Wandering through the crowd so as to escape a drunken uncle of Ron’s who seemed unsure whether or not Harry was his son, Harry spotted an old wizard sitting alone at a table. His cloud of white hair made him look rather like an aged dandelion clock, and was topped by a moth-eaten fez. He was vaguely familiar: racking his brains Harry suddenly realised that this was Elphias Doge, member of the Order of the Phoenix, and the writer of Dumbledore’s obituary.

  Harry approached him.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Doge; he had a rather high-pitched, wheezy voice.

  Harry leaned in.

  ‘Mr Doge, I’m Harry Potter.’

  Doge gasped.

  ‘My dear boy! Arthur told me you were here, disguised … I am so glad, so honoured!’

  In a flutter of nervous pleasure Doge poured Harry a goblet of champagne.

  ‘I thought of writing to you,’ he whispered, ‘after Dumbledore … the shock … and for you, I am sure …’

  Doge’s tiny eyes filled with sudden tears.

  ‘I saw the obituary you wrote for the Daily Prophet,’ said Harry. ‘I didn’t realise you knew Professor Dumbledore so well.’

  ‘As well as anyone,’ said Doge, dabbing his eyes with a napkin. ‘Certainly I knew him longest, if you don’t count Aberforth – and somehow, people never do seem to count Aberforth.’

  ‘Speaking of the Daily Prophet … I don’t know whether you saw, Mr Doge –?’

  ‘Oh, please call me Elphias, dear boy.’

  ‘Elphias, I don’t know whether you saw the interview Rita Skeeter gave about Dumbledore?’

  Doge’s face flooded with angry colour.

  ‘Oh, yes, Harry, I saw it. That woman, or vulture might be a more accurate term, positively pestered me to talk to her. I am ashamed to say that I became rather rude, called her an interfering trout, which resulted, as you may have seen, in aspersions cast upon my sanity.’

  ‘Well, in that interview,’ Harry went on, ‘Rita Skeeter hinted that Professor Dumbledore was involved in the Dark Arts when he was young.’

  ‘Don’t believe a word of it!’ said Doge at once. ‘Not a word, Harry! Let nothing tarnish your memories of Albus Dumbledore!’

  Harry looked into Doge’s earnest, pained face and felt not reassured, but frustrated. Did Doge really think it was that easy, that Harry could simply choose not to believe? Didn’t Doge understand Harry’s need to be sure, to know everything?

  Perhaps Doge suspected Harry’s feelings, for he looked concerned and hurried on, ‘Harry, Rita Skeeter is a dreadful –’

  But he was interrupted by a shrill cackle.

  ‘Rita Skeeter? Oh, I love her, always read her!’

  Harry and Doge looked up to see Auntie Muriel standing there, the plumes dancing on her hat, a goblet of champagne in her hand. ‘She’s written a book about Dumbledore, you know!’

  ‘Hello, Muriel,’ said Doge. ‘Yes, we were just discussing –’

  ‘You there! Give me your chair, I’m a hundred and seven!’

  Another redheaded Weasley cousin jumped off his seat, looking alarmed, and Auntie Muriel swung it round with surprising strength and plopped herself down upon it between Doge and Harry.

  ‘Hello again, Barry, or whatever your name is,’ she said to Harry. ‘Now, what were you saying about Rita Skeeter, Elphias? You know she’s written a biography of Dumbledore? I can’t wait to read it, I must remember to place an order at Flourish and Blotts!’

  Doge looked stiff and solemn at this, but Auntie Muriel drained her goblet and clicked her bony fingers at a passing waiter for a replacement. She took another large gulp of champagne, belched and then said, ‘There’s no need to look like a pair of stuffed frogs! Before he became so respected and respectable and all that tosh, there were some mighty funny rumours about Albus!’

  ‘Ill-informed sniping,’ said Doge, turning radish-coloured again.

  ‘You would say that, Elphias,’ cackled Auntie Muriel. ‘I noticed how you skated over the sticky patches in that obituary of yours!’

  ‘I’m sorry you think so,’ said Doge, more coldly still. ‘I assure you I was writing from the heart.’

  ‘Oh, we all know you worshipped Dumbledore; I daresay you’ll still think he was a saint even if it does turn out that he did away with his Squib sister!’

  ‘Muriel!’ exclaimed Doge.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the iced champagne was stealing through Harry’s chest.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked Muriel. ‘Who said his sister was a Squib? I thought she was ill?’

  ‘Thought wrong, then, didn’t you, Barry!’ said Auntie Muriel, looking delighted at the effect she had produced. ‘Anyway, how could you expect to know anything about it? It all happened years and years before you were even thought of, my dear, and the truth is that those of us who were alive then never knew what really happened. That’s why I can’t wait to find out what Skeeter’s unearthed! Dumbledore kept that sister of his quiet for a long time!’

  ‘Untrue!’ wheezed Doge. ‘Absolutely untrue!’

  ‘He never told me his sister was a Squib,’ said Harry, without thinking, still cold inside.

  ‘And why on earth would he tell you?’ screeched Muriel, swaying a little in her seat as she attempted to focus upon Harry.

  ‘The reason Albus never spoke about Ariana,’ began Elphias, in a voice stiff with emotion, ‘is, I should have thought, quite clear. He was so devastated by her death –’

  ‘Why did nobody ever see her, Elphias?’ squawked Muriel. ‘Why did half of us never even know she existed, until they carried the coffin out of the house and held a funeral for her? Where was saintly Albus, while Ariana was locked in the cellar? Off being brilliant at Hogwarts, and never mind what was going on in his own house!’

  ‘What d’you mean “locked in the cellar”?’ asked Harry. ‘What is this?’

  Doge looked wretched. Auntie Muriel cackled again and answered Harry.

  ‘Dumbledore’s mother was a terrifying woman, simply terrifying. Muggle-born, though I heard she pretended otherwise –’

  ‘She never pretended anything of the sort! Kendra was a fine woman,’ whispered Doge miserably, but Auntie Muriel ignored him.

  ‘– proud and very domineering, the sort of witch who would have been mortified to produce a Squib –’

  ‘Ariana was not a Squib!’ wheezed Doge.

  ‘So you say, Elphias, but explain, then, why she never attended Hogwarts!’ said Auntie Muriel. She turned back to Harry. ‘In our day Squibs were often hushed up. Though to take it to the extreme of actually imprisoning a little girl in the house and pretending she didn’t exist –’

  ‘I tell you, that’s not what happened!’ said Doge, but Auntie Muriel steamrollered on, still addressing Harry.

  ‘Squibs were usually shipped off to Muggle schools and encouraged to integrate into the Muggle community … much kinder than trying to find them a place in the wizarding world, where they must always be second class; but naturally Kendra Dumbledore wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her daughter go to a Muggle school –’

  ‘Ariana was delicate!’ said Doge desperately. ‘Her health was always too poor to permit her –’

  ‘To permit her to leave the house?’ cackled Muriel. ‘And yet she was never taken to St Mungo’s and no healer was ever summoned to see her!’

  ‘Really, Muriel, how you can possibly know whether –’

  ‘For your information, Elphias, my cousin Lancelot was a healer at St Mungo’s at the time, and he told my family in strictest confidence that Ariana had never been seen there. All most suspicious, Lancelot thought!’

  Doge looked to be on the verge of tears. Auntie Muriel, who seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, snapped her fingers for more champagne. Numbly Harry thought of how the Dursleys had once shut him up, locked him away, kept him out of sight, all for the crime of being a wizard. Had Dumbledore’s sister suffered the same fate in reverse: imprisoned for her lack of magic? And had Dumbledore truly left her to her fate while he went off to Hogwarts, to prove himself brilliant and talented?

  ‘Now, if Kendra hadn’t died first,’ Muriel resumed, ‘I’d have said that it was she who finished off Ariana –’

  ‘How can you, Muriel?’ groaned Doge. ‘A mother kill her own daughter? Think what you are saying!’

  ‘If the mother in question was capable of imprisoning her daughter for years on end, why not?’ shrugged Auntie Muriel. ‘But as I say, it doesn’t fit, because Kendra died before Ariana – of what, nobody ever seemed sure –’

  ‘Oh, no doubt Ariana murdered her,’ said Doge, with a brave attempt at scorn. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Yes, Ariana might have made a desperate bid for freedom and killed Kendra in the struggle,’ said Auntie Muriel thoughtfully. ‘Shake your head all you like, Elphias! You were at Ariana’s funeral, were you not?’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ said Doge, through trembling lips. ‘And a more desperately sad occasion I cannot remember. Albus was heartbroken –’

  ‘His heart wasn’t the only thing. Didn’t Aberforth break Albus’s nose halfway through the service?’

  If Doge had looked horrified before this, it was nothing to how he looked now. Muriel might have stabbed him. She cackled loudly and took another swig of champagne, which dribbled down her chin.

  ‘How do you –?’ croaked Doge.

  ‘My mother was friendly with old Bathilda Bagshot,’ said Auntie Muriel happily. ‘Bathilda described the whole thing to Mother while I was listening at the door. A coffin-side brawl! The way Bathilda told it, Aberforth shouted that it was all Albus’s fault that Ariana was dead and then punched him in the face. According to Bathilda, Albus did not even defend himself, and that’s odd enough in itself, Albus could have destroyed Aberforth in a duel with both hands tied behind his back.’

  Muriel swigged yet more champagne. The recitation of these old scandals seemed to elate her as much as they horrified Doge. Harry did not know what to think, what to believe: he wanted the truth, and yet all Doge did was sit there and bleat feebly that Ariana had been ill. Harry could hardly believe that Dumbledore would not have intervened if such cruelty was happening inside his own house, and yet there was undoubtedly something odd about the story.

  ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ Muriel said, hiccoughing slightly as she lowered her goblet. ‘I think Bathilda has spilled the beans to Rita Skeeter. All those hints in Skeeter’s interview about an important source close to the Dumbledores – goodness knows she was there all through the Ariana business and it would fit!’

  ‘Bathilda would never talk to Rita Skeeter!’ whispered Doge.

  ‘Bathilda Bagshot?’ Harry said. ‘The author of A History of Magic?’

  The name was printed on the front of one of Harry’s textbooks, though admittedly not one of the ones he had read most attentively.

  ‘Yes,’ said Doge, clutching at Harry’s question like a drowning man at a lifebelt. ‘A most gifted magical historian and an old friend of Albus’s.’

  ‘Quite gaga these days, I’ve heard,’ said Auntie Muriel cheerfully.

  ‘If that is so, it is even more dishonourable for Skeeter to have taken advantage of her,’ said Doge, ‘and no reliance can be placed on anything Bathilda may have said!’

  ‘Oh, there are ways of bringing back memories, and I’m sure Rita Skeeter knows them all,’ said Auntie Muriel. ‘But even if Bathilda’s completely cuckoo, I’m sure she’d still have old photographs, maybe even letters. She knew the Dumbledores for years … well worth a trip to Godric’s Hollow, I’d have thought.’

  Harry, who had been taking a sip of Butterbeer, choked. Doge banged him on the back as Harry coughed, looking at Auntie Muriel through streaming eyes. Once he had control of his voice again, he asked, ‘Bathilda Bagshot lives in Godric’s Hollow?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s been there forever! The Dumbledores moved there after Percival was imprisoned, and she was their neighbour.’

  ‘The Dumbledores lived in Godric’s Hollow?’

  ‘Yes, Barry, that’s what I just said,’ said Auntie Muriel testily.

  Harry felt drained, empty. Never once, in six years, had Dumbledore told Harry that they had both lived and lost loved ones in Godric’s Hollow. Why? Were Lily and James buried close to Dumbledore’s mother and sister? Had Dumbledore visited their graves, perhaps walked past Lily and James’s to do so? And he had never once told Harry … never bothered to say …

  And why it was so important, Harry could not explain, even to himself, yet he felt it had been tantamount to a lie not to tell him that they had this place, and these experiences, in common. He stared ahead of him, barely noticing what was going on around him, and did not realise that Hermione had appeared out of the crowd until she drew up a chair beside him.

  ‘I simply can’t dance any more,’ she panted, slipping off one of her shoes and rubbing the sole of her foot. ‘Ron’s gone looking to find more Butterbeers. It’s a bit odd, I’ve just seen Viktor storming away from Luna’s father, it looked like they’d been arguing –’ She dropped her voice, staring at him. ‘Harry, are you OK?’

  Harry did not know where to begin, but it did not matter. At that moment, something large and silver came falling through the canopy over the dance floor. Graceful and gleaming, the lynx landed lightly in the middle of the astonished dancers. Heads turned, as those nearest it froze, absurdly, in mid-dance. Then the Patronus’s mouth opened wide and it spoke in the loud, deep, slow voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt.

  ‘The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.’

  — CHAPTER NINE —

  A Place to Hide

  Everything seemed fuzzy, slow. Harry and Hermione jumped to their feet and drew their wands. Many people were only just realising that something strange had happened; heads were still turning towards the silver cat as it vanished. Silence spread outwards in cold ripples from the place where the Patronus had landed. Then somebody screamed.

  Harry and Hermione threw themselves into the panicking crowd. Guests were sprinting in all directions; many were Disapparating; the protective enchantments around The Burrow had broken.

  ‘Ron!’ Hermione cried. ‘Ron, where are you?’

  As they pushed their way across the dance floor, Harry saw cloaked and masked figures appearing in the crowd; then he saw Lupin and Tonks, their wands raised, and heard both of them shout ‘Protego!’, a cry that was echoed on all sides –

  ‘Ron! Ron!’ Hermione called, half sobbing as she and Harry were buffeted by terrified guests: Harry seized her hand to make sure they weren’t separated as a streak of light whizzed over their heads, whether a protective charm or something more sinister he did not know –

  And then Ron was there. He caught hold of Hermione’s free arm and Harry felt her turn on the spot; sight and sound were extinguished as darkness pressed in upon him; all he could feel was Hermione’s hand as he was squeezed through space and time, away from The Burrow, away from the descending Death Eaters, away, perhaps, from Voldemort himself …

  ‘Where are we?’ said Ron’s voice.

  Harry opened his eyes. For a moment he thought they had not left the wedding after all: they still seemed to be surrounded by people.

  ‘Tottenham Court Road,’ panted Hermione. ‘Walk, just walk, we need to find somewhere for you to change.’

  Harry did as she asked. They half walked, half ran up the wide, dark street thronged with late-night revellers and lined with closed shops, stars twinkling above them. A double-decker bus rumbled by and a group of merry pub-goers ogled them as they passed; Harry and Ron were still wearing dress robes.

  ‘Hermione, we haven’t got anything to change into,’ Ron told her, as a young woman burst into raucous giggles at the sight of him.

  ‘Why didn’t I make sure I had the Invisibility Cloak with me?’ said Harry, inwardly cursing his own stupidity. ‘All last year I kept it on me and –’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ve got the Cloak, I’ve got clothes for both of you,’ said Hermione. ‘Just try and act naturally until – this will do.’

  She led them down a side street, then into the shelter of a shadowy alleyway.

  ‘When you say you’ve got the Cloak, and clothes …’ said Harry, frowning at Hermione, who was carrying nothing except her small beaded handbag, in which she was now rummaging.

  ‘Yes, they’re here,’ said Hermione, and to Harry and Ron’s utter astonishment, she pulled out a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, some maroon socks and, finally, the silvery Invisibility Cloak.

  ‘How the ruddy hell –?’

  ‘Undetectable Extension Charm,’ said Hermione. ‘Tricky, but I think I’ve done it OK; anyway, I managed to fit everything we need in here.’ She gave the fragile-looking bag a little shake and it echoed like a cargo hold as a number of heavy objects rolled around inside it. ‘Oh, damn, that’ll be the books,’ she said, peering into it, ‘and I had them all stacked by subject … oh well … Harry, you’d better take the Invisibility Cloak. Ron, hurry up and change …’

  ‘When did you do all this?’ Harry asked, as Ron stripped off his robes.

  ‘I told you at The Burrow, I’ve had the essentials packed for days, you know, in case we needed to make a quick getaway. I packed your rucksack this morning, Harry, after you changed, and put it in here … I just had a feeling …’

  ‘You’re amazing, you are,’ said Ron, handing her his bundled-up robes.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hermione, managing a small smile as she pushed the robes into the bag. ‘Please, Harry, get that Cloak on!’

  Harry threw the Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders and pulled it up over his head, vanishing from sight. He was only just beginning to appreciate what had happened.

  ‘The others – everyone at the wedding –’

  ‘We can’t worry about that now,’ whispered Hermione. ‘It’s you they’re after, Harry, and we’ll just put everyone in even more danger by going back.’