Ron obliged at once. Holding it up in front of him, he clicked it. The solitary lamp they had lit went out at once.

“The thing is,” whispered Hermione through the dark, “we could have achieved that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder.”

There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flew back to the ceiling and illuminated them all once more.

“Still, it’s cool,” said Ron, a little defensively. “And from what they said, Dumbledore invented it himself!”

“I know, but surely he wouldn’t have singled you out in his will just to help us turn out the lights!”

“D’you think he knew the Ministry would confiscate his will and examine everything he’d left us?” asked Harry.

“Definitely,” said Hermione. “He couldn’t tell us in the will why he was leaving us these things, but that will doesn’t explain…”

“…why he couldn’t have given us a hint when he was alive?” asked Ron.

“Well, exactly,” said Hermione, now flicking through The Tales of Beedle the Bard. “If these things are important enough to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you’d think he’d have left us know why… unless he thought it was obvious?”

“Thought wrong, then, didn’t he?” said Ron. “I always said he was mental. Brilliant and everything, but cracked. Leaving Harry an old Snitch—what the hell was that about?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Hermione. “When Scrimgeour made you take it, Harry, I was so sure that something was going to happen!”

“Yeah, well,” said Harry, his pulse quickened as he raised the Snitch in his fingers. “I wasn’t going to try too hard in front of Scrimgeour, was I?”

“What do you mean?” asked Hermione.

“The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match?” said Harry. “Don’t you remember?”

Hermione looked simply bemused. Ron, however, gasped, pointing frantically from Harry to the Snitch and back again until he found his voice.

“That was the one you nearly swallowed!”

“Exactly,” said Harry, and with his heart beating fast, he pressed his mouth to the Snitch.

It did not open. Frustration and bitter disappointment welled up inside him: He lowered the golden sphere, but then Hermione cried out.

“Writing! There’s writing on it, quick, look!”

He nearly dropped the Snitch in surprise and excitement. Hermione was quite right. Engraved upon the smooth golden surface, where seconds before there had been nothing, were five words written in the thin, slanted handwriting that Harry recognized as Dumbledore’s:

...

I open at the close.

He had barely read them when the words vanished again.

“‘I open at the close…’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hermione and Ron shook their heads, looking blank.

“I open at the close… at the close… I open at the close…”

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Harry jumped to his feet too. Scrimgeour limped toward Harry and jabbed him hard in the chest with the point of his wand; It singed a hole in Harry’s T-shirt like a lit cigarette.	\|	But no matter how often they repeated the words, with many different inflections, they were unable to wring any more meaning from them.

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