The Sign of the Cross

Harry woke up feeling, of all things, perfectly fine.

He lay with his eyes shut for a moment, waiting for the fire to come back into his arm, and it didn't. He felt as though he'd slept a whole night through and woken up early, with nothing wrong anywhere. He opened his eyes.

Dracina Malfoy's face was about six inches above his.

She had his head in her lap. One of her hands was on his hair, where it had stopped in the middle of stroking it back, and the other was pressed flat against the front of his robes, over his heart, as though she'd been checking it was still going. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her face was blotched, and there was a long smear of Basilisk blood up one of her cheeks that she hadn't noticed.

She saw that he was awake. For one second she didn't move at all.

Then she snatched both her hands back as if he were hot.

Harry sat up. The Chamber tilted and came right again. He looked round, and saw the great dead coils of the Basilisk, and the sword standing upright in the ruined diary, and Fawkes on his broken pillar, and he looked back at Dracina.

'Are you all right?' he said.

'I'm fine.' She said it much too quickly. 'I'm perfectly fine. Why wouldn't I be?'

Her eyes were still streaming. She dragged the heel of her hand across them, hard, and then across her nose, and then she set her jaw and looked at the far wall, as though she'd decided that if she didn't look at him it wouldn't count.

'You've been crying,' said Harry.

'I have not.'

'Your eyes are-'

'It's dust, Potter. There's a great deal of dust. A pillar fell down.'

Harry let it go. He got to his feet, swaying a bit, and his eyes went across the floor to the other girl lying on the stone, and his stomach dropped.

'Ginny.'

He ran to her. He didn't see Dracina's face as he did it, which was a pity, or perhaps not. He didn't see her mouth tighten, or her hands close in her lap, or the way she watched him go down on his knees beside somebody else as if he'd taken something out of her hands.

Ginny was very white. The cut at her temple was still bleeding, slowly, a thin fresh trickle over the dried stuff, and when Harry took her by the shoulders and shook her gently she didn't move.

'Ginny. Ginny, wake up. It's Harry. It's over. Ginny...'

Her eyelids flickered. She made a small sound. Then her eyes opened, and found him, and went wide.

'Harry?' Her voice was a croak. 'Harry... I followed her... I saw her go down the... she hit me, Harry, she had the book and she just...' Her hand went to her head and came away red, and she stared at it. 'I'm bleeding.'

'You're all right. You're going to be all right. We're getting out.' Harry looked round, helplessly, at the blood. He had no idea what to do about a cut. He'd never been taught. The Dursleys had never put a plaster on him in his life.

There was a rustle of robes beside him.

Dracina had come over. She was standing with her arms folded and her chin up and her face still blotchy, and she was looking down at Ginny with an expression that was trying very hard to be contempt and not quite managing it.

'Oh, for Merlin's sake,' she said. 'Give her here.'

She dropped to her knees on Ginny's other side, pushed Harry's hands out of the way, and took Ginny's face between her own two hands, quite firmly, turning the cut to the light. Ginny flinched.

'Hold still, Weasley. I'm not going to bite you.' She drew her wand. 'Mother taught me this last year. I used to fall off my pony.'

She touched the wand to the cut, and murmured something, and the bleeding stopped. She did it again, and the edges of the cut drew together. A third time, and there was nothing left but a thin pink line, and the dried blood flaking off round it.

Ginny stared up at her.

'Thank you,' she whispered.

Something went across Dracina's face. It was there and gone in a second, but Harry saw it. It was as though somebody had said something kind to her in a language she only half understood, and she didn't know what to do with it. Her lips parted. Then she shut them again, and let go of Ginny's face, and stood up, and brushed off her knees.

'Don't mention it,' she said stiffly. 'Really. Don't.'

Fawkes was waiting for them, hovering at the Chamber door.

Harry got Ginny up and steadied her, and the three of them picked their way across the floor, over the motionless coils of the dead Basilisk, through the long green gloom, and out into the tunnel. Harry carried the sword. The Sorting Hat was stuffed into his belt. Behind them, the stone doors slid shut with a soft hiss.

After a few minutes in the dark, a distant sound of rock shifting reached them.

'Ron!' Harry yelled, breaking into a run. 'Ginny's okay! I've got her!'

He heard Ron give a strangled cheer. They came round the bend and there was his face, filthy and eager, staring through a good-sized gap he'd managed to make in the rockfall.

'Ginny!'

Ron shoved an arm through and dragged her to the gap first. 'You're alive! I don't believe it! What happened?'

He tried to hug her, but Ginny held him off, with a hand against his chest.

'Don't. I still feel dizzy. I'll fall over.'

'But you're okay, Ginny,' said Ron, beaming at her all over his face. 'You're okay. It's over now, it's... hang on, where did that bird come from?'

Fawkes had swooped through the gap after Ginny.

'He's Dumbledore's,' said Harry, squeezing through after them.

'And how come you've got a sword?' said Ron, gaping at the thing in Harry's hand.

The fire had gone out of it. But it was no less wonderful for that, lying long, pale and quiet along Harry's arm, with the letters down the blade catching Fawkes's glow.

'I'll explain when we're out,' said Harry, with a quick sideways look at Ginny.

'But-'

'What's Lockhart doing here?' shouted Dracina.

She'd come through the gap last, and she was standing with her hands on her hips, peering up the tunnel into the dark. She seemed to be able to see in it a good deal better than any of the rest of them.

They walked on up to the mouth of the pipe, with Fawkes leading the way, his wide scarlet wings giving out a soft gold light in the blackness. And there, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, humming placidly to himself, was Gilderoy Lockhart.

Harry told Dracina what had happened, as briefly as he could. Ron finished it for him.

'His memory's gone,' said Ron. 'The charm backfired. Got him instead of us. He hasn't a clue who he is, or where, or who we are. I told him to sit here and wait. He's a danger to himself. He's uh, gone a bit retarded I'm afraid.'

Lockhart looked up at them all, pleasantly.

'Hello,' he said. 'Odd sort of place, this, isn't it? Do you live here?'

'No,' said Ron, with his eyebrows up at Harry.

Harry bent and looked up the long, dark pipe.

'Have you thought about how we're going to get back up that?' he said.

Ron shook his head. But Fawkes had swooped past Harry and was hovering in front of him now, his beady eyes bright in the gloom, waving his long golden tail feathers.

Harry looked at him doubtfully.

'He looks like he wants you to hold on...' said Ron, baffled. 'But you're miles too heavy for a bird to carry up there.'

'Fawkes,' said Harry, 'isn't an ordinary bird.' He turned to the others. 'We've got to hang on to each other. Ginny, take Ron's hand. Professor Lockhart...'

'He means you,' said Ron sharply to Lockhart. 'Take Ginny's other hand.'

Harry tucked the sword and the Sorting Hat into his belt. Ron got a fistful of the back of Harry's robes. And Harry reached up, and took hold of Fawkes's strangely hot tail feathers.

An extraordinary lightness went through him, from his fingers to his feet, and the next second, with a whoosh, they were all flying up the pipe. Something had hold of Harry's left arm. It was Dracina. She was hanging on to him with both hands, so tightly that it hurt, as though she thought the wind might take him away from her if she loosened her grip for a second. Below him Harry could hear Lockhart dangling, calling out, 'Amazing! Amazing! This is just like magic!'

The cold air whipped through Harry's hair, and before he'd finished enjoying it, it was over. All five of them landed in a heap on the wet floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and as Lockhart straightened his hat, the sink slid back into place over the pipe.

Myrtle goggled at them.

'You're alive,' she said blankly, to Harry.

'There's no need to sound so disappointed,' he said grimly, wiping blood and slime off his glasses.

'Oh, well... I'd only been thinking. If you had died, you'd have been very welcome to share my toilet,' said Myrtle, going a shimmering silver about the cheeks.

'Urgh,' said Ron, as they came out of the bathroom into the dark, empty corridor. 'Harry! I think Myrtle's gone and got fond of you! You've got competition... uh, Ginny, I mean...'

'No she hasn't,' Dracina hissed.

'Right,' said Ron diplomatically, and rubbed his ear, where she'd bitten it last year.

'Where now?' he said, with an anxious look at Ginny.

Harry pointed. Fawkes was already gliding away up the corridor, glowing gold. They went after him, and a minute later found themselves outside Professor McGonagall's office.

Harry knocked, and pushed the door open.

For a moment nobody said anything. Harry, Ron, Ginny, Dracina and Lockhart stood in the doorway, caked in muck and slime, and, in Harry's and Ginny's case, blood.

Then somebody screamed.

'GINNY!'

It was Mrs Weasley. She'd been sitting in front of the fire, crying, and she came out of her chair as though it had thrown her, with Mr Weasley right behind her, and the pair of them flung themselves on their daughter.

Harry was looking past them. Professor Dumbledore was standing by the mantelpiece, beaming, next to Professor McGonagall, who had one hand pressed to her chest and was taking great, steadying breaths. Fawkes went past Harry's ear in a rush of scarlet and settled on Dumbledore's shoulder. And then Harry and Ron were both seized, and crushed, and rocked, in Mrs Weasley's arms.

'Oh, Ron. Oh, Harry. You're the two bravest boys in all the world! You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?'

'Ah, just a bit of elbow grease. Nothing to it,' said Harry.

He was trying, quite hard, not to melt. Mrs Weasley's hug was warm, and it smelled of the Burrow, and for one dangerous second it made him feel as if he had a mum. He pulled himself back. No. This was Ron's mum. He didn't get to borrow her.

'It's a long story, Mrs Weasley,' he said.

'I think we should all like to hear it,' said Professor McGonagall faintly.

Mrs Weasley let go of him. Harry hesitated. Then he went over to the desk and laid down on it the Sorting Hat, and the sword, and what was left of Riddle's diary. And he began to tell them.

He talked for nearly a quarter of an hour, into complete silence. He told them about the voice nobody else could hear, and how Hermione had worked out at last that it was a Basilisk in the pipes. He told them about following the spiders into the Forest, and Aragog, and the girl who'd died in a bathroom. How he'd guessed that the girl was Myrtle, and that the way into the Chamber must be somewhere in her bathroom.

'Very well,' Professor McGonagall said, as he paused. 'So you found the entrance. Breaking, I might add, roughly one hundred school rules into very small pieces along the way. But how on earth, Potter, did you all get out of there alive?'

So Harry, his voice gone hoarse, told them about Fawkes arriving in the nick of time, and the Sorting Hat giving him the sword.

And then he stuck.

He'd managed, so far, not to mention the diary at all. Or Ginny going down into the Chamber. Or Dracina. She was standing by the door, a little apart from everybody, and the tears were still running silently down her face, and she hadn't wiped them away. What if they expel her? Harry thought, in a sudden panic. The diary didn't work any more. There was no way left to prove that it had been Riddle making her do it all.

Without quite meaning to, he looked at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore smiled faintly. The firelight caught his half-moon spectacles.

'What interests me most,' he said gently, 'is how Lord Voldemort came to enchant Miss Malfoy at all. When my sources tell me he is at present in hiding in the forests of Albania.'

Relief went through Harry like warm water. Glorious, sweeping relief.

'What I want to know,' said Mrs Weasley, 'is how Ginny came to have so much blood on her.'

She said it in a firm, motherly sort of voice that promised a variety of horrors depending on the answer.

Harry sighed. Across the room he saw Dracina draw a breath, and square her shoulders, and get ready to tell the truth.

'It was that nasty Tom Riddle,' said Ginny. 'He hit me, Mum! With the diary.'

She shot a look at Dracina as she said it. Dracina had suddenly discovered something extremely interesting on the floor. It wasn't a lie, not quite, and Mrs Weasley seemed to accept it.

'But how could such a thing happen?' said Mrs Weasley.

'It was this,' said Harry quickly, picking up the diary and holding it out to Dumbledore. 'Riddle wrote it. When he was sixteen.'

Dumbledore took it, and looked keenly down his long, crooked nose at the pierced and ink-sodden pages.

'Brilliant,' he said softly. 'Of course, he was very probably the most brilliant student this school has ever had.'

He turned to the Weasleys, who looked completely lost.

'Very few people know that Lord Voldemort was once called Tom Riddle. I taught him myself, here, fifty years ago. He vanished after he left school. Travelled a great deal. Sank so far into the Dark Arts, kept company with the very worst of our kind, put himself through so many dangerous transformations, that when he came back as Lord Voldemort there was almost nothing left to recognise. Hardly anybody ever connected him with the clever, handsome boy who was Head Boy here.'

'And what,' said Professor McGonagall, 'has Miss Malfoy to do with any of this?'

Dracina couldn't take any more.

She burst into tears. Not quiet ones, this time. Great, wrenching, gulping sobs that bent her over in the middle, and through them it all came pouring out. She'd had the diary. She'd found it in her bag in late August and she'd written in it, she'd written in it every night, she'd told it everything, and it had written back, and it had been kind. It had been the only thing in the whole world that listened. She nearly said why. Harry saw her get right to the edge of it. I wrote in it because of... And then she swerved, and said only, 'It was the only thing that ever listened to me,' in a voice that broke clean in two. And then she hadn't been able to stop. And then she'd started losing time, and waking up in corridors, and her hands had been red, and she hadn't known, she hadn't known what she was doing, and it was all her fault, all of it, Granger and the Creevey boy and the cat and the Hufflepuff and all of it, and she'd never, ever...

A hand came down on her shoulder.

It was Harry's. He didn't know if it was the right thing. He hadn't thought about it. He'd just crossed the room while she was talking, and when he got there, his hand went on her shoulder, and stayed.

The effect was extraordinary. She stopped sobbing in the middle of a breath. Her head came up. She looked at his hand, and then at him, and the colour came up into her blotched face, and something in it went soft and bright and astonished.

And every single other person in that room exchanged a look.

Ron looked at Ginny. Ginny looked at her mum. Mrs Weasley looked at Mr Weasley with her eyebrows somewhere up near her hair. Professor McGonagall looked at the ceiling and let out a very long breath through her nose. Even Lockhart, who had no idea who anybody was, looked round at them all, and then at Harry and Dracina, and said, 'Ah,' in a tone of pleasant comprehension.

Only Dumbledore didn't look away. He looked straight at the two of them, the boy with his hand on the girl's shoulder and the girl looking up at the boy as if the sun had come out, and his face was one that nobody in the room could read at all. He was thinking of a river at the bottom of a lane, and a summer afternoon, and a girl who'd turned the whole of it to light just to see if she could. He said nothing. His tears were silent and wistful.

Mr Weasley cleared his throat.

'Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain. I taught my family all about that,' he said gently.

'Miss Weasley and Miss Malfoy should both go up to the hospital wing at once,' said Dumbledore, in a firm voice. 'This has been a dreadful ordeal for them. There will be no punishment. Older and far wiser witches and wizards than they have been taken in by Lord Voldemort.' He went to the door and opened it. 'Bed rest. And perhaps a very large mug of hot chocolate. I always find it does the trick,' he added, twinkling kindly down at the girls. 'Madam Pomfrey will still be up. She's handing out Mandrake juice this very minute. I shouldn't wonder if the Basilisk's victims are waking as we speak.'

'So Hermione's okay!' said Ron, lighting up.

'No lasting harm has been done,' said Dumbledore.

Mrs Weasley led Ginny out, with one arm round her, and Mr Weasley went after them, still looking badly shaken. Dracina went last. She stopped in the doorway and looked back, once, at Harry, and then was gone.

'You know, Minerva,' said Dumbledore thoughtfully, 'I rather think all this calls for a feast. Might I trouble you to go and wake the kitchens?'

'Very well,' said Professor McGonagall crisply, making for the door. 'I'll leave you to deal with Potter and Weasley, shall I?'

'Certainly,' said Dumbledore.

She went out. Harry and Ron looked at Dumbledore uncertainly. Deal with them. What had she meant? Surely, surely, after all that, they weren't about to be punished?

'I seem to recall,' said Dumbledore, 'telling the pair of you that I should have to expel you if you broke any more school rules.'

Ron's mouth fell open.

'Which only goes to show,' Dumbledore went on, smiling, 'that the best of us must sometimes eat our words. You will both receive Special Awards for Services to the School. And, let me see. Yes. I think two hundred points apiece for Gryffindor.'

Ron went the same bright pink as Lockhart's Valentine flowers, and shut his mouth again.

'But one of us seems to be keeping remarkably quiet about his own part in this dangerous adventure,' Dumbledore added. 'Why so modest, Gilderoy?'

Harry jumped. He'd completely forgotten Lockhart. He turned, and saw him standing in the corner, still with his vague, pleasant smile. When Dumbledore spoke to him, Lockhart looked over his own shoulder to see who was being addressed.

'Professor Dumbledore,' said Ron quickly, 'there was an accident. Down in the Chamber. Professor Lockhart-'

'Am I a professor?' said Lockhart, mildly surprised. 'Good heavens. I expect I was hopeless, was I?'

'He tried to do a Memory Charm and the wand backfired,' Ron told Dumbledore quietly. 'He's lost his memory. All of it. And to be brutally honest, Professor, I think it's made him a bit retarded.'

'Dear me,' said Dumbledore, shaking his head so that his long silver moustache quivered. 'Impaled upon your own sword, Gilderoy!'

'Sword?' said Lockhart dimly. 'Haven't got a sword. That boy has, though.' He pointed at Harry. 'He'll lend you one.'

'Would you be so good as to take Professor Lockhart up to the hospital wing as well?' Dumbledore asked Ron. 'I'd like a few more words with Harry.'

Lockhart wandered out. Ron threw a curious look back at Dumbledore and Harry as he pulled the door to behind him.

Dumbledore went over to one of the chairs by the fire.

'Sit down, Harry,' he said.

Harry sat. He felt, for no reason he could name, extremely nervous.

'First of all, Harry, I want to thank you,' said Dumbledore, and his eyes were twinkling again. 'You must have shown me real loyalty, down there in the Chamber. Nothing else could have brought Fawkes to you.'

He stroked the phoenix, which had fluttered down onto his knee. Harry grinned awkwardly under his gaze.

'And so you met Tom Riddle,' Dumbledore said thoughtfully. 'I imagine he was very interested in you.'

And something that had been gnawing at Harry since the Chamber came out of his mouth before he could stop it.

'Professor Dumbledore... Riddle said I'm like him. We had similar lives. Similar... feelings about things.'

'That's very interesting, Harry. Do you agree with Tom?' Dumbledore asked sweetly.

'No!' Harry said, at once, and far too loudly. And then he made himself be honest, because it was Dumbledore, and because he found he couldn't not be. 'Sometimes... yes. I... I get so angry at the Dursleys. For all they did to me. Sometimes it's all the Muggles. Tom said he could help me. Help me to hurt them back. And for a nasty moment... I was tempted. B-but I didn't do it in the end. I never could. I couldn't leave Ginny and Dra... Malfoy.'

Dumbledore's face had gone grave.

'I have seen what the Dursleys have done to you, Harry,' he said. 'And you have my word that I have made personally sure they will not do it again.'

Harry wondered what he meant by that. It didn't matter, really. He was going to the Burrow with Ron. Dumbledore needn't have bothered.

'I mean, I'm... I'm in Gryffindor, I'm...' But he trailed off. The doubt had come creeping back. 'Professor,' he began again, after a moment, 'the Sorting Hat told me I'd... I'd have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought I was Slytherin's heir for a bit. Because I can talk to snakes...'

'You can speak Parseltongue, Harry,' said Dumbledore calmly, 'because Lord Voldemort, who is the last living descendant of Salazar Slytherin, can speak Parseltongue. Unless I am very much mistaken, he passed some of his own powers into you on the night he gave you that scar. Not, I think, on purpose.'

'Voldemort put a bit of himself in me?' said Harry, thunderstruck.

'It would certainly seem so.'

'Then I should be in Slytherin,' said Harry, searching Dumbledore's face. 'The Hat could see Slytherin's power in me, and it-'

'Put you in Gryffindor,' said Dumbledore evenly. 'Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have a great many of the qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in the students he chose for himself. His own rare gift, Parseltongue. Resourcefulness. Determination. A certain disregard for rules,' he added, and the moustache quivered again. 'And yet the Hat put you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think.'

'It only put me in Gryffindor,' said Harry, in a defeated sort of voice, 'because I asked it not to put me in Slytherin.'

'Exactly,' said Dumbledore, and beamed. 'Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, far more than our abilities, that show what we truly are.'

Harry sat very still.

'And if you want proof that you belong in Gryffindor,' said Dumbledore, 'I suggest you look rather more closely at this.'

He reached across to Professor McGonagall's desk, lifted the sword, and put it into Harry's hands.

Harry turned it over, dully. It caught the firelight all down its length. The strange letters along the blade shone and went dark and shone again as it moved.

'This sword has belonged to a series of brave men,' Dumbledore said. 'One of whom was Godric Gryffindor himself. Harry, this sword is ancient, and it is good. It belongs to an ancient and noble bloodline that Godric was a part of. It can only be wielded by men... well. Men of the same calibre as Godric. Once they even called this the Sword of Gryffindor. A trick of the goblins, Harry. It had a few names before that. But this is a sword that can only be wielded by a true Gryffindor. By you, Harry.'

Harry nodded, and sighed.

'You would have done well in Slytherin, Harry. There's no shame in it. There's no inherent evil in Slytherin. But regardless of all that, this sword chose you at your moment of need.'

Something had changed in Dumbledore's face. Harry had seen it before. He'd seen it in front of the Mirror of Erised, and in the hospital wing at the end of last year, when Dumbledore had looked, just for a moment, not like a headmaster at all, but like somebody very old carrying something very heavy.

'You'll need it again, one day,' Dumbledore said quietly. 'Not today. But another day, soon.'

Harry opened his mouth to ask what he meant. But Dumbledore had already turned away, and was pulling open a drawer in Professor McGonagall's desk, and taking out a quill and a bottle of ink.

Harry put the sword back down on the table.

'What you need right now, Harry, is some food and some sleep. I suggest you go down to the feast, while I write to Azkaban. Fawkes will carry it. We want our gamekeeper back tonight, not next week. And I must draft a notice for the Daily Prophet as well,' he added, thoughtfully. 'We shall need a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Merlin's beard. We do seem to get through them, don't we?'

Harry got up and crossed to the door. He'd just put his hand on the handle when it burst open so violently that it bounced off the wall.

Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway, with fury in his face. And cowering under his arm, bandaged from head to foot, was Dobby.

'Good evening, Lucius,' said Dumbledore pleasantly.

Mr Malfoy very nearly knocked Harry over as he swept in. Dobby scuttled in after him, crouched at the hem of his cloak, with a look of stark terror on his face.

'So!' said Lucius Malfoy. His cold eyes were fixed on Dumbledore. 'You've come back. The governors suspended you, and still you saw fit to return to Hogwarts.'

'Well, you see, Lucius,' said Dumbledore, smiling serenely, 'the other eleven governors wrote to me today. Rather like being caught in a hailstorm of owls, if I'm honest. They had heard that Arthur Weasley's daughter had been killed, and they wished me back at once. They seemed to think I was the man for the job after all. They told me some very odd stories, too. Several of them seemed to be under the impression that you had threatened to curse their families if they did not agree to suspend me in the first place.'

Mr Malfoy went paler than ever, but his eyes were still slits.

'So,' he sneered. 'Have you stopped the attacks? Have you caught the culprit?'

'We have,' said Dumbledore, with a smile.

'Well?' said Mr Malfoy sharply. 'Who is it?'

'The same person as last time, Lucius,' said Dumbledore. 'But this time Lord Voldemort was working through somebody else. By means of this.'

He held up the small black book with the great hole through the middle of it, and watched Mr Malfoy's face very closely.

Harry, though, was watching Dobby.

The elf was doing something extremely odd. With his huge eyes fixed on Harry, he kept pointing at the diary, and then at Mr Malfoy, and then hitting himself hard on the head with his fist.

'I see...' said Mr Malfoy slowly.

'A clever plan,' said Dumbledore, in a level voice, still looking Mr Malfoy straight in the eye. 'Because if Harry here...' Mr Malfoy flicked a quick, sharp look at Harry, '...and his friend Ronald Weasley had not found this book, why, Dracina Malfoy might have taken all the blame. Nobody could ever have proved she hadn't acted of her own free will. Imagine the scandal of that, Lucius. For the Malfoys.'

Mr Malfoy said nothing. His face had gone like a pale, colourless mask.

'And imagine,' Dumbledore went on, 'what might have happened had that diary ended up in, say, Ginny Weasley's possession. Not that it did. It ended up in your daughter's possession.'

He said the last part quite quietly, as an accusation he already knew to be true.

Lucius was silent. Every scrap of colour had gone out of his face. And Harry, watching him, had the strangest feeling that he was hearing this for the first time. He hadn't known. All that scheming, and he hadn't known his own daughter had taken Ginny's place. He'd have stopped it, if he had. He'd have stopped it in a second. And he'd have been perfectly content to let the Petrifying go on, and the killings start, if it had been anybody else in the whole world holding that diary but Dracina Malfoy.

'I can see what a bad actor would do here,' Dumbledore continued. 'Somebody with a grudge against the Weasleys places the diary in the possession of young Miss Weasley. As you well know, the Weasleys are one of our most prominent pure-blood families. Imagine the effect on Arthur Weasley and his Muggle Protection Act, if his own daughter were found attacking and killing Muggle-borns. Very fortunate for the Weasleys that the diary ended up with poor Dracina. And that the diary was found, and Riddle's memories wiped out of it. Who knows what the consequences might have been otherwise... especially for your own daughter.'

Even Harry heard it. The kind, mild, twinkling voice went, on those last words, very low and very cold, and there was something under it that was very nearly disgust. Disgust at Lucius Malfoy for having done this, even by accident, to his own child.

Mr Malfoy made himself speak.

'Very fortunate,' he said stiffly.

And still, behind his back, Dobby was pointing: at the diary, and then at Lucius Malfoy, and then punching himself in the head.

And Harry suddenly understood.

He nodded at Dobby. Dobby backed into a corner, and began twisting his ears, hard, by way of punishment.

'Don't you want to know how Dracina got hold of that diary, Mr Malfoy?' said Harry.

Lucius Malfoy rounded on him.

'How should I know how she did?'

'Because you gave it to Ginny,' said Harry. 'In Flourish and Blotts. You picked up her old Transfiguration book, and slipped the diary inside it, didn't you? As Professor Dumbledore says, it all would've worked out for you if it ended up with Ginny. That was your plan.'

He saw Mr Malfoy's white hands clench, and unclench.

'Prove it,' said Lucius, with a haughty chuckle and a sneer.

'Oh, nobody will be able to do that,' said Dumbledore, smiling at Harry. 'Not now that Riddle within this book has been destroyed. On the other hand, I would advise you, Lucius, not to go handing out any more of Lord Voldemort's old school things. Should any more of them find their way into innocent hands, I think Arthur Weasley, for one, will make very sure they are traced back to you.'

Lucius Malfoy turned to go.

'Oh, and one more thing, Lucius. I had been planning to write to you and Narcissa, to tell you what a terrible ordeal your daughter has been through. But I think it would be a great deal more prudent, and more discreet, if you were to tell her mother yourself. I shall still send the letter, of course. In case you are too busy.'

Lucius Malfoy stood quite still. Harry distinctly saw his right hand twitch, as though it wanted very badly to go for his wand. Instead, he turned on his house-elf.

'We're going, Dobby!'

He wrenched the door open, and as the elf came hurrying up to him, he kicked him clean through it. They could hear Dobby squealing with pain all the way down the corridor.

Harry stood for a moment, thinking hard.

Then it came to him.

'Professor Dumbledore,' he said quickly, 'can I give that diary back to Mr Malfoy? Please?'

'Certainly, Harry,' said Dumbledore calmly. 'But do hurry. The feast, remember.'

Harry grabbed the diary and ran out of the office. He could hear Dobby's squeals going away round the corner. Quickly, wondering whether this could possibly work, he dragged off the sodden, slimy, filthy sock from the foot that had lost its shoe somewhere in the Chamber, and stuffed the diary into it. Then he ran.

He caught them at the top of the stairs.

'Mr Malfoy,' he said, and held it out. 'Here. You can have this back.'

Lucius Malfoy looked at the sock in Harry's hand as though it were something dead. Then he took it, by the very end, between finger and thumb, and peeled it off the diary, and flung it away over his shoulder without looking.

Dobby caught it.

Lucius didn't see. He was looking at the diary. He turned it over in his long white hands, and ran a thumb over the hole in it, and his mouth was a thin line.

'He told you,' said Lucius quietly. It wasn't a question. 'Riddle. He'd have enjoyed that. He was always fond of an audience.'

'He told me you were going to give it to Ginny,' said Harry. 'And that Dracina picked it up by mistake. And I reckon you tried to warn her about something, after. In your own way.'

Lucius's eyes came up.

'You will understand,' he said, in a very low, very precise voice, 'that none of this is being said. That we are not having this conversation. That if it were ever repeated, I should deny every word and see to it that you regretted the repeating.' He paused. 'I was instructed, Potter. Do you understand what that means, from him? One does not decline. One is not consulted. One is handed a book and told where it is to go, and one goes. He is not a man you say no to. He is barely a man at all, any more.'

'Right,' said Harry. 'So you were forced to do it. I see.' He nodded slowly. 'And you'd have been fine with it, would you? If it had gone to Ginny the way it was supposed to? If it had been Ginny lying on the floor of that Chamber with her life getting sucked out, instead of Dracina? Or any other girl? That'd have been all right? You'd have slept perfectly well?' He tilted his head. 'It only got a bit awkward when you found out it was your own daughter, didn't it, Mr Malfoy. That's when you started caring. Funny, that. The timing.'

Lucius Malfoy's face went white and then very faintly pink, and the pink was worse.

'You know nothing of what he is,' he said. 'He knows magic that was old when this castle was a hill. Things that were forgotten before the Romans came. He can do things, Potter, that you cannot begin to-'

'Can he?' said Harry. 'Because I just watched him. Up close. For about half an hour. And d'you know what he did, Mr Malfoy? He talked. He talked about blood, and how pure it was, and how important it was. And then he was going to kill a pure-blood girl to get a body back. And then another one. And he's a half-blood himself. He told me. Muggle dad. He's a half-blood from a Muggle orphanage who's got the whole lot of you running about for him, kicking house-elves and planting diaries, over something he doesn't even believe.' Harry shrugged. 'He's a fraud, Mr Malfoy. He's a fraud with good hair. Well. He had good hair. Fifty years ago. I expect that's gone too, now, along with the nose.'

Lucius Malfoy raised one long white finger.

He opened his mouth. He was quite clearly about to say something cutting, and aristocratic, and final. Harry waited for it.

It didn't come.

Instead, something strange happened to Lucius Malfoy's face. The corner of his mouth went up. He pressed it down. It went up again. And then, to the very obvious astonishment of both of them, a short, dry, startled sound came out of him, and it was a laugh.

'Along with the nose,' he said. He shook his head slowly. 'Merlin's beard.'

He looked at Harry for a long moment, up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. The sneer had gone. What was left was something a great deal more thoughtful, and a great deal more dangerous, and almost, very nearly, respectful.

'You have given me a great deal to think about, Potter,' he said at last. 'I had not expected that. I had expected a scrawny little hero with his head full of Dumbledore. You'd have done well in Slytherin. Do you know that? You'd have done very well indeed.'

Harry blinked. It was the second time he'd been told that in an hour.

'And I think,' said Lucius Malfoy, more quietly, almost to himself, 'that I begin to see what she sees in you.'

He didn't say who she was. He didn't need to. Harry felt his face go hot, and made a note, somewhere at the back of his mind, that he was going to have to go and talk to Dracina. Properly. About all of it.

'Come, Dobby,' said Lucius, turning away. 'We're leaving.'

Dobby didn't move.

Lucius stopped, and turned back, with his eyebrows up. And then he saw what the elf was holding.

Dobby was standing in the middle of the corridor with the sock clutched to his chest in both bandaged hands, and he was looking at Lucius Malfoy with the expression of someone who has just been handed the keys to the whole world.

'Master has given Dobby a sock,' he said. His voice was trembling. 'Master threw it, and Dobby caught it, and Dobby... Dobby is free.'

For a second, Lucius Malfoy looked at Harry, and his hand moved towards his robes, and Harry's own hand moved towards his wand, and the corridor went very quiet.

Then Lucius laughed again.

It was a real laugh this time, short and surprised and not unkind, and he dropped his hand.

'Fair play, Potter,' he said. 'Fair play. That was well done.' He drew his cloak about him. 'I wish you a very pleasant summer. Try not to get yourself killed before September. I find I should rather like to see how you turn out.'

And he went away down the stairs without looking back, with the diary under his arm, and he was, Harry thought, watching him go, a man in two minds about something. He'd come up those stairs hating Harry Potter. He was going down them having rather unexpectedly started to like him, and not at all sure what to do about it.

Dobby's arms went round Harry's middle.

'Harry Potter freed Dobby!' he sobbed, into Harry's robes. 'Harry Potter set Dobby free!'

And for one moment, with the elf's bony arms locked round him and the elf's bony skull right there under his chin, Harry thought: now. Now's the time. Finally.

He didn't. He couldn't. Dobby was looking up at him with his great wet tennis-ball eyes shining with such adoration, and saying such extravagant things about him, that his hands simply wouldn't do it. Harry sighed. Perhaps Dobby was just a bit special, and you couldn't hold it against him. Perhaps that was the only way to think about Dobby that didn't end with somebody in the hospital wing.

'Dobby,' he said, quite sternly, holding him off at arm's length. 'Listen to me. Don't you ever mess me about again. All right? No more barriers. No more Bludgers. No more puddings. If you want to help me, you ask me first. You hear?'

'Dobby hears, sir! Dobby hears and obeys! Dobby will never, never...' The elf dropped to his knees on the flagstones. 'Dobby is a free elf now, sir, but Dobby will serve Harry Potter of his own will, for ever and ever! Dobby will be Harry Potter's own servant! A champion of the light, sir, as Harry Potter is a champion of the light! Dobby swears it!'

'Right,' said Harry weakly. 'Well. I'd better go. There's a feast, and my friend Hermione should be awake by now...'

Dobby flung his arms round Harry's middle again.

'Harry Potter is greater by far than Dobby knew!' he sobbed. 'Farewell, Harry Potter!'

And with a final loud crack, Dobby was gone.

Harry stood alone in the corridor for a moment, with one shoe and no socks, and a great deal to think about.

Then he turned, and went the other way from the feast. Towards the hospital wing.

He had somebody to talk to first.

The hospital wing was full of Weasleys.

They were all round Ginny's bed, every one of them. Mrs Weasley was tucking the blanket in so tightly that Ginny couldn't move her arms. Mr Weasley was holding her hand. Fred and George had turned up from somewhere in their pyjamas and were sitting on the end of the bed arguing about who'd been more worried, and Percy was standing a little apart with his hands behind his back, white-faced and silent, and every so often he reached out and touched Ginny's hair, very quickly, as if to make sure she was really there. Ron was in the middle of it all, talking too loudly, with a mug of hot chocolate he'd forgotten to drink.

Harry stopped in the doorway and looked at them for a moment. The beds at the far end, Hermione's and Colin's and the others, were still curtained off, with Madam Pomfrey's shadow moving behind the screens and the sharp green smell of Mandrake juice coming out from under them. Not yet, then. Soon. He looked across the ward.

Dracina was in the bed by the far window. On her own.

She was sitting up against the pillows with her hands in her lap and her hair all over the place, and she was watching the Weasleys. She didn't know anybody was looking at her. Her face was quite unguarded, and what was on it was a longing so naked and so plain that Harry felt something twist in his chest. She was looking at that noisy, shabby, crowded, arguing, red-headed heap round Ginny's bed the way Harry had once looked into the Mirror of Erised.

He knew the look.

He'd never thought of Dracina Malfoy as lonely. She had a manor, a pony, ribbons in her hair, and parents who sent her sweets every week and owls every day. But she was sitting there by herself, with a mug of hot chocolate going cold beside her, and she looked as lonely as Harry had ever been in his cupboard.

He went over.

He didn't notice Mrs Weasley's head turn to follow him. He didn't notice her eyes go from him to the girl in the far bed and back again, and narrow, and go thoughtful, in exactly the way a mother's eyes go when she is weighing up a girlfriend to see if she's worthy of marrying her son.

Dracina saw him coming. Her face became a mask.

'What do you want?' she said. 'Come to gloat? I expect the whole school will be gloating by breakfast. Dracina Malfoy, the Heir of Slytherin's little puppet. I expect you'll all have a lovely time.' She tossed her hair. It didn't quite come off, because the hair was still stiff with dust. 'Well, you can tell Weasley from me that I'm not grateful. I didn't ask to be-'

'Can I sit down?'

She stopped.

'What?'

'Can I sit down.' Harry nodded at the end of the bed. 'I'm knackered. I've been fighting a giant bloody snake.'

She stared at him. Then, without saying yes, she drew her feet up under the blanket to make room. Harry sat.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Across the ward, Fred said something that made Ginny laugh, and Mrs Weasley said George Weasley, you'll have that mug over.

'Why d'you do it?' Harry said.

'Do what?'

'All of it. The way you talk to people. Ron and Hermione and Neville and Ginny. The way you talk to me.' He looked at her. 'Your elf's been watching the Dursleys since the summer. Tom said so. You know what they're like. You know what they say to me. So you must know why I can't stand it when somebody talks like that. Why I walk off. Why I don't want to be anywhere near it.' He paused. 'So why do you keep doing it?'

Dracina looked down at her hands.

She was quiet for so long that he thought she wasn't going to answer. When she did, it was in a small, flat voice that didn't sound like her at all.

'Because I don't understand it,' she said.

'Understand what?'

'Any of it. Them. Those Muggles. What they do to you. Why they do it. Dobby told me. He told me about the cupboard, and the bread, and the bars, and I lay awake all night and I couldn't... I didn't understand. Nobody's ever done anything like that to me. Nobody would dare. And I kept thinking, why does he put up with it? Why doesn't he do something? He's the Boy Who Lived, he killed a troll, he could turn the whole lot of them into...' She stopped. 'And then I'd see you, and you'd just be... eating your breakfast. As if it was normal. And I'd get so angry I didn't know what to do with it, and it would come out all wrong. It always comes out wrong.'

'I don't put up with it,' said Harry.

He said it quite firmly. More firmly than he'd meant to.

'I have to live with them. Or I did. Until the Weasleys came and got me.' He looked across at the bed by the door. 'They put bars on my window and Ron came in a flying car and ripped them off the wall. That's the difference. I didn't have anybody before. Now I do.'

Dracina followed his look. Her mouth did something complicated.

'Well,' she said, after a moment, very grudgingly. 'That's one thing the Weasleys are good for, I suppose.'

Harry turned and stared at her.

'That,' he said slowly, 'might be the first properly nice thing I've ever heard you say about anybody. Let alone me.'

And Dracina giggled.

It came out of her before she could stop it. It wasn't the high, thin, mad giggle from the common room at Christmas. It was a real one, small and surprised and rather pretty, with her hand over her mouth, and it changed her whole face.

'I like that,' said Harry, without thinking. 'That giggle. You should do that instead of pout or sneer.'

She went pink to the ears and looked at the wall.

Harry looked at his hands.

'I've had a lot to think about,' he said. 'Tonight. Down there. And on the way up. And I think...' He made himself say it. 'I think you want to be my friend. I think that's what all of it's been. The whole year. All of it's been you wanting to be my friend and not knowing how to say it.'

Dracina didn't answer for a long time. When she spoke, she didn't look at him.

'I don't know what I really want,' she said quietly. 'I've been trying to work it out since September and I'm no closer.' Her fingers twisted in the blanket. 'Father came to see me. Just now. Before you. He stood at the end of this bed and he told me, in that voice, the one he uses for Ministry people, that I was not to make friends with Harry Potter. For my own safety. He said it very seriously. He said there were things I didn't understand, and that being close to you was a very dangerous place to stand, and that he had my best interests at heart.' She sighed. 'He's never once told me not to do something that I didn't then go and do.'

She lifted her chin. Some of the old look came back into her face, and Harry found, to his surprise, that he'd rather missed it.

'Fine,' she said. 'I'll be your friend, Potter. On one condition. You have to admit that I'm the superior witch. To you and to Granger. Out loud. Where people can hear.'

Harry laughed. He couldn't help it. It came out of him in a great incredulous bark that made Percy look round.

'Superior? You can't do a Shield Charm.'

'I can do a Shield Charm.'

'You can't. I've seen you try. You go Protego and then you duck.'

'That's technique.'

'No. That's hiding. And Hermione made Polyjuice Potion in a toilet. In her second year. What've you made?'

'I made a Basilisk come out of a wall, Potter, with my voice, while I was asleep...'

'That was Tom!'

'It was my mouth.'

'That doesn't count! That's like saying Ron's wand's brilliant because it keeps blowing up!'

'Weasley's wand is brilliant. It's the most dangerous object in this castle. It took out a whole tunnel.'

Harry was laughing properly now, and so, he realised, was she, with her head back against the pillows and the colour up in her face and her eyes bright, and it was a very strange thing, to be sitting on the end of Dracina Malfoy's bed at one in the morning, laughing. It was the first time, he thought, in nearly two years, that they'd ever talked for more than a minute without one of them walking off. And neither of them had said anything cruel. Not once.

The laughing died down. They sat for a moment in a surprisingly comfortable quiet.

'Harry,' said Dracina.

It was the first time she'd used his name to his face while he was awake to hear it. She seemed to realise that at the same moment he did, and went pink again, and ploughed on anyway.

'The man. Who was he?'

Harry went still.

'What man?'

'In the Chamber. When you fell. After you... after the diary.' She was watching him closely. 'You went down right next to me, and I was trying to get you up, I looked up and there was a man. Standing by the broken pillar. Just standing there, looking at you.' Her voice had dropped. 'Fair skin. Long hair, brown, down past his shoulders. A beard. He had a plain white robe on. Nothing on it. No badge, no house, nothing. And he was looking at you like...' She stopped. 'I don't know like what. I've never seen anybody look at anybody like that. Did you see him?'

Harry's mouth had gone dry.

He had seen him. He'd been quite sure, on the way up the pipe, that he'd imagined it. That it had been the venom, and the pain, and the dark. He'd nearly managed to put it away.

'Yes,' he said. 'I saw him.'

They looked at each other.

'He was there before, too,' Harry said slowly. 'Before I woke up. When I was... when it was bad. There was a voice. And then warm, all over. And then the bird. And when I got up I felt...' He couldn't find the word. 'Fine. Better than fine. As if somebody had fixed me. And then after, when I'd finished, it all came back, and he was just standing there. Watching. Looking pleased.' He swallowed. 'Looking proud.'

'That's what I saw,' Dracina whispered. 'That's exactly what I saw. And then I looked down at you, and when I looked up again he'd gone.'

Neither of them said anything for a bit.

For one wild moment, a thought went through Harry's head that he didn't dare say out loud. A man in white, with long hair and a beard, who'd been there when he was dying and who'd looked at him like that. He'd seen that face before. Not in the Chamber. In a stained-glass window, in a church, the one time Aunt Petunia had taken them all at Christmas because the Polkisses went and she wasn't going to be outdone. He'd been seven. He'd stared up at it all through the carols.

Jesus Christ.

Don't be stupid, he told himself. That's mad. That's completely mad.

Except that a few hours ago he'd pulled a flaming sword out of a hat and cut the head off a fifty-foot snake in a sewer under a castle full of wizards, so he wasn't entirely sure any more where mad began.

The Dursleys had never had any time for that sort of thing. Neither had anybody else he'd ever met in the Muggle world, come to that. It was something old people did, and Americans, and it was looked down on, politely, at Privet Drive, the way everything was that didn't involve a new car.

He didn't know what he thought. He found he was leaving this conversation with a great many more questions than he'd brought into it. Who had that man been? Was he really Jesus? Why had he bothered with Harry, of all people? And the voice, in the dark, before the phoenix. Your work is not yet done, my child. Whose voice had that been? Was it God?

He got up.

'I'd better go,' he said. 'Feast. And Hermione should be awake.'

Something flickered across Dracina's face at the name, and was smoothed away.

'Go on, then,' she said. 'Go and see your Mudbl...' She stopped herself. It cost her something. He saw it cost her. 'Go and see Granger,' she said instead, stiffly.

'Thanks,' said Harry. 'For Ginny's head. That was decent of you.'

He went.

He didn't think badly of her any more. He thought, walking back down the ward. He'd come in here not knowing what he thought, and he was going out knowing that, at least. Whatever she said to him next week, next month, next year, however nasty it came out, he'd know where it came from now. From being lonely. From being awkward. From having to keep up a face in front of the Slytherins. From a bit of hurt she didn't know how to put down. He'd try to remember that. He'd try to think well of her, even when she made it hard.

He had no idea at all that he was in love with her. That would take a while yet.

Dracina watched him go.

She watched him all the way down the ward, past the Weasleys, with her chin on her knees, and when the door swung shut behind him she went on looking at it.

Saint George, she thought.

Every wizarding child knew the story. He was in the picture books next to Merlin. He'd been a wizard, of course, whatever the Muggles said, the knight who rode out and killed the dragon that was eating a kingdom's daughters, and brought the princess home. Mother had a tapestry of him in the east drawing room. He had black hair.

Of course Harry was Saint George. Of course he was. She'd known it since Madam Malkin's, if she was honest, since the first time she'd looked at him and forgotten what to do with her hands. He was her knight. He'd come down into the dark and killed the Dragon and stood over her with a sword on fire, and one day, when everything was arranged properly, he would come and claim her, the way knights did in the stories.

He only needed to see it. And he would. Just as soon as she'd dealt with the thing that was standing in his light.

Just as soon as the Mudblood was out of the way.

'Miss Malfoy, dear.'

Dracina jumped.

Mrs Weasley was standing beside her bed. Dracina hadn't heard her come. She was a short, round, red-faced woman in a dressing gown, with her hair coming down, and she was smiling the sweetest, warmest, most motherly smile Dracina had ever seen in her life. She bent down and tucked the blanket in round Dracina's feet, and smoothed it, and patted it.

'I just wanted to say thank you,' she said softly. 'For Ginny's poor head. That was kind of you. You're a kind girl, underneath. I can always tell.'

'Th... thank you,' said Dracina.

'And I wanted to say one other thing.' Mrs Weasley sat down on the edge of the bed, and took Dracina's hand in both of hers, and held it. Her hands were warm and soft and rough from washing-up, and her smile never wavered, and her voice was like honey. 'If you break Harry's heart, I'll kill you slowly.'

She patted Dracina's hand.

'There,' she said. 'Drink your chocolate, dear, before it goes cold.'

And she went back across the ward to her daughter.

Dracina sat very still in the bed by the window, with her mouth open and her hot chocolate going cold, and nodded, slowly, at nobody.

Harry had been to a good many Hogwarts feasts, but never one quite like that one.

Everybody was in their pyjamas. Nobody had bothered to dress. The whole school had come stumbling down in slippers and dressing gowns at some hour past midnight, and the celebrations went on all night.

He saw Hermione before she saw him.

She was coming in through the great doors with Madam Pomfrey behind her, still a bit stiff, still blinking, with her hair standing out round her head like a hedge. And then she saw him, across the whole length of the Hall, and her face split open, and she ran.

'You solved it!' she shrieked, as she hit him. 'You solved it! You solved it!'

Harry caught her and hugged her and swung her round, and she was laughing and crying both at once into his neck, and he didn't care who was looking. It was the first time he'd ever hugged her first. He thought, dimly, that he probably should have done it before.

And he didn't feel it, because he couldn't have, but something stirred and woke in Hermione as she held on to him. Something that had been lying very quiet since the hospital wing in January. It stretched, and opened one eye.

But she'd learned. She'd learned in a bed with whiskers on her face, and she'd learned it well. She let go of him after a moment, and stepped back, and wiped her eyes, and smiled, and it was a perfectly ordinary smile.

'Where's Malfoy?' she said lightly. 'Ron said she was down there with you. Is she all right?'

'She's in the hospital wing,' said Harry. 'I've just come from talking to Dracina, actually. She's a bit shaken up, but she's...'

He didn't notice. He was already turning to wave at Ron.

Hermione noticed. Dracina. Not Malfoy. She noted it, and filed it, and said nothing whatever.

She thinks he'll be hers, Hermione thought, quite calmly, watching Harry go off down the table towards the Weasleys. That's what she thinks. She's wrong. But I'm not going to fight her the way I did. Not like that. That didn't work. That nearly cost me him.

I'll be his friend. His best friend. For as long as it takes. And when it's time, I'll deal with her.

She went and sat down next to Ron, and asked him, quite brightly, how the exams had gone.

Harry couldn't have said afterwards which part of that night was best. Justin hurrying over from the Hufflepuff table to wring his hand and apologise about fifteen times. Hagrid turning up at half past three in the morning, with Fawkes on his shoulder and the sea still on his coat, and clouting Harry and Ron so hard on the shoulders that they went face-first into their trifle. His and Ron's four hundred points taking the House Cup for Gryffindor for the second year running. Professor McGonagall standing up to announce that, as a treat, the exams had been cancelled ('Oh, no!' said Hermione). Or Dumbledore rising to say that, unfortunately, Professor Lockhart would not be returning next year, as he needed to go away and find his memory.

Quite a few of the teachers joined in the cheering that greeted this last piece of news. The Hogwarts Express, it turned out, would not be leaving in the morning after all. Even Snape, which nobody had expected. He clapped three times, quite loudly, with something very like enthusiasm, and then caught several people looking, and went back to glowering at once.

'Shame,' said Ron, helping himself to a jam doughnut. 'He was starting to grow on me.'

The rest of the summer term went by in a haze of hot, blazing sunshine.

Hogwarts went back to normal, with only a few small differences. Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons were cancelled ('but we've had loads of practice at that anyway,' Ron told a disgruntled Hermione), and Lucius Malfoy was sacked as a school governor. Dracina wasn't strutting about the castle any more as though she owned it. Quite the opposite. She looked sulky and resentful and kept her head down, and for some reason Harry couldn't work out, she wouldn't even speak to him. He tried twice. Both times she went red and walked off very fast, and once, when he looked back, she'd stopped at the end of the corridor and was watching him with an expression he couldn't read at all.

Ginny Weasley, on the other hand, was perfectly happy again.

And all too soon, it was time for the Hogwarts Express.

Harry had his trunk packed and his owl in her cage and was halfway across the Entrance Hall with Ron and Hermione when Dumbledore stepped out of the shadow of the great doors.

'Harry. A word, if I may. It won't take long.'

Ron and Hermione hung back. Harry went with him, out into the sunshine, to the top of the stone steps, where the carriages were waiting below, and the lake was blazing, and the whole school was streaming past them with their trunks.

Dumbledore didn't say anything for a moment. He was looking out at the lake. And Harry, looking up at him, saw that his face was wrong. It was set, and grey, and very old, and there was something in it that Harry had seen there only once before, in the hospital wing a year ago, when Dumbledore had looked away at the jackdaws.

'Harry,' Dumbledore said. 'You must go back to your aunt and uncle's house this summer.'

Harry didn't understand him.

He heard the words. They went in, and sat there, and made no sense. He'd been going to the Burrow. He'd been going to the Burrow since August. Mrs Weasley had said. As long as you want. Ron had said it a hundred times. You're ours now. Deal with it.

'What?' he said.

'You must go back to Privet Drive,' said Dumbledore quietly. 'Not to the Weasleys. I'm sorry.'

'No.' Harry heard his own voice go strange. 'No. I'm going to Ron's. Mrs Weasley said. She said. She said I could stay as long as I-'

'I know what she said. I've spoken to her.'

'Then...' The sense of it was starting to come through, and with it something else, something hot and rising. 'Then why? What did I do?'

It came out very small. Much smaller than he'd meant it to. He heard it, and hated it, and couldn't stop it.

'What did I do wrong?'

'Nothing.' Dumbledore turned to him, and his voice was fierce. 'You have done nothing wrong, Harry. Nothing. Not one thing. Do you hear me? This is not a punishment. If I could-'

'Then don't send me!' Harry's voice cracked right up the middle. He didn't care who heard. 'I'm not going back there! I'm not! You don't know what it's... you do know, you said you knew, you said you'd seen, the bars, and the cat flap, and the... I'm not going back. I won't. You can't make me. I'll run away. I'll go to the Burrow on my own, I'll walk, I'll...'

'Harry.'

'I'm not going back!'

He was crying. He realised it with a shock, the way you realise you've cut yourself. The tears were just there, pouring down, in the sunshine, in front of the whole school going past with their trunks, and he couldn't stop them, and he put his sleeve over his face and turned away.

Dumbledore put a hand on his shoulder.

'Listen to me,' he said, very low. 'Please. I will tell you why, and then you may hate me for it, and I shan't blame you. But listen.'

Harry didn't turn round. But he stopped trying to walk away.

'When your mother died for you, Harry, she put a protection on you. Old magic. Older than anything I can do. The magic of Elves, Harry. And of Númenor. It lives in your blood, and it lives in hers. And her blood is in one other living person in this world.' A pause. 'Your aunt.'

Harry went still.

'While you live under her roof, while you can call that house your home, Lord Voldemort cannot touch you there. Nor can anything he sends. Nor can a great many other things that are a good deal older and a good deal worse than he is, and that have, I am sorry to say, begun to take an interest in you.' Dumbledore's hand tightened. 'Here, at Hogwarts, I can protect you. There, at Privet Drive, your mother can. Anywhere else, Harry, anywhere else, even the Burrow, even surrounded by the Weasleys, who would every one of them die for you, you are a twelve-year-old boy that the most dangerous wizard alive wants dead. And he knows where you are. He always knows where you are.'

Harry was shaking.

'He came back this year,' Dumbledore said. 'Out of a book. He came for you through Dracina Malfoy and a diary, and he very nearly had you. I will not give him a second chance by putting you somewhere I cannot cover. I cannot. I'm sorry. I would give a very great deal for it to be otherwise.'

Harry turned round.

His face was wet and his glasses were smeared and he couldn't see properly, and he looked up at Dumbledore and saw, through the blur, that Dumbledore's own eyes were bright, and that his mouth was pressed into a hard line, and that he looked, for a moment, as though he hated himself more than anyone alive.

'So I have to go back,' Harry said.

It wasn't a question any more.

'Yes.'

Harry stood there in the sunshine and sobbed. Just for a minute. Quietly, with his shoulders going, the way children cry when they've learned that crying doesn't do any good. And then he stopped. He wiped his face with his sleeve, both sides, hard. He pushed his glasses up. He took a breath that shook, and another that shook less, and he nodded.

I've beaten Voldemort twice, he thought. I can do two months of Vernon Dursley. I can.

'Molly knows,' Dumbledore said gently. 'I told her last night. She was... not pleased with me. I don't think I have ever been shouted at quite like it, and I taught your Professor McGonagall.' A ghost of something went across his face and was gone. 'She wanted you to know that the moment it's safe, the very moment, the car will be outside your door. With or without bars.'

Harry nodded again. He couldn't speak.

'And Harry. One more thing. I want you to hear this.' Dumbledore bent a little, so that their eyes were level. 'It will be two months. Only two. And I have been to Privet Drive. I have spoken to your aunt and uncle myself. In person. In their front room.' His voice had gone very quiet, and very even, and there was something underneath it that made the hairs rise on Harry's arms. 'You have my word, Harry. They will never harm you again. Not a hand, not a word, not a locked door. I have made quite sure of it.'

Harry looked at him. He wanted to ask what that meant. What Dumbledore had done, in the front room at Privet Drive, to make Uncle Vernon sure of anything. But Dumbledore had straightened up, and the look was gone, and he was only an old man in the sunshine again.

'Please be strong,' Dumbledore said. 'I know I have no right to ask it.'

'I'll be all right,' said Harry.

He didn't know if it was true. But he said it, and he made his face do what it had to do, and he walked back down the steps.

Ron was waiting at the bottom. Ron had seen the whole thing.

He hadn't heard the words. But he'd seen Harry's face, and he'd seen Dumbledore's hand on Harry's shoulder, and he'd seen Harry cry, and he knew, the way Ron always knew. His ears had gone scarlet, and his fists were clenched at his sides, and he was glaring up at the top of the steps with a look that Harry had never once seen him give a teacher.

'He's sending you back,' Ron said. It wasn't a question. 'He's sending you back to them.'

'Ron...'

'After everything. After the car. After Mum said.' Ron's voice was shaking. 'What's the point of him? What's the actual point of him, if he can't even-'

'Ron. Don't.' Hermione had come up beside them. Her face was white. She'd seen it too. She didn't say anything else. She just put her arm through Harry's and held on.

And a long way off, across the lawn, by the carriages, where the Slytherins were loading their trunks, a girl with white-blonde hair was standing quite still with her hand over her mouth, watching the top of the steps. Crabbe and Goyle were looking at her, baffled. Daphne Greengrass was saying Dracina, what's the matter, what are you looking at? And Pansy had an arm round her and was saying it's all right, it's all right, you're still not well, that's all, come and sit down.

Dracina didn't answer any of them. She was crying, silently, without seeming to know she was doing it, with her eyes fixed on a small, thin, black-haired boy coming down a flight of stone steps with his face wiped and set. Her knight. Her knight, who had gone into the dark for her and come out with a sword on fire, and who was being sent back, for two months, to the people with the bars.

I'll make it right, she thought. I don't know how. But I'll make it right. For both of us.

Pansy led her gently away.

'It's okay,' Harry said, as the three of them walked down to the carriages. Ron was still seething. Hermione was still holding his arm. 'It's okay. Honestly. Dumbledore's wise. He knows what he's doing.'

He said it, and he believed it, and he went on believing it all the way to the station, because he had to. If Dumbledore wasn't wise, if Dumbledore wasn't good and kind and right, then there was nobody at the top of the steps at all, and Harry couldn't live in a world like that. So he held on to it, like he was holding on to a broom that was trying to throw you off, and nobody could reach him there, and nobody tried.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George and Ginny got a compartment to themselves.

They made the most of the last few hours before they were forbidden to do magic for the summer. They played Exploding Snap, and set off the very last of Fred and George's Filibuster fireworks, and practised disarming each other up and down the compartment, with Ron, who had no wand left to be disarmed of, keeping score and shouting the count. Harry was getting very good at it. Ron said it wasn't fair, since Harry had had Snape to copy, Hermione said that was exactly how one learned. Ron said that Hermione was welcome to go and copy Snape and see how she liked it, Hermione threw a Chocolate Frog at him. The sun came and went through the windows. The fields rolled by, green and gold.

They were nearly at King's Cross when Harry remembered something.

'Ginny,' he said. 'What did you see Percy doing? That he didn't want you to tell anyone?'

'Oh, that,' said Ginny, and giggled. 'Well. Percy's got a girlfriend.'

Fred dropped a pile of books on George's head.

'Oh,' said Ron, who'd spent the last six weeks quite sure Percy had been caught at something entirely different. 'What?'

'It's that Ravenclaw Prefect. Penelope Clearwater,' said Ginny. 'That's who he was writing to all last summer. He's been meeting her all over the school in secret. I walked in on them kissing in an empty classroom one day. He was so upset when she was... you know. Attacked.' She looked round at them anxiously. 'You won't tease him, will you?'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' said Fred, looking as though his birthday had come early.

'Definitely not,' said George, sniggering.

The Hogwarts Express slowed, and stopped.

Harry pulled out his quill and a scrap of parchment, and turned to Ron and Hermione.

'This is called a telephone number,' he said, writing it out twice, tearing the parchment in half, and giving them one each. 'I told your dad how to use a telephone last summer. He'll know. Ring me at the Dursleys. Okay? I can't do two months with nobody to talk to but Dudley...'

'Your aunt and uncle will be proud of you, though, won't they?' said Hermione, as they climbed down onto the platform and joined the crowd pushing towards the barrier. 'When they hear what you did this year?'

'Proud?' said Harry. 'Are you mad? All those chances to die, and I didn't manage it once. They'll be furious.'

And together, the three of them walked back through the gateway into the Muggle world.

The station was loud and grey and ordinary. Somewhere beyond the crowd, Harry knew, Uncle Vernon was waiting with his moustache and his car and his face. He could feel the Burrow going away from him with every step, and the summer coming up to meet him, two months long, with bars on it.

And Harry did something he had never done in his life.

He stopped, just for a second, in the middle of the concourse, with his trunk and his owl, and he touched his forehead, and his chest, and his left shoulder, and his right. He made the sign of the Cross. He did it clumsily. He wasn't sure he'd got it the right way round. He felt very silly about it all. Yet he knew what he saw down in the Chamber. More and more so as he dwelt on the memory. He'd only ever seen the sign of the cross done once, by an old woman in a church, through the gap in the carols, a long time ago.

Please, he thought. He didn't know who to. Please. Just get me through it.

No matter what Harry thought at the time. God was listening, watching, and would make sure Harry was safe.

Then Harry picked up his trunk, and went to find the Dursleys.