“Maybe they’ll be too scared to tell him?” said Ron hopefully. “Maybe they’ll cover up —”
The sky, the smell of lake water, the sound of Ron’s voice were extinguished: Pain cleaved Harry’s head like a sword stroke. He was standing in a dimly lit room, and a semicircle of wizards faced him, and on the floor at his feet knelt a small, quaking figure.
“What did you say to me?” His voice was high and cold, but fury and fear burned inside him. The one thing he had dreaded — but it could not be true, he could not see how . . .
The goblin was trembling, unable to meet the red eyes high above his.
“Say it again!” murmured Voldemort. “Say it again!”
“M-my Lord,” stammered the goblin, its black eyes wide with terror, “m-my Lord . . . we t-tried t-to st-stop them. . . . Im-impostors, my Lord . . . broke — broke into the — into the Lestranges’ v-vault. . . .”
“Impostors? What impostors? I thought Gringotts had ways of revealing impostors? Who were they?”
“It was . . . it was . . . the P-Potter b-boy and t-two accomplices. . . .”
“And they took?” he said, his voice rising, a terrible fear gripping him. “Tell me! What did they take?”
“A . . . a s-small golden c-cup, m-my Lord . . .”
The scream of rage, of denial left him as if it were a stranger’s: He was crazed, frenzied, it could not be true, it was impossible, nobody had ever known: How was it possible that the boy could have discovered his secret?
The Elder Wand slashed through the air and green light erupted through the room; the kneeling goblin rolled over, dead; the watching wizards scattered before him, terrified: Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy threw others behind them in their race for the door, and again and again his wand fell, and those who were left were slain, all of them, for bringing him this news, for hearing about the golden cup —
Alone amongst the dead he stormed up and down, and they passed before him in vision: his treasures, his safeguards, his anchors to immortality — the diary was destroyed and the cup was stolen: What if, what if, the boy knew about the others? Could he know, had he already acted, had he traced more of them? Was Dumbledore at the root of this? Dumbledore, who had always suspected him; Dumbledore, dead on his orders; Dumbledore, whose wand was his now, yet who reached out from the ignominy of death through the boy, the boy —
But surely if the boy had destroyed any of his Horcruxes, he, Lord Voldemort, would have known, would have felt it? He, the greatest wizard of them all; he, the most powerful; he, the killer of Dumbledore and of how many other worthless, nameless men: How could Lord Voldemort not have known, if he, himself, most important and precious, had been attacked, mutilated?
True, he had not felt it when the diary had been destroyed, but he had thought that was because he had no body to feel, being less than ghost . . . No, surely, the rest were safe . . . The other Horcruxes must be intact. . . .
But he must know, he must be sure . . . He paced the room, kicking aside the goblin’s corpse as he passed, and the pictures blurred and burned in his boiling brain: the lake, the shack, and Hogwarts —
A modicum of calm cooled his rage now: How could the boy know that he had hidden the ring in the Gaunt shack? No one had ever known him to be related to the Gaunts, he had hidden the connection, the killings had never been traced to him: The ring, surely, was safe.
And how could the boy, or anybody else, know about the cave or penetrate its protection? The idea of the locket being stolen was absurd. . . .
As for the school: He alone knew where in Hogwarts he had stowed the Horcrux, because he alone had plumbed the deepest secrets of that place. . . .
And there was still Nagini, who must remain close now, no longer sent to do his bidding, under his protection. . . .
But to be sure, to be utterly sure, he must return to each of his hiding places, he must redouble protection around each of his Horcruxes. . . . A job, like the quest for the Elder Wand, that he must undertake alone . . .
Which should he visit first, which was in most danger? An old unease flickered inside him. Dumbledore had known his middle name . . . Dumbledore might have made the connection with the Gaunts . . . Their abandoned home was, perhaps, the least secure of his hiding places, it was there that he would go first. . . .
The lake, surely impossible . . . though was there a slight possibility that Dumbledore might have known some of his past misdeeds, through the orphanage.
And Hogwarts . . . but he knew that his Horcrux there was safe; it would be impossible for Potter to enter Hogsmeade without detection, let alone the school. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to alert Snape to the fact that the boy might try to reenter the castle . . . To tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a grave mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy: Didn’t their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was ever to trust?
He would visit the Gaunt shack first, then, and take Nagini with him: He would not be parted from the snake anymore . . . and he strode from the room, through the hall, and out into the dark garden where the fountain played; he called the snake in Parseltongue and it slithered out to join him like a long shadow. . . .
Harry’s eyes flew open as he wrenched himself back to the present: He was lying on the bank of the lake in the setting sun, and Ron and Hermione were looking down at him. Judging by their worried looks, and by the continued pounding of his scar, his sudden excursion into Voldemort’s mind had not passed unnoticed. He struggled up, shivering, vaguely surprised that he was still wet to his skin, and saw the cup lying innocently in the grass before him, and the lake, deep blue shot with gold in the failing sun.
“He knows.” His own voice sounded strange and low after Voldemort’s high screams. “He knows, and he’s going to check where the others are, and the last one,” he was already on his feet, “is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it.”