He barely made it: bolting the door behind him with trembling hands, he grasped his pounding head and fell to the floor, then, in an explosion of agony, he felt the rage that did not belong to him possess his soul, saw a long room, lit only by firelight, and the great, blond Death Eater on the floor, screaming and writhing, and a slighter figure standing over him, wand outstretched, while Harry spoke in a high, cold, merciless voice.

  ‘More, Rowle, or shall we end it and feed you to Nagini? Lord Voldemort is not sure that he will forgive this time … You called me back for this, to tell me that Harry Potter has escaped again? Draco, give Rowle another taste of our displeasure … do it, or feel my wrath yourself!’

  A log fell in the fire: flames reared, their light darting across a terrified, pointed white face – with a sense of emerging from deep water Harry drew heaving breaths and opened his eyes.

  He was spread-eagled on the cold black marble floor, his nose inches from one of the silver serpent tails that supported the large bathtub. He sat up. Malfoy’s gaunt, petrified face seemed branded on the inside of his eyes. Harry felt sickened by what he had seen, by the use to which Draco was now being put by Voldemort.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and Harry jumped as Hermione’s voice rang out.

  ‘Harry, do you want your toothbrush? I’ve got it here.’

  ‘Yeah, great, thanks,’ he said, fighting to keep his voice casual as he stood up to let her in.

  — CHAPTER TEN —

  Kreacher’s Tale

  Harry woke early next morning, wrapped in a sleeping bag on the drawing-room floor. A chink of sky was visible between the heavy curtains: it was the cool, clear blue of watered ink, somewhere between night and dawn, and everything was quiet except for Ron and Hermione’s slow, deep breathing. Harry glanced over at the dark shapes they made on the floor beside him. Ron had had a fit of gallantry and insisted that Hermione sleep on the cushions from the sofa, so that her silhouette was raised above his. Her arm curved to the floor, her fingers inches from Ron’s. Harry wondered whether they had fallen asleep holding hands. The idea made him feel strangely lonely.

  He looked up at the shadowy ceiling, the cobwebbed chandelier. Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been standing in the sunlight at the entrance to the marquee, waiting to show in wedding guests. It seemed a lifetime away. What was going to happen now? He lay on the floor and he thought of the Horcruxes, of the daunting, complex mission Dumbledore had left him … Dumbledore …

  The grief that had possessed him since Dumbledore’s death felt different now. The accusations he had heard from Muriel at the wedding seemed to have nested in his brain, like diseased things, infecting his memories of the wizard he had idolised. Could Dumbledore have let such things happen? Had he been like Dudley, content to watch neglect and abuse as long as it did not affect him? Could he have turned his back on a sister who was being imprisoned and hidden?

  Harry thought of Godric’s Hollow, of graves Dumbledore had never mentioned there; he thought of mysterious objects left, without explanation, in Dumbledore’s will, and resentment swelled in the darkness. Why hadn’t Dumbledore told him? Why hadn’t he explained? Had Dumbledore actually cared about Harry at all? Or had Harry been nothing more than a tool to be polished and honed, but not trusted, never confided in?

  Harry could not stand lying there with nothing but bitter thoughts for company. Desperate for something to do, for distraction, he slipped out of his sleeping bag, picked up his wand and crept out of the room. On the landing he whispered, ‘Lumos,’ and started to climb the stairs by wandlight.

  On the second landing was the bedroom in which he and Ron had slept last time they had been here; he glanced into it. The wardrobe doors stood open and the bedclothes had been ripped back. Harry remembered the overturned troll leg downstairs. Somebody had searched the house since the Order had left. Snape? Or perhaps Mundungus, who had pilfered plenty from this house both before and after Sirius died? Harry’s gaze wandered to the portrait that sometimes contained Phineas Nigellus Black, Sirius’s great-great-grandfather, but it was empty, showing nothing but a stretch of muddy backdrop. Phineas Nigellus was evidently spending the night in the Headmaster’s study at Hogwarts.

  Harry continued up the stairs until he reached the topmost landing, where there were only two doors. The one facing him bore a nameplate reading Sirius. Harry had never entered his godfather’s bedroom before. He pushed open the door, holding his wand high to cast light as widely as possible.

  The room was spacious and must, once, have been handsome. There was a large bed with a carved wooden headboard, a tall window obscured by long velvet curtains and a chandelier thickly coated in dust, with candle stubs still resting in its sockets, solid wax hanging in frost-like drips. A fine film of dust covered the pictures on the walls and the bed’s headboard; a spider’s web stretched between the chandelier and the top of the large wooden wardrobe and as Harry moved deeper into the room, he heard a scurrying of disturbed mice.

  The teenaged Sirius had plastered the walls with so many posters and pictures that little of the walls’ silvery-grey silk was visible. Harry could only assume that Sirius’s parents had been unable to remove the Permanent Sticking Charm that kept them on the wall, because he was sure they would not have appreciated their eldest son’s taste in decoration. Sirius seemed to have gone out of his way to annoy his parents. There were several large Gryffindor banners, faded scarlet and gold, just to underline his difference from all the rest of the Slytherin family. There were many pictures of Muggle motorcycles, and also (Harry had to admire Sirius’s nerve) several posters of bikini-clad Muggle girls; Harry could tell that they were Muggles because they remained quite stationary within their pictures, faded smiles and glazed eyes frozen on the paper. This was in contrast to the only wizarding photograph on the walls, which was a picture of four Hogwarts students standing arm in arm, laughing at the camera.

  With a leap of pleasure, Harry recognised his father; his untidy, black hair stuck up at the back like Harry’s and he, too, wore glasses. Beside him was Sirius, carelessly handsome, his slightly arrogant face so much younger and happier than Harry had ever seen it alive. To Sirius’s right stood Pettigrew, more than a head shorter, plump and watery-eyed, flushed with pleasure at his inclusion in this coolest of gangs, with the much admired rebels that James and Sirius had been. On James’s left was Lupin, even then a little shabby-looking, but he had the same air of delighted surprise at finding himself liked and included … or was it simply because Harry knew how it had been, that he saw these things in the picture? He tried to take it from the wall; it was his, now, after all – Sirius had left him everything – but it would not budge. Sirius had taken no chances in preventing his parents from redecorating his room.

  Harry looked around at the floor. The sky outside was growing brighter: a shaft of light revealed bits of paper, books and small objects scattered over the carpet. Evidently Sirius’s bedroom had been searched too, although its contents seemed to have been judged mostly, if not entirely, worthless. A few of the books had been shaken roughly enough to part company with their covers, and sundry pages littered the floor. Harry bent down, picked up a few of the pieces of paper and examined them. He recognised one as part of an old edition of A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot, and another as belonging to a motorcycle maintenance manual. The third was handwritten and crumpled: he smoothed it out.

  Dear Padfoot,

  Thank you, thank you, for Harry’s birthday present! It was his favourite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I’m enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course, James thought it was so funny, says he’s going to be a great Quidditch player, but we’ve had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don’t take our eyes off him when he gets going.

  We had a very quiet birthday tea, just us and old Bathilda, who has always been sweet to us and who dotes on Harry. We were so sorry you couldn’t come, but the Order’s got to come first and Harry’s not old enough to know it’s his birthday anyway! James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell – also, Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance of little excursions. If you could visit, it would cheer him up so much. Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard.

  Bathilda drops in most days, she’s a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore, I’m not sure he’d be pleased if he knew! I don’t know how much to believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore

  Harry’s extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat down.

  He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g’s the same way he did: he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son.

  Impatiently brushing away the wetness in his eyes, he reread the letter, this time concentrating on the meaning. It was like listening to a half-remembered voice.

  They had had a cat … perhaps it had perished, like his parents, at Godric’s Hollow … or else fled when there was nobody left to feed it … Sirius had bought him his first broomstick … his parents had known Bathilda Bagshot; had Dumbledore introduced them? Dumbledore’s still got his Invisibility Cloak … there was something funny there …

  Harry paused, pondering his mother’s words. Why had Dumbledore taken James’s Invisibility Cloak? Harry distinctly remembered his Headmaster telling him, years before, ‘I don’t need a cloak to become invisible.’ Perhaps some less gifted Order member had needed its assistance, and Dumbledore had acted as carrier? Harry passed on …

  Wormy was here … Pettigrew, the traitor, had seemed ‘down’, had he? Was he aware that he was seeing James and Lily alive for the last time?

  And finally Bathilda again, who told incredible stories about Dumbledore: it seems incredible that Dumbledore –

  That Dumbledore what? But there were any number of things that would seem incredible about Dumbledore; that he had once received bottom marks in a Transfiguration test, for instance, or had taken up goat-charming like Aberforth …

  Harry got to his feet and scanned the floor: perhaps the rest of the letter was here somewhere. He seized papers, treating them, in his eagerness, with as little consideration as the original searcher; he pulled open drawers, shook out books, stood on a chair to run his hand over the top of the wardrobe and crawled under the bed and armchair.

  At last, lying face down on the floor he spotted what looked like a torn piece of paper under the chest of drawers. When he pulled it out, it proved to be most of the photograph Lily had described in her letter. A black-haired baby was zooming in and out of the picture on a tiny broom, roaring with laughter, and a pair of legs that must have belonged to James were chasing after him. Harry tucked the photograph into his pocket with Lily’s letter and continued to look for the second sheet.

  After another quarter of an hour, however, he was forced to conclude that the rest of his mother’s letter was gone. Had it simply been lost in the sixteen years that had elapsed since it had been written, or had it been taken by whoever had searched the room? Harry read the first sheet again, this time looking for clues as to what might have made the second sheet valuable. His toy broomstick could hardly be considered interesting to the Death Eaters … the only potentially useful thing he could see here was possible information on Dumbledore. It seems incredible that Dumbledore – what?

  ‘Harry? Harry! Harry!’

  ‘I’m here!’ he called. ‘What’s happened?’

  There was a clatter of footsteps outside the door, and Hermione burst inside.

  ‘We woke up and didn’t know where you were!’ she said breathlessly. She turned and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Ron! I’ve found him!’

  Ron’s annoyed voice echoed distantly from several floors below.

  ‘Good! Tell him from me he’s a git!’

  ‘Harry, don’t just disappear, please, we were terrified! Why did you come up here, anyway?’ She gazed around the ransacked room. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Look what I’ve just found.’

  He held out his mother’s letter. Hermione took it and read it while Harry watched her. When she reached the end of the page, she looked up at him.

  ‘Oh, Harry …’

  ‘And there’s this, too.’

  He handed her the torn photograph, and Hermione smiled at the baby zooming in and out of sight on the toy broom.

  ‘I’ve been looking for the rest of the letter,’ Harry said, ‘but it’s not here.’

  Hermione glanced around.

  ‘Did you make all this mess, or was some of it done when you got here?’

  ‘Someone had searched before me,’ said Harry.

  ‘I thought so. Every room I looked into on the way up had been disturbed. What were they after, do you think?’

  ‘Information on the Order, if it was Snape.’

  ‘But you’d think he’d already have all he needed, I mean, he was in the Order, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well then,’ said Harry, keen to discuss his theory, ‘what about information on Dumbledore? The second page of this letter, for instance. You know this Bathilda my mum mentions, you know who she is?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bathilda Bagshot, the author of –’

  ‘A History of Magic,’ said Hermione, looking interested. ‘So your parents knew her? She was an incredible magical historian.’

  ‘And she’s still alive,’ said Harry, ‘and she lives in Godric’s Hollow, Ron’s Auntie Muriel was talking about her at the wedding. She knew Dumbledore’s family too. Be pretty interesting to talk to, wouldn’t she?’

  There was a little too much understanding in the smile Hermione gave him for Harry’s liking. He took back the letter and the photograph and tucked them inside the pouch around his neck, so as not to have to look at her and give himself away.

  ‘I understand why you’d love to talk to her about your mum and dad, and Dumbledore too,’ said Hermione. ‘But, that wouldn’t really help us in our search for the Horcruxes, would it?’ Harry did not answer, and she rushed on, ‘Harry, I know you really want to go to Godric’s Hollow, but I’m scared … I’m scared at how easily those Death Eaters found us yesterday. It just makes me feel more than ever that we ought to avoid the place where your parents are buried, I’m sure they’d be expecting you to visit it.’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ Harry said, still avoiding looking at her. ‘Muriel said stuff about Dumbledore at the wedding. I want to know the truth …’

  He told Hermione everything that Muriel had told him. When he had finished, Hermione said, ‘Of course, I can see why that’s upset you, Harry –’

  ‘– I’m not upset,’ he lied, ‘I’d just like to know whether or not it’s true or –’

  ‘Harry, do you really think you’ll get the truth from a malicious old woman like Muriel, or from Rita Skeeter? How can you believe them? You knew Dumbledore!’

  ‘I thought I did,’ he muttered.

  ‘But you know how much truth there was in everything Rita wrote about you! Doge is right, how can you let these people tarnish your memories of Dumbledore?’

  He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt. There it was again: choose what to believe. He wanted the truth. Why was everybody so determined that he should not get it?

  ‘Shall we go down to the kitchen?’ Hermione suggested after a little pause. ‘Find something for breakfast?’

  He agreed, but grudgingly, and followed her out on to the landing and past the second door that led off it. There were deep scratch marks in the paintwork below a small sign that he had not noticed in the dark. He paused at the top of the stairs to read it. It was a pompous, little sign, neatly lettered by hand, the sort of thing that Percy Weasley might have stuck on his bedroom door:

  Do Not Enter

  Without the Express Permission of

  Regulus Arcturus Black

  Excitement trickled through Harry, but he was not immediately sure why. He read the sign again. Hermione was already a flight of stairs below him.

  ‘Hermione,’ he said, and he was surprised that his voice was so calm. ‘Come back up here.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘R.A.B. I think I’ve found him.’

  There was a gasp and then Hermione ran back up the stairs.

  ‘In your mum’s letter? But I didn’t see –’

  Harry shook his head, pointing at Regulus’s sign. She read it, then clutched Harry’s arm so tightly that he winced.

  ‘Sirius’s brother?’ she whispered.

  ‘He was a Death Eater,’ said Harry, ‘Sirius told me about him, he joined up when he was really young and then got cold feet and tried to leave – so they killed him.’

  ‘That fits!’ gasped Hermione. ‘If he was a Death Eater, he had access to Voldemort, and if he became disenchanted then he would have wanted to bring Voldemort down!’

  She released Harry, leaned over the banister and screamed, ‘Ron! RON! Get up here, quick!’

  Ron appeared, panting, a minute later, his wand ready in his hand.

  ‘What’s up? If it’s massive spiders again, I want breakfast before I –’