Chapter 49

Imogen's hour glass chimed softly by her bed, the sound barely audible. Imogen heard it only because she was sleeping very lightly, and had gone to bed only an hour before. She rose, and moving to Hermione's bed, gently woke her friend. The two dressed in silence, undetected by Padma and the snoring Lavender Brown. Reasonably sure that they had not been heard by their two dormitory mates, Hermione and Imogen stepped softly down the stairs to the common room, their way dimly lit by the lumos - induced light from their wands.

Upon waking, Imogen's thoughts had immediately turned to the night's work, a thrill of anticipation running through her, a feeling which faded as she descended the stairs. Tonight if things went wrong, there would be no headmaster at the charge to rescue a Hogwart's student in difficulty. There would be no wizarding cavalry to suddenly appear over the top of the hill, scattering their enemies before them. Imogen and all the other students had been told that Dumbledore had suffered an accident of some kind and would be indisposed for an indefinite period. McGonagall, the acting headmistress and speaking to the assembled students after dinner that evening, assured the students that the headmaster would make a complete recovery. But as to when that would be, she and the healers could not hazard a guess. Without Dumbledore, Imogen felt as alone and as lost as she had when she first appeared at platform nine and three-quarters so many months earlier.

In the common room, Imogen and Hermione increased the luminosity of their wands and then inspected each other closely. Hermione was dressed in the Muggle clothing that she had worn on the Hogwart's train after the Christmas break, Imogen in jeans she'd picked up on a shopping trip to the Muggle village not far from the Burrow, along with the T-shirt and a sweater. Hermione nodded in approval at Imogen's thoroughly Muggle-like appearance. They each donned a jacket, and then checked their pockets. Imogen, like Hermione, had several small bottles filled with the Austrias potion, each individually wrapped in tissue to muffle any sound that could have been caused by glass tinkling on glass. They each carried small sums of Muggle and wizarding money.

In the boys' dormitory, Ron and Harry were making the same preparations as Hermione and Imogen, but with a less efficiency and more noise. After Ron bumped into his trunk for the third time, Neville stirred and then sat up.

"What are you doing up?" he asked Ron, rubbing his eyes and trying to see in the dim light supplied by Ron's wand.

"Just a bit of mischief," whispered Ron. "I'll tell you all about it when I get back." Fortunately Neville did not notice that Harry too was up and about, otherwise he might have asked more questions. Instead he only turned over his pillow, put down his head and promptly fell back asleep.

"If you're finished knocking everything over, maybe we can get going now," whispered Harry.

"You weren't exactly quiet yourself," retorted Ron as he led the way down the stairs.

It was only when Ron reached the common room that the seriousness of what he was doing began to sink in. A few hours earlier, it has all seemed like a bit of a lark, Harry's idea of sneaking out in the middle of the night to locate, retrieve and destroy another Horcrux. He and Harry had shared more than a few capers over the years, and this had seemed to Ron like just one more. The timing was a bit odd, though, now that Ron thought of it. Harry had not made mention of another horcrux mission after the destruction of the Ravenclaw diadem a few weeks previously. They'd all been busy with other things, such as trying to locate Draco on the Marauder's map, improving their dueling skills, and, on occasion, doing homework. Perhaps it was the news of Dumbledore's mishap that had suddenly galvanized Harry into action. Having the most powerful wizard on earth close at hand was, after all, an enormous safety net, and now that that net had been snatched away with no hint as to when it would return, perhaps this had inspired Harry to get to work on destroying another Horcrux. But it was also possible that Harry had intended all along that this week they'd go out on a mission. Harry had been anything but loquacious over the last few weeks, increasingly concerned about security, despite the unbreakable vow all of them had sworn at the start of the term. Thus Ron found himself with Harry, Imogen and Hermione, with only the common room door between him and expulsion, for there was no doubt that if he and the others were found wandering about Hogwarts in the middle of the night that the miserable Delores Umbridge would seize upon the opportunity to strike from the rolls four of her least favorite students.

"Is everybody ready?" asked Harry in an excited whisper as he pulled out his invisibility cloak. It had been agreed that the cloak would be used by the girls, for the boys had grown enough that that is was hard for both of them to fit easily underneath, at least not without slowing down their progress through the halls considerably. Once the girls were covered and quite invisible, Harry and Ron pulled small vials from their pockets, each of which contained a very small dose of Asturias potion. As he opened his bottle, Harry wondered again at Snape's decision to teach them the Asturias potion at the end of last term. He had heard from Neville that Snape claimed he always taught the Asturias potion to his fifth years, but Imogen said that nowhere in her perfect recollection of the 'books' was there any mention of the powerful invisibility-inducing liquid. Surely a potion of such efficacy would have been remarked upon in the fifth 'book' if, as Snape had claimed, it was a routine part of Potions class. Given Hermione's talent for research, Harry has asked her to see what she could find about the Potions curriculum over the last few years, and she had reported that as far as she could determine, the potion had never been taught at the school before. It was not part of the fifth year curriculum, nor the sixth nor even the seventh. It was an extremely difficult potion, highly dangerous and completely unsuitable for teenagers, for it was an open invitation for mischief when properly made, and lethal when not. Snape's decision to teach them the Asturias potion was a remarkable innovation on his part, and perhaps illegal as well. But Harry was grateful for the potion now as he downed the contents in one swallow and shimmered into almost total invisibility.

"Shoes off, everyone," said Harry. "We'll be able to move to the halls much more quietly without shoes on." Harry took off his own shoes, and from the rustling sounds from his invisible friends, he judged that they had done the same. He opened the portrait hall door and exited the common room, his friends in tow. They all made their way to the meeting place: the large mirror on the fourth floor. It was impossible for Harry and Ron to keep track of each other or the two girls, and so they each focused on keeping a measured, silent pace in the school's dark halls. In the weak torch light it would be easy to blunder in to a suit of armor or some other obstacle, so everyone stayed clear of the walls and walked down the middle of the hall. Hermione and Imogen, under Harry's invisibility cloak, made slower progress than the boys.

"At least we don't have to worry about Mrs. Norris," whispered Hermione. "And we don't have to worry about Mr. Filch, either — he can't do us any harm now."

"Not unless someone in Toronto tries to send us a letter. It would probably get lost if Filch were handling it," replied Imogen in hushed but bemused tones. Hermione snickered, remembering the Muggle occupation the headmaster had found for Filch in the post office.

"Did you notice that Harry brought his dagger?" asked Hermione.

"Yes. It's become quite the talisman for him."

"Do you mean that literally?" asked Hermione. "Do you think it has any talismanic properties?"

"No," replied Imogen. "I was using 'talisman'' in the Muggle sense of the word, not the magical. Although come to think of it, maybe it really is a talisman. Wherever did you get it?"

"Just a Muggle flea market," said Hermione. It was only a replica of a movie prop, but Harry thought it had magical properties. She lived in mild fear that Harry would one day discover the truth and would be rather put out with her.

"Have you ever possessed a talisman or even held one in your hand?" asked Imogen. "I've done some reading about them, and they're rather interesting. For instance, did you know —"

They were interrupted by a harsh whisper.

"I could hear you girls from the other end of the hall," said Ron's exasperated voice, addressing them from the dark nothingness as they ascended the stairs to the third floor. "We've gone through so much trouble not to be spotted. Do you want to give it all away?"

The girls, conscious of their guilt, lapsed into total silence. Hermione was accustomed to having complete moral advantage over Ron, and was surprised at how irritated she felt to find their roles reversed. A memory suddenly popped into her head from a few weeks earlier, when, on their first Horcrux mission, she had publicly chastised Ron for being too loud in the Forbidden Forest, humiliating him in front of an entire group of students. To her credit, Hermione now blushed for shame at the recollection.

The two girls made the rest of the journey inside the school without further incident and soon arrived at the fourth floor, making their way to the mirror, behind which was a secret exit from the school. Once there, Hermione pulled out her wand and tapped the wall quietly three times: the agreed-upon signal that she and Imogen had arrived.

"We're all here now," said Harry.

"And none too soon. You're becoming visible," replied Ron.

"And so are you." Harry pulled out his wand and tapped the mirror, which obligingly tipped forward revealing an opening that led straight down into the depths of the school. "There's a ladder," said Harry. "Ron, you go first, followed by the girls. I'll go last so that I can close the entrance behind this."

Ron's head quickly disappearing down the illicit exit. He and Harry had talked about this secret passageway after Imogen had mentioned its existence over the holidays. It was supposed to have been blocked by a cave-in or a collapse, and Ron wondered when Harry had found the time to clear the blockage.

Once Ron was down, Hermione and Imogen emerged from under Harry' cloak, and Imogen went down next. After only a few rungs of the ladder, she found herself in utter darkness. She did not know how far down she had yet to descend, and she clutched each rung with a desperate grip, terrified of falling into the empty darkness below. After what seemed like forever, her right foot, groping for the next rung, suddenly made contact with a solid surface: the floor. She looked up, but saw nothing, she was surrounded by complete silence.

"Ron?"

There was no answer.

"Ron?" she asked, more loudly this time and with a note of desperate urgency and even fear in her voice. After a long pause but before Imogen could give the alarm, Ron deigned to reply.

"Yeah?"

"You idiot Ron," said a relieved but angry Imogen. "This is no time for jokes."

"Sorry," said Ron. "I would have answered earlier, but I was distracted by a rat that I stepped on."

"You liar!" exclaimed Imogen. "You know I'm terrified of rats, just like you are of spiders. How would you like it if I started making giant spider jokes?"

"I wasn't joking," said Ron mildly, pulling out his wand and illuminating it. He directed Imogen's gaze the floor, and there Imogen saw the remains of a freshly killed rat, and near it a discarded package of some sweets. Attracted by the odor, the rat had been licking away at the remains of the package, unaware that a large human being was silently descending the ladder immediately above its head. Ron's final step off the ladder had instantly ended the creature's life.

"I wouldn't have minded so much if I'd been wearing my shoes," said Ron. "It's pretty disgusting having rat brains on your foot, believe me —"

"Oh, stop!" said Imogen, throwing her hands over her ears. Ron took her arm gently, and moved her way from the base of the ladder, clearing the way just in time for Hermione.

"Mind the dead rat," said Ron.

"I will, and I'll look out for the wounded hippogriff as well. Oh gross!" Hermione realized a little late that Ron had not been joking, and she minded exceedingly the unpleasant contact her foot experienced with the remains of the dead rodent. Harry reached the bottom of the ladder without stepping on the dead rat, much to Ron's disappointment.

Safe from detection, none of them needed to worry about being invisible, nor did they have to keep their voices down. They moved through the dark subterranean corridor at a brisk walk, the passage lit only by the light from their wands. It was hard to judge distance or time, but Imogen estimated they had been walking about five minutes when Harry called a halt. He peered closely at the wall, apparently looking at something. Evidently he found it, and tapped briskly at several bricks with his wand in a manner not unlike that used to gain access to Diagon Alley. The wall opened to reveal a small shelf, on which lay two brooms. Harry pulled out his broom and passed the other to Ron.

"I put these here a few hours ago because I did not want us having to carry any more than we needed to after lights out," explained Harry.

Hermione and Imogen were glad to see the brooms. Harry had not explained to them how they were to reach their destination once they were off school grounds, and not seeing any brooms in the common room, Imogen had assumed they would be riding a magical creature. The last thing Imogen wanted was a Thestral or Hippogriff ride hundreds of feet above the ground in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night.

"This isn't going to be an enjoyable broom ride," said Harry, "After all, we'll be several hundred feet above the ground in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night. But it beats walking, I suppose."

"And just where would we be walking, but for the broom ride?" asked Imogen.

"The shack that was, at one time, the residence of Marvolo Gaunt. According to what you told us, Imogen, we can expect to find a Horcurx placed there by Voldemort decades ago."

"Why this Horcrux?" asked Hermione.

"Only one reason," replied Harry as the four resumed their trek in the passage way. "Like the Ravenclaw diadem, this particular Horcrux is unguarded. It's the easiest one to go after. If we were to go after the Hufflepuff cup at Gringotts — which, by the way I think we should take last of all the Horcruxes but Nagini — we might ruin everything. Even if we destroy the Hufflepuff cup, this won't do us any good at all, if Voldemort finds out about it and then hides the other Horcruxes.

Imogen's voice rose in objection. "But Harry, you know from what I told you that we should be able to get into Gringott's and retrieve the cup. Hermione needs to disguise herself as Bellatrix Lestrange, and you use the imperious curse on any guards that appear uncooperative."

"Yes. I recall. But it's incredibly risky and I don't want to leave it to chance. I'd rather come up with some other plan. Besides, to disguise one of us as Bellatrix, we'd have to get to her first, as we need one of her hairs for the Polyjuice. Getting to Bellatrix might even more difficult than getting into Gringotts. So I think a new plan is called for. But here we are." They'd reached the end of the underground passageway, marked by a ladder.

"Upstairs is the cellar of the Three Broomsticks," explained Harry. "No talking or blundering about."

Harry gently opened the hidden door and poked his head through the opening. He listened, and hearing nothing but the silence, he lighted his wand to show him the way to the stairs. He whispered to Ron to follow him up, moving to the staircase to wait for his friends. One by one they emerged, Imogen coming up last and gently closing the door behind her.

Harry pulled out his Invisibility Cloak.

"You two wear this," he said, addressing Imogen and Hermione. "Stay close behind us and with your wands out. If there's any trouble, take care of it." Harry headed up the staircase and onto the main floor of the Three Broomsticks accompanied by his friends. A noisy, raucous place during business hours, the pub was silent as a sepulchre now, the only sound the occasional slight squeak of a floorboard. Moving with great care, it took the four of them a while to reach the front door. Harry tried the handle, and, as he expected, it was unlocked, the charm a simple one, guarding the door against unskilled intruders from the outside, but not from the inside. Evidently Hogsmeade was not a high crime district and the owner of the Three Broomsticks did not take security all that seriously. Now outside, the four students headed to a nearby dark alley between two buildings. Ron mounted his broom and waited for Hermione to join him. But instead, she pulled out her wand, pointed it at Ron and quietly muttered a charm.

"What's that for?" he asked.

"It's a kind of shield charm," Hermione replied, turning the wand on herself. "We're going to need something against the cold. It's already chilly enough, and it's going to be even worse once we're up high and moving."

She performed the same charm for Harry and Imogen and now they were ready to leave. Hermione got on Ron's broom behind him, and wrapped her arms around him. Imogen watched this closely, for she had very little experience with riding brooms. This was one aspect of wizarding life which unfortunately she had had no time to study while at school. She attempted the odd flight during the Christmas vacation at the Burrow, but she had no natural talent for it. Her short rides were characterized by jerky stops and starts, unexpected changes in direction and the constant risk of collision. Imogen got on Harry's broom, sitting behind him and wrapping her arms around Harry in imitation of Hermione. She envied the practiced ease with which Hermione had tossed her arms around Ron, wishing that she could feel the same level of comfort in doing so with Harry. Perhaps he detected her discomfort.

"You will have to hold on tighter, Imogen, if you don't want to get thrown off."

Harry kicked off the ground, the broom's tail down and nose pointed upwards into the night sky. Now Imogen needed no prompting to clutch tightly to Harry, terrified of falling off the back of the broom. Harry was not accustomed to carrying a passenger, and he observed his broom's performance closely. After all, his life and that of Imogen's might depend on his skill with a broom if they had to escape at the evening's end. The rate of climb was slower, and they were only a few hundred feet above the ground as Harry banked and headed south.

Imogen stared down at the distant Hogwarts grounds, the castle clearly distinguishable against the backdrop of pure white snow, the whole scene illuminated by a moon that was only one night short of being full, high in a cloudless sky. Imogen looked over her shoulder at the retreating village of Hogsmeade, only a few windows illuminated by candlelight and already very faint. Harry banked to the right, in plenty of time to manoeuvre around one of the low mountains surrounding the area. The broom's response was rather sluggish, for it was bearing the weight almost double that to which it was accustomed. Harry looked behind him to check on Ron's progress.

"Oy! You'll have to go faster than that if you're going to get there first!"

Harry whipped his head around at the source of Ron's voice, and saw his friend some distance ahead, almost the length of a Quidditch pitch.

"Hang on, Imogen," warned Harry. The girl clutched him even tighter as Harry's broom began to accelerate. Evidently Ron was doing the same, for it took Harry's rather superior broom some time before it pulled level with Ron's. Thereafter Harry slowed his rate of acceleration and the two brooms rose together in the night sky levelling off into thinner air at approximately five thousand feet.

Imogen looked to her left, wondering if she would be able to distinguish the distant blackness of the North Sea, but found that she could not. She looked down to her right, marvelling at the faint twinkle of distant towns, and the clear reflection of the moon on a river far below. She was grateful for the shielding charm Hermione had performed on her just before departure, for she was quite sure that at this height, at this time of the year and at this speed, she would have been close to freezing to death. The charm blunted the worst of the wind effect, and she found that she was able to converse with Harry without too much difficulty.

"How fast do you think we're going?"

"Pretty fast, I would say," he replied. "At ground level this broom is good for about 150 miles per hour, and because we're up so high and the wind resistance is so low, I think I could do something close to that speed even though there's two of us on the broom. But I'm travelling a little under the maximum speed so that Ron can keep up on his broom. I would say we're doing about 140 miles per hour."

"How long will this take us?" she asked, hopeful that there journey would be short.

"About two hours."

"Oh."

The novelty of the high altitude broom ride was wearing off rather quicker than Imogen had expected. Her lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of a two hour night flight was conveyed both in her monosyllabic reply and in her tone. Harry laughed at Imogen's response, and extracting his wand from his pocket, silently cast a binding curse at Imogen's hands clutched around the front of his body. Instantly Imogen's wrists were joined by a tight, but not too tight rope. He glanced downwards, and then performed the same magic, causing her ankles to be tied together.

"What the hell are you doing?" shouted Imogen.

"There is not the slightest chance you'll fall off now," replied Harry. If you want, you can get a couple of hours' sleep before we get there."

Imogen thought this was a good idea, and resting her head on Harry's shoulder, soon nodded off.

Imogen woke, and upon waking immediately realized the reason. The broom was now pointed down — steeply down. They were in free-fall, and Imogen felt the vertigo of weightlessness for the first time, an unpleasant sensation that she hoped would end soon. And it did as Harry pulled up sharply, and then settled the broom down on a gentle slope near some woods, Ron and Hermione landing a short distance away. Harry quickly and silently uncharmed the bonds that had kept Imogen tied to him during the flight. She dismounted, stretching her limbs to get the ache out of them and rubbing her sore wrists. She looked about her in the darkness, marking that the moon had risen considerably during the ride, and now was almost directly overhead.

It was amazing what a difference to the climate a few hundred miles made, thought Imogen. There was not a trace of snow on the ground, whereas back at Hogwarts there had had nothing but snow for months. She turned at the sound of footsteps, and then heard Hermione's voice.

"Let me undo that shield charm," said Hermione. "I'll put it back on when it's time to leave."

With the charm lifted, Imogen now felt the chill of the night air, but to her way of thinking, this weather could be hardly be called winter at all, despite the fact it was mid-February. She wondered for the hundredth time against what unknown past she was measuring her present experience. Why did she expect winters to be long, cold and snow-bound? How had she known to build a snow shelter when she had been caught outdoors in the Forbidden Forest some weeks previously? Harry took her hand and directed her onwards, ending this line of internal enquiry.

"It's just over this hill," he said. The four of them marched as a group up the slope to the crest of the hill, their forms clearly distinguishable in the moonlight had anyone been watching.

And someone was.

When Harry had planned the mission to Gaunt's shack, he was anything but heedless of the dangers attendant to the enterprise. Marvolo Gaunt had been a nasty piece of work, and was descended from a long line of equally nasty wizards. Perhaps Marvolo's only saving grace was the fact that he was the product of too many generations of inbreeding, and thus lacked the intellectual capacity to vent to his mindless rage in an intelligent way. It was to this man's shack that Harry was going, and it was safe for Harry to assume that there could be some dangerous surprises waiting for them. There could be traps (both magical and otherwise) for the unwary, both in the shack and on the grounds. And these potential traps might be rather subtle. After all, it was not just Marvolo that might have been motivated to protect his property. His grandson was Voldemort himself, and Voldemort had chosen Gaunt's shack as the place to store a Horcrux: a fragment of Voldemort's soul, placed inside Gaunt's ring, a Slytherin heirloom. This object, so vile in the sight of Harry and his friends, was, to Voldemort, infinitely more holy than a reliquary, and it would be foolish for Harry to blunder into the shack expecting to encounter no difficulties. It was for this reason that Harry had brought with him three friends of proven reliability and fearlessness. Armed with his friends, his Invisibility Cloak and Imogen's knowledge of what was to happen in an unaltered future, Harry felt that he had done as much as he could do. One could plan only so much, leaving the rest to chance.

But chance was not with Harry and his friends this evening. Harry was unaware, nor could he have been aware, that the village near Gaunt's shack was not only home to Voldemort's father. It had another connection to the Dark Lord, in that it was the hometown to one of his most evil servants, the werewolf Fenrir Greyback.

Decades earlier, a pair of Muggles in town welcomed the birth of their third child, unaware that the boy was a wizard. Eleven years later, the letter of invitation had come from Hogwarts, and with it the explanation for the odd incidents that had surrounded their son almost from birth. A visit from Dumbledore himself calmed the apprehensive couple, and they had entrusted Fenrir into Dumbledore's care.

The boy had been raised by normal, loving parents and was marked by none of the psychosis common to Voldemort and his gang. But the wizarding world saw to it that the boy's development at Hogwarts went awry. Fenrir had always been a bit rebellious, and when some friends suggested an illicit trip to the Forbidden Forest to celebrate the end of final exams, the twelve-year-old Fenrir had thought this was a great idea. Less than an hour later he was back at the school, bleeding heavily from bites suffered in a savage attack in the forest. The combined magic of his young friends had been barely enough to ward off the attacker, the boys hustling Fenrir to the school as fast as they could. He was still in the infirmary and close to being discharged when, three days later, the light of a full moon streamed through the window, and for the first time the true nature of the attack upon him was revealed.

Dumbledore was not headmaster in those days but only the transfiguration master, and his protests that Fenrir Greyback must be allowed to stay at the school were overridden by the authorities. Fenrir's first year of the school was also his last, expelled for no fault of his own and over Dumbledore's clear warnings.

"This is a foolish mistake," wrote Dumbledore to the school's board of directors, appealing to them in an effort of reverse the headmaster's decision. "This young Ravenclaw has already acquired great skill with his wand. If he is permitted to continue at Hogwarts I will personally guarantee the safety of all students and staff. The boy will face special challenges, but nothing that cannot be overcome. But if the decision to expel him is upheld, what will we be unleashing on the world outside Hogwarts? Our students will be safe, but the rest of the world will not. Do you imagine that by taking away his wand from him now, that he will never find means to acquire another? You will answer that the Ministry will keep a close eye on him. Doubtless the Ministry will do its best, but not nearly as good a job as I would do inside the four walls at Hogwarts. Perhaps you will say that if the young Greyback breaks the law by using magic, that he will be arrested and placed in Azkaban. To this I answer, how much harm will he do before he is caught? And what will you do if you cannot catch him? Are we not foolish to pass laws against an outcast, and create prisons to put him in, when it is we who are creating the outcast in the first place? Why don't you leave him with me, even for a year, and then reconsider your decision?"

The letter did no good. Rather than attending to the common sense and humanity of Dumbledore's views, the superintendents in the Ministry preferred to rely on their laws, their regulations, their policies and procedures, their Aurors, and their courts with their writs, injunctions and prisons, all of which had turned out to be useless. The first wizard assigned to watch Greyback was found wandering outside the Ministry's secret entrance in London, quite unable to complete his mission, for the simple reason that Greyback had removed the man's eyes. A package came to the Ministry a few days later, a jar wrapped with a taunting note, inviting the healers at St. Mungo's to put the man's eyes back in if they could. The eyes were inside the jar. The investigators sent to find Greyback in the forest outside his village had been picked off one by one. Finally the Ministry had sent in its best Aurors, but by then Greyback had fled and had evaded capture ever since. And now, instead of a few werewolves here and there, the Ministry had to deal with far larger problem: the werewolves that Greyback was producing in unprecedented quantities, fresh scores of them every year.