There was a smattering of applause and a few whoops; Ron took a bow.
“What were you after?” asked Seamus eagerly.
Before any of them could parry the question with one of their own, Harry felt a terrible, scorching pain in the lightning scar. As he turned his back hastily on the curious and delighted faces, the Room of Requirement vanished, and he was standing inside a ruined stone shack, and the rotting floorboards were ripped apart at his feet, a disinterred golden box lay open and empty beside the hole, and Voldemort’s scream of fury vibrated inside his head.
With an enormous effort he pulled out of Voldemort’s mind again, back to where he stood, swaying, in the Room of Requirement, sweat pouring from his face and Ron holding him up.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Neville was saying. “What to sit down? I expect you’re tired, aren’t—?”
“No,” said Harry. He looked at Ron and Hermione, trying to tell them without words that Voldemort had just discovered the loss of one of the other Horcruxes. Time was running out fast: If Voldemort chose to visit Hogwarts next, they would miss their chance.
“We need to get going,” he said, and their expressions told him that they understood.
“What are we going to do, then, Harry?” asked Seamus. “What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” repeated Harry. He was exercising all his willpower to prevent himself succumbing again to Voldemort’s rage: His scar was still burning. “Well, there’s something we—Ron, Hermione, and I—need to do, and then we’ll get out of here.”
Nobody was laughing or whooping anymore. Neville looked confused.
“What d’you mean, ‘get out of here’?”
“We haven’t come back to stay,” said Harry, rubbing his scar, trying to soothe the pain. “There’s something important we need to do—”
“What is it?”
“I—I can’t tell you.”
There was a ripple of muttering at this: Neville’s brows contracted.
“Why can’t you tell us? It’s something to do with fighting You-Know-Who, right?”
“Well, yeah—”
“Then we’ll help you.”
The other members of Dumbledore’s Army were nodding, some enthusiastically, others solemnly. A couple of them rose from their chairs to demonstrate their willingness for immediate action.
“You don’t understand,” Harry seemed to have said that a lot in the last few hours. “We—we can’t tell you. We’ve got to do it—alone.”
“Why?” asked Neville.
“Because…” In his desperation to start looking for the missing Horcrux, or at least have a private discussion with Ron and Hermione about where they might commence their search, Harry found it difficult to gather his thoughts. His scar was still searing. “Dumbledore left the three of us a job,” he said carefully, “and we weren’t supposed to tell—I mean, he wanted us to do it, just the three of us.”
“We’re his army,” said Neville. “Dumbledore’s Army. We were all in it together, we’ve been keeping it going while you three have been off on your own—”
“It hasn’t exactly been a picnic, mate,” said Ron.
“I never said it had, but I don’t see why you can’t trust us. Everyone in this room’s been fighting and they’ve been driven in here because the Carrows were hunting them down. Everyone in here’s proven they’re loyal to Dumbledore—loyal to you.”
“Look,” Harry began, without knowing what he was going to say, but it did not matter. The tunnel door had just opened behind him.
“We got your message, Neville! Hello you three, I thought you must be here!”
It was Luna and Dean. Seamus gave a great roar of delight and ran to hug his best friend.
“Hi, everyone!” said Luna happily. “Oh, it’s great to be back!”
“Luna,” said Harry distractedly, “what are you doing here? How did you—?”
“I sent for her,” said Neville, holding up the fake Galleon. “I promised her and Ginny that if you turned up I’d let them know. We all thought that if you came back, it would mean revolution. That we were going to overthrow Snape and the Carrows.”
“Of course that’s what it means,” said Luna brightly. “Isn’t it, Harry? We’re going to fight them out of Hogwarts?”
“Listen,” said Harry with a rising sense of panic, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we came back for. There’s something we’ve got to do, and then—”
“You’re going to leave us in this mess?” demanded Michael Corner.
“No!” said Ron. “What we’re doing will benefit everyone in the end, it’s all about trying to get rid of You-Know-Who—”
“Then let us help!” said Neville angrily. “We want to be a part of it!”
There was another noise behind them, and Harry turned. His heart seemed to fall: Ginny was now climbing through the hole in the wall, closely followed by Fred, George, and Lee Jordan. Ginny gave Harry a radiant smile: He had forgotten, he had never fully appreciated, how beautiful she was, but he had never been less pleased to see her.
“Aberforth’s getting a bit annoyed,” said Fred, raising his hand in answer to several cries of greeting. “He wants a kip, and his bar’s turned into a railway station.”
Harry’s mouth fell open. Right behind Lee Jordan came Harry’s old girlfriend, Cho Chang. She smiled at him.
“I got the message,” she said, holding up her own fake Galleon and she walked over to sit beside Michael Corner.
“So what’s the plan, Harry?” said George.
“There isn’t one,” said Harry, still disoriented by the sudden appearance of all these people, unable to take everything in while his scar was still burning so fiercely.
“Just going to make it up as we go along, are we? My favorite kind,” said Fred.
“You’ve got to stop this!” Harry told Neville. “What did you call them all back for? This is insane—”
“We’re fighting, aren’t we?” said Dean, taking out his fake Galleon. “The message said Harry was back, and we were going to fight! I’ll have to get a wand, though—”
“You haven’t got a wand—?” began Seamus.
Ron turned suddenly to Harry.
“Why can’t they help?”
“What?”
“They can help,” He dropped his voice and said, so that none of them could hear but Hermione, who stood between them, “We don’t know where it is. We’ve got to find it fast. We don’t have to tell them it’s a Horcrux.”
Harry looked from Ron to Hermione, who murmured, “I think Ron’s right. We don’t even know what we’re looking for, we need them.” And when Harry looked unconvinced, “You don’t have to do everything alone, Harry.”
Harry thought fast, his scar still prickling, his head threatening to split again. Dumbledore had warned him against telling anyone but Ron and Hermione about the Horcruxes. Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up, and Albus… he was a natural… Was he turning into Dumbledore, keeping his secrets clutched to his chest, afraid to trust? But Dumbledore had trusted Snape, and where had that led? To murder at the top of the highest tower…
“All right,” he said quietly to the other two. “Okay,” he called to the room at large, and all noise ceased: Fred and George, who had been cracking jokes for the benefit of those nearest, fell silent, and all of the looked alert, excited.
“There’s something we need to find,” Harry said. “Something—something that’ll help us overthrow You-Know-Who. It’s here at Hogwarts, but we don’t know where. It might have belonged to Ravenclaw. Has anyone heard of an object like that? Has anyone come across something with her eagle on it, for instance?”
He looked hopefully toward the little group of Ravenclaws, to Padma, Michael, Terry, and Cho, but it was Luna who answered, perched on the arm of Ginny’s chair.
“Well, there’s her lost diadem. I told you about it, remember, Harry? The lost diadem of Ravenclaw? Daddy’s trying to duplicate it.”
“Yeah,
but the lost diadem,” said Michael Corner, rolling his eyes, “is lost, Luna. That’s sort of the point.”
“When was it lost?” asked Harry.
“Centuries ago, they say,” said Cho, and Harry’s heart sank. “Professor Flitwick says the diadem vanished with Ravenclaw herself. People have looked, but,” she appealed to her fellow Ravenclaws. “Nobody’s ever found a trace of it, have them?”
They all shook their heads.
“Sorry, but what is a diadem?” asked Ron.
“It’s a kind of crown,” said Terry Boot. “Ravenclaw’s was supposed to have magical properties, enhance the wisdom of the wearer.”
“Yes, Daddy’s Wrackspurt siphons—”
But Harry cut across Luna.
“And none of you have ever seen anything that looks like it?
They all shook their heads again. Harry looked at Ron and Hermione and his own disappointment was mirrored back at him. An object that had been lost this long, and apparently without trace, did not seem like a good candidate for the Horcrux hidden in the castle… Before he could formulate a new question, however, Cho spoke again.
“If you’d like to see what the diadem’s supposed to look like, I could take you up to our common room and show you, Harry. Ravenclaw’s wearing it in her statue.”
Harry’s scar scorched again: For a moment the Room of Requirement swam before him, and he saw instead the dark earth soaring beneath him and felt the great snake wrapped around his shoulders. Voldemort was flying again, whether to the underground lake or here, to the castle, he did not know: Either way, there was hardly any time left.
“He’s on the move,” he said quietly to Ron and Hermione. He glanced at Cho and then back at them. “Listen, I know it’s not much of a lead, but I’m going to go look at this statue, at least find out what the diadem looks like. Wait for me here and keep, you know—the other one—safe.”
Cho had got to her feet, but Ginny said rather fiercely, “No, Luna will take Harry, won’t you, Luna?”
“Oooh, yes, I’d like to,” said Luna happily, as Cho sat down again, looking disappointed.
“How do we get out?” Harry asked Neville.
“Over here.”
He led Harry and Luna to a corner, where a small cupboard opened onto a steep staircase.
“It comes out somewhere different every day, so they’ve never been able to find it,” he said. “Only trouble is, we never know exactly where we’re going to end up when we go out. Be careful, Harry, they’re always patrolling the corridors at night.”
“No problem,” said Harry. “See you in a bit.”
He and Luna hurried up the staircase, which was long, lit by torches, and turned corners in unexpected places. At last they reached what appeared to be solid wall.
“Get under here,” Harry told Luna, pulling out the Invisibility Cloak and throwing it over both of them. He gave the wall a little push.
It melted away at his touch and they slipped outside. Harry glanced back and saw that it had resealed itself at once. They were standing in a dark corridor. Harry pulled Luna back into the shadows, fumbled in the pouch around his neck, and took out the Marauder’s Map. Holding it close to his nose he searched, and located his and Luna’s dots at last.
“We’re up on the fifth floor,” he whispered, watching filch moving away from them, a corridor ahead. “Come on, this way.”
They crept off.
Harry had prowled the castle at night many times before, but never had his heart hammered that fast, never had so much depended on his safe passage through the place. Through squares of moonlight upon the floor, past suits of armor whose helmets creaked at the sound of their soft footsteps, around corners beyond which who knew what lurked. Harry and Luna walked, checking the Marauder’s Map whenever light permitted, twice pausing to allow a ghost to pass without drawing attention to themselves. He expected to encounter an obstacle at any moment; his worst fear was Peeves, and he strained his ears with every step to hear the first, telltale signs of the poltergeist’s approach.
“The way, Harry,” breathed Luna, plucking his sleeve and pulling him toward a spiral staircase.
They climbed in tight, dizzying circles; Harry had never been up here before. At last they reached a door. There was no handle and no keyhole: nothing but a plain expanse of aged wood, and a bronze knocker in the shape an eagle.
Luna reached out a pale hand, which looked eerie floating in midair, unconnected to arm or body. She knocked once, and in the silence it sounded to Harry like a cannon blast. At once the beak of the eagle opened, but instead of a bird’s called, a soft, musical voice said, “Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?”
“Hmm… What do you think, Harry?” said Luna, looking thoughtful.
“What? Isn’t there a password?”
“Oh no, you’ve got to answer a question,” said Luna.
“What if you get it wrong?”
“Well, you have to wait for somebody who gets it right,” said Luna. “That way you learn, you see?”
“Yeah… Trouble is, we can’t really afford to wait for anyone else, Luna.”
“No, I see what you mean,” said Luna seriously. “Well then, I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.”
“Well reasoned,” said the voice, and the door swung open.
The deserted Ravenclaw common room was a wide, circular room, airier than any Harry had ever seen at Hogwarts. Graceful arched windows punctuated the walls, which were hung with blue-and-bronze silks. By day, the Ravenclaws would have a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains. The ceiling was domed and painted with stars, which were echoed in the midnight-blue carpet. There were tables, chairs, and bookcases, and in a niche opposite the door stood a tall statue of white marble.
Harry recognized Rowena Ravenclaw from the bust he had seen at Luna’s house. The statue stood beside a door that led, he guessed, to dormitories above. He strode right up to the marble woman, and she seemed to look back at him with a quizzical half smile on her face, beautiful yet slightly intimidating. A delicate-looking circlet had been reproduced in marble on top of her head. It was not unlike the tiara Fleur had worn at her wedding. There were tiny words etched into it. Harry stepped out from under the Cloak and climbed up onto Ravenclaw’s plinth to read them.
“‘Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.’”
“Which makes you pretty skint, witless,” said a cackling voice.
Harry whirled around, slipped off the plinth, and landed on the floor. The sloping-shouldered figure of Alecto Carrow was standing before him, and even as Harry raised his wand, she pressed a stubby forefinger to the skull and snake branded on her forearm.
30. THE SACKING OF SEVERUS SNAPE
The moment her finger touched the Mark, Harry’s scar burned savagely, the starry room vanished from sight, and he was standing upon an outcrop of rock beneath a cliff, and the sea was washing around him and there was a triumph in his heart—They have the boy.
A loud bang brought Harry back to where he stood. Disoriented, he raised his wand, but the witch before him was already falling forward; she hit the ground so hard that the glass in the bookcases tinkled.
“I’ve never Stunned anyone except in our D.A. lessons,” said Luna, sounding mildly interested. “That was noisier than I though it would be.”
And sure enough, the ceiling had begun to tremble. Scurrying, echoing footsteps were growing louder from behind the door leading to the dormitories. Luna’s spell had woken Ravenclaws sleeping above.
“Luna, where are you? I need to get under the Cloak!”
Luna’s feet appeared out of nowhere; he hurried to her side and she let the Cloak fall back over them as the door opened and a stream of Ravenclaws, all in their nightclothes, flooded into the common room. There were gasps and cries of surprise as they saw Alecto lying there unconscious. Slowly they shuffled in around her, a savage beast that might wake at any moment and attack them. Then one brave little first-year darted
up to her and prodded her backside with his big toe.
“I think she might be dead!” he shouted with delight.
“Oh look,” whispered Luna happily, as the Ravenclaws crowded in around Alecto. “They’re pleased!”
“Yeah… great…”
Harry closed his eyes, and as his scar throbbed he chose to sink again into Voldemort’s mind… He was moving along the tunnel into the first cave… He had chosen to make sure of the locket before coming… but that would not take him long…
There was a rap on the common room door and every Ravenclaw froze. From the other side, Harry heard the soft, musical voice that issued from the eagle door knocker: “Where do Vanished objects go?”
“I dunno, do I? Shut it!” snarled an uncouth voice that Harry knew was that of the Carrow brother, Amycus. “Alecto? Alecto? Are you there? Have you got him? Open the door!”
The Ravenclaws were whispering amongst themselves, terrified. Then without warning, there came a series of loud bangs, as though somebody was firing a gun into the door.
“ALECTO! If he comes, and we haven’t got Potter—d’you want to go the same way as the Malfoys? ANSWER ME!” Amycus bellowed, shaking the door for all he was worth, but still it did not open. The Ravenclaws were all backing away, and some of the most frightened began scampering back up the stair case to their beds. Then, just as Harry was wondering whether he ought not to blast open the door and Stun Amycus before the Death Eater could do anything else, a second, most familiar voice rang out beyond the door.
“May I ask what you are doing, Professor Carrow?”
“Trying—to get—through this damned—door!” shouted Amycus. “Go and get Flitwick! Get him to open it, now!”
“But isn’t your sister in there?” asked Professor McGonagall. “Didn’t Professor Flitwick let her in earlier this evening, at your urgent request? Perhaps she could open the door for you? Then you needn’t wake up half the castle.”
“She ain’t answering, you old besom! You open it! Garn! Do it, now!”
“Certainly, if you wish it,” said Professor McGonagall, with awful coldness. There was a genteel tap of the knocker and the musical voice asked again.
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