The Crux of the Matter

Chapter 3: The Door in the Mountain

Harry felt very odd as he navigated the flying motorbike over the English Channel. Besides traveling to Hogwarts year after year, he had never been out of the country. This was his first time on the European mainland, the first time he had ever seen the world. Despite the low mood he had found himself in lately, and the seriousness of his current situation, Harry could not help but feel a burst of pure excitement. It felt good, heading off to strange new places, moving on his own steam with his two best mates for company.

But despite this heady beginning, it soon proved to be a mostly silent and uncomfortable journey. In the fall the weather had still been mild enough for them to take their meals outdoors, to even sleep under the stars as long as they kept a watch. But now the cold was so bitter that Harry, Ron, and Hermione found themselves scrounging for shelter wherever they went. The first night they broke into a barn and slept huddled behind some farm equipment, the soft bleating of their sleeping companions -- a herd of sheep -- oddly comforting in the dark. After almost two weeks of creaking roofs and snorting livestock, Ron convinced Harry and Hermione to take a room in a Muggle tavern. They had landed in a small town in Germany, and Hermione kept exclaiming over how pretty the buildings were. Ron fondly rolled his eyes whenever she did this. He just wanted the beer, and Harry couldn’t help but agree -- anything to get warm.

They pored over their plans late into the night, looking at maps of the Carpathian Mountains, lists of the nearby towns, and descriptions of the magical creatures whose paths they might cross. Hermione had taken notes on many of the magical theories Volshebnik had expounded upon in his published articles, and she reviewed these with Harry and Ron, trying to familiarize them with Volshebnik’s work. It was tremendously complicated stuff, far more difficult to understand than anything Harry had learned at Hogwarts. It seemed to puzzle even Hermione, though she never admitted it. Looking at Volshebnik’s writing caused Harry to experience his first niggling doubts about his plan. The man they were seeking was clearly very brilliant, and Harry’s strategy of just waltzing into his home and firing off questions about Horcruxes was beginning to seem rather inadequate.

But it wasn’t these doubts that troubled him most. Harry was kept awake at nights, even if he wasn’t the one on watch, by thoughts of Ginny. Their final conversation haunted him continuously. Several times his eyes glazed over while he flew the bike, and he had nearly crashed it, so focused was he on trying to understand what had gone wrong, what he could have done or said to make things happen differently. The odd thing was that he knew that nothing about their relationship had changed over that Christmas reunion. They had not been together as a couple in more than six months. So why did it feel like his heart had just been broken?

He felt a growing sense of fury when he thought of her. Six months ago he had been so sure in his knowledge of Ginny, convinced that she understood him, and that she would not question his decisions where other people would. But now quite suddenly she had become a mystery to him, far more perplexing to Harry than Cho had ever been. What had Ginny wanted from him, that day in Ron’s bedroom? Why had she attacked him like that, after half a year’s separation?

She wants to come with me, said the little, at the moment unwelcome, honest voice in Harry’s head. She wants to help. She doesn’t want to sit around at school, while I’m off fighting a war. She’s like Sirius in that way.

Sirius is dead! Harry fumed at himself, as he flew the bike across a sparkling lake. It’s all for the best! She can’t come with me, it’s just mad. She isn’t seventeen after all, and besides, she’s a weakness. I can’t stop thinking about her now; imagine what it’d be like if she was actually here!

Ginny is not a weakness, huffed the honest voice, which was sounding more like Hermione by the minute. Harry, losing patience, stopped listening to it and gunned the engine.

February neared. The motorcycle traversed barren farmlands and blinding snowy plains. At first Harry thought these pristine landscapes very beautiful, but after a few days of uninterrupted emptiness, he changed his mind. This kind of beauty was dead depressing.

They were flying over a forest of leafless, scraggly trees when Hermione gave a shout.

“Oh my!”

Ron leaned forward so abruptly that he nearly pitched over the side of the bike. “What’s up?” he asked.

Hermione pointed down into the trees. “Over there. It’s -- no -- it can’t be -- “

“Blimey,” Ron exclaimed, “It is!”

“What?” called Harry, whose eyes were still focused on the horizon.

“Giants,” Hermione gasped.

Harry craned his neck over the handlebars. The monotony of the landscape had finally been punctured. What looked like a mass of large, lumpy boulders was bobbing its way through the forest, the trees rippling like waves in its wake.

“Giants on the move,” said Ron in awe.

Harry braked, and the bike hovered in midair high over the scene. All three travelers stared in horror as the giants, with their house-long strides, emerged from the forest into an open field, which until that moment had been thickly covered in untouched snow. There were at least three dozen of them making a straight line across the plain, sending up whole blizzards of snow with every massive footfall. Harry felt deeply uneasy at the eery coordination of their movements . He thought of Grawp, who, if placed in a situation like this, would probably have made frequent detours to uproot trees, but these giants showed no interest in their surroundings. Their faces -- each as enormous, pitted, and gray as the surface of the moon -- were identically twisted in expressions of purposeful brutishness.

“It’s an army,” Harry said, his voice low. “They’re moving like they’re under orders.”

Hermione gasped. “And they’re heading -- “

“West,” gulped Ron.

“Towards England,” Harry said, nodding.

They did not speak again until the giants were out of sight. “You have to tell Lupin,” said Hermione without preamble.

There was no arguing with this. Harry’s feelings towards Lupin were as cold as his ears in the wind, but a terrifying army was heading his way, and Lupin needed to know. “As soon as we land,” Harry said, revving the engine.

The motorbike set down in a gray and misty town in Poland. Harry, Ron, and Hermione rolled through the streets, Disillusioned and unnoticed, looking for shelter. Being exposed among Muggles made all three of them terribly anxious. Harry had to navigate the bike one-handed because the other was tightly gripping his wand inside his jacket pocket. Ron’s eyes flickered from one darkened alleyway to the next, as if he expected Dementors to emerge from the shadows. His fear wasn’t completely unwarranted; the place was certainly bleak enough to be a breeding ground.

Finally Hermione spotted an abandoned textile mill, and they broke in and settled down around one of her magical bluebell fires to thaw out their trembling hands.

Ron surveyed the rotting wooden floor and the cobwebs growing on the spinning mules, and he shook his head. “Is it crazy that this looks homely to me?”

“Only if your home is a broom cupboard,” said Harry, who was digging through his pack in search of the mirror that had once belonged to Sirius.

Hermione, who was clearly feeling cheerful now that they were under a roof, smiled wickedly at Ron. “You know what made all these cobwebs, don’t you?”

Ron swatted playfully at her hair. “Ruin my mood, why don’t you. Bit damp in here though. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

Hermione sighed and shifted her hands closer to the fire. There was a bite of annoyance in her voice when she said, “Ron, there’s nothing the matter with me, I’ve been off the Vapor antidote for almost a month now. As soon as my hands have some feeling again, I’ll be fine.”

Ron looked slightly cowed by her reaction, but the expression of fervent worry did not disappear from his face.

Harry finally found the little square mirror and called for Lupin, whose face appeared on the mirror’s surface almost instantly. He looked tired as usual, and a little peaky on account of the approaching full moon, but his face was positively glowing with relief .

“Harry! Has something happened? Are you all right?”

Harry wasted no time in telling him about the march of the giants. Lupin looked grim at the news, but remarkably unsurprised. He simply said, “They’ve been summoned.”

“Voldemort,” Harry breathed, leaning closer to the mirror. “He’s building his army then?”

“It seems so,” nodded Lupin. “We’ve been hearing rumors about the giants for months now, we just never had a sighting to confirm it .”

“Never had a sighting?” said Harry incredulously. “They’re a bit hard to miss!”

“Yes,” said Lupin patiently, “but the giants would be Disillusioned when they travel through inhabited areas.”

“How could they be?” Ron asked, frowning. “They can’t do magic.”

Hermione gasped. “There must be Death Eaters traveling with them!”

She was too far away for Lupin’s reflection to hear, but it hardly mattered. “Death Eaters must be traveling with them,” said Lupin. Every line of his face seemed to tighten. “Harry, you haven’t been flying out in the open?”

“Of course not. We‘ve been Disillusioned the whole time,” said Harry, immediately irritated. “I’m not that thick.”

“I am only asking you to be careful,” said Lupin. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to make Voldemort think the Order is hiding you at Hogwarts. If he were to find out otherwise...”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks for that,” said Harry quickly, “But really, Professor, I’m being careful, okay?”

Lupin gave him a long, searching look. “There are members of the Order who want to know where you are at all times, Harry, did you know that? They say that you should be under lock and key, under guard. And I have always argued against it. I have fought for your right to act as an adult in this war.”

Harry did not understand why Lupin was telling him this. “Errr... I appreciate that,” he said.

“I trust you, Harry.”

“Good,” grunted Harry, now feeling distinctly uncomfortable. A prickly sense of shame wormed its way up his neck, and he didn’t fully understand what was causing it.

“You’ll call if you need me?” Lupin asked, his expression keener than ever. Harry gave a jerky nod, and Lupin’s reflection vanished. Harry stared at what had now become his own weary face in the surface of the mirror. When he looked up, he was greeted with the unwelcome sight of Ron and Hermione exchanging matching eye-rollings.

“What was that for?” he snapped.

“Nothing,” Ron muttered.

But it didn’t look like nothing to Hermione. She was gracing Harry with a sharp stare, as if there were words written across his nose that she needed to read.

“What, Hermione?”

She frowned at him and glanced at Ron, who was busying himself with trying to fit a lumpy sausage on to a toasting fork. He would not look at her. Hermione heaved a sigh.

“Nothing, Harry. It’s nothing.” She bit her lip, hung her head, and took a sausage for herself.

Ron looked up at Hermione, his mouth open in surprise. “Aren’t -- aren’t you going to say something to him?”

Hermione brandished her toasting fork nonchalantly. “Nope,” she said.

“But -- but -- “ Ron was clearly dumbfounded by Hermione’s mood. “But you always do. You always talk to him when he’s like this!”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not sitting here!” cried Harry. “And what am I supposed to be like exactly?”

“Yes, Ron,” said Hermione in a brisk voice, “what is he like?”

For a moment Ron simply gaped at them both like a fish on dry land, but then he snapped his mouth shut. He gave Hermione one long, admonishing look, and turned back to Harry.

“Harry,” he said very firmly, “I dunno what this weird thing is between you and Lupin, but it’s getting out of hand. What’s he done to hack you off anyway?”

Now it was Harry’s turn to gape. Hermione beamed at Ron.

“Look,” stammered Harry, “I’m -- I’m not hacked off with him. I’m just annoyed.”

Neither Ron nor Hermione looked convinced by this. “You still call him ‘Professor,’” Ron said.

“So what? He was our teacher.”

Hermione heaved a huge sigh. “He was our teacher four years ago, Harry!”

Harry felt perplexed and annoyed. He did not need the pair of them ganging up on him. “Who cares what I call him?” he shot back. “He can’t help us and that’s all there is to it. Lupin stays out.”

Ron was squinting at Harry as if he was speaking some incomprehensible language, possibly Troll. “But -- but why?”

Harry steadily declared, “Because we’re doing fine without him,” hoping against hope that this would be the final word on the matter.

“Fine?” repeated Ron, raising both his eyebrows.

Hermione shook her head. “Harry, we’re running off to the Ukraine to interview a Dark wizard who is either dead or really incredibly dangerous.”

Ron nodded fervently. “Mate, if this is your idea of fine, I never want to see ‘terrible.’”

“You both agreed to this plan!”

“Yes,” said Hermione, leaning forward imploringly, “but we never condoned you shutting Lupin out of things. He could be so helpful, Harry! If we had him on our side, we wouldn’t have to fight the Order at every turn anymore.”

“Hermione -- “

“He knows all sorts of things about the Dark Arts, he’s got contacts -- “

“Hermione -- “

“He’s nearly head of the Order, it’s not like he’s in any extra danger if he’s helping us, it’s not at all like you and Ginny -- “

“That’s enough!” Harry hissed furiously. Hermione fell silent at once, her eyes wide. “Now,” said Harry, looking back and forth between her and Ron, “I’m only going to say this once, okay? Lupin’s a good bloke. He was the best Defense teacher we ever had. But in case you two haven’t noticed, the people I trust -- anyone who’s ever tried to protect me -- they all end up dead. I’ve had enough of that. So Lupin stays out of it. You can’t convince me otherwise.”

He could think of nothing else to say. Interminable silence stretched between the three of them, punctuated only by the creaking of the floor beams, the crackling of the bluebell fire, and the uneven pounding of Harry’s heart.

“All right,” whispered Hermione, sniffing. “I won’t bring it up again.”

“Very good,” said Harry. The prickly shame now crept its way into his face, making his cheeks burn. He glanced wildly around for some form of distraction, and his eyes fell upon the potions kit poking out the top of his bag, the little glass bottles idly reflecting the blue flames of the campfire.

“We should make more Dissimulata,” Harry said, grabbing at the kit. “We have cover -- a fire -- this is the best chance we’ll get.”

Ron and Hermione both looked less than overjoyed at this suggestion. Dissimulata was a very tricky potion to brew, well beyond N.E.W.T. standard, and immensely unpleasant to administer. But it was the only method they could find that effectively concealed Harry’s scar, short of brewing Polyjuice Potion and turning him into someone else entirely.

So they set to work. Harry chopped the feverwort and yarrow, Ron stewed the fluxweed and mayapple resin, and Hermione carefully measured out from a little leather pouch bats’ teeth sharp as needles. They worked together easily, as if the argument about Lupin had never happened, but Harry could still feel its unacknowledged presence in the room, as unavoidable as if it were a fourth person sitting around the campfire with them.

Soon the potion was steaming in Hermione’s collapsible cauldron, its roiling depths a luminescent crimson that cast a furious blush over the entire room. Their fire turned violet and Ron’s hair positively glowed red. Hermione, who was squinting from all the funny-smelling steam and lurid light, slowly lowered an eye dropper into the cauldron and filled it with potion. She turned to Harry with businesslike trepidation.

“Harry, are you ready?”

He nodded and gripped at the crack between two moldy floorboards. He tipped his head back and Hermione knelt over him, as if she really were about to give him some eye drops. But then she squeezed a few round droplets of Dissimulata not into Harry’s eyes, but across his forehead.

Harry shut his eyes by instinct. He heard a horrible hissing noise and felt a very odd sensation on his forehead, like the skin there was alternately bunching up and stretching very thin. It was not painful exactly, at least not as painful as other agonies his forehead had been forced to endure, but it felt fairly nauseating and just plain weird. Ron clearly felt the same way, judging by his noise of fascinated disgust. Finally the hissing subsided and Harry opened his eyes.

He glanced at Sirius’s mirror, which he had left lying on the floor in front of him, and saw that his skin had become thick and hard where the potion had touched him. It looked like a puddle of wax had dried on his face, the scar a funny jagged canyon down the puddle’s middle. He couldn’t stop himself from prodding at his forehead; it felt a lot like wax, too.

Ron made the disgusted noise again. Hermione wrinkled up her own brow in sympathy. “You’d better get it over with,” she said tightly.

Harry sought out the edge of the waxy area, dug his nails into it and pulled, as if he were peeling a sticker off his forehead. It was hard work; his skin was very reluctant to part company with his head.

But finally the deed was done. Harry quickly threw the lumpy bits of wax into the fire, and again he bent his face over Sirius’s mirror. The pinkish skin now revealed from under the wax looked thankfully normal -- though Harry found it decidedly not normal to see his forehead completely unmarked. Hermione and Ron obviously thought so too, because they were staring unabashedly at his forehead in a way that they would never dare do had there been a scar there. For once Harry did not find the blatant goggling annoying; in fact, he entirely understood the impulse. Again he looked into the mirror and stared at the reflection of a boy without a scar, a boy who could have been anyone.

“It’s odd for you, isn’t it?” Hermione asked quietly, her eyes glittering in the firelight.

“Very,” said Harry. “I might not like my scar, but I suppose it’s who I am in the end.”

“Oh, you’re more than that, mate,” said Ron offhandedly, poking at the bubbling cauldron with the handle of his toasting fork. “Eurgh, this potion is revolting.”

Harry did not particularly enjoy pulling coagulated skin off his forehead, but for him this was not the worst part of taking Dissimulata. There happened to be a side effect. For the length of the potion’s duration -- about ten days -- Harry experienced particularly vivid, profoundly disturbing dreams. By now he was no stranger to this sort of thing, but these dreams were so very wild that they served to only further exhaust his already deeply tired mind. Dissimulata sleep might as well have been a state of wakefulness.

The night in the Polish textile mill was no different. He dreamt he was sitting in Aunt Petunia’s sterilized kitchen on Privet Drive, drumming his fingers on the table, which was outfitted in a tablecloth intricately embroidered with Cornish pixies. The cloth pixies squirmed under Harry’s fingers and pulled bizarre faces at him.

The doorbell rang, but the door opened before he had even stood up to answer it. Ginny entered. For some reason, she was dressed in her glitteringly gold bridesmaid’s robes.

“Are you coming?” she asked, sounding harried.

“I’d rather not,” said Harry, who was happy watching the pixies.

“Well, you’ve got no choice,” she said, stepping forward. “I’ll drag you there if I have to.” She placed both her hands on his arm and gave him a hard yank.

“Ginny, no -- stop that -- “ He gripped the table edge and planted his feet firmly on the tiled floor, but her hands dug clawlike into his arm and she tugged at him with increasing urgency.

“You’ve got to come! You promised Dumbledore, don’t you remember? He made you swear!“

“Ow -- Ginny, that hurts -- “

She pried his fingers off the table one by one and Harry expected her to drag him out the front door, but instead she steered him down the hallway, stopping expectantly in front of the door to the cupboard under the stairs.

“Well?” she cried, crossing her arms.

Harry felt incredibly nervous. “You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

“What sort of a question is that?” Ginny asked him, sounding hurt. “Get in.” She opened the cupboard door. Harry took a deep breath, hunched over, and scrambled through it into total darkness.

Slowly he straightened up and as he did so fire kindled in floating candles all around him. He was not in the cupboard under the stairs, but in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The candle flames were blue instead of orange, but besides this everything was exactly how he remembered it. But wait -- here was something strange -- there were very pale figures stationed all along the paneled walls like sentinels. For a moment Harry thought they were ghosts.

“They’re not ghosts, Harry,” said Ginny, who was suddenly standing right next to him. There were tears on her face. “They’re you.”

Harry looked back at the nearest figure, and stepping closer he saw that she was right. The figure looked exactly like him, except that this Harry was wearing a long gray robe and was frighteningly pale. Its eyes were opened very wide, but they were blank and empty. Harry turned his head and scanned the length of the hall. All the Harrys looked like this: staring, unmoving, dead.

Ginny looked up at him, more tears gathering in her eyes. “You should have let me help you,” she said.

The nearest Harry suddenly blinked. Its eyes focused. Then it reached out and grabbed Harry’s wrist. Its fingers were like ice. “Wake up,” it said, “Wake -- “

“-- up, Harry, it’s almost sunrise -- “

He jerked awake so unexpectedly that Hermione, who was crouching over him, nearly fell right over.

“Huzzawha’?” yelped Harry. But he recovered his equilibrium over a cup of strong tea and another roasted sausage, and half an hour later -- when the only harbinger of the day to come was a green streak on the bottom of the dark sky -- Harry’s dream had faded into nothing but an uneasy echo in the back of his brain. Harry prepped the bike, Ron threw open the mill doors, and they were off again.

*********************************************

On Valentine’s Day, they were so close to reaching their destination that Harry decided to just fly through the night. He knew they all could have done with a full night’s rest -- certainly he had been terribly on edge lately from lack of proper sleep -- but they had left The Burrow nearly six weeks ago, and Harry just wanted their grueling journey to be over.

Hermione fell asleep with her head resting against Harry’s back, and Ron held on to her to ensure she wouldn’t slip.

“Maybe we should land, Harry!” Ron called from behind him. “Hermione’s out cold!”

“No, I want to reach the Carpathians by the morning.” said Harry, his face screwed up against the wind.

“The mountains will still be there tomorrow, mate. It’s not like we’re in that big of a hurry.”

“Of course we’re in a hurry,” Harry snapped, his eyes on the twinkling lights of a small town beneath them.

“It’s just...Hermione was ill not long ago,” Ron’s voice was clearly an attempt at casual, but the obvious concern in it was palpable. It grated at Harry’s nerves. “I don’t think we should overtax her, not if we can help it. And it’s cold enough up here to freeze the balls off a jarvey.”

“Put another Warming Charm on her cloak then.”

“Harry -- come on!”

“Ron, I’m not stopping!” Harry ground his fingers into the handle grips, his heart beating harder than usual. “And you should really stop fussing over Hermione. She doesn’t like it, you know. She can take care of herself.”

“I know that!” said Ron, and now Harry could hear the anger pulsing in his voice. “But I’m allowed to worry, aren’t I? You were there, you saw what she was like!”

“She is fine now!” Harry loudly enunciated each word, trying to drive the point into Ron’s skull. “Give the worrying a rest. You really think I’d bring her along if she wasn’t okay?”

“Keep your voice down, all right? You’ll wake her up.”

Harry let himself laugh, bitterly, fiercely.

Ron’s voice was positively icy. “Look, mate, she’s my girlfriend. I’m allowed to care about her. You’ve got no bloody right to tell me off, just because you gave up on Ginny doesn’t mean we all have to -- ”

“I didn’t give up on Ginny -- “

“Right, I forgot. It was ‘for her own good.’ Whatever you say.”

Now Harry took his hands off the handle grips and half-spun in his seat, so that he could glare full on at Ron over the top of Hermione’s hair.

“Do you have a problem with the way I treated Ginny?”

“Yeah I do! She’s my sister!” said Ron, who was making a very valiant effort not to shout in Hermione’s ear. “And it’s not just her, I have a problem with the way you’ve been treating everyone, Harry! Lupin, Ginny, and now it’s me and Hermione too, is it?”

“You’re raving mad! I’ve told you a thousand times why I -- but it doesn’t even matter. This has nothing to do with me and Ginny.”

Ron snorted. “You’re a right hypocrite, you are. If you’re jealous of me and Hermione, you should have let Ginny come along, and you know it.”

The motorbike had never felt so small to Harry. He longed for the twisting castle corridors of Hogwarts, or at the very least the velvet hangings on his four poster, so he could lose himself in darkness, attain one moment of peace. There were limits to how long he could endure anyone’s constant company, even Ron’s.

Furious silence settled down on them, and it persisted through the night.

When Hermione awoke in the yellowish dawn light, it was the sight of the Carpathian Mountains that greeted her.

“Looks like you got your white Christmas after all, Hermione,” Harry said to her as she stirred behind him, successfully making his voice sound light and friendly.

“Oooh, they’re lovely,” she said, leaning out from behind him to get a better view.

“Yeah, not bad,” said Ron, and he was not as successful as Harry at concealing the strain that their argument had left on his voice.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Hermione, twisting in her seat to get a look at his face.

“Nothing,” grunted Ron.

The mountains unfurled beneath them, pristine and peaked with snow. Harry flew lower, circling over frigid mountain lakes and flocks of evergreen trees. Nothing looked quite like that view from Voldemort’s memory, so he continued on, following the curl of the range across the country.

The mountains bore little sign of life. Harry, Ron, and Hermione passed lonely farms that might have even been abandoned, and once or twice they thought they spotted a large wing or tail sweep through the air before it disappeared into the mountainside.

“Nothing to worry about, though,” said Hermione, patting Harry’s back. “We know Harry can out-fly a dragon.”

Ron said nothing to this.

As the sun was beginning to climb down from the sky, Harry saw a stretch of cliff that sent an eerie shock up his spine. It was isolated, dropping off from the mountain at an almost impossible angle, and the very faint markings of a palatial facade could just be made out through the snow.

“There it is,” he whispered.

He landed the bike on a rock outcropping not far from the door. The wind howled in his ears.

“This is the place!” he cried to the others, grinning in spite of the wind. “Let’s talk for a moment.”

They nodded and slid off the bike, hunched up against the barrage of wind and snow. Harry led them into a gap between two rocky mountain folds where the winds were not as biting. Here he turned to Ron and Hermione and watched the now familiar spectacle of something solidifying in both his friends’ faces, a concentrated steeling of their nerves, a flowering determination to meet this new challenge head-on. He knew they could probably see something similar happening in him.

“Before we go in,” Harry said, his voice carefully steady, “we have to agree on a few things. First, you must understand that from this point forward, I’ve got to pretend to be a Dark wizard.”

“We know, Harry!” Ron responded, and there was something hostile about this interruption that Harry chose to ignore.

“Yeah, but it’s not going to be easy,” said Harry. “We can’t give ourselves away. I may have to say some things...do some things...that I’d never do otherwise. And you’ve got to just accept it. You can’t show any surprise.”

Ron stared at Harry, lips tight, looking both sulky and alarmed. Hermione opened her mouth, clearly about to say something disapproving, but Harry cut her off.

“I’m not finished,” he said. “There’s one more thing. For this to work, you’re going to have to be, well...you’re going to have to sort of pretend to be...minions.”

“Pretend to be what?” Ron shouted over a loud gust of wind.

“Minions!” Harry shouted. “My -- my henchmen!”

Hermione raised her eyebrows slowly.

“If Volshebnik’s here, if he accepts us in, I’m going to tell him that I’m your boss. So you’re going to have to go along with it. Obey my orders, and don’t contradict me in front of him... It would be best actually if you don’t talk at all unless, well, unless I tell you to.”

There was a moment of what could not quite be called silence, since the wind was positively roaring in their ears. Finally Ron shouted, loud and slowly, “You have got to be kidding!”

“I’m not,” responded Harry, as calmly as he could. “I don’t see any other way to do this. Voldemort didn’t have friends at Hogwarts; he had followers . You can’t go in there as my friends.”

“Harry--” Hermione was shaking her head, and snow came falling out of her hair. “Are you sure this is the only way? I don’t know if any of us can make this seem, um, convincing.”

“We’re going to have to,” said Harry, “unless either of you suddenly has a better idea.”

Ron and Hermione cringed under the unappeasable wind, but neither of them spoke.

“Then are we agreed?” Harry asked.

Ron looked morose, but he nodded. Hermione, however, took one tentative step towards Harry, and put her hand on his arm. “We will go in there as your friends, Harry. We always do. Even if we’re pretending to be your followers. You know we’ll do whatever it takes to help you destroy Voldemort.”

Ron nodded, though his voice was brusque. “Even if it means we have to call you ‘my Lord.’”

“Don’t,” Harry said, too quickly.

“What then?” asked Ron. “‘Master?’”

“Yeah,” said Harry evenly, “I think ‘Master’ would be better.”

He led them back out on to the ledge, and the three of them stood by the parked motorbike, surveying the great face of the cliff. Harry felt one jittering pang, a single moment of panic. They were all alone in the wilderness, with nothing but a stark drop behind them and massive, immovable stone in front of them.

“How should we do this?” he asked.

“You’d better knock,” replied Ron, his voice still very cool. “I doubt he’s got a doorbell.”

“We’d better bring the bike with us, though,” cried Hermione through the wind. “Wouldn’t want to leave it out here. Remember what Charlie said about avalanches?”

So Harry kept the engine running, and they marched the motorbike right to the door. Harry’s heart beat very quickly. Snow was blowing into his face, just as it had when he’d been there before -- when Voldemort had been there before. Harry adjusted his scarf, pulled the hood of his cloak over his head, and peered up at the markings on the cliff. All sorts of designs were carved into the stone; Harry could make out some dancing figures, and even a dragon or two. He had expected something a bit more unapproachable to decorate the entrance of a Dark wizard’s abode.

Harry reached up and knocked at the door. A moment later, he felt like a fool. It was solid rock.

“Use your wand, Harry,” advised Hermione.

He took it out and tapped three times on the door. For a moment, nothing happened. The snow continued to blow up their noses, and the wind’s whistling did not falter.

And then they heard a quiet rumbling issuing from the inside of the mountain, as if there was an avalanche bubbling up from its heart. Hermione and Ron each took a few steps back, but Harry remained where he was, willing the door to move aside. And slowly it did. The rock face of the cliff rolled past them, and they were shocked to see a very long, cavernous hallway stretched before them, its walls made of a translucent ice that glowed blue from some strange internal illumination.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged shocked looks. The other two nodded to Harry, and he knew it was his call. He slowly made his way through the door, and parked the motorbike near one of the icy walls. Ron and Hermione followed him, and the stone door immediately rumbled closed behind them.

Ron’s mouth hung open. Hermione seemed to be struck dumb.

“Come on,” Harry whispered, and he began striding down the hallway, his footsteps echoing oddly on the craggy rock floor. Ron and Hermione followed him with difficulty. The floor of the cavern did not seem to be made for walking; its surface dipped alarmingly in some places, and in others it rose to sharp peaks that they had to edge carefully around.

Harry had made it halfway down the hallway when he heard an odd crumbling noise and a shout from Ron. He whipped round and saw that Ron had got his foot trapped in a strange place in the rock where it formed a little arch right across the toes of his boot. He yanked at it, swearing a blue streak, but his boot would not slip free.

“Ron!” both Harry and Hermione cried, scrambling over to help him, but however they angled Ron’s foot, they could not free him from the stone.

“How did you get it stuck like this?” asked Hermione, who was kneeling next to Ron’s foot.

“I dunno,” said Ron, pulling on his knee. “I just looked down and it was like that.”

Again Harry heard the funny crumbling noise, and suddenly Hermione cried out.

“My hand!” A moment ago it had been splayed out on a rock, but now it was caught in a dip with sharp edges which were biting at her wrist almost like jaws. She tried to twist it out of the rock, but like Ron she too was caught.

“What’s going on?” cried Ron.

Harry took a few steps back, and pulled out his wand. He pointed it at the rock that ensnared Hermione and yelled, “Reducto!’ The spell bounced harmlessly off the rock, and chipped a little dent in the ice wall.

“Harry!” shrieked Hermione, and he didn’t need the warning, because he could hear that crumbling noise again. Quickly he looked down at the floor around him and saw that it was alive, the stone grinding its way toward him like strands of hard vines attempting to bind his legs. Harry leapt aside, but then he tripped on the edge of a shallow crater and fell into it. Now the ground was moving all around him, buckling into strange peaks and lunging unexpectedly. Harry felt a heavy ridge of rock fall across his knees, trapping him. The ground shifted underneath his face, scratching at his cheek. The floor was eating him.

Harry heard a cry and saw that Ron was being pulled under just as he was. Harry’s wand arm was still free, so he aimed it at the rock around Ron as steadily as he could and shouted, “Expelliarmus!” He missed, but the spell hit a writhing mound not far from Ron and this time the spell had some effect. The rock shuddered.

“That spell only works on living things, Harry!” shouted Hermione, trying to fend off the creeping rock.

“These things are alive!” he shouted back. “Expelliarmus!” This time his aim was true. The rock released Ron, who staggered a bit to the side and Disarmed the crushing rock which gripped at Harry. He pulled himself free as Hermione also performed Expelliarmus and scrambled away. The three of them staggered across the churning floor, edging together, back to back to back, Disarming the rock whenever it tried to grab at them.

“We can’t keep doing this forever!” shouted Ron.

The floor was writhing with more and more urgency. Great mounds of rock seemed to be climbing out of the rippling floor. Harry realized with a horrible pang of terror that these were figures made of rock, issuing from the ground like swimmers emerging from a choppy sea. They were massive, with wide swinging arms, and as they pulled themselves out of the floor they began to prowl about in a lumbering circle around Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

When Ron lunged at one, pointing his wand, the rock creature seized him by his arms and the wand clattered to the ground. Another grabbed at Hermione, who called out, “Expelliarmus!” but she just missed. The living rock lifted her off the ground and she screamed.

Harry pointed his wand at the heavy-footed figure that had captured Hermione and cried, “Stupefy!” The rock creature lurched backwards a few paces -- Hermione shrieked -- but the spell seemed only to have slowed it down for a moment.

“Not nearly powerful enough,” said a carefully amused, slightly accented voice, which echoed around the hallway from no discernible source. The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stood upright, but he had no time to worry about this eerie new addition to the fray. A rock person had seized his throat from behind.

“Flagrate!” croaked Harry, drawing a line of fire around the rock creature’s pointed head, and it dropped him, its sharp fingers clawing at the flames.

“Clever boy,” said the voice. “but that won’t hold them. Try a full Body Bind.”

Harry did not appreciate having disembodied voices ridicule his fight performance, but at the moment he had no time to quibble with advice. “Petrificus Totalus!” he cried, pointing his wand at the creature who still had Hermione in its grasp. It immediately became inert, and crumbled to the floor. Hermione pulled herself free, and together she and Harry liberated Ron and began binding the attacking rock creatures, until the hallway was empty, the stone floor still and silent once again.

“Very good!” said that same strange voice, and all three of them whipped around to see a very tall wizard approaching them. The rough stone of the hallway floor smoothed out wherever he stepped, so that his long white robes could drag easily along the ground.

“The three of you work very well together. I commend you.”

He came closer. Now Harry saw that this man was so very old that everything about him seemed faded: his robes, his heavily-bagged gray eyes, and his hair, which had clearly once been black, but now was lank and colorless, hanging around him like dead skin about to drop off. The only prominent feature on his person were his eyebrows, which grew wildly in two steep arches like mountain slopes, still entirely black, the only part of his hair that had not faded.

This, Harry thought, must be their man.

The old wizard turned to Harry and regarded him carefully. “You in particular are very quick on your feet. Superb instincts. You cannot be taught to react like that, no, no. It is what they call an inborn talent. Tell me, how old are you?”

“Seventeen,” said Harry, trying not to look unnerved under the appraising stare.

One of the wizard’s prominent eyebrows climbed its way up his forehead. “So young? Sad state of the world when a mere boy must defend himself at a moment’s notice, yes indeed, a sad state. And I suppose you have a name?”

“Yes, I do,” said Harry.

The ends of the wizard’s mouth curled ever so slightly. “And it is...?”

“Yours first.”

Now the wizard smiled broadly. “Why don’t you guess.”

“All right,” said Harry. “Svargas Volshebnik.”

Volshebnik’s face twisted a little. “Your pronunciation is awful, but I am happy to say you have come to the right place. Now your name please.”

Harry had a good one. “Draco Malfoy,” he replied. “And these are my associates, Crabbe and Goyle.” He glanced at Ron and Hermione, and they took the hint, both nodding stiffly, and falling into line a few feet behind Harry.

“Malfoy?” asked Volshebnik, and for a moment Harry was afraid he’d been recognized. “A French name, isn’t it?”

“Er, yes,” said Harry, who hadn’t honestly ever given this much thought.

Volshebnik shook his head, amused again. “Why must all you English wizards go about with French names? You are not the first, you know. I suppose it is a delusion of grandeur, yes. But I have always liked those common English names. Hopkins. Brown. Nice strong names.”

Harry stared. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from an old tutor of Voldemort’s, but this odd wizard pontificating on all manner of trivial subjects was not exactly fitting the bill. In fact, more than anything Volshebnik reminded him of Dumbledore.

“Well,” said Volshebnik, “don’t stand about in the entranceway as if you don’t know whether to stay or go! Come inside and we shall talk. I don’t often have guests, you know. I hope you don’t mind if I make an occasion of it.”

He snapped his fingers and once again the floor was alive, the great stone figures leaping to Volshebnik’s command. They stood in rows along the ice walls, like a saluting guard.

Volshebnik turned back to Harry, smiling. “My golems will show the way.”

“Thank you,” said Harry.

But as Harry turned to follow the marching creatures, Volshebnik lunged at him. “Punctum!”

Harry brought his wand up in a flash. “Protego!” He deflected Volshebnik’s curse, and was about to attack, when he realized that the old man was laughing.

“Superb instincts, really superb! Come into my house, Mr. Malfoy, I am happy to have you.”