The jinx broke: The dust-figure exploded again, and it was impossible to make out the newcomer through the dense gray cloud it left behind.
Harry pointed his wand into the middle of it.
“Don’t move!”
He had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black: At the sound of his yell, the curtains hiding her flew open and she began to scream, “Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house —”
Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry, wands pointing, like his, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below.
“Hold your fire, it’s me, Remus!”
“Oh, thank goodness,” said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell. Ron too lowered his wand, but Harry did not.
“Show yourself!” he called back.
Lupin moved forward into the lamplight, hands still held high in a gesture of surrender.
“I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder’s Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag.”
“Oh, all right,” said Harry, lowering his wand, “but I had to check, didn’t I?”
“Speaking as your ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn’t be quite so quick to lower your defenses.”
They ran down the stairs toward him. Wrapped in a thick black traveling cloak, he looked exhausted, but pleased to see them.
“No sign of Severus, then?” he asked.
“No,” said Harry. “What’s going on? Is everyone okay?”
“Yes,” said Lupin, “but we’re all being watched. There are a couple of Death Eaters in the square outside —”
“We know —”
“I had to Apparate very precisely onto the top step outside the front door to be sure that they would not see me. They can’t know you’re in here or I’m sure they’d have more people out there; they’re staking out everywhere that’s got any connection with you, Harry. Let’s go downstairs, there’s a lot to tell you, and I want to know what happened after you left the Burrow.”
They descended into the kitchen, where Hermione pointed her wand at the grate. A fire sprang up instantly: It gave the illusion of coziness to the stark stone walls and glistened off the long wooden table. Lupin pulled a few butterbeers from beneath his traveling cloak and they sat down.
“I’d have been here three days ago but I needed to shake off the Death Eater tailing me,” said Lupin. “So, you came straight here after the wedding?”
“No,” said Harry, “only after we ran into a couple of Death Eaters in a café on Tottenham Court Road.”
Lupin slopped most of his butterbeer down his front.
“What?”
They explained what had happened; when they had finished, Lupin looked aghast.
“But how did they find you so quickly? It’s impossible to track anyone who Apparates, unless you grab hold of them as they disappear!”
“And it doesn’t seem likely they were just strolling down Tottenham Court Road at the time, does it?” said Harry.
“We wondered,” said Hermione tentatively, “whether Harry could still have the Trace on him?”
“Impossible,” said Lupin. Ron looked smug, and Harry felt hugely relieved. “Apart from anything else, they’d know for sure Harry was here if he still had the Trace on him, wouldn’t they? But I can’t see how they could have tracked you to Tottenham Court Road, that’s worrying, really worrying.”
He looked disturbed, but as far as Harry was concerned, that question could wait.
“Tell us what happened after we left, we haven’t heard a thing since Ron’s dad told us the family were safe.”
“Well, Kingsley saved us,” said Lupin. “Thanks to his warning most of the wedding guests were able to Disapparate before they arrived.”
“Were they Death Eaters or Ministry people?” interjected Hermione.
“A mixture; but to all intents and purposes they’re the same thing now,” said Lupin. “There were about a dozen of them, but they didn’t know you were there, Harry. Arthur heard a rumor that they tried to torture your whereabouts out of Scrimgeour before they killed him; if it’s true, he didn’t give you away.”
Harry looked at Ron and Hermione; their expressions reflected the mingled shock and gratitude he felt. He had never liked Scrimgeour much, but if what Lupin said was true, the man’s final act had been to try to protect Harry.
“The Death Eaters searched the Burrow from top to bottom,” Lupin went on. “They found the ghoul, but didn’t want to get too close — and then they interrogated those of us who remained for hours. They were trying to get information on you, Harry, but of course nobody apart from the Order knew that you had been there.
“At the same time that they were smashing up the wedding, more Death Eaters were forcing their way into every Order-connected house in the country. No deaths,” he added quickly, forestalling the question, “but they were rough. They burned down Dedalus Diggle’s house, but as you know he wasn’t there, and they used the Cruciatus Curse on Tonks’s family. Again, trying to find out where you went after you visited them. They’re all right — shaken, obviously, but otherwise okay.”
“The Death Eaters got through all those protective charms?” Harry asked, remembering how effective these had been on the night he had crashed in Tonks’s parents’ garden.
“What you’ve got to realize, Harry, is that the Death Eaters have got the full might of the Ministry on their side now,” said Lupin. “They’ve got the power to perform brutal spells without fear of identification or arrest. They managed to penetrate every defensive spell we’d cast against them, and once inside, they were completely open about why they’d come.”
“And are they bothering to give an excuse for torturing Harry’s whereabouts out of people?” asked Hermione, an edge to her voice.