‘It’s all righ’, Fang – it’s all righ’!’ yelled Hagrid, but the great boarhound had taken flight as slivers of china flew like shrapnel through the air, and Hagrid pounded off after the terrified dog, leaving Harry alone.

  He forged on through the trembling passages, his wand at the ready, and for the length of one corridor the little painted knight, Sir Cadogan, rushed from painting to painting beside him, clanking along in his armour, screaming encouragement, his fat little pony cantering behind him.

  ‘Braggarts and rogues, dogs and scoundrels, drive them out, Harry Potter, see them off!’

  Harry hurtled round a corner and found Fred and a small knot of students, including Lee Jordan and Hannah Abbott, standing beside another empty plinth, whose statue had concealed a secret passageway. Their wands were drawn and they were listening at the concealed hole.

  ‘Nice night for it!’ Fred shouted, as the castle quaked again, and Harry sprinted by, elated and terrified in equal measure. Along yet another corridor he dashed, and then there were owls everywhere, and Mrs Norris was hissing and trying to bat them with her paws, no doubt to return them to their proper place …

  ‘Potter!’

  Aberforth Dumbledore stood blocking the corridor ahead, his wand held ready.

  ‘I’ve had hundreds of kids thundering through my pub, Potter!’

  ‘I know, we’re evacuating,’ Harry said. ‘Voldemort’s –’

  ‘– attacking because they haven’t handed you over, yeah,’ said Aberforth, ‘I’m not deaf, the whole of Hogsmeade heard him. And it never occurred to any of you to keep a few Slytherins hostage? There are kids of Death Eaters you’ve just sent to safety. Wouldn’t it have been a bit smarter to keep ’em here?’

  ‘It wouldn’t stop Voldemort,’ said Harry, ‘and your brother would never have done it.’

  Aberforth grunted and tore away in the opposite direction.

  Your brother would never have done it … well, it was the truth, Harry thought, as he ran on again; Dumbledore, who had defended Snape for so long, would never have held students ransom …

  And then he skidded round a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and fury he saw them: Ron and Hermione, both with their arms full of large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Ron with a broomstick under his arm.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Harry shouted.

  ‘Chamber of Secrets,’ said Ron.

  ‘Chamber – what?’ said Harry, coming to an unsteady halt before them.

  ‘It was Ron, all Ron’s idea!’ said Hermione breathlessly. ‘Wasn’t it absolutely brilliant? There we were, after you left, and I said to Ron, even if we find the other one, how are we going to get rid of it? We still hadn’t got rid of the cup! And then he thought of it! The Basilisk!’

  ‘What the –?’

  ‘Something to get rid of Horcruxes,’ said Ron simply.

  Harry’s eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Ron and Hermione’s arms: great, curved fangs torn, he now realised, from the skull of a dead Basilisk.

  ‘But how did you get in there?’ he asked, staring from the fangs to Ron. ‘You need to speak Parseltongue!’

  ‘He did!’ whispered Hermione. ‘Show him, Ron!’

  Ron made a horrible, strangled hissing noise.

  ‘It’s what you did to open the locket,’ he told Harry apologetically. ‘I had to have a few goes to get it right, but,’ he shrugged modestly, ‘we got there in the end.’

  ‘He was amazing!’ said Hermione. ‘Amazing!’

  ‘So …’ Harry was struggling to keep up. ‘So …’

  ‘So we’re another Horcrux down,’ said Ron, and from under his jacket he pulled the mangled remains of Hufflepuff ’s cup. ‘Hermione stabbed it. Thought she should. She hasn’t had the pleasure yet.’

  ‘Genius!’ yelled Harry.

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Ron, though he looked delighted with himself. ‘So what’s new with you?’

  As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: all three of them looked up as dust fell from the ceiling and they heard a distant scream.

  ‘I know what the diadem looks like, and I know where it is,’ said Harry, talking fast. ‘He hid it exactly where I hid my old Potions book, where everyone’s been hiding stuff for centuries. He thought he was the only one to find it. Come on.’

  As the walls trembled again, he led the other two back through the concealed entrance and down the staircase into the Room of Requirement. It was empty except for three women: Ginny, Tonks, and an elderly witch wearing a moth-eaten hat, whom Harry recognised immediately as Neville’s grandmother.

  ‘Ah, Potter,’ she said crisply, as if she had been waiting for him. ‘You can tell us what’s going on.’

  ‘Is everyone OK?’ said Ginny and Tonks together.

  ‘’S far as we know,’ said Harry. ‘Are there still people in the passage to the Hog’s Head?’

  He knew that the Room would not be able to transform while there were still users inside it.

  ‘I was the last to come through,’ said Mrs Longbottom. ‘I sealed it, I think it unwise to leave it open now Aberforth has left his pub. Have you seen my grandson?’

  ‘He’s fighting,’ said Harry. ‘Naturally,’ said the old lady proudly. ‘Excuse me, I must go and assist him.’

  With surprising speed, she trotted off towards the stone steps. Harry looked at Tonks. ‘I thought you were supposed to be with Teddy at your mother’s?’

  ‘I couldn’t stand not knowing –’ Tonks looked anguished. ‘She’ll look after him – have you seen Remus?’

  ‘He was planning to lead a group of fighters into the grounds –’

  Without another word, Tonks sped off.

  ‘Ginny,’ said Harry, ‘I’m sorry, but we need you to leave too. Just for a bit. Then you can come back in.’

  Ginny looked simply delighted to leave her sanctuary.

  ‘And then you can come back in!’ he shouted after her, as she ran up the steps after Tonks.

  ‘You’ve got to come back in!’

  ‘Hang on a moment!’ said Ron sharply. ‘We’ve forgotten someone!’

  ‘Who?’ asked Hermione.

  ‘The house-elves, they’ll all be down in the kitchen, won’t they?’

  ‘You mean we ought to get them fighting?’ asked Harry.

  ‘No,’ said Ron seriously, ‘I mean we should tell them to get out. We don’t want any more Dobbys, do we? We can’t order them to die for us –’

  There was a clatter as the Basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermione’s arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermione off her feet.

  ‘Is this the moment?’ Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. ‘OI! There’s a war going on here!’

  Ron and Hermione broke apart, their arms still around each other.

  ‘I know, mate,’ said Ron, who looked as though he had recently been hit on the back of the head with a Bludger, ‘so it’s now or never, isn’t it?’

  ‘Never mind that, what about the Horcrux?’ Harry shouted. ‘D’you think you could just – just hold it in until we’ve got the diadem?’

  ‘Yeah – right – sorry –’ said Ron, and he and Hermione set about gathering up fangs, both pink in the face.

  It was clear, as the three of them stepped back into the corridor upstairs, that in the minutes that they had spent in the Room of Requirement the situation within the castle had deteriorated severely: the walls and ceiling were shaking worse than ever; dust filled the air and through the nearest window Harry saw bursts of green and red light so close to the foot of the castle that he knew the Death Eaters must be very near to entering the place. Looking down, Harry saw Grawp the giant meandering past, swinging what looked like a stone gargoyle torn from the roof and roaring his displeasure.

  ‘Let’s hope he steps on some of them!’ said Ron, as more screams echoed from close by.

  ‘As long as it’s not any of our lot!’ said a voice: Harry turned and saw Ginny and Tonks, both with their wands drawn at the next window, which was missing several panes. Even as he watched, Ginny sent a well-aimed jinx into a crowd of fighters below.

  ‘Good girl!’ roared a figure running through the dust towards them, and Harry saw Aberforth again, his grey hair flying as he led a small group of students past. ‘They look like they might be breaching the North Battlements, they’ve brought giants of their own!’

  ‘Have you seen Remus?’ Tonks called after him.

  ‘He was duelling Dolohov,’ shouted Aberforth, ‘haven’t seen him since!’

  ‘Tonks,’ said Ginny, ‘Tonks, I’m sure he’s OK –’

  But Tonks had run off into the dust after Aberforth.

  Ginny turned, helpless, to Harry, Ron and Hermione.

  ‘They’ll be all right,’ said Harry, though he knew they were empty words. ‘Ginny, we’ll be back in a moment, just keep out of the way, keep safe – come on!’ he said to Ron and Hermione, and they ran back to the stretch of wall beyond which the Room of Requirement was waiting to do the bidding of the next entrant.

  I need the place where everything is hidden, Harry begged of it, inside his head, and the door materialised on their third run past.

  The furore of the battle died the moment they crossed the threshold and closed the door behind them: all was silent. They were in a place the size of a cathedral with the appearance of a city, its towering walls built of objects hidden by thousands of long-gone students.

  ‘And he never realised anyone could get in?’ said Ron, his voice echoing in the silence.

  ‘He thought he was the only one,’ said Harry. ‘Too bad for him I’ve had to hide stuff in my time … this way,’ he added, ‘I think it’s down here …’

  He passed the stuffed troll and the Vanishing Cabinet Draco Malfoy had mended last year with such disastrous consequences, then hesitated, looking up and down aisles of junk; he could not remember where to go next …

  ‘Accio diadem,’ cried Hermione in desperation, but nothing flew through the air towards them. It seemed that, like the vault at Gringotts, the room would not yield its hidden objects that easily.

  ‘Let’s split up,’ Harry told the other two. ‘Look for a stone bust of an old man wearing a wig and a tiara! It’s standing on a cupboard and it’s definitely somewhere near here …’

  They sped off up adjacent aisles; Harry could hear the others’ footsteps echoing through the towering piles of junk, of bottles, hats, crates, chairs, books, weapons, broomsticks, bats …

  ‘Somewhere near here,’ Harry muttered to himself. ‘Somewhere … somewhere …’

  Deeper and deeper into the labyrinth he went, looking for objects he recognised from his one previous trip into the room. His breath was loud in his ears, and then his very soul seemed to shiver: there it was, right ahead, the blistered old cupboard in which he had hidden his old Potions book, and on top of it, the pock-marked stone warlock wearing a dusty, old wig and what looked like an ancient, discoloured tiara.

  He had already stretched out his hand, though he remained ten feet away, when a voice behind him said, ‘Hold it, Potter.’

  He skidded to a halt and turned round. Crabbe and Goyle were standing behind him, shoulder to shoulder, wands pointing right at Harry. Through the small space between their jeering faces, he saw Draco Malfoy.

  ‘That’s my wand you’re holding, Potter,’ said Malfoy, pointing his own through the gap between Crabbe and Goyle.

  ‘Not any more,’ panted Harry, tightening his grip on the hawthorn wand. ‘Winners, keepers, Malfoy. Who’s lent you theirs?’

  ‘My mother,’ said Draco.

  Harry laughed, though there was nothing very humorous about the situation. He could not hear Ron or Hermione any more. They seemed to have run out of earshot, searching for the diadem.

  ‘So how come you three aren’t with Voldemort?’ asked Harry.

  ‘We’re gonna be rewarded,’ said Crabbe: his voice was surprisingly soft for such an enormous person; Harry had hardly ever heard him speak before. Crabbe was smiling like a small child promised a large bag of sweets. ‘We ’ung back, Potter. We decided not to go. Decided to bring you to ’im.’

  ‘Good plan,’ said Harry in mock admiration. He could not believe that he was this close, and was going to be thwarted by Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle. He began edging slowly backwards towards the place where the Horcrux sat lopsided upon the bust. If he could just get his hands on it before the fight broke out …

  ‘So how did you get in here?’ he asked, trying to distract them.

  ‘I virtually lived in the Room of Hidden Things all last year,’ said Malfoy, his voice brittle. ‘I know how to get in.’

  ‘We was hiding in the corridor outside,’ grunted Goyle. ‘We can do Diss-lusion Charms now! And then,’ his face split into a gormless grin, ‘you turned up right in front of us and said you was looking for a die-dum! What’s a die-dum?’

  ‘Harry?’ Ron’s voice echoed suddenly from the other side of the wall to Harry’s right. ‘Are you talking to someone?’

  With a whip-like movement, Crabbe pointed his wand at the fifty-foot mountain of old furniture, of broken trunks, of old books and robes and unidentifiable junk and shouted, ‘Descendo!’

  The wall began to totter, then crumbled into the aisle next door where Ron stood.

  ‘Ron!’ Harry bellowed, as somewhere out of sight Hermione screamed, and Harry heard innumerable objects crashing to the floor on the other side of the destabilised wall: he pointed his wand at the rampart, cried, ‘Finite!’ and it steadied.

  ‘No!’ shouted Malfoy, staying Crabbe’s arm as the latter made to repeat his spell. ‘If you wreck the room, you might bury this diadem thing!’

  ‘What’s that matter?’ said Crabbe, tugging himself free. ‘It’s Potter the Dark Lord wants, who cares about a die-dum?’

  ‘Potter came in here to get it,’ said Malfoy with ill-disguised impatience at the slow-wittedness of his colleagues, ‘so that must mean –’

  ‘“Must mean”?’ Crabbe turned on Malfoy with undisguised ferocity. ‘Who cares what you think? I don’t take your orders no more, Draco. You an’ your dad are finished.’

  ‘Harry?’ shouted Ron again, from the other side of the junk wall. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Harry?’ mimicked Crabbe. ‘What’s going – no, Potter! Crucio!’

  Harry had lunged for the tiara; Crabbe’s curse missed him but hit the stone bust, which flew into the air; the diadem soared upwards and then dropped out of sight in the mass of objects on which the bust had rested.

  ‘STOP!’ Malfoy shouted at Crabbe, his voice echoing through the enormous room. ‘The Dark Lord wants him alive –’

  ‘So? I’m not killing him, am I?’ yelled Crabbe, throwing off Malfoy’s restraining arm, ‘but if I can, I will, the Dark Lord wants him dead anyway, what’s the diff—?’

  A jet of scarlet light shot past Harry by inches: Hermione had run round the corner behind him and sent a Stunning Spell straight at Crabbe’s head. It only missed because Malfoy pulled him out of the way.

  ‘It’s that Mudblood! Avada Kedavra!’

  Harry saw Hermione dive aside and his fury that Crabbe had aimed to kill wiped all else from his mind. He shot a Stunning Spell at Crabbe, who lurched out of the way, knocking Malfoy’s wand out of his hand; it rolled out of sight beneath a mountain of broken furniture and boxes.

  ‘Don’t kill him! DON’T KILL HIM!’ Malfoy yelled at Crabbe and Goyle, who were both aiming at Harry: their split second’s hesitation was all Harry needed.

  ‘Expelliarmus!’

  Goyle’s wand flew out of his hand and disappeared into the bulwark of objects beside him; Goyle leapt foolishly on the spot, trying to retrieve it; Malfoy jumped out of range of Hermione’s second Stunning Spell and Ron, appearing suddenly at the end of the aisle, shot a full Body-Bind Curse at Crabbe, which narrowly missed.

  Crabbe wheeled round and screamed, ‘Avada Kedavra!’ again. Ron leapt out of sight to avoid the jet of green light. The wandless Malfoy cowered behind a three-legged wardrobe as Hermione charged towards them, hitting Goyle with a Stunning Spell as she came.

  ‘It’s somewhere here!’ Harry yelled at her, pointing at the pile of junk into which the old tiara had fallen. ‘Look for it while I go and help R—’

  ‘HARRY!’ she screamed.

  A roaring, billowing noise behind him gave him a moment’s warning. He turned and saw both Ron and Crabbe running as hard as they could up the aisle towards them.

  ‘Like it hot, scum?’ roared Crabbe as he ran.

  But he seemed to have no control over what he had done. Flames of abnormal size were pursuing them, licking up the sides of the junk bulwarks, which were crumbling to soot at their touch.

  ‘Aguamenti!’ Harry bawled, but the jet of water that soared from the tip of his wand evaporated in the air.

  ‘RUN!’

  Malfoy grabbed the Stunned Goyle and dragged him along: Crabbe outstripped all of them, now looking terrified; Harry, Ron and Hermione pelted along in his wake, and the fire pursued them. It was not normal fire; Crabbe had used a curse of which Harry had no knowledge: as they turned a corner the flames chased them as though they were alive, sentient, intent upon killing them. Now the fire was mutating, forming a gigantic pack of fiery beasts: flaming serpents, Chimaeras and dragons rose and fell and rose again, and the detritus of centuries on which they were feeding was thrown up in the air into their fanged mouths, tossed high on clawed feet, before being consumed by the inferno.

  Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle had vanished from view: Harry, Ron and Hermione stopped dead; the fiery monsters were circling them, drawing closer and closer, claws and horns and tails lashed, and the heat was solid as a wall around them.