After glancing once at this portrait, Professor McGonagall made an odd movement as though steeling herself, then rounded the desk to look at Harry, her face taut and lined.
“Harry,” she said, “I would like to know what you and Professor Dumbledore were doing this evening when you left the school.”
“I can’t tell you that, Professor,” said Harry. He had expected the question and had his answer ready. It had been here, in this very room, that Dumbledore had told him that he was to confide the contents of their lessons to nobody but Ron and Hermione.
“Harry, it might be important,” said Professor McGonagall.
“It is,” said Harry, “very, but he didn’t want me to tell anyone.”
Professor McGonagall glared at him. “Potter”—Harry registered the renewed use of his surname—“in the light of Professor Dumbledore’s death, I think you must see that the situation has changed somewhat—”
“I don’t think so,” said Harry, shrugging. “Professor Dumbledore never told me to stop following his orders if he died.”
“But—”
“There’s one thing you should know before the Ministry gets here, though. Madam Rosmerta’s under the Imperius Curse, she was helping Malfoy and the Death Eaters, that’s how the necklace and the poisoned mead—”
“Rosmerta?” said Professor McGonagall incredulously, but before she could go on, there was a knock on the door behind them and Professors Sprout, Flitwick, and Slughorn traipsed into the room, followed by Hagrid, who was still weeping copiously, his huge frame trembling with grief.
“Snape!” ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most shaken, pale and sweating. “Snape! I taught him! I thought I knew him!”
But before any of them could respond to this, a sharp voice spoke from high on the wall: A sallow-faced wizard with a short black fringe had just walked back into his empty canvas. “Minerva, the Minister will be here within seconds, he has just Disapparated from the Ministry.”
“Thank you, Everard,” said Professor McGonagall, and she turned quickly to her teachers.
“I want to talk about what happens to Hogwarts before he gets here,” she said quickly. “Personally, I am not convinced that the school should reopen next year. The death of the headmaster at the hands of one of our colleagues is a terrible stain upon Hogwarts’s history. It is horrible.”
“I am sure Dumbledore would have wanted the school to remain open,” said Professor Sprout. “I feel that if a single pupil wants to come, then the school ought to remain open for that pupil.”
“But will we have a single pupil after this?” said Slughorn, now dabbing his sweating brow with a silken handkerchief. “Parents will want to keep their children at home and I can’t say I blame them. Personally, I don’t think we’re in more danger at Hogwarts than we are anywhere else, but you can’t expect mothers to think like that. They’ll want to keep their families together, it’s only natural.”
“I agree,” said Professor McGonagall. “And in any case, it is not true to say that Dumbledore never envisaged a situation in which Hogwarts might close. When the Chamber of Secrets reopened he considered the closure of the school—and I must say that Professor Dumbledore’s murder is more disturbing to me than the idea of Slytherin’s monster living undetected in the bowels of the castle…”
“We must consult the governors,” said Professor Flitwick in his squeaky little voice; he had a large bruise on his forehead but seemed otherwise unscathed by his collapse in Snape’s office. “We must follow the established procedures. A decision should not be made hastily.”
“Hagrid, you haven’t said anything,” said Professor McGonagall. “What are your views, ought Hogwarts to remain open?”
Hagrid, who had been weeping silently into his large, spotted handkerchief throughout this conversation, now raised puffy red eyes and croaked, “I dunno, Professor… that’s fer the Heads of House an’ the headmistress ter decide…”
“Professor Dumbledore always valued your views,” said Professor McGonagall kindly, “and so do I.”
“Well, I’m stayin,” said Hagrid, fat tears still leaking out of the corners of his eyes and trickling down into his tangled beard. “It’s me home, it’s bin me home since I was thirteen. An’ if there’s kids who wan’ me ter teach ’em, I’ll do it. But… I dunno… Hogwarts without Dumbledore…”
He gulped and disappeared behind his handkerchief once more, and there was silence.
“Very well,” said Professor McGonagall, glancing out of the window at the grounds, checking to see whether the Minister was yet approaching, “then I must agree with Filius that the right thing to do is to consult the governors, who will make the final decision.
“Now, as to getting students home… there is an argument for doing it sooner rather than later. We could arrange for the Hogwarts Express to come tomorrow if necessary—”
“What about Dumbledore’s funeral?” said Harry, speaking at last.
“Well…” said Professor McGonagall, losing a little of her briskness as her voice shook. “I—I know that it was Dumbledore’s wish to be laid to rest here, at Hogwarts—”
“Then that’s what’ll happen, isn’t it?” said Harry fiercely.
“If the Ministry thinks it appropriate,” said Professor McGonagall. “No other headmaster or headmistress has ever been—”
“No other headmaster or headmistress ever gave more to this school,” growled Hagrid.
“Hogwarts should be Dumbledore’s final resting place,” said Professor Flitwick.
“Absolutely,” said Professor Sprout.
“And in that case,” said Harry, “you shouldn’t send the students home until the funeral’s over. They’ll want to say—”
The last word caught in his throat, but Professor Sprout completed the sentence for him.
“Good-bye.”
“Well said,” squeaked Professor Flitwick. “Well said indeed! Our students should pay tribute, it is fitting. We can arrange transport home afterward.”
“Seconded,” barked Professor Sprout.
“I suppose… yes…” said Slughorn in a rather agitated voice, while Hagrid let out a strangled sob of assent.
“He’s coming,” said Professor McGonagall suddenly, gazing down into the grounds. “The Minister… and by the looks of it he’s brought a delegation…”
“Can I leave, Professor?” said Harry at once.
He had no desire at all to see, or be interrogated by Rufus Scrimgeour tonight.
“You may,” said Professor McGonagall. “And quickly.”
She strode toward the door and held it open for him. He sped down the spiral staircase and off along the deserted corridor; he had left his Invisibility Cloak at the top of the Astronomy Tower, but it did not matter; there was nobody in the corridors to see him pass, not even Filch, Mrs. Norris, or Peeves. He did not meet another soul until he turned into the passage leading to the Gryffindor common room.
“Is it true?” whispered the Fat Lady as he approached her. “It is really true? Dumbledore—dead?”
“Yes,” said Harry.
She let out a wail and, without waiting for the password, swung forward to admit him.
As Harry had suspected it would be, the common room was jam-packed. The room fell silent as he climbed through the portrait hole. He saw Dean and Seamus sitting in a group nearby: This meant that the dormitory must be empty, or nearly so. Without speaking to anybody, without making eye contact at all, Harry walked straight across the room and through the door to the boys’ dormitories.
As he had hoped, Ron was waiting for him, still fully dressed, sitting on his bed. Harry sat down on his own four-poster and for a moment, they simply stared at each other.
“They’re talking about closing the school,” said Harry.
“Lupin said they would,” said Ron.
There was a pause.
“So?” said Ron in a very low voice, as though he thought the furniture might be listening in. “Did you
find one? Did you get it? A—a Horcrux?”
Harry shook his head. All that had taken place around that black lake seemed like an old nightmare now; had it really happened, and only hours ago?
“You didn’t get it?” said Ron, looking crestfallen. “It wasn’t there?”
“No,” said Harry. “Someone had already taken it and left a fake in its place.”
“Already taken—?”
Wordlessly, Harry pulled the fake locket from his pocket, opened it, and passed it to Ron. The full story could wait… It did not matter tonight… nothing mattered except the end, the end of their pointless adventure, the end of Dumbledore’s life…
“R. A. B.,” whispered Ron, “but who was that?”
“Dunno,” said Harry, lying back on his bed fully clothed and staring blankly upwards. He felt no curiosity at all about R. A. B.: He doubted that he would ever feel curious again. As he lay there, he became aware suddenly that the grounds were silent. Fawkes had stopped singing.
And he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world… had left Harry.
30. THE WHITE TOMB
All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed. Some students were hurried away from Hogwarts by their parents over the next couple of days—the Patil twins were gone before breakfast on the morning following Dumbledore’s death and Zacharias Smith was escorted from the castle by his haughty-looking father. Seamus Finnigan, on the other hand, refused point-blank to accompany his mother home; they had a shouting match in the Entrance Hall which was resolved when she agreed that he could remain behind for the funeral. She had difficulty in finding a bed in Hogsmeade, Seamus told Harry and Ron, for wizards and witches were pouring into the village, preparing to pay their last respects to Durnbledore.
Some excitement was caused among the younger students, who had never seen it before, when a powder-blue carriage the size of a house, pulled by a dozen giant winged palominos, came soaring out of the sky in the late afternoon before the funeral and landed on the edge of the Forest. Harry watched from a window as a gigantic and handsome olive-skinned, black-haired woman descended the carriage steps and threw herself into the waiting Hagrid’s arms. Meanwhile a delegation of Ministry officials, including the Minister for Magic himself, was being accommodated within the castle. Harry was diligently avoiding contact with any of them; he was sure that, sooner or later, he would be asked again to account for Dumbledore’s last excursion from Hogwarts.
Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were spending all of their time together. The beautiful weather seemed to mock them; Harry could imagine how it would have been if Durnbledore had not died, and they had had this time together at the very end of the year, Ginny’s examinations finished, the pressure of homework lifted… and hour by hour, he put off saying the thing that he knew he must say, doing what he knew it was right to do, because it was too hard to forgo his best source of comfort.
They visited the hospital wing twice a day: Neville had been discharged, but Bill remained under Madam Pomfrey’s care. His scars were as bad as ever; in truth, he now bore a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody, though thankfully with both eyes and legs, but in personality he seemed just the same as ever. All that appeared to have changed was that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.
“…so eet ees lucky ’e is marrying me,” said Fleur happily, plumping up Bill’s pillows, “because ze British overcook their meat, I ’ave always said this.”
“I suppose I’m just going to have to accept that he really is going to marry her,” sighed Ginny later that evening, as she, Harry, Ron and Hermione sat beside the open window of the Gryffindor common room, looking out over the twilit grounds.
“She’s not that bad,” said Harry. “Ugly, though,” he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.
“Well, I suppose if Mum can stand it, I can.”
“Anyone else we know died?” Ron asked Hermione, who was perusing the Evening Prophet.
Hermione winced at the forced toughness in his voice.
“No,” she said reprovingly, folding up ihe newspaper. “They’re still looking for Snape, but no sign…”
“Of course there isn’t,” said Harry, who became angry every lime this subject cropped up. “They won’t find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they’ve never managed to do that in all this time…”
“I’m going to go to bed,” yawned Ginny. “I haven’t been sleeping that well since… well… I could do with some sleep.”
She kissed Harry (Ron looked away pointedly), waved al the other two and departed for the girls’ dormitories. The moment the door had closed behind her, Hermione leaned forwards towards Harry with a most Hermione-ish look on her face.
“Harry, I found something out this morning, in the library…”
“R. A. B.?” said Harry, sitting up straight.
He did not feel the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery; he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcrux had to be completed before he could move a little further along the dark and winding path stretching ahead of him, the path that he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone. There might still be as many as four Horcruxes out there somewhere and each would need to be found and eliminated before there was even a possibility that Voldemort could be killed. He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them within reach: “the locket… the cup… the snake… something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s… the locket… the cup… the snake… something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s…”
This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry’s mind as he fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups, lockets and mysterious objects that he could not quite reach, though Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb…
He had shown Hermione the note inside the locket the morning after Dumbledore’s death, and although she had not immediately recognised the initials as belonging to some obscure wizard about whom she had been reading, she had since been rushing off to the library a little more often than was strictly necessary for somebody who had no homework to do.
“No,” she said sadly, “I’ve been trying, Harry, but I haven’t found anything… there are a couple of reasonably well-known wizards with those initials—Rosalind Antigone Bungs… Rupert “Axebanger” Brookstanton… but they don’t seem to fit at all. Judging by that note, the person who stole the Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can’t find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him… no, actually, it’s about… well, Snape.”
She looked nervous even saying the name again.
“What about him?” asked Harry heavily, slumping back in his chair.
“Well, it’s just that I was sort of right about the Half-Blood Prince business,” she said tentatively.
“D’you have to rub it in, Hermione? How d’you think I feel about that now?”
“No—no—Harry, I didn’t mean that!” she said hastily, looking around to check that they were not being overheard. “It’s just that I was right about Eileen Prince once owning the book. You see… she was Snape’s mother!”
“I thought she wasn’t much of a looker,” said Ron.
Hermione ignored him.
“I was going through ihe rest of the old Prophets and there was a tiny announcement about Eileen Prince marrying a man called Tobias Snape, and then later an announcement saying that she’d given birth to a—”
“—murderer,” spat Harry.
“Well… yes,” said Hermione. “So… I was sort of right. Snape must have been proud of being “half a Prince”, you see? Tobias Snape was a Muggle from what it said in the Prophet—”
“Yeah, that fits,” said Harry. “He’d
play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them… he’s just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father… ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name—Lord Voldemort—the Half-Blood Prince—how could Dumbledore have missed—?”
He broke off, looking out of the window. He could not stop himself dwelling upon Dumbledore’s inexcusable trust in Snape… but as Hermione had just inadvertently reminded him, he, Harry, had been taken in just the same… in spite of the increasing nastiness of those scribbled spells, he had refused to believe ill of the boy who had been so clever, who had helped him so much…
Helped him… it was an almost unendurable thought, now…
“I still don’t get why he didn’t turn you in for using that book,” said Ron. “He must’ve known where you were getting it ali from.”
“He knew,” said Harry bitterly. “He knew when I used Sectumsempra. He didn’t really need Legilimency… he might even have known before then, with Slughorn talking about how brilliant I was at Potions… shouldn’t have left his old book in the bottom of that cupboard, should he?”
“But why didn’t he turn you in?”
“I don’t think he wanted to associate himself with that book,” said Hermione. “I don’t think Dumbledore would have liked it very much if he’d known. And even if Snape pretended it hadn’t been his, Slughorn would have recognised his writing at once. Anyway, the book was left in Snape’s old classroom, and I’ll bet Dumbledore knew his mother was called ‘Prince.’”
“I should’ve shown the book to Dumbledore,” said Harry. “All that time he was showing me how Voldemort was evil even when he was at school, and I had proof Snape was, too—”
“‘Evil’ is a strong word,” said Hermione quietly.
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