The air through which they needed to move seemed to have become solid: They could not Disapparate; the Death Eaters had cast their charms well. The cold was biting deeper and deeper into Harry’s flesh. He, Ron, and Hermione retreated down the side street, groping their way along the wall, trying not to make a sound. Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly, came dementors, ten or more of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks and their scabbed and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity? Harry was sure of it: They seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths he detested, tasting despair on the air, closing in —
He raised his wand: He could not, would not, suffer the Dementor’s Kiss, whatever happened afterward. It was of Ron and Hermione that he thought as he whispered, “Expecto Patronum!”
The silver stag burst from his wand and charged: The dementors scattered and there was a triumphant yell from somewhere out of sight.
“It’s him, down there, down there, I saw his Patronus, it was a stag!”
The dementors had retreated, the stars were popping out again, and the footsteps of the Death Eaters were becoming louder; but before Harry in his panic could decide what to do, there was a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-hand side of the narrow street, and a rough voice said, “Potter, in here, quick!”
He obeyed without hesitation: The three of them hurtled through the open doorway.
“Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!” muttered a tall figure, passing them on his way into the street and slamming the door behind him.
Harry had had no idea where they were, but now he saw, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust-strewn bar of the Hog’s Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through a second doorway, which led to a rickety wooden staircase that they climbed as fast as they could. The stairs opened onto a sitting room with a threadbare carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single large oil painting of a blonde girl who gazed out at the room with a kind of vacant sweetness.
Shouts reached them from the street below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak, they crept toward the grimy window and looked down. Their savior, whom Harry now recognized as the Hog’s Head’s barman, was the only person not wearing a hood.
“So what?” he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. “So what? You send dementors down my street, I’ll send a Patronus back at ’em! I’m not having ’em near me, I’ve told you that, I’m not having it!”
“That wasn’t your Patronus!” said a Death Eater. “That was a stag, it was Potter’s!”
“Stag!” roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. “Stag! You idiot — Expecto Patronum!”
Something huge and horned erupted from the wand: Head down, it charged toward the High Street and out of sight.
“That’s not what I saw —” said the Death Eater, though with less certainty.
“Curfew’s been broken, you heard the noise,” one of his companions told the barman. “Someone was out in the street against regulations —”
“If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!”
“You set off the Caterwauling Charm?”
“What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven’t pressed your little Dark Marks and summoned him. He’s not going to like being called here for me and my old cat, is he, now?”
“Don’t you worry about us,” said one of the Death Eaters, “worry about yourself, breaking curfew!”
“And where will you lot traffick potions and poisons when my pub’s closed down? What’ll happen to your little sidelines then?”
“Are you threatening — ?”
“I keep my mouth shut, it’s why you come here, isn’t it?”
“I still say I saw a stag Patronus!” shouted the first Death Eater.
“Stag?” roared the barman. “It’s a goat, idiot!”
“All right, we made a mistake,” said the second Death Eater. “Break curfew again and we won’t be so lenient!”
The Death Eaters strode back toward the High Street. Hermione moaned with relief, wove out from under the Cloak, and sat down on a wobble-legged chair. Harry drew the curtains tight shut, then pulled the Cloak off himself and Ron. They could hear the barman down below, rebolting the door of the bar, then climbing the stairs.
Harry’s attention was caught by something on the mantelpiece: a small, rectangular mirror propped on top of it, right beneath the portrait of the girl.
The barman entered the room.
“You bloody fools,” he said gruffly, looking from one to the other of them. “What were you thinking, coming here?”
“Thank you,” said Harry. “We can’t thank you enough. You saved our lives.”
The barman grunted. Harry approached him, looking up into the face, trying to see past the long, stringy, wire-gray hair and beard. He wore spectacles. Behind the dirty lenses, the eyes were a piercing, brilliant blue.
“It’s your eye I’ve been seeing in the mirror.”
There was silence in the room. Harry and the barman looked at each other.
“You sent Dobby.”
The barman nodded and looked around for the elf.
“Thought he’d be with you. Where’ve you left him?”
“He’s dead,” said Harry. “Bellatrix Lestrange killed him.”
The barman’s face was impassive. After a few moments he said, “I’m sorry to hear it. I liked that elf.”
He turned away, lighting lamps with prods of his wand, not looking at any of them.
“You’re Aberforth,” said Harry to the man’s back.
He neither confirmed nor denied it, but bent to light the fire.
“How did you get this?” Harry asked, walking across to Sirius’s mirror, the twin of the one he had broken nearly two years before.
“Bought it from Dung ’bout a year ago,” said Aberforth. “Albus told me what it was. Been trying to keep an eye out for you.”
Ron gasped.
“The silver doe!” he said excitedly. “Was that you too?”
“What are you talking about?” said Aberforth.
“Someone sent a doe Patronus to us!”
“Brains like that, you could be a Death Eater, son. Haven’t I just proved my Patronus is a goat?”