Nymphadora Tonks

We are going to play a game! I have 8 canon ships! Every Week we will eliminate one ship and the winner will move on until there is a winner. This week you Choose between Remus/Tonk and Lucius/Narcissa! Comment who you want to win!

Nymphadora Tonks. Although I haven't watched the movies, (I might watch one.) My friends do talk about harry potter sometimes. And I play Harry Potter Top Trumps sometimes.

Firstly, I like the Marauders being bffs with a brotherhood. So I think any romance between them, be it Starbucks or Woflstar would just ruin that dynamic and this is usually what happens in the Wolfstar fanfics and headcanons I come across. Also, in NO WAY is this post meant to be an attack on anything LGBTQ.

Secondly, I think Wolfstar is mostly based on headcanons and even fanon rather than canon. There’s nothing indicating compatibility in canon. Or even if we can use certain canon info to support their compatibility, there’s definitely more canon info supporting James and Sirius’s compatibility. In other words, there isn’t anything indicating them as more compatible than J and S. Yes, James was straight and married Lily, but Remus was also straight and married Tonks. And Rowling has said that not only was Sirius not gay, but that he was too busy being a rebel to settle down in a relationship (let alone getting married). So if we dismiss Starbucks on James’s canon sexuality, we’d have to do the same with Wolfstar on their canon sexualities.

And no, I don’t ship Starbucks. But the reason I bring up Starbucks is because I never understood why Wolfstar is shipped more than Starbucks when canon clearly shows Starbucks with a deeper connection. Even J and S scene shows them in synch with each other. The same can’t be said for Wolfstar who also have problematic elements like Sirius’s werewolf prank, Sirius saying he wished it was fullmoon in SWM, and them mistrusting each other with the whole ‘I think he's a death eater spy because his family is dark/because he's a werewolf.’

Another big problem with Wolfstar is how their ship often takes away James’s importance in Sirius and Remus’s lives as their bff and downplays his relationship with the both. Most of the time when I come across Wolfstar fanfics or headcanons, it always involves them being closer than J and S. It always downplays the close relationship that both Remus and especially Sirius had with James. It always show Sirius being closer to Remus and being annoyed and belittling of James. It even often shows Sirius getting jealous and threatening James if he hugged Remus or complimented Remus. That’s clearly not canon because canon makes it clear James was the one who both Remus and Sirius were the most closest with in their group and that James preferred these two (especially Sirius) the most.

I’ve so far never come across any Wolfstar fic that didn’t at least at some points annoy or frustrate me with downplaying James’s relationship with both Sirius and Remus and taking away James’s important role in both their lives. I dislike anything that takes away his importance or downplays his relationship with any character, be it Sirius, Remus, Harry, Lily, Dumbledore, McGonagall, or Hagrid.

Conclusion: There’s nothing that makes Wolfstar any more canon that any fanon ship for most fans to agree it’s canon. Saying they’re essentially canon doesn’t make them canon. There’s no evidence for any romantic entanglement between them. So they aren’t canon. There isn’t any evidence they’d make a good couple either. Plus, Rowling has confirmed that neither Remus nor Sirius are gay when a fan asked. So they definitely weren’t canon. But of course they’re just as valid of a ship as any fanon ship like Harmony, etc.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845391

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845905

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003846382

Tags:

@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Mega.mind.harry.potter

Chapter Thirty-Three: Mars Shining Bright Over the Forbidden Forest

Finally, the truth. Answers that Remus and Sirius had never known themselves. Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms. Along the way, he was to dispose of Voldemort’s remaining links to life, so that when at last he flung himself across Voldemort’s path, and did not raise a wand to defend himself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric’s Hollow would be finished:

Neither would live, neither could survive.

He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?

Terror washed over him as he lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding inside him. Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: His will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death. Yet it did not occur to him now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, he knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.

If he could only have died on that summer’s night when he had left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had saved him! If he could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly he would not have known it had happened! Or if he could have launched himself in front of a wand to save someone he loved…He envied even his parents’ deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to his own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. He felt his fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control them, although no one could see him; the portraits on the walls were all empty.

Slowly, very slowly, he sat up, and as he did so he felt more alive and more aware of his own living body than ever before. Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone…or at least, he would be gone from it. His breath came slow and deep, and his mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were his eyes.

Dumbledore’s betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, he realized that now. He had never questioned that his own assumption: that Dumbledore wanted him alive. Now he saw that his life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to him, and obediently he had continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but himself, to life!

How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the boy who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort.

And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that he would keep going to the end, even though it was his end, because he had taken trouble to get to know him, hadn’t he? Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for him now that he had discovered it was in his power to stop it. The images of Remus, Tonks, Fred, and Colin lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into his mind’s eye, and for a moment he could hardly breathe: Death was impatient…

But Dumbledore had overestimated him. He had failed: The snake survived. One Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the earth, even after Harry had been killed. True, that would mean an easier job for somebody. He wondered who would do it…Tracey, Allison, and Theodore would know what needed to be done, of course…That would have been why Dumbledore wanted him to confide in three others…so that if he fulfilled his true destiny a little early, they could carry on…

Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that he must doe. I must die. It must end.

Canini, Theodore, Allison, and Tracey seemed a long way away, in a far-off country; he felt as though he had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no explanations, he was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts they would make to stop him would waste valuable time. He looked down at Sirius’ gold watch with the silver trim he had received from Remus on his seventeenth birthday. Nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for his surrender had elapsed. He stood up. His heart was leaping against his ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime’s beats before the end. He did not look back as he closed the office door.

The castle was empty. He felt ghostly striding through it alone, as if he had already died. The portrait people were still missing from their frames; the whole place was eerily still, as if all its remaining lifeblood were concentrated in the Great Hall where the dead and the mourners were crammed.

Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak over himself and descended through the floors, at last walking down the marble staircase into the entrance hall. Perhaps some tiny part of him hoped to be sensed, to be seen, to be stopped, but the Cloak was, as ever, impenetrable, perfect, and he reached the front doors easily.

Then Neville nearly walked into him. He and Lavender Brown were carrying a body in from the grounds. Harry glanced down and saw it was Tracey’s teacher for Ancient Studies Professor Camelia Magia, he was fairly certain he had never even met in person this instructor and yet she had fought and died for him.

‘You should take a break Neville, rest and heal up before the next wave,’ said Lavender after they gently put the body down just within the entrance to the Great Hall.

Neville did not go to get healed however, instead he leaned against the door frame for a moment and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He looked like an old man. Then he set off down the stops again into the darkness to recover more bodies.

Harry took one glance back at the entrance of the Great Hall. People were moving around, trying to comfort each other, drinking, kneeling beside the dead, but he could not see any of the people he loved, no hint of Canini, Theodore, Allison, or any of the Weasleys, no Tracey and Terence, no Luna. He felt he would have given all the time remaining to him for just one last look at them; but then, would he ever have the strength to stop looking? It was better like this.

He moved down the steps and out into the darkness. It was nearly four in the morning, and the deathly stillness of the grounds felt as though they were holding their breath, waiting to see whether he could do what he must.

Harry moved toward Neville, who was bending over another body.

‘Neville.’

‘Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure!’

Harry had pulled off the Cloak: The idea had come to him out of nowhere, born out of a desire to make absolutely sure.

‘Where are you going, alone?’ Neville asked suspiciously.

‘It’s all part of the plan,’ said Harry. ‘There’s something I’ve got to do. Listen—Neville—‘

‘Harry!’ Neville looked suddenly scared. ‘Harry, you’re not thinking of handing yourself over?’

‘No,’ Harry lied easily. ‘Course not…this is something else. But I might be out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort’s name, Neville? He’s got a huge snake…Calls it Nagini…’

‘I’ve heard, yeah…What about it?’

‘It’s got to be killed. Tracey, Allison, and Theodore know that, but just in case they—‘

The awfulness of that possibility smothered him for a moment, made it impossible to keep talking. But he pulled himself together again; This was crucial, he must be like Dumbledore, keep a cool head, make sure there were backups, others to carry on. Dumbledore had died knowing that four people still knew about the Horcruxes; now Neville will take Harry’s place. There would still be four in the secret.

‘Just in case they’re—busy—and you get the chance—‘

‘Kill the snake?’

‘Kill the snake,’ Harry repeated.

‘All right, Harry,’ whispered Neville. ‘You’re okay, are you?’

‘I’m fine. Thanks, Neville.’

But Neville seized his wrist as Harry made to move on.

‘We’re all going to keep fighting, Harry. You know that?’

‘Yeah, I—‘

The suffocating feeling extinguished the end of the sentence; he could not go on. Neville did not seem to find it strange. He patted Harry on the shoulder, released him, and walked away to look for more bodies.

Harry swing the Cloak back over himself and walked on. Someone else was moving not far away, stooping over another prone figure on the ground. He was feet away from her when he realized it was Allison.

He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.

‘You are ok,’ Allison was saying in one of the softest tones Harry had ever heard. ‘I’m going to get you inside of the castle and Madam Pomfrey will fix you to be all better.’

‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore! I shouldn’t have stayed!’

‘I-I’ll,’ Allison tried to begin, but her voice broke. Harry watched as she shoved her emotions back down and forced herself to be stoic again. ‘I’ll make sure you get home. Just let me bring you inside first.’

Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Allison to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home…

Allison was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Allison look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.

Hagrid’s hut loomed out of the darkness. There were no lights, no sound of Fang scrabbling at the door, his bark booming in welcome. All those visits to Hagrid, and the gleam of the copper kettle on the fire, and rock cakes and giant grubs, and his great bearded face, and celebrating Quidditch victories, and Tracey helping him save Norberta…

He moved on, and now he reached the edge of the forest, and he stopped.

A swarm of dementors was gliding amongst the trees; he could feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely through it. He had no strength left for a Patronus. He could no longer control his own trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air…

The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.

“I open at the close.”

Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have by-passed thought. This was the close. This was the moment.

He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, ‘I am about to die.’

The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco’s wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, ‘Lumos.’

The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible.

And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.

He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times. He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthly, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.

They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.

James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr Weasley’s.

Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger than Harry remembered him being at the time of his death, but still sported his shoulder length hair and short shaggy beard. He loped with an easy grace, his hands intertwined with the partner he just regained.

Remus was younger too, his numerous scars had vanished, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back with his love, and to be surrounded by old friends.

Tonks looked identical to how she did just hours before, short spiky bubblegum pink hair and all. Out of all of them, Harry had expected her to be the most unhappy, and yet she too smiled brightly when Harry looked at her.

Lily’s smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.

‘You’ve been so brave.’

He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.

‘You are nearly there,’ said James. ‘Very close. We are…so proud of you.’

‘Does it hurt?’

The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

‘Dying? Not at all,’ said Sirius. ‘Quicker and easier than falling asleep.’

‘And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over,’ said Remus.

‘I didn’t want you to die,’ Harry said. These words came without his volition. ‘Any of you. I’m sorry—‘ He addressed Tonks more than any of them, beseeching her. ‘—right after you got married and had your son...Tonks, I’m sorry—‘

‘It is alright Harry, I am sorry too that I won’t get to watch by Tulip’s side as he grow up, but I don’t regret a single choice I have made. She, my mother, Canini, and others will tell him why I died. That I was trying to ensure he’d be free from the pain and suffering of war.’

Harry then turned to Remus, he choked on his words as he spoke.

‘Canini…she has lost so much tonight…I don’t know if I can go knowing she still needs me,’ said Harry.

‘I am sorry I had to leave her tonight too,’ said Remus. ‘And I’m sorry I will not get to see the woman she fought so hard to become, but I know how strong she is and that after tonight she will eventually be alright. We did our part Harry, there is nothing else we can do.’

A thought popped into his head, a pretty selfish one considering so many lost loved ones were already surrounding him, but it slipped out before he could stop himself.

‘And what about Fred, Colin, and even Paw-Paw Lyle?’

‘Each of them and others you have met who are now gone wanted to be here too,’ said Sirius simply, ‘but there are others right now that more desperately need to be watched over by them. Colin for Theodore and Dennis, Fred for the Weasley’s, and Lyle for Canini. When you eventually join us we will watch over them all together my son.’

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not explicitly tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision. ‘You’ll stay with me?’

‘Until the very end,’ said James.

‘They won’t be able to see you?’ asked Harry.

‘We are part of you,’ said Sirius. ‘Invisible to anyone else.’

Harry looked at his mother.

‘Stay close to me,’ he said quietly.

And he set off. The dementors’ chill did not overcome him; he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like Patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was about to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Canini, Theodore, Tracey, and Allison, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort…

A thud and a whisper. Some other living creature had stirred close by Harry stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening, and his mother and father, his adoptive fathers, and Tonks stopped too.

‘Someone there,’ came a rough whisper close at hand. ‘He’s got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be—?’

Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree; Their wands flared and Harry saw Yaxley and Dolohov peering into the darkness, directly at the place Harry and his loved ones stood. Apparently they could not see anything.

‘Definitely heard something,’ said Yaxley. ‘Animal, d’you reckon?’

‘That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here,’ said Dolohov, glancing over his shoulder.

Yaxley looked down at his watch. ‘Time’s nearly up. Potter’s had his hour. He’s not coming.’

‘And he was sure he’d come! He won’t be happy.’

‘Better go back,’ said Yaxley, ‘Find out what the plan is now.’

He and Dolohov turned and walked deeper into the forest.

Harry followed them, knowing that they would lead him exactly where he wanted to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled at him, and the three men Harry had called father all nodded in encouragement.

They had traveled on mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead, and Yaxley and Dolohov stepped out into a clearing that Harry knew had been the place where the monstrous Aragog had once lived.

The remnants of his vast web were there still, but the swarm of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death Eaters, to fight for their cause. A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and its flickering light fell over a crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters.

Some of them were still masked and hooded; others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, casting massive shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like rock. Harry saw Bellatrix, skulking, sharpening a new knife; the great blonde Rowle was dabbing at his bleeding lip. He saw Lucius Malfoy, who looked defeated and terrified, and Narcissa, whose eyes were sunken and full of apprehension.

Every eye was fixed upon Voldemort, who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, or else counting silently in his mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene, thought absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind his head, still swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.

When Dolohov and Yaxley rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.

‘No sign of him, my Lord,’ said Dolohov.

Voldemort’s expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers.

‘My Lord—‘

Bellatrix had spoken; She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled, her face a little bloody but otherwise unharmed.

Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak another word, but eyed him in worshipful fascination.

‘I thought he would come,’ said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. ‘I expected him to come.’

Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside.

His hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.

‘I was, it seems…mistaken,’ said Voldemort.

‘You weren’t.’

Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster. He did not want to sound afraid.

The Resurrection Stone slipped from between his numb fingers, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw all four of his parents and Tonks vanish as he stepped forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.

The illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared at Harry moved toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.

Then a voice yelled, ‘HARRY! NO!’

He turned: Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.

‘NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT’RE YEH—?’

‘QUIET!’ shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced.

Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.

Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made not attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.

‘Harry Potter,’ he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the splitting fire. ‘The Boy Who Lived, come to die.’

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought about how he hoped his actions would save all those he cared about, and his mind then inexplicably focused on Allison, and her soft but strong look, and the feel of her lips on his—

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear—

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845391

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003845905

Tags:

@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Mega.mind.harry.potter

(I have now finished writing the book☺️). I am posting a chapter today, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I’ll post both the final chapter and the epilogue. I am so excited for you all to see the ending I have been working towards for over four years now.)

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Prince’s Tale

Harry remained kneeling at Snape’s side, simply staring down at him, until quite suddenly a high, cold voice spoke so close to them that Harry jumped on his feet, the flask gripped tightly in his hands, thinking that Voldemort had re-entered the room.

Voldemort’s voice reverberated from the walls and floor, and Harry realized that he was talking to Hogwarts and to all the surrounding area, that the residents of Hogsmeade and all those still fighting in the castle would hear him as clearly as if he stood beside them, his breath on the back of their necks, a deathblow away.

‘You have fought,’ said the high, cold voice, ‘valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.’

Harry knew Voldemort was lying, he had just moments ago witnessed him say how he didn’t care how many died tonight. In fact he had said the more the better.

‘Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.

‘I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.’

Tracey, Allison, and Theodore all shook their heads frantically, looking at Harry.

‘Don’t you dare do what he says,’ said Theodore.

‘There will be a way for us to succeed,’ said Tracey in false confidence.

‘We-we should get to the castle,’ said Allison, the only one to not directly say he shouldn’t go. ‘We need a new plan.’

The girls turned around to head back, but Theodore hung back for just an extra second where he glanced at Snape’s body. Theodore had viewed the man beneath him as a mentor, a role model, and then as a traitor, and Harry could see many conflicting feelings wash across his face before turning and hurrying back to the tunnel entrance with the girls. Harry gathered up the Invisibility Cloak, then looked down at Snape. He did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for which it had been done…

They crawled back through the tunnel, none of them talking, and Harry wondered whether the others could still hear Voldemort ringing in their heads as he could.

“You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest...One hour...”

Small bundles seemed to litter the lawn at the front of the castle. It could only be an hour or so from dawn, yet it was pitch-black. The four of them hurried toward the stone steps. A lone dog, the size of a small boat, lay abandoned in front of them. There was no other sign of Grawp or of his attacker.

The castle was unnaturally silent. There were no flashes of light now, no bangs or screams or shouts. The flagstones of the deserted entrance hall were stained with blood. Emeralds were still scattered all over the floor, along with pieces of marble and splintered wood. Part of the banisters had been blown away.

‘Where is everybody?’ whispered Tracey.

Allison led the way to the Great Hall. Harry stopped in the doorway.

The House tables were gone and the room was crowded. The survivors stood in groups, their arms around each other’s necks. The injured were being treated upon the raised platform by Madam Pomfrey, Chiara Lobosca, and a group of helpers. Firenze was amongst the injured; his flank poured blood and he shook where he lay, unable to stand.

The dead lay in a row in the middle of the Hall. Harry’s heart plummeted as he saw Fred lying amongst them, surrounded by all the Weasleys. George was kneeling at his head; Mrs Weasley was lying across Fred’s chest, her body shaking. Mr Weasley stroking her hair while tears cascaded down his cheeks.

Without a word, the four turned to the rest of the dead. Harry spotted Canini on her knees crying between the bodies of Remus and Tonks, pale and still and peaceful-looking, apparently asleep beneath the dark, enchanted ceiling. Harry had so desperately wanted to comfort his sister earlier, but now he felt numb and as though he couldn’t move. Thankfully she wasn’t completely alone, Susan Bones was hugging her, and as Harry stood rooted in the ground Tracey walked over to join Canini.

Harry suddenly was nearly deafened by a blood curtailing ‘NOOOO!’ from Theodore beside him and looks around to find Dean Thomas and Katie Bell carrying in the body of Colin Creevey.

Theodore attempted to run to his boyfriend’s side, yelling Colin’s name to the body that could no longer hear him, but Harry ran after him and wrapped his arms tightly around his foster brother. He held him still and began dragging him back as Theodore frantically told him to let go. Harry was forced into a memory from two years ago where Remus had done the same for him immediately after Sirius had died, he had hated him at the time, but it was now, as Remus lay still not far away and Harry was doing the same for Theodore, that he finally understood the action his adoptive father had taken. After what felt like an eternity Theodore’s energy gave out and he slumped to his knees.

As gently as putting a baby down for bed, Dean Thomas and Katie Bell lay Colin in front of Theodore and Harry. Even though Colin had grown to become nearly as tall as Harry, he was tiny in death. Sobbing, Theodore ran his fingers through his boyfriend’s mousy brown hair. Allison then came up and kneeled beside him, and a moment later Dennis came running to his brother’s side.

Unable to handle the grief of all this loss, Harry quietly got up and the Great Hall seemed to fly away, become smaller, shrink, as Harry reeled backward from the doorway. He could not draw breath. He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him. He could not bear to join Canini or Theodore, could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in the first place, Remus, Tonks, and Colin might never have died…

He turned away and ran up the marble staircase. Remus…Tonks…Colin…Fred…He yearned not to feel...He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside him…

The castle was completely empty; even the ghosts seemed to have joined the mass mourning in the Great Hall. Harry ran without stopping, clutching the crystal flask of Snape’s last thoughts, and he did not slow down until he reached the stone gargoyle guarding the headmaster’s office.

‘Password?’

‘Dumbledore!’ said Harry without thinking, because it was he whom he yearned to see, and to his surprise the gargoyle slid aside revealing the spiral staircase behind.

But when Harry burst into the circular office he found a change. The portraits that hung all around the walls were empty. Not a single headmaster or headmistress remained to see him; all, it seemed, had flitted away, charging through the paintings that lined the castle so that they could have a clear view of what was going on.

Harry glanced hopelessly at Dumbledore’s deserted frame, which hung directly behind the headmaster’s chair, then turned his back on it. The stone Pensieve lay in the cabinet where it had always been. Harry heaved it onto the desk and poured Snape’s memories into the wide basin with its runic markings around the edge. To escape into someone else’s head would be a blessed relief…

Nothing that even Snape had left him could be worse than his own thoughts. The memories swirled, silver white and strange, and without hesitating, with a feeling of reckless abandonment, as though this would assuage his torturing grief, Harry dived.

He fell headlong into sunlight, and his feet found warm ground. When he straightened up, he saw that he was in a nearly deserted playground. A single huge chimney dominated the distant skyline. Two girls were swinging backward and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.

Harry moved closer to the boy. Snape looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised greed in his thin face as he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.

‘Lily, don’t do it!’ shrieked the elder of the two.

But the girl had let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quite literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.

‘Mummy told you not to!’

Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals on the ground, making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up, hands on hips.

‘Mummy said you weren’t allowed, Lily!’

‘But I’m fine,’ said Lily, still giggling. ‘Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do.’

Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart from themselves and, though the girls did not know it, Snape. Lily had picked up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Snape lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a clear view, then held out her palm. The flower sat there, opening and closing its petals, like some bizarre, many-lipped oyster.

‘Stop it!’ shrieked Petunia.

‘It’s not hurting you,’ said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and threw it back to the ground.

‘It’s not right,’ said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. ‘How do you do it?’ she added, and there was definite longing in her voice.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Snape could no longer contain himself, but had jumped out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his appearance. A dull flush of colour mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at Lily.

‘What’s obvious?’ asked Lily.

Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now hovering beside the swings, he lowered his voice and said, ‘I know what you are.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re…you’re a witch,’ whispered Snape.

She looked affronted.

‘That’s not a very nice thing to say to somebody!’

She turned, nose in the air, and marched off toward her sister.

‘No!’ said Snape. He was highly coloured now, and Harry wondered why he did not take off the ridiculously large coat, unless it was because he did not want to reveal the smock beneath it. He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.

The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding on to one of the swing poles, as though it was the safe place in tag.

‘You are,’ said Snape to Lily. ‘You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.’

Petunia’s laugh was like cold water.

‘Wizard!’ she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had recovered from the shock of his unexpected appearance. ‘I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,’ she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation. ‘Why have you been spying on us?’

‘Haven’t been spying,’ said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and dirty-haired in the bright sunlight. ‘Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,’ he added spitefully, ‘you’re a Muggle.’

Though Petunia evidently did not understand the word, she could hardly mistake the tone.

‘Lily, come on, we’re leaving!’ she said shrilly. Lily obeyed her sister at once, glaring at Snape as she left. He stood watching them as they marched through the playground gate, and Harry, the only one left to observe him, recognized Snape’s bitter disappointment, and understood that Snape had been planning this moment for a while, and that it had all gone wrong…

The scene dissolved, and before Harry knew it, re-formed around him. He was now in a small thicket of trees. He could see a sunlit river glittering through their trunks. The shadows cast by the trees made a basin of cool green shade. Two children sat facing each other, cross-legged on the ground. Snape had removed his coat now; his odd smock looked less peculiar in the half light.

‘…and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school, you get letters.’

‘But I have done magic outside school!’

‘We’re all right. We haven’t got wands yet. They let you off when you’re a kid and you can’t help it. But once you’re eleven,’ he nodded importantly, ‘and they start training you, then you’ve got to go careful.’

There was a little silence. Lily had picked up a fallen twig and twirled it in the air, and Harry knew that she was imagining sparks trailing from it. Then she dropped the twig, leaned in toward the boy, and said, ‘It is real, isn’t it? It’s not a joke? Petunia says you’re lying to me. Petunia says there isn’t a Hogwarts. It is real, isn’t it?’

‘It’s real for us,’ said Snape. ‘Not for her. But we’ll get the letter, you and me.’

‘Really?’ whispered Lily.

‘Definitely,’ said Snape, and even with his poorly cut hair and his odd clothes, he struck an oddly impressive figure sprawled in front of her, brimful of confidence in his destiny.

‘And will it really come by owl?’ Lily whispered.

‘Normally,’ said Snape. ‘But you’re Muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents.’

‘Does it make a difference, being Muggle-born?’

Snape hesitated. His black eyes, eager in the greenish gloom, moved over the pale face, the dark red hair.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t make any difference.’

‘Good,’ said Lily, relaxing. It was clear that she had been worrying.

‘You’ve got loads of magic,’ said Snape. ‘I saw that. All the time I was watching you...’

His voice trailed away; she was not listening, but had stretched out on the leafy ground and was looking up at the canopy of leaves overhead. He watched her as greedily as he had watched her in the playground.

‘How are things at your house?’ Lily asked. A little crease appeared between his eyes.

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘They’re not arguing anymore?’

‘Oh yes, they’re arguing,’ said Snape. He picked up a fistful of leaves and began tearing them apart, apparently unaware of what he was doing. ‘But it won’t be that long and I’ll be gone.’

‘Doesn’t your dad like magic?’

‘He doesn’t like anything, much,’ said Snape.

‘Severus?’

A little smile twisted Snape’s mouth when she said his name.

‘Yeah?’

‘Tell me about the dementors again.’

‘What d’you want to know about them for?’

‘If I use magic outside school—‘

‘They wouldn’t give you to the dementors for that! Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re too—‘

He turned red again and shredded more leaves. Then a small rustling noise behind Harry made him turn: Petunia, hiding behind a tree, had lost her footing.

‘Tuney!’ said Lily, surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet.

‘Who’s spying now?’ he shouted. ‘What d’you want?’

Petunia was breathless, alarmed at being caught. Harry could see her struggling for something hurtful to say.

‘What is that you’re wearing, anyway?’ she said, pointing at Snape’s chest. ‘Your mum’s blouse?’

There was a crack. A branch over Petunia’s head had fallen.

Lily screamed. The branch caught Petunia on the shoulder, and she staggered backward and burst into tears.

‘Tuney!’

But Petunia was running away. Lily rounded on Snape.

‘Did you make that happen?’

‘No,’ he looked both defiant and scared.

‘You did!’ she was backing away from him. ‘You did! You hurt her!’

‘No—no, I didn’t! No on purpose!’

But the lie did not convince Lily. After one last burning look, she ran from the little thicket, off after her sister, and Snape looked miserable and confused…

And the scene re-formed. Harry looked around. He was on platform nine and three quarters, and Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched, next to a thin, sallow-faced, sour-looking woman who greatly resembled him. Snape was staring at a family of four a short distance away. The two girls stood a little apart from their parents. Harry had never seen his maternal grandparents, not even as pictures at the Dursley’s, it appeared that Lily took more after her dad while their mum looked much like how Petunia would grow up to look. Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister. Harry moved closer to listen.

‘…I’m sorry, Tuney, I’m sorry! Listen—‘ She caught her sister’s hand and held on tight to it, even though Petunia tried to pull it away. ‘Maybe once I’m there—no, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I’m there, I’ll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!’

‘I don’t—want—to—go!’ said Petunia, and she dragged her hand back out of her sister’s grasp. ‘You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a–a…’

Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, over the students, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart.

‘—you think I want to be a–a freak?’

Lily’s eyes filled with tears as Petunia succeeded in tugging her hand away.

‘I’m not a freak,’ said Lily. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’

‘That’s where you’re going,’ said Petunia with relish. ‘A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy…weirdos, that’s what you two are. It’s good you’re being separated from normal people. It’s for our safety.’

Lily glanced toward her parents, who were looking around the platform with an air of wholehearted enjoyment, drinking in the scene. Then she looked back at her sister, and her voice was low and fierce.

‘You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the headmaster and begged him to take you.’

Petunia turned scarlet.

‘Beg? I didn’t beg!’

‘I saw his reply. It was very kind.’

‘You shouldn’t have read—‘ whispered Petunia, ‘that was my private—how could you—?’

Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where Snape stood nearby. Petunia gasped.

‘That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!’

‘No—not sneaking—‘ Now Lily was on the defensive. ‘Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of—‘

‘Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!’ said Petunia, now as pale as she had been flushed. ‘Freak!’ she spat at her sister, and she flounced off to where her parents stood…

The scene dissolved again. Snape was hurrying along the corridor of the Hogwarts Express as it clattered through the countryside. He had already changed into his school robes, had perhaps taken the first opportunity to take off his dreadful Muggle clothes. At last he stopped, outside a compartment in which a group of rowdy boys were talking. Hunched in a corner seat beside the window was Lily, her face pressed against the windowpane.

Snape slid open the compartment door and sat down opposite Lily. She glanced at him and then looked back out of the window. She had been crying.

‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ she said in a constricted voice.

‘Why not?’

‘Tuney h–hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.’

‘So what?’

She threw him a look of deep dislike.

‘So she’s my sister!’

‘She’s only a—‘ he caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him.

‘But we’re going!’ he said, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. ‘This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!’

She nodded, mopping her eyes, but in spite of herself, she half smiled.

‘You’d better be in Slytherin,’ said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little.

‘Slytherin?’

One of the boys sharing the compartment, who had shown no interest at all in Lily or Snape until that point, looked around at the word, and Harry, whose attention had been focused entirely on the two beside the window, saw his birth father, James: slight, dark caramel skin, black-haired like Snape, but with that indefinable air of having been well-cared-for, even adored, that Snape so conspicuously lacked.

‘Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?’ James asked the boy lounging on the seats opposite him, and with a jolt, Harry realized that it was Sirius. Sirius did not smile.

‘My whole family have been in Slytherin,’ he said.

‘Blimey,’ said James, ‘and I thought you seemed all right!’

Sirius grinned.

‘Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?’

James lifted an invisible sword.

‘“Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!” Like my dad.’

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.

‘Got a problem with that?’

‘No,’ said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. ‘If you’d rather be brawny than brainy—‘

‘Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?’ interjected Sirius.

James roared with laughter. Lily sat up, rather flushed, and looked from James to Sirius in dislike.

‘Come on, Severus, let’s find another compartment.’

‘Oooooo…’

James and Sirius imitated her lofty voice; James tried to trip Snape as he passed.

‘See ya, Snivellus!’ a voice called, as the compartment door slammed…

And the scene dissolved once more…

Harry was standing right behind Snape as they faced the candlelit House tables, lined with rapt faces. Then Professor McGonagall said, ‘Evans, Lily!’

He watched his mother walk forward on trembling legs and sit down upon the rickety stool. Professor McGonagall dropped the Sorting Hat onto her head, and barely a second after it had touched the dark red hair, the hat cried, ‘Gryffindor!’

Harry heard Snape let out a tiny groan. Lily took off the hat, handed it back to Professor McGonagall, then hurried toward the cheering Gryffindors, but as she went she glanced back at Snape, and there was a sad little smile on her face. Harry saw Sirius move up the bench to make room for her. She took one look at him, seemed to recognize him from the train, folded her arms, and firmly turned her back on him.

The roll call continued. Harry watched Remus, Pettigrew, and his father join Lily and Sirius at the Gryffindor table. At last, when only a dozen students remained to be sorted, Professor McGonagall called Snape.

Harry walked with him to the stool, watched him place the hat upon his head.

‘Slytherin!’ cried the Sorting Hat. And Severus Snape moved off to the other side of the Hall, away from Lily, to where the Slytherins were cheering him, to where Lucius Malfoy, a prefect badge gleaming upon his chest, patted Snape on the back as he sat down beside him…And the scene changed…

Lily and Snape were walking across the castle courtyard, evidently arguing. Harry hurried to catch up with them, to listen in. As he reached them, he realized how much taller they both were. A few years seemed to have passed since their Sorting.

‘…thought we were supposed to be friends?’ Snape was saying, ‘Best friends?’

‘We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Mary MacDonald the other day?’

Lily had reached a pillar and leaned against it, looking up into the thin, sallow face.

‘That was nothing,’ said Snape. ‘It was a laugh, that’s all—‘

‘It was Dark Magic, and if you think that’s funny—‘

‘What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?’ demanded Snape. His colour rose again as he said it, unable, it seemed, to hold in his resentment.

‘What’s Potter got to do with anything?’ said Lily.

‘They sneak out at night. There’s something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?’

‘He’s ill,’ said Lily. ‘They say he’s ill—‘

‘Every month at the full moon?’ said Snape.

‘I know your theory,’ said Lily, and she sounded cold. ‘Why are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they’re doing at night?’

‘I’m just trying to show you they’re not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are.’

The intensity of his gaze made her blush.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842653

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003843726

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844089/r/4400000000017564493

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844352

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003844924

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Chapter Thirty: The Battle of Hogwarts

The enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall was dark and scattered with stars, and below it the four long House tables were lined with disheveled students, some in traveling cloaks, others in dressing gowns. Here and there shone the pearly white figures of the school ghosts. Every eye, living and dead, was fixed upon Professor McGonagall, who was speaking from the raised platform at the top of the Hall. Behind her stood the remaining teachers, including the palomino centaur, Firenze, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix who had arrived to fight.

‘—evacuation will be overseen by Mr Filch and Aurora Sinistra. Prefects, when I give the word, you will organize your House and take your charges, in an orderly fashion, to the evacuation point.’

Many of the students looked petrified. However, as Harry skirted the walls, scanning the Slytherin and Gryffindor tables for Theodore, Ernie Macmillan stood up at the Hufflepuff table and shouted. ‘And what if we want to stay and fight?’

There was a smattering of applause.

‘If you are of age, you may stay,’ said Professor McGonagall.

‘What about our things?’ called a girl at the Ravenclaw table. ‘Our trunks, our owls?’

‘We have no time to collect possessions,’ said Professor McGonagall. ‘The important thing is to get you out of here safely.’

‘Where is Headmaster Snape?’ shouted the annoying blood supremest sixth-year William Harper a girl from Harry’s House.

‘He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk,’ replied Professor McGonagall, and a great cheer erupted from the Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, and even most of the Slytherins.

Harry moved up the Hall alongside the Slytherin table, still looking for Theodore. As he paused, faces turned in his direction, and a great deal of whispering broke out in his wake.

‘We have already placed protection around the castle,’ Professor McGonagall was saying, ‘but it is unlikely to hold for very long unless we reinforce it. I must ask you, therefore, to move quickly and calmly, and do as your prefects—‘

But her final words were drowned as a different voice echoed throughout the Hall. It was high, cold, and clean. There was no telling from where it came; it seemed to issue from the walls themselves. Like the monster it had once commanded, it might have lain dormant there for centuries.

‘I know you are preparing to fight.’

There were screams amongst the students, some of whom clutched each other, looking around in terror for the source of the sound.

‘Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood.’

There was silence in the Hall now, the kind of silence that presses against the eardrums, that seems too huge to be contained by walls.

‘Give me Harry Potter,’ said Voldemort’s voice, ‘and none but him shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you should be rewarded. You have until midnight.’

The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him frozen in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, ‘But he’s there! Potter’s there! Someone grab him!’

Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. He watched as many Slytherins beside him rose and moved in front of him, but they weren’t facing Harry, but Pansy Parkinson. First Daphne Greengrass, then Niall Urquhart, as well as Ella Wilkins, Bridget Maloney, Scarlett Lympsham, Maynard Hatton, Simon Dedworth, and then finally Terence, Tracey, and Allison. They all stood with their arms raised protecting him from her and the other small minority that may wish to follow Voldemort’s orders. Soon enough they were joined by members of all four Houses, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and under sleeves.

‘Thank you, Miss Parkinson,’ said Professor McGonagall in a clipped voice. ‘You will leave the Hall first with Mr Filch. You will be followed by the rest of former Inquisitorial Squad members.’

Harry heard the grinding of benches and then the sound of angry bullies trooping out on the other side of the Hall.

‘Any underaged Slytherins will follow behind, Ravenclaws, behind them!’ cried Professor McGonagall.

Slowly the four tables emptied. The Slytherin table really only had himself, Tracey, Allison, Terence, Daphne, Millicent, Niall, Ella, Bridget, Gemma Farley, and Adrian Pucey, but a number of older Ravenclaws remained seated while their fellows filed out; even more Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors stayed behind, necessitating Professor McGonagall’s descent from the teachers’ platform to chivvy the underage on their way.

‘Patel, Romsey, Madley! Absolutely not! Nor can you Wolpert, Peakes, Creevey!’

While she was referring to Dennis, hearing the name reminded Harry of one of his worries. He hurried over Remus, who was sitting at the Hufflepuff table with Canini.

‘Where are Theodore and Colin?’

‘They haven’t returned ye—?’ began Remus, looking worried. But he broke off as Kingsley had stepped forward on the raised platform to address those who had remained behind.

‘We’ve only got half an hour until midnight, so we need to act fast! A battle plan has been agreed between the teachers of Hogwarts and the Order of the Phoenix. Professors Flitwick, Sprout, and McGonagall are going to take groups of fighters up to the three highest towers—Ravenclaw, Astronomy, and Gryffindor—where they’ll have a good overview, excellent positions from which to work spells. Meanwhile Remus’—he indicated Harry’s adoptive father—‘Arthur’—he pointed toward Mr Weasley, sitting at the Gryffindor table with his family—‘and I will take groups into the grounds. We’ll need somebody to organize defense of the entrances of the passageways into the school—‘

‘Sounds like a job for us,’ called out Fred from the Gryffindor table, indicating himself and George, and Kingsley nodded his approval.

‘All right, leaders up here and we’ll divide up the troops!’

‘Potter,’ said Professor McGonagall, hurrying up to him, as students flooded the platform, jostling for position, receiving instructions, ‘Aren’t you supposed to be looking for something?’

‘What? Oh,’ said Harry, ‘oh yeah!’

He had almost forgotten about the Horcrux, almost forgotten that the battle was being fought so that he could search for it: The inexplicable absence of Theodore had momentarily driven every other thought from his mind.

‘Then go, Potter, go!’

‘Right—yeah—‘

He quickly ran up to Remus and Canini.

‘I have to go, you both keep each other safe,’ he said, giving each a hug.

‘We will, go do what you have to do,’ said Remus, and Harry was about to leave before he added. ‘Harry, I’m proud of you.’

Harry nodded in appreciation.

‘Good luck,’ said Canini before Harry ran off to join Allison and Tracey who had just said their own goodbyes to Terry and Terence.

Harry sensed eyes following them as he ran out of the Great Hall again, into the entrance hall still crowded with evacuating students. He allowed himself to be swept up the marble staircase with them, but at the top he hurried off along a deserted corridor. Fear and panic were clouding his thought processes as Allison and Tracey tried to catch up. He tried to calm himself, to concentrate on finding the Horcrux, but his thoughts buzzed as frantically and fruitlessly as wasps trapped beneath a glass. He was beginning to worry about what had happened to his foster brother and it seemed to marshal his ideas. He slowed down, coming to a halt halfway along an empty passage, where he sat down upon the plinth of a departed statue and pulled the Marauder’s Map out of the pouch around his neck.

‘What is it Harry?’ asked Tracey as she and Allison caught up.

‘I can’t see Theodore, or Colin for that matter, anywhere on the map,’ said Harry. Allison put a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him down.

‘They could just be in one of crowds. I’m certain they both are ok,’ she said. Then slowly she added, ‘We have to focus on the Horcrux.’

And so Harry put the map away, pressed his hands over his face, and closed his eyes, trying to concentrate…

Voldemort thought I’d go to Ravenclaw Tower.

There it was: a solid fact, the place to start. Voldemort had stationed Alecto Carrow in the Ravenclaw common room, and there could only be one explanation: Voldemort feared that Harry already knew his Horcrux was connected to that house.

But the only object anyone seemed to associate with Ravenclaw was the lost diadem…and how could the Horcrux be the diadem? How was it possible that Voldemort, a Slytherin, had found the diadem that had eluded generations of Ravenclaws? Who could have told him where to look, when nobody had seen the diadem in living memory?

In living memory...

Beneath his fingers, Harry’s eyes flew open again. He leapt up from the plinth.

‘I have an idea!’ he announced before tearing back the way he had come, now in pursuit of his one last hope. The sound of hundreds of people marching towards the Room of Requirement grew louder and louder as he returned to the marble stairs. Prefects were shouting instructions, trying to keep track of the students in their own Houses; there was much pushing and shoving; Harry saw Zacharias Smith bowling over first years to get to the front of the queue; here and there younger students were in tears, while older ones called desperately for friends, siblings, or other family members…

Harry caught sight of a pearly white figure drifting across the entrance hall below and yelled as loudly as he could over the clamor.

‘Nick! NICK! I need to talk to you!’

He forced his way back through the tide of students, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs, where Nearly Headless Nick, the ghost of Gryffindor, stood waiting for him.

‘Harry! Good to see you my boy!’

Nick made to grasp Harry’s hands with both of his own: Harry’s felt as though they had been thrust into icy water.

‘Nick, you’ve got to help me. Who’s the ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?’

Nearly Headless Nick looked surprised and a little offended.

‘The Gray Lady, of course; but if it is ghostly services you require—?’

‘It’s got to be her, it’s about her House—d’you know where she is?’

‘Harry?’ gasped Allison as she and Tracey caught up.

‘Let’s see…’

Nick’s head wobbled a little on his ruff as he turned hither and thither, peering over the heads of the swarming students.

‘That’s her over there, Harry, the young woman with the long hair.’

Harry looked in the direction of Nick’s transparent, pointing finger and saw a tall ghost who caught sight of Harry looking at her, raised her eyebrows, and drifted away through a solid wall.

Harry ran after her, with the girls trying to keep up but were getting caught behind the ocean of students. Once through the door of the corridor into which she had disappeared, he saw her at the very end of the passage, still gliding smoothly away from him.

‘Hey—wait—come back!’

She consented to pause, floating a few inches from the ground. Harry supposed that she was beautiful, with her waist-length hair and floor-length cloak, but she also looked haughty and proud. Close to, he recognized her as a ghost he had passed several times in the corridor, but to whom he had never spoken.

‘You’re the Gray Lady?’

She nodded but did not speak.

‘The ghost of Ravenclaw Tower?’

‘That is correct.’

Her tone was not encouraging.

‘Please: I need some help. I need to know anything you can tell me about the lost diadem.’

A cold smile curved her lips.

‘I am afraid,’ she said, turning to leave, ‘that I cannot help you.’

‘WAIT!’

He had not meant to shout, but anger and panic were threatening to overwhelm him. He glanced at his watch as she hovered in front of him. It was a quarter to midnight.

‘This is urgent,’ he said fiercely. ‘If that diadem’s at Hogwarts, I’ve got to find it, fast.’

‘You are hardly the first student to covet the diadem,’ she said disdainfully. ‘Generations of students have badgered me—‘

‘This isn’t about trying to get better marks!’ Harry shouted at her. ‘It’s about Voldemort—defeating Voldemort—or aren’t you interested in that?’

She could not blush, but her transparent cheeks became more opaque, and her voice was heated as she replied, ‘Of course I—how dare you suggest—?’

‘Well, help me, then!’

Her composure was slipping.

‘It—it is not a question of—‘ she stammered. ‘My mother’s diadem—‘

‘Your mother’s?’

She looked angry with herself.

‘When I lived,’ she said stiffly, ‘I was Helena Ravenclaw.’

‘You’re her daughter? But then, you must know what happened to it!’

‘While the diadem bestows wisdom,’ she said with an obvious effort to pull herself together, ‘I doubt that it would greatly increase your chances of defeating the wizard who calls himself Lord—‘

‘Haven’t I just told you, I’m not interested in wearing it!’ Harry said fiercely. ‘There’s no time to explain—but if you care about Hogwarts, if you want to see Voldemort finished, you’ve got to tell me anything you know about the diadem!’

She remained quite still, floating in midair, staring down at him, and a sense of hopelessness engulfed Harry. Of course, if she had known anything, she would have told Flitwick or Dumbledore, who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.

‘I stole the diadem from my mother.’

‘You—you did what?’

‘I stole the diadem,’ repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a in a whisper. ‘I sought to make myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it.’

He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence and did not ask; he simply listened, hard, as she went on.

‘My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended that she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other founders of Hogwarts. Then my mother fell ill-fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to see me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so.’

Harry waited. She drew a deep breath of no air and threw back her head.

‘He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with him, he became violent. The Baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me.’

‘The Baron? You mean—?’

‘The Bloody Baron, yes, your House’s ghost,’ said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. ‘When he saw what he had done, he was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used it to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence…as he should,’ she added bitterly.

‘And…and the diadem?’

‘It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree.’

‘A hollow tree?’ repeated Harry. ‘What tree? Where was this?’

‘A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother’s reach.’

‘Albania,’ repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously from confusion, and now he understood why she was telling him what she had denied Dumbledore and Flitwick. ‘You’ve already told someone this story, haven’t you? Another student?’

She closed her eyes and nodded.

‘Ihad...noidea...Hewas...flattering. Heseemedto...to understand…to sympathize…’

Yes, Harry thought, Tom Riddle would certainly have understood Helena Ravenclaw’s desire to possess fabulous objects to which she had little right.

‘Well, you weren’t the first person Riddle wormed things out of,’ Harry muttered. ‘He could be charming when he wanted…’

So Voldemort had managed to wheedle the location of the lost diadem out of the Gray Lady. He had traveled to that far-flung forest and retrieved the diadem from its hiding place, perhaps as soon as he left Hogwarts, before he even started work at Borgin and Burkes.

And wouldn’t those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an excellent refuge when, so much later, Voldemort had needed a place to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long years?

But the diadem, once it became his precious Horcrux, had not been left in that lowly tree…No, the diadem had been returned secretly to its true home, and Voldemort must have put it there—

‘—the night he asked for a job!’ said Harry, finishing his thought.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He hid the diadem in the castle, the night he asked Dumbledore to let him teach!’ said Harry. Saying it out loud enabled him to make sense of it all. ‘He must’ve hidden the diadem on his way up to, or down from, Dumbledore’s office! But it was still worth trying to get the job—then he might’ve got the chance to nick Gryffindor’s sword as well…thank you, thanks!’

Harry left her floating there, looking utterly bewildered. As he rounded the corner back into the entrance hall, he checked his watch. It was five minutes until midnight, and though he now knew what the last Horcrux was, he was no closer to discovering where it was.

‘There you are-‘ said Tracey, as she and Allison finally found him, but lost in desperate speculation he ran right passed them, turned a corner, but he had taken only a few steps down the new corridor when the window to his left broke open with a deafening, shattering crash. As he leapt aside, a gigantic body flew in through the window and hit the opposite wall. Something large and furry detached itself, whimpering, from the new arrival and flung itself at Harry.

‘Hagrid!’ bellowed Harry and the girls, Harry had to fight off Fang the boarhound’s attentions as the enormous bearded figure clambered to his feet.

‘Harry, Tracey, Allison, yer here! Yer all here!’

Hagrid stooped down, bestowed upon the three friends a cursory and rib-cracking hug, then ran back to the shattered window.

‘Good boy, Grawpy!’ he bellowed through the hole in the window. ‘I’ll see yer in a moment, there’s a good lad!’

Beyond Hagrid, out in the dark night, Harry saw bursts of light in the distance and heard a weird, keening scream. He looked down at his watch. It was midnight. The battle had begun.

‘Blimey, Harry,’ panted Hagrid, ‘this is it, eh? Time ter fight?’

‘Hagrid, how did you know to be here?’ asked Tracey quickly.

‘Heard You-Know-Who from up in our cave,’ said Hagrid grimly. ‘Voice carried, didn’ it? “Yeh got till midnight ter gimme Potter.” Knew yeh mus’ be here, knew what mus’ be happenin’. Get down, Fang. So we come ter join in, me an’ Grawpy an’ Fang. Smashed our way through the boundary by the forest, Grawpy was carryin’ us, Fang an’ me. Told him ter let me down at the castle, so he shoved me through the window, bless him. Not exac’ly what I meant, bu’—where’s Theo?’

‘We don’t know, Harry I’m guessing you haven’t been able to find him yet,’ said Allison.

‘No,’ said Harry, ‘come on.’

They all hurried together along the corridor, Fang lolloping beside them. Harry could hear movement through the corridors all around: running footsteps, shouts; through the windows, he could see more flashes of light in the dark grounds.

‘Where’re we goin’?’ puffed Hagrid, pounding along at Harry’s heels, making the floorboards quake.

‘I dunno exactly,’ said Harry, making another random turn, ‘but Theodore and his boyfriend must be around here somewhere…’

The first casualties of the battle were already strewn across the passage ahead: The two stone gargoyles that usually guarded the entrance to the staffroom had been smashed apart by a jinx that had sailed through another broken window. Their remains stirred feebly on the floor, and as Harry and the girls leapt over one of their disembodied heads, it moaned faintly.

‘Oh, don’t mind me…I’ll just lie here and crumble…’

Its ugly stone face made Harry think suddenly of the marble bust of Rowena Ravenclaw at Xenophilius’s house, wearing that mad headdress—and then of the statue in Ravenclaw Tower, with the stone diadem upon her white curls…And as he reached the end of the passage, he finally remembered why the stone diadem had looked familiar, he remembered a third stone effigy came back to him: that of an ugly old warlock, onto whose head Harry himself had placed a wig and a battered old tiara. The shock shot through Harry with the heat of firewhisky, and he nearly stumbled.

He knew, at last, where the Horcrux sat waiting for him…

Tom Riddle, who confided in no one and operated alone, might have been arrogant enough to assume that he, and only he, had penetrated the deepest mysteries of Hogwarts Castle. Of course, Dumbledore and Flitwick, those model pupils, had never set foot in that particular place, but he, Harry, had strayed off the beaten track in his time at school—here at last was a secret he and Voldemort knew, that Dumbledore had never discovered—

He was roused by Professor Sprout, who was thundering past followed by Neville, Susan Bones, and half a dozen others, all of them wearing earmuffs and carrying what appeared to be large potted plants.

‘Mandrakes!’ Neville bellowed at them over his shoulder as he ran. ‘Going to lob them over the walls—they won’t like this!’

Harry knew now where to go. He sped off, with Hagrid and Fang galloping behind him. They passed portrait after portrait, and the painted figures raced alongside them, wizards and witches in ruffs and breeches, in armor and cloaks, cramming themselves into each others’ canvases, screaming news from other parts of the castle. As they reached the end of this corridor, the whole castle shook, and Harry knew, as a gigantic vase blew off its plinth with explosive force, that it was in the grip of enchantments more sinister than those of the teachers and the Order.

‘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 with just Allison and Tracey.

‘Where are we going?’ begged Tracey, she and Allison both had their wands drawn now, but Harry had no time to answer.

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 around a corner and found Fred and a small knot of students, including Lee Jordan, Terry Boot, 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 the three friends 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.’

‘Sorry—‘ began Allison.

‘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 Death Eater spawn hostage? You three may be good, but some of those Slytherins you just released are going to go straight to their parents!’

‘It wouldn’t stop Voldemort,’ said Harry, ‘and your brother would never have done it. We have to give everyone a chance and not punish those before they’ve made their choice.’

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 around a final corner and with a yell of mingled relief and fury he saw them: Theodore and Colin, both with their arms full of familiar large, curved, dirty yellow objects, Colin with a broomstick under his arm.

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

‘I could kill you right now!’ shouted Allison, but Harry could tell she was relieved.

‘Chamber of Secrets,’ said Theodore.

‘Chamber—what?’ said Harry, the three of them coming to an unsteady halt before the couple.

‘Theo, he’s an absolute genius!’ said Colin completely out of breath. ‘He came up with a plan to help you guys! Just after you left Harry and I caught up a bit with Dennis I asked Theo what the plan was now, and at first he said he didn’t know, but then I could practically see the lightbulb turn on above his head. He said there were objects of some sort you needed to destroy to kill You-Know-Who, and that he just realized where he could get some, and so he took us to the Chamber of Secrets!’

‘Really—?’ asked Tracey.

‘Yes, I realized that Dumbledore only took one fang, so the dead Basilisk likely still had nearly a full mouthful,’ said Theodore simply, but he still had a wide grin on his face just like Colin’s.

Harry’s eyes dropped to the objects clutched in Theodore and Colin’s arms and realized what they were: probably every fang left from the mouth of Salazar’s basilisk.

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

Theodore made a horrible strangled hissing noise.

‘Sometimes when you have your Voldemort vision nightmares you talk Parseltongue in your sleep, I guess seven years as your dorm-mate has its advantages,’ he told Harry apologetically.

‘It still took him a few tries, but I guess he has a Grass Snake as a Patronus for a reason as eventually the door opened!’ explained Colin. ‘My boyfriend is absolutely brilliant!’

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

‘So hand us the cup so that we’re one more down!’ exclaimed Theodore, so sudden desperation coming over him.

Tracey quickly shoved her hand into her purse and a moment later drew out the ancient cup and placed it in front of Theodore. He knelt down, raised the fang above his head, and with one hard thrust Theodore broke the cup into several pieces. Harry couldn’t be sure, but it was almost like there was a little screech along with the breaking of the metal.

‘Alright! What’s next!’ said Colin eagerly, but Theodore put down his fang and took Colin’s hands in his.

‘This next part has to be just the three of us, it’s too dangerous for more to know,’ said Theodore very seriously. ‘I need you to join the fight, they’ll need every D.A. member there is.’

Colin looked reluctant, but he gave Theodore the tiniest nod.

‘I’ll go find Dennis then, we should stick together, and I can return his broom,’ said Colin.

‘Just about everyone under seventeen was evacuated,’ noted Harry.

‘Ha, I know my brother, he double backed when no one was looking,’ said Colin as he let go of Theodore, he then gave his boyfriend a long proper kiss. ‘Stay safe, I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Theodore managed before Colin ran down the corridor and out of sight. Slowly Theodore turned back to the others. ‘That is one more Horcrux we don’t have to worry about. What’s happened since I left? What is next?’

As he said it, there was an explosion from overhead: All four 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 one.’

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003842029

Tags:

@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Interested.me @Mega.mind.harry.potter

Chapter Twenty-Four: Family

Tonks and Tulip’s cottage was surrounded by thick forest and was the only property on the north side of the lake that Harry could see, it was a simple design and reminded him of Mould-On-The-Wold Cottage but with a more creative colour scheme. It was a lonely and beautiful place. Whenever Harry was outside the tiny cottage or its garden, he could hear the constant melody of wind off the trees and the surface of the small lake.

The afternoon after they had all been rescued by Dobby nearly everyone was resting, all except for Harry, Theodore, and Allison who still had work to do. Allison had managed to snag back Tracey’s purse before they escaped Malfoy Manor, which meant three out of four friends were researching what Griphook had meant by payment other than gold. It was past four when Theodore triumphantly held up his copy of A History of Magic.

‘I think I found it. According to this small passage about how the 1752 Goblin Rebellion started, Goblins view all goblin-made items as their own property. More specifically they view the rightful owner of a goblin object is the maker, not the purchaser. If the maker is no longer alive then the object belongs to all goblins. Any goblin made item bought by another creature they view as rented for that creature’s lifetime and should be returned upon that creature’s death.’

‘Alright, that’s brilliant and all,’ said Allison, ‘but how does that help us pay Griphook. Does anyone have any goblin made items whose human owners are now dead in their possession that we didn’t know about until now.’

‘Ha ha, no,’ said Theodore mockingly in response to her sarcasm. ‘I’m certain however that we can find one…eventually.’

They sat quietly for a minute, then Harry remembered something and stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Allison.

‘You two get some rest now, I think I have this figured out. I’m going to go call in a favour.’

Harry made his way to the kitchen where he found Tonks sitting at the kitchen island preparing dinning by magic while simultaneously writing a letter by hand.

‘You out of everybody should be resting,’ said Harry calmly as he sat down next to her.

‘This baby is keeping me awake anyway, so I might as well make food for everyone for when they wake up,’ said his beloved cousin as she looked up from her letter.

‘Thank you for everything, by the way. I know right now you probably want to focus on preparing for you and Tulip’s baby.’

‘We spent the last seven months preparing, we’re already as ready as we’re going to be. Harry, don’t ever worry about coming to me for help, I will always be there for you if you need me.’

This managed to get a small smile out of him, probably his very first since the last Potterwatch broadcast.

‘Who are you writing?’

‘My mum, despite everything that has just happened I still received an owl from her just now asking if she could still come over tonight for an Easter supper. As much as I wish I could see her right now I think for today we all just need to rest and heal,’ she paused, then sighed. ‘I think in reality she wants to see me as much as possible because she really is missing dad…’

Harry’s face drooped, and some tears welled up in Tonks’ eyes.

‘I’m really sorry about your dad. I was heartbroken when I heard on Potterwatch.’

‘I miss him dreadfully, but your friend Dean’s arrival has brought me comfort. He told me that when the Snatchers found all of them it was Dirk Cresswell and my father who fended them off to give Dean and the goblins time to escape, although the other goblin didn’t make it. My dad died a hero, even though Dean and Griphook got captured a few days later, he bought them enough time to have run into you guys which led to their freedom.’

‘Then you should be very proud.’

‘I already was,’ she said, letting the tears run down her face.

Harry allowed Tonks a moment to recompose herself and send her letter, before asking her for the help he needed.

‘I need you to send another message. Can the Patronus messenger go long range?’

‘I don’t know if it can reach far away countries, but it should be able to be received by its target anywhere in the UK. Why, who do you need to send a message to?’

‘Fleur Weasley. Tell her I’m calling in a favour for saving her sister’s life,’ that was not, strictly speaking, true, as Gabrielle had never been in real danger, but neither Harry nor Fleur had known that at the time and so Harry’s actions in saving her had been genuine. ‘Tell her I need her to send Muriel Prewett’s goblin-made tiara here, that it will be returned if possible, but there is a chance it won’t.’

And Tonks nodded.

Harry spent much of the next couple days making excuses to escape the crowded cottage, walking along the shore of the quiet lake, distant farm land under work, the cool spring breeze that swept through the trees as well as across his face. The enormity of his decision not to race Voldemort to the wand still scared Harry. He could not remember, ever before, choosing not to act. He was full of doubts, doubts that Tracey could not help voicing whenever they were together.

‘What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in time to get the wand?’ ‘What if working out what the symbol meant made you “worthy” to get the Hallows?’ ‘Harry, if that really is the Elder Wand, how in the world are we supposed to finish off You-Know-Who?’

Harry had no answers: There were moments when he wondered whether it had been outright madness not to try to prevent Voldemort breaking open the tomb. He could not even explain satisfactorily why he had decided against it: Every time he tried to reconstruct the internal arguments that had led to his decision, they sounded feebler to him.

The odd thing was that Theodore’s support made him feel just as confused as Tracey’s doubts. Now forced to accept that the Elder Wand was real, he maintained that it was an evil object, and that the way Voldemort had taken possession of it was repellent, not to be considered.

‘How would you have prevented it anyway, Harry?’ he said over and over again. ‘Would you have broken into Dumbledore’s tomb and taken the wand before he arrived. Would you have been able to do that?’

But the idea of Dumbledore’s corpse frightened Harry much less than the possibility that he might have misunderstood the living Dumbledore’s intentions. He felt that he was still grasping in the dark; he had chosen his path but kept looking back, wondering whether he had misread the signs, whether he should not have taken the other way. It was only Allison who understood he needed moments alone away from everyone else, anytime the other two began asking him to many questions she would intervene and help him gain half an hour or so alone.

From time to time, anger at Dumbledore crashed over Harry again, powerful as the waves slamming themselves against the cliff beneath the cottage, anger that Dumbledore had not explained before he died.

‘If he’s truly dead,’ said Tracey the morning of the second day after they had arrived at the cottage. They had just begun eating breakfast, no one but the four were currently awake, and Harry had been staring out at the wall that separated the garden from the forest.

‘Trace, you’re my best friend, but that’s insane!’

‘Maybe, but think about it,’ said Tracey, speaking across Harry, who continued to gaze at the wall and the forest. ‘His Deluminator bringing you back to us. The silver doe. Me finding the fang when I thought about Dumbledore. The blue eye Harry saw in the mirror—‘

‘But Tracey, Harry admitted that the stress from the situation could have made him imagine them!’ said Theodore. ‘Right, Harry?’

‘I could have,’ said Harry without looking at him.

‘But is that really what you believe?’ asked Tracey.

‘No, I don’t,’ said Harry.

‘That’s what I thought,’ whispered Tracey quickly, before Allison gave her a dirty look. She looked hesitant, but continued. ‘But if it wasn’t Dumbledore who sent Dobby, then how did he know not only where we were, but that you were in the cellar?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Theodore, ‘but how could Dumbledore have sent it when he is dead encased in marble at Hogwarts?’

‘Perhaps it was his ghost?’ suggested Tracey.

‘Dumbledore wouldn’t come back as a ghost,’ said Harry. There was little about Dumbledore he was sure of now, but he knew that much. ‘He would have gone on.’

‘Sorry? “Gone on”?’ asked Tracey.

But before Harry or Allison could put an end to the constant questions for now, an owl flew through the open kitchen window and dropped a medium sized package in front of Harry along with a note.

“Grateful to help. All the luck.

Bien à vous,

Fleur”

Opening the package he found a worn velvet case, and inside was the tiara. Upon closer inspection from how he had seen it at the wedding Harry see how the silver had a unique shimmer that regular silver did not.

‘This should hopefully do it,’ Harry let out in a breath of relief.

‘Goodness, how beautiful,’ said the voice of Luna Lovegood who had appeared behind them.

‘Oh, morning Luna, didn’t see you there,’ said Allison.

‘Daddy’s made a tiara,’ piped up Luna, ‘Well, more of a crown, really.’

Tracey and Harry just looked at each other. Harry knew that she was remembering the ludicrous headdress they had seen on their visit to Xenophilius.

‘Yes, he’s trying to re-create the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. He thinks he’s identified most of the main elements now. Adding the billywig wings really made a difference.’

‘Yes, we saw it, it was quite…interesting,’ said Theodore. ‘Listen, Luna, we have to go upstairs for a bit. Enjoy breakfast.’

They made their way upstairs to the tiniest of the cottage’s three bedrooms, carrying with them the small velvet case. Harry knocked and Griphook beckoned them to come. He had drawn the red cotton curtains against the bright, cloudy sky, which gave the room a fiery glow at odds with the rest of the airy, light cottage.

‘I have reached my decision, Harry Potter,’ said the goblin, who was sitting cross-legged in a low chair, drumming its arms with his spindly fingers. ‘Though the goblins of Gringotts will consider it base treachery, I have decided to help you…for a price.’

‘That’s great!’ said Harry, further relief surging through him. ‘Griphook, thank you, we’re really—‘

‘—What,’ said the goblin firmly, ‘are you prepared to offer me.’

Harry held out the case and opened it. Griphook’s black eyes glittered; there were no whites to his eyes.

‘Moonstones and diamonds, goblin made, very impressive,’ said Griphook, and Harry’s heart raised. ‘However I know of the witch who paid for this, she is still alive. I will not accept an item that is still under lease.’

Harry’s spirits plummeted. He was about to panic, this was the only goblin-made item of value he could acquire, what was he going to do n—

‘What do you mean Muriel Prewett is alive?’ said Allison, stoic as ever. ‘She died of old age on September first, it was one of the few deaths the Daily Prophet actually reported.’

There was silence for a moment, Harry felt as though his heart was going to beat out of his chest. Then Griphook raised an eyebrow.

‘I do not read Wizarding papers, and I lost contact with the magical world soon after that date,’ said Griphook. ‘Is it true that the witch who possessed the tiara is now dead?’

‘Yes,’ said Theodore, backing up Allison’s story. ‘She was over a hundred and nine years old, the stress of the war was too much for her.’

Tracey frowned at the floor while Allison and Theodore were speaking; Harry felt irritated at her, afraid that she might give the game away. However, Griphook had eyes for nobody but Harry.

‘Hum,’ mumbled Griphook. ‘Very well, I will accept the tiara as payment.’

He held out his hand, but Harry did not give it to him.

‘You will receive the tiara as collateral, but the Weasley family wants the tiara back,’ explained Harry. ‘Once we’re inside the vault we’ll take the tiara back and you can take as much of the treasure inside as you—‘

Harry had said the wrong thing. Griphook flushed angrily.

‘I am not a thief, boy! I am not trying to procure treasures to which I have no right!’

‘But goblin treasure does not belong to any witch or wizard after they die, and I am certain there are some goblin artifacts in the vault that long predate Bellatrix or her husband,’ said Tracey quickly, possibly trying to make up for almost giving them away. ‘Besides, this is the vault of the woman who tortured us both, I would think you would be happy to gain a small amount of revenge.’

‘The silver helmet of Urg the Unclean and his men, great goblin revolutionaries, does lay uselessly in that vault,’ said Griphook slowly. ‘Very well. I have your word, Harry Potter, that you will give me now the tiara in agreement for helping you, and I shall return it and take the helmet once we’re inside the vault?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry.

‘Then hand over the tiara and shake,’ said the goblin, holding out his hand.

Harry did as he was told and took his hand and shook. He wondered whether those black eyes saw any misgivings in his own. Then Griphook relinquished him, clapped his hands together, and said, ‘So. We beg—‘

‘Errrg!’ came a loud moan from across the hall.

‘What was that?’ said Tracey.

The four friends exited the room and ran into Tulip exiting her and Tonks’ bedroom. She looked equally parts excited and equal parts terrified.

‘Is everything ok?’ asked Harry.

‘It’s time!’ she said in rapid speed. ‘Tonks is having the baby!’

‘Tonks-baby-‘ Harry’s brain just short-circuited.

‘Oh my goodness, oh my goodness,’ began Tracey.

‘Will she have to go to St. Mungo’s?’ asked Theodore.

‘It’s under Ministry control, too dangerous. I’m going to go fetch Chiara Lobosca,’ said Tulip as she quickly walked to the stairs. Another of Tonks’ moans could be heard coming from her room. ‘In the meantime, Allison you are the only one with a level head, go downstairs and get a bottle of Wiggenweld Potion, a bowl of hot water, and some towels. Keep her comfortable until I get back.’

Tulip was right to put Allison in charge, because Harry, Theodore, and Tracey continued to freak out while they waited for Tulip’s return, and once Luna and Dean figured out what was going on they joined in on the freaking out party in the living room. About a half-hour later Tulip returned with Chiara and a medical bag and the two went upstairs into Tonks’ room and Allison came back down.

The group became more calm as the day progressed. That didn’t stop the nerves however, Harry was pretty sure he did more walking that day as he paced around the house as he had going across the country the last seven months. They could hear Chiara, Tulip, and especially Nymphadora upstairs, but didn’t know how it was going.

It was only just before the sun began to set that a fourth sound entered the mix in the form of a new born’s cry, and shortly after Chiara came back downstairs.

‘It’s a healthy baby boy!’ she announced.

‘A boy, a baby boy!’ said Theodore as though he had never heard of such a thing.

‘How wonderful!’ said Allison, a wide smile on her face.

‘Babies born in April are exceptionally unpredictable,’ Luna said mystically as though reciting a rhyme.

‘When can we see them?’ asked Harry. He was eager to see the new life his cousin and her wife had created.

‘They are all resting right now and probably won’t want to be seen until morning,’ said Chiara as she put on her travelling cloak, ‘except for you Harry, they’d like to see you if you’re up to it.’

‘Oh?’ said Harry.

He made his way upstairs. Compared to the noise that had been coming from this floor most of the day it was now almost completely silent. He knocked on the door quietly, afraid of waking up the baby if it was asleep. Thankfully no crying followed his knock, but a soft, ‘Come in, Harry.’

He entered, and found the two women sitting upright on the bed. Tulip on top of the covers, and Tonks looking exhausted was under the covers while holding a tiny baby swaddled in a turquoise blanket. It was in that moment that Harry realized he didn’t know what to do, he had survived encounters with Voldemort five times, but when it came to his cousin holding her newborn baby he just stood there.

‘Er, congratulations Tonks,’ he managed to get out. ‘It’s a boy, um, right?’

Both Tonks and Tulip laughed.

‘Come over here Harry, it’s ok,’ said Tonks while gesturing with her head to approach.

He got over his nerves and practically ran over to the bed and down on its edge next to Tonks. He gave her a one arm hug, then looked down at the new life she had brought into the world. The baby had some pretty chubby cheeks for a new born, deep dark brown eyes like Tulip, and a wisp of mousy brown hair like Tonks did when she was born.

‘He’s adorable, and has your natural hair,’ said Harry with a smile.

‘Right now he does,’ said Tulip, and Harry looked up as she spoke, ‘but when he first came out it was tomato-red like mine.’

‘What…’ began Harry, and sure enough when he looked back at the baby it was now sporting jet black hair and emerald green eyes. ‘He’s a Metamorphmagus! Incredible!’

‘Yes, very incredible,’ said Tulip, kissing her wife on her temple.

‘We’ve chosen a name,’ said Tonks, in a serine tone.

‘Oh, let’s hear it,’ said Harry.

‘Well, we both lost our fathers in recent months, I also lost Mad-eye who was my beloved mentor, so while we admit it is a little silly we have chosen Edward Asahi-Alastor Karasu-Tonks,’ said Tonks. She then quickly added, ‘But we’ll be calling him Teddy for the most part.’

‘I think they would all be honoured,’ said Harry.

He once again looked down at the little baby and smiled. Harry wasn’t sure if he had felt this genuinely happy since Allison saved his life from the locket Horcrux.

‘If you think it’s safe, we’re planning on inviting Tonks’ mum and your dad and sister over tomorrow to meet the baby,’ said Tulip, now a little more serious.

‘Er, yes, it should be,’ said Harry, now a little too overwhelmed with emotions to think about the fact that meant he’d be seeing them for the first time in eight months. ‘They’ll know how to arrive safely.’

‘Just to be safe though we won’t be inviting the godmother, my best friend Merula, until things cool down here,’ continued Tulip. ‘Although we will be sending her pictures.’

‘And the godfather?’ Harry said absentmindedly.

Tonks and Tulip smiled at each other once more before Tonks spoke.

‘Will you be the godfather?’ she said with complete joy and sincerity.

‘M–me?’ stammered Harry.

‘Of course you—Flower and I have long been in agreement about that. There is no one we would want more.’

‘I—yeah—blimey—‘

Harry felt overwhelmed, astonished, and delighted. Godfather, he couldn’t believe it. Right then and there he promised to himself to be just as loving and reckless of a godfather to Teddy Karasu-Tonks as Sirius Black had been to him.

The rest of the evening went by in a blur. That night most of the household did not get much sleep, both from adrenaline and the fact that there was a crying newborn baby in the house. By the following morning everyone was an odd combination of exhausted and jittery, all except for Griphook who was just simply grouchy.

Harry had forgotten that Tulip had mentioned they would be receiving guests up until the moment that there was a bang on the front door at exactly twelve o’clock.

Everyone’s head turned toward it. Tulip came running out of the kitchen, despite it being expected they all still had to be cautious; Tonks was sitting on an armchair in the living room holding a wrapped up Teddy close in her arms; Harry held his hand over his pocket that contained Draco’s wand, Theodore and Tracey did the same. Silently Griphook slipped beneath the table, out of sight.

‘Who is there?’ asked Tulip.

‘It is I, Remus John Lupin!’ called out the familiar voice. Harry’s heart spread up. ‘I am accompanied by my daughter Canini Cesario Howling, and the mother of Nymphadora, Andromeda Irma Tonks. Dora, the Secret-Keeper of Shell Cottage, told us the address so that we could today and celebrate!’

Satisfied in the answer, Tulip wrenched the door open.

Remus, Canini, and Andromeda fell over the threshold. The stress of the war and the death of her husband must have taken its toll, as Andromeda finally had her first strands of grey hair, though it was nothing compared to Remus who now had more grey than light brown. Over the last eight months Canini must have felt she needed a change, as she had cut her incredibly long hair back down to just past shoulder length. They straightened up, looked around the room, making sure of who was there, then Remus and Canini sprinted across the room and nearly tackled Harry and Theodore in a hug.

‘You’re ok, you’re ok, you’re actually ok,’ Remus muttered over and over again in near disbelief.

Canini already had tears rolling down her scarred cheeks, ‘I missed you two so much!’ she managed.

‘I missed you guys too,’ said Theodore between sobs.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, to also relate his gratitude for being able to see them again, but it was in that moment that just how badly in his heart he had missed them washed over him that he too was reduced to uncontrollable sobs. The surrounding world disappeared, Harry had even forgotten that other people were present, because for the duration of them all crying the world was only made up of this small broken family that had finally been reunited. It was only when they had all gotten it out of their system that the world came back into focus.

‘It’s good to see you two alright,’ said Remus as they all separated. ‘You four I should say. And Harry, Theo, you could both go for a haircut and shave.’

‘Yeah, we’ll probably get on top of that soon. It’s just been…busy,’ expressed Theodore.

‘We’ll have plenty of time to talk about Theo’s incredibly messy hair later, right now I want to meet Teddy,’ said Canini in a cheerful manner Harry had so missed. She went over to Andromeda who was already holding the baby.

‘Yes, it’s time to celebrate!’ said Remus, pulling out from his robes a fancy looking bottle. ‘I’ve brought an eighty-three bottle of Italian Vermouth Bianco just for this occasion!’

The wind buffeted the little cottage and the fire leapt and crackled, and Tulip was soon opening another bottle of wine. The arrival of Teddy and the family reunion seemed to have taken them out of themselves, removed them for a while from their state of siege: Tidings of new life were exhilarating. Only the goblin seemed untouched by the suddenly festive atmosphere, and after a while he slunk back to the bedroom he now occupied alone. Harry thought he was the only one who had noticed this, until he saw Remus’ eyes following the goblin up the stairs.

As the girls plus Theodore now fawned over Tonks and the baby, Harry and Remus found themselves migrating alone to the kitchen. Some of the joy left and Harry now couldn’t help but think about the last time he had talked to his adoptive father in person.

‘About what happened in Grimmauld Place, I’m so—‘

‘Don’t apologize, Harry,’ said Remus as he cut him off. ‘I needed to hear every word. I was in turmoil, and instead of trying to deal with my problems I was running away from them, and in doing so running away from my responsibilities. Your words convinced me to take up the twins offer, and I was then able to make a difference while still being reasonably safe and could be there for Canini.’

‘So…you’re not mad?’

‘Mad? I am more proud of you and Theodore than I have ever been. I am honoured to have you both as my sons. And I know Teddy will eventually be honoured to have you as his godfather.’

Harry was at risk of tearing up again, but thankfully Remus changed the subject.

‘Now, tell me all that has happened, and don’t worry, I know you can’t tell me everything.’

And Harry got to spend the better part of the afternoon talking about all that had happened. He still wasn’t able to tell Remus about the Horcruxes, but he did tell him they had made progress on their mission. He also did not tell him about the Hallows, as he still felt ashamed about them. After discussing Allison’s departure and then return, Remus had a question.

‘And you still aren’t back together?’

‘I was overjoyed that she was back, but for a while I was still hurt that she had left and how she had done so, I just didn’t show it as much as Tracey.’

‘It sounds like she deeply regrets what she did. Let me ask you something, do you still love her?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry instantly, he didn’t need to think about that, not even a second.

‘Then I wouldn’t wait much longer to let her back into your heart. These are still very uncertain times. Love shouldn’t have to wait.’

Harry nodded, and then continued giving details on his adventures. When he got to the present he discussed that he had made a deal with Griphook, but not the details surrounding it. Remus’ face went dark.

‘I’m not sure if you know this, but shortly after I lost my job as an auror, I spent a month working as a guard at Gringotts. Even though I wasn’t there long, I got to know a lot about Goblins…’

‘What are you saying?’ Harry asked.

‘They aren’t human Harry, and they don’t think like one either,’ said Remus. ‘Deals made between wizards and Goblins have lead to some the bloodiest conflicts in both our histories. Both sides have wronged the other, it is true we are not innocent in this matter, but it has lead to goblins having a deep mistrust of us that persists to this day.’

‘But I respect gob—‘ Harry began, but Remus shook his head.

‘Harry, your heart is so big, it is a beautiful quality about you. But treating this goblin well isn’t actually going to change any decision he has already made about you. If you made a deal with him, and I suspect that would involve goblin-made items, then no matter what your agreement says he is going to view the objects as his.’

Harry had an ominous feeling now; he wondered whether Remus guessed more than he was letting on.

‘I just want you to be prepared,’ said Remus, as he stood up from the table. ‘Don’t ever think you know for sure what a goblin is thinking.’

With that foreboding conversation out of the way they all returned to celebrating the new life. Everyone told jokes and laughed, cooed over the new baby, and just got to enjoy each other’s company for the first time in months.

When it was time for the three of them to go, there were even more hugs, and a few tears shed. Just before leaving Remus pulled Harry, Theodore, Allison, and Tracey aside.

‘Dora has told me that she suspects you four won’t be staying here long term. While I want you to be safe, I know that your mission is important. So I’m going to wish you all the luck that I can, and just know that if you ever need me all you need to do is find a way to let me know and I’ll be there.’

Harry and Theodore hugged him and Canini one last time, and then the two of them plus Andromeda were off.

Slowly the days stretched onwards, and the gang resumed their planning with Griphook. It was like planning to break into the Ministry all over again. They settled to work in the smallest bedroom, which was kept, according to Griphook’s preference, in semidarkness.

‘I have visited the Lestranges’ vault only once,’ Griphook told them, ‘on the occasion I was told to place inside it the false sword. It is one of the most ancient chambers. The oldest Wizarding families store their treasures at the deepest level, where the vaults are largest and best protected…’

They remained shut in the cupboard-like room for hours at a time. There was problem after problem to overcome, not least of which was that their store of Polyjuice Potion was greatly depleted.

‘If we had a full month to spare I still likely wouldn’t be able to make more,’ Theodore signed. ‘Tulip has told me the shortage on Fluxweed is even worse now than it was eight months ago. As it stands we only have enough for one person.’

‘That’ll be enough, especially if you can make a temporary Aging Potion,’ said Harry, who was examining Griphook’s hand-drawn map of the deepest passageways.

The other inhabitants of the cottage could hardly fail to notice that something was going on now that Harry, Tracey, Theodore, and mostly Allison only emerged for mealtimes. Nobody asked questions, although Harry often felt Tonks’ eyes on the four of them at the table, thoughtful, concerned.

The longer they spent together, the more Harry realized that he did not much like the goblin. Griphook was unexpectedly bloodthirsty, laughed at the idea of pain in lesser creatures and seemed to relish the possibility that they might have to hurt other wizards to reach the Lestranges’ vault. Harry could tell that his distaste was shared by the other three, but they did not discuss it. Tonks once offered to move Tracey and Allison into Griphooks room, but they refused. Harry and the other three knew that Griphook would think poorly of having to sleep on the sofa; keeping Griphook happy was essential to their plans. They needed him.

The goblin ate only grudgingly with the rest of them. Even after his legs had mended, he continued to request trays of food in his room, like the still-frail Ollivander, until Dean (following a small breakdown from the exhausted Tulip) went upstairs on Tulip’s request to tell him that the arrangement could not continue. Thereafter Griphook joined them at the overcrowded table, although he refused to eat the same food, insisting, instead, on lumps of raw meat, roots, and various fungi.

Harry felt responsible: It was, after all, he who had insisted that the goblin remain at Tonks and Tulip’s cottage so that he could question him, but they insisted that they understood.

After his family’s departure, the only joyful day came a few days later. Harry had needed a break away from Griphook, and decided to have a short walk through the garden. When he reached the lake-side garden with blooming spring flowers, however, he heard some noise coming from behind the shed. He made his way over and found Allison sitting on a chair sanding a stick of light reddish-brown colour.

‘How is it coming?’ he asked, and she looked up and smiled.

‘I think I just finished actually. The dead cedar tree I found was still dry and strong so it was perfect to work with, I just sanded the small branch to shape I want, and Harry look,’ she stood up and held out a small jar, and inside was what looked like the wing of a dragon fly, but it was a deep purple and glittered in an unnatural way.

‘What is it?’ Harry asked genuinely.

‘Well, there aren’t really any Unicorns, Dragons, or Phoenixes in this forest, so I had to find another source of magic. The garden has had some fairies hanging around in it, and I managed to find an intact wing that I liked. While Mr Ollivander prefers to work with only the three superior cores, he said he’ll insert whatever magical core I can find. Once he does, all that will be left is for me to polish it.’

‘I’m so proud of you,’ Harry blurted out. Allison’s cheeks went pink.

‘Oh, um, thank you Harry.’

He was going to backtrack, mumble something and walk away, but he remembered what Remus had told him and decided to take a chance.

‘I really mean it, you have worked so hard on it this past week. I don’t think I could ever do what you have done,’ said Harry, and her smile grew even brighter. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is, you’re so passionate, determined, and just incredible. I can’t imagine my life without you by my side. I know the last six months haven’t been easy, but would you be willing to give what we have another shot?’

Harry wasn’t sure what she would say, but in the end Allison didn’t say anything. Instead she closed the distance between herself and Harry, took his hands in hers, and kissed him. It was beautiful and sweet. Harry had nearly forgotten what kissing her was like. As they kissed, Harry took in the moment, so that he would always remember that the resumption of their relationship was associated with the essence of aloe vera and cedar dust.

‘I—‘ he began.

‘I love you too, Harry.’

By late afternoon, with the help of Ollivander, Allison had completed her wand, and she insisted Tracey disarm her to try and guarantee Bellatrix’ wand would respond to her. Recovered as much as he could, and his work at the cottage finished, Mr Ollivander began packing and panning his move to Andromeda’s home.

That evening, Luna and Dean entered with their arms full of firewood.

‘…and tiny little ears,’ Luna was saying, ‘a bit like hippo’s, Daddy says, only purple and hairy. And if you want to call them, you have to hum; they prefer a waltz, nothing too fast…’

Looking uncomfortable, Dean shrugged at Harry as he passed, following Luna into the combined dining and sitting room where Tracey, Allison, and Theodore were laying the dinner table, and Harry decided to join them.

‘...and if you ever come to our house I’ll be able to show you the horn, Daddy wrote to me about it but I haven’t seen it yet, because the Death Eaters took me from the Hogwarts Express and I never got home for Christmas,’ Luna was saying, as she and Dean relit the fire.

‘Luna, I’m really sorry, but I told you your home was destroyed,’ Allison called over to her.

‘By that very horn,’ continued Tracey. ‘It was from an Erumpent, not a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, it exploded—‘

‘Our home can be fixed, and it was definitely a Snorkack horn,’ said Luna serenely, ‘Daddy told me. It will probably have re–formed by now, they mend themselves, you know.’

Tracey shook her head and continued laying down forks as Tulip appeared, leading Mr Ollivander down the stairs. The wandmaker still looked exceptionally frail, and he clung to Tulip’s arm as the latter supported him, carrying a large suitcase.

‘I’m going to miss you, Mr Ollivander,’ said Luna, approaching the old man.

‘And I you, my dear,’ said Ollivander, patting her on the shoulder. ‘You were an inexpressible comfort to me in that terrible place.’

‘You’ll be missed,’ said Tonks, as she entered the kitchen with Teddy in her arms.

‘Thank you, I hope to see you all again, and I wish you the best of luck on each of your journeys.’

A strong wind gusted against the cottage windows as Tulip and Ollivander set off into the night. The rest of them squeezed in around the table; elbow to elbow and with barely enough room to move, they started to eat. The fire crackled and popped in the grate beside them. Tonks, Harry noticed, was merely playing with her food or feeding Teddy milk; she glanced at the window every few minutes; however, Tulip returned before supper was even finished, her long red hair tangled by the wind.

‘Everything went well,’ she told Tonks. ‘Ollivander is all settled in, your mum says hello. Remus and Canini send you all their love. They were all happy to hear everyone is still doing well.’

It was then, with them all sitting around the table and with love sent from the rest of his family, that Harry realized something. He wasn’t just hunting Horcruxes and trying to defeat Voldemort so that the wizarding world could be free, he was doing it so that he could have more moments like this with the ones he loved.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003833123

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003838588

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003840013

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003841380

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@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972 @Interested.me @Mega.mind.harry.potter

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Wandmaker

It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant Harry knelt again beside Dumbledore’s body at the foot of the tallest tower at Hogwarts, but in reality he was staring at a tiny body curled upon the grass, pierced by Bellatrix’s silver knife. Harry’s voice was still saying, 'Dobby...Dobby…’ even though he knew that the elf had gone where he could not call him back.

After a minute or so he realized that they had, after all, come to the right place, for here were Tulip and a very pregnant Tonks, Luna, Dean, and Theodore, gathering around him as he knelt over the elf.

‘Tracey,’ he said suddenly. ‘Where is she?’

‘Allison has brought her into the house,’ said Tonks. ‘Don’t worry about her, Harry, she’ll be ok.’

Harry looked back down at Dobby. He stretched out a hand and pulled the sharp blade from the elf’s body, then dragged off his own jacket and covered Dobby in it like a blanket.

A light wind was rushing between the trees and over the lake that was somewhere nearby; Harry listened to it while the others talked, discussing matters in which he could take no interest, making decisions, Dean carried the injured Griphook into the house, Tulip hurrying with them; now Tonks and Theodore were talking towards Harry, but he couldn’t hear them. He gazed down at the tiny body, and his scar prickled and burned, and in one part of his mind, viewed as if from the wrong end of a long telescope, he saw Voldemort punishing those they had left behind at the Malfoy Manor. His rage was dreadful and yet Harry’s grief for Dobby seemed to diminish it, so that it became a distant storm that reached Harry from across a vast, silent ocean.

‘I want to do it properly,’ were the first words of which Harry was fully conscious of speaking. ‘Not by magic. Have you got a spade?’ And shortly afterward he had set to work, alone, digging the grave in the place that Tonks had shown him at the centre of the garden, in a small clearing. He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every drop of his sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved their lives.

His scar burned, but he was master of the pain, he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out…though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love.

On Harry dug, deeper and deeper into the hard, cold earth, subsuming his grief in sweat, denying the pain in his scar. In the darkness, with nothing but the sound of his own breath and the small waves of the lake to keep him company, the things that had happened at the Malfoys’ returned to him, the things he had heard came back to him, and understanding blossomed in the darkness…

The steady rhythm of his arms beat time with his thoughts. Hallows…Horcruxes…Hallows…Horcruxes…yet no longer burned with that weird, obsessive longing. Loss and fear had snuffed it out. He felt as though he had been slapped awake again.

Deeper and deeper Harry sank into the grave, and he knew where Voldemort had been tonight, and whom he had killed in the topmost cell of Nurmengard, and why…And he thought of Wormtail, dead because of one small unconscious impulse of mercy…Dumbledore had foreseen that…How much more had he known?

Harry lost track of time. He knew only that the darkness had lightened a few degrees when he was rejoined by Theodore and Allison.

‘How’s Tracey?’

‘She’s resting,’ said Allison. ‘Theo gave her some Calming Draught, and Tulip is watching over her.’

Harry had his retort ready for when they asked him why he had not simply created a perfect grave with his wand, but he did not need it. They jumped down into the hole he had made with spades of their own and together they worked in silence until the hole seemed deep enough.

Harry wrapped the elf more snugly in his jacket. Theodore sat on the edge of the grave and stripped off his shoes and socks, which he placed on the elf’s bare feet. Allison presented hand knitted mittens and hat that Harry knew were made by her mother, which Harry placed carefully upon Dolby’s hands and head, muffling his batlike ears.

‘We should close his eyes.’

Harry had not heard the others coming through the darkness. Tonks was wearing long maternity robes, Tulip a travelling cloak, from the pocket of which protruded a bottle of what Harry recognized to be Skele-Gro. Tracey was wrapped in a borrowed dressing gown, pale and unsteady on her feet; Theodore put an arm around her when she reached him. Dean had also come with a blanket around his shoulders. Luna, who was huddled in one of Tulip’s coats, crouched down and placed her fingers tenderly upon each of the elf’s eyelids, sliding them over his glassy stare.

‘There,’ she said softly. ‘Now he could be sleeping.’

Harry placed the elf into the grave, arranged his tiny limbs so that he might have been resting, then climbed out and gazed for the last time upon the little body. He forced himself not to break down as he remembered Dumbledore’s funeral, and the rows and rows of golden chairs, and the Minister of Magic in the front row, the recitation of Dumbledore’s achievements, the stateliness of the white marble tomb. He felt that Dobby deserved just as grand a funeral, and yet here the elf lay in the middle of a dormant garden in a roughly dug hole. He only somewhat registered that Allison was now by his side with her arms around him.

‘I think we ought to say something,’ piped up Luna. ‘I’ll go first, shall I?’

And as everybody looked at her, she addressed the dead elf at the bottom of the grave.

‘Thank you so much Dobby for rescuing me from that cellar. It’s so unfair that you had to die when you were so good and brave. I’ll always remember what you did for us. I hope you’re happy now.’

She turned and looked expectingly at Theodore, who cleared his throat and said in a thick voice, ‘Yes…thank you Dobby.’

‘Thanks,’ muttered Dean.

Harry swallowed. ‘Good bye Dobby, you were always there for me when in you most.’

It was all he could manage, but Luna had said it all for him. Tonks raised her wand, and the pile of earth beside the grave rose up into the air and fell neatly upon it, a small, reddish mound.

‘D’ya mind if I stay here a moment?’ he asked the others.

They murmured words he did not catch; Allison gave him a little squeeze and then let go, Harry felt gentle pats upon his back, and then they all traipsed back toward the cottage, leaving Harry alone beside the elf.

He looked around: There were a number of large white stones, smoothed by the lake, marking the edge of the flower beds. He picked up one of the largest and laid it, pillowlike, over the place where Dobby’s head now rested. He then felt in his pocket for a wand. There were two in there. He had forgotten, lost track; he could not now remember whose wands these were; he seemed to remember wrenching them out of someone’s hand. He selected the shorter of the two, which felt friendlier in his hand, and pointed it at the rock.

Slowly, under his murmured instruction, deep cuts appeared upon the rock’s surface. He knew that Theodore or Tracey could have done it more neatly, and probably more quickly, but he wanted to mark the spot as he had wanted to dig the grave. When Harry stood up again, the stone read:

“HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.”

He looked at his handiwork for a few more seconds, then walked away, his scar still prickling a little, and his mind full of those things that had come to him in the grave, ideas that had taken shape in the darkness, ideas both fascinating and terrible.

They were all sitting in the living room when he entered the little hall, their attention focused upon Tonks, who was talking. The room was a light coloured blue, pretty, with a small fire of fresh firewood burning brightly in the hearth. Harry did not want to drop mud upon the carpet, so he stood in the doorway, listening.

‘…lucky that Canini was expelled over the summer. If she was at Hogwarts right now they would have taken her hostage before we could save her. Everyone should now be safe,’ she looked around and saw Harry standing there, her face softened. ‘Up until now You-Know-Who and his forces have mostly been leaving your family alone in hopes to catch you returning to them or us making contact with you, but after tonight we’re pretty sure he has become more desperate and more than willing to hurt us to get to you. I got Remus and Canini to move in with my mum and—don’t apologize,’ she added at the sight of Harry’s expression. ‘No matter what it was a matter of time before he targeted our family to get to you. And it’s all ok, everyone is safe.’

‘How are they protected?’ asked Harry.

‘Remus has cast a Fidelius Charm. Mum’s the Secret-Keeper. And back when Allison moved in with us I did the same here; I’m Secret-Keeper for this cottage. None of us should really leave the house, but mum, Remus, and myself haven’t really left our respective homes much these past few months anyway. Once Mr Ollivander and Griphook are recovered, we’ll have them move in with mum as well. There isn’t enough beds here, but she has two extra bedrooms not currently being used plus a pull-out couch. Flower has given Griphook some Skele-Gro for his legs so he’ll probably be ready to move in—‘

‘No,’ Harry said and Tonks looked startled. ‘I need both of them here. I need to talk to them. It’s important.’

He heard the authority of his own voice, the conviction, the voice of purpose that had come to him as he dug Dobby’s grave. All of their faces were turned toward him looking puzzled.

‘I’m going to wash,’ Harry told Tonks looking down at his hands still covered with mud and Dobby’s blood. ‘Then I’ll need to see them, straight away.’

He walked into the little kitchen, to the basin beneath a window overlooking the sea. Dawn was breaking over the horizon, shell pink and faintly gold, as he washed, again following the train of thought that had come to him in the dark garden…

Dobby would never be able to tell them who had sent him to the cellar, but Harry knew what he had seen. A piercing blue eye had looked out of the mirror fragment, and then help had come. Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it. Harry dried his hands, impervious to the beauty of the scene outside the window and to the murmuring of the others in the sitting room. He looked out over the ocean and felt closer, this dawn, than ever before, closer to the heart of it all.

And still his scar prickled, and he knew that Voldemort was getting there too. Harry understood and yet did not understand. His instinct was telling him one thing, his brain quite another. The Dumbledore in Harry’s head smiled, surveying Harry over the tips of his fingers, pressed together as if in prayer.

You gave Allison the Deluminator…You understood her…You gave her a way back...And you understood Wormtail too…You knew there was a bit of regret there, somewhere...And if you knew them…What did you know about me, Dumbledore?

Am I meant to know but not to seek? Did you know how hard I’d feel that? Is that why you made it this difficult? So I’d have time to work that out?

Harry stood quite still, eyes glazed, watching the place where a bright gold ray of dazzling sun was rising over the horizon. Then he looked down at his clean hands and was momentarily surprised to see the cloth he was holding in them. He set it down and returned to the hall, and as he did so, he felt his scar pulse angrily, and then flashed across his mind, swift as the reflection of a dragonfly over water, the outline of a building he knew extremely well.

Tonks and Tulip were standing at the foot of the stairs.

‘I need to speak to Griphook and Ollivander,’ Harry said.

‘I don’t know, Harry,’ said Tulip. ‘You should wait. The goblin is in a lot of pain, and Mr Ollivander is incredibly weak—‘

‘I’m sorry,’ he said without heat, ‘but it can’t wait. I need to talk to them now. Privately—and separately. It’s urgent.’

‘Harry, I trust you and will do anything to help you, but could I please get an explanation on what has happened tonight and to you?’ asked Tonks, a deeply worried look on her face. You arrive randomly after eight months with your friends, a dead house-elf, your friend who fought with you in the Department of Mysteries, the boy and goblin who were with my father when he died, Tracey appears to have been tortured, and Allison and Theodore refuse to speak about anything without you—‘

‘We can’t tell you what we’re doing,’ said Harry flatly. ‘You’re in the Order, Tonks, you know Dumbledore left us a mission. We’re not supposed to talk about it to anyone else. I’ll tell you what I can when this is all done, but for this moment I have to focus on the mission.’

Tulip made an uneasy noise, but Tonks did not look at her; she was staring at Harry. Her round and exhausted face was hard to read. Finally, Tonks said, ‘Very well. Which one do you need to talk to first?’

Harry hesitated. He knew what hung on his decision. There was hardly any time left; now was the moment to decide: Horcruxes or Hallows?

‘Griphook,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll speak to Griphook first.’

His heart was racing as if he had been sprinting and had just cleared an enormous obstacle.

‘First door up here on the left,’ said Tonks, waddling as she lead the way.

Harry had walked up several steps before stopping and looking back.

‘I need you three as well!’ he called to Tracey, Allison, and Theodore, who had been skulking, half concealed, in the doorway of the sitting room.

They moved into the light, looking oddly relieved.

‘How are you?’ Harry asked Tracey. ‘You were amazing—coming up with that story when she was hurting you like that—‘ Tracey gave a weak smile as Allison gave her a one-armed squeeze.

‘What is your plan, Harry?’ Allison asked.

‘You’ll see. Come on.’

The four of them followed Tonks up the steep stairs onto a small landing. Four doors led off it.

‘Use this room,’ said Tonks, opening the door to her and Tulip’s room, it too had a view of the lake, now flecked with gold in the sunrise, in the corner a crib was set up. Harry moved to the window, turned his back on the spectacular view, and waited, his arms folded, his scar prickling. Tracey took the chair beside the dressing table; Theodore and Tracey stood on either side.

Tonks reappeared, carrying the little goblin, whom she set down carefully upon the bed. Griphook grunted thanks, and Tonks left, closing the door upon them all.

‘I’m sorry to take you out of bed,’ said Harry. ‘How are your legs?’

‘Painful,’ replied the goblin. ‘But mending.’

He was still holding Slytherin’s Locket, when he noticed Harry staring at it he tossed it to Tracey who just barely caught it.

‘I believe this is yours.’

‘Er, thanks,’ she muttered, and once again her small emerald locket was joined by the ancient broken one.

It was now, in proper lighting, that Harry finally got to have a good look at the goblin. He wore a strange look: half truculent, half intrigued. Harry noted the goblin’s sallow skin, his long thin fingers, his black eyes. Tulip had removed his shoes: His long feet were dirty. He was larger than a house-elf, but not by much. His domed head was much bigger than a human’s.

‘You probably don’t remember—‘ Harry began.

‘—that I was the goblin who showed you to your vault, the first time you ever visited Gringotts?’ said Griphook. ‘I remember, Harry Potter. Even amongst goblins, you are very famous.’

Harry and the goblin looked at each other, sizing each other up. Harry’s scar was still prickling. He wanted to get through this interview with Griphook quickly, and at the same time was afraid of making a false move. While he tried to decide on the best way to approach his request, the goblin broke the silence.

‘You buried the elf,’ he said, sounding unexpectedly rancorous. ‘I watched you from the window of the bedroom next door.’

‘Yes,’ said Harry.

Griphook looked at him out of the corners of his slanting black eyes.

‘You are an unusual wizard, Harry Potter.’

‘In what way?’ asked Harry, rubbing his scar absently.

‘You dug the grave.’

‘So?’

Griphook did not answer. Harry rather thought he was being sneered at for acting like a Muggle, but it did not matter to him whether Griphook approved of Dobby’s grave or not. He gathered himself for the attack.

‘Griphook, I need to ask—‘

‘You also rescued a goblin.’

‘What?’

‘You brought me here. Saved me.’

‘Well, I take it you’re not sorry?’ said Harry a little impatiently.

‘No, Harry Potter,’ said Griphook, and with one finger he twisted the thin black beard upon his chin, ‘but you are a very odd wizard.’

‘Right,’ said Harry. ‘Well, I need some help, Griphook, and you can give it to me.’

The goblin made no sign of encouragement, but continued to frown at Harry as though he had never seen anything like him.

‘I need to break into a Gringotts vault.’

Harry had not meant to say it so badly: the words were forced from him as pain shot through his lightning scar and he saw, again, the outline of Hogwarts. He closed his mind firmly. He needed to deal with Griphook first. His friends were staring at Harry as though he had gone mad.

‘Harry—‘ said Allison, but she was cut off by Griphook.

‘Break into a Gringotts vault?’ repeated the goblin, wincing a little as he shifted his position upon the bed. ‘It is impossible.’

‘Actually it isn’t,’ Theodore contradicted him. ‘It has been done once before.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘The same day I first met you, Griphook. My birthday, seven years ago.’

‘The vault in question was empty at the time,’ snapped the goblin, and Harry understood that even though Griphook had let Gringotts, he was offended at the idea of its defenses being breached. ‘Its protection was minimal.’

‘Well, the vault we need to get into isn’t empty, and I’m guessing its protection will be pretty powerful,’ said Harry. ‘It belongs to the Lestranges.’

He saw his three friends look at each other, astonished, but there would be time enough to explain after Griphook had given his answer.

‘You have no chance,’ said Griphook flatly. ‘No chance at all. “If you seek beneath our floors, a treasure that was never yours—“‘

‘“Thief, you have been warned, beware”—yeah, I know, I remember,’ said Harry. ‘But I’m not trying to get myself any treasure, I’m not trying to take anything for personal gain. Can you believe that?’

The goblin looked slantwise at Harry, and the lightning scar on Harry’s forehead prickled, but he ignored it, refusing to acknowledge its pain or its invitation.

‘If there was a wizard of whom I would believe that they did not seek personal gain,’ said Griphook finally, ‘it would be you, Harry Potter. Goblins and elves are not used to the protection or the respect that you have shown this night. Not from wand-carriers.’

‘Wand-carriers,’ repeated Harry: The phrase fell oddly upon his ears as his scar prickled, as Voldemort turned his thoughts northward, and as Harry burned to question Ollivander next door.

‘The right to carry a wand,’ said the goblin quietly, ‘has long been contested between wizards and goblins.’

‘But can’t Goblins perform magic without a wand?’ asked Allison.

‘That is immaterial! Wizards refuse to share the secrets of wandlore with other magical beings, they deny us the possibility of extending our powers!’

‘That is true, but goblins don’t share any of their magical secrets either,’ said Theodore. ‘Such as how you imbue your metal with magic that allows it to only become stronger. Magic wizard inventors have never been able to—‘

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Harry, noting Griphook’s rising colour. ‘This isn’t about wizards versus goblins or any other sort of magical creature—‘

Griphook gave a nasty laugh.

‘But it is, it is precisely that! As the Dark Lord becomes ever more powerful, your race is set still more firmly above mine! Gringotts falls under Wizarding rule, house-elves are slaughtered, and who amongst the wand-carriers protests?’

‘I do,’ said Tracey. With great effort she sat up as straight as she could. ‘My friends and I have always protested against mistreatment of others, human or not. And to those currently in charge I don’t stand much higher than you Griphook, a proud daughter of a muggle! They say my blood is filth!’

‘But that’s not true—‘ said Allison.

‘But it is,’ said Tracey. ‘I am equally proud of my muggle brother and dad as I am my magical mum. Bellatrix chose me to torture, back in the manor!’ As she spoke, she pulled up the sleeve of the dressing gown to reveal the cuts Bellatrix had made, spelling crude scarlet letters:

“FILTH”

‘Tracey…’ Theodore tried to begin in shock, but Tracey continued.

‘The elf that died, his name was Dobby, and it was Harry who freed him five years ago,’ she stated. ‘And my boyfriend and I have been members of a free house-elf organization at Hogwarts for a couple years now. The four of us want You-Know-Who and his bigotry to end as much as you do, Griphook.’

The goblin gazed at Tracey with the same curiosity he had shown Harry.

‘What do you seek within the Lestranges’ vault?’ he asked abruptly. ‘I doubt four Slytherins seek the Sword of Gryffindor. Even if that were your intentions, I should warn you the sword inside is a fake.’

‘It’s true, we don’t seek the sword, but the fake sword isn’t the only thing in that vault, is it?’ asked Harry. ‘Perhaps you’ve seen other things in there?’

His heart was pounding harder than ever. He redoubled his efforts to ignore the pulsing of his scar.

The goblin twisted his beard around his finger again.

‘It is against our code to speak of the secrets of Gringotts. We are the guardians of fabulous treasures. We have a duty to the objects placed in our care, which were, so often, wrought by our fingers.’

The goblin’s black eyes roved from Harry to Tracey, to Allison, to Theodore and then back again.

‘So young,’ he said finally, ‘to be fighting so many.’

‘Will you help us?’ said Harry. ‘We haven’t got a hope of breaking in without a goblin’s help. You’re our one chance.’

‘I shall…think about it. If I do agree however, I will require compensation, and I won’t accept wizarding currency,’ said Griphook maddeningly.

‘But—‘ Allison started angrily; Tracey nudged her in the ribs.

‘Thank you,’ said Harry.

The goblin bowed his great domed head in acknowledgement, then flexed his short legs.

‘I think,’ he said, settling himself ostentatiously upon Tonks and Tulip’s bed, ‘that the Skele-Gro has finished its work. I may be able to sleep at last. Forgive me…’

‘Yeah, of course,’ said Harry, but as they were leaving the room Harry couldn’t help but feel the goblin’s eyes lingering on him as he closed the door.

‘He already has an answer,’ whispered Allison. ‘He just wants us to wait to become more desperate. And what does he mean by "compensation other than wizarding currancy"?'

'I think we'll have to find that out,' said Tracey quietly.

‘Harry,’ whispered Theodore, pulling them all away from the door, into the middle of the still-dark landing, ‘do you want to get into the Lestrange vault for the reason I think you do? Do you believe she has a Horcrux?’

‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘Bellatrix recognized the locket as having belonged to You-Know-Who, that he’d kill everyone in Malfoy Manor if it was discovered to be destroyed. She specifically said that it was one of the objects he had hid, implying she knew of at least one other. When she was the most desperate she let slip that she thought it came from a vault, she might have thought that because that was what she herself did. Before seven years ago it was unthinkable that anything could be stolen from Gringotts, so if she was asked to hide something that was probably the best place she could think of.’

‘I thought Dumbledore said we should look for places You-Know-Who has been, places that are important to him?’ asked Tracey. ‘Why would her vault be important?’

‘I don’t know whether he was ever inside Gringotts,’ said Harry. ‘He never had gold there when he was younger, because nobody left him anything. He would have seen the bank from the outside, though, the first time he ever went to Diagon Alley.’

Harry’s scar throbbed, but he ignored it; he wanted his friends to understand about Gringotts before they spoke to Ollivander.

‘I think he would have envied anyone who had a key to a Gringotts vault. I think he’d have seen it as a real symbol of belonging to the Wizarding world. And don’t forget, he trusted Bellatrix and her husband. They were his most devoted servants before he fell, and they went looking for him after he vanished. He said it the night he came back, I heard him.’

Harry rubbed his scar.

‘I don’t think he’d have told Bellatrix it was a Horcrux, though. He never told Lucius Malfoy the truth about the diary. He probably told her it was a treasured possession and asked her to place it in her vault. The safest place in the world for anything you want to hide…except for Hogwarts.’

When Harry had finished speaking, Allison shook her head.

‘You sound as though you know him…’

‘Bits of him,’ said Harry. ‘Bits…I just wish I’d understood Dumbledore as much. But we’ll see. Come on—Ollivander now.’

Tracey, Allison, and Theodore looked bewildered but very impressed as they followed him across the little landing and knocked upon the door opposite of Tonks and Tulip’s. A weak ‘Come in!’ answered them.

The wandmaker was lying on the twin bed farthest from the window. He had been held in the cellar for more than a year, and tortured, Harry knew, on at least one occasion. He was emaciated, the bones of his face sticking out sharply against the yellowish skin. His great silver eyes seemed vast in their sunken sockets. The hands that lay upon the blanket could have belonged to a skeleton. Harry sat down on the empty bed, beside his three friends. The rising sun was not visible here. The room faced the lake-side garden and the freshly dug grave.

‘Mr Ollivander, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Harry said.

‘My dear boy,’ Ollivander’s voice was feeble, you rescued us, I thought we would die in that place, I can never thank you…never thank you…enough.’

‘We were glad to do it.’

Harry’s scar throbbed. He knew, he was certain, that there was hardly any time left in which to beat Voldemort to his goal, or else to attempt to thwart him. He felt a flutter of panic…yet he had made his decision when he chose to speak to Griphook first. Feigning a calm he did not feel, he groped in the pouch around his neck and took out the two halves of his broken wand.

‘Mr Ollivander, I need some help.’

‘Anything. Anything,’ said the wandmaker weakly.

‘Can you mend this? Is it possible?’

Ollivander held out a trembling hand, and Harry placed the two barely connected halves in his palm.

‘Holly and phoenix feather,’ said Ollivander in a tremulous voice. ‘Eleven inches. Nice and supple.’

‘Yes,’ said Harry. ‘Can you—?’

‘No,’ whispered Ollivander. ‘I am sorry, very sorry, but a wand that has suffered this degree of damage cannot be repaired by any means that I know of.’

Harry had been braced to hear it, but it was a blow nevertheless. He took the wand halves back and replaced them in the pouch around his neck. Ollivander stared at the place where the shattered wand had vanished, and did not look away until Harry had taken from his pocket the two wands he had brought from the Malfoys’.

‘Can you identify these?’ Harry asked.

The wandmaker took the first of the wands and held it close to his faded eyes, rolling it between his knobble-knuckled fingers, flexing it slightly.

‘Walnut and dragon heartstring,’ he said. ‘Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.’

‘And this one?’

Ollivander performed the same examination.

‘Hawthorn and unicorn hair. Ten inches precisely. Reasonably springy. This was the wand of Draco Malfoy.’

‘Was?’ repeated Harry. ‘Isn’t it still his?’

‘Perhaps not. If you took it from him—‘

‘—I did—‘

‘—then it may be yours. Of course, the manner of taking matters. Much also depends upon the wand itself. In general, however, where a wand has been won, its allegiance will change.’

There was a silence in the room, except for the distant rushing of the sea.

‘You talk about wands like they’ve got feelings,’ said Harry, ‘like they can think for themselves.’

‘The wand chooses the wizard,’ said Ollivander. ‘That much has always been clear to those of us who have studied wandlore.’

‘A person can still use a wand that hasn’t chosen them, though?’ asked Harry.

‘Oh yes, if you are any wizard at all you will be able to channel your magic through almost any instrument. The best results, however, must always come where there is the strongest affinity between wizard and wand. These connections are complex. An initial attraction, and then a mutual quest for experience, the wand learning from the wizard, the wizard from the wand.’

The sea gushed forward and backward; it was a mournful sound.

‘I took this wand from Draco Malfoy by force,’ said Harry. ‘Can I use it safely?’

‘I think so. Subtle laws govern wand ownership, but the conquered wand will usually bend its will to its new master. I believe that is the case with this one.’

‘Would that mean I should use this one?’ asked Theodore, pulling Wormtail’s wand out of his pocket and handing it to Ollivander.

‘Chestnut and dragon heartstring. Nine-and-a-quarter inches. Brittle. I was forced to make this shortly after my kidnapping, for Peter Pettigrew. Yes, if you won it, it is more likely to do your bidding, and do it well, than another wand.’

‘And this holds true for all wands, does it?’ asked Harry.

‘For the most part. Some wand woods are more loyal to their original owners, Ms Lestrange’s would prefer its old master, but its spells should at the very least not rebound,’ replied Ollivander, his protuberant eyes upon Harry’s face. ‘You ask deep questions, Mr Potter. Wandlore is a complex and mysterious branch of magic.’

‘So to clarify, it isn’t necessary to kill the previous owner to take the possession of a wand?’ asked Harry.

Ollivander swallowed.

‘Necessary? No, I should not say that it is necessary to kill.’

‘There are legends, though,’ said Harry, and as his heart rate quickened, the pain in his scar became more intense; he was sure that Voldemort has decided to put his idea into action. ‘Legends about a wand—or wands—that have been passed from hand to hand by murder.’

Ollivander turned pale. Against the snowy pillow he was light gray, and his eyes were enormous, bloodshot, and bulging with what looked like fear.

‘Only one wand, I think,’ he whispered.

‘And You-Know-Who is interested in it, isn’t he?’ asked Harry.

‘I—how?’ croaked Ollivander, and he looked appealingly at Tracey, Allison, and Theodore for help. ‘How do you know this?’

‘He wanted you to tell him how to overcome the connection between our wands,’ said Harry.

Ollivander looked terrified.

‘He tortured me, you must understand that! The Cruciatus Curse, I–I had no choice but to tell him what I knew, what I guessed!’

‘I understand, I am not mad at you for the information you gave him,’ said Harry. ‘You told him about the twin cores? You said he just had to borrow another wizard’s wand?’

Ollivander looked horrified, transfixed, by the amount that Harry knew. He nodded slowly.

‘But it didn’t work,’ Harry went on. ‘Mine still beat the borrowed wand. Do you know why that is?’

Ollivander shook his head slowly as he had just nodded.

‘I had…never heard of such a thing. Your wand performed something unique that night. The connection of the twin cores is incredibly rare, yet why your wand would have snapped the borrowed wand, I do not know…’

‘We were talking about the other wand, the wand that changes hands by murder. When You-Know-Who realized my wand had done something strange, he came back and asked about that other wand, didn’t he?’

‘How do you know this?’

Harry did not answer.

‘Yes, he asked,’ whispered Ollivander. ‘He wanted to know everything I could tell him about the wand variously known as the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, or the Elder Wand.’

Harry glanced sideways at Theodore. He looked flabbergasted.

‘The Dark Lord,’ said Ollivander in hushed and frightened tones, ‘had always been happy with the wand I made him—yew and phoenix feather, thirteen-and-a-half inches—until he discovered the connection of the twin cores. Now he seeks another, more powerful wand, as the only way to conquer yours.’

‘But he’ll know soon, if he doesn’t already, that mine’s broken beyond repair,’ said Harry quietly.

‘How—?’ began Allison.

‘Priori Incantatem,’ said Harry. ‘We left your lot’s three wands including Tracey and the sycamore wand at the Malfoys’, Allison. If they examine them properly, make them re-create the spells they’ve cast lately, they’d see that Tracey’s broke mine, they’ll see that she tried and failed to mend it, and they’ll realize that I’ve been using the sycamore one ever since.’

It wasn’t Harry’s intention, but his last couple statements seemed to have made Tracey quite uncomfortable as all the colour drained from her face. Allison gave Harry a hesitant look, and she said, ‘That’ll be a problem for later, tonight we—‘

But Mr Ollivander intervened.

‘The Dark Lord no longer seeks the Elder Wand only for your destruction, Mr Potter. He is determined to possess it because he believes it will make him truly invulnerable.’

‘And will it?’

‘The owner of the Elder Wand must always fear attack,’ said Ollivander, ‘but the idea of the Dark Lord in possession of the Deathstick is, I must admit…formidable.’

Harry was suddenly reminded of how unsure, when they first met, of how much he like Ollivander. A memory of him yelling at Sirius for customizing his wand stuck at the surface of his mind for a second. Even now, having been tortured and imprisoned by Voldemort, the idea of the Dark Wizard in possession of this wand seemed to enthrall him as much as it repulsed him.

‘So—you truly believe the Elder Wand exists, Mr Ollivander?’ asked Theodore.

‘Oh yes,’ said Ollivander. ‘Yes, it is perfectly possible to trace the wand’s course through history. There are gaps, of, course, and long ones, where it vanishes from view, temporarily lost or hidden; but always it resurfaces. It has certain identifying characteristics that those who are learned in wandlore recognize. There are written accounts, some of them obscure, that I and other wandmakers have made it our business to study. They have the ring of authenticity.’

‘Then it isn’t just a story myth?’ Theodore tried to confirm.

‘No,’ said Ollivander. ‘Whether it needs to pass by murder, I do not know. Its history is bloody, but that may be simply due to the fact that it is such a desirable object, and arouses such passions in wizards. Immensely powerful, dangerous in the wrong hands, and an object of incredible fascination to all of us who study the power of wands.’

‘Mr Ollivander,’ said Harry, ‘you told You-Know-Who that Gregorovitch had the Elder Wand, didn’t you?’

Ollivander turned, if possible, even paler. He looked ghostly as he gulped.

‘But how—how do you—?’

‘Never mind how I know it,’ said Harry, closing his eyes momentarily as his scar burned and he saw, for mere seconds, a vision of the main street in Hogsmeade, still dark, because it was so much farther north. ‘You told You-Know-Who that Gregorovitch had the wand?’

‘It was a rumour,’ whispered Ollivander. ‘A rumour, years and years ago, long before you were born, I believe Gregorovitch himself started it. You can see how good it would be for business; that he was studying and duplicating the qualities of the Elder Wand!’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Harry. He stood up. ‘Mr Ollivander, one last thing, and then we’ll let you get some rest. What do you know about the Deathly Hallows?’

‘The—the what?’ asked the wandmaker, looking utterly bewildered.

‘The Deathly Hallows.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this still something to do with wands?’

Harry looked into the sunken face and believed that Ollivander was not acting. He did not know about the Hallows.

‘Thank you,’ said Harry. ‘Thank you very much.’

Before he could leave the man to rest, Allison had her own question.

‘Mr Ollivander, I lost my wand in the manor as well. My family is French, and my mother told me about her making my wand, but she never got to show me how. When you are more recovered could you tell me what to do?’

‘The makings of Ollivander wands are a family secret, but if you are determined to make your own wand I can give you some tips to start you on the right path,’ Mr Ollivander said with a tiny smile.

‘Thank you,’ said Allison with a nod.

‘We’ll leave you to get some rest now,’ said Harry, his voice took his small smile away.

Ollivander looked stricken.

‘He was torturing me!’ he gasped. ‘The Cruciatus Curse...you have no idea...’

‘I do,’ said Harry, ‘I really do. Please get some rest. Thank you for telling us all of this, I know it couldn’t have been easy.’

Harry led the other three down the staircase. Harry caught glimpses of Tonks, Tulip, Luna, and Dean sitting at the table in the kitchen, cups of tea in front of them. They all looked up at Harry as he appeared in the doorway, but he merely nodded to them and continued into the garden, his three friends behind him. The reddish mound of earth that covered Dobby lay ahead, and Harry walked back to it, as the pain in his head built more and more powerfully. It was a huge effort now to close down the visions that were forcing themselves upon him, but he knew that he would have to resist only a little longer. He would yield very soon, because he needed to know that his theory was right. He must make only one more short effort, so that he could explain to his friends.

‘Gregorovitch had the Elder Wand a long time ago,’ he said, ‘I saw You-Know-Who trying to find him. When he tracked him down, he found that Gregorovitch didn’t have it anymore: It was stolen from him by Grindelwald. How Grindelwald found out that Gregorovitch had it, I don’t know—but if Gregorovitch was stupid enough to spread the rumour, it can’t have been that difficult.’

Voldemort was at the gates of Hogwarts; Harry could see him standing there, and see too the lamp bobbing in the pre-dawn, coming closer and closer.

‘And Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to become powerful. And at the height of his power, when Dumbledore knew he was the only one who could stop him, he dueled Grindelwald and beat him, and he took the Elder Wand.’

‘Dumbledore’s wand was THE Elder Wand?’ said Tracey. ‘What, but—who owns it now? Where is it?’

‘At Hogwarts, Dumbledore was buried with it,’ said Harry, fighting to remain with them in the lake-side garden.

‘Then we have to go, we have to protect it!’ said Theodore urgently. ‘Harry, we can’t let it fall into his hands!’

‘It’s too late for that,’ said Harry. He could not help himself, but clutched his head, trying to help it resist. ‘He knows where it is. He’s there now.’

‘Harry!’ Allison said anxiously. ‘When did you learn this? While you were burying Dobby, Theo and I could have—‘

‘No,’ said Harry, and he sank to his knees in the grass. ‘You guys were right. Dumbledore didn’t want me to have it. He didn’t want me to take it. He wanted me to get the Horcruxes.’

‘But with it he’ll be unbeatable!’ moaned Theodore in defeat.

‘I’m not supposed to…I’m supposed to get the Horcruxes…’

And now everything was cool and dark: The sun was barely visible over the horizon as he glided alongside Snape, up through the grounds toward the lake.

‘I shall join you in the castle shortly,’ he said in his high, cold voice. ‘Leave me now.’

Snape bowed and set off back up the path, his black cloak billowing behind him. Harry walked slowly, waiting for Snape’s figure to disappear. It would not do for Snape, or indeed anyone else, to see where he was going. But there were no lights in the castle windows, and he could conceal himself…and in a second he had cast upon himself a Disillusionment Charm that hid him even from his own eyes.

And he walked on, around the edge of the lake, taking in the outlines of the beloved castle, his first kingdom, his birthright…

And here it was, beside the lake, reflected in the dark waters. The white marble tomb, an unnecessary blot on the familiar landscape. He felt again that rush of controlled euphoria, that heady sense of purpose in destruction. He raised the old yew wand: How fitting that this would be its last great act.

The tomb split open from head to foot. The shrouded figure was as long as thin as it had been in life. He raised the wand again. The wrappings fell open. The face was translucent, pale, sunken, yet almost perfectly preserved. They had left his spectacles on the crooked nose: He felt amused derision. Dumbledore’s hands were folded upon his chest, and there it lay, clutched beneath them, buried with him.

Had the old fool imagined that marble or death would protect the wand? Had he thought that the Dark Lord would be scared to violate his tomb? The spiderlike hand swooped and pulled the wand from Dumbledore’s grasp, and as he took it, a shower of sparks flew from its tip, sparkling over the corpse of its last owner, ready to serve a new master at last.

These are the best three characters from Hufflepuff

Cedric-died straight away, didn't get into his personality much.

Tonks-had basically no lines in movies, underrated.

Mad eye Moody -no one even knows he's Hufflepuff!

To think jk Rowling is actually Hufflepuff.

First half of book:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003829962

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@SaphireStark @Missy Clara Oswald @CatsAndRoblox @Pervaza972

Chapter Nineteen: Xenophilius Lovegood

Harry had not expected Tracey’s anger to subside overnight, but was pleased that while she was still moody and not talking directly to Allison, that she at the very least wasn’t yelling at her anymore. Allison accepted that this was the status quo for now and returned to her normal stoic demeanour. With the two girls not talking much, whenever all four of them sat together at the table Harry felt like he was at a poorly attended funeral.

During the few moments Allison spent alone with Harry, however (collecting water and searching the undergrowth for mushrooms as after Godric’s Hollow they were taking a break from villages), she became shamelessly cheery.

‘You realize that someone helped us,’ she kept saying. ‘Someone cast the doe. We have a secret ally. Now there is one less Horcrux to worry about.’

Bolstered by the destruction of the locket, they set to debating the possible locations of the other Horcruxes, and even though they had discussed the matter so often before, Harry felt optimistic, certain that more breakthroughs would succeed the first. Tracey’s sulkiness could not mar his buoyant spirits; The sudden upswing in their fortunes, they appearance of the mysterious doe, the destruction of the Horcrux, and above all, Allison’s return, made Harry so happy that it was quite difficult to maintain a straight face.

With a raised eyebrow from Theodore that Harry ignored, late in the afternoon he and Allison escaped Tracey’s baleful presence again, and under the pretense of scouting the bare hedges for nonexistent blackberries, they continued their ongoing exchange of news. Harry had finally managed to tell Allison the whole story of his, Tracey, and Theodore’s various wanderings, right up to the full story of what had happened at Godric’s Hollow; Allison was now filling Harry in on everything she had discovered about the wider Wizarding world during her weeks away.

‘…I’m surprised that with you all avoiding villages with higher wizarding populations that you managed to learn about the taboo,’ she said after explaining the many desperate attempts of Muggle-borns to evade the Ministry.

‘The what?’

‘You, Theodore, and Tracey have all stopped using You-Know-Who’s name!’

‘Oh, yeah. Well, it’s just a bad habit we’ve slipped into,’ said Harry. ‘But I haven’t got a problem calling him V—‘

‘STOP!’ roared Allison, causing Harry to jump into the hedge and the other two to stick their heads out of the tent to look over at them.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you all,’ looking a little embarrassed from her outburst but still very serious about what she was saying, ‘but his name has been jinxed. While I was gone I had access to more Order information and they’ve learned that’s how You-Know-Who and his followers find people now. By saying his name it breaks every nearby protective enchantment, and alerts You-Know-Who and his followers of your location, it’s why Potterwatch refers to him as chief Death Eater now—it’s also how they tracked us on Caring Cross Road to the convenience store!’

‘Because we used his name?’ asked Harry.

‘Correct! If it wasn’t putting our lives in danger I’d appreciate their cunning, only people very serious about defeating him use his name, people like Dumbledore and those loyal to him. Now there is a Taboo on the name, anyone who says it is trackable—a nearly foolproof way to find us and the members of the Order. They very nearly got Kingsley—‘

‘Kingsley? No! Is he ok?’ asked Tracey from the tent entrance, a friend’s safety overriding her anger towards Allison.

‘I think so, he accidentally said the name and a small army of Death Eaters cornered him, Tonks told me, but he managed to fight his way out. He’s now on the run now just like us, I think he’s staying wherever Colin is because they both still make appearances on Potterwatch,’ said Allison, causally letting them all know both were ok. A thought popped into her head. ‘Do you think it’s possible Kingsley sent us the doe?’

‘His Patronus is a lynx, we saw it at the wedding, remember?’ said Harry.

‘Right, sorry…’

Theodore and Tracey went back into the tent and Harry and Allison moved farther along the hedge, away from the tent to talk a little more in private.

‘Harry…do you think it was possible that Dumbledore sent the doe?’

‘Dumbledore?’

‘Yeah,’ said Allison in a low voice, a little hesitant, she looked as though she was worried he’d laugh at her. ‘You said that the snake and You-Know-Who performed ancient dark magic beyond your imagination, well what if Dumbledore was able to do the same but with light magic. It was his Deluminator that brought me to you, so it could have been his magic that brought you to me.’

Harry did not laugh at Allison, because he understood too well the longing behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had managed to come back to them, that he was watching over them, would have been inexpressibly comforting. He shook his head.

‘Dumbledore’s dead,’ he said. ‘I saw it happen, I saw the body. He’s definitely gone. Anyway, his Patronus was a phoenix, not a doe.’

‘Tracey told me once last year that powerful emotions can affect magic, which includes shapes of Patronuses,’ said Allison. Harry remembered hearing something similar at some point, but there were still holes in Allison’s theory.

‘Patronuses can change, but if Dumbledore was alive, why wouldn’t he show himself? Why wouldn’t he just give us what we need, tell us what to do, or better yet he would do it himself.’

‘Not sure,’ said Allison. ‘It would probably be the same reason he did tell you everything while he was alive? The same reason he left you the Snitch, Tracey his handbag, and Theodore an old copy of a children’s book?’

‘Which is what?’ asked Harry, turning to look Allison full in the face, desperate for the answer.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Allison. ‘When I was being influenced by the Horcrux I used to think that he wanted to make our lives more difficult, but I now know that isn’t true. He left Tracey the bag so we’d have a weapon to destroy the Horcruxes, and he left me the Deluminator…he, um, probably knew I’d end up leaving you.’

The last part she said with shame.

‘No,’ Harry corrected her. ‘He must’ve know you’d always want to come back.’

Allison looked grateful, but still awkward. Partly to change the subject, Harry said, ‘Speaking of Dumbledore, have you heard what Skeeter wrote about him?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Allison at once. ‘It’s the only gossip people are talking about, other than careful and quiet gossip about you. I thought I my father taught me everything about Grindelwald, but I had no idea he knew Dumbledore before their duel. I wouldn’t put much thought into what Dumbledore did back then, he was quite young when—‘

‘Our age,’ said Harry, just as he had retorted to Theodore, and something in his face seemed to convince Allison against pursuing the subject.

A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles. Harry took aim at it with the wand Allison had given him the previous night, which Theodore and Tracey had insisted on examining and agreed it was likely sycamore.

‘Engorgio.’

The spider game a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web.

Harry tried again. This time the spider grew slightly larger.

‘Harry, stop, I think you’re hurting it.’

Harry had been so lost in thought he had forgotten the spider was alive.

‘Sorry—Reducio.’

The spider did not shrink. Harry looked down at the sycamore wand.

Every minor spell he had cast with it so far that day had seemed less powerful than those he had produced with his phoenix wand. The new one felt intrusively unfamiliar, like having somebody else’s hand sown to the end of his arm.

‘I don’t know a lot of wand lore, but I know sycamore wands are better at exciting and adventurous spells, and struggle with mundane magic,’ advised Tracey later that day after watching Harry continue to struggle to perform simple spells. ‘Practice should eventually elevate any down sides.’

He knew why she wanted to be right: She still felt guilty about breaking his wand. He bit back the retort that sprang to his lips, that she could take the sycamore wand if she thought it made no difference, and he would have hers instead.

Keen for them all to be friends again, however, he agreed; but when Allison gave Tracey a tentative smile, she stalked off to lay down on her bunk.

All four of them returned to the tent when darkness fell, and Harry took first watch. Sitting in the entrance, he tried to make the sycamore wand levitate small stones at his feet; but his magic still seemed clumsier and less powerful than it had done before. Theodore was lying in his bunk reading, Tracey was cleaning some of her clothes in the kitchen sink, while Allison sat in one of the armchairs and was staring at the little wireless radio from Grimmauld Place that was sitting on the table.

‘Have any of you listened to Potterwatch recently?’ she asked.

‘Er, no, it’s been nearly two weeks,’ said Theodore, looking up from Dumbledore’s copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. ‘We’d been distracted from preparing for Godric’s Hollow and then afterwards were too busy recovering or dealing with the basilisk fang.’

‘Well I had only been listening occasionally, as after I left I started reading Quibblers. Turns out after August first they stopped posting their regular content and became the only magazine sharing real wizarding news, unlike the Death Eater propaganda everywhere else, but just over a week ago they suddenly stopped printing new copies, so I’m out of up to date information as well. Mind if I turn it on?’

‘Go for it,’ said Theodore, now back to focusing on his book.

She drummed lightly on top of the radio with her wand, muttering random possible passwords under her breath. She threw Tracey many covert glances, plainly fearing an angry outburst, but for all the notice she took of her she might not have been there. For ten minutes or so Allison tapped and muttered. Tracey continued her laundry, Theodore turned the pages of his book, and Harry continued to practice with the sycamore wand.

Eventually Theodore got out of his bed and came to sit at the table where Allison now ceased her tapping on the radio.

‘Sorry if I’m annoying you, I’ll try again later,’ she said a little disappointed.

Theodore then raised his voice a little so Harry and Tracey realized he was talking to all three of them, ‘We all need to have a talk.’

Harry looked at the book still clutched in his hand. It was no longer the children’s book, but The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.

‘What?’ Harry said apprehensively. It flew through his mind that there was a chapter on him in there; he was not sure he felt up to hearing Rita’s version of his relationship with Dumbledore. Theodore’s answer, however, was completely unexpected.

‘I think we should go visit Xenophilius Lovegood.’

Harry, Allison, and Tracey all stared at him.

‘Sorry?’ said Harry.

‘Luna’s dad, I think we need to talk to him!’

‘Ok? Why?’ asked Tracey, leaving the rest of her laundry in the sink and joining Theodore and Allison at the table.

Theodore took a deep breath, as though bracing himself, and said, ‘I found the mark again, the one inked into Beedle the Bard. Look!’

He gestured for Harry to see, so he left the tent entrance and now all four sat at the table. He thrust The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore under Harry’s unwilling eyes as he saw a photograph of the original letter that Dumbledore had written Grindelwald, with Dumbledore’s familiar thin, slanting handwriting. He hated seeing absolute proof that Dumbledore really had written those words, that they had not been Rita’s invention.

‘Look,’ said Theodore. ‘Harry, look at the signature!’

He obeyed. For a moment he had no idea what he was talking about, but, looking more closely with the aid of his lit wand, he saw that Dumbledore had replaced the A of Albus with a tiny version of the same triangular mark inscribed upon The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

‘What? I don’t understand?’ said Allison, Harry quickly brought her up to speed about all they knew about the symbol.

‘It has connections to both Dumbledore and the wizarding world’s previous darkest wizard, being on an ancient grave in Godric’s Hollow where Bathilda lived may suggest it has something to do with Grindelwald’s family, but then it pops up on Mr Lovegood’s neck,’ Theodore said, ranting a little. ‘The three other known people who might have known what it meant are either dead or imprisoned, the only one left being Xenophilius Lovegood. Now normally I would believe a word that comes out of his mouth as facts, but Allison says his information has become more trustworthy and he’s our only lead.’

‘You have yet to explain why it is we should go see him, Theo,’ pointed out Tracey. ‘What does this mark have to do with our quest?’

‘Well remember the inked in symbol in Dumbledore’s copy of the The Tales of Beedle the Bard, now that I’ve seen how he draws the symbol in his letter I believe Dumbledore marked it into the book himself. Two out of four items he has left us have been very important so far, and that little mark is the only thing in the entire book that has been altered so it much be important. I want to know why it was important to Dumbledore, and why he thought it would be important to me, and to the very best of our knowledge the only person who might have answers is Mr Lovegood.’

Harry did not answer immediately. He looked into Theodore’s intense, eager face and then out into the surrounding darkness, thinking. After a long pause he said,

‘Theo, don’t take this the wrong way, but we don’t need another Godric’s Hollow. We talked ourselves into going there, and—‘

‘Dumbledore left it for a reason, Harry!’ said Theodore, Harry could tell he wasn’t going to be able to change his mind but he felt he needed to try.

‘We keep trying to convince ourselves Dumbledore left us secret signs and clues—‘

‘But his bag did have a basilisk fang,’ chimed in Tracey.

‘And his Deluminator ended up being very important,’ said Allison to agree with Tracey. ‘I think Theo and Trace are right, Harry, I think we have no other option other than to go to Lovegood.’

Harry threw her a dark look. He was quite sure that Allison’s support of the plan was just to try and get back in Tracey’s good graces.

Her face softened when she saw Harry’s look and changed tactics to get him on board.

‘It won’t be like you guys’ trip to Godric’s Hollow, Harry,’ she said. ‘Like I mentioned a little earlier, Mr Lovegood is on your side. For nearly half a year now the Quibbler has only ever portrayed you in a positive light, and every issue tells its readers to help you if they can.’

‘This mark is important Harry, I just know it,’ said Theodore earnestly.

‘But don’t you think if it was, Dumbledore would have told me about it before he died?’

‘Well, er, maybe he thought it was something you needed to figure out for yourself,’ said Tracey with a faint air of clutching at straws.

‘Oh,’ said Allison sycophantically, ‘that makes sense.’

‘Not really,’ said Tracey argumentatively towards Allison before turning her attention back to the others, ‘but we have no other leads so talking to Mr Lovegood is really the only option we have.’

‘I’m sorry Harry, but it looks like you’re outvoted for this one,’ said Theodore in a very matter-of-fact tone, an excited smile crept onto his face.

‘Fine,’ said Harry, half amused, half irritated. ‘Only, once we’ve seen Lovegood, let’s try and look for some more Horcruxes, shall we? Where do the Lovegoods live, anyway? I know they’re in Ottery St Catchpole like the Weasley’s but I don’t actually know exactly where?’

‘Sirius had met and became friends with Mr Lovegood the same summer I started living in Mould-On-The-Wold,’ said Theodore, trying to think. ‘I believe they live in a hilly area because he would complain about not being able to ride there the muggle way or be able to fly because he couldn’t land.’

‘Hilly area in Ottery St Catchpole, alright it’s a start,’ said Tracey. ‘That and it’s the Lovegood’s house, I think we’ll know it when we see it.’

When Tracey had returned to her laundry and Theodore to his bunk to read, Harry lowered his voice.

‘You only agreed to try and get back in her good books.’

‘Look Harry, you and Theo already mostly forgive me, but Tracey is my best friend and I kills me inside how I betrayed her. So yes, for stuff that should be harmless I will be taking her side,’ explained Allison honestly. ‘Besides, it’s still Christmas break, so this way we’ll get to see Luna.’

They had an excellent view of the village of Ottery St. Cachpole from the breezy hillside to which they Disapparated next morning. From their high vantage point the village looked like a collection of toy houses in the great slanting shafts of sunlight stretching to earth in the breaks between clouds. They stood for a minute or two looking toward the Burrow their hands shadowing their eyes, but all they could make out were the high hedges and trees of the orchard, which afforded the crooked little house protection from Muggle eyes.

‘I have spent a few Christmas’ with the Weasley’s,’ said Harry, ‘it feels weird to be here now and not get to say hi.’

‘I think you just miss a family setting, none of us have gotten to enjoy being home with family in months,’ said Tracey sadly.

‘Er…’ Allison let out.

‘No!’ Tracey responded in frustration. ‘Seriously Allison?’

‘I stayed in small inns or abandoned buildings for the first few nights after I left, but I didn’t take almost any of my possessions with me when I left so I was ran out of money and clean clothes fast. Six days after I left you all I returned to Tonks and Tulip’s cottage in Winterton.’

‘How’d they take your return?’ asked Theodore. ‘Were they mad you left us?’

‘Worse than mad, Tonks was disappointed in me,’ said Allison with shame and remorse. ‘But she didn’t turn me away, I think deep down she was relieved I had returned safe and that I had news that at the time you all were safe too. She also needed company, she took an early maternity leave to not have to work for the new Ministry, but with Tulip so far working full time she was spending most days alone. To keep me, herself, Tulip, and the baby safe she stopped having guests over so that there was little chance the Ministry knew where I was, I don’t think her mother appreciated that however, she’s quite lonely with Ted on the run.’

‘How is Tonks doing?’ asked Harry, he was referring to her pregnancy.

‘Good, healthy, when I left she had started to get quite big, but like I said she is worrying about her dad and while I was staying with her she had limited contact with anyone other than myself and Tulip so she was also quite isolated. While I miss them both, I’m hoping that now that I’m gone she’s having more company.’

That was enough time for discussing the people they missed, they turned away from the Burrow and Theodore pointed in another direction.

‘We should try there first,’ he said, leading the way over the top of the hill.

They walked for a few hours, Harry, at Tracey’s insistence, hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak. The cluster of low hills appeared to be uninhabited apart from one small cottage, which seemed deserted.

‘Is it possible that is there house and they’re travelling for the holidays, or maybe they’ve gone on the run and that’s why there hasn’t been any recent Quibblers?’ theorized Allison, while peering through the window at a neat little kitchen with geraniums on the windowsill. Tracey snorted.

‘I think we’d be able to tell if this was the Lovegood residence. I think we’re just at the wrong set of hills.’

So they Disapparated a few miles farther north.

‘There!’ shouted Allison, as the wind whipped their hair and clothes. She was pointing upward, toward the top of the hill on which they had appeared, where a most strange-looking house rose vertically against the sky, a great black cylinder with a ghostly moon hanging behind it in the afternoon sky. ‘That has got to be Luna’s home, it both screams Lovegood and Ravenclaw. It’s like it’s a giant rook!’

‘You think that looks like a bird?’ said Tracey sarcastically. Normally that would get Allison mad, but her desire to be on good terms with Tracey again was very powerful.

‘I meant the chess piece known as a rook, the one that Theodore took the place of when we were trying to save the Philosopher’s Stone.’

Allison was the most athletic of the group and she reached the top of the hill first. When Harry, Theodore, and Tracey caught up with her, panting and clutching stitches in their sides, they found her grinning broadly.

‘This is the Lovegood’s,’ said Allison. ‘See.’

Three hand-painted signs had been tacked to a broken-down gate. The first read,

“THE QUIBBLER, EDITOR: X. LOVEGOOD”

the second,

“PICK YOUR OWN MISTLETOE”

and the third,

“KEEP OFF THE DIRIGIBLE PLUMS”

The gate creaked as they opened it. The zigzagging path leading to the front door was overgrown with a variety of odd plants, including a bush covered in the orange radish-like fruit Luna sometimes wore as earrings. Harry thought he recognized a Snargaluff and gave the wizened stump a wide berth. Two aged crab apple trees, beat with the wind, stripped of leaves but still heavy with berry-sized red fruits and bushy crowns of white-beaded mistletoe, stood sentinel on either side of the front door. A little owl with a slightly flattened, hawklike head peered down at them from one of the branches.

‘I think you’ll have to take off the Invisibility Cloak,’ said Theodore, gaining a hesitant look from Tracey. ‘Mr Lovegood wants to help you, he might not even let the rest of us in without you.’

He did as Theodore suggested, handing the Cloak to Tracey to stow in her emerald purse. Theodore then rapped three times on the thick black door, which was studded with iron nails and bore a knocker shaped like an eagle.

Barely ten seconds passed, then the door was flung open and there stood Xenophilius Lovegood, barefoot and wearing what appeared to be a stained nightshirt. His long white candyfloss hair was dirty and unkempt. Xenophilius had been positively dapper at Bill and Fleur’s wedding by comparison.

‘What? What is it? Who are you? What do you want?’ he cried in a high-pitched, querulous voice, looking first at Theodore, then at Allison and Tracey, and finally at Harry, upon which his mouth fell open in a perfect comical O.

‘Hello, Mr Lovegood,’ said Harry, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Harry, Harry Potter.’

Xenophilius did not take Harry’s hand, although the eye that was not pointing inward at his nose slid straight to the scar on Harry’s forehead.

‘Would it be okay if we came in?’ asked Harry. ‘There’s something we’d like to ask you.’

‘I…I’m not sure that’s advisable,’ whispered Xenophilius. He swallowed and cast a quick look around the garden. ‘Rather a shock...My word...I...I’m afraid I don’t really think I ought to—‘

‘It won’t take long,’ said Harry, slightly disappointed by this less than warming welcome.

‘I—oh, all right then. Come in, quickly. Quickly!’

They were barely over the threshold when Xenophilius slammed the door shut behind then. They were standing in the most peculiar kitchen Harry had ever seen. The room was perfectly circular, so that it felt like being inside a giant pepper pot. Everything was curved to fit the walls—the stove, the sink, and the cupboards—and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects, and birds in bright primary colors. Harry thought he recognized Luna’s style: The effect in such an enclosed space, was slightly overwhelming.

In the middle of the floor, a wrought-iron spiral staircase led to the upper levels. There was a great deal of clattering and banging coming from overhead: Harry wondered what Luna could be doing. ‘You’d better come up,’ said Xenophilius, still looking extremely uncomfortable, and he led the way.

The room above seemed to be a combination of living room and workplace, and as such, was even more cluttered than the kitchen. Though much smaller and entirely round, the room somewhat resembled the Room of Requirement on the unforgettable occasion that it had transformed itself into a gigantic labyrinth comprised of centuries of hidden objects. There were piles upon piles of books and papers on every surface. Delicately made models of creatures Harry did not recognize, all flapping wings or snapping jaws, hung from the ceiling.

Luna was not there; The thing that was making such a racket was a wooden object covered in magically turning cogs and wheels. It looked like the bizarre offspring of a workbench and a set of old shelves, but after a moment Harry decided it was an old fashioned printing press, due to the fact that it was churning out Quibblers.

‘Excuse me,’ said Xenophilius, and he strode over to the machine, seized a grubby tablecloth from beneath an immense number of books and papers, which all tumbled onto the floor, and threw it over the press, somewhat muffling the loud bangs and clatters. He then faced Harry.

‘Why have you come here?’

Before Harry could speak, however, Tracey pointed towards the wall.

‘Er, Mr Lovegood, what is that?’

She was pointing at an enormous, gray spiral horn, not unlike that of a unicorn, which had been mounted on the wall, protruding several feet into the room.

‘It is the horn of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack,’ said Xenophilius.

‘And, um, how did you acquire it?’ said Tracey, trying to sound genuinely curious.

‘I bought it,’ said Xenophilius, a small smile crossed his face before fading, ‘two weeks ago, from a delightful young wizard who knew of my interest in the exquisite Snorkack. A Christmas surprise for my Luna.’

Tracey then quietly whispered in a volume only the others close by her could hear, ‘It’s actually a Erumpent horn, do not touch it as it’ll explode.’

Before the others could react to this news, Mr Lovegood cleared his throat and turned to Harry.

‘Now, why exactly have you come here, Mr Potter?’

‘We need some help,’ said Harry, before Tracey could interrupt again.

‘Ah,’ said Xenophilius. ‘Help. Hmm.’

His good eye moved again to Harry’s scar. He seems simultaneously terrified and mesmerized.

‘Yes. The thing is…helping Harry Potter…rather dangerous...’

‘But you tell readers like myself in every issue to help Harry if given the chance,’ said Allison, now also sounding as disappointed as Harry was.

Xenophilius glanced behind her at the concealed printing press, still banging and clattering beneath the tablecloth.

‘Er—yes, I have expressed that view. However—‘

‘But let me guess, that’s advice you have for others but not yourself?’ said Theodore, joining in on the disappointment.

Xenophilius did not answer. He kept swallowing, his eyes darting between the four of them. Harry had the impression that he was undergoing some painful internal struggle.

‘Mr Lovegood, where is Luna?’ said Allison, trying to have a softer voice. She and Harry were the ones of the group closest to Luna. ‘I’m sure she’d want to help.’

Xenophilius gulped. He seemed to be steeling himself. Finally he said in a shaky voice difficult to hear over the noise of the printing press, ‘Luna is down at the stream, fishing for Freshwater Plimpies. She…she will like to see you. I’ll go and call her and then—very well. I shall try to help you.’

He disappeared down the spiral staircase and they heard the front door open and close. They looked at each other.

‘I never thought he’d be such a coward,’ said Allison, back to being disappointed. ‘After Luna fighting with us in the Department of Mysteries, and helping out when the Death Eater’s invaded Hogwarts last summer, I thought her father would have at least a small amount of her courage.’

‘He’s probably worried about what’ll happen to them if the Death Eaters find out I was here,’ said Harry.

‘Well, I think Allison is right,’ said Theodore, ‘he’s a hypocrite, and I think we should make this visit as short as possible.’

Harry crossed to the window of the far side of the room. He could see a stream, a thin, glittering ribbon lying far below them at the base of the hill. They were very high up; a bird fluttered past the window as he stared in the direction of the Burrow, now invisible beyond another line of hills. It was possible Remus and Canini were visiting them for Christmas, this had been the longest period ever he had been separated from the both of them. His heart just ached knowing they both potentially were not that far away…maybe after this visit he could briefly check if they are at the-No, anyone he came into contact with was in danger. Xenophilius’s attitude proved that.

He turned away from the windows and his gaze fell upon another peculiar object standing upon the cluttered, curved sideboard: a stone bust of a beautiful but austere-looking witch wearing a most bizarre-looking headdress. Two object that resembled golden ear trumpets curved out from the sides. A tiny pair of glittering blue wings was stuck to a leather strap that ran over the top of her head, while one of the orange radishes had been stuck to a second strap around her forehead.

‘Look at this,’ said Harry.

‘Odd,’ said Tracey with a snicker. ‘I’m surprised neither of them wore it to the wedding.’

‘Be nice,’ Allison whispered, but a smirk had crossed her face as well.

They heard the front door close, and a moment later Xenophilius had climbed back up the spiral staircase into the room, his thin legs now encased in Wellington boots, bearing a tray of ill-assorted teacups and a steaming teapot.

‘Ah, you have spotted my pet invention,’ he said, shoving the tray into Tracey’s arms and joining Harry at the statue’s side. ‘Modeled, fittingly enough, upon the head of the beautiful Rowena Ravenclaw. “Wit beyond measure is a man’s greatest treasure!”’

He indicated the objects like ear trumpets.

‘These are the Wrackspurt siphons—to remove all sources of distraction from the thinker’s immediate area. Here,’ he pointed out the tiny wings, ‘a billywig propeller, to induce an elevated frame of mind. Finally,’ he pointed to the orange radish, ‘the Dirgible Plum, so as to enhance the ability to accept the extraordinary.’

Xenophilius strode back to the tea tray, which Tracey had managed to balance precariously on one of the cluttered side tables. ‘May I offer you all an infusion of Gurdyroots?’ said Xenophilius. ‘We make it ourselves.’

As he started to pour out the drink, which was a deep purple as beetroot juice, he added, ‘Luna is down beyond Bottom Bridge, she is most excited that you are here. She ought not be too long, she has caught nearly enough Plumpies to make soup for all of us. Do sit down and help yourselves to sugar.

‘Now,’ he removed a tottering pile of papers from an armchair and sat down, his Wellingtoned legs crossed, ‘how may I help you, Mr Potter?’

‘Well,’ said Harry, glancing at Theodore, who nodded encouragingly, ‘it’s about that symbol you were wearing around your neck at Bill and Fleur’s wedding, Mr Lovegood. We wondered what it meant.’

Xenophilius raised his eyebrows.

‘Are you referring to the sign of the Deathly Hallows?’

1. Luna Lovegood

2. Dobby

3. Nymphadora Tonks

4. Fred and George Weasley (I count them as 1)

5. Sirius Black

6. Hermione Granger

7. Harry Potter

8. Albus Dumbledore

9. Remus Lupin

10. Ronald Weasley

why did he name his children after his

• bully professor

• questionable favoritism headmaster

• some other people i forgot

and NOT a single kid after MCGOBAGALL???????

also albus and severus are absolutely horrible names to give a baby

imagine looking at a child and going “hmm yes i’ll name this baby albus/severus/remus/nymphsdora”

some of those mightve been nicknames but i dont care

thats evil

harry is dumb💀

In my opinion, one of the worst things in Hp are the ships, so I decided to make a list with some Hp ships and my opinion about them:

• Ginny and Harry

Harry is literally married to his best friend’s sister. I mean, how wrong is that?

• Ron and Hermione

They’ve been best friends for years, and it feels really awkward for someone to date it’s best friend. Also something that to me feels really odd.

• Cedric and Cho

It is just them. Nothing wrong about it, I just feel it is too plain.

• Lupin and Nymphadora (I think that’s how it’s written)

I don’t really get it. I know they do have some cute scenes, but it’s not like they were highlighted in the story or something (as a couple), so it is not so amazing, at least to me.

• Voldemort and Bellatrix

This is one of the few good/medium ships, in my opinion. It is good, because it is them, but we also don’t get too much about it. I think it would work great if we did, tho.

I know I didn’t give you to many examples but I’m not remembering other ships from the top of my mind rn.

If you have any other ship suggestions please say, because maybe there could be a part 2!

Tonks: Chatting with her friends

Snape: Detention, Ms Tonks.

Snape: Leaves room.

Tonks: *Morphs into Snape* "Today, we will learn about the deadliest potion of all. Shampoo...

Snape: 100 points from Hufflepuff, and Detention for a week.