He was about to go home, about to return

He was about to go home, about to return to the place where he had had a family. It was in Godric’s Hollow that, but for Voldemort, he would have grown up and spent every school holiday. He could have invited friends to his house…. He might even have had brothers and sisters…. It would have been his mother who had made his seventeenth birthday cake. The life he had lost had hardly ever seemed so real to him as at this moment, when he knew he was about to see the place where it had been taken from him. After Hermione had gone to bed that night, Harry quietly extracted his rucksack from Hermione’s beaded bag, and from inside it, the photograph album Hagrid had given him so long ago. For the first time in months, he perused the old pictures of his parents, smiling and waving up at him from the images, which were all he had left of them now.

Harry would gladly have set out for Godric’s Hollow the following day, but Hermione had other ideas. Convinced as she was that Voldemort would expect Harry to return to the scene of his parents’ deaths, she was determined that they would set off only after they had ensured that they had the best disguises possible. It was therefore a full week later – once they had surreptitiously obtained hairs from innocent Muggles who were Christmas shopping, and had practiced Apparating and Disapparating while underneath the Invisibility Cloak together – that Hermione agreed to make the journey.

They were to Apparate to the village under cover of darkness, so it was late afternoon when they finally swallowed Polyjuice Potion, Harry transforming into a balding, middle-aged Muggle man, Hermione into his small and rather mousy wife. The beaded bag containing all of their possessions (apart from the Horcrux, which Harry was wearing around his neck) was tucked into an inside pocket of Hermione’s buttoned-up coat. Harry lowered the Invisibility Cloak over them, then they turned into the suffocating darkness once again.

Heart beating in his throat, Harry opened his eyes. They were standing hand in hand in a snowy lane under a dark blue sky, in which the night’s first stars were already glimmering feebly. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decorations twinkling in their windows. A short way ahead of them, a glow of golden streetlights indicated the center of the village.

“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.

“I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione.”

“I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione.”

“I know that; but it isn’t a rune and it’s not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don’t think it is! It’s been inked in, look, somebody’s drawn it there, it isn’t really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?“

“No… No, wait a moment.” Harry looked closer. “Isn’t it the same symbol Luna’s dad was wearing round his neck?”

“Well, that’s what I thought too!”

“Then it’s Grindelwald’s mark.“

She stared at him, openmouthed.

“What?“

“Krum told me…”

He recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told him at the wedding. Hermione looked astonished.

“Grindelwald’s mark?“

She looked from Harry to the weird symbol and back again. “I’ve never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There’s no mention of it in anything I’ve ever read about him.”

“Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there.”

She fell back into the old armchair, frowning.

“That’s very odd. If it’s a symbol of Dark Magic, what’s it doing in a book of children’s stories?”

“Yeah, it is weird,” said Harry. “And you’d think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff.”

“I know…. Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the titles.”

She did not speak, but continued to pore over the strange mark. Harry tried again.

“Hermione?”

“Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking. I – I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.”

She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused, and he was sure she was still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ve been wondering that too. I really think we’ll have to.”

“Did you hear me right?” he asked.

“Of course I did. You want to go to Godric’s Hollow. I agree. I think we should. I mean, I can’t think of anywhere else it could be either. It’ll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it’s there.”

“Er – what’s there?“ asked Harry.

At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.

“Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you’d want to go back there, and I mean, Godric’s Hollow is Godric Gryffindor’s birthplace – “

“Really? Gryffindor came from Godric’s Hollow?”

“Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?“

“Erm,” he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in months: The muscles in his face felt oddly stiff. “I might’ve opened it, you know, when I bought it… just the once….”

“Well, as the village is named after him I’d have thought you might have made the connection,“ said Hermione. She sounded much more like her old self than she had done of late; Harry half expected her to announce that she was off to the library. ”There’s a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait…“

She opened the beaded bag and rummaged for a while, finally extracting her copy of their old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbed through until finding the page she wanted.




“‘Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworsh in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric’s Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries.’“




“You and your parents aren’t mentioned.“ Hermione said, closing the book, ”because Professor Bagshot doesn’t cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Godric’s Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor’s sword; don’t you think Dumbledore would have expected you to make the connection?“

They were spending many evenings in near silence

They were spending many evenings in near silence and Hermione took to bringing out Phineas Nigellus’s portrait and propping it up in a chair, as though he might fill part of the gaping hole left by Ron’s departure. Despite his previous assertion that he would never visit them again, Phineas Nigellus did not seem able to resist the chance to find out more about what Harry was up to and consented to reappear, blindfolded, every few days of so. Harry was even glad to see him, because he was company, albeit of a snide and taunting kind. They relished any news about what was happening at Hogwarts, though Phineas Nigellus was not an ideal informer. He venerated Snape, the first Slytherin headmaster since he himself had controlled the school, and they had to be careful not to criticize or ask impertinent questions about Snape, or Phineas Nigellus would instantly leave his painting.

However, he did let drop certain snippets. Snape seemed to be facing a constant, low level of mutiny from a hard core of students. Ginny had been banned from going into Hogsmeade. Snape had reinstated Umbridge’s old decree forbidding gatherings of three or more students or any unofficial student societies. From all of these things, Harry deduced that Ginny, and probably Neville and Luna along with her, had been doing their best to continue Dumbledore’s Army. This scant news made Harry want to see Ginny so badly it felt like a stomachache; but it also made him think of Ron again, and of Dumbledore, and of Hogwarts itself, which he missed nearly as much as his ex-girlfriend. Indeed, as Phineas Niggellus talked about Snape’s crackdown, Harry experienced a split second of madness when he imagined simply going back to school to join the destabilization of Snape’s regime: Being fed and having a soft bad, and other people being in charge, seemed the most wonderful prospect in the world at this moment. But then he remembered that he was Undesirable Number One, that there was a ten-thousand Galleon price on his head, and that to walk into Hogwarts these days was just as dangerous as walking into the Ministry of Magic. Indeed, Phineas Nigellus inadvertently emphasized this fact by slipping in leading questions about Harry and Hermione’s whereabouts. Hermione shoved him back inside the beaded bag every time he did this, and Phineas Nigellus invariably refused to reappear for several days after these unceremonious good-byes.

The weather grew colder and colder. They did not dare remain in any area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of their worries, they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buried the tent in the night. They had already spotted Christmas Trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there came an evening when Harry resolved to suggest again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to them. They had just eaten an unusually good meal: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left), and Harry thought that she might be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears.

He had also had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours’ break from wearing the Horcrux, which was hanging over the end of the bunk beside him.

“Hermione?”

“Hmm?“ She was curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He could not imagine how much more she could get out of the book, which was not, after all, very long, but evidently she was still deciphering something in it, because Spellman’s Syllabary lay open on the arm of the chair.

Harry cleared his throat. He felt exactly as he had done on the occasion, several years previously, when he had asked Professor McGonagall whether he could go into Hogsmeade, despite the fact that he had not persuaded the Dursleys to sign his permission slip.

“Hermione, I’ve been thinking, and – ”

“Harry, could you help me with something?”

Apparently she had not been listening to him. She leaned forward and held out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

“Look at that symbol,” she said, pointing to the top of a page. Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure), there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.

Chapter 16 Godric's Hollow

Chapter 16 Godric's Hollow

When Harry woke the following day it was several seconds before he remembered what had happened. Then he hoped childishly, that it had been a dream, that Ron was still there and had never left. Yet by turning his head on his pillow he could see Ron’s deserted bunk. It was like a dead body in the way it seems to draw his eyes. Harry jumped down from his own bed, keeping his eyes averted from Ron’s. Hermione, who was already busy in the kitchen, did not wish Harry good morning, but turned her face away quickly as he went by. He’s gone, Harry told himself. He’s gone. He had to keep thinking it as he washed and dressed as though repetition would dull the shock of it. He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And that was the simple truth of it, Harry knew, because their protective enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they vacated this spot, for Ron to find them again. He and Hermione ate breakfast in silence. Hermione’s eyes were puffy and red; she looked as if she had not slept. They packed up their things, Hermione dawdling. Harry knew why she wanted to spin out their time on the riverbank; several times he saw her look up eagerly, and he was sure she had deluded herself into thinking that she heard footsteps through the heavy rain, but no red-haired figure appeared between the trees. Every time Harry imitated her, looked around ( for he could not help hoping a little, himself) and saw nothing but rain-swept woods, another little parcel of fury exploded inside him. He could hear Ron saying, “We thought you knew what you were doing!”, and he resumed packing with a hard knot in the pit of his stomach.

The muddy river beside them was rising rapidly and would soon spill over onto their bank. They had lingered a good hour after they would usually have departed their campsite. Finally having entirely repacked the beaded bag three times, Hermione seemed unable to find any more reasons to delay: She and Harry grasped hands and Disapparated, reappearing on a windswept heather-covered hillside. The instant they arrived, Hermione dropped Harry’s hand and walked away from him, finally sitting down on a large rock, her face on her knees, shaking with what he knew were sobs. He watched her, supposing that he ought to go and comfort her, but something kept him rooted to the spot. Everything inside him felt cold and tight: Again he saw the contemptuous expression on Ron’s face. Harry strode off through the heather, walking in a large circle with the distraught Hermione at its center, casting the spell she usually performed to ensure their protection.

They did not discuss Ron at all over the next few days. Harry was determined never to mention his name again and Hermione seemed to know that it was no use forcing the issue, although sometimes at night when she thought he was sleeping, he would hear her crying. Meanwhile Harry had started bringing out the Marauder’s map and examining it by wandlight. He was waiting for the moment when Ron’s labeled dot would reappear in the corridors of Hogwarts, proving that he had returned to the comfortable castle, protected by his status of pureblood. However, Ron did not appear on the map and after a while Harry found himself taking it out simply to stare at Ginny’s name in the girl’s dormitory, wondering whether the intensity with which he gazed at it might break into her sleep, that she would somehow know he was thinking about her, hoping that she was all right.

By day, they devoted themselves to trying to determine the possible locations of Gryffindor’s sword, but the more they talked about the places in which Dumbledore might have hidden it, the more desperate and far-fetched their speculation became. Cudgel his brains though he might, Harry could not remember Dumbledore ever mentioning a place in which he might hide something. There were moments when he did not know whether he was angrier with Ron or with Dumbledore. We thought you knew what you were doing…We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do… We thought you had a real plan!

He could not hide it from himself: Ron had been right. Dumbledore had left him with virtually nothing. They had discovered one Horcrux, but they had no means of destroying it: The others were as unattainable as they had ever been. Hopelessness threatened to engulf him. He was staggered now to think of his own presumption in accepting his friends’ offers to accompany him on this meandering, pointless journey. he knew nothing, he had no ideas, and he was constantly, painfully on the alert for any indications that Hermione too was about to tell him that she had had enough. That she was leaving.

“Bathilda Bagshot, the author of – ”

“Bathilda Bagshot, the author of – ”

“A History of Magic,” said Hermione, looking interested. “So your parents knew her? She was an incredible magic historian.”

“And she’s still alive,” said Harry, “and she lives in Godric’s Hollow. Ron’s Auntie Muriel was talking about her at the wedding. She knew Dumbledore’s family too. Be pretty interesting to talk to, wouldn’t she?” There was a little too much understanding in the smile Hermione gave him for Harry’s liking. He took back the letter and the photograph and tucked them inside the pouch around his neck, so as not to have to look at her and give himself away. “I understand why you’d love to talk to her about your mum and dad, and Dumbledore too,” said Hermione. “But that wouldn’t really help us in our search for the Horcruxes, would it?” Harry did not answer, and she rushed on, “Harry, I know you really want to go to Godric’s Hollow, but I’m scared. I’m scared at how easily those Death Eaters found us yesterday.

It just makes me feel more than ever that we ought to avoid the place where your parents are buried, I’m sure they’d be expecting you to visit it.”

“It’s not just that,” Harry said, still avoiding looking at her, “Muriel said stuff about Dumbledore at the wedding. I want to know the truth…”

He told Hermione everything that Muriel had told him. When he had finished, Hermione said, “Of course, I can see why that’s upset you, Harry – ”

“I’m not upset,” he lied, “I’d just like to know whether or not it’s true or – ”

“Harry do you really think you’ll get the truth from a malicious old woman like Muriel, or from Rita Skeeter? How can you believe them? You knew Dumbledore!”

“I thought I did,” he muttered.

“But you know how much truth there was in everything Rita wrote about you! Doge is right, how can you let these people tarnish your memories of Dumbledore?”

He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt. There it was again: Choose what to believe. He wanted the truth. Why was everybody so determined that he should not get it?

“Shall we go down to the kitchen?” Hermione suggested after a little pause. “Find something for breakfast?”

Do Not Enter Without the Express Permission of Regulus Arcturus Black
Excitement trickled through Harry, but he was not immediately sure why. He read the sign again. Hermione was already a flight of stairs below him.

“Hermione,” he said, and he was surprised that his voice was so calm. “Come back up here.”

“What’s the matter?”

“R.A.B. I think I’ve found him.”

There was a gasp, and then Hermione ran back up the stairs.

“In your mum’s letter? But I didn’t see – ”

Harry shook his head, pointing at Regulus’s sign. She read it, then clutched Harry’s arm so tightly that he winced.

“Sirius’s brother?” she whispered.

“He was a Death Eater,” said Harry. “Sirius told me about him, he joined up when he was really young and then got cold feet and tried to leave – so they killed him.”

“That fits!” gasped Hermione. “If he was a Death Eater he had access to Voldemort, and if he became disenchanted, then he would have wanted to bring Voldemort down!”

She released Harry, leaned over the banister, and screamed, “Ron! RON! Get up here, quick!”

Ron appeared, panting, a minute later, his wand ready in his hand.

“What’s up? If it’s massive spiders again I want breakfast before I – ”

He frowned at the sign on Regulus’s door, in which Hermione was silently pointing.

“What? That was Sirius’s brother, wasn’t it? Regulus Arcturus … Regulus … R.A.B.! The locket – you don’t reckon –?”

“Let’s find out,” said Harry. He pushed the door: It was locked. Hermione pointed her wand at the handle and said, “Alohamora.” There was a click, and the door swung open.

They moved over the threshold together, gazing around. Regulus’s bedroom was slightly smaller than Sirius’s, though it had the same sense of former grandeur. Whereas Sirius had sought to advertise his diffidence from the rest of the family, Regulus had striven to emphasize the opposite. The Slytherin colors of emerald and silver were everywhere, draping the bed, the walls, and the windows. The Black family crest was painstakingly painted over the bed, along with its motto, TOUJOURS PUR. Beneath this was a collection of yellow newspaper cuttings, all stuck together to make a ragged collage. Hermione crossed the room to examine them.

“They’re all about Voldemort,” she said. “Regulus seems to have been a fan for a few years before he joined the Death Eaters …”

A little puff of dust rose from the bedcovers as she sat down to read the clippings. Harry, meanwhile, had noticed another photograph: a Hogwarts Quidditch team was smiling and waving out of the frame. He moved closer and saw the snakes emblazoned on their chests: Slytherins. Regulus was instantly recognizable as the boy sitting in the middle of the front row: He had the same dark hair and slightly haughty look of his brother, though he was smaller, slighter, and rather less handsome than Sirius had been.

“He played Seeker,” said Harry.

“What?” said Hermione vaguely; she was still immersed in Voldemort’s press clippings.

“He’s sitting in the middle of the front row, that’s where the Seeker … Never mind,” said Harry, realizing that nobody was listening. Ron was on his hands and knees, searching under the wardrobe. Harry looked around the room for likely hiding places and approached the desk. Yet again, somebody had searched before them. The drawers’ contents had been turned over recently, the dust disturbed, but there was nothing of value there: old quills, out-of-date textbooks that bore evidence of being roughly handled, a recently smashed ink bottle, its sticky residue covering the contents of the drawer.

“There’s an easier way,” said Hermione, as Harry wiped his inky fingers on his jeans. She raised her wand and said, “Accio Locket!”

Nothing happened. Ron, who had been searching the folds of the faded curtains, looked disappointed.

“Is that it, then? It’s not here?”

“Oh, it could still be here, but under counter-enchantments,” said Hermione. “Charms to prevent it from being summoned magically, you know.”

“Like Voldemort put on the stone basin in the cave,” said Harry, remembering how he had been unable to Summon the fake locket.

“How are we supposed to find it then?” asked Ron.

“We search manually,” said Hermione.

“We search manually,” said Hermione.

“That’s a good idea,” said Ron, rolling his eyes, and he resumed his examination of the curtains.

They combed every inch of the room for more than an hour, but were forced, finally, to conclude that the locket was not there.

The sun had risen now; its light dazzled them even through the grimy landing windows.

“It could be somewhere else in the house, though,” said Hermione in a rallying tone as they walked back downstairs. As Harry and Ron had become more discouraged, she seemed to have become more determined. “Whether he’d manage to destroy it or not, he’d want to keep it hidden from Voldemort, wouldn’t he? Remember all those awful things we had to get rid of when we were here last time? That clock that shot bolts at everyone and those old robes that tried to strangle Ron; Regulus might have put them there to protect the locket’s hiding place, even though we didn’t realize it at … at …”

Harry and Ron looked at her. She was standing with one foot in midair, with the dumbstruck look of one who had just been Obliviated: her eyes had even drifted out of focus.

“… at the time,” she finished in a whisper.

“Something wrong?” asked Ron.

“There was a locket.”

“What?” said Harry and Ron together.

“In the cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody could open it. And we … we …”

Harry felt as though a brick had slid down through his chest into his stomach. He remembered. He had even handled the thing as they passed it around, each trying in turn to pry it open. It had been tossed into a sack of rubbish, along with the snuffbox of Wartcap powder and the music box that had made everyone sleepy …

“Kreacher nicked loads of things back from us,” said Harry. It was the only chance, the only slender hope left to them, and he was going to cling to it until forced to let go. “He had a whole stash of stuff in his cupboard in the kitchen. C’mon.”

He ran down the stairs taking two steps at a time, the other two thundering along in his wake. They made so much noise that they woke the portrait of Sirius’s mother as they passed through the hall.

“Filth! Mudbloods! Scum!” she screamed after them as they dashed down into the basement kitchen and slammed the door behind them. Harry ran the length of the room, skidded to a halt at the door of Kreacher’s cupboard, and wrenched it open. There was the nest of dirty old blankets in which the house-elf had once slept, but they were not longer glittering with the trinkets Kreacher had salvaged. The only thing there was an old copy of Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. Refusing to believe his eyes, Harry snatched up the blankets and shook them. A dead mouse fell out and rolled dismally across the floor. Ron groaned as he threw himself into a kitchen chair; Hermione closed her eyes.

“It’s not over yet,” said Harry, and he raised his voice and called, “Kreacher!”

There was a loud crack and the house elf that Harry had so reluctantly inherited from Sirius appeared out of nowhere in front of the cold and empty fireplace: tiny, half human-sized, his pale skin hanging off him in folds, white hair sprouting copiously from his batlike ears. He was still wearing the filthy rag in which they had first met him, and the contemptuous look he bent upon Harry showed that his attitude to his change of ownership had altered no more than his outfit.

“Master,” croaked Kreacher in his bullfrog’s voice, and he bowed low; muttering to his knees, “back in my Mistress’s old house with the blood-traitor Weasley and the Mudblood – ”

“I forbid you to call anyone ‘blood traitor’ or ‘Mudblood,’” growled Harry. He would have found Kreacher, with his snoutlike nose and bloodshot eyes, a distinctively unlovable object even if the elf had not betrayed Sirius to Voldemort.

“I’ve got a question for you,” said Harry, his heart beating rather fast as he looked down at the elf, “and I order you to answer it truthfully. Understand?”

“Yes, Master,” said Kreacher, bowing low again. Harry saw his lips moving soundlessly, undoubtedly framing the insults he was now forbidden to utter.

“Two years ago,” said Harry, his heart now hammering against his ribs, “there was a big gold locket in the drawing room upstairs. We threw it out. Did you steal it back?”

There was a moment’s silence, during which Kreacher straightened up to look Harry full in the face. Then he said, “Yes.”

“Where is it now?” asked Harry jubilantly as Ron and Hermione looked gleeful.

Kreacher closed his eyes as though he could not bear to see their reactions to his next word.

“Gone.”

“Gone?” echoed Harry, elation floating out of him, “What do you mean, it’s gone?”

The elf shivered. He swayed.

“Kreacher,” said Harry fiercely, “I order you – ”

“Mundungus Fletcher,” croaked the elf, his eyes still tight shut. “Mundungus Fletcher stole it all; Miss Bella’s and Miss Cissy’s pictures, my Mistress’s gloves, the Order of Merlin, First Class, the goblets with the family crest, and – and – ”

Kreacher was gulping for air: His hollow chest was rising and falling rapidly, then his eyes flew open and he uttered a bloodcurdling scream.

“ – and the locket, Master Regulus’s locket. Kreacher did wrong, Kreacher failed in his orders!”

Harry reacted instinctively: As Kreacher lunged for the poker standing in the grate, he launched himself upon the elf, flattening him. Hermione’s scream mingled with Kreacher’s but Harry bellowed louder than both of them: “Kreacher, I order you to stay still!”

He felt the elf freeze and released him. Kreacher lay flat on the cold stone floor, tears gushing from his sagging eyes.

“Harry, let him up!” Hermione whispered.

“So he can beat himself up with the poker?” snorted Harry, kneeling beside the elf. “I don’t think so. Right. Kreacher, I want the truth: How do you know Mundungus Fletcher stole the locket?”

“Kreacher saw him!” gasped the elf as tears poured over his snout and into his mouth full of graying teeth. “Kreacher saw him coming out of Kreacher’s cupboard with his hands full of Kreacher’s treasures. Kreacher told the sneak thief to stop, but Mundungus Fletcher laughed and r-ran …”

“You called the locket ‘Master Regulus’s,’” said Harry. “Why? Where did it come from? What did Regulus have to do with it? Kreacher, sit up and tell me everything you know about that locket, and everything Regulus had to do with it!”

The elf sat up, curled into a ball, placed his wet face between his knees, and began to rock backward and forward. When he spoke, his voice was muffled but quite distinct in the silent, echoing kitchen.

“Master Sirius ran away, good riddance, for he was a bad boy and broke my Mistress’s heart with his lawless ways. But Master Regulus had proper order; he knew what was due to the name of Black and the dignity of his pure blood. For years he talked of the Dark Lord, who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns … and when he was sixteen years old, Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord. So proud, so proud, so happy to serve …

And one day, a year after he joined, Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked Kreacher. And Master Regulus said … he said