Harry’s heart was beating rather fast. He was sure that Scrimgeour was right. How could he avoid taking the Snitch with his bare hand in front of the Minister?

  ‘You don’t say anything,’ said Scrimgeour. ‘Perhaps you already know what the Snitch contains?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry, still wondering how he could appear to touch the Snitch without really doing so. If only he knew Legilimency, really knew it, and could read Hermione’s mind; he could practically hear her brain whirring beside him.

  ‘Take it,’ said Scrimgeour quietly.

  Harry met the Minister’s yellow eyes and knew he had no option but to obey. He held out his hand and Scrimgeour leaned forwards again and placed the Snitch, slowly and deliberately, into Harry’s palm.

  Nothing happened. As Harry’s fingers closed around the Snitch, its tired wings fluttered and were still. Scrimgeour, Ron and Hermione continued to gaze avidly at the now partially concealed ball, as if still hoping it might transform in some way.

  ‘That was dramatic,’ said Harry coolly. Both Ron and Hermione laughed.

  ‘That’s all, then, is it?’ asked Hermione, making to prise herself off the sofa.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Scrimgeour, who looked bad-tempered now. ‘Dumbledore left you a second bequest, Potter.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Harry, excitement rekindling.

  Scrimgeour did not bother to read from the will this time.

  ‘The sword of Godric Gryffindor,’ he said.

  Hermione and Ron both stiffened. Harry looked around for a sign of the ruby-encrusted hilt, but Scrimgeour did not pull the sword from the leather pouch which, in any case, looked much too small to contain it.

  ‘So where is it?’ Harry asked suspiciously.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Scrimgeour, ‘that sword was not Dumbledore’s to give away. The sword of Godric Gryffindor is an important historical artefact, and as such, belongs –’

  ‘It belongs to Harry!’ said Hermione hotly. ‘It chose him, he was the one who found it, it came to him out of the Sorting Hat –’

  ‘According to reliable historical sources, the sword may present itself to any worthy Gryffindor,’ said Scrimgeour. ‘That does not make it the exclusive property of Mr Potter, whatever Dumbledore may have decided.’ Scrimgeour scratched his badly shaven cheek, scrutinising Harry. ‘Why do you think –?’

  ‘Dumbledore wanted to give me the sword?’ said Harry, struggling to keep his temper. ‘Maybe he thought it would look nice on my wall.’

  ‘This is not a joke, Potter!’ growled Scrimgeour. ‘Was it because Dumbledore believed that only the sword of Godric Gryffindor could defeat the Heir of Slytherin? Did he wish to give you that sword, Potter, because he believed, as do many, that you are the one destined to destroy He Who Must Not Be Named?’

  ‘Interesting theory,’ said Harry. ‘Has anyone ever tried sticking a sword in Voldemort? Maybe the Ministry should put some people on to that, instead of wasting their time stripping down Deluminators, or covering up breakouts from Azkaban. So is this what you’ve been doing, Minister, shut up in your office, trying to break open a Snitch? People are dying, I was nearly one of them, Voldemort chased me across three counties, he killed Mad-Eye Moody, but there’s been no word about any of that from the Ministry, has there? And you still expect us to cooperate with you!’

  ‘You go too far!’ shouted Scrimgeour, standing up; Harry jumped to his feet too. Scrimgeour limped towards Harry and jabbed him hard in the chest with the point of his wand: it singed a hole in Harry’s T-shirt like a lit cigarette.

  ‘Oi!’ said Ron, jumping up and raising his own wand, but Harry said, ‘No! D’you want to give him an excuse to arrest us?’

  ‘Remembered you’re not at school, have you?’ said Scrimgeour, breathing hard into Harry’s face. ‘Remembered that I am not Dumbledore, who forgave your insolence and insubordination? You may wear that scar like a crown, Potter, but it is not up to a seventeen-year-old boy to tell me how to do my job! It’s time you learned some respect!’

  ‘It’s time you earned it,’ said Harry.

  The floor trembled; there was a sound of running footsteps, then the door to the sitting room burst open and Mr and Mrs Weasley ran in.

  ‘We – we thought we heard –’ began Mr Weasley, looking thoroughly alarmed at the sight of Harry and the Minister virtually nose to nose.

  ‘– raised voices,’ panted Mrs Weasley.

  Scrimgeour took a couple of steps back from Harry, glancing at the hole he had made in Harry’s T-shirt. He seemed to regret his loss of temper.

  ‘It – it was nothing,’ he growled. ‘I … regret your attitude,’ he said, looking Harry full in the face once more. ‘You seem to think that the Ministry does not desire what you – what Dumbledore – desired. We ought to be working together.’

  ‘I don’t like your methods, Minister,’ said Harry. ‘Remember?’

  For the second time, he raised his right fist, and displayed to Scrimgeour the scars that still showed white on the back of it, spelling I must not tell lies. Scrimgeour’s expression hardened. He turned away without another word and limped from the room. Mrs Weasley hurried after him; Harry heard her stop at the back door. After a minute or so, she called, ‘He’s gone!’

  ‘What did he want?’ Mr Weasley asked, looking around at Harry, Ron and Hermione, as Mrs Weasley came hurrying back to them.

  ‘To give us what Dumbledore left us,’ said Harry. ‘They’ve only just released the contents of his will.’

  Outside in the garden, over the dinner tables, the three objects Scrimgeour had given them were passed from hand to hand. Everyone exclaimed over the Deluminator and The Tales of Beedle the Bard and lamented the fact that Scrimgeour had refused to pass on the sword, but none of them could offer any suggestion as to why Dumbledore would have left Harry an old Snitch. As Mr Weasley examined the Deluminator for the third or fourth time, Mrs Weasley said tentatively, ‘Harry, dear, everyone’s awfully hungry, we didn’t like to start without you … shall I serve dinner now?’

  They all ate rather hurriedly and then, after a hasty chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ and much gulping of cake, the party broke up. Hagrid, who was invited to the wedding the following day, but was far too bulky to sleep in the overstretched Burrow, left to set up a tent for himself in a neighbouring field.

  ‘Meet us upstairs,’ Harry whispered to Hermione, while they helped Mrs Weasley restore the garden to its normal state. ‘After everyone’s gone to bed.’

  Up in the attic room, Ron examined his Deluminator and Harry filled Hagrid’s Mokeskin purse, not with gold, but with those items he most prized, apparently worthless though some of them were: the Marauder’s Map, the shard of Sirius’s enchanted mirror and R.A.B.’s locket. He pulled the strings tight and slipped the purse around his neck, then sat holding the old Snitch and watching its wings flutter feebly. At last, Hermione tapped on the door and tiptoed inside.

  ‘Muffliato,’ she whispered, waving her wand in the direction of the stairs.

  ‘Thought you didn’t approve of that spell?’ said Ron.

  ‘Times change,’ said Hermione. ‘Now, show us that Deluminator.’

  Ron obliged at once. Holding it up in front of him, he clicked it. The solitary lamp they had lit went out at once.

  ‘The thing is,’ whispered Hermione through the dark, ‘we could have achieved that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder.’

  There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flew back to the ceiling and illuminated them all once more.

  ‘Still, it’s cool,’ said Ron, a little defensively. ‘And from what they said, Dumbledore invented it himself!’

  ‘I know, but surely he wouldn’t have singled you out in his will just to help us turn out the lights!’

  ‘D’you think he knew the Ministry would confiscate his will and examine everything he’d left us?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Definitely,’ said Hermione. ‘He couldn’t tell us in the will why he was leaving us these things, but that still doesn’t explain …’

  ‘… why he couldn’t have given us a hint when he was alive?’ asked Ron.

  ‘Well, exactly,’ said Hermione, now flicking through The Tales of Beedle the Bard. ‘If these things are important enough to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you’d think he’d have let us know why … unless he thought it was obvious?’

  ‘Thought wrong, then, didn’t he?’ said Ron. ‘I always said he was mental. Brilliant, and everything, but cracked. Leaving Harry an old Snitch – what the hell was that about?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Hermione. ‘When Scrimgeour made you take it, Harry, I was so sure that something was going to happen!’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ said Harry, his pulse quickening as he raised the Snitch in his fingers. ‘I wasn’t going to try too hard in front of Scrimgeour, was I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Hermione.

  ‘The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match?’ said Harry. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  Hermione looked simply bemused. Ron, however, gasped, pointing frantically from Harry to the Snitch and back again until he found his voice.

  ‘That was the one you nearly swallowed!’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Harry, and with his heart beating fast, he pressed his mouth to the Snitch.

  It did not open. Frustration and bitter disappointment welled up inside him: he lowered the golden sphere, but then Hermione cried out.

  ‘Writing! There’s writing on it, quick, look!’

  He nearly dropped the Snitch in surprise and excitement. Hermione was quite right. Engraved upon the smooth golden surface, where seconds before there had been nothing, were five words written in the thin slanting handwriting that Harry recognised as Dumbledore’s:

  I open at the close.

  He had barely read them when the words vanished again.

  ‘ “I open at the close …” What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Hermione and Ron shook their heads, looking blank.

  ‘I open at the close … at the close … I open at the close …’

  But no matter how often they repeated the words, with many different inflections, they were unable to wring any more meaning from them.

  ‘And the sword,’ said Ron finally, when they had at last abandoned their attempts to divine meaning in the Snitch’s inscription. ‘Why did he want Harry to have the sword?’

  ‘And why couldn’t he just have told me?’ Harry said quietly. ‘It was there, it was right there on the wall of his office during all our talks last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn’t he just give it to me then?’

  He felt as though he were sitting in an examination with a question he ought to have been able to answer in front of him, his brain slow and unresponsive. Was there something he had missed in the long talks with Dumbledore last year? Ought he to know what it all meant? Had Dumbledore expected him to understand?

  ‘And as for this book,’ said Hermione, ‘The Tales of Beedle the Bard … I’ve never even heard of them!’

  ‘You’ve never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?’ said Ron incredulously. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ said Hermione in surprise. ‘Do you know them, then?’

  ‘Well, of course I do!’

  Harry looked up, diverted. The circumstance of Ron having read a book that Hermione had not was unprecedented. Ron, however, looked bemused by their surprise.

  ‘Oh, come on! All the old kids’ stories are supposed to be Beedle’s, aren’t they? The Fountain of Fair Fortune … The Wizard and the Hopping Pot … Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump …’

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Hermione, giggling. ‘What was that last one?’

  ‘Come off it!’ said Ron, looking in disbelief from Harry to Hermione. ‘You must’ve heard of Babbitty Rabbitty –’

  ‘Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!’ said Hermione. ‘We didn’t hear stories like that when we were little, we heard Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Cinderella –’

  ‘What’s that, an illness?’ asked Ron.

  ‘So these are children’s stories?’ asked Hermione, bending again over the runes.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ron uncertainly, ‘I mean, that’s just what you hear, you know, that all these old stories came from Beedle. I dunno what they’re like in the original versions.’

  ‘But I wonder why Dumbledore thought I should read them?’

  Something creaked downstairs.

  ‘Probably just Charlie, now Mum’s asleep, sneaking off to regrow his hair,’ said Ron nervously.

  ‘All the same, we should get to bed,’ whispered Hermione. ‘It wouldn’t do to oversleep tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Ron. ‘A brutal triple murder by the bridegroom’s mother might put a bit of a damper on the wedding. I’ll get the lights.’

  And he clicked the Deluminator once more as Hermione left the room.

  — CHAPTER EIGHT —

  The Wedding

  Three o’clock on the following afternoon found Harry, Ron, Fred and George standing outside the great, white marquee in the orchard, awaiting the arrival of the wedding guests. Harry had taken a large dose of Polyjuice Potion and was now the double of a redheaded Muggle boy from the local village, Ottery St Catchpole, from whom Fred had stolen hairs using a Summoning Charm. The plan was to introduce Harry as ‘Cousin Barny’ and trust to the great number of Weasley relatives to camouflage him.

  All four of them were clutching seating plans, so that they could help show people to the right seats. A host of white-robed waiters had arrived an hour earlier, along with a golden-jacketed band, and all of these wizards were currently sitting a short distance away under a tree; Harry could see a blue haze of pipe smoke issuing from the spot.

  Behind Harry, the entrance to the marquee revealed rows and rows of fragile golden chairs set either side of a long, purple carpet. The supporting poles were entwined with white and gold flowers. Fred and George had fastened an enormous bunch of golden balloons over the exact point where Bill and Fleur would shortly become husband and wife. Outside, butterflies and bees were hovering lazily over the grass and hedgerow. Harry was rather uncomfortable. The Muggle boy whose appearance he was affecting was slightly fatter than him, and his dress robes felt hot and tight in the full glare of a summer’s day.

  ‘When I get married,’ said Fred, tugging at the collar of his own robes, ‘I won’t be bothering with any of this nonsense. You can all wear what you like, and I’ll put a full Body-Bind Curse on Mum until it’s all over.’

  ‘She wasn’t too bad this morning, considering,’ said George. ‘Cried a bit about Percy not being here, but who wants him? Oh blimey, brace yourselves – here they come, look.’

  Brightly coloured figures were appearing, one by one, out of nowhere at the distant boundary of the yard. Within minutes a procession had formed, which began to snake its way up through the garden towards the marquee. Exotic flowers and bewitched birds fluttered on the witches’ hats, while precious gems glittered from many of the wizards’ cravats; a hum of excited chatter grew louder and louder, drowning the sound of the bees as the crowd approached the tent.

  ‘Excellent, I think I see a few Veela cousins,’ said George, craning his neck for a better look. ‘They’ll need help understanding our English customs, I’ll look after them …’

  ‘Not so fast, Lugless,’ said Fred, and darting past the gaggle of middle-aged witches heading the procession he said, ‘Here – permettez-moi to assister vous,’ to a pair of pretty French girls, who giggled and allowed him to escort them inside. George was left to deal with the middle-aged witches and Ron took charge of Mr Weasley’s old Ministry colleague, Perkins, while a rather deaf old couple fell to Harry’s lot.

  ‘Wotcher,’ said a familiar voice as he came out of the marquee again and found Tonks and Lupin at the front of the queue. She had turned blonde for the occasion. ‘Arthur told us you were the one with the curly hair. Sorry about last night,’ she added in a whisper, as Harry led them up the aisle. ‘The Ministry’s being very anti-werewolf at the moment and we thought our presence might not do you any favours.’

  ‘It’s fine, I understand,’ said Harry, speaking more to Lupin than Tonks. Lupin gave him a swift smile, but as they turned away, Harry saw Lupin’s face fall again into lines of misery. He did not understand it, but there was no time to dwell on the matter: Hagrid was causing a certain amount of disruption. Having misunderstood Fred’s directions, he had sat himself, not upon the magically enlarged and reinforced seat set aside for him in the back row, but on five seats that now resembled a large pile of golden matchsticks.

  While Mr Weasley repaired the damage and Hagrid shouted apologies to anybody who would listen, Harry hurried back to the entrance to find Ron face to face with a most eccentric-looking wizard. Slightly cross-eyed, with shoulder-length white hair the texture of candyfloss, he wore a cap whose tassel dangled in front of his nose and robes of an eye-watering shade of egg-yolk yellow. An odd symbol, rather like a triangular eye, glistened from a golden chain around his neck.

  ‘Xenophilius Lovegood,’ he said, extending a hand to Harry, ‘my daughter and I live just over the hill, so kind of the good Weasleys to invite us. But I think you know my Luna?’ he added to Ron.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ron. ‘Isn’t she with you?’

  ‘She lingered in that charming little garden to say hello to the gnomes, such a glorious infestation! How few wizards realise just how much we can learn from the wise little gnomes – or, to give them their correct name, the Gernumbli gardensi.’

  ‘Ours do know a lot of excellent swear words,’ said Ron, ‘but I think Fred and George taught them those.’

  He led a party of warlocks into the marquee as Luna rushed up.

  ‘Hello, Harry!’ she said.