‘Thank you very much for those wise words, Rapier,’ said Lee. ‘Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don’t know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: the next password will be “Mad-Eye”. Keep each other safe: keep faith. Goodnight.’

  The radio’s dial twirled and the lights behind the tuning panel went out. Harry, Ron and Hermione were still beaming. Hearing familiar, friendly voices was an extraordinary tonic; Harry had become so used to their isolation he had nearly forgotten that other people were resisting Voldemort. It was like waking from a long sleep.

  ‘Good, eh?’ said Ron happily.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Harry.

  ‘It’s so brave of them,’ sighed Hermione admiringly. ‘If they were found …’

  ‘Well, they keep on the move, don’t they?’ said Ron. ‘Like us.’

  ‘But did you hear what Fred said?’ asked Harry excitedly; now the broadcast was over, his thoughts turned again towards his all-consuming obsession. ‘He’s abroad! He’s still looking for the wand, I knew it!’

  ‘Harry –’

  ‘Come on, Hermione, why are you so determined not to admit it? Vol—’

  ‘HARRY, NO!’

  ‘—demort’s after the Elder Wand!’

  ‘The name’s Taboo!’ Ron bellowed, leaping to his feet as a loud crack sounded outside the tent. ‘I told you, Harry, I told you, we can’t say it any more – we’ve got to put the protection back around us – quickly – it’s how they find –’

  But Ron stopped talking, and Harry knew why. The Sneakoscope on the table had lit up and begun to spin; they could hear voices coming nearer and nearer: rough, excited voices. Ron pulled the Deluminator out of his pocket and clicked it: their lamps went out.

  ‘Come out of there with your hands up!’ came a rasping voice through the darkness. ‘We know you’re in there! You’ve got half a dozen wands pointing at you and we don’t care who we curse!’

  — CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE —

  Malfoy Manor

  Harry looked round at the other two, now mere outlines in the darkness. He saw Hermione point her wand, not towards the outside, but into his face; there was a bang, a burst of white light, and he buckled in agony, unable to see. He could feel his face swelling rapidly under his hands, as heavy footfalls surrounded him.

  ‘Get up, vermin.’

  Unknown hands dragged Harry roughly off the ground. Before he could stop them, someone had rummaged through his pockets and removed the blackthorn wand. Harry clutched at his excruciatingly painful face, which felt unrecognisable beneath his fingers, tight, swollen and puffy as though he had suffered some violent allergic reaction. His eyes had been reduced to slits through which he could barely see; his glasses fell off as he was bundled out of the tent; all he could make out were the blurred shapes of four or five people wrestling Ron and Hermione outside too.

  ‘Get – off – her!’ Ron shouted. There was the unmistakable sound of knuckles hitting flesh: Ron grunted in pain and Hermione screamed, ‘No! Leave him alone, leave him alone!’

  ‘Your boyfriend’s going to have worse than that done to him if he’s on my list,’ said the horribly familiar, rasping voice. ‘Delicious girl … what a treat … I do enjoy the softness of the skin …’

  Harry’s stomach turned over. He knew who this was: Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who was permitted to wear Death Eater robes in return for his hired savagery.

  ‘Search the tent!’ said another voice.

  Harry was thrown, face down, on to the ground. A thud told him that Ron had been cast down beside him. They could hear footsteps and crashes; the men were pushing over chairs inside the tent as they searched.

  ‘Now, let’s see who we’ve got,’ said Greyback’s gloating voice from overhead, and Harry was rolled over on to his back. A beam of wandlight fell into his face and Greyback laughed.

  ‘I’ll be needing Butterbeer to wash this one down. What happened to you, ugly?’

  Harry did not answer immediately.

  ‘I said,’ repeated Greyback, and Harry received a blow to the diaphragm that made him double over in pain, ‘what happened to you?’

  ‘Stung,’ Harry muttered. ‘Been stung.’

  ‘Yeah, looks like it,’ said a second voice.

  ‘What’s your name?’ snarled Greyback.

  ‘Dudley,’ said Harry.

  ‘And your first name?’

  ‘I – Vernon. Vernon Dudley.’

  ‘Check the list, Scabior,’ said Greyback, and Harry heard him move sideways to look down at Ron, instead. ‘And what about you, Ginger?’

  ‘Stan Shunpike,’ said Ron.

  ‘Like ’ell you are,’ said the man called Scabior. ‘We know Stan Shunpike, ’e’s put a bit of work our way.’

  There was another thud.

  ‘I’b Bardy,’ said Ron, and Harry could tell that his mouth was full of blood. ‘Bardy Weadley.’

  ‘A Weasley?’ rasped Greyback. ‘So you’re related to blood traitors even if you’re not a Mudblood. And lastly, your pretty little friend …’ The relish in his voice made Harry’s flesh crawl.

  ‘Easy, Greyback,’ said Scabior, over the jeering of the others.

  ‘Oh, I’m not going to bite just yet. We’ll see if she’s a bit quicker at remembering her name than Barny. Who are you, girly?’

  ‘Penelope Clearwater,’ said Hermione. She sounded terrified, but convincing.

  ‘What’s your Blood Status?’

  ‘Half-blood,’ said Hermione.

  ‘Easy enough to check,’ said Scabior. ‘But the ’ole lot of ’em look like they could still be ’Ogwarts age –’

  ‘We’b lebt,’ said Ron.

  ‘Left, ’ave you, Ginger?’ said Scabior. ‘And you decided to go camping? And you thought, just for a laugh, you’d use the Dark Lord’s name?’

  ‘Nod a laugh,’ said Ron. ‘Aggiden.’

  ‘Accident?’ There was more jeering laughter.

  ‘You know who used to like using the Dark Lord’s name, Weasley?’ growled Greyback. ‘The Order of the Phoenix. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘Doh.’

  ‘Well, they don’t show the Dark Lord proper respect, so the name’s been Tabooed. A few Order members have been tracked that way. We’ll see. Bind them up with the other two prisoners!’

  Someone yanked Harry up by the hair, dragged him a short way, pushed him down into a sitting position, then started binding him back-to-back with other people. Harry was still half-blind, barely able to see anything through his puffed-up eyes. When at last the man tying them had walked away, Harry whispered to the other prisoners.

  ‘Anyone still got a wand?’

  ‘No,’ said Ron and Hermione from either side of him.

  ‘This is all my fault. I said the name, I’m sorry –’

  ‘Harry?’

  It was a new, but familiar, voice, and it came from directly behind Harry, from the person tied to Hermione’s left.

  ‘Dean?’

  ‘It is you! If they find out who they’ve got –! They’re Snatchers, they’re only looking for truants to sell for gold –’

  ‘Not a bad little haul for one night,’ Greyback was saying, as a pair of hobnailed boots marched close by Harry and they heard more crashes from inside the tent. ‘A Mudblood, a runaway goblin and three truants. You checked their names on the list yet, Scabior?’ he roared.

  ‘Yeah. There’s no Vernon Dudley on ’ere, Greyback.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Greyback. ‘That’s interesting.’

  He crouched down beside Harry, who saw, through the infinitesimal gap left between his swollen eyelids, a face covered in matted, grey hair and whiskers, with pointed brown teeth and sores at the corners of his mouth. Greyback smelled as he had done at the top of the Tower where Dumbledore had died: of dirt, sweat and blood.

  ‘So you aren’t wanted, then, Vernon? Or are you on that list under a different name? What house were you in at Hogwarts?’

  ‘Slytherin,’ said Harry automatically.

  ‘Funny ’ow they all thinks we wants to ’ear that,’ jeered Scabior out of the shadows. ‘But none of ’em can tell us where the common room is.’

  ‘It’s in the dungeons,’ said Harry clearly. ‘You enter through the wall. It’s full of skulls and stuff and it’s under the lake, so the light’s all green.’

  There was a short pause.

  ‘Well, well, looks like we really ’ave caught a little Slytherin,’ said Scabior. ‘Good for you, Vernon, ’cause there ain’t a lot of Mudblood Slytherins. Who’s your father?’

  ‘He works at the Ministry,’ Harry lied. He knew that his whole story would collapse with the smallest investigation, but on the other hand, he only had until his face regained its usual appearance before the game was up in any case. ‘Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.’

  ‘You know what, Greyback,’ said Scabior. ‘I think there is a Dudley in there.’

  Harry could barely breathe: could luck, sheer luck, get them safely out of this?

  ‘Well, well,’ said Greyback, and Harry could hear the tiniest note of trepidation in that callous voice, and knew that Greyback was wondering whether he had indeed just attacked and bound the son of a Ministry official. Harry’s heart was pounding against the ropes around his ribs; he would not have been surprised to know that Greyback could see it. ‘If you’re telling the truth, ugly, you’ve got nothing to fear from a trip to the Ministry. I expect your father’ll reward us just for picking you up.’

  ‘But,’ said Harry, his mouth bone dry, ‘if you just let us –’

  ‘Hey!’ came a shout from inside the tent. ‘Look at this, Greyback!’

  A dark figure came bustling towards them, and Harry saw a glint of silver in the light of their wands. They had found Gryffindor’s sword.

  ‘Ve-e-ry nice,’ said Greyback appreciatively, taking it from his companion. ‘Oh, very nice indeed. Looks goblin-made, that. Where did you get something like this?’

  ‘It’s my father’s,’ Harry lied, hoping against hope that it was too dark for Greyback to see the name etched just below the hilt. ‘We borrowed it to cut firewood –’

  ‘’Ang on a minute, Greyback! Look at this, in the Prophet!’

  As Scabior said it, Harry’s scar, which was stretched tight across his distended forehead, burned savagely. More clearly than he could make out anything around him, he saw a towering building, a grim fortress, jet black and forbidding; Voldemort’s thoughts had suddenly become razor-sharp again; he was gliding towards the gigantic building with a sense of calmly euphoric purpose …

  So close … so close …

  With a huge effort of will, Harry closed his mind to Voldemort’s thoughts, pulling himself back to where he sat, tied to Ron, Hermione, Dean and Griphook in the darkness, listening to Greyback and Scabior.

  ‘“’Ermione Granger,”’ Scabior was saying, ‘“the Mudblood who is known to be travelling with ’Arry Potter.”’

  Harry’s scar burned in the silence, but he made a supreme effort to keep himself present, not to slip into Voldemort’s mind. He heard the creak of Greyback’s boots as he crouched down in front of Hermione.

  ‘You know what, little girly? This picture looks a hell of a lot like you.’

  ‘It isn’t! It isn’t me!’

  Hermione’s terrified squeak was as good as a confession.

  ‘“… known to be travelling with Harry Potter”,’ repeated Greyback quietly.

  A stillness had settled over the scene. Harry’s scar was exquisitely painful, but he struggled with all his strength against the pull of Voldemort’s thoughts: it had never been so important to remain in his own right mind.

  ‘Well, this changes things, doesn’t it?’ whispered Greyback.

  Nobody spoke: Harry sensed the gang of Snatchers watching, frozen, and felt Hermione’s arm trembling against his. Greyback got up and took a couple of steps to where Harry sat, crouching down again to stare closely at his misshapen features.

  ‘What’s that on your forehead, Vernon?’ he asked softly, his breath foul in Harry’s nostrils as he pressed a filthy finger to the taut scar.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ Harry yelled; he could not stop himself; he thought he might be sick from the pain of it.

  ‘I thought you wore glasses, Potter?’ breathed Greyback.

  ‘I found glasses!’ yelped one of the Snatchers skulking in the background. ‘There was glasses in the tent, Greyback, wait –’

  And seconds later Harry’s glasses had been rammed back on to his face. The Snatchers were closing in, now, peering at him.

  ‘It is!’ rasped Greyback. ‘We’ve caught Potter!’

  They all took several steps backwards, stunned by what they had done. Harry, still fighting to remain present inside his own splitting head, could think of nothing to say: fragmented visions were breaking across the surface of his mind –

  … he was gliding around the high walls of the black fortress –

  No, he was Harry, tied up and wandless, in grave danger –

  … looking up, up to the topmost window, the highest tower –

  He was Harry, and they were discussing his fate in low voices –

  … time to fly –

  ‘… to the Ministry?’

  ‘To hell with the Ministry,’ growled Greyback. ‘They’ll take the credit, and we won’t get a look in. I say we take him straight to You-Know-Who.’

  ‘Will you summon ’im? ’Ere?’ said Scabior, sounding awed, terrified.

  ‘No,’ snarled Greyback, ‘I haven’t got – they say he’s using the Malfoys’ place as a base. We’ll take the boy there.’

  Harry thought he knew why Greyback was not calling Voldemort. The werewolf might be allowed to wear Death Eater robes when they wanted to use him, but only Voldemort’s inner circle were branded with the Dark Mark: Greyback had not been granted this highest honour.

  Harry’s scar seared again –

  … and he rose into the night, flying straight up to the window at the very top of the tower –

  ‘… completely sure it’s ’im? ’Cause if it ain’t, Greyback, we’re dead.’

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ roared Greyback, covering his moment of inadequacy. ‘I say that’s Potter, and him plus his wand, that’s two hundred thousand Galleons right there! But if you’re too gutless to come along, any of you, it’s all for me, and with any luck, I’ll get the girl thrown in!’

  … the window was the merest slit in the black rock, not big enough for a man to enter … a skeletal figure was just visible through it, curled beneath a blanket … dead, or sleeping …?

  ‘All right!’ said Scabior. ‘All right, we’re in! And what about the rest of ’em, Greyback, what’ll we do with ’em?’

  ‘Might as well take the lot. We’ve got two Mudbloods, that’s another ten Galleons. Give me the sword, as well. If they’re rubies, that’s another small fortune right there.’

  The prisoners were dragged to their feet. Harry could hear Hermione’s breathing, fast and terrified.

  ‘Grab hold, and make it tight. I’ll do Potter!’ said Greyback, seizing a fistful of Harry’s hair; Harry could feel his long, yellow nails scratching his scalp. ‘On three! One – two – three –’

  They Disapparated, pulling the prisoners with them. Harry struggled, trying to throw off Greyback’s hand, but it was hopeless: Ron and Hermione were squeezed tightly against him on either side, he could not separate from the group, and as the breath was squeezed out of him his scar seared more painfully still –

  … as he forced himself through the slit of a window like a snake and landed, lightly as vapour, inside the cell-like room –

  The prisoners lurched into one another as they landed in a country lane. Harry’s eyes, still puffy, took a moment to acclimatise, then he saw a pair of wrought-iron gates at the foot of what looked like a long drive. He experienced the tiniest trickle of relief. The worst had not happened yet: Voldemort was not here. He was, Harry knew, for he was fighting to resist the vision, in some strange, fortress-like place, at the top of a tower. How long it would take Voldemort to get to this place, once he knew that Harry was here, was another matter …

  One of the Snatchers strode to the gates and shook them.

  ‘How do we get in? They’re locked, Greyback, I can’t – blimey!’

  He whipped his hands away in fright. The iron was contorting, twisting itself out of the abstract furls and coils into a frightening face, which spoke in a clanging, echoing voice: ‘State your purpose!’

  ‘We’ve got Potter!’ Greyback roared triumphantly. ‘We’ve captured Harry Potter!’

  The gates swung open.

  ‘Come on!’ said Greyback to his men, and the prisoners were shunted through the gates and up the drive, between high hedges that muffled their footsteps. Harry saw a ghostly white shape above him, and realised it was an albino peacock. He stumbled and was dragged on to his feet by Greyback; now he was staggering along sideways, tied back-to-back to the four other prisoners. Closing his puffy eyes he allowed the pain in his scar to overcome him for a moment, wanting to know what Voldemort was doing, whether he knew yet that Harry was caught –

  … the emaciated figure stirred beneath its thin blanket and rolled over towards him, eyes opening in a skull of a face … the frail man sat up, great sunken eyes fixed upon him, upon Voldemort, and then he smiled. Most of his teeth were gone …

  ‘So, you have come. I thought you would … one day. But your journey was pointless. I never had it.’

  ‘You lie!’

  As Voldemort’s anger throbbed inside him, Harry’s scar threatened to burst with pain, and he wrenched his mind back to his own body, fighting to remain present as the prisoners were pushed over gravel.