“Oh yeah…”

“Oh yeah…”

Harry did not want to admit that he had not been thinking about the sword at all when he suggested they go to Godric’s Hollow. For him, the lore of the village lay in his parents’ graves, the house where he had narrowly escaped death, and in the person of Bathilda Bagshot.

“Remember what Muriel said?” he asked eventually.

“Who?”

“You know,” he hesitated. He did not want to say Ron’s name. “Ginny’s great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles.”

“Oh,” said Hermione. It was a sticky moment: Harry knew that she had sensed Ron’s name in the offing. He rushed on:

“She said Bathilda Bagshot still lived in Godric’s Hollow.”

“Bathilda Bagshot,” murmured Hermione, running her index finger over Bathilda’s embossed name on the front cover of A History of Magic. “Well, I suppose – ”

She gasped so dramatically that Harry’s insides turned over; he drew his wand, looking around at the entrance, half expecting to see a hand forcing its way through the entrance flap, but there was nothing there.

“What?” he said, half angry, half relieved. “What did you do that for? I thought you’d seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least – ”

“Harry, what if Bathilda’s got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?”

Harry considered this possibility. Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she was “gaga.” Was it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, Harry felt that Dumbledore had left a great deal to chance: Dumbledore had never revealed that he had replaced the sword with a fake, nor had he so much as mentioned a friendship with Bathilda. Now, however, was not the moment to cast doubt on Hermione’s theory, not when she was so surprisingly willing to fall in with Harry’s dearest wish.

“Yeah, he might have done! So, are we going to go to Godric’s Hollow?”

“Yes, but we’ll have to think it through carefully, Harry.” She was sitting up now, and Harry could tell that the prospect of having a plan again had lifted her mood as much as his. “We’ll need to practice Disapparating together under the Invisibility Cloak for a start, and perhaps Disillusionment Charms would be sensible too, unless you think we should go the whole hog and use Polyjuice Potion? In that case we’ll need to collect hair from somebody. I actually think we’d better do that, Harry, the thicker our disguises the better….”

Harry let her talk, nodding and agreeing whenever there was a pause, but his mind had left the conversation. For the first time since he had discovered that the sword in Gringotts was a fake, he felt excited.