Harry Potter and the Final Prophecy

-- Chapter Eight --

    Under Occupation

Suddenly minute black insects or unidentifiable creatures began trickling and then swarming into the cell under the door, gathering in a seething mass on the floor in front of him, building up into a heap like an anthill as more and more entered. Fascinated, but increasingly apprehensive, Harry watched as the mound reached several feet in height and recognisable features began to form, a clawlike three-fingered hand with curving talons, a head with a single bulbous cyclopean eye ... Harry backed away as the creature completed reassembling itself and started to move purposefully towards him. He was forced hard against the wall as its claws reached for his throat. 'Diffindo!' he shouted, and the creature fell apart into its termite-like corpuscles, but these immediately began reforming again.

He turned to the wall in a haze of panic, willing it to vanish, 'evanesco,' he said, and suddenly the way before him was clear, the solid wall replaced by an entrance into a further rock tunnel which curved steeply downwards. He ran along this as fast as he could go, leaving the Cyclops trailing behind. There were no cells or vaults leading off this passage, and it quickly narrowed to a crudely cut flue of jagged rocks, which he guessed was part of the raw cave system on which Gringotts was built. There was no phosphorescence to light the way, only glints of dim illumination from the tunnel behind. He stumbled in the near darkness, cutting his hands against the jagged surfaces.

The draft of air rushing past him became stronger and stronger, and a sound like flowing water grew louder. He struggled the final few feet up a loose ramp of scree to the entrance of the tunnel. He was standing on the gravel bank of a fast-flowing underground river; driven by desperate thirst he ran down to the water's edge and drank the icy water as fast as he could swallow it. Only once his throat stopped feeling like the surface of the Sahara did he pause and look around. The river was merely a few feet wide, on the other side was a similar bank of stones, and beyond it a sheer rock wall which rose up and up ... he gazed in stupefaction at the sight above him. The river was running along the bottom of a gigantic underground ravine whose sides towered vertically up beyond sight, so high that they seemed to meet in some indefinite distance miles above. He could just make out bridges or roadways crossing the canyon at many different points hundreds of feet above him. He sank onto the rocks, totally demoralised, realising that he must be so far underground that there was no hope of escape.

The Cyclops, now dissociated again, was still creeping towards him across the rocks like a blight of the stone. Harry waded into the freezing stream, hoping that it would be unable to cross. Once on the other side, he started walking upstream, feeling like an ant edging along the bottom of this colossal crack in the Earth. The Cyclops followed on the opposite bank, easily matching his tired progress across the loose sliding shale.

After several hours he came to a rock archway which opened onto another endless staircase of shallow goblin-sized steps. He tried to see how high it went, but he could only catch a glimpse of hundreds of flights of stairs before the shaft simply disappeared up into darkness above him. He spent a day climbing, managing to drink from the condensation on the walls, but he realised he was ascending more and more slowly all the time as the lack of food, and now the lack of hope, wore away at him.

Soon after waking from another tortured sleep on the stairs and resuming his laboured ascent, he noticed sounds coming from above, and currents of air, indicating an opening in the shaft. He went more carefully, creeping up to an archway which opened onto a wide cross-passageway on which there were several railway tracks. The sound of voices and carts came in the distance. Once he was sure there was no-one near he dashed across the archway and continued to climb. For a while he was encouraged that he was coming closer to the occupied parts of Gringotts, and ultimately the surface, but the monotonous series of stairways continued all through the rest of the day with no interruption.

At last, when he had almost given up hope again, the stairway came to an end, a final flight of steps ascending to a stone archway onto another busy thoroughfare. He was just about to peer round the side of this to check if it was safe to leave, when the rattle of a cart coming along the tunnel forced him to retreat again. After it had passed he chanced a quick look, the passageway was wide and well-lit, with numerous other passages opening off it. He selected the darkest and smallest of these, about 100 yards away, and waited until the last sounds of the cart had died away in the distance before sprinting down the main passageway and into the side tunnel. This was cold and dark and had no vaults leading off it. Harry noticed numerous goblin bootprints and the trackmarks of wheels, however, so continued cautiously along the passage, which remained level while curving almost imperceptibly to the left, away from the colossal gorge.

After ten minutes he came to another junction with a busy avenue. Opposite there were a number of side tunnels leading onwards, and he paused, crouching down to conceal himself, to decide which one to follow. A movement near the entrance caught his eye. A rat was watching him, peering out from the end of a pipe high in the tunnel wall ... a rat with a silver paw ... As soon as Wormtail realised that Harry had spotted him, he whipped around and scurried away down the pipe. Harry stood still for a moment in shock before the distant sound of goblin carts coming closer brought him back to his senses and he hid until they had passed, then crossed the avenue and crept on along a dipping and curving side passageway, hoping desperately to find a route up to the surface. Wormtail must have entered through such a route, he reasoned, since apparition was impossible, so this tunnel could not be very far underground. But a sewer pipe big enough only for a rat was of no use to him ...

The passage terminated at another brightly-lit main tunnel, but this time there were no onward side tunnels. The sound of voices and railway carts came from the distance. He peered round the entrance. On the left the main passage sloped up to a doorway, and the railway tracks seemed to begin there. Several empty carts waited on sidings. As he watched, the doorway opened and a pair of goblins, carrying a large crate, came through. He just caught a glimpse of the gleaming white marble lobby of the Gringotts building on Diagon Alley before the doors closed, the goblins mounted an empty cart and started speeding down the corridor towards him. He ducked behind the rim of the side tunnel again, his heart pounding with a mixture of elation and apprehension. He had nearly made it, but somehow he would have to reach the door along the busy corridor, and then cross the lobby itself ... he wished he already knew how to do the Disillusionment Charm, or even better, become invisible without a cloak ...

Once silence descended again he crept out into the main passage and started cautiously heading for the doorway, staying close to the tunnel side. But he had barely gone five feet when an angry shout came from behind him. He whipped round, dropping to the floor as he did so. A goblin guard stood there, staring at him in amazement. 'STUPEFY' Harry yelled, pointing at the goblin, and a blaze of red light radiated from his hand and knocked the guard over. Not waiting to see if he was unconscious, Harry sprinted for the doorway. But before he could reach it, more shouts came from behind, and the doorway opened and several goblins appeared, blocking his way. He halted, about ten goblins were advancing on him from ahead and behind, he was surrounded. The goblins raised their forefingers and a web of blue light sprung up around him, sweeping him off his feet and stunning him into unconsciousness.

He woke some unknowable time later lying on a wooden bed platform in a cell almost identical to the one he'd escaped from days before. He could hear several guards outside the door, talking in their incomprehensible staccato language. He sat on the bed platform feeling totally dispirited and hopeless, his head in his hands. He had come so close to getting away, yet after everything he'd done to escape from here he had failed, he could see no solution at all. A plate of food and a glass of water appeared on the platform and he consumed them automatically, his mind numb with exhaustion. Suddenly there were cries of panic outside, and barked orders. A loud CRACK sounded in the corner of his cell and he whipped round in shock to see Dobby standing there, grinning at him and clutching Dumbledore's favourite portkey kettle and a large bulging sack, which was wriggling.

'How did you get in?' he asked, stunned.

'House-elf apparition is different from Wizard's apparition, sir,' Dobby explained, 'you have to touch this kettle, right away, sir, it will take you out of here.' He put the kettle down on the floor.

'But ...,' Harry swallowed his questions and reached out his hand to the portkey, almost afraid to hope that he could at last escape from Gringotts. As he touched the handle the familiar jerking sensation swept him up into a whirl of movement and unintelligible shapes until abruptly he crashed onto a flagstone floor.

Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were standing over him, looking down at him with expressions of relief and concern. 'Are you alright, Harry?' Dumbledore asked, helping him to his feet and leading him to a huge velvet-covered armchair which he sank into, still numb with shock.

'He looks half-starved, Albus,' said McGonagall, magicking a plate of sandwiches out of thin air and pressing them into Harry's hands.

'Where? How?' he began, looking around at the elegant gothic archways and windows and ornate furniture of this large high-ceilinged room.

'Madam Maxime has graciously allowed us to use part of her school to continue your education this year,' Dumbledore explained.

'Go on, eat!' interrupted Professor McGonagall, 'you look as if you haven't had a good meal in weeks.'

Harry managed half of a ham sandwich before the dozens of questions in his head became impossible to suppress. 'Are Ron and Hermione and Sirius ok, and Hagrid ... ?'

'Yes, they're all fine. Once you've rested you can go to see Ron and Hermione. Sirius is in hospital in ...' Dumbledore just stopped himself telling Harry the location in time. Harry glared at him. '... a safe place. And Hagrid is away on business for the order,' finished Dumbledore, smiling. 'But it was you we were all worried about, you seemed to have vanished off the face of the Earth, as indeed you had!'

'What did the goblins want with me? Why did they try and keep me prisoner?' Harry asked, stuffing the remainder of the sandwich in his mouth to appease McGonagall's glare.

'Well it seems our friend Ragnok was being a bit too clever for his own good. He realised that Voldemort was about to take over, and he knew that Voldemort was still obsessed with killing you, so he thought you would be a good bargaining counter, to help the goblins cut a deal with the new regime and get more freedoms and power than they had under the Ministry. But what he didn't understand is that Voldemort has no more respect for keeping a deal than the goblins. As soon as Voldemort learned where you were, he planned his own attempt to capture you. And, just in time, we also discovered that you were being held at Gringotts ...'

At that moment Dobby appeared with a loud CRACK, his sack was now empty but he was clutching a wand, which he held out to Harry. 'Your wand, Harry Potter, sir,' he said, bowing.

Harry took the wand, staring at it in amazement. The feeling of warmth that filled his hand and spread up his arm as he held it confirmed that it was indeed his own. 'How ...?' he asked weakly.

'I created a diversion, sir, with some nifflers, those goblins are scared of 'em getting loose in case they gets into their treasure and tears it apart ...'

'Dobby, that was brilliant, how can I ever thank you?' he said.

'T'was not me, sir, it was Professor Dumbledore's idea, sir,' said the elf, covering his face with his hands in embarrassment at Harry's praise.

'Finish your sandwiches, Potter,' said McGonagall sternly, with a smile.

     *

After he'd been checked over by Madam Pomfrey, who tutted in amazement over how much weight he'd lost, and prescribed him double helpings at each meal and a week excused from lessons, Professor McGonagall took him to the basement that the Gryffindors were using as their common room. As soon as he opened the heavy iron-banded door he was mobbed by people demanding his story, Ron, Hermione and Ginny in the lead.

'Christ, Harry, you look like a right state, what on earth happened to you?' asked Dean.

Finally Harry managed to satisfy the curiosity of the crowd and got away from them to talk to Ron and Hermione in one of the many alcoves and subchambers of the vast porticoed room. He was surprised to see Crookshanks, who leapt onto his lap as soon as he sat down, and sniffed interestedly at his dragon-singed robes.

'Did many people manage to escape?' he asked, stroking the cat's ears.

'All the Gryffindors are here, and most of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. But all the Slytherins stayed, of course,' said Hermione.

'What about the staff?'

'Hagrid had a bit of a battle to get away, his giants took on some of Voldemort's giants, and there were dementors and some other horrible things running around as well, I think that was what attacked Sirius. But Flitwick and Madam Pomfrey and Vanadair are here. Trelawney has disappeared, no-one knows what's happened to her, and Firenze managed to escape but he's still in the forest somewhere. And Snape is the new headmaster.'

'Snape! So he did betray Dumbledore.'

'Yeah,' Ron said angrily, 'he must have known about the attack in advance, and deliberately got McGonagall out of the way, so he could just hand it over to You-Know-Who without a fight.'

'But he seemed genuinely shocked by the attack,' Harry recalled, 'as if Voldemort had kept it a secret from him, meaning that Voldemort no longer trusted him, even.'

'Maybe that was all just part of the act, to stop us doing anything and keep us penned up somewhere so You-Know-Who could just walk in and slaughter us.'

'No, look at it logically,' said Hermione, frowning in concentration, 'either Voldemort mistrusted him and didn't warn him in advance about the attack, in which case he's somehow managed to regain Voldemort's trust, or, he did know -- and told Dumbledore, and perhaps this is all part of Dumbledore's plans?'

'That's mad,' said Ron, shocked, 'how can it be in Dumbledore's plans to lose Hogwarts?'

'Well, the important thing is to defeat Voldemort, eventually. For that what matters is for Dumbledore himself to survive, and other members of the order. It's people that count in the end, not places ...'

And I need to be kept safe, thought Harry grimly to himself, until the time comes when Dumbledore plans to use me to destroy Voldemort ... I'm just a tool, a weapon, and I don't need to be told _how_ I'm going to be used, or when ...

'How did you escape from the cave?' he asked.

'I managed to waylay an owl, soon after you left, and sent a message to Dumbledore. Then Crookshanks came and found us, the clever thing. An hour later Professor Lupin turned up with a portkey which brought us all here, so it was easy really.'

'We saw Aberforth get killed, though,' said Ron grimly, 'a gang of Death Eaters attacked the Hog's Head, there's nothing but a pile of rubble left now.'

'They went from door to door,' said Hermione, her hands trembling, 'taking away people they didn't approve of, including all the Muggle-borns probably ... but the whole country will be like that now.'

'Are your parents over here as well?' Harry asked.

'No, but they're safe, as long as, well, there has been an arrangement to protect them, ever since the holidays,' she said carefully.

'Mum and Dad and Bill are still over there, working undercover for the order,' Ron said in a worried voice, 'I haven't heard from them in a week, but Fred and George got away in time and have set up shop and are causing their usual mayhem in the French Diagon Alley in Paris, ''Alder mazey" or something like that.'

'''Allee de magie",' Hermione corrected with a smile.

'What about Percy?' Harry asked.

'Oh he's still working for Fudge, of course,' Ron said contemptuously, 'Fudge is head of ''Muggle Affairs", whatever that means, and Lucius Malfoy is minister for magic instead ... it's mad, completely mad.'

Finally they went to the dormitory, which led off the common room through elegant gothic arches, and was divided into fourteen separate chambers for their bedrooms. Although smaller than Gryffindor tower, it was, like the rest of Beauxbatons, very warm and comfortable.

Nonetheless, after a couple of weeks, Harry found himself losing patience with the excessively opulent surroundings and the very regimented and formal atmosphere of the school. The business about standing up at every meal and lesson when the teachers entered, and the emphasis on discipline and appearance was becoming very tiresome. The third time he was told off by a Beauxbatons prefect for looking 'minable' (shabby) he rounded on the boy, who was younger by at least a year, and told him, using English words that needed no translation, exactly where to take his supercilious attitude.

The food also seemed somewhat peculiar, either almost tasteless or with tastes that Harry found hard to imagine anyone could consider enjoyable. One lunchtime Ron started hungrily chewing a steak only to immediately gag on it when he realised it was almost raw and inedible. Harry was not surprised to see that at the Hogwarts teachers table only Professor Vanadair was eating with enthusiasm, the others were politely slicing minute portions from the blood-saturated slabs of meat and reluctantly putting them in their mouths.

'C'mon, Ron, make an effort,' Hermione urged him, 'it's a French speciality.'

'That's easy for you to say, Hermione,' Harry commented, noticing that she had again insisted on the vegetarian option.

'Well of course, I, personally, don't feel that it is right to kill animals for food, but since you've chosen to eat meat you should follow the customs of the country that has generously accepted us.'

They ended up sharing Hermione's glutinous cheese dish, the smell of which reminded Harry unpleasantly of the stairway of decaying corpses in his visions of the descent to hell.

Animals were not allowed in the dining hall, so instead the post owls waited during breakfast in wire cages in the entrance hall, which were labelled with the letter of the recipient's surname. Harry was hoping for some message from Sirius or Hagrid, so checked these cages every morning, but there had been nothing yet in the ''P" cage for him. Now however, as they left after lunch, he noticed a large screech owl standing in the cage, staring unblinkingly at him. Heart sinking, he saw that its envelope was in the standard official Ministry of Magic style, and was addressed to him. He read the letter with a mixture of incredulity and disgust.

Dear Mr Potter, Since we have received no reply from you to our letter of 1st November, asking you to account for your four violations of the law concerning unlicensed use of apparition, subsequent to your violation of the law on 31st October, it is my duty to inform you that a hearing will be held on Monday 8th December to determine the sentence for these offences. Your attendance at this hearing, to be held at the Ministry of Magic at 9.30am, is requested.

Hoping you are well, Yours sincerely, Mafalda Hopkirk Improper Use of Magic Office Ministry of Magic London

Harry showed the parchment to Ron and Hermione. 'Oh, that's ridiculous!' said Hermione, 'that's just typical of the Ministry, wasting time on trivial offences while far more serious crimes are being carried out in their name.'

'It's a trap,' Ron said, 'don't even think about going there.'

They went downstairs for their study period in the common room. 'Well, of course not,' agreed Harry, 'but it just gives them an official reason to arrest me, doesn't it, when I do return ...' He sat down beside them near a window and started taking his work out of his bag, wondering again how, or even, if, they could ever return home.

Many of the parents of the Hogwarts students had also fled to France, together with many other wizard refugees from Britain, and several Aurors and Ministry wizards who were unwilling to serve the new regime. Harry spared a brief thought for the Dursleys, but as yet Voldemort seemed not to have taken any new measures against Muggles.

Lessons at Beauxbatons were similar to those at Hogwarts, except for Potions and Care of Magical Creatures, which were given by Beauxbatons teachers. Professor Pierrepoint, a fastidious small French wizard who spoke almost incomprehensible English, gave Potions, and Professor Gnyevski, a burly Russian wizard, took Care of Magical Creatures. Unfortunately Professor Gnyevski seemed to have a similar taste in magical creatures to Hagrid. Hermione groaned when they arrived for their first lesson to find a vicious-looking winged serpent tethered to a pole, snarling and spitting as it tried to reach the students with its fangs.

Finally, three weeks after he'd arrived, Professor McGonagall asked him and Ron and Hermione to stay behind after Transfiguration, and then led them down through several levels of basements in the palace until they arrived at a small room where Sirius lay propped up on a bed, grinning at them as they entered. Although he still looked very ill, he seemed his usual ebullient self as Harry told him the story of his escape from Gringotts and Sirius explained that the French ministry had given him a pardon 'Dumbledore vouched for me, and Kingsley gave evidence, he'd been questioning Wormtail before the Ministry collapsed, so I'm a free man, here at least.'

He offered them a cup each of his revivifying potion, a strange steaming purplish brew, only telling them after they'd drunk it that it consisted mainly of salamander blood ... While Ron and Harry laughed at Sirius's jokes, Hermione still seemed worried about something. Finally, Professor McGonagall ushered them back upstairs, leaving Harry alone with his godfather.

'Harry,' Sirius said quietly, when the others had gone, 'here is what I was trying to bring you when the castle was attacked.' He took a small package from the inner pocket of his robes.

Harry could see it was a leather-bound book entitled ''Forbidden Sorcery: Volume 3" and published by a company in Knockturn Alley. A snake motif was outlined in green on the cover, and a skull on the binding.

'Why do you want me to have it?' Harry asked suspiciously, wondering why Sirius was being so secretive about this.

'It contains instructions for performing the Avada Kedavra curse,' Sirius said calmly.

'I don't need it!' Harry said vehemently. He had deliberately avoided learning how to throw the killing curse, afraid that he would use it in a state of anger or panic ... and destroy a life for no reason.

'But you will need it, this year. I'm sure Dumbledore knows this. I overheard something I was not supposed to hear, about a new prophecy that seems to have been made, by that old fraud Trelawney ... but I guess she must occasionally get a prediction correct by the laws of chance, if nothing else ...'

'Dumbledore wouldn't let me die if he knew how to protect me!' Harry protested.

'Dumbledore does not want you to die, of course, but if it is a choice between one person dying, or a thousand, or tens of thousands dying ... he would have to make the first choice, even though it might tear his heart to do it.'

'Well, so would I make that choice.' Harry said, although he was feeling numb with fear of the future.

'Even if it was you who must die?'

'Yes. Wouldn't you do the same?' Harry challenged him.

'Perhaps. But I will not sacrifice you to save the world, neither would your parents have done.' He stared at Harry, almost in tears, 'It was because of the mistake I made sixteen years ago that James and Lily lost their lives, I will not let you die as well because of a mistake, or inaction, of mine.'

'My parents would not have wanted me to kill, either,' Harry said, his own voice thick with emotion.

'This is Voldemort we're talking about,' Sirius said, staring at Harry incredulously, 'a creature of pure evil, the creature that murdered your parents! Killing him is not murder, Harry, it is more like putting down a dangerous beast.'

'He is human, however much he might want to deny that, his emotions ... are much like yours or mine. If anyone should know that, I do. And how can good result from actions that are themselves evil?'

'You sound just like Dumbledore,' Sirius said scathingly, 'that kind of philosophy is fine when you're 150 years old, Harry, but in the real world you are facing death, very soon, at the hands of Voldemort. I have touched death, I have been through the portal of death, and I don't want you to experience that, to lose the chance of life, before you've even begun to live,' he said with a shiver of horror.

Harry felt completely torn between his loyalty to Sirius and his horror of learning to kill. He felt that to take someone's life, even Voldemort's, would place him on the same level as Voldemort, and on the side of evil.

'Take it!' Sirius insisted, holding out the book.

'No,' Harry said firmly.

'Please,' Sirius pleaded with him, 'I nearly sacrificed my own life bringing it to you.'

'OK,' said Harry, finally, 'but I'm not going to learn how to kill, I'm simply not.'