Harry Potter and the Final Prophecy

     -- Chapter Ten --

     Durmstrang

By February, Sirius finally seemed well enough to leave Beauxbatons, but was not permitted to tell them where he was going. Harry bid him a sad farewell, wondering once more if this was the last time they'd ever see each other.

Despite the increasing workload in their subjects, the lessons were still very interesting. In Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall had them attempting to turn their desks into a succession of different animals, Hermione managed a pig, deer and augurey, but for some reason was stumped by the final transformation, to an eagle. Harry and Ron barely managed to add a curly tail to their own desk, which waggled forlornly. In Defence Against the Dark Arts they had reached the Unforgivable Curses, and Professor Vanadair was teaching them about the very advanced and difficult magic used to release a person from the Imperius curse and to conjure a shield against the Cruciatus curse. She didn't seem to be aware of Neville's background and the fact that his parents had been driven insane by the use of Cruciatus on them by Bellatrix Lestrange and other Death Eaters. Neville however gave no sign that the curse held associations of particular horror for him, but instead worked with grim intensity on mastering the counter-spell.

There was no further news of Voldemort's schemes until the middle of the month, when Seamus turned up for Charms, white with shock and clutching a letter. In the usual chaos of the lesson (they were supposed to be practising levitating each other; Professor Flitwick was busy trying to bring Dean back to earth after Neville had sent him crashing painfully into the ceiling) Harry managed to ask Seamus what was wrong. `It's my folks,' he said with a worried expression. `They've had to go on the run, You-Know-Who has attacked the Irish Ministry and taken over control there.'

The unfriendly attitude of the Beauxbatons pupils towards the Hogwarts students was not improved by this latest evidence of Voldemort's ambitions. Many seemed to regard the British refugees as a source of danger, increasing the risk that Voldemort would try to seize their own country and attack the school.

Hermione, one of the few Hogwarts students who knew passable French, did attempt to make friends with some Beauxbatons finalists, although this was not very successful, probably, as Harry reflected wryly, because her idea of friendship was to tell other people what they should be doing.

     *

On the first of March Harry was woken by the first rays of dawn sunlight shining in through the dormitory windows, and noticed that Ron was already up and sitting on his bed, examining a new broomstick with an expression halfway between incredulity and ecstasy.

`What is it?' Harry asked quietly.

Ron turned the gleaming handle to show him the inscription `Nimbus 5000' in gold lettering on the shaft.

`Where did that come from?' Harry asked, mystified.

`Well, it's my birthday today, you know, so I guess it was probably Hermione,' Ron said with an embarrassed grin. `Unless it was you of course.'

`No, no it wasn't me, I didn't know it was your birthday, sorry about that,' Harry apologised, as the other final year Gryffindors, Neville, Dean and Seamus, started to stir and get up. Ron quickly re-wrapped the broomstick and hid it under his bed before they could spot it and ask awkward questions.

`Er, thanks,' Ron muttered to Hermione as they met up in the common room. She grinned sheepishly.

`Was it ok?' she asked.

`Yeah, of course, brilliant, unbelievable really ...' he said fervently as they climbed the stairs to breakfast.

Ron kept returning to the dormitory during the rest of the day to gaze in reverence at the Nimbus, and after dinner he took it out for a test flight over the Beauxbatons lawns, watched enviously by Harry, who regretted the loss of his Firebolt more than anything else he'd left behind in the escape from Hogwarts, apart from Hedwig.

Over the next week Ron and Hermione spent much more time together away from Harry. Late on Friday evening he trudged despondently back alone to the common room from the library, but paused at the door, which was ajar, and as he looked in he could see them embracing again, completely oblivous to his presence. He quickly looked away, but not before he'd seen that this time they were kissing intimately, lips to lips, obviously very much in love ... His stomach contracted in dismay and disappointment. He crept away from the common room feeling a tremendous emptiness and regret that he had never experienced such love, or to love in this way in return, and that perhaps he would never know it ...

     *

The following Monday evening Harry was irritated by spasmodic pains in his scar, which he seemed unable to banish. At each surge of pain came a strange but sinister emotion that he couldn't identify, but which he knew originated from Voldemort's mind. He took several hours to get to sleep as the grunts and snores of Ron and the others sounded intermittently around him. And immediately, it seemed, he was trapped in a nightmare, dreaming that the palace was under attack, surrounded by flashes of light as spells smashed windows and walls, the screams and crashes of panicking students coming from all directions, and he was trying to move, to escape or help, but he was paralysed and frozen motionless in bed. His memory was also confused and fragmentary, yet in one portion of his brain he realised that the attack was really happening, and that he was imprisoned in his dream, struggling to move or even think enough to leave a memory, an understanding, a decision about what to do ... He felt the room shudder and a voice, Ron's voice, shouting at him to wake up, shaking him ... the incoherent mass of light and sounds swept around him again as the noise of the attack intensified. He felt himself being lifted from the bed, trying to move as if drugged, his limbs without feeling or sense of position.

He sank in and out of consciousness, momentarily believing himself to be back at primary school, confused by the shouts and screams of the playground, then at Privet Drive, as owls crashed into windows and Uncle Vernon roared in anger ... he was being carried quickly out of the common room by Ron and Dean, he realised, as he fought to clear his mind. Even his lips felt numb, but by exerting all his willpower he managed to stutter, `Let me down ... I'll try to walk ...' He stumbled and sank to his knees, unable to feel the floor or command his muscles as the panic-stricken faces of the other Gryffindor students swept past him. He could see Hermione waving her wand at him and muttering a hasty incantation and with a surge of relief Harry felt the dream paralysis lifting and found himself slowly regaining control of his limbs and normal awareness. He managed to stand and stagger down the corridor after the others as they dashed to the stairs up to the entrance hall. Dozens of other terrified Hogwarts students were pouring out of the dormitories behind them as Dean and Ginny, in the lead, leapt up the stairs, followed by Neville, Ron and Hermione. When they reached the hall it was filled with confused Beauxbatons students milling around, unsure of what was happening. Suddenly there were loud shouts of `Impedimenta!', `Crucio!' and `Stupefy!' and dozens of red beams lanced through the crowds, which parted, with screams of panic, and Harry could see the masked and sinister figures of at least ten Death Eaters, advancing straight towards them. He ran at full speed into a side corridor, urging Ron and the others to follow, they raced down it desperately as the Death Eaters closed on them, beams of spells ricocheting off the walls. Suddenly Ginny gave a shriek of horror and Harry looked round to see Dean collapsing in a blaze of green light and falling lifeless onto the floor. Sobbing uncontrollably, Ginny tried hopelessly to drag the body with them but Harry grabbed her and pulled her away, `Come on!' he urged her as she resisted him, `they'll kill us all if we delay!' More lethal spells shot around them as they came to a crossing of corridors.

Harry was about to plunge on ahead when Antonin Dolohov and another Death Eater suddenly appeared in front of them. Dolohov grinned in amusement at their terror and made a slashing movement with his wand, Harry dived to his left to dodge the curse and rolled head over heels, picked himself up and charged along the narrow corridor, suddenly realising that he was alone and the others must still be trapped. He stopped and turned around but a short man was hurtling towards him, aiming his wand with lethal intent. Harry was already running desperately again before his mind had time consciously to recognise the figure as Wormtail.

The corridor was a dead-end, only a single doorway at its end. Harry dived inside as Wormtail chased after him. Frantically he looked around the room, but it was only a windowless small office, with no means of escape. He backed against the desk as Wormtail burst in, a snarl of triumph twisting his rat-like face. He shouted `Expelliarmus!' too fast for Harry to react, and Harry's wand shot out of his hand and into Wormtail's grasp. Harry could see that Pettigrew was preparing to kill him, and his mind spun desperately trying to find a way to escape. He couldn't believe that it would all end like this ... But momentarily, Wormtail hesitated, his wand pointing straight at Harry's heart, his mouth frozen in the act of shouting the fatal curse. Suddenly he whipped round as the sound of someone running towards the room came from behind him. Before Harry could take advantage of this distraction, a cry of `Avada Kedavra!' in what was unmistakably Sirius's voice, came from the corridor, and a pulse of green light blazed into the room and threw Wormtail to the ground, where he remained, as suddenly motionless and lifeless as a statue. Sirius stormed into the room, gasping for breath, and gave the corpse a savage kick.

`Sirius, there was no need to kill him!' Harry whispered in shock, horrified at seeing yet another senseless death.

`It was the only way, Harry,' Sirius said angrily, `and he deserved it, for betraying your parents, for all the crimes he's committed at Voldemort's behest ... the world is better off without that piece of filth.' The sound of several people running along the corridor made them both turn round apprehensively, but it was only Lupin with Hermione, Ron, Neville and Ginny. Lupin stopped as soon as he saw the dead body of Wormtail on the floor, and looked critically at Sirius, but did not say anything to him.

`You must get away from here, Harry,' he said urgently, handing his wand back to him, `we'll take you all to the boundary of the school and you can apparate from there.'

Harry noticed that Neville was limping, and bleeding from a deep gash across his forehead, and that Ginny was still ashen-faced, trembling with shock, as they cautiously followed Lupin and Sirius back down the corridor. The unconscious body of a Death Eater that Harry didn't recognise lay at the intersection of the corridors. `How did you get away?' Harry asked Ron as Lupin conjured bindings from thin air and lashed them around the man's wrists and ankles and levitated him along behind them.

`The order turned up just in time,' said Ron, grasping Ginny's shoulder to prevent her turning back to where Dean's dead body lay, `Dad, Sirius, Lupin, Kingsley, Tonks, and they fought off the Death Eaters. Then we realised you were missing ...'

`Sirius got Wormtail just as he was about to kill me,' Harry said, wondering why Wormtail had hesitated. Was it because Harry had once saved his life, or had he realised that he should leave it to Voldemort to kill Harry? They reached a doorway into the grounds of the school, which were dimly lit by the first grey light of dawn showing in the sky. Hundreds of Beauxbatons and Hogwarts students were running away across the lawns as the sounds of explosions and the shouts of battling wizards came from inside the palace. `We should help,' said Harry, starting to turn back.

`No,' said Lupin firmly, `we're just holding off the Death Eaters long enough to give time for everyone to escape, we cannot defeat them, there are too many here.' Sirius steered Harry away and after five minutes they reached the edge of the park.

`You will have to apparate to Paris first,' Lupin began to explain, as they paused at a gap in the boundary hedge. Suddenly Ginny screamed and pointed and Harry turned to see three Death Eaters materialising on the other side of the perimeter, their wands focused on himself.

Harry yelled `STUPEFY!' at them and dived to the ground as his spell rebounded off a hastily conjured shield. Simultaneously Hermione, Ron and Sirius cast a mixture of impediment and stupification curses at the attackers and two were knocked off their feet, the third immediately disapparated.

`Right, let's go, now!' Lupin ordered, stepping over the boundary of the school and urging the others forward into the woods.

`Ginny and Neville can't apparate,' Harry reminded him.

`We'll have to use a portkey, Remus,' Sirius said, watching alertly around for any more attempts to stop them.

Lupin bent down and touched his wand to a broken branch on the ground, and muttered `Portus'. The branch trembled and glowed blue, then lay still. `Everyone, quickly, touch the branch,' he told them. Just as they were swept away from Beauxbatons Harry caught a glimpse of a dozen Death Eaters materialising around the spot where they had been standing, wands aimed directly at them.

Seconds later they crashed in a whirling heap onto a hard concrete floor. There were gleaming brass and copper cauldrons in neat stacks around them and Harry guessed they were in the storeroom of a shop. `Wrong place, Remus!' said Sirius with a brief grin as they got to their feet.

`Sorry, there wasn't time to fix it exactly, but we should be nearly there ...' Lupin apologised. He went to the door of the basement and listened before ushering them forward. They climbed quietly up the small set of stairs into the showroom of the shop. Lupin unlocked the door and they went cautiously out into the cold early-morning street.

There were no shoppers about, but Harry was startled to see many people and families sleeping in the street, huddled up in their cloaks against the walls. He realised these must be British wizard refugees. Some were awake and watched them pass with bleak expressions of impassive hopelessness and loss.

They reached the Weasley twins' shop. Lupin and Sirius hesitated at the door. `Better be careful,' Sirius warned, `I bet they've got a few unpleasant surprises organised for unexpected visitors.'

Suddenly Harry heard voices from inside the shop. `That's Dad,' said Ron, going forward and knocking on the door. The door told him to go away in an extremely rude manner, in both French and English, but then it opened and Mr Weasley was standing there together with Tonks, Fred, George and Lee, and Seamus, Lavender, the Patils, Luna, and several other Hogwarts students, who greeted them with cheers.

They went in, and Mr Weasley hugged Ginny, but her face still showed only an expression of devastated horror at what had happened. Lupin briefly updated Tonks and Mr Weasley on how they'd escaped. `Where's mum?' Fred asked.

`Molly is with Dumbledore, rescuing more Hogwarts students, and any Beauxbatons students that want to come,' Lupin explained.

Ginny collapsed into a chair, staring numbly into the empty fireplace. Ron kept glancing at her worriedly but she did not move or look up as the other students excitedly swapped stories about their escape from the palace. Harry knew that at any minute someone would ask where Dean was ... Ron took Fred and George aside and warned them about what had happened.

`Now listen everyone, quiet, please,' said Mr Weasley, `we've arranged for all of you, and your families, if they're over here, to be accommodated in another country, as it seems the French Ministry is no longer willing to allow us to remain here. We'll be going there shortly, and I must ask all of you to please be on your best behaviour and not to offend our new hosts in any way, as it is a considerable favour on their part to accept us.' He also cast a worried glance at Ginny before continuing. `Ginny, Ron, Fred and George, Harry, Hermione, Neville and Luna will go with Reamus and Sirius, the rest will go with Tonks and myself. We'll meet up at the main gates of the school. Is that clear?'

Hermione and Luna went over and sat beside Ginny and tried to comfort her, but she gave no response. Harry knew very well from his own experience of seeing Sirius pass through the gateway of death that nothing anyone would do or say could ease the terrible pain, the black abyss of anger, despair and loss. He had at least had a fragment of hope to cling to, but Ginny had nothing. They gathered in a subdued crowd around Sirius and Lupin, who had created a portkey from an empty packing crate. They all put a hand on the crate, Fred and George clutching large clunking sacks of galleons, and whirled away into a mass of unformed shapes and colours, landing with a thump in a huge wet mound of snow.

Harry climbed out of the snowbank and looked around. They had arrived at the edge of a gloomy Northern forest, the weak sun raising mist from the ice-littered ground in the bitterly cold air. The dark hulk of a squat sinister-looking castle loomed over the barren landscape ahead of them. `Durmstrang,' Hermione whispered, fearfully.

Sirius and Lupin led the way, stepping cautiously over the frozen earth. The boundary of the school was marked by an immensely high spiked iron fence, stretching endlessly across the desolate white land. There seemed to be no entrance or gateway anywhere. Suddenly Neville let out a shriek, he had touched the bars of the fence and was trapped, unable to detach his hand, which seemed to have become welded into the iron. Harry realised with horror that the fence was slowly consuming Neville's flesh, his fingers disappearing centimetre by centimetre into the metal pillars. `Diffindo!' Sirius and Lupin shouted, pointing their wands at the point where Neville was fused into the fence. With a horrible ripping sound, Neville managed to pull away, his hand bleeding where the skin and epidermis had been eaten. Harry could see that even the riverlets of blood flowing down the post were being absorbed into the metal. Lupin conjured some bandages which wrapped themselves tightly around Neville's wounded hand. As they paused, a dozen spectral figures of crazed ghosts came rushing at them through the air from the direction of the castle, mouths agape in hideous screams of anger. Sirius waved his wand and a translucent shield sprang up over them all, which the ghosts buffeted against, unable to break through.

`There they are,' said Ron, pointing to their right. Harry could just make out crowds of people in the far distance, gathered at the fence. They began slowly to walk towards the crowd, shivering as the cold started to pierce their thin cloaks. Harry was still wearing his pajamas under his cloak and after ten minutes felt like a moving block of ice, his feet numb inside trainers soaked with freezing meltwater.

The people on the edges of the crowd waved to them as they got nearer. Harry could see the tall figures of Dumbledore and Madam Maxime standing in front of a huge pair of gates into the grounds, and hundreds of students and adults milling around behind him, trying to keep warm. Mrs Weasley fought her way through the crowd and gave a cry of relief when she saw that Ginny and the others were safe. Professor McGonagall directed them all to the group behind her, where the other Gryffindor students and their relatives were gathered. Seamus and Lavender joined them, and Harry explained quietly to them what had happened to Dean. Seamus had a mortified expression like that of Ginny when he finished. Harry couldn't see anyone else missing, from the students that he knew. Then he realised that Hagrid wasn't here, nor were Dianne Polkiss, Grant Chalby or several Ravenclaw members of the DA: Michael Corner, Anthony Goldstein or Terry Boot. His heart sank as he realised that many others must be missing, since only a hundred or fewer students were gathered with increasing impatience around their teachers. There were only a handful of Beauxbatons students, visibly shuddering with cold in their thin blue silk robes.

Looking back at the gates, Harry realised Dumbledore was waiting for a small party of wizards and witches who were walking towards them from the castle, led by a tall strongly-built wizard with blonde hair, who even from this distance radiated authority.

`That's Maxwell Pendragon,' Hermione said quietly, `he was a famous potions-maker, but he was reprimanded by the International Council of Wizards for inventing a potion which selectively killed Muggle-borns and those far from pure-blood status. He left Vanadair's institute in disgrace a couple of years ago.'

The Durmstrang party were only a dozen yards away now, striding across the snow in thick black fur capes, their expressions dour and displeased, except for Pendragon, who wore an ambiguous, calculating smile as he surveyed the miserable crowd of foreigners who had arrived outside his school to beg his assistance.

He halted under the huge iron gates, raised his wand and muttered an invocation in a strange language. The gates creaked slowly, reluctantly, open. He stepped forward and shook Dumbledore's hand, greeting him with a broad insincere smile, brandishing a set of perfect teeth. Harry was reminded of the nausea-inducing egotism of Gilderoy Lockhart, but unlike Lockhart a palpable aura of power radiated from the Durmstrang headmaster. `This is an extremely dangerous person,' Harry realised.

Pendragon exchanged a few muttered words with Dumbledore, which Harry couldn't hear. The American's grin did not subside, and Harry could tell he was enjoying his situation of superiority over Dumbledore.

`Ellie!' Pendragon suddenly cried, spotting Professor Vanadair, `how wonderful to see you again!' Vanadair returned the greeting with a brief nod and a tight ironic smile.

`Please, enter our school and be welcome,' Pendragon finally said, waving everyone forward. `You must all be frozen,' he added, smiling in obvious entertainment at their discomfort.

Harry trudged up the endless muddy path behind McGonagall and the others. As they neared the dark forbidding walls of the castle a strange and sinister feeling began to grow inside him, a sense of doom and desolation, and a feeling that the castle itself was watching them all approach with a savage unreasoning hatred and anger. Even the sky seemed to be pretanaturally darkening and shifting, as if about to slide apart to reveal some hideous true reality behind its surface. He couldn't help but feel that Dumbledore was mistaken to bring them here, where the very atmosphere stank of the practice of dark magic. As he looked around at the bewildered and lost expressions of the younger students a feeling of anger at their enforced nomadic existence grew in him.

When they arrived at the vast fortified entrance doors of the castle Pendragon halted and turned again to Dumbledore, advising or warning him of something in a cautionary whisper. He swept his wand in a semicircle across the width of the entrance. Harry felt the tide of hostility that radiated towards them from the building abate a little, and the doors shifted and rattled slightly but did not open. There were large ferocious-looking gargoyles of a leopard and dragon and serpent set over the entrance doors, which seemed to be watching the newcomers with suspicion and distaste. The doors themselves were decorated with carvings of skeletons and skulls, whose eye-sockets gazed down at them in cynical amusement and contempt. Pendragon performed another complex spell as his staff looked on with expressions ranging from misgiving to open hostility. Harry realised that Pendragon was having to overcome the building itself in order to enable the non-purebloods to enter. Finally the doors creaked apart with an anguished rasp. The teachers entered cautiously, followed by the youngest students, then the rest of the pupils and the adults.

The gargoyles above the door suddenly sprang to life and snarled furiously at the first Muggle-born students as they stepped over the threshold of the castle, straining as if to free themselves from their confines of stone and attack. They bared their teeth menacingly at Harry as he too stepped into the dark entrance hall.

It was no warmer inside the castle. They were taken down dark narrow corridors lit dimly by wall-mounted braziers giving off inadequate heat and a smoky light. All the Durmstrang students they saw seemed to be wearing their heavy winter cloaks indoors, which gave them the appearance of people going to a fancy dress party in bear costumes. Finally they were crowded together into a dingy and lightless sub-basement, which Dumbledore explained would be their common room, for all the houses. There were just two dormitories, one for all the girls, and one for the boys. The adults would be staying with the staff in a further set of makeshift basement rooms. Everyone stared miserably around at the dismal surroundings or talked in hushed whispers. The dark reptilian forms of furniture around the room seemed to be sleeping discontentedly, breathing in sinister rasps and moans as the students nervously sat on them. The air smelt of damp and decay and the fumes of unidentifiable potions.

Most of the students collapsed exhausted wherever they could find a space. Ginny still looked dazed and lost. Harry wanted more than anything to be able to comfort her and care for her, but knew that the wound was too fresh, the shock still too strong, for any relief to be possible. It would be the worst thing as well, he realised, for him to try to build a relationship with her, knowing that he could also be doomed, it would be totally unfair, to bring yet more grief upon her. Mr and Mrs Weasley took her away with them, Madam Pomfrey led Neville away to be repaired, and Harry realised that he himself was still in a state of shock, his hands trembling, in reaction to his near death at the hands of Wormtail, and the killings he'd witnessed. Seamus was leaning against Lavender, eyes closed as if still unable to accept the loss of his friend.

After an hour of cold and miserable waiting they were called upstairs to lunch and passed through yet more lightless corridors up to a long low-ceilinged room which was only a fraction of the size of Hogwarts great hall. It was like being inside a fridge. Harry could see his breath rising in clouds. `I've never been so cold in my life,' Ron complained, pulling his cloak tighter about him in a futile attempt at fending off the bone-penetrating chill.

`I don't know why he's brought us here,' said Hermione wearily, watching Dumbledore and Madam Maxime join one end of the staff table, `there are some very nice wizard schools in other countries, in Italy, or Spain ... almost anywhere would be less obsessed with the dark arts than here.'

`And warmer,' Ron added with a convulsive shudder.

Food appeared in the crude thick wooden bowls in front of them, food which seemed to consist mainly of potatoes and lard with some unidentifiable lumps of gristle added for variety. Hermione grimaced as she tried to separate out the meat from the fatty mess.

Harry looked around at the other tables. The Durmstrang students sat huddled along their three house tables, eating rapidly and silently, totally ignoring the newcomers. The tall narrow windows were concealed behind thick curtains of an oppressive blood-red velvet. In the dim light from the guttering braziers he could see that the walls and pillars of the hall were covered with carvings of what seemed to be people being tortured or executed, stretched on racks, beheaded, killed by curses, hangings, there were even images of the archway of death being put to its original use as a means of execution. As he stared at these grisly embellishments he lost what small appetite he'd had for the food.

Hermione was still picking distastefully at her portion of greasy slop. `C'mon Hermione,' Ron chided her, `make an effort, it's a traditional Russian dish!'

She glared at him, not appreciating the humour. `We're all going to die of scurvy on this diet,' she said, as a few mouldy chocolates appeared on their dessert plates.

They trudged tiredly back to the basement, but Seamus, who was in front, suddenly convulsed in agony when he touched the door of the common room. `Streeler venom!' he gasped, trying to wipe the noxious slime off his hand, which was already swelling and blistering into smouldering black boils. Loud jeers came from a gang of Durmstrang students at the end of the corridor, Harry ran towards them, so angry he didn't think about what he was doing, and pulled out his wand. Before he could curse any of them however, they had all slipped away into what appeared to be a solid wall, he tried to follow them but found that the wall really was solid.

Ron and Hermione caught up with him as he rubbed his bruised head. `That's strange ...' Hermione said, pointing behind him.

Harry noticed that the entire end wall was occupied by what he assumed at first was an ordinary mirror, at least it appeared to show the reflections of Ron and Hermione, but Harry realised that something was wrong -- in the mirror images they seemed older somehow, and they were wearing Muggle clothes for some strange reason. He himself was missing completely from the reflection. Hermione was reading an inscription `Etafru oyt ubem itsih tton wohsi' at the base of the mirror, which reminded Harry of the mirror of Erised, although it still made no sense to him. Hermione gasped in shock, and she looked sideways at Harry to see if he'd understood. `Let's get away from here!' she said fearfully. As she pulled him away, Harry noticed that in the mirror, the images of Ron and Hermione had matching rings on their fingers.