapestry depicted a knight kneeling before a man on a throne-- a king perhaps. The knight held his sword extended sideways on the palms of his hands, as if offering it to the king, and the king, in turn, extended a red, heart shaped object, a jewel of some kind, Harry supposed, to the knight.
At each corner of the tapestry was the shield of Gryffindor with the lion rampant that decorated the Gryffindor Tower. He reached out to touch the tapestry. The sword, he saw, was the very one that sat in blackened ruins in the glass case in the office. Only in the tapestry, the sword was as when he had first seen it, and the letters spelling Godric Gryffindor could be seen clearly on the sword in the tapestry.
Harry shivered because the tapestry was cold and he realized that the draft was coming from behind it form wherever the light issued. He took a step back. He had enough experience with strange objects, magical objects that emitted light, in this very office, to be wary of them.
However, curiosity won out. With a glance toward the door, he drew his wand and prodded the tapestry, but nothing happened. Using the tip of the wand, he lifted the tapestry back and saw that the light came from a crack in the wall behind it. He pushed on the wall and it swung back easily.
It was, in fact, a door. The light came from a pair of torches that burned on either side of the doorway and they lit a stone stairway that led down into a concealed passageway. The tempo of his heart picked up and he stepped into the passageway thinking that Dumbledore was going to be annoyed with him for sure. But he was certain this passageway was not on the Marauders Map and he was also certain that he’d never have another chance to find out where it went. A quick trip while Dumbledore talked with Fudge, he calculated, could show him where it went.
He hesitated and then as if impelled by some mysterious force, Harry started down the steps. The passageway dimmed after a few minutes, so he lit has wand and went on. The steps spiraled down what must be the inside of the tower and then after a long while leveled out to a smooth passageway. He continued walking, trying to orient himself, to figure out if this passageway led out, as several others did, to Hogsmeade.
After a while, the walls of the passageway were solid rock, not brick and it was quite chilly, though not nearly as it would have been outside, or even in some of the other passageways to Hogsmeade. The passageway began a gentle uphill slope and he reached a point where it divided off into three branches. He took the right branch first, leaving a small mark on the wall as Hermione had once marked the doors in the Department of Mysteries. After only a short way, however, he was met with a wall of solid rock.
Retracing his steps, Harry then took the middle path. This one continued a bit farther than the one on the right and it too ended in a solid wall. But the wall was at the end of a large circular room that had been carved into the stone and in the center of the room on a stone plinth waist high lay an old man on a wool pallet. The man had long white hair, but no beard and he was dressed as the kneeling man in the tapestry had been in dress that must be a thousand years old.
The old man was dead. Harry had seen enough of death to know that. A faint golden light shimmered around the man’s form. Harry reached out a hand and felt a faint warning tingle. It reminded him of the feel of a shield spell if one were unfortunate enough to come into direct contact with the spell’s force and he pulled his hand back instantly. This place, then, was a tomb, and the body there was perfectly preserved.
Even the Egyptians with their mummies had not preserved their dead so perfectly. He looked again and a peculiar thought stole its way into his mind. The robes the dead man wore had on their front the same lion rearing as those on the shields in the corners of the tapestry. And in the man’s clasped hands rested a red stone shaped like a heart. His hand reached out again as if it acted on its own and Harry gently took the stone from the resting man’s hands. The spell, whatever it was, did him no harm. He felt only a faint tingle as he removed the stone and the spell appeared undisturbed, as did the dead man, whose features were utterly serene.
The small light from his wand glowed through the depths of the red stone and cast glowing shadows on the walls. Except that one shadow was darker and man sized. He whirled to meet the shadow’s maker and then let out a breath of relief. It was Dumbledore. Harry could not tell from the elderly wizard’s face whether he was angry or not.
He said, “I saw the light Professor, coming from behind the tapestry and I….” Harry stopped there and flushed for the second time that morning with embarrassment. Here he was, acting just as impulsively as he had when he was fourteen and had taken a look into Dumbledore’s Pensieve. Dumbledore’s gaze was focused on the jewel in his hand and Harry flushed even deeper.
He said, “I don’t know why I picked it up. I’ll put it back. I wasn’t going to steal it or anything.” Harry reached out his hand to place the stone back where it belonged, but Dumbledore caught his wrist and stopped him.
Harry stared at him, startled, and wondering what the old man meant to do. Would he be expelled for this? Would he be charged with theft, with violating a dead man’s tomb? Violating, his mind told him, Godric Gryffindor’s tomb?
“I had thought to show you this one day,” Dumbledore said, “just not so soon.” Harry stared at Dumbledore and would have spoken, but the old man looked down at the dead one and smiled a small smile. “I suspect he would have approved of you,” Dumbledore added, “and I think he would not mind if we borrow this for a while. It may help to serve now the very purpose for which it was originally given.” Dumbledore let go and held out a hand, palm open. “May I?” he asked.
“Of course,” Harry said hastily and he laid the stone on the Professor’s open palm.
“Do you know what it is?” Dumbledore asked.
“The Heart of Gryffindor?” Harry hazarded. Dumbledore looked quite surprised and a faint twinkle returned to his blue eyes. “So you did listen in History class once in a while.”
“Erm, once or twice,” Harry answered. “I, erm, liked the bits about Gryffindor, you know. I was interested, because of the sword and well, because he’s the founder of our House and all.”
Then the recent events came back to him reminding him that this was merely a diversion, and he asked, “Professor, did Minister Fudge mean what he said, about making me work for this task force?” Dumbledore gave him a sharp look.
“He’d like to, Harry. But I think I’ve managed to hold him off until you graduate, at least. And by that time,” he continued, “it may be that Fudge will be out of office altogether.”
“But who…?” Harry started to ask, and Dumbledore answered before he could finish, “Who will replace him? Not I, I assure you. I have no wish for it. But we desperately need someone who will provide more principled leadership than Fudge is capable of.”
Harry waited as some shadow flitted through the old man’s eyes and Dumbledore went on, “Fudge, you see, Harry, is a rather small man. In some other place and time, he would be still much as he was when you first met him, weak and basically kind. Only he has been forced to face a task for which he was simply unequal, and hiding from it has corrupted him, along with the encouragement he received from men like Lucius Malfoy.”
“How many people,” Harry asked, “would be equal to it? Equal to facing Voldemort and fighting him? Every time I have to face him, I’m scared, you know. Every time, I want to flee or just give up.”
Dumbledore smiled at him. “But you don’t flee, Harry. That’s why you are a proper Gryffindor. Our first headmaster would have been very proud of you, I’m sure. As I am.” Harry’s pleasure at the old wizard’s words was diminished by a rumbling, hissing sound.
He turned his head and said, “What is that?”
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow and said, “I don’t know.” He pocketed the stone and pulled out his wand and advanced slowly toward where the room opened back out to the main passageway. Harry followed closely behind and he was almost knocked flat when Dumbledore abruptly jumped backward to dodge a sudden sheet of flame.
A hissing voice said, “Thieves. Thieves in my nest.”
Harry jumped again. “Who’s there,” he called and the sheet of flame jumped out into the passageway again.
Then he realized who it was and said, “I know who that is.” Harry stepped in front of Dumbledore and ignored his warning. He peered around the corner and saw, poking through the passageway to the left branch of the tunnel, a large triangular, serpent-like head.
“Norbert, it’s me. Harry.” A large slitted amber eye blinked and looked at him.
“Wizard boy,” Norbert hissed. “I don’t like wizards in my den, stealing my treasure.”
“What treasure?” Harry asked, forgetting about the stone. “There’s just the dead wizard here.” The head withdrew and cautiously, Harry moved toward the entrance to the remaining passageway.
“It’s Norbert,” he told Dumbledore. He had to fight a weird desire to laugh. For a moment, he had felt as though he was back in the Chamber of Secrets and the Basilisk was upon him.
“Be careful,” Dumbledore said. “Just because Hagrid hatched him doesn’t mean he’s tame. He nearly flamed us just now.”
The black head poked back through and Norbert said, “Come talk to me wizard boy. I’m getting bored with no one to talk to. The Centaurs just flee and so do the unicorns. They think I’m going to eat them after we chat.”
“Do you?” Harry asked curiously.
A faint hiss and a small cloud of smoke came from the dragon. “All’s fair when it comes to survival, wizard boy. Lucky for you I had a very tasty cow just this morning.” Norbert’s head withdrew and Harry followed a cautious step or two down the passageway. He lit his wand again and gasped out loud. The dragon had curled himself around a huge mountain of gold and jewels.
“Look, Professor Dumbledore,” he said.
Dumbledore, surprisingly, looked exasperated. “Gryffindor’s treasure,” he said, “though it really belongs to the school. The Founders began collecting it against the time in the future when wizards might need it, for influence or to ransom those whom ignorant Muggles had imprisoned. It hasn’t been used in some time, though, since the Statute of Secrecy was passed.”
Harry said softly, “Well, it looks like Norbert’s decided it’s his.” The dragon’s eyes were closing, but one opened up briefly again and Norbert hissed, “Go away now, wizard boy. I feel the need to nap. You can come back and talk to me another day.”
Harry left and tugged at Dumbledore to come after him. They returned to the Headmaster’s office and it occurred to Harry that he had never told Dumbledore what it was he had come for.
Dumbledore, however, sat down behind his chair and said, “We’ll talk again soon, Harry. There are a few things I need to think about and some people I’ll have to talk to after the Minister’s visit.” The office door swung open and Harry found himself outside of it with plenty of his own to worry about as well.
