“It wasn’t me,” said Harry flatly. “It was my wand. My wand acted of its own accord.”
After a few moments, Hermione said gently, “But that’s impossible, Harry. You mean that you did magic without meaning to; you reacted instinctively.”
“No,” said Harry. “The bike was falling, I couldn’t have told you where Voldemort was, but my wand spun in my hand and found him and shot a spell at him, and it wasn’t even a spell I recognized. I’ve never made gold flames appear before.”
“Often,” said Mr. Weasley, “when you’re in a pressured situation you can produce magic you never dreamed of. Small children often find, before they’re trained —”
“It wasn’t like that,” said Harry through gritted teeth. His scar was burning: He felt angry and frustrated; he hated the idea that they were all imagining him to have power to match Voldemort’s.
No one said anything. He knew that they did not believe him. Now that he came to think of it, he had never heard of a wand performing magic on its own before.
His scar seared with pain; it was all he could do not to moan aloud. Muttering about fresh air, he set down his glass and left the room.
As he crossed the dark yard, the great skeletal thestral looked up, rustled its enormous batlike wings, then resumed its grazing. Harry stopped at the gate into the garden, staring out at its overgrown plants, rubbing his pounding forehead and thinking of Dumbledore.
Dumbledore would have believed him, he knew it. Dumbledore would have known how and why Harry’s wand had acted independently, because Dumbledore always had the answers; he had known about wands, had explained to Harry the strange connection that existed between his wand and Voldemort’s . . . But Dumbledore, like Mad-Eye, like Sirius, like his parents, like his poor owl, all were gone where Harry could never talk to them again. He felt a burning in his throat that had nothing to do with firewhisky. . . .
And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside his head.
“You told me the problem would be solved by using another’s wand!”
And into his mind burst the vision of an emaciated old man lying in rags upon a stone floor, screaming, a horrible, drawn-out scream, a scream of unendurable agony. . . .
“No! No! I beg you, I beg you. . . .”
“You lied to Lord Voldemort, Ollivander!”
“I did not. . . . I swear I did not. . . .”
“You sought to help Potter, to help him escape me!”
“I swear I did not . . . I believed a different wand would work. . . .”
“Explain, then, what happened. Lucius’s wand is destroyed!”
“I cannot understand . . . The connection . . . exists only . . . between your two wands. . . .”
“Lies!”
“Please . . . I beg you. . . .”
And Harry saw the white hand raise its wand and felt Voldemort’s surge of vicious anger, saw the frail old man on the floor writhe in agony —
“Harry?”
It was over as quickly as it had come: Harry stood shaking in the darkness, clutching the gate into the garden, his heart racing, his scar still tingling. It was several moments before he realized that Ron and Hermione were at his side.
“Harry, come back in the house,” Hermione whispered. “You aren’t still thinking of leaving?”
“Yeah, you’ve got to stay, mate,” said Ron, thumping Harry on the back.
“Are you all right?” Hermione asked, close enough now to look into Harry’s face. “You look awful!”
“Well,” said Harry shakily, “I probably look better than Ollivander. . . .”
When he had finished telling them what he had seen, Ron looked appalled, but Hermione downright terrified.
“But it was supposed to have stopped! Your scar — it wasn’t supposed to do this anymore! You mustn’t let that connection open up again — Dumbledore wanted you to close your mind!”
When he did not reply, she gripped his arm.
“Harry, he’s taking over the Ministry and the newspapers and half the Wizarding world! Don’t let him inside your head too!”
CHAPTER SIX
THE GHOUL IN PAJAMAS
The shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in the days that followed; Harry kept expecting to see him stumping in through the back door like the other Order members, who passed in and out to relay news. Harry felt that nothing but action would assuage his feelings of guilt and grief and that he ought to set out on his mission to find and destroy Horcruxes as soon as possible.
“Well, you can’t do anything about the” — Ron mouthed the word Horcruxes — “till you’re seventeen. You’ve still got the Trace on you. And we can plan here as well as anywhere, can’t we? Or,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “d’you reckon you already know where the You-Know-Whats are?”
“No,” Harry admitted.
“I think Hermione’s been doing a bit of research,” said Ron. “She said she was saving it for when you got here.”
They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr. Weasley and Bill had just left for work. Mrs. Weasley had gone upstairs to wake Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had drifted off to take a bath.
“The Trace’ll break on the thirty-first,” said Harry. “That means I only need to stay here four days. Then I can —”
“Five days,” Ron corrected him firmly. “We’ve got to stay for the wedding. They’ll kill us if we miss it.”
Harry understood “they” to mean Fleur and Mrs. Weasley.
“It’s one extra day,” said Ron, when Harry looked mutinous.
“Don’t they realize how important — ?”
“’Course they don’t,” said Ron. “They haven’t got a clue. And now you mention it, I wanted to talk to you about that.”