Ron was gaping at him; Hermione sat up, looking worried.

“But what did you see? How do you know?”

“I saw him find out about the cup, I—I was in his head, he’s”—Harry remembered the killings—“he’s seriously angry, and scared too, he can’t understand how we knew, and now he’s going to check the others are safe, the ring first. He things the Hogwarts one is safest, because Snape’s there, because it’ll be so hard not to be seen getting in. I think he’ll check that one last, but he could still be there within hours—”

“Did you see where in Hogwarts it is?” asked Ron, now scrambling to his feet too.

“No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn’t think about exactly where it is—”

“Wait, wait!” cried Hermione as Ron caught up to the Horcrux and Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak again. “We can’t just go, we haven’t got a plan, we need to—”

“We need to get going,” said Harry firmly. He had been hoping to sleep, looking forward to getting into the new tent, but that was impossible now. “Can you imagine what he’s going to do once he realizes the ring and the locket are gone? What if he moves the Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn’t safe enough?”

“But how are we going to get in?”

“We’ll go to Hogsmeade,” said Harry, “and try to work something out once we see what the protection around the school’s like. Get under the Cloak, Hermione, I want to stick together this time.”

“But we don’t really fit—”

“It’ll be dark, no one’s going to notice our feet.”

The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water. The dragon had drunk its fill and risen into the air. They paused in their preparations to watch it climb higher and higher, now black against the rapidly darkening sky, until it vanished over a nearby mountain. Then Hermione walked forward and took her place between the other two, Harry pulled the Cloak down as far as it would go, and together they turned on the spot into the crushing darkness.

THE MISSING MIRROR

Harry’s feet touched the road. He saw the achingly familiar Hogsmeade High Street: dark shop fronts, and the mist line of black mountains beyond the village and the curve in the road ahead that led off toward Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broomsticks, and with a lurch of the hear, he remembered with piercing accuracy, how he had landed here nearly a year before, supporting a desperately weak Dumbledore, all this in a second, upon landing—and then, even as he relaxed his grip upon Ron’s and Hermione’s arms, it happened.

The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Voldemort’s when he had realized the cup had been stolen: It tore at every nerve in Harry’s body, and he knew that their appearance had caused it.

Even as he looked at the other two beneath the Cloak, the door of the Three Broomsticks burst open and a dozen cloaked and hooded Death Eaters dashed into the streets, their wands aloft.

Harry seized Ron’s wrist as he raised his wand; there were too many of them to run. Even attempting it would have give away their position. One of the Death Eaters raised his wand, and the scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.

“Accio Cloak!” roared one of the Death Eaters.

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Hermione looked across the lake to the far bank where the dragon was still drinking.	\|	Harry seized his folds, but it made no attempt to escape. The Summoning Charm had not worked on it.

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