The Alchemist's Cell
by SJR0301
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was amazing, Harry thought, how much better being clean and having proper clothes on made you feel. The jeans the Inspector had lent him were a bit too big and had to be rolled up at the bottom; but even so, they were better than anything he had ever had as a hand-me-down from Dudley. With the clean shirt and borrowed trainers, that almost fit him (they were only a little bit loose), Harry felt that he could even walk down the street in Privet Drive without anyone thinking he was a delinquent, and that was saying something. He tucked his wand under his shirt and wondered how he was going to persuade the detectives to let him go.
He really needed to get back to Hogwarts or else he was going to be in even more terrible trouble. He hoped, too, that Flamel had survived and found a way to contact Dumbledore. He thought that the old man must not have died, or Voldemort would have been terribly angry and he would have felt that. He hoped that Flamel had escaped, as Voldemort hadn't been happy either. Harry was certain of that. Inspector Bones pointed to a chair at a samll table near the kitchen.
"Sit," he said, "You can have some tea and breakfast while we talk."
Harry frowned and thought Mad-eye Moody would think him stupid for accepting food from someone whom he knew so little. However, he was really very hungry and, he thought, if they had wanted to harm him, they'd had ample time already. He sat and took a sip of the tea and a bite of the eggs and toast. He took a few more bites, but, feeling the intent gaze of the officers, he stopped and waited for their questions.
"What I want to know," Sergeant Kray said, "is why you're so sure this Voldemort guy is the culprit here." Harry noted that Bones winced a bit at her use of Voldemort's name, but he ignored that and looked at her.
"I told you," he answered, "he was in Flamel's house. I had a fight with him. If you know that the house was the headquarters for his operations, then it was him."
"What about the other deaths," she persisted. "How do you know he killed your parents, for instance? How do you know he killed those other people?"
"I was there," Harry answered. "I saw him." He had stopped feeling hungry and pushed the food away. He glanced at Bones and couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling. His face was as closed as Snape's when they were having Occlumency lessons. His professional demeanor perhaps.
"You were there when he killed Nancy Bell? Margaret Miller?" the Sergeant asked again.
"No, not those," Harry replied. "But they propbably were him. It looks like it."
"So you don't really know he was behind those, do you?" she asked again. Harry shrugged.
"One of them was right by Little Hangleton. That's where his father's house was. I know he was using that for a base a couple of years ago," Harry said. The image of the graveyard flashed through his mind. He blocked it out and forced himself to look calmly at the Sergeant.
"And how do you know that?" Bones interposed. Harry swallowed. He felt as if he had a piece of toast stuck down his throat and couldn't get it out.
After a second, he answered, "I was there."
"You were in Little Hangleton? At the Riddle House?" Bones had taken over now, and he seemed unhappy with Harry's answers.
"Yes," Harry said. He really did not want to talk about that. Even though he had given the interview in The Quibbler about it last year, he really didn't want to talk about it again.
"You seem to have a strange attraction to this Voldmeort's headquarters," Sergeant Kray commented. "You were at the Riddle House, and then you were at the house the other day. How is it, that a sixteen year old is mixed up in this stuff?"
Harry stared at her and felt his temper rise. He knew he was lucky to be alive; he knew that he might have drowned if they hadn't helped him; yet he resented their questions and their doubt.
"Well, I can't help it," he answered angrily, "If Voldemort kidnapped me, could I? That's how I ended up at the Riddle House, or to be precise, in the graveyard. I never actually went inside the house."
"He kidnapped you?" Bones asked. It was clear he didn't quite believe Harry. "I know he's wicked," Bones added, "and I might believe he killed your parents. But I have a hard time believing he'd be so concerned with one teenage boy. Why you?"
Harry glared at him. He understood that Bones didn't know the whole of his story, but that didn't matter. He didn't want to be made to talk just now. All he wanted was to get back to Hogwarts and to tell Dumbledore what had happened. He wanted Dumbledore to fix it, to make everything right, as he had at the hearing last year.
"Why me?" Harry managed to get out. "Because I'm the one he couldn't kill. Because when he failed to kill me...when the curse failed...his power was broken and he disappeared for thriteen years. He wanted me as special guest for his rebirthing. He wanted to kill me in front of his Death Eaters to prove he could. So he took me right out of school, me and another boy, Cedric. And he killed Cedric right away, just because he was there, in the wrong place. I saw him kill Cedric. I saw him." Harry shoved his hands under his arms to hide them. He didn't want them seeing him shake. He shut up and waited for them to show something: belief, disbelief; it didn't matter.
They looked at each other, and he could see they were, by that exchange, communicating their agreement about him. He did that himself at times with his friends.
"So You Know Who had you at the graveyard," Bones said. "He killed your friend, but he let you live?"
"Let me?" Harry echoed. "He didn't let me live. I had to watch him get his power back. Then he gave me my wand back to try to fight him, because he wanted to make it look like he was really beating me in a duel, even though he knew and everybody knew I hadn't a chance."
"But he didn't kill you," Sergeant Kray said dryly. "Here you are, and there he is, merrily killing everyone in sight but you. And we're supposed to believe that?" She looked at Bones and back to him and said, "Tell me another."
"I don't care whether you believe me," Harry answered. "If you don't want to believe me, that's fine. The stupid Ministry refused to belive me, too, when I told them he was back. For a whole year, they refused to believe me, and now look where he's got. Back in power and with the start of an army." He glared at them because they weren't listening, and he didn't know what to say to convince them. Even the wizard, Bones, didn't believe him. But why should he? He'd never heard of the Boy Who Lived.
***
Bones stared at the kid and didn't know what to think. He was sure the kid was a wizard. He had a live wand and it had sparked last night when the kid was distressed. And he knew everything. He knew too much. That was the problem. No sixteen year old should be talking about You Know Who, saying his name, as casually as his Muggle friends talked about the Prime Minister. And no one, no one, could survive the Killing Curse. Edgar had seen it for himself.
Instant death. Unblockable. He looked at the kid's face again. There was no question he was distressed. He probably had seen the other boy killed, Edgar thought. That part might be true. And he had been in the burning house, he had a burn and bruises, no question about that. Edgar thought, I've got to know this is true before I go to Masters. He thought again, and though he felt badly, he had to put pity aside. The truth mattered here. He went to get the box in which he'd been collecting odd bits of evidence for the case. If the boy was truthful, maybe he could explain a thing or two. He fished through the box and came up with a large plastic bag that held Margaret Miller's wand.
"Do you recognize this?" he asked. Fay craned her neck to see the wand and made a slight noise of disapproval. He hoped she wouldn't start demanding to see some magic again. That would be a problem.
The boy shrugged and said, "Can I look at it?"
Edgar handed it to him and watched uneasily as the boy took it out of the bag. The kid didn't wave it or anything, though. He looked at it carefully and said, "No, I've never seen that one before. It's not Cedric's either. Cedric's was longer, almost fourteen inches. This one's maybe only ten." He handed it back and Edgar put it back in the box.
Edgar pulled out Nancy Bell's papers next. "What about these?" he asked, but again the boy shook his head. "Someone's star charts, but no one I know," he said indifferently. Egar considered him again. The first two items had made no impression on the kid. He could see the boy relax slightly and thought now was the time to go for shock value, and hope to surprise something real out of him.
Edgar brought out the next two pieces of evidence. They might, he thought, mean nothing, too. They might have been there by coincidence. He handed the boy the next bag, which held a piece of rope and silver knife, with the dark brown stains of dried blood. The kid looked at them with a frown and said, "What's this?"
"I think it's plain," Edgar said. "That's a knife and the other's a piece of rope, and they've both got blood on them. What do you know about these?" The kid still looked puzzled and he said, "Noth..." and stopped before the word nothing could come out all the way. Some thought crossed over his face, and he said slowly, "Where did you find these? Why are you showing them to me?" Edgar watched him closely.
"You said you'd been at the Riddle House," he answered, "at the graveyard. I found these there, by Tom Riddle's grave."
Whatever he had expected, the kid's reaction was not it. He opened his mouth, but seemed unable to speak, and he stared at the rope and the knife as if they were some rattler about to bite. He had lost all color again, and looked quite as pale as he had when they first dragged him out of the water unbreathing. Edgar could see in his eyes, the huge green eyes, that he was remembering something.
"This is too much," he said. He said it almost calmly, almost conversationally, and he started walking for the door. "I'm going," he said, and he had his hand on the door before Edgar could catch him by the arm and say, "Easy, now, we're not quite finished."
He could feel the coiled tension in the boy's body and thought with a curse, that he had made some terrible mistake. He gestured to Fay and stepped back to let Fay guide him back to the couch and to gently push him down again. Fay looked at him questioningly. She had seen how close the boy was to bolting and to using violence if necessary to get away. He shook his head at her. The moment had passed and the boy was now staring blindly at his hands, which he clasped in his lap, and then shoved under his arms again as though he were cold.
Edgar said quietly, very quietly, "You recognize those then?"
The boy didn't move at first or respond. He took a deep breath, as though he were just out of the water again, and hadn't breathed for a while, and then another. "They might be...It's almost two years, but...if you found them there..." He paused again, and Edgar waved for Fay not to speak. "The rope," he said, "they tied me up, and Wormtail, that's one of the death eaters, he, cut off his hand, for the spell, you see, to bring Voldmeort back. He cut his own hand off, and then..." The kid stopped again and said, "I want to go."
He stared at Edgar and repeated, "I want to go. I've told you what you wanted. If you want more, you can come with me to Hogwarts and ask Dumbledore himself, and he'll tell you it's all true."
"All right," Edar said, and saw the look of relief. "But, I want you to come to the Yard first again and make a statement. You'll need to make an official statement and give us an address, so we can find you again." The boy gawked at him.
"You must be joking," he said. "Give an offical statement! I'll be expelled. They'll break my wand. I've already said more than I should have and the only way I'll get away with it is because you're a wizard. I mean, your Auntie's in the Ministry. You know perfectly well I can't do that."
"I think, you'll find," Fay answered for them both, "that you will. These are murders we're talking about. And serious organized crime. If you won't make a statement, we can't let you go. It's worth our jobs. And it may cost lives. Because this fellow, wizard or not, is going to keep killing, isn't he? And we have to catch him. That's our job."
The boy stared at her and almost laughed. "You've got to be kidding! You think, Voldemort wherever he is and arrest him? Pull out your badges and say, You're under arrest, just like that? And you think he won't kill you on the spot?"
He stared at Edgar and said, "Tell her. She doesn't understand. She'll get herself killed. He killed your parents. You know what he is!”
"Yes," Edgar answered. "I know what he is. But so did you, when you went to that house. And you went anyway. What makes you think you could do more than grown ups? What makes you think we shouldn't do what's right?" He looked at Fay, and she nodded at him. "Let's go," he said. "To the Yard for a short while longer, and then I'll let you go."
The boy stood up abruptly. He looked as though he had come to a decision and as if all the youth had been chiseled away. All that was left was a quite beautiful face, but one rather like the angels one saw in certain of the artists' works. Not like soft babies. No, he looked like an avenging angel, out to do the business of justice.
"Okay," he said, "I'll give you a statement, if you give me your word you'll come to see Dumbledore before you do anything stupid like trying to arrest him. I guess it's necessary, isn't it, whether the Ministry wants it or not. It's not just magic folk he's killing. Nobody's safe anymore."
Edgar stared at him. He understood what the boy was doing, binding him with his word. Without looking at Fay, he said, "It's a deal."
***
Harry followed the detectives out to the street. He was certain he'd be facing another hearing already, even if he didn't give a formal statement. He half-hoped that Bones would bury the statement, see to it that it was never seen by anyone, but he knew that wouldn't happen.
Whatever his wizard background, Harry thought, the Inspector was committed to his present life. And what he himself had said was true - Voldemort had expanded his reach so greatly by recruiting muggle gangs, that he was now a serious threat to both worlds.
The car they were in now was different from the one they'd ridden to London in. This one was the kind Dudley would love. Come to think of it, if Harry had a car, he wouldn't mind one like this either. It was sleek and silver and the inside felt luxurious. The Inspector drove it through the crowded streets of London as easily as Harry wove through the opposing teams when he played quidditch. Harry wondered with a pang if he'd ever get to play quidditch again. A radio up front crackled, and the Inspector spoke back into it.
"I can't hear you. You're breaking up." A whirring ring followed. Bones pulled out a mobile phone and punched a button on the side to raise the volume.
"Bones, here," he answered calmly.
"It's Graves," the voice in the phone barked. "We've got some of our bunch tracked back to that pub you first saw them in. Meet me there, right away."
"We're on our way," Bones answered. He turned a corner and then another and sped up, slipping through the traffic now faster than Harry had ever been driven in a car and in this kind of fashion.
"What about him?" Sergeant Kray asked.
Bones didn't answer for a moment, then he answered, "We can't stop now. He'll have to stay in the car while we go in."
They careened around a roundabout and the silver car hugged the turn. Then they shot out into another street that ran diagonally away from where they had been. Harry thought he recognized parts of the area. They weren't far from where he'd been last summer. They slowed and Bones pulled up at a corner where seedy flats mingled with seedier stores. At the other end of the street, Harry could see the dingy glass front of a tavern. Bones reached into the glove compartment and took out a gun and the Sergeant pulled one out of her purse. They both quickly checked their weapons and then got out of the car, leaving Harry in the back seat.
"Don't get out of the car, whatever happens," Bones ordered. The tall detective didn't wait for Harry to assent. He nodded to Fay and they stepped onto the sidewalk and were joined by the tall, older policeman who had been there at the water and who had put the handcuffs on him. The older man pointed to various windows up and down the street and then motioned the other two along.
Harry had a bad feeling about this. He felt the hair on his neck rise and he craned his neck to get a better view of the detectives as they approached the glass-fronted tavern. There were men coming out from an alley to the side of where the detectives were. There were more men coming out of the tavern itself.
Two men, actually, and for one second Harry thought Crabbe and Goyle had followed him all the way to London to have another go at him. Then reason asserted itself and he thought, no, it's just two large thugs, that's all. He squinted to see better and realized with horror that it was Crabbe and Goyle--only it was their fathers, the Death Eaters and they were drawing wands, not guns. Graves swung around and got off a shot at the men coming out the alley. The gunshot was much louder than Harry would have thought. Louder than the sound of a wizard disapparating. He’d never mistake the two again.
The men scattered, and severeal shots came back from them. Bones and Kray had turned to send off a couple of shots of their own, and everybody was ignoring Crabbe and Goyle, who had raised their wands to attack. The street was a jumble of movement as men shot their guns and ran simultaneously, and Graves went down all at once and lay still. Harry flung himself out of the car and drew his wand running toward the chaos.
***
The street was in chaos. Men were shooting in every direction, and Edgar pushed Fay out of the way and snapped off another shot at the same time. There were two men coming out of the tavern, men he knew. The two enormous thugs who had the ear of the boss --You Know Who --or so they bragged. He understood, in a second, that what they had said must be true, because they had both drawn wands and were pointing them right at him and Fay.
He would have had no time to draw a wand, if he'd had his on him, but he pointed the gun straight at them and sighted. He hadn't time to squeeze off a shot, though, because someone had raced in front them weapon drawn and yelling out, "Expelliarmus!" A red light shot out of the boy's wand, and the one on the right was knocked over and his wand flew away in the air.
The second one stared in astonishment and cursed. "Potter! I don't believe it!" His expression hardened and he raised his wand again and started the words of the spell, but the boy reacted incredibly fast and threw himself to the side just as the green light came out, plowing a molten path in the street where it struck.
The boy attacked again as he was coming out of the roll to his knees, crying "Stupefy!" and the second one was knocked out entirely. The first one was struggling to his knees and was reaching for his wand. Edgar yelled and sighted his gun at the reaching hand, but another distraction had arrived. One of the other thugs, a Muggle was approaching gun drawn and pointing at them all. And the gun was one of the biggest Edgar had ever seen, a sawed off shotgun, he thought.
He yelled again at the boy to clear away, but the boy turned and casually flicked his wand, and the gun floated out of the thug's grasp. The thug cursed and reached for it in the air, but another flick of the wand sent a sheet of fire at the thing in the air, and it began to melt in the air in front of them.
Edgar was stunned. He'd never seen anybody do that. Not even his father. And this was a sixteen year old, not even done with his sixth year? The kid turned his attention back to the wizard thug, who was conscious, but the thug turned and ran down the alley and the kid ran after him.
Edgar paused only for a second to say to Fay, "Are you hurt?"
She shook her head. Her face was a study in bewilderment. "Did you see what he did? Did you see that?" She stared at him as if she'd never seen him before and said, "Can you? Do that?"
Edgar said, "Some of it. But not that last thing. I've never seen anything like that." He realized that they were about to lose both their quarry and the boy. He ran down the alley after them and Fay was only half a step behind.
***
Harry wove down the streets, following Crabbe as fast as he could. The huge man ran faster than Harry would have thought, his long legs eating up the distance and his heavy bulk pushing people out of his way. If he had spared a thought for Goyle, he would have assumed that the police would arrest him and take his wand, but he hadn't thought at all. He ran after the Death Eater, terrified that the wizard would start cursing every Muggle in sight just to make an extra diversion; but he didn't.
The wizard kept running, turning down this street and that, looking over his shoulder once, and increasing his speed. Harry followed him into a street that looked strangely familiar and then realized as the Death Eater ran into another glass fronted tavern, exactly where he was. There was a bookstore on one side and a record store on the other, and the Muggles on the street walking past saw only those two, and not the tavern in the middle. It was The Leaky Cauldron.
Harry ran in and saw all the patrons there staring at him. He realized that it was his drawn wand and agitated state that had gotten their attention. As one, they gawked and Tom the bartender said, "Bless my soul, it's Harry Potter," just as he had the very first time Harry had ever come there.
"Did you see him?" he asked Tom. "The Death Eater, did you see him?"
Another patron, a skinny looking wizard with wild grey hair sticking out in tufts and a toad sitting on his shoulder said, "I donn't know about no Death Eater, boy. Only one as come in here lately was that Crabbe fellow."
"Him," Harry said, "where did he go?" Tom looked crestfallen and pointed at the fireplace.
"There. He used floo powder, but I didn't catch where he was going." Harry stared around and realized he had lost the detectives, or at least he hoped he had just left them behind and that they weren't hurt. He tried to catch his breath and thought, now this is really beyond me, I've got to get to Dumbledore and tell him.
He turned to Tom and said, "Could I...erm, borrow some Floo powder, please. I need to get back to school and right away."
The bald bartender looked at him and said, "Aye, that's about the best thought anyone's had all day. He brought a small ceramic crock out from under the counter and said, "Normally I charge a sickle for a handful, but as it's you, I'll let you pay me next time." He stared anxiously at Harry and said, "Go on, then. Hurry!" as if he knew something Harry didn't.
Harry stared at him one moment more and said, "Thanks, Tom." He took a handful of Floo powder and said as clearly as he could, "Hogwarts, Headmaster's Office." The fire felt pleasantly warm and he spun away in the longest, most dizzying trip he'd ever gone and came out of the fire into Dumbledore's office to land in a heap at the elderly wizard's feet.
***
Edgar pulled up cursing and Fay bumped into him. He caught her by reflex and scanned the street looking for a black head.
"We've lost them," Fay said.
"Yes," he said.
"Where would they have gone?" Fay asked. "And the boy, what about him? Does he ever listen to anyone? You told him to stay in the car! And he goes haring off chasing a fleeing felon. Is he mad?"
"Fay," Edgar said. He thought it quite extraordinary that she was fuming over the kid like that, like a mother hen who'd lost its chick.
"If it weren't for the kid," he said, "we'd both be dead." That silenced her for a moment.
"You don't suppose," she said, "you don't suppose that other one, one of the big ones, will lead him into a trap?"
Edgar tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach and said, "It's possible." He thought a second and added, "We've got to go back and check on Graves and see what happened to the others."
"And then? What about the boy?" Fay asked.
"Then we go back to the Riddle House," Edgar answered grimly, as fast as is humanly possible."
"Why there?" Fay asked. "It's empty, abandoned."
"He's used it for his headquarters," Edgar answered. "Now that we've flushed him out of Flamel's house, he'll go back there. If he ever left it entirely."
"Edgar," Fay said, "you told the kid we weren't going after him until you talked to that other man. And," she added, "If he can kill like that, by magic, how are we supposed to actually take him in?"
"We'll see when we get there," Edgar answered. "We have to go there. It's the most likely place that thug would have gone to, and he'll have led the boy there. Right into a trap. There's no time, now, for stories and consultations. We've got a minor possibly in danger of being killed by a known felon. It's our job to stop it."
It took more time than he had wanted to get back and send Graves to the hospital. He'd taken a bullet in the shoulder and was being terribly testy about the whole thing. The rest of the street was deserted, as was the tavern from which the two wizards had emerged.
As soon, however, as the ambulance took Graves away, Edgar was sprinting to the car and pointing it north toward Little Hangleton. He put the portable siren on and ran the car north on the expressway at speeds even he knew were dangerous. Fay said nothing though, and if anything, she seemed even more anxious then he was to arrive at the place that was the origin and the nexus of the mystery. He wished he had a wand, but his had gone up in flames the day his parent’s house had burned.
They pulled into Little Hangleton in just over an hour's time. Edgar parked the car by the vicar's house and checked his gun again to make sure it was fully loaded. He waited a second for Fay to get out, and while she was looking in the other direction at the silhouette of the house, he slipped Margaret Miller's wand out of the evidence bag and into his coat pocket. From the outside, the house appeared to be as deserted as it had been the last time they'd been there. But the front door, which should have been locked, swung open at his touch, and he saw that the yellow police tape sealing the house had been torn away.
"Stay behind me," he said softly to Fay, "and make a run for it if they actually attack."
"Don't be an idiot, Edgar," she whispered. "I'm not leaving you to them."
"What a charming sentiment," said a voice as cold as a glacial winter. "Do come in," the voice continued, "it's been so terribly long since we've had proper guests in this house."
Edgar walked forward trying to keep Fay partly behind him, so he could shield her if they attacked. There were easily a dozen men there, all of them hooded and robed. The voice had issued from a robed figure seated in front of the fireplace in the lounge they had inspected once before.
Edgar felt a chill run through him. This was He Who Must Not Be Named. This was his parents' murderer. The man in the chair must once have been tall, but his body was now strangely hunched over, as if his bones were collapsing under their own weight. That should have made him less frightening, but the eyes and the voice were enough to frighten any one. He alone was unmasked and his eyes were no longer human. They were red and the pupils were slits, like a cat's or a snake's. And his nose was strangely flat. The eyes watched him coldly, as if he were no more than a mouse to the snake, just waiting to be toyed with and then killed. He forced himself to meet those eyes and show no fear.
"You must introduce yourselves," said You Know Who. It was an odd parody of politeness; all the more strange as Edgar had a feeling he knew precisely who they were already.
Edgar pulled out his Yard I.D. and said, "The police are who we are. Scotland Yard, and you are under arrest for the murders of the men in the lock-up; for conspiracy to import illegal drugs and weapons; for the murders of Nancy Bell, Margaret Miller and Janet Gordon. And that's just for starters, Mr. Riddle."
Peculiarly, he thought the hunched form had moved in startlement at being called Riddle. Edgar thought it a tiny chink in the creature's armor--for that's how he now saw him, as some demonic creature that had no relationship to humanity anymore. However, the creature collected himself speedily and laughed, a high cold laugh that sent chills down his spine.
"You think that Muggle police can arrest me? Lord Voldemort?" He laughed again and the watching Death Eaters laughed with him, a hollow echo devoid of any merriment.
Edgar drew his gun and said pleasantly, "Why, yes, we can. If you move," he added, "I will shoot you." The Death Eaters laughed again. One of them raised a wand and Edgar shot him in the shoulder and dove to the side all at once, pulling Fay away with him.
A spell nearly caught him, and his gun flew out of his hand. He rolled right into a Death Eater and pulled him down by the ankles, so that the Death Eater acted as a shield against the next spell. The man fell and was still, and someone screamed in fury. Even as he rose, Edgar was drawing the borrowed wand. He had spied a broom in the corner and hoped it was a real broom, not just a stupid Muggle household tool.
With barely time for thought, and remembering the boy's attack earlier, he pointed the wand and shouted the Stunning Spell. Death Eaters dove out of the way, but one went down and Riddle was standing, saying coldly, "Clear away! I'll get him, the dirty blood traitor. A wizard, working for Muggles!"
The other Death Eaters jumped back, giving Edgar the opening he needed. While Riddle flourished his wand, Edgar shouted the spell he needed - "Accio broom!"
The broom sailed through the air nearly knocking Riddle over. The creature moved with great speed despite his deformity, and was already raising his wand as Edgar jumped on the broom and dove directly at the other Death Eaters. Wands were raised and Riddle was recovering himself. Edgar shot forward on the broom and scooped Fay up as if she were a quaffle and accelerated the broom right through the huge bay window and out of the house.
The green light of the Killing Curse followed him and missed the broom by a fraction, landing on a tree and setting it alight; blowing it up from the inside even, it seemed. Riddle screamed in fury again, and Edgar knew they had scant time left. He shot up in the air and hoped none of the other Death Eaters had brooms this good. He urged it on as fast as possible and landed it in seconds by the silver car.
Fay had clutched him as if she were riding pillion on a motorbike and she yelled, "My god! You can fly! This is mad!" Edgar threw the keys to Fay and said, "Get in!"
He took off again and craned his neck to see if they were being followed. The trees around the Riddle House were all on fire and the fire was spreading across the lawn toward the house. Several Death Eaters had come running out, and one pointed at Edgar. He drew his wand again, but the hunched form of the creature stood framed in the doorway. The high cold voice was magically magnified as it called the Death Eaters back.
"Leave them. We'll have time for them later. Put out the fire, now, before it reaches the house and spoils everything." The Death Eaters were using every spell Edgar had ever heard of to douse the fire, but it wasn't working. He wondered if the Killing Curse's magic was so unblockable that not even a strike on something non-human could be stopped.
"Get out of the way!" Riddle screamed. "Useless incompetents! All of you!" He flicked the wand and an ice cold wind blew by, slowing the fire's progress toward the house. The wind was not only cold; it had a thick, tangible feel to it, and where it blew, darkness followed. Edgar shuddered and turned his broom with difficulty. As he left he heard Riddle screaming at one of the Death Eaters, "You let Potter go? You let him go?" The Death Eater screamed.
An agonizing scream such as Edgar had never heard before; animal-like, in quality. The icy voice had returned to calm, but it was the false calm that sits at the eye of the storm. Still magnified, Riddle's voice said, "The time has come for you to prove your worth. Now, I shall have him, before this day is out. I'll have the Potter brat today; else there'll be payment from those who fail. He'll not interefere with my plans again." The Death Eaters were kneeling and some had actually prostrated themselves before Riddle, as if he were some incarnation of an ancient idol wakened from a deathless sleep to feed upon the innocent.
Edgar fled then. He had to get back and find out where the boy had gone. And Masters had got to be told. He'd seen enough to scare him now more thoroughly than he'd been when he was sixteen. He landed by the car and threw the broom in the trunk, and said,
"Go!" Fay pushed the silver car back to London almost faster than he had driven it to Little Hangleton. Edgar had his mobile phone out instantly to call Hoskins and warn him, but the phone was dead. He cursed and shook it.
"Where's your phone?" he asked.
"My pocket," she said tersely, not taking her hands off the wheel--which was a good thing considering she had got the car's speed up to one hundred twenty miles per hour. Edgar fished in her jacket pocket, trying not to disturb her steering. He flicked open her mobile and found it, too, was dead.
"Damn," he muttered. "Too damn much magic."
~~~***~~~
Harry stared up at Dumbledore's face and saw the old man looked thoroughly astonished, and then an expression crossed the headmaster's face Harry had never seen before. Not happiness, not good humor, nor amusement; it was joy.
"Harry," the old man said. He reached down and took Harry's hand and pulled him up, and Harry was surprised at the strength in the old man's grip.
"Dramatics as usual," said a dry, sarcastic voice from a nearby picture. "But then, there's nothing more dramatic than a teenager is there."
"I wasn't trying to be dramatic," Harry said testily. Somehow, Phineas Nigellus annoyed him, immediately. The dry voice reminded him of Snape, though the former Headmaster had been Sirius's ancestor and no relation to Snape that he knew of.
Dumbledore looked at him gravely, then, and said, "Where have you been? And where is Flamel? It was Flamel, wasn't it, that you were dreaming about?" Harry stared at Dumbledore.
"I thought you knew," he said. He felt quite dumbfounded. He had always felt as if Dumbledore must know absolutely everything.
Dumbledore sighed. "Not at all," he answered. "I thought the dreams of the old man were another trap, because I could find nothing to tell me who it might be or if it were real."
"Then how did you know it must be Flamel," Harry asked.
"Ah," Dumbledore answered, "Your friends, Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Ginny Weasley and the remarkable Miss Hermione Granger figured it out. Miss Weasley insisted that your dream had to be real when she heard the letter you left for me. And the others figured it out from there."
"But, if you figured it out," Harry said, "why didn't you come? I mean, I'm glad you didn't because Voldemort was there and he might have killed somebody. But once you knew...?"
"I did go," Dumbledore answered, "too late. You left in the night, and no one discovered you were gone until hours later. And by the time Alastor Moody and I arrived, the house was in flames and there was no one there but Muggle firemen and police." Dumbledore paused and said quietly, "When you failed to return, and Nicholas failed to show up here, we feared the worst."
"Come and sit," Dumbledore said, "and tell me what's happened." He flicked his wand, and a cup of tea and a tray of sandwiches appeared. Harry looked at them and Dumbledore motioned for him to eat. He took a sip of the tea and a bite of a sandwich and started to talk. He interrupted only twice.
"Nicholas is alive?" he said in amazement.
"Yes," Harry said. He took another couple of bites of the sandwich and said, "I think he is. He got away in the water with the gillyweed I gave him. But I don't know where he went or if Voldemort caught back up with him again."
"I see," Dumbledore said. A frown creased his brow and created a new web of wrinkles, but nothing like the myriad creases that had made a map of Flamel's face. "I meant, actually, how is it he's alive when he destroyed the Stone and stopped taking the Elixir? He wrote me when Perenelle died that he expected to die himself before the day was out."
"I dunno," Harry answered. "I don't think he understood why he didn't die either."
"So you took the gillyweed, then, but you got separated from Flamel?" Dumbledore prompted.
"Oh, no," Harry answered. "I didn't have enough gillyweed. There wasn't enough in Professor Snape's cupboard." He stopped there and saw a faint twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes.
"A little casual with the school's rules, at times. Well, we'll discuss the rule-breaking later. Right now, I must know the rest."
Harry swallowed and said as calmly as he could, "I'll understand if you have to expel me. I know it was against all the rules and everything you've told me."
"So you said in your letter," Dumbledore replied. Harry swallowed again and took another sip of tea. He couldn't help noticing that Dumbledore had not said he wouldn't be expelled. He went on and continued with the rest and Dumbledore's astonished exclamation, "Edgar Bones! alive!" cued Harry to continue with the remainder of his story. But he faltered when he saw the sorrow and grief and weariness in the elderly wizard's face as he told Dumbledore of the files of dead wizards, and the Muggle gangs and the battle in the street with Death Eaters and Muggle thugs allied. He felt altogether wrung out, emptied of all energy and all feeling but a creeping terror.
"It came true," Professor, "didn't it?"
Dumbledore looked at him in silent inquiry and Harry clarified, "Professor Trelawney's second prophecy. He did rise again. And he is more powerful and terrible then ever he was." Harry added, "It's a funny thing though. I think something might have gone wrong with his re-birth."
Dumbledore stared at him, his gaze sharpening and said, "What?"
"Well he was all hunched over, like his spine had collapsed. Like some very, very ancient people you see sometimes. But it didn't stop him from moving or anything. And his hands, they were changed. When I saw him last, his fingers were very long and spidery, but now they looked, I dunno, knotty or something, like a very old man's. Like Flamel's almost, though not quite so bad."
"I see," Dumbledore said after a moment. "So he wanted the Stone for more than one reason. Not just for immortality. He wanted to be young again. He was rebirthed, but he was reborn back to the age he should be at, with the diseases of the old." Dumbledore looked thoughtfully at Harry and said, "This is good news and yet, very heavy news as well. The Minister will have to be told. And the Muggle authorities."
Harry said, "I suppose they must know already. From Inspector Bones. Except...I'm not sure he actually told them about the magic. I think he was still not willing to break the Statute of Secrecy. And his partner, Sergeant Kray, she didn't want to believe there was magic so she didn't want him to tell their boss about any of it yet."
Dumbledore steepled his hands together and sat staring upward. Harry took another sip of tea and hoped he wasn't going to be expelled. He was faintly surprised that he was still alive, but being so, he found the thought of having to leave the place he thought of as his true home most painful.
As if sensing Harry's anxiety, Dumbledore looked at him searchingly and said gently, "You did well. As well as any adult wizard might have in the same circumstances."
"Oh," Harry said, "I was afraid I might get my wand snapped for having done magic in front of muggles and for having talked about it to the Muggle police."
"Fortunately," Dumbledore said dryly, "Minister Fudge doesn't know about that yet. And there is an argument that the person you talked to is himself a wizard, even if he pretends to be a Muggle and works for the Muggle authorities."
He went quiet again and added, "Although I have begun to think we may have made a mistake keeping things secret as we have. Now that they are threatened by real magic, by the darkest and most evil magic, the Muggles won't want to believe that it even exists. And one can't fight the devil, if one doesn't believe he exists in the first place." Dumbledore looked at Harry again and said, "There is just one thing that I am most unhappy about."
Harry sat still and waited anxiously for his sentence to be given. He tried to meet the old man's eyes. Forced himself to look straight into the blue eyes, that were as serious as he'd ever seen them.
"I had thought," Dumbledore said, "I had hoped..." Unusually, he didn't complete the sentence all at once. "I am sorry that you did not trust me enough to come to me with this before you left." Harry opened his mouth to speak but stopped when Dumbledore held up his hand. "It is useless to wish we could undo our past mistakes, and yet I do wish that the mistakes I made last year had never been. You failed to tell me because I failed to tell you the things you ought to have known last year. And even this year, I heard you when you told me of these things, and yet I did not listen closely enough."
Harry stared at Dumbledore and said, "It's not your mistake. It's mine. I knew I ought to tell you. You couldn't know that what I was dreaming was real. I didn't know for sure it was real until that very night. And even then, I wasn't a hundred percent sure. I might have been mistaken. I went off without telling anyone and tried to deal with it myself. And look where it got me. I don't know if Flamel is alive. I don't know if Voldemort caught him again. And I might have let the Muggle's know all about us. I mucked up good, really, didn't I?"
Dumbledore shook his head. "No, you didn't. We didn't know about Voldemort's venture into the Muggle criminal world. He hasn't let everyone in on that. And we didn't know about Nicholas and Voldemort's attempts to get a new Stone. That's also news. And more importantly, it tells us that Voldemort is now keeping things even from his own Death Eaters."
Fawkes gave a sudden trill from his perch. And Harry smiled at the phoenix. The bird flapped its wings and simultaneously, an elderly witch came running into one of the pictures on the wall. She was panting heavily and said in gasps, "Dumbledore. Go. Great Hall. Now!"
Harry jumped up to go with Dumbledore, but he said, "You stay here." Fawkes flew up and Dumbledore caught his tail. They disappeared in a golden flash.
Harry ran to the door after Dumbledore and turned the knob. With a shock, he found that it was locked, as it had been last year when Dumbledore had forced him to confront the truth and had revealed the thing that ate at Harry's spirit all year. He slammed his fist into the door, but only succeeded in giving himself a pain.
"When is going to stop treating me like a child?" he snarled at the pictures on the wall.
"More drama," Phineas Nigellus replied. "Do you never think? Does it not occur to you that he is trying to protect you? To keep you safe until you are truly ready?"
"Until I'm truly ready for what?" Harry asked coldly. Then fear congealed his insides and he said, "Until I'm ready, to face Voldemort? To really fight him? Is that it?" It hit him then, a blow to the heart of sheer horror and rage.
"He's here, now, isn't he?" Harry listened and thought. "But why don't I feel it then? I should feel it, if he's here. And Dumbledore's gone to fight him, to give me more time! When he knows I am the only one who can defeat Voldemort. I'm the only one who has half a chance. And he's gone to buy me time. So I can "be ready"!"
He all but shouted at the pictures, "I'm right! I know it! I'm right."
One of the pictures said severely, "You've got to learn to do as the Headmaster says. You just said so yourself."
"But this is different," Harry said. "They'll kill him. It's Dumbledore they want. If they kill him, they think they can have it all." He stared wildly at the portraits trying to find a sympathetic face, but half of them had fled from their frames, and he was stuck here, while everyone else was there, facing Voldemort, maybe being killed by him. The dry voice of Phinneas Nigellus spoke again.
"Think! How will you fight him?" Harry drew his wand and the portrait made a sound of disgust.
"With that? The very wand that is the brother of his? Will you not have another failed match with that? You cannot defeat him with that, but he can kill you if you aren't ready."
Harry pounded his fist on the Headmaster's desk and said, "Then tell me! You were Headmaster. How am I to do it? If the prophecy is true, I should be able to. Or was that just a bunch of nonsense?”
More "drama"?" The portraits had gone dumb as any Muggle painting and no one answered.
"Help me!" Harry demanded. "Tell me!" There was no answer. The bright afternoon sun sparkled on all of Dumbledore's shiny magical devices and broke into prisms, rainbows through the glass of a great crystal ball sitting on the desk and off the glass case and silver sword inside it. His eyes lit on the sword. The Sword of Gryffindor. It's red rubies glowed and called to him. He tried to find a catch to the glass case, but there was none. He tapped it with his wand and said, "Alohomora," but it didn't open anymore than the door had. Harry could feel the frustration seizing him. He had to get down and help Dumbledore. He couldn't leave him like that.
"Please," he said, "You've got to help me." Not a picture moved; not a voice answered.
"You are all dead," he finally snarled. "What's left of you? Just useless pictures with an illusion of life and wisdom. What do you know? You don't really remember anything. You don't really feel anything. You won't really care when Voldemort wins and burns this place down and your stupid pictures along with it."
"More drama," answered to cool emotionless voice of Sirus's great-grand-uncle. Harry looked for something to throw at him. He snarled at the portrait, though he knew it was useless.
"It's not drama. This is Voldmeort we're talking about. This is the one who's responsible for Sirius' death. This is the one who's responsible for ending your line, the great and noble House of Black. But what does that matter? It's just one more death and you can't grieve over it because you're really dead yourself. You're nothing. And if you're still something, somehow, then help me. If not for Dumbledore, then for the sake of your great-nephew, whose life was ruined by Voldemort. For your own sake, because He stole your future, and the future of your House. And everyone's future will be the same as Sirius'--just death.” Harry stood there waiting, feeling that the time was stealing by, and the future would be one long reign of sorrow.
Then a musical clink sounded. The glass case opened and the silver sword tipped forward and fell at his feet, just as the King's sword had in McGonagall's gerat chess game. Harry seized the sword in his hand and the door to the office swung open before he had touched it. He ran down the stairs for the Great Hall and felt, almost, as if he might take flight, even without a broom.
