Something Better Than This

Chapter 8: Now Where Are We?

The next couple of weeks were busy ones. The acquisition of an infant basilisk turned out to be fairly time-consuming, and the fact that she could already talk and move around merely meant that Harry had to instruct her meticulously on where she could go, what she should and shouldn't eat ("If you aren't sure, don't!"), and about how she shouldn't make noise or show herself unless she was absolutely sure that there was no one who didn't already know about her in the room. Maeve was surprisingly accommodating; Harry didn't think he'd have taken the news that he had to keep his eyes shut all the time very well. He did, however, begin to find himself lying awake wondering whether in centuries to come he would be known as the madman responsible for hiding a terrible monster in what used to be a warm and pleasant family home.

On the bright side, they hadn't seen a single spider in Ron's room since Maeve had taken up sleeping there. And she could snap mosquitoes out of the air without looking.

In addition to the education of Maeve, Harry also celebrated his birthday, on which he received some very peculiar presents. Hermione gave him a book of Muggle fairy tales, which baffled him until he found that she'd marked one in which the villain had hidden his soul in a box somewhere, another book on exotic magical connections and interactions, and an instruction manual on the care and feeding of magical serpents and the useful properties of various venoms and shed skins. "And I got the oddest looks when buying it, let me tell you!" she told him. Harry supposed that this was useful, particularly as Maeve had eaten so much that he already had a few snakeskins stuffed inside a pair of old socks in his trunk.

Ginny's gifts were somewhat more normal, though they did include a box of owl treats "So that Hedwig won't feel too left out." Fred and George gave him a lot of Ice Mice, which Maeve proclaimed delicious and generously shared with Crookshanks. Harry supposed that this indicated a good temperament, which was encouraging.

He and Ron attended the summer Apparition Test session and were stared at until Ron was fidgeting and Harry's eyes ached from rolling, but they both passed. Ginny said she hoped the summer test would be a week or so later next summer, as she'd probably heard enough to pass it without the lessons by this point. Harry agonized over her birthday present and eventually settled on a hair-clip that looked like a Snitch, which kept her hair out of her eyes but still let it be tossed everywhere else by the wind of her flight.

And he spent some very enjoyable if somewhat guilty hours with her in his arms and laughing while he attempted to teach her Parseltongue by running his tongue around her ears in every way he could think of, though in the end they had to bring Maeve into it. Maeve said that of course this would work, although there weren't too many people who weren't already Parselmouths who were inclined to hold still while a snake stuck its tongue in their ears. Ginny made the most dreadful faces as the young basilisk did so; and her eyes nearly popped when Maeve asked if it had worked and it turned out that it had.

The idea of the locket that had been at Grimmauld Place nagged at him, though. When he could safely leave Maeve behind (although he took her along once or twice and let her admire the serpentine decorations), he went back again and again looking for it -- an easier process now that he could Apparate himself without attracting any awkward questions. Ron and Hermione were starting to think he should pursue some other method, or a different Horcrux, instead of turning Sirius's old house upside-down. The portrait of Mrs. Black had taken up having coughing fits whenever he passed it, and Phineas Nigellus would wander through nearby frames and tell him he was being foolish.

Harry straightened up on one of these occasions and asked in exasperation, "If you're so sure the locket's not here to find, does that mean you've seen it somewhere else?"

"I believe Mundungus Fletcher had pocketed it at one point," said Phineas. "Sirius should never have given him permission to carry off so many items. Particularly dangerous ones." He paused for consideration. "Or perhaps that was a different locket. It may have been put out with the rubbish. Perhaps you should try tracing that."

Harry swore at this and, thoroughly put out, pictured Mundungus and the locket and called out, "Accio Voldemort's Horcrux locket!"

He wasn't really surprised when nothing happened except for the portrait sniggering at him. He was surprised when, several minutes later, he walked by an open doorway and was tackled by a garbage bag. He wrestled with it, kicking it a few times and being poked by a number of pointy pieces of its contents, and eventually got hold of one straining knob that made the whole thing go quiet.

It turned out to be the locket, on a gold chain that had somehow ended up tangled with a withered Christmas garland.

He still couldn't pry it open. It didn't look broken. Harry went to find Ron and Hermione with the sinking feeling that both R. A. B., whoever he had been, and Albus Dumbledore had died for this particular Horcrux in vain.

"I've found it," he said, leaning around a doorway. He ducked as a pair of scissors escaped Hermione's grasp, eluded Ron's hasty grab, and flew past his head to embed themselves in the wall behind him. "The locket, I mean. It really does look just like the one Dumbledore showed me in the Pensieve." His scar itched. "I just wish I thought it were broken."

"It doesn't look broken," Ron said, frowning, "except for the part where it won't come open. How are you supposed to tell if you've got hold of a Horcrux?"

"I don't know," Harry said, frustrated. "It doesn't really feel like I'm holding a piece of Voldemort. I just recognize it as something he had, that Dumbledore was sure he meant to make into a Horcrux. I don't know who he might have killed to make it or how to destroy it."

"Well, what about how the others were destroyed before?" Hermione asked.

"I stuck a basilisk's fang in the diary," Harry said, "after it broke off in my arm. Fawkes had healed me already, and destroying the diary didn't actually hurt me. I don't know how Dumbledore destroyed the one in the ring, but you saw what that did to his hand." He frowned at the locket. "Even if a basilisk fang would work, I'm not sure asking Maeve to bite this would be a good idea."

"It's possible that a basilisk would be naturally resistant to some of the types of magic Voldemort used," Hermione said, "but I hope there's a better way to go about it."

"So do I." Harry frowned at it. "Maybe we'd better take it out of here, anyway."

Hermione scooped up Crookshanks, and side by side, they all three Disapparated.

Harry felt that the squeezing feeling was a great deal worse than usual this time, and halfway through the nonexistent tight rubber tube, he felt a wrenching jerk behind his navel as if he'd just grasped a particularly violent Portkey. He tried to reach out for Ron and Hermione, tried to pull himself back on course, though he couldn't think why he would be off it. There was a tearing sensation in his lungs; they begged for air, and fireworks went off behind his eyes.

Something seemed to slam into him, hard, striking him on the hip. Then, all at once, the crushing squeezing sensation was gone and he was gulping in air again. He looked around quickly through watering eyes and saw Ron and Hermione beside him, gasping too but safe.

Then he started to look around and pay attention to his surroundings, and he realized that they were definitely not at the Burrow. They were standing on a dirt path surrounded by boggy woods, eerily silent but for birdsong.

"All right," Ron said, looking around as well, "what just happened? And where are we?"

"I don't know." Hermione looked shaken. "I don't recognize this place at all. Neither of you is splinched, I hope?"

Ron shook his head.

"I don't think I am," Harry said, "but I don't know what happened either. Unless Voldemort enchanted the locket to keep people from stealing it. But then wouldn't it have taken us... well... somewhere else? To him, or anyway not in the middle of the woods?" He pulled out the locket and looked at it. It didn't seem to have changed.

"We could have got something odd on us in the house," Hermione suggested doubtfully. "I can't think what, though. It's never been a problem before. But how could the locket make us all Apparate to the wrong place?"

"You're the one who keeps reminding us it's impossible to Apparate on Hogwarts grounds," Ron said. "It could be something that affects everybody near it."

"Yes, but it's much easier to anchor something like that to an area than to an object," Hermione said distractedly. "Do you suppose we should try again to get home, or try to find out where we are?"

"Let's not try that again yet," Harry said hastily. "It seems worth looking about a bit first. And giving our stomachs time to settle. Mine, anyway."

"It looks safe enough," Ron said. "As much as a forest generally does, anyway. Doesn't seem like his sort of place, somehow."

Harry thought of the Riddle house, and of the horrible graveyard in Little Hangleton. "Not really. Well... let's try up the path, I suppose." A pause. "Wands... not out. But easy to get at."

They started off, moving very slowly and watching carefully around them with their hands on their wands. Harry had shoved the locket back into the pocket of his jeans, and his stomach churned every time he felt it against his leg, which felt bruised. The trees looked normal enough; the woods breathed quietly, and the birds called to each other without seeming to feel any threat other than the three strange teenagers moving along the path. Even that didn't disturb them too much. Hermione let Crookshanks down, and after shaking out all four of his legs and expressing his distaste for the trip, the orange cat strolled along beside or around them with no appearance of concern -- certainly far less than he'd shown in the house on Grimmauld Place.

There was, however, a nagging sensation growing in the back of Harry's mind, aside from the worry of the locket Horcrux. He couldn't settle quite what it was, but he had the vague feeling that he ought to know where they were, even while he was reasonably sure he had never been there before. There was something about the shape of the path....

While he was still trying to sort this out, they came around a bend and the forest opened out into a clearing. They all stopped short. There was a cottage on the other side of it, with smoke rising from it, and a large vegetable garden taking up much of the clearing; young fruit trees lined one edge, and a goat gazed at them and then wandered off. Aside from a stinking heap of manure and vegetable refuse off to one side, the whole thing looked fairly clean and well kept. Even the dung-heap was relatively neat.

It was the good condition of the place that caused Harry to spend several long seconds staring before he realized that the shape of the cottage and the ground and even the path through the woods matched, or at least resembled very closely, what he had seen in the Pensieve of Ogden's visit to the Gaunts' hovel. The clearing and vegetable garden hadn't been there, and the cottage had been much more closely surrounded by trees, and it did seem strange that someone would have cut down the hedgerows. The roof was thatched now instead of broken tile, which also seemed an odd change. Even so, the more he looked at the cottage, the more certain Harry became that it was the same place. Perhaps some eccentric person had bought the plot of land and fixed it up -- but hadn't Dumbledore found the ring there just within the past year, and said the house was a ruin? This would have to have been awfully fast work. And come to think of it, where was the main road? It had been close enough for Merope Gaunt to watch Voldemort's father ride by.

He turned to relay these thoughts to Ron and Hermione in a whisper. Halfway through his speculations, Hermione grabbed his arm and Ron said in a low voice, "We've got company, mate."

Harry turned back again and saw what he must have missed earlier, or rather who. There was a girl at the end of a row of propped-up beans. Her hair was brown and tied back severely, her dress plain, sturdy, and as green as the leaves, her face scrunched up and suspicious, and she held a hoe as if she was seriously thinking of hitting them with it if they were foolish enough to come within reach.

Harry decided that she was better looking than the Gaunts, not that this was any great feat, but evidently not much more welcoming.

Hermione took a cautious half-step forward, her hands spread empty in front of her. "Excuse us," she said, "we didn't mean to intrude, but--"

The girl in green interrupted, saying something in a language Harry didn't understand at all.

Hermione backed up again. "I'm sorry, I don't--"

The other girl frowned at them and spoke again, just as incomprehensibly.

"I don't suppose that's a language you know?" Ron muttered to Hermione. She shook her head.

Ron attempted pantomime, which involved looking around at the trees, scratching his head with a bewildered expression, and ending with an exaggerated shrug. This only succeeded in making the girl take several wary steps back toward the house.

Harry took one step after her with some idea of trying introductions by pointing, but as soon as he pointed at her, what he'd taken for a thick striped leather tie holding her hair back stirred and three serpentine heads reared up from hers like a weird tiara and hissed a warning in chorus. Crookshanks arched up and hissed back.

"She's got a Runespoor!" Hermione gasped, rather unnecessarily.

"At least if she's a Parselmouth you can talk to her," Ron murmured. "Or does it work that way?"

You could tell a conversation was going badly, Harry thought, when "Lay a hand on her and I'll bite you" constituted an improvement. Voldemort's unintentional and dubious gift of Parseltongue was turning out to be more useful than Harry liked, but at least it was better than being beaten with garden implements.

Fixing his eyes on the Runespoor, as he'd never yet been successful in speaking Parseltongue without looking at a serpent of some sort (or at least a picture), Harry began carefully, "We don't mean any harm."

As he heard the hissing issue from his mouth, however, the girl's eyes widened -- and instead of replying or even giving the Runespoor a chance to do so, she dropped the hoe and sprinted for the cottage door. She yanked it open and darted inside, slamming it behind her.

Ron blinked and said the same thing Harry was thinking. "That's a funny reaction for a girl with a Runespoor in her hair...."

"Perhaps we should go apologize?" Hermione suggested uneasily.

"I didn't say anything rude," Harry said, "and I don't see how I can apologize if she's upset that I spoke the only language we might have in common!"

"All right," Hermione said, "I suppose that was silly, but still--"

She broke off as the door opened again to reveal a man about Harry's height, with long silver hair and a beard over features lined and darkened by the sun. His clothing was also green, and while it didn't exactly look like a wizard's robes, the stick in his left hand was definitely a wand. He held it easily and stood straight, looking far less wary than the girl but quite definitely as if he would be prepared for any hostilities.

He opened his mouth and hissed. To Harry's ears alone, he said, "Good morrow, if you come in peace. You have found Salazar Serpent-Tongue. And who are you?"

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