The Ransom of Albus Dumbledore

3. SIRIUS'S STORY

"Here it is, Sirius." She thrust the parchment at the face in the mirror.

Good girl!

"So what's this all about?"

Have you had a chance to look at it?

"No. Shall I?"

I guess it won't make much sense without an explanation. It's apparently a list of things Dumbledore meant to take care of before he died.

"Oh." Hermione couldn't keep a hint of irritation out of her voice. She'd always thought of Sirius as rather a shallow, flighty type. If he was going to waste her precious time making her run around looking for a laundry list...

As if he had read the look on her face, Sirius blurted, Wait, Hermione. I'm not talking about trivial, everyday chores like airing out the guest bedroom or have having your pet Kneazle declawed. These are promises he made to people. Big promises, Hermione, life-and-death promises.

She glanced at the headings on the list. A lot of the words were abbreviated, but she recognized some right away, prominent among them: "Mggl-brns", "D.Drsly", "DEs", "Kncktrn A.", "N.Mlfy", "Scrmgr", and "Pttgrw."

"He certainly cast a wide net," she murmured.

Sirius bowed his head and murmured, Albus Dumbledore cared about everyone he ever met--even Tom Riddle. There was the merest hint of reverence in his voice. Whatever else you might say about Sirius, he admired and respected his old headmaster

"You said something about this list being important to help Professor Dumbledore--that he was trapped or something."

I'd better go back to the beginning, said Sirius, clearing his throat. Did Harry tell you why he and Dumbledore were not in the castle the night the Death Eaters broke in?

"Yes, they were looking for Horcruxes--objects Voldemort has stored parts of his life essence in. Professor Dumbledore thought there was one in a cave by the ocean. He and Harry Apparated into it. Harry didn't tell me and Ron the details though. I think it hurt him too much."

What exactly did he tell you?

Hemone thought back. "Inside the cave, they found this lake. And then a little boat appeared, and they used it to cross over to an island. Harry said they could see this green glow coming from the island. That's what they aimed for. Then they stepped ashore... that was about all he said... I guess there must have been a Horcrux on the island."

While they were in the boat, did Harry mention seeing anything... in the water for instance?

"No, he didn't."

There were creatures called Inferi in the water--

Hermione nodded eagerly. "I've read about those--"

Harry didn't know what they were at first. He just saw these corpses floating along. Dumbledore would have told told him not to touch the water at any price. Do you know what Inferi are, Hermione?

"They're zombies, aren't they? Animated bodies of dead people--but mindless. I heard that Voldemort has been able to conjure a great number to do his bidding."

Well--

Hermione went on quickly, "They're something like Dementors, I think."

Sirius snorted. Not really. They are souls, tortured souls of people long dead, who have been given the loan of a body so that they can walk the earth for a time. And they're not entirely without thoughts. They've some of their own, and emotions too, unlike Dementors--

"What emotions?" she asked sharply.

Longing...regret...envy...among others. Sirius paused and stared out into the middle distance. But to go on with the story: the island wasn't very big--more like a rock sticking out of the water-- and there was this pedestal with a bowl on top filled some greenish, phosphorescent liquid. That's where the glow came from. And they could see a locket at the bottom of the bowl. The professor tried every way he could to reach it, but there was some kind of invisible barrier that prevented him. So he pulled a goblet out of the air--

"A goblet? Why?"

This was a very special goblet. It was able to get through to the liquid inside the bowl.

"So how do you know all this, Sirius?" Hemione asked.

Lord Death told me.

"Lord Death?" That name again.

I'll come back to him later. Anyway, Dumbledore Accio-ed this goblet from beyond the Veil, from Death's own house, in fact. It's the only kind of vessel that would work, under the circumstances. That's some kind of magic, Hermione."

Hermione was with child to know more about this person "Lord Death" all the ghosts kept referring to. He sounded like another powerful Dark Wizard, as if one wasn't enough. She hoped he wasn't a friend, or even an acquaintance, of You-Know-Who's. She had a hundred questions about Sirius's situation as well, but she could see he wasn't about to answer them--not yet at least-- so she concentrated on the story he was telling.

Now here's the really weird part, said Sirius. It wasn't enough to just penetrate the barrier, or even to bail the fluid out of the bowl. For some reason, Dumbledore had to drink it.

Without knowing exactly why, Hermione was horrified by this idea. Perhaps it was because the liquid had been placed in the bowl by the person who most hated and envied the Headmaster. Was it a trap of some sort? "Drink it?!" she exclaimed.

Yes. Sirius'voice was grave. because The water from the River Styx must never be allowed to mingle with the waters of earth.

"The River Styx! The river the Dead have to cross to get to the Underworld," Hermione recited from her Ancient History class. "But that's just a myth, isn't it?"

But Sirius's face had taken on a grim, closed look. After a moment of silence, he went on. Before he began, the professor made Harry promise to force him to keep on drinking no matter how much he begged not to--until the bowl was empty. And Harry did. I don't know how he found the strength, but he did. Each time he offered him a glassful, the professor begged, pleaded with him not to make him drink any more. Harry had to lie each time and say it was only water or it was the last glassful--like that.

"It must have been the hardest thing he's ever had to do," Hermione murmured. For some reason the incident reminded her of the look on Harry's face the night he described Voldemort's rebirth to her and Ron. He seemed bent on punishing himself for not being able to stop it. Once Ron would have cringed at such a description or made some lame remark, but that time, he just put a steadying hand on Harry's shoulder and held his eyes with a grave stare. "It wasn't your fault mate," Ron had said, "you did more than anyone else could have." For that, she should have kissed him right on the frown line puckering his freckled brow....

Sirius cut into her thoughts. My godson has certainly been through some rough times. But the worst may have been having to listen to the things Dumbledore said during the ordeal.

"What?" Hermione leaned in to the image in the mirror. "What did he say?"

Apparently, after a couple of glassfuls, the professor seemed to fall into a trance or something. He was twitching--all over--and he cried out, like he was having a nightmare--like he was guilty of some terrible crime--or witnessing one. He kept saying, 'I'm sorry. It's all my fault,' and 'I did wrong' and 'please, don't hurt them'--things like that.

"That sounds like the Headmaster," said Hermione, nodding. "He never seemed to care much about protecting himself."

Do you know how many gobletfuls he drank?

"What do you mean?"

Take a guess.

This sounded like the sort of riddle Ron was always posing: "how many hags does it take to screw up a potion, or those Knock-knock jokes of her father's. But Sirius was not smiling. "I don't know," she admitted impatiently. "Ten, maybe?"

"Close. There were eleven in all."

"So?"

So, there were twelve gobletfuls in the bowl. Somehow that number was important to the spell binding the water."

"That makes sense. In arithmancy, twelve is a mystical number, tied to the relationship between life and death. So there was liquid left in the bottom of the bowl. Was that important?"

Supremely so, according Lord Death. Because it was then that Harry did something that he never should have done, though it seemed the only thing he could do at the time.

"Oh no," Hermione cried. "what was it?"

The professor said he was terribly thirsty, and Harry couldn't get his Aguamenti charm to work properly, so he filled the goblet with lake water.

"Oh, I know. He disturbed the bodies--the Inferi."

Yes, but that's not--

"No, no, it makes sense--"

Right. And that's the important--

"Exactly. Because it woke the Inferi, and Harry had to try and fight them off. I remember now. He did tell us that much."

Nooo--

Hermione was vehement. "Yes, I'm telling you: Harry didn't have enough power to fend them off, and they both might have been dragged under the water, but the professor came to his senses and drove the Inferi off... with a Fireball, I think."

Exasperation at her stubbornnes caused Sirius to shout, Yes, yes, but the really important thing, the Nogtail in the pigsty, one might say, is that apparently that action of Harry's--putting the goblet into the lake--carried the last of the Styx water from the bowl into the lake.

Hermione quailed at his reaction. "I--I don't understand. What's so wrong about that?"

Sirius calmed down, but only a little. He said acidly, You were taught that the River Styx marks the border between this life and the next. What they don't teach in those Muggle classes is that if its waters are permitted to mingle with earthly matter, unspeakable things may happen.

"But, Sirius, nothing did happen. Harry and the professor--they got away all right--"

That may be true, but it's only because the consequences of that rash act could not be carried out on the earthly plane. And I'm quoting Lord Death now: "By the immutable laws of the Afterlife, punishment could only be inflicted after death."

"W-why?" Hermione stammered.

Because the water of the Styx belongs to the Beyond. And, worse still, the first creatures it touched were already dead.

"The Inferi," Hermione said, and her brain started working frantically, recalling snippets from her classes and her readings, especially some she loathed, having to do with Divination.

Yes, it called to them, reminded them of their sorry fate.

"And shortly thereafter, Dumbledore died, making him susceptible to the water's magic."

Sirius nodded. The punishment I spoke of is even now being wreaked on his soul by the spirits of those dead who were present in the lake.

"Oh no," she moaned. "You said Dumbledore was trapped. You meant by Inferi?"

The image in the mirror nodded gravely. The way Death explained it, Inferi are a branch of the Dead who are imprisoned in a lower world--beyond the Styx. It's a kind of dull Hell reserved for the ones who never kept their promises in this life--liars, cheats, and like that. There are other Hells as well, but this is the only one that evil wizards like Voldemort can draw his undead minions from.

"Why is that?"

Having all these regrets about faithless pledges and broken vows, the Inferi are in closer touch with this life than other spirits. They long to come back, even if only as zombies. Have you ever read Dante?

"Only The Inferno. My parents were taking me to Florence one summer and thought I should have some background first."

Bella used to read it to me--for the fun of giving a small boy nightmares. I remember. It describes all the circles of hell with their torments in deliciously sadistic detail. Dante was quite a good at divination--for a Muggle. The eighth circle has all the liars, hypocrites, thieves, gossips, warmongers, counterfeiters, flatterers, fortune-tellers, and politicians. Probably more sinners are there than in any other level.

Hermine goggled. "So You-Know-Who's army could number in the millions."

Well, not quite. As I say, in order for them to be able to interact with living beings, he has to have bodies to join them to--that they can walk around in. But although they can only affect the living if they can control a physical body, when Dumbledore died, their souls were drawn to his through the bond of the Styx. And there was another link as well. Their sins of omission haunt them eternally, so they are able to hold him and torment him because of something they best recognize and understand--his unfulfilled commitments.

Hermione studied list she had found in the Headmaster's office. "And this contains some of those commitments."

All of them, if I'm right.

"How can you be so sure?"

Sirius' eyes unfocussed and his mouth quirked in a smile, as if he was seeing events long past, happy ones. I remember some of the Order meetings he chaired. Dumbledore never let even a hint of magical danger to any wizard or witch--or Muggle even-- go unanswered. Whenever someone would come to the Order with a problem or an injustice--especially if it had to do with the Death Eaters--he would write it down. At meetings, he parceled them out--to everyone but me, of course. He frowned. But he took a lot of those tasks on himself too--the most challenging ones I think, the ones with the greatest risk. And he always wrote down his obligations and crossed them off as he completed them. Our beloved Headmaster may have seemed disorganized in some ways, but where people's welfare was concerned, he was totally reliable. You can be sure that what you hold in your hand is the key to Albus Dumbledore's salvation.

Hermione beamed. "So if someone goes around and carries out the promises he made, the professor will be released."

The way Death explained it, it's more like the Inferi will no longer recognize him as one of their own, and so they'll lose interest. He will become transparent or sort of like invisible to them. Anyway that's what Lord Death says.

"We should get this list to the Aurors immediately. Even though they're busy hunting down Professor Snape and Draco, they'll still want to make this a first priority."

But the question is: would they believe you?

"Of course they would--"

And even worse, can we trust any of them? They report to Scrimgeour, you know.

Hermione was indignant. "Tonks would never--"

But if she asked for an extended leave and couldn't tell them why...This is a long list, Hermione.

Hermione admitted the force of his logic. "All right, the Aurors are out. The Order then."

I hate to point this out, but most of them are Aurors.

Hermione grimaced. Sirius was starting to sound like Ron at his most irritatingly logical. "Professor McGonagall--erm--no, that's right. She'll be busy--at school." She didn't mention to Sirius that the new Headmistress looked much older since Dumbledore died. And that look she got whenever she said his name--it would kill her to know he was suffering still. "What about Professor Lupin?"

Sirius' face turned sad. Have you seen him lately?

"No..."

I'm going to tell you something in strictest confidence, Hermione. He looked about and beckoned her closer to the mirror. While I was still alive, Remus Lupin took on the responsibility of infiltrating the rogue werewolf population to try and neutralize them. We can't let him be distracted from that.

"But Professor Dumbledore..."

...would agree with me. The werewolves are the biggest threat to both the Muggle and magical populations now, even worse than the Inferi or the Dementors...or even the Giants. Remember, every werewolf attack means new members for the pack, countless potential Dark allies. And to be a werewolf is worse than death, Hermione, much worse. Dumbledore wouldn't want Remus to leave that post, even to save his soul.

Hermione had to acquiesce to his heartfelt plea. "Harry...or Ron...no, we can't bother them with this. Harry's been through too much already, and if he thought that he was responsible for the Professor's suffering, it would just about kill him. Oh, and Ron's going to be celebrating his brother's marriage. I can't deprive his family of him now, especially since it might be the last time he ever... And Ginny--no, I couldn't put her through this. Oh dear...what can we...?"

Don't you see, Hermione? The only person available... and qualified... is you.

"What?" Hermione's thoughts were a swirl of confusion. There was something very flattering about the supercilious, blasé Sirius Black, asking for her help. When he was alive, he had never seemed to trust her or Ron's or even Harry's judgment. But he was asking the impossible. Anyone could see that. She tried to explain, "Sirius--I'm not--I couldn't--"

But he obviously wasn't going to accept a 'no' answer. Believe me, Hermione, there is no one better suited for this task.

"There must be someone else who can--"

Think, Hermione. You said it yourself: the list shows that Dumbledore cast a wide net--far beyond our Magicosm--in his efforts to shield people from the Dark Lord. And besides him--and Harry--you're the only person I know who has such an intimate knowledge of both the Muggle and magical worlds.

"That's true but I...I just don't know..."

You've a quick mind, and your spell work is off the charts. Hermione, you are the best---the only person for the job."

This final blast of fulsome praise shattered the barriers of reason. "All right. I'll do it. For Dumbledore." And maybe she could ask Ron...or Ginny to come along...at least for a bit.

That's great. And with my help, I just know you'll succeed.

"What do you mean--with your help?" She hoped to heaven that he didn't mean what it sounded like he meant.

But Sirius was on a roll. Do you think I'd just leave you to fend for yourself? I do still have some male pride, you know...and some abilities, though they are limited. At the very least, I can be a companion to you, someone you can bounce ideas off of.

Reason roused itself and warred with reluctance. She really couldn't do this all by myself, and it would unfair to ask Ron...But Sirius? Oh, honestly! "Well... erm... all right...."

I can understand your reluctance to work with me.

"What do you mean?"

I know we haven't always gotten along.

"Oh, that. Well, sometimes you have been rather...stand-offish." And brooding and unsympathetuc, petulant, uncooperative, self-centered, out of control.... She forced a note of cheeriness into her voice. "Never mind. We have the same goal here. I'm sure we'll work together just fine. But...there is one other thing."

What's that?

"We'll have to act fast. I'm to meet Harry and Ron for Bill's wedding the end of July. We were going to start off to look for the Horcruxes right after that."

He sighed. We have to finish this by August, you say? That gives us only two months. But there is another reason why it's important that the work be completed quickly.

"What?"

I'm afraid of what the Inferis' torments can ultimately do to Dumbledore's soul. If it's anything like the Dementors...well, it's got to be even worse than with them.

"What do you mean?"

While I was in Azkaban, Hermione, I was never entirely alone. At least, I could hear other prisoners nearby. Oh, they were mostly just muttering to themselves, moaning, crying-- screaming sometimes---but in a way all that noise was comforting because it reminded me that there were real people all around me in the same boat as I was. And I could see the sky through the grate in the ceiling... hear the rain, and the seabirds calling. And there was the occasional outsider--always there to visit someone else of course--but it helped keep me going too, just knowing the door swung both ways and that there was a real world on the other side of it, far away from those soul-sucking fiends. It gave me hope, you see.

But Dumbledore's all closed in, in that tomb, Hermione. He's all alone in there, hopeless and helpless, with all these feelings of guilt, of insufficiency, knowing that there are people up here he was not able to help, people he promised something to...

"Well, not exactly alone. But, as you say, the Inferi are like Dementors..."

Something like. They're hungry, yes, but for revenge, not happy feelings. I think the Inferi must be so jealous of the living. They'd love to turn even one of us into a twisted bit of ectoplasmic swill like themselves.

"How can you know that?"

I think I understand a little of how they feel. My last year, I had to sit in Grimmauld Place doing nothing, feeling bitter and envious of the rest of you out there--free--and fighting. I wanted you all to know how I felt. I wanted to punish every last one of you--oh Merlin--Harry especially--for the sorry situation I'd got myself into. The Dead are like that, I'm sure, at least the ones who have made a lot of lives miserable with their lies and cheating. They can't ever go back to fix their mistakes.

She felt a very unrational lump in her throat. "Sirius--"

Hermione. I don't know anything about necromancy or psychology or whatever else the great minds of magic and Muggledom use to explain these things. I just have a feeling in my non-existent gut that we have to wrap this up soon, before they damage Dumbledore's soul beyond repair.

He's changed, she thought. But I can't let this get to me. We have a job to do. "Well, there's no sense dwelling on that," she said briskly, waving away the fumes of discouragement. "I just have a few things to wrap up with the Headmistress, and then we can go. But how will you travel? I can't carry this mirror around with me."

Well--

"Oh, I know. While I was in the Head's office, your great, great grandfather told me that you can inhabit bodies when you're not traipsing through mirrors and such."

Ah, dear Phineas Nigellus! He sends his love, I'm sure. Yes, over the last year Lord Death provided all sorts of 'containers' for my spirit. He made a face. But I won't inhabit just any old body. Some of the corpses he offered were foul--from old cemeteries and battlefields.

"And I heard you've been cats and dogs and--um--lesser beings."

If you're referring to that flobberworm I was forced to inhabit--well, I was desperate. How was I to know you'd stopped taking Creature Care?

"Why did you do it?"

I--uh--felt I had to keep an eye on you all.

"Really?"

Yes, I was also one of those owls that brought your test results that day at the Weasleys--the one with the hole in his chest. You didn't notice; you were so wrapped up in your OWL results. And later I took possession of a dead garden gnome in the midden out back of Molly's kitchen. Choked on too many potato peelings, the greasy little git. I don't ever want to be inside of one of those again. The smell and the diet was bloody awful...not to mention their mating habits...

Hermione stared at him, horrified.

Oops--sorry about that.Then I heard you all were going to Diagon Alley--not the safest of trips these days, so I borrowed the corpse of a seedy amulet merchant who'd been garrotted in Knockturn Alley and set up shop.

And--oh yes--later on the train to Hogwarts, your friend Luna Lovegood mistook me in my spirit form for a Wrackspurt. I couldn't stop Malfoy from beating up on Harry, but I was able to put a bug in Tonks's ear about it out on the platform so she could get on the train and rescue him. And I spent a good bit of time inhabiting various not too decayed bits of Buckbeak's snacks...

"But you never communicated with us--not even once." Sneaking around like that, spying on us all, when Harry was hurting so badly after your death. I wonder if you'll ever grow up.

Well, when I'm inhabiting an animal, I can't use telepathy. Something about the ectoplasmic vibrations being trapped within the confines of earthly clay...I don't know... I never paid much attention to that stuff in Trelawney's classes.

She rolled her eyes. Trelawney. Right. "Tell me about it. But you could've left clues--hints--spelled your name out in rat pellets or something. It would have been so helpful to Harry. You...you don't know how many times he wished he could talk to you."

I'm sorry, Hermione. Believe me, I felt his pain. But my silence was a condition of my freedom. The Grim Reaper let me go out in the world and watch over you all, but he made me promise not to reveal myself to any of you. He gets a little touchy about the boundary between Life and Death. It's his baby after all. He can't stand mediums and séances and such.

Oh. "So how come you're allowed to talk--erm--communicate with me now?"

The Pale Prince wants Dumbledore freed as much as we do. He's beside himself about the way Voldemort has been usurping his power.

"Usurping--? You mean making the Horcruxes?"

Yes, they kept him alive all those times he should've died. His Ghastliness still resents Voldie, I can tell. He wanders around mumbling, "Why couldn't he just kick off on schedule like a good fellow?"

"On schedule?"

Voldemort refused to die when it was his turn.

"When was that?"

Voldemort was actually scheduled to die in 1981 on Halloween Night.

"That's when Harry--as a baby--was able to resist his Killing Curse, and it rebounded back on him."

Yes, Death told me that was the true meaning of the prophecy--'neither can live while the other survives.'

"But the prophecy also says: 'The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal.' Harry didn't get the mark on his forehead until that night. But if You-Know-Who was meant to die that same night, it doesn't make sense."

Excellent point, Hermione. I asked something like that same question, and Skull Face just said that some words can have more than one meaning. I don't know what he meant by that. I mean, a mark's a mark, right?

"No, 'mark' can mean lots of other things, not just a sign or a scar. It can mean 'recognize' too." She had a sudden epiphany, which gave her a jolt of confidence. Epiphanies always did that for Hermione, especially when they came out of her own swotting, and the effect was doubled when she could show her revelation off to someone she felt had never really appreciated the value of scholarship, like Sirius--or Ron. "And the Dark Lord did just that, when he heard the first part of the prophecy. He perceived that Harry would be a formidable enemy. That's when he 'marked' him or 'recognized' him as his equal. That's why he felt he had to hunt him down. "

Then the scar may have had nothing to do with the prophecy. It makes sense--as much as the other anyway. So Voldie cheated Death--literally. And it made Death mad. But Voldie couldn't leave bad enough alone. He had to keep interfering in Death's affairs. The old Scythe-swinger told me all about it in one of his rants: how Voldie's spirit inhabited Professor Quirrell, and then he tried to steal the Philosopher's Stone, and then he killed a unicorn to keep himself alive, and he made that restoration concoction with Harry's blood, and then he conjured the Inferi, yada, yada, yada...

"Well, I guess I can understand how--erm--how Death feels..."

And that's not the worst of it, Hermione. Since Voldemort didn't die when he was supposed to, anyone he's killed himself since then is also a person who wasn't scheduled to die yet. And since there's nowhere else for them to go, they end up on Death's estate--just like me.

"Who has he killed since 1981?"

Only three that we know of: an old Muggle geezer named Frank Bryce. Well, his time did finally run out last week--he was that old--so he passed over at last. I kind of miss him. He was a decent snooker player. And Bertha Jorkins. Sirius said this last with a look of pain on his face.

"Isn't she that scatty witch who went missing during the Quidditch World Cup?"

Yes, though 'scatty' isn't the word I'd use. More like brainless and weepy and terminally annoying. Death thinks so too. She's a non-stop talker. He'd do anything to get her off the grounds, but she's not scheduled to go for another fifty years.

"That's dreadful."

And then there's Karkarov.

"Igor Karkarov, Viktor's headmaster? The one who was a Death Eater?"

No, actually it's his brother, Sergei. And this is the one funny thing in this whole mess. Voldemort was itching to get Karkarov after he turned tail and ran out on the Death Eaters last year. He heard a rumor about where he was and went after him himself. Just couldn't wait on his minions, he was that mad. But it turns out, it was Karkarov's older brother, who looks a lot like him. So he killed the wrong bloke.

"Does he know he made a mistake?"

No one does yet, not even the Ministry. But if Voldie doesn't, I'm sure he'll find out soon enough. Wherever the real Igor is hiding, his spies are sure to get wind of it.

"Do you think Lord Death, angry as he is, would help us take Voldemort down?"

You betcha. The Master of the Moribund can't interfere directly--it's against some rule or other--but he can give us information. It was Death who told me about Dumbledore's situation in the first place. I had to wheedle most of the story out of him though. He's not the most forthcoming of informants.

"You say you live with him?"

Yes, he has this house and grounds--a garden and such. He doesn't much like my being there. He's still mad at me for coming through that Veil. I'm a trespasser who's upset his nice, neat little universe. And, as I say, I can't leave until my time.

He doesn't...torture you or anything, does he?"

No, it's more like intermittent carping and whining about 'the good old days'. That's not so bad, really. Reminds me of my mum. It's when he gives me the silent treatment that I start to go crazy.

"Does he do it a lot?"

Oh yes, it's his favorite way of getting back at me. But then, he's away a lot too--finishing people off. There's a brisk business in dying, especially nowadays. He looked glum at this.

"But it's a good thing for him to be away, isn't it? I mean the ranting and all sounds awful."

No, it's not. I hate to say it, but I miss him when he's gone. It's like solitary confinement. Lonely and very, very boring, except when Bertha or Sergei come wandering in--which might actually be worse, when I come to think of it. She's very silly, and he's very quarrelsome, but since he doesn't speak English, I can never tell what he's mad about.

"It must be frustrating."

And monotonous. Death's house is all shades of black and gray, and, as I say, apart from visits from those two, there's no sound, none at all, except for the ticking of that one big clock in the hall and all that eerie tinkling and whooshing.

"What?"

Oh, didn't I tell you? He has shelves lining every single goddamned room, with all these hourglasses on them--

"Hourglasses?"

I guess it's okay to tell you about them. There's one for every living creature on earth, from the tallest giant right down to the teeniest pissy ant--or so he says. So all this sand is whoshing through all the necks of all these hourglasses and there's this tiny tinkling sound when a stray particle hits the sides.

"And when the sand in your glass runs out, your time is up."

Death showed me mine once. It'll empty out at the end of July of this year--only another month or so--but it started him off on one of his rants. My non-existent ears were ringing for days afterwards.

"Wait. What happens when you do pass over? I mean--will you still be able to help me?"

Oops, I forgot about that. I'll have to ask old Bag of Bones about it. He seemed really eager to get Dumbledore on his way to the Beyond, so I'm sure he'll come up with something... But, it's true. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go. He brightened. But then I'll get to--well--

"You really want to pass over and be with James and Lily, don't you?

The image in the mirror just sighed.

"You've been through a lot since you--died."

All in a most excellent cause though. It's ironic, isn't it, that I may be able to help more in the fight against Voldemort dead than I did alive.

"You mean by rescuing the Headmaster's soul."

Yes, but also it looks to me as if some of these promises on Dumbledore's list involve Death Eater activities. So we'll be gutting two vampires with one stake, as they say: fighting Voldie at the same time we're saving Dumbledore.

"All right, let's say we try to do this together. Will you be traveling as a spirit or what? I mean, if you're inhabiting an animal, it will be hard to understand you. I mean--my French is pretty good, but I don't speak Kneazle."

That's true, but there's a potion you can take to allow you to understand us dumb brutes.

"Really?"

Mmm-hmm. There's some in Dumbledore's--McGonagall's office: Dr. Doolittle's Veterinariserum.

"I remember that bottle. I packed it up. It's going to his brother Aberforth."

Can you get it back? It will come in real handy. That Doolittle was quite a gifted vet--Muggle fellow, you know.

"How did he come to be able to make a magical potion?"

That's something I'll have to ask him after I get into the Afterlife myself.

"I have another question--about how this whole thing started. The Styx water, how did it get into that bowl in the cave in the first place?"

Voldemort, of course. He, of all, people, would have a detailed knowledge of necromancy and would have figured out how to Summon it...

"But, Sirius, Harry told us that the locket at the bottom of the bowl wasn't the real Horcrux. It had a note inside--a message for the Dark Lord. Someone had found the real Horcrux, stolen it, and left the locket in its place. So there's someone out there who was able to get by the water in the bowl, remove the Horcrux, and replace it with an innocent replica."

A Death Eater, I'd guess. Who else would have a clue what Voldemort was doing?

"But who else would have that kind of power?"

Necromancy is a very specialized field of study. I only ever knew one person who had that kind of interest. He was rather brilliant--if misguided--in that way. It made him quite valuable to the Dark Lord for a time.

"The signature on the note was just initials: R.A.B."

Sirius looked startled, and was silent a moment. It fits, he murmured. Then: I have an idea who it is, but I won't know for sure until I have myself passed over.

"Then the person is already dead. Can you tell me who--"

No! He bowed his head. But--if I'm right--yes, he's dead.