“What’s Nurmengard?”
“The prison Grindelwald had built to hold his opponents. He ended up in there himself, once Dumbledore had caught him. Anyway, it’s — it’s an awful thought that Dumbledore’s ideas helped Grindelwald rise to power. But on the other hand, even Rita can’t pretend that they knew each other for more than a few months one summer when they were both really young, and —”
“I thought you’d say that,” said Harry. He did not want to let his anger spill out at her, but it was hard to keep his voice steady. “I thought you’d say ‘They were young.’ They were the same age as we are now. And here we are, risking our lives to fight the Dark Arts, and there he was, in a huddle with his new best friend, plotting their rise to power over the Muggles.”
His temper would not remain in check much longer: He stood up and walked around, trying to work some of it off.
“I’m not trying to defend what Dumbledore wrote,” said Hermione. “All that ‘right to rule’ rubbish, it’s ‘Magic Is Might’ all over again. But Harry, his mother had just died, he was stuck alone in the house —”
“Alone? He wasn’t alone! He had his brother and sister for company, his Squib sister he was keeping locked up —”
“I don’t believe it,” said Hermione. She stood up too. “Whatever was wrong with that girl, I don’t think she was a Squib. The Dumbledore we knew would never, ever have allowed —”
“The Dumbledore we thought we knew didn’t want to conquer Muggles by force!” Harry shouted, his voice echoing across the empty hilltop, and several blackbirds rose into the air, squawking and spiraling against the pearly sky.
“He changed, Harry, he changed! It’s as simple as that! Maybe he did believe these things when he was seventeen, but the whole of the rest of his life was devoted to fighting the Dark Arts! Dumbledore was the one who stopped Grindelwald, the one who always voted for Muggle protection and Muggle-born rights, who fought You-Know-Who from the start, and who died trying to bring him down!”
Rita’s book lay on the ground between them, so that the face of Albus Dumbledore smiled dolefully at both.
“Harry, I’m sorry, but I think the real reason you’re so angry is that Dumbledore never told you any of this himself.”
“Maybe I am!” Harry bellowed, and he flung his arms over his head, hardly knowing whether he was trying to hold in his anger or protect himself from the weight of his own disillusionment. “Look what he asked from me, Hermione! Risk your life, Harry! And again! And again! And don’t expect me to explain everything, just trust me blindly, trust that I know what I’m doing, trust me even though I don’t trust you! Never the whole truth! Never!”
His voice cracked with the strain, and they stood looking at each other in the whiteness and the emptiness, and Harry felt they were as insignificant as insects beneath that wide sky.
“He loved you,” Hermione whispered. “I know he loved you.”
Harry dropped his arms.
“I don’t know who he loved, Hermione, but it was never me. This isn’t love, the mess he’s left me in. He shared a damn sight more of what he was really thinking with Gellert Grindelwald than he ever shared with me.”
Harry picked up Hermione’s wand, which he had dropped in the snow, and sat back down in the entrance of the tent.
“Thanks for the tea. I’ll finish the watch. You get back in the warm.”
She hesitated, but recognized the dismissal. She picked up the book and then walked back past him into the tent, but as she did so, she brushed the top of his head lightly with her hand. He closed his eyes at her touch, and hated himself for wishing that what she said was true: that Dumbledore had really cared.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SILVER DOE
It was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch at midnight. Harry’s dreams were confused and disturbing: Nagini wove in and out of them, first through a gigantic, cracked ring, then through a wreath of Christmas roses. He woke repeatedly, panicky, convinced that somebody had called out to him in the distance, imagining that the wind whipping around the tent was footsteps or voices.
Finally he got up in the darkness and joined Hermione, who was huddled in the entrance to the tent reading A History of Magic by the light of her wand. The snow was still falling thickly, and she greeted with relief his suggestion of packing up early and moving on.
“We’ll go somewhere more sheltered,” she agreed, shivering as she pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas. “I kept thinking I could hear people moving outside. I even thought I saw somebody once or twice.”
Harry paused in the act of pulling on a jumper and glanced at the silent, motionless Sneakoscope on the table.
“I’m sure I imagined it,” said Hermione, looking nervous. “The snow in the dark, it plays tricks on your eyes. . . . But perhaps we ought to Disapparate under the Invisibility Cloak, just in case?”
Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry wearing the Horcrux, and Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disapparated. The usual tightness engulfed them; Harry’s feet parted company with the snowy ground, then slammed hard onto what felt like frozen earth covered with leaves.
“Where are we?” he asked, peering around at a fresh mass of trees as Hermione opened the beaded bag and began tugging out tent poles.