“— and Ron stabbed it with the sword.”
“And . . . and it went? Just like that?” she whispered.
“Well, it — it screamed,” said Harry with half a glance at Ron. “Here.”
He threw the locket into her lap; gingerly she picked it up and examined its punctured windows.
Deciding that it was at last safe to do so, Harry removed the Shield Charm with a wave of Hermione’s wand and turned to Ron.
“Did you just say you got away from the Snatchers with a spare wand?”
“What?” said Ron, who had been watching Hermione examining the locket. “Oh — oh yeah.”
He tugged open a buckle on his rucksack and pulled a short, dark wand out of its pocket. “Here. I figured it’s always handy to have a backup.”
“You were right,” said Harry, holding out his hand. “Mine’s broken.”
“You’re kidding?” Ron said, but at that moment Hermione got to her feet, and he looked apprehensive again.
Hermione put the vanquished Horcrux into the beaded bag, then climbed back into her bed and settled down without another word.
Ron passed Harry the new wand.
“About the best you could hope for, I think,” murmured Harry.
“Yeah,” said Ron. “Could’ve been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?”
“I still haven’t ruled it out,” came Hermione’s muffled voice from beneath her blankets, but Harry saw Ron smiling slightly as he pulled his maroon pajamas out of his rucksack.
CHAPTER TWENTY
XENOPHILIUS LOVEGOOD
Harry had not expected Hermione’s anger to abate overnight, and was therefore unsurprised that she communicated mainly by dirty looks and pointed silences the next morning. Ron responded by maintaining an unnaturally somber demeanor in her presence as an outward sign of continuing remorse. In fact, when all three of them were together Harry felt like the only non-mourner at a poorly attended funeral. During those few moments he spent alone with Harry, however (collecting water and searching the undergrowth for mushrooms), Ron became shamelessly cheery.
“Someone helped us,” he kept saying. “Someone sent that doe. Someone’s on our side. One Horcrux down, mate!”
Bolstered by the destruction of the locket, they set to debating the possible locations of the other Horcruxes, and even though they had discussed the matter so often before, Harry felt optimistic, certain that more breakthroughs would succeed the first. Hermione’s sulkiness could not mar his buoyant spirits: The sudden upswing in their fortunes, the appearance of the mysterious doe, the recovery of Gryffindor’s sword, and above all, Ron’s return, made Harry so happy that it was quite difficult to maintain a straight face.
Late in the afternoon he and Ron escaped Hermione’s baleful presence again, and under the pretense of scouring the bare hedges for nonexistent blackberries, they continued their ongoing exchange of news. Harry had finally managed to tell Ron the whole story of his and Hermione’s various wanderings, right up to the full story of what had happened at Godric’s Hollow; Ron was now filling Harry in on everything he had discovered about the wider Wizarding world during his weeks away.
“. . . and how did you find out about the Taboo?” he asked Harry after explaining the many desperate attempts of Muggle-borns to evade the Ministry.
“The what?”
“You and Hermione have stopped saying You-Know-Who’s name!”
“Oh, yeah. Well, it’s just a bad habit we’ve slipped into,” said Harry. “But I haven’t got a problem calling him V —”
“NO!” roared Ron, causing Harry to jump into the hedge and Hermione (nose buried in a book at the tent entrance) to scowl over at them. “Sorry,” said Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the brambles, “but the name’s been jinxed, Harry, that’s how they track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance — it’s how they found us in Tottenham Court Road!”
“Because we used his name?”
“Exactly! You’ve got to give them credit, it makes sense. It was only people who were serious about standing up to him, like Dumbledore, who ever dared use it. Now they’ve put a Taboo on it, anyone who says it is trackable — quick-and-easy way to find Order members! They nearly got Kingsley —”
“You’re kidding?”
“Yeah, a bunch of Death Eaters cornered him, Bill said, but he fought his way out. He’s on the run now, just like us.” Ron scratched his chin thoughtfully with the end of his wand. “You don’t reckon Kingsley could have sent that doe?”
“His Patronus is a lynx, we saw it at the wedding, remember?”
“Oh yeah . . .”
They moved farther along the hedge, away from the tent and Hermione.
“Harry . . . you don’t reckon it could’ve been Dumbledore?”
“Dumbledore what?”
Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice, “Dumbledore . . . the doe? I mean,” Ron was watching Harry out of the corners of his eyes, “he had the real sword last, didn’t he?”
Harry did not laugh at Ron, because he understood too well the longing behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had managed to come back to them, that he was watching over them, would have been inexpressibly comforting. He shook his head.
“Dumbledore’s dead,” he said. “I saw it happen, I saw the body. He’s definitely gone. Anyway, his Patronus was a phoenix, not a doe.”
“Patronuses can change, though, can’t they?” said Ron. “Tonks’s changed, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, but if Dumbledore was alive, why wouldn’t he show himself? Why wouldn’t he just hand us the sword?”
“Search me,” said Ron. “Same reason he didn’t give it to you while he was alive? Same reason he left you an old Snitch and Hermione a book of kids’ stories?”