‘No,’ said Bill at once, ‘I’ll do it, I’ll come.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Tonks and Fleur together.

  ‘Mad-Eye’s body,’ said Lupin. ‘We need to recover it.’

  ‘Can’t it –?’ began Mrs Weasley, with an appealing look at Bill.

  ‘Wait?’ said Bill. ‘Not unless you’d rather the Death Eaters took it?’

  Nobody spoke. Lupin and Bill said goodbye and left.

  The rest of them now dropped into chairs, all except for Harry, who remained standing. The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence.

  ‘I’ve got to go too,’ said Harry.

  Ten pairs of startled eyes looked at him.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Harry,’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I can’t stay here.’

  He rubbed his forehead: it was prickling again; it had not hurt like this for more than a year.

  ‘You’re all in danger while I’m here. I don’t want –’

  ‘But don’t be so silly!’ said Mrs Weasley. ‘The whole point of tonight was to get you here safely, and thank goodness it worked. And Fleur’s agreed to get married here rather than in France, we’ve arranged everything so that we can all stay together and look after you –’

  She did not understand; she was making him feel worse, not better.

  ‘If Voldemort finds out I’m here –’

  ‘But why should he?’ asked Mrs Weasley.

  ‘There are a dozen places you might be now, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘He’s got no way of knowing which safe house you’re in.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m worried for!’ said Harry.

  ‘We know that,’ said Mr Weasley quietly, ‘but it would make our efforts tonight seem rather pointless if you left.’

  ‘Yer not goin’ anywhere,’ growled Hagrid. ‘Blimey, Harry, after all we wen’ through ter get you here?’

  ‘Yeah, what about my bleeding ear?’ said George, hoisting himself up on his cushions.

  ‘I know that –’

  ‘Mad-Eye wouldn’t want –’

  ‘I KNOW!’ Harry bellowed.

  He felt beleaguered and blackmailed: did they think he did not know what they had done for him, didn’t they understand that it was for precisely that reason that he wanted to go now, before they had to suffer any more on his behalf? There was a long and awkward silence in which his scar continued to prickle and throb, and which was broken at last by Mrs Weasley.

  ‘Where’s Hedwig, Harry?’ she said coaxingly. ‘We can put her up with Pigwidgeon and give her something to eat.’

  His insides clenched like a fist. He could not tell her the truth. He drank the last of his Firewhisky to avoid answering.

  ‘Wait ’til it gets out yeh did it again, Harry,’ said Hagrid. ‘Escaped him, fought him off when he was right on top of yeh!’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It was my wand. My wand acted of its own accord.’

  After a few moments, Hermione said gently, ‘But that’s impossible, Harry. You mean that you did magic without meaning to; you reacted instinctively.’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘The bike was falling, I couldn’t have told you where Voldemort was, but my wand spun in my hand and found him and shot a spell at him, and it wasn’t even a spell I recognised. I’ve never made gold flames appear before.’

  ‘Often,’ said Mr Weasley, ‘when you’re in a pressured situation you can produce magic you never dreamed of. Small children often find, before they’re trained –’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Harry through gritted teeth. His scar was burning: he felt angry and frustrated; he hated the idea that they were all imagining him to have power to match Voldemort’s.

  No one said anything. He knew that they did not believe him. Now that he came to think of it, he had never heard of a wand performing magic on its own before.

  His scar seared with pain; it was all he could do not to moan aloud. Muttering about fresh air, he set down his glass and left the room.

  As he crossed the dark yard, the great, skeletal Thestral looked up, rustled its enormous bat-like wings, then resumed its grazing. Harry stopped at the gate into the garden, staring out at its overgrown plants, rubbing his pounding forehead and thinking of Dumbledore.

  Dumbledore would have believed him, he knew it. Dumbledore would have known how and why Harry’s wand had acted independently, because Dumbledore always had the answers; he had known about wands, had explained to Harry the strange connection that existed between his wand and Voldemort’s … but Dumbledore, like Mad-Eye, like Sirius, like his parents, like his poor owl, all were gone where Harry could never talk to them again. He felt a burning in his throat that had nothing to do with Firewhisky …

  And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside his head.

  ‘You told me the problem would be solved by using another’s wand!’

  And into his mind burst the vision of an emaciated old man lying in rags upon a stone floor, screaming, a horrible, drawn-out scream, a scream of unendurable agony …

  ‘No! No! I beg you, I beg you …’

  ‘You lied to Lord Voldemort, Ollivander!’

  ‘I did not … I swear I did not …’

  ‘You sought to help Potter, to help him escape me!’

  ‘I swear I did not … I believed a different wand would work …’

  ‘Explain, then, what happened. Lucius’s wand is destroyed!’

  ‘I cannot understand … the connection … exists only … between your two wands …’

  ‘Lies!’

  ‘Please … I beg you …’

  And Harry saw the white hand raise its wand and felt Voldemort’s surge of vicious anger, saw the frail old man on the floor writhe in agony –

  ‘Harry?’

  It was over as quickly as it had come: Harry stood shaking in the darkness, clutching the gate into the garden, his heart racing, his scar still tingling. It was several moments before he realised that Ron and Hermione were at his side.

  ‘Harry, come back in the house,’ Hermione whispered. ‘You aren’t still thinking of leaving?’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got to stay, mate,’ said Ron, thumping Harry on the back.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Hermione asked, close enough now to look into Harry’s face. ‘You look awful!’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry shakily, ‘I probably look better than Ollivander …’

  When he had finished telling them what he had seen, Ron looked appalled, but Hermione downright terrified.

  ‘But it was supposed to have stopped! Your scar – it wasn’t supposed to do this any more! You mustn’t let that connection open up again – Dumbledore wanted you to close your mind!’

  When he did not reply, she gripped his arm.

  ‘Harry, he’s taking over the Ministry and the newspapers and half the wizarding world! Don’t let him inside your head too!’

  — CHAPTER SIX —

  The Ghoul in Pyjamas

  The shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in the days that followed; Harry kept expecting to see him stumping in through the back door like the other Order members, who passed in and out to relay news. Harry felt that nothing but action would assuage his feelings of guilt and grief and that he ought to set out on his mission to find and destroy Horcruxes as soon as possible.

  ‘Well, you can’t do anything about the –’ Ron mouthed the word Horcruxes, ‘’til you’re seventeen. You’ve still got the Trace on you. And we can plan here as well as anywhere, can’t we? Or,’ he dropped his voice to a whisper, ‘d’you reckon you already know where the you-know-whats are?’

  ‘No,’ Harry admitted.

  ‘I think Hermione’s been doing a bit of research,’ said Ron. ‘She said she was saving it for when you got here.’

  They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr Weasley and Bill had just left for work, Mrs Weasley had gone upstairs to wake Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had drifted off to take a bath.

  ‘The Trace’ll break on the thirty-first,’ said Harry. ‘That means I only need to stay here four days. Then I can –’

  ‘Five days,’ Ron corrected him firmly. ‘We’ve got to stay for the wedding. They’ll kill us if we miss it.’

  Harry understood ‘they’ to mean Fleur and Mrs Weasley.

  ‘It’s one extra day,’ said Ron, when Harry looked mutinous.

  ‘Don’t they realise how important –?’

  ‘’Course they don’t,’ said Ron. ‘They haven’t got a clue. And now you mention it, I wanted to talk to you about that.’

  Ron glanced towards the door into the hall to check that Mrs Weasley was not returning yet, then leaned in closer to Harry.

  ‘Mum’s been trying to get it out of Hermione and me. What we’re off to do. She’ll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and Lupin’ve both asked as well, but when we said Dumbledore told you not to tell anyone except us, they dropped it. Not Mum, though. She’s determined.’

  Ron’s prediction came true within hours. Shortly before lunch, Mrs Weasley detached Harry from the others by asking him to help identify a lone man’s sock that she thought might have come out of his rucksack. Once she had him cornered in the tiny scullery off the kitchen, she started.

  ‘Ron and Hermione seem to think that the three of you are dropping out of Hogwarts,’ she began in a light, casual tone.

  ‘Oh,’ said Harry. ‘Well, yeah. We are.’

  The mangle turned of its own accord in a corner, wringing out what looked like one of Mr Weasley’s vests.

  ‘May I ask why you are abandoning your education?’ said Mrs Weasley.

  ‘Well, Dumbledore left me … stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’

  ‘What sort of “stuff ”?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t –’

  ‘Well, frankly, I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr and Mrs Granger would agree!’ said Mrs Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the ‘concerned parent’ attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did so that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help.

  ‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs Weasley. I’m sorry. Ron and Hermione don’t have to come, it’s their choice –’

  ‘I don’t see that you have to go, either!’ she snapped, dropping all pretence now. ‘You’re barely of age, any of you! It’s utter nonsense, if Dumbledore needed work doing, he had the whole Order at his command! Harry, you must have misunderstood him. Probably he was telling you something he wanted done, and you took it to mean that he wanted you –’

  ‘I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’

  He handed her back the single sock he was supposed to be identifying, which was patterned with golden bulrushes.

  ‘And that’s not mine, I don’t support Puddlemere United.’

  ‘Oh, of course not,’ said Mrs Weasley, with a sudden and rather unnerving return to her casual tone. ‘I should have realised. Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here, you won’t mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will you? There’s still so much to do.’

  ‘No – I – of course not,’ said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of subject.

  ‘Sweet of you,’ she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery.

  From that moment on, Mrs Weasley kept Harry, Ron and Hermione so busy with preparations for the wedding that they hardly had time to think. The kindest explanation of this behaviour would have been that Mrs Weasley wanted to distract them all from thoughts of Mad-Eye, and the terrors of their recent journey. After two days of non-stop cutlery cleaning, of colour-matching favours, ribbons and flowers, of de-gnoming the garden and helping Mrs Weasley cook vast batches of canapés, however, Harry started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed to keep him, Ron and Hermione away from one another; he had not had a chance to speak to the two of them, alone, since the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing Ollivander.

  ‘I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting together and planning, she’ll be able to delay you leaving,’ Ginny told Harry in an undertone, as they laid the table for dinner on the third night of his stay.

  ‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’

  He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.

  ‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do?’

  ‘I – not – I was joking,’ said Harry evasively.

  They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since those stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too. Both of them jumped as the door opened, and Mr Weasley, Kingsley and Bill walked in.

  They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now, because The Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place as the Headquarters. Mr Weasley had explained that after the death of Dumbledore, their Secret Keeper, each of the people to whom Dumbledore had confided Grimmauld Place’s location had become a Secret Keeper in turn.

  ‘And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the power of the Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities for the Death Eaters to get the secret out of somebody. We can’t expect it to hold much longer.’

  ‘But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address by now?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they’ll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can’t be sure. It would have been insane to keep using the place as Headquarters now that its protection has become so shaky.’

  The kitchen was so crowded that evening it was difficult to manoeuvre knives and forks. Harry found himself crammed beside Ginny; the unsaid things that had just passed between them made him wish they had been separated by a few more people. He was trying so hard to avoid brushing her arm he could barely cut his chicken.

  ‘No news about Mad-Eye?’ Harry asked Bill.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Bill.

  They had not been able to hold a funeral for Moody, because Bill and Lupin had failed to recover his body. It had been difficult to know where he might have fallen, given the darkness and the confusion of the battle.

  ‘The Daily Prophet hasn’t said a word about him dying, or about finding the body,’ Bill went on. ‘But that doesn’t mean much. It’s keeping a lot quiet these days.’

  ‘And they still haven’t called a hearing about all the under-age magic I used escaping the Death Eaters?’ Harry called across the table to Mr Weasley, who shook his head. ‘Because they know I had no choice or because they don’t want me to tell the world Voldemort attacked me?’

  ‘The latter, I think. Scrimgeour doesn’t want to admit that You-Know-Who is as powerful as he is, nor that Azkaban’s seen a mass breakout.’

  ‘Yeah, why tell the public the truth?’ said Harry, clenching his knife so tightly that the faint scars on the back of his right hand stood out, white against his skin: I must not tell lies.

  ‘Isn’t anyone at the Ministry prepared to stand up to him?’ asked Ron angrily.

  ‘Of course, Ron, but people are terrified,’ Mr Weasley replied, ‘terrified that they will be next to disappear, their children the next to be attacked! There are nasty rumours going round; I, for one, don’t believe the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts resigned. She hasn’t been seen for weeks now. Meanwhile, Scrimgeour remains shut up in his office all day: I just hope he’s working on a plan.’

  There was a pause in which Mrs Weasley magicked the empty plates on to the side, and served apple tart.

  ‘We must decide ’ow you will be disguised, ’Arry,’ said Fleur, once everyone had pudding. ‘For ze wedding,’ she added, when he looked confused. ‘Of course, none of our guests are Death Eaters, but we cannot guarantee zat zey will not let something slip after zey ’ave ’ad champagne.’

  From this, Harry gathered that she still suspected Hagrid.

  ‘Yes, good point,’ said Mrs Weasley from the top of the table, where she sat, spectacles perched on the end of her nose, scanning an immense list of jobs that she had scribbled on a very long piece of parchment. ‘Now, Ron, have you cleaned out your room yet?’

  ‘Why?’ exclaimed Ron, slamming his spoon down and glaring at his mother. ‘Why does my room have to be cleaned out? Harry and I are fine with it the way it is!’

  ‘We are holding your brother’s wedding here in a few days’ time, young man –’

  ‘And are they getting married in my bedroom?’ asked Ron furiously. ‘No! So why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left –’

  ‘Don’t talk to your mother like that,’ said Mr Weasley firmly. ‘And do as you’re told.’

  Ron scowled at both his parents, then picked up his spoon and attacked the last few mouthfuls of his apple tart.

  ‘I can help, some of it’s my mess,’ Harry told Ron, but Mrs Weasley cut across him.

  ‘No, Harry, dear, I’d much rather you helped Arthur muck out the chickens, and Hermione, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d change the sheets for Monsieur and Madame Delacour, you know they’re arriving at eleven tomorrow morning.’

  But as it turned out, there was very little to do for the chickens.

  ‘There’s no need to, er, mention it to Molly,’ Mr Weasley told Harry, blocking his access to the coop, ‘but, er, Ted Tonks sent me most of what was left of Sirius’s bike and, er, I’m hiding – that’s to say, keeping – it in here. Fantastic stuff: there’s an exhaust gaskin, as I believe it’s called, the most magnificent battery, and it’ll be a great opportunity to find out how brakes work. I’m going to try and put it all back together again when Molly’s not – I mean, when I’ve got time.’