Rage Against Evil

It was Quirrell.

He was standing in the middle of the chamber with his back to the door, quite still, and there was no sign of the twitching, flinching, apologetic man who'd spent the whole year jumping at his own shadow. He stood straight. His hands were folded behind him. When he turned, his face was perfectly calm, and that was somehow worse than anything.

'You!' gasped Harry.

Quirrell smiled.

'Me,' he said. 'I did wonder whether it'd be you I met down here, Potter.'

'I knew there was something funny about you,' said Harry, and his voice shook, though not with fear, not yet. 'But I honestly reckoned you didn't have the will to sort this out compared to Snape.'

'Snape? Severus Snape?' Quirrell laughed, and it wasn't the nervous bleat Harry had heard across a hundred lessons. It was low and dry and cold. 'Don't be so silly. Whilst dear Severus does like to sit on the fence, he does look the part, doesn't he? It's been wonderfully convenient, having him sweep about the place like a great bat in a bad mood. Stand him next to me, and who'd ever look twice at p-p-poor, st-stammering P-Professor Quirrell?'

He said the last part in the old voice, the one from the classroom, and then dropped it like a coat he'd finished with.

Things were starting to come clear for Harry, horribly clear. The mushrooms. The two times the stutter had vanished. The stranger in the hood at the Hog's Head who'd wanted to know all about Fluffy. But there was one thing that didn't fit.

'Snape tried to knock me off my broom,' he said. 'He wanted me dead.'

'No, you foolish boy. I wanted you dead! Your rather obsessive friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and you'd have been on the ground in pieces. I'd have had you long before that, as it happens, if Severus hadn't been sitting there mumbling a counter-curse under his breath, keeping you on.'

'I was not getting off that broom no matter what you would've tried,' said Harry firmly.

Quirrell laughed at that, as though Harry had said something charming.

'You really thought it was Severus? Why d'you suppose he wanted to referee the next match? To make sure I didn't have another go. He needn't have troubled himself. I couldn't do a thing with Dumbledore sitting in the stands. The rest of the staff were convinced he was trying to cheat Gryffindor out of the Cup, and he's never been so unpopular. And all for nothing, when I'm going to kill you tonight anyway.'

Quirrell snapped his fingers.

Chains came out of the empty air with a sound like a portcullis dropping and wound themselves round Harry, round his chest and his arms and his ankles, and pulled tight.

'You're too nosy to live, Potter. Rather like your father in that regard. He was a few years ahead of me but my oh my did he like to stick his nose in our business. Even then.'

Harry struggled. The chains didn't give an inch.

'Whose business?' he said. when suddenly he had a thought. 'Oh no, don't tell me you're j-'

'Silence!' Quirrell's calm cracked for the first time, and he turned away from Harry towards the thing that stood in the middle of the chamber. 'It's funny, Potter. For all I knew you'd seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone.'

'You let the troll in?'

'Naturally. Trolls and I have an understanding. You saw what I did to the one in the chamber back there, I take it? The pity of it was that while the rest of them were running round the castle hunting for it, Severus, who'd had his eye on me from the start, went straight up to the third floor to cut me off. So my troll didn't manage to beat you to death, and that wretched dog didn't even take Severus's leg off properly.' He drew a breath. 'Now, be quiet, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror.'

And it was then that Harry saw what Quirrell was standing in front of.

It was the Mirror of Erised. The gold frame, the clawed feet, the words along the top that he'd never managed to read. He hadn't seen it since Dumbledore had sent him away from it, and here it was, deep under the school, and Quirrell was gazing into it with a hunger that made his face look thin.

Harry laughed. He couldn't help it. It was exactly what Dumbledore had said. Men had wasted away in front of that glass.

'Quiet, Potter. This mirror. It's the key to finding the stone for my master.' Quirrell gave the frame a few experimental taps with his wand, then with his knuckles, as though it might be hollow. 'Of course, that mad Dumbledore had to come up with something so esoteric. Lucius made sure he's in London though. I'll be far gone by the time that senile old fool is back.'

Lucius. Harry turned the name over. He'd heard it before, in a shop full of robes, a hundred years ago.

All Harry could think of doing was to keep Quirrell talking. Every second the man spent answering him was a second he wasn't giving to the Mirror.

'Why did you leave us alone in the forest?' Harry said. 'What really happened?'

Quirrell laughed at that. A cruel, sickening laugh, that went on too long.

'I had to have children pure of heart and body, you see. Unicorns don't appear to men like me. Oh no. I had to make sure it would come to you without me around. I'd wounded the damn thing earlier in the day but it's just too fast when it senses impurity.'

Harry felt sick. He thought of Dracina's face in the dark, white as the unicorn's, and of the hooded thing crawling across the clearing, and of the four of them left standing there like bait on a hook, which was exactly what they'd been.

Quirrell went round the back of the Mirror, and came out again, and stared into it so hungrily that Harry could see the glass reflected in his eyes.

'I see it,' he breathed. 'I see the Stone. I'm holding it up to my master. But where is it?'

Harry worked his wrists against the chains. Nothing. He had to keep going.

'But Snape always seemed to hate me so much.'

'Oh, he does,' said Quirrell, without looking round. 'Make no mistake about that. He was at school with your father, didn't you know? They couldn't stand the sight of each other. But he never wanted you dead.'

'But I heard you,' Harry said. 'A few days ago. You were crying, and I thought it was Snape, threatening you.'

For the first time something passed across Quirrell's face, quick as a bird's shadow. Fear.

'Sometimes,' he said, 'I find my master's instructions hard to carry out. He is a very great wizard, and I am weak.'

'You mean he was there? In the classroom with you?'

'He is with me wherever I go,' said Quirrell quietly.

The chamber seemed to get colder.

'I met him on my travels. I was a foolish young man then, full of silly notions about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me the truth of it. There's no good and evil, Potter. There's power, and there are those too weak to reach for it. I've served him faithfully since then, though I've failed him more often than I'd like. He's had to be hard on me.' Quirrell gave a sudden shiver, from his shoulders to his knees. 'He doesn't forgive easily. When I failed to get the Stone out of Gringotts he was... most displeased. He punished me. He decided he'd have to keep a closer watch on me after that.'

His voice trailed off, and he went back to the Mirror.

Gringotts. Harry's mind went back to Diagon Alley, to the day Hagrid had emptied vault seven hundred and thirteen, and to the Leaky Cauldron, where a nervous young man in a turban had shaken his hand and wouldn't quite meet his eye. He'd been there. He'd been there that very day. How could Harry have been so stupid?

Quirrell swore under his breath.

'I don't understand it. Is the Stone inside the glass? Should I break it?'

Harry's mind was racing now.

He knew what the Mirror showed. It showed what you wanted most. And he knew what he'd wanted most, the three nights he'd sat in front of it: his mother's green eyes, his father's untidy hair, the whole crowd of them smiling and waving. His family. People who wanted him.

But that wasn't what he wanted now. Not at this moment, chained up in a cold room with Voldemort's servant two feet away. What he wanted now, more than anything in the world, was to find the Stone before Quirrell did. To stop Voldemort. If he wanted that badly enough, and he did, he wanted it so badly it hurt, then the Mirror ought to show him finding it.

A plan began to put itself together in his head. He only had to look. But Quirrell was standing right in front of the glass. How could Harry get there without Quirrell seeing what he was up to?

He tried shuffling to the left, an inch at a time, to work round the edge of the frame. The chains round his ankles were too tight. He tripped, and went down hard on the stone floor.

Quirrell didn't even look at him. He was muttering to the glass.

'What does it do? How does it work? Help me, Master!'

And then a voice answered.

It was high and thin and cold, and the worst of it was where it came from. It didn't come from the Mirror, or from the shadows. It came from Quirrell himself.

'Use the boy... use the boy...'

Quirrell wheeled round.

'Yes. Potter. Come here.'

He clapped his hands once and the chains fell off Harry with a crash. Harry got up slowly. His legs felt as though they belonged to somebody else.

'Come here,' Quirrell said again. 'Look in the Mirror, and tell me what you see.'

Harry walked towards him.

He had to fight his own face to keep it straight. Quirrell was giving him exactly what he'd wanted. Handing it over. But he had to be clever about this. Whatever he saw in the glass, he'd have to lie about it, and he'd have to lie well, and hope that Quirrell believed him.

Quirrell stepped round behind him, close, and Harry caught the strange smell that always seemed to hang about the man's turban, like something gone bad in a cupboard. He shut his eyes, stepped in front of the Mirror, and opened them.

There he was. Pale and small and frightened-looking. Then the reflection smiled.

It put its hand in its pocket, and drew out a stone the colour of blood, and winked at him, and put the Stone back in its pocket. And as it did, Harry felt something heavy drop into his own real pocket, against his leg.

Somehow, impossibly, he had the Stone.

'Well?' said Quirrell, right behind his ear. 'What do you see?'

Harry screwed his courage together.

'I see you, you're crying and snivelling because that's what you always do. You're huddling in a ball. Wow this is very true to life, Professor.'

'Cursed child! Get out of the way, I'll see for myself!'

Quirrell shoved him aside, and Harry stumbled away from the glass. He'd made Quirrell furious, which had been the idea, because a furious man believes what he's told. What Harry hadn't got was a plan for the part after that.

'He lies... he lies...'

'Potter, come back here!' Quirrell shouted. 'The truth! What did you see?'

The high voice spoke again, and this time Harry heard the words very clearly.

'Let me speak to him... face to face...'

'Master, you're not strong enough!'

'I have strength enough... for this...'

Harry couldn't move. It was as though the Devil's Snare had come up through the floor and taken him by the ankles. He stood and watched as Quirrell reached up and started to unwind his turban.

The cloth came away in loops. Quirrell's head looked oddly small without it, and oddly pale. Then he turned, slowly, on the spot, and Harry would have screamed, if he'd had any sound left in him.

On the back of Quirrell's head, pushing out of the skull like a parasite, was the face from every nightmare Harry had ever had.

It was chalk white. It had red eyes, red and glaring, and where a nose should have been there were two slits, like a snake's. It was the most terrible and the most unnatural thing Harry had ever seen.

'Harry Potter...' it whispered.

Harry tried to step back and his legs wouldn't do it.

'See what I've become?' said the face. 'Mere shadow. Mere vapour. I have a shape only when I can borrow another's... but there have always been those willing to let me in... Unicorn blood has strengthened me these past weeks... you saw my faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the Forest... and once I have the Elixir of Life, I shall make a body of my own... Now... why don't you give me that Stone in your pocket?'

Bugger. He knew.

Feeling came back into Harry's legs all at once, and he stumbled backwards.

'Don't be a fool,' said the face, and it didn't whisper now, it snarled. 'Save your own life and join me... or you'll go the same way as your parents... They died begging me for mercy...'

'LIAR!' Harry shouted.

Quirrell came at him backwards, step by step, so that the face could keep him in view. It was smiling.

'How touching,' it hissed. 'I always did value courage... Yes, boy, your parents were brave... I killed your father first, and he fought me well... but your mother needn't have died... she was trying to protect you... Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died for nothing.'

Harry had never been so frightened in his life.

Here it was. Here was the thing, the Dark wizard who'd killed his parents, the foul thing that had taken everything from him before he was old enough to know he had it. His scar split open with pain as Quirrell came closer. He was done for. He was going to die down here in the dark, and nobody would ever know. And the voice was there, the old voice, the Dursley voice. Useless. Failure. Of course you're going to die, you've never done one thing right in your life.

But beyond the pain, underneath the voice, Harry felt something else.

It was the thing that had kept him on his broom when it bucked and rolled and tried to throw him. The thing that had made him jump on a troll's back. The thing that had made him want to protect his friends, so that they'd never have to look into a mirror to see their families. But it was fed by something else, too, something he'd never let himself feel this much of before.

Hatred. It went through him like lava. Hatred for the Dark wizard who'd taken everything, who'd killed his parents and then, crucially, had failed to kill him. And this wasn't even Voldemort. This was a scrap. A pathetic, parasitic leftover, hanging off the back of a coward's head.

Harry surged forward.

He wasn't going to die here. He didn't want to die! And he was not going to let Voldemort kill him!

'SEIZE HIM!' Voldemort screamed, and Quirrell's hand closed on Harry's wrist.

Harry was going to claw at it. Bite it. Do anything at all to get that hand off him. But before he could do any of it, a pain like a needle went straight through his scar, and his head felt as though it were coming apart down the middle, and he roared, in pain and in rage, right into Quirrell's face.

'Aaaaagh!'

And Quirrell let go.

Harry couldn't believe it. Was the man so pathetic that he'd been frightened off by an angry eleven-year-old? The pain in his head ebbed. He looked wildly round for Quirrell and found him bent double, staring at his own fingers.

They were blistering as Harry watched.

'Seize him! SEIZE HIM!' Voldemort shrieked, and Quirrell lunged and took Harry clean off his feet. They went down together, Quirrell on top, and both his hands were round Harry's throat, and Harry's scar was so bright with pain he could barely see. But he could see Quirrell. Quirrell was howling.

'Master, I can't hold him! My hands! My hands!'

Quirrell was still kneeling on him, pinning him to the floor, but he'd let go of Harry's neck and was staring at his own palms, baffled. They were raw and red and shining, as if he'd held them in a fire.

Good, Harry thought. He wanted them both to hurt.

'Then kill him, fool, and have done with it!' screeched Voldemort.

Quirrell raised his hand, and his lips began to shape a curse, and Harry, through sheer will and blistering hate, reached up and grabbed Quirrell's face with both hands.

'AAAARGH!'

Quirrell rolled off him, clutching at his cheeks, and they were blistering too, and Harry understood. Quirrell couldn't touch him. Not his bare skin. Not without agony. And the only chance Harry had was to keep hold of him, keep him hurting, keep him in too much pain to get a curse out.

Harry scrambled up, caught Quirrell by the arm, and hung on with everything he had.

Quirrell screamed and tried to shake him off. The pain in Harry's head was climbing and climbing. He could see the other face too now, the white face, twisting round on the back of Quirrell's head to look at him, and for one moment, just one, Harry saw that Voldemort was afraid. Terrified. For his own life.

It was like blood in the water.

Harry held on. He howled with the pain of it and he didn't let go, and Voldemort screamed too, and it was a sound that might once have come out of a human being but had long ago become something else, something with no humanity left in it at all. A beast's noise. Or a snake's.

Somewhere far off, Harry thought he could hear other voices. They were calling his name.

He turned his head, and there was the Mirror, and in the Mirror were his parents. His mother and his father, and they were looking straight at him, and there was such pride in their faces that Harry's heart turned over. He hoped it was real. He hoped so much that it was real.

The pain was everything now. He couldn't see. He felt Quirrell wrench and tear himself free. The voices were louder, and they were still calling him, and his parents were calling him too. Maybe it was time. Maybe it was finally time to step through the glass and be with them.

Harry felt very heavy.

He sank, and everything went black.

Something gold was glinting just above him.

The Snitch! Harry reached for it, but his arms weighed a ton each. He blinked. It wasn't the Snitch. It was a pair of spectacles, half-moon ones, catching the light. How odd. He blinked again, and the face of Albus Dumbledore swam into place above the spectacles, and it was smiling.

'Good afternoon, Harry,' said Dumbledore.

Harry stared at him. Then it all came back in a rush.

'Sir! The Stone! It was Quirrell! He's got the Stone! Sir, quick...'

'Calm yourself, dear boy. You're a little behind the times,' said Dumbledore. 'Quirrell does not have the Stone.'

Harry tried to throw himself out of bed. He got about two inches. Dumbledore's hand was flat on his chest, holding him down with a strength that didn't belong to an old man at all.

'Then who does? Sir, I...'

'Harry, please lie still, or Madam Pomfrey will have me thrown out, and I should like to finish our conversation.'

Harry swallowed and looked about him. He was in the hospital wing. The sheets were white and smelled of starch, and on the table beside the bed was what looked like the entire stock of Honeydukes.

'Tokens from your friends and admirers,' said Dumbledore, beaming at the pile. 'What passed between you and Professor Quirrell in the dungeons is, of course, a complete secret, and so, naturally, the entire school knows every word of it. I believe your friends Messrs Fred and George Weasley attempted to send you a lavatory seat. No doubt they felt it would cheer you up. Madam Pomfrey took the view that it was unhygienic, and confiscated it.'

'How long have I been in here?'

'Three days. Mr Ronald Weasley and Miss Granger will be very glad you've come round. They've been beside themselves.'

'But sir, the Stone...'

Dumbledore sighed.

'So young to be so brave, heroic, determined,' he said, and he said it sadly, and Harry couldn't think why.

'I see you won't be put off. Very well. The Stone. Professor Quirrell didn't manage to take it from you. I got there in time to stop him, though I must say you were managing remarkably well on your own.'

'You got there? You got Hermione's owl?'

'We must have passed each other in the air. I'd no sooner landed in London than I understood that the one place I ought to be was the one I'd just left. I arrived just in time to pull Quirrell off you.'

'It was you.'

'I was afraid I'd be too late.'

'You nearly were. I couldn't have kept him off the Stone much longer...'

'Not the Stone, Harry. You. The effort of it very nearly killed you. For one dreadful moment I thought it had.' He folded his hands. 'As for the Stone, it has been destroyed.'

'Destroyed?' said Harry blankly. 'But your friend. Nicolas Flamel...'

'Oh, you know about Nicolas?' said Dumbledore, and he looked delighted. 'You really did do the thing thoroughly, didn't you? Well, Nicolas and I have had a little talk, and we've agreed that it's all for the best.'

'But that means he'll die, won't he? Him and his wife?'

'They have enough Elixir put by to set their affairs in order. And then, yes, they will die.'

He smiled at the look on Harry's face.

'To someone as young as you, I know it sounds like madness. But to Nicolas and Perenelle it really is rather like going to bed after a very, very long day. To the well-organised mind, Harry, death is only the next great adventure.'

There was something in Dumbledore's face as he said it, and in his voice, that was between happiness and sadness and wasn't quite either, and Harry couldn't have put a name to it then. He'd come to know it very well in the years ahead.

'The Stone was never such a wonderful thing, you know,' Dumbledore went on. 'All the money and all the life you could want. The two things most people would pick over anything else. The trouble is that people do have a knack for picking exactly what's worst for them.'

Harry lay there without a word to say. Dumbledore hummed a little tune under his breath and smiled at the ceiling.

'Sir?' said Harry at last. 'I've been thinking. Even if the Stone's gone... Vol... I mean, You-Know-Who...'

'Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for a thing. Being afraid of a name only makes you more afraid of the thing itself.'

'Yes, sir. Well. Voldemort's going to try other ways of coming back, isn't he? I mean, he's not gone, is he?'

'No, Harry, he is not. He's out there somewhere still, looking for another body to share, perhaps. Not being properly alive, he can't be killed. The things keeping him anchored to this mortal plane will not let him die. He left Quirrell to die, you know. He's no kinder to his servants than to his enemies. All the same, Harry, you may only have put off his return, but it needs only someone else willing to stand against him next time, in what looks like a hopeless fight, and if he's put off again, and again, why, he may never come back at all.'

Harry nodded, and stopped at once, because it made his head ring like a bell.

'Sir, respectfully,' he said. 'I would very much like to know the truth about a great many things.'

'The truth.' Dumbledore sighed.

And Harry saw it again, the thing he'd seen in Dumbledore's face in the empty classroom by the Mirror. A weight. It was sad, very sad, and Harry wondered what on earth could make a wizard as great as Dumbledore look like that. Then it lifted, and was gone, as though it had never been there at all.

'It's a beautiful and terrible thing, the truth, and it ought to be handled with care. But I'll answer your questions, unless I've a very good reason not to, and in that case I'll ask you to forgive me. I shan't lie to you. That I promise.'

'Well,' said Harry. 'Voldemort said he only killed my mother because she tried to stop him killing me. But why did he want to kill me in the first place?'

Dumbledore sighed, and this time it went all the way down.

'I said I cannot lie. But in this matter, a first year wizard would not understand the full truth. It's something even a wizard as experienced as I can't quite understand but I'll do my best to explain the bits you may understand. And when you're older I'll tell you the rest, when you can truly understand it all. Is that acceptable to you, Harry?'

Harry nodded. He'd have accepted anything from Dumbledore just then. He didn't notice the way Dumbledore looked at him when he did it, or the small movement of the old man's hands on the coverlet, as though he'd been about to say something else and had put it away again.

'Your mother was a Muggleborn, Harry, that much is not in dispute. However, some have held to the belief that Muggleborn witches and wizards are simply recessive magical power from some magical ancestor in that Muggleborn's line. There are many reasons that could be, and we'd be here all day explaining all the theories. It's very controversial so not much research has ever been done into it. But suffice to say, I have reason to believe your mother was descended from a very powerful line of magic indeed.'

'What line, Professor?'

Dumbledore sighed once more.

'I promised I wouldn't lie to you. Therefore I cannot tell you yet, Harry. I may well be wrong. And the knowledge would put you and your friends' lives in danger. And we wouldn't want that, would we?'

Harry nodded. He trusted Dumbledore completely.

'I will tell you in the fullness of time. I can say this much, Harry. Whatever power lay in your mother was activated the night Voldemort came to kill you. I've regrettably seen many mothers die to save their children. And not one unleashed the power that your mother unleashed that night. It was a power fuelled by love. And it protected you, Harry.'

'How?' asked Harry.

'As I said, I only understand portions of it myself and can only tell you so much at this juncture. I believe there were several factors at play, Harry. The power of your dying mother's spell, the evil power that keeps Voldemort chained to this plane, the love and will of a mother. Magic is chaotic and alive, Mr Potter. Not so easily categorised and controlled as our Ministry and countless witches and wizards would want and would have you believe. It was all of these factors mixing in and out of each other. That resulted in a very powerful force being laid upon you. Though your mother and father may be gone, their life, and their power, and most importantly their love, live on within you, Harry. There's no scar for it. Nothing you could see. But to have been loved that deeply, even once the person who loved us has gone, leaves a kind of protection on us for good. It's in your very skin. Quirrell, so full of hatred and greed and ambition, with Voldemort sharing his soul, couldn't lay a hand on you for that reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.'

Harry couldn't help it. He cried.

To know that some part of his parents was still alive, in him. That they'd wanted him so much that even dead, even gone, they were still looking after him. He put his hands over his face and his shoulders shook, and he didn't care.

Dumbledore looked away, out of the window, where a pair of jackdaws were squabbling on the sill, and seemed to find them very interesting.

When Harry had wiped his eyes on the sheet, Dumbledore was still looking at the window, and there was something far off in his face. Harry wouldn't understand it for years. It would take a great deal of context, and most of it hard-won, before he'd look back on this moment and know just how ashamed of himself Albus Dumbledore had been.

When he'd found his voice again, Harry said, 'And the Invisibility Cloak. D'you know who sent it me?'

'Ah. Your father happened to leave it with me, and I thought you might like to have it.' Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. 'Useful things, Cloaks. Your father used his mainly for sneaking down to the kitchens for food, as I recall.'

'And there's something else.'

'Fire away.'

'Quirrell said Snape...'

'Professor Snape, Harry.'

'Yes. Him. Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my dad. Is that true?'

'Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike what you believe lies between yourself and Ms Malfoy.'

Dumbledore chuckled, as if he'd just made a very good joke that only he could hear. Harry had no idea what he was on about. Of course he detested Malfoy.

'And then,' Dumbledore went on, 'your father did a thing that Professor Snape has never been able to forgive.'

'What?'

'He saved his life.'

'What?'

'Yes,' said Dumbledore dreamily. 'Funny, isn't it, how people's minds work? Professor Snape couldn't bear to be in your father's debt. I rather think he worked so hard to keep you alive this year because it would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father's memory in peace. But I'm afraid nothing Severus can ever do will make up for what he did.'

He winced, as though he'd said something he hadn't meant to say.

Harry tried to make sense of it, and it made his head pound, so he gave up.

'And sir. There's one more thing.'

'Only one?'

'How did I get the Stone out of the Mirror?'

'Ah, now, I'm glad you asked me that. It was one of my better ideas, and between you and me, that's saying something. Seeing as they don't call me the most brilliant wizard of this age for no reason if I do say so myself. You see, only somebody who wanted to find the Stone, find it but not use it, would be able to get it out. Anyone else would just see themselves turning out gold, or drinking the Elixir. I do surprise myself, sometimes.' He clapped his hands together. 'Now, no more questions. I suggest you make a start on these sweets. Ah! Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans! I had the misfortune in my youth to come across one that tasted of vomit, and I'm afraid I've never quite trusted them since. But I think I'll be safe with a nice toffee, don't you?'

He smiled, picked a golden-brown bean out of the box, and popped it in his mouth. Then he choked.

'Alas!' he said. 'Earwax!'

Madam Pomfrey, the matron, was a kind woman, but she ran the hospital wing like a fortress.

'Just five minutes,' Harry pleaded.

'Absolutely not.'

'You let Professor Dumbledore in.'

'That was the Headmaster. That's entirely different. You need rest.'

'I am resting. Look. Lying down and everything. Oh, go on, Madam Pomfrey...'

'Oh, very well,' she said. 'But five minutes. Not a second more.'

And she let Ron and Hermione in.

'Harry!'

Hermione looked ready to throw herself across the bed, and Ron stepped in front of her, quite casually, as though he just happened to want to be there. He'd been getting the measure of Hermione lately, Harry thought. The way she was with him, and how much of it he could take. Ron gave Harry a small nod over his shoulder, and Harry nodded back, and they understood each other.

It didn't stop Hermione talking.

'Oh, Harry, we thought you were going to... Dumbledore was so worried...'

'The whole school's talking about it,' said Ron. 'Malfoy's been apoplectic. She's sworn revenge on all of us. Keeps saying she'll get us back to anyone who'll listen. That this is war. And of course her father will hear about this.'

Harry sighed. What was he supposed to do about that? He'd said sorry to her. He'd meant it.

'What really happened?' said Ron.

It was one of those rare times when the real story was stranger than anything the rumours had come up with. Harry told them. Quirrell, calm as a pond. The Mirror, and the Stone dropping into his pocket. The chains.

'And then he started unwinding his turban,' said Harry.

'His turban?' said Ron. 'What for?'

'Because there was a face on the back of his head.'

Hermione screamed. Madam Pomfrey's door banged open at the far end of the ward and banged shut again.

'A face?'

'His. Voldemort's.' Harry had to look at the sweets while he said it. 'White. With red eyes. He talked to me. He said my parents died begging.'

'They never,' said Ron at once, fiercely.

'No,' said Harry. 'They didn't.'

He told them the rest, the burning hands, the voices, and the Mirror. Ron and Hermione were a very good audience. They gasped in the right places, and Hermione held on to the bedpost as if she might fall over.

'So the Stone's gone?' Ron said at last. 'Flamel's just going to die?'

'That's what I said. But Dumbledore reckons... what was it... "to the well-organised mind, death is only the next great adventure".'

'I always said he was as mental as a soup sandwich,' said Ron, looking rather impressed at how mad his hero was.

'So what happened to you two?' said Harry.

'Well, I got back all right,' said Hermione. 'And I brought Ron round, which took a while...'

'She slapped me,' said Ron.

'I did not, I patted you...'

'She slapped me. Twice.'

'...and we were running up to the Owlery to get a message to Dumbledore when we met him in the Entrance Hall. He already knew. He just said, "Harry's gone after him, hasn't he?" and went tearing off to the third floor.'

'D'you reckon he meant you to do it?' said Ron. 'Sending you your dad's Cloak and all that?'

'Well,' said Hermione, and she went off like a firework, 'if he did, I mean to say, that's terrible, you could have been killed...'

'No, it isn't,' said Harry slowly. 'He's a great man, Dumbledore. I think he wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on in this place, you know. I reckon he had a good idea we were going to try it, and instead of stopping us he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the Mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort, if I could.' Harry looked at the ceiling. 'He's so wise.'

Ron gave him a funny look. It was the look he gave Percy when Percy got going about the Ministry. Harry had heard the story about the idol Charlie had sent Percy from Romania the year before, the one Mrs Weasley had had to take off him. Too many tentacles for her liking.

'Yeah,' said Ron. 'Dumbledore's barking, all right.' He said it proudly. 'Listen. You've got to be up for the end-of-year feast tomorrow. The points are all in and Slytherin won, of course. You missed the last Quidditch match. We were steamrollered by Ravenclaw without you.'

Ron sounded absolutely defeated.

'But the food'll be good,' he finished.

And Harry appreciated that.

Madam Pomfrey came bustling down the ward.

'You've had nearly fifteen minutes. Now OUT,' she said firmly.

After a good night's sleep Harry felt almost himself again.

'I want to go to the feast,' he told Madam Pomfrey, as she straightened the towers of sweet boxes on his table. 'I can, can't I?'

'Professor Dumbledore says you're to be allowed,' she said, with a sniff, as though Professor Dumbledore had no idea how dangerous a feast could be in the wrong hands. 'And you've another visitor.'

'Oh, good,' said Harry. 'Who?'

Hagrid came sideways through the door as she said it. Indoors, as usual, he looked too big to be allowed. He sat down on the chair by the bed, which complained, took one look at Harry, and burst into tears.

'It's all my ruddy fault!' he sobbed, into his hands. 'I told the evil git how ter get past Fluffy! I told him! It was the one thing he didn' know an' I told him! Yeh could've died! All fer a dragon egg! I'll never touch a drop again! I should be chucked out an' made ter live as a Muggle!'

'Hagrid!' said Harry. He'd never seen Hagrid like this, shaking all over, great tears running down into his beard. 'Hagrid, he'd have found out somehow. This is Voldemort we're talking about. He'd have got it out of someone even if you'd never said a word.'

'Yeh could've died!' sobbed Hagrid. 'An' don' say the name!'

'VOLDEMORT!' Harry bellowed, and Hagrid was so startled that he stopped crying. 'I've met him, and I'm calling him by his name. Please cheer up, Hagrid. We saved the Stone. It's gone, he can't use it. Have a Chocolate Frog, I've got loads...'

Hagrid wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

'That reminds me,' he said thickly. 'I've got yeh a present.'

'It's not a stoat sandwich, is it?' said Harry nervously, and at last Hagrid gave a weak sort of chuckle.

'Nah. Dumbledore gave me the day off yesterday ter sort it out. 'Course, he shoulda sacked me instead. Anyway. Got yeh this.'

It was a book, bound in handsome leather. Harry opened it.

It was full of wizard photographs. On every page, smiling and waving up at him, were his mother and his father. Here they were by a lake. Here they were in a garden, with his father's arm round his mother and his mother laughing at something out of the picture. Here was his mother holding a baby with black hair who kept trying to grab her nose.

'Sent owls off ter all yer mum an' dad's old school friends, askin' fer photos,' said Hagrid. 'Knew yeh didn' have any. D'yeh like it?'

Harry couldn't speak. Hagrid understood that well enough.

Hagrid was a wonderful man, Harry thought, holding the book against his chest, and he loved him. But he hoped Dumbledore would never, ever trust him with anything dangerous again.

Harry went down to the end-of-year feast on his own that night. Madam Pomfrey had kept him back for one last look at his throat and one last dose of something that tasted of pepper, so by the time she let him go the whole school was already in the Great Hall, and the corridors were empty.

Almost empty. Somebody was sitting on the bottom step of the marble staircase with his head in his hands, and it was Neville.

'Aren't you going in?' said Harry.

Neville looked up. His face was pink and miserable.

'In a minute,' he said. 'Harry, I've got to tell you something, and you're going to hate me.'

'I doubt it.'

'I gave Malfoy the password.' It came out in a rush. 'To the common room. I know I shouldn't have. She came and found me in the library, and she sat down right next to me, and she was... she was nice, Harry. She said she needed to see you and it was important and she'd never ask me for anything again. And she looked like she meant it. Nobody ever...' He stopped. 'Nobody asks me for things. Not like that. And then I heard what she did, getting in, and I thought, what if she'd been there to hurt you? What if she'd...'

'She wasn't,' said Harry.

'But I didn't know that.'

'Neville.' Harry sat down on the step beside him. 'She wasn't there to hurt anyone. She was there to say sorry to me, if you want to know, and she never got the chance, because Hermione put her in a Body-Bind before she could get it out.'

Neville's mouth fell open.

'Hermione did?'

'Yeah.'

'Blimey.' Neville thought about this for a bit. 'Was Malfoy all right?'

'She was furious,' said Harry, and found, to his surprise, that he was grinning. 'Come on. Ron says the food'll be good.'

But as they went in through the great doors, Harry thought about Dracina Malfoy sitting down next to Neville Longbottom in the library, and being nice, and he thought that of all the strange things that had happened this year, that might have been the strangest.

The Hall was done out in green and silver for Slytherin's seventh House Cup in a row. An enormous banner hung behind the High Table with the Slytherin serpent on it, and the Slytherin table looked like a nest of very pleased snakes.

When Harry walked in there was a sudden hush, and then everybody started talking at once, loudly. He slid into a seat between Ron and Hermione and did his best not to notice that people were standing up to get a look at him. Luckily Dumbledore came in a moment later, and the noise died away.

'Another year gone!' said Dumbledore cheerfully. 'And before we fall on this excellent feast, I'm afraid you must put up with an old man's wittering for a minute or two. What a year it's been! I hope your heads are all a little fuller than they were in September. You've the whole summer to get them nice and empty again before next year.

'Now. The House Cup wants awarding, and the points stand like this. In fourth place, Gryffindor, with three hundred and twelve. In third, Hufflepuff, with three hundred and fifty-two. Ravenclaw have four hundred and twenty-six. And Slytherin, four hundred and seventy-two.'

A storm of cheering and stamping went up from the Slytherin table. Harry could see Malfoy cackling with Pansy Parkinson and a gaggle of other horse-faced Slytherin girls. And still, every so often, she looked across at him, and when she did her face went blank and unreadable, like a door shutting. It was very frustrating.

'Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin,' said Dumbledore. 'However, recent events have to be taken into account.'

The room went very still. The smiles along the Slytherin table faded, just slightly.

'Ahem,' said Dumbledore. 'I have a few last-minute points to give out. Let me see. Yes.

'First. To Mr Ronald Weasley...'

Ron went purple. He looked like a radish that had caught the sun.

'...for the best-played game of chess this school has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor house fifty points.'

The Gryffindor cheers nearly lifted the enchanted ceiling off its beams. The stars overhead seemed to wobble. Percy could be heard telling the other prefects, 'My brother, you know! My youngest brother! Got past McGonagall's giant chess set!'

Eventually there was quiet again.

'Second. To Miss Hermione Granger. For the use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor house fifty points.'

Hermione buried her face in her arms. Harry strongly suspected she was crying. All along the table Gryffindors were beside themselves. A hundred points up.

'Third. To Mr Harry Potter,' said Dumbledore, and the Hall went deadly quiet. 'For pure nerve, outstanding courage and the will to destroy evil, I award Gryffindor house sixty points.'

The din was deafening. Anyone who could add up while yelling themselves hoarse had worked it out: Gryffindor now had four hundred and seventy-two points. Dead level with Slytherin. They'd tied for the Cup. If only Dumbledore had given Harry one more point.

Dumbledore raised a hand, and the Hall settled, slowly.

'There are all kinds of courage,' he said, smiling. 'And that is to be praised. However. Courage can also lead to foolishness and rule breaking.'

Harry saw Dracina go suddenly, dreadfully quiet. So did the rest of the Slytherin table.

'It has unfortunately come to my attention that young Ms Malfoy found her way into the Gryffindor common room. I shouldn't but seemingly have to remind you all that this is very much against the rules. In fact, entering another house's common room without permission from a member of staff is an expellable offence.'

Malfoy gasped. Then she started to cry, right there at the table, weeping on the spot. Nobody seemed to care except Pansy Parkinson, who put both arms round her and held on.

'However,' said Dumbledore, 'I do understand and even sympathise with Ms Malfoy's reasoning. In trying to make amends for a mistake she made. Therefore, I have elected to take one hundred points from Slytherin. In the hopes that Ms Malfoy and Slytherin students learn this lesson that trespassing is a grave offence. And do not repeat it.'

Anyone standing outside the Great Hall might have thought something had exploded, the noise from the Gryffindor table was so loud. Harry, Ron and Hermione were on their feet, yelling. Harry, still cheering, dug Ron in the ribs and pointed down the Hall at Malfoy, who couldn't have looked more stunned or more horrified if somebody had put the Body-Bind on her all over again.

She looked up and found Harry, and gave him a look of pure murder.

Harry stuck his tongue out at her.

Then she went oddly pink, and turned back to Pansy Parkinson, whose front was still wet from Malfoy's crying, and didn't look round again.

'Which means,' Dumbledore called over the applause, for even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were cheering, because everybody enjoys watching Slytherin lose, 'we need a small change of decoration.'

He clapped his hands.

In an instant the green hangings turned scarlet and the silver turned gold. The great serpent vanished, and a towering Gryffindor lion stood in its place. Snape was shaking Professor McGonagall's hand with a dreadful, fixed smile. His eye met Harry's, and Harry knew at once that nothing Snape felt about him had changed by so much as a hair.

Harry found he didn't mind. Next year, it seemed, things would be back to normal, or as normal as Hogwarts ever got.

It was the best night of his life. Better than winning at Quidditch, better than Christmas, better than knocking out mountain trolls. He'd never forget it, as long as he lived.

Harry had almost forgotten about the exam results, but they came all the same. To Ron's but not Harry's surprise, Ron passed with good marks. Harry always knew that Ron had a keen mind. And was as smart as Hermione when he put his mind to it. Harry did well too to his own surprise. Hermione, of course, came top of the year.

'A hundred and twelve on Charms,' said Ron, reading over her shoulder. 'How is that even possible? What did you do, answer the questions he didn't ask?'

'Flitwick sets a bonus question,' said Hermione, pink with pleasure. 'Nobody ever reads to the end of the paper.'

Even Neville scraped through, his Herbology mark making up for a Potions mark that Snape had written in red ink and underlined. They'd hoped that Goyle, who was nearly as stupid as he was nasty, might be thrown out, but he'd passed too.

'Shame,' said Ron. 'Still. You can't have everything.'

And suddenly their wardrobes were empty and their trunks were full. Neville's toad was found lurking in a corner of the boys' toilets. Notes went round warning everyone not to use magic over the holidays.

'I always hope they'll forget to hand these out,' said Fred Weasley sadly.

Hagrid took them down to the fleet of little boats that sailed across the lake, and then they were on the Hogwarts Express, talking and laughing as the countryside outside went greener and tidier, and eating Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans as the train tore past Muggle towns.

'Grass,' said Ron, chewing. 'That's definitely grass.'

'Give me one,' said Hermione. She took a green one, considered it, and put it in her mouth, and her face went very still. 'Sprouts,' she said.

Harry laughed, and for a while, in the hot compartment with the sun coming in and Ron's feet up on the seat, he forgot where the train was going.

Hermione had shifted along the seat until her shoulder was against his, and when he reached for the beans her hand was already there, and it stayed on his a moment longer than it needed to.

'Sorry,' she said, not moving it.

'It's fine,' said Harry, and took a bean, and didn't think any more about it.

Ron looked out of the window.

Then they were pulling off their robes and putting on jackets and coats, and then they were sliding in to platform nine and three-quarters at King's Cross.

It took a long time to get everyone off. A wizened old guard stood up by the barrier and let them through in twos and threes, so that they wouldn't all burst out of a solid wall at once and give the Muggles a fright.

'You've got to come and stay this summer,' said Ron. 'Both of you. I'll send an owl.'

'Thanks,' said Harry. 'I'll need something to look forward to.'

The crowd pushed them along towards the gateway back to the Muggle world. People kept calling out as they passed.

'Bye, Harry!'

'See you, Potter!'

'Still famous,' said Ron, grinning.

'Not where I'm going,' said Harry. 'I promise you that.'

'Potter!'

It was Malfoy. She came stamping through the crowd with her trunk bumping behind her and planted herself in front of him.

'You need to watch out, next year,' she said.

They were the words he'd have expected from Malfoy. It was the tone that was wrong. She sounded, very nearly, worried.

'Worry about yourself, Malfoy,' said Harry. He'd meant it to come out diplomatic. It came out a good deal sharper than he'd intended.

Malfoy's mouth opened and shut. She huffed, and turned on her heel, and went through the gateway with her luggage, and Harry had the odd impression, from the set of her shoulders as she went, that she'd meant to say something else entirely and hadn't been able to find it.

He, Ron and Hermione went through together.

'There he is, Mum! There he is, look!'

It was Ginny Weasley, Ron's little sister, but it wasn't Ron she was pointing at.

'Harry Potter!' she squealed. 'Look, Mum! I can see...'

'Be quiet, Ginny. And it's rude to point.'

Mrs Weasley beamed down at the three of them.

'Busy year?'

'Very,' said Harry. 'Thanks for the fudge and the jumper, Mrs Weasley. I was so grateful.'

Something went across Mrs Weasley's face at that, the way it does when a grown-up hears more in a thank-you than the child meant to put there, and she looked at him a moment longer than she needed to.

'Oh, it was nothing, dear.'

'Ready, are you?'

It was Uncle Vernon. Still purple in the face, still moustached, still outraged by the sheer cheek of Harry, standing there with an owl in a cage in a station full of ordinary people. Aunt Petunia and Dudley stood behind him, and Dudley looked as though Harry might bite.

Harry's face went dark. The year was over. The voice had been right about that much. It was time to go back to the Dursleys, and he wished, with his whole heart, that he didn't have to.

'You must be Harry's family!' said Mrs Weasley. Her eyes had gone from Harry to Uncle Vernon and back, and they'd got rather sharp.

'In a manner of speaking,' said Uncle Vernon. 'Hurry up, boy, we haven't got all day.'

And he walked off.

Mrs Weasley watched him go. She didn't say anything. But her mouth had gone thin, and she put a hand on Ginny's shoulder without seeming to notice she'd done it.

Harry hung back for a last word.

'See you over the summer, then,' he said, and kept his voice light.

'Hope you have... er... a good holiday,' said Hermione, looking after Uncle Vernon as though she couldn't quite believe anybody could be so unpleasant.

'Oh, I will,' said Harry, and the other two were surprised to see a grin spreading over his face.

It was completely fake. He wasn't going to give the Dursleys the satisfaction of knowing they'd spoiled anything, and he wasn't going to send his friends home worried.

'They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home,' he said. 'I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer.'

He nodded to them, and walked off after his uncle, and he made very sure not to look back at Ron and Hermione and the whole row of Weasleys, because he knew exactly what their faces would be doing.

But there was something in him now that hadn't been there in September. He'd found it down in the dark, with Quirrell's hands round his throat, and it wasn't going anywhere. If he could stand up to Voldemort, Harry thought, as the owl cage swung in his hand and the Dursleys' car came into view, then he could put up with anything the Dursleys could throw at him.

Anything at all.