“All righ’, Harry!” he said, beaming, when Harry approached the fence. “Come in, come in, we’ll have a cup o’ dandelion juice. . . .
“How’s things?” Hagrid asked him, as they settled down at his wooden table with a glass apiece of iced juice. “You — er — feelin’ all righ’, are yeh?”
Harry knew from the look of concern on Hagrid’s face that he was not referring to Harry’s physical well-being.
“I’m fine,” Harry said quickly, because he could not bear to discuss the thing that he knew was in Hagrid’s mind. “So, where’ve you been?”
“Bin hidin’ out in the mountains,” said Hagrid. “Up in a cave, like Sirius did when he —”
Hagrid broke off, cleared his throat gruffly, looked at Harry, and took a long draught of juice.
“Anyway, back now,” he said feebly.
“You — you look better,” said Harry, who was determined to keep the conversation moving away from Sirius.
“Wha’?” said Hagrid, raising a massive hand and feeling his face. “Oh — oh yeah. Well, Grawpy’s loads better behaved now, loads. Seemed right pleased ter see me when I got back, ter tell yeh the truth. He’s a good lad, really. . . . I’ve bin thinkin’ abou’ tryin’ ter find him a lady friend, actually . . .”
Harry would normally have tried to persuade Hagrid out of this idea at once. The prospect of a second giant taking up residence in the forest, possibly even wilder and more brutal than Grawp, was positively alarming, but somehow Harry could not muster the energy necessary to argue the point. He was starting to wish he was alone again, and with the idea of hastening his departure he took several large gulps of his dandelion juice, half emptying his glass.
“Ev’ryone knows you’ve bin tellin’ the truth now, Harry,” said Hagrid softly and unexpectedly. “Tha’s gotta be better, hasn’ it?”
Harry shrugged.
“Look . . .” Hagrid leaned toward him across the table, “I knew Sirius longer ’n you did. . . . He died in battle, an’ tha’s the way he’d’ve wanted ter go —”
“He didn’t want to go at all!” said Harry angrily.
Hagrid bowed his great shaggy head.
“Nah, I don’ reckon he did,” he said quietly. “But still, Harry . . . he was never one ter sit around at home an’ let other people do the fightin’. He couldn’ have lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help —”
Harry leapt up again.
“I’ve got to go and visit Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing,” he said mechanically.
“Oh,” said Hagrid, looking rather upset. “Oh . . . all righ’ then, Harry . . . Take care of yerself then, an’ drop back in if yeh’ve got a mo . . .”
“Yeah . . . right . . .”
Harry crossed to the door as fast as he could and pulled it open. He was out in the sunshine again before Hagrid had finished saying good-bye and walked away across the lawn. Once again, people called out to him as he passed. He closed his eyes for a few moments, wishing they would all vanish, that he could open his eyes and find himself alone in the grounds. . . .
A few days ago, before his exams had finished and he had seen the vision Voldemort had planted in his mind, he would have given almost anything for the Wizarding world to know that he had been telling the truth, for them to believe that Voldemort was back and know that he was neither a liar nor mad. Now, however . . .
He walked a short way around the lake, sat down on its bank, sheltered from the gaze of passersby behind a tangle of shrubs, and stared out over the gleaming water, thinking. . . .
Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he had felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world. He was — he had always been — a marked man. It was just that he had never really understood what that meant. . . .
And yet sitting here on the edge of the lake, with the terrible weight of grief dragging at him, with the loss of Sirius so raw and fresh inside, he could not muster any great sense of fear. It was sunny and the grounds around him were full of laughing people, and even though he felt as distant from them as though he belonged to a different race, it was still very hard to believe as he sat here that his life must include, or end in, murder. . . .
He sat there for a long time, gazing out at the water, trying not to think about his godfather or to remember that it was directly across from here, on the opposite bank, that Sirius had collapsed trying to fend off a hundred dementors. . . .
The sun had fallen before he realized that he was cold. He got up and returned to the castle, wiping his face on his sleeve as he went.
Ron and Hermione left the hospital wing completely cured three days before the end of term. Hermione showed signs of wanting to talk about Sirius, but Ron tended to make hushing noises every time she mentioned his name. Harry was not sure whether or not he wanted to talk about his godfather yet; his wishes varied with his mood. He knew one thing, though: Unhappy as he felt at the moment, he would greatly miss Hogwarts in a few days’ time when he was back at number four, Privet Drive. Even though he now understood exactly why he had to return there every summer, he did not feel any better about it. Indeed, he had never dreaded his return more.