Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs.

“Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic to be honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me, and they’d taken my wand. Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn’t do it so well. Splinched myself again”—Ron held up his right hand to show two missing fingernails: Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly—“and I came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank where we’d been… you were gone.”

“Gosh, what a gripping story,” Hermione said in the lofty voice she adopted when wishing to wound. “You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric’s Hollow and, let’s think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who’s snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second.”

“What?” Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione ignored him.

“Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn’t it?”

“Hermione,” said Harry quietly, “Ron just saved my life.”

She appeared not to have heard him.

“One thing I would like to know, though,” she said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over Ron’s head. “How exactly did you find us tonight? That’s important. Once we know, we’ll be able to make sure we’re not visited by anyone else we don’t want to see.”

Ron glared at her, then pulled a small silver object from his jeans pocket.

“This.”

She had to look at Ron to see what he was showing them.

“The Deluminator?” she asked, so surprised she forgot to look cold and fierce.

“It doesn’t just turn the lights on and off,” said Ron. “I don’t know how it works or why it happened then and not any other time, because I’ve been wanting to come back ever since I left. But I was listening to the radio really early on Christmas morning and I heard… I heard you.”

He was looking at Hermione.

“You heard me on the radio?” she asked incredulously.

“No, I heard you coming out of my pocket. Your voice,” he held up the Deluminator again, “came out of this.”

“And what exactly did I say?” asked Hermione, her tone somewhere between skepticism and curiosity.

“My name. ‘Ron.’ And you said… something about a wand…”

Hermione turned a fiery shade of scarlet. Harry remembered: it had been the first time Ron’s name had been said aloud by either of them since the day he had left; Hermione had mentioned it when talking about repairing Harry’s wand.

“So I took it out,” Ron went on, looking at the Deluminator, “and it didn’t seem different or anything, but I was sure I’d heard you. So I clicked it. And the light went out in my room, but another light appeared right outside the window.”

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps.	\|	Ron raised his empty hand and pointed in front of him, his eyes focused on something neither Harry nor Hermione could see.

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