The weather grew colder and colder. They did not dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of their worries, they continued to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was flooded with chill water; and a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half buried the tent in the night.
They had already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there came an evening when Harry resolved to suggest, again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to them. They had just eaten an unusually good meal: Hermione had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as she left), and Harry thought that she might be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears. He had also had the foresight to suggest that they take a few hours’ break from wearing the Horcrux, which was hanging over the end of the bunk beside him.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?” She was curled up in one of the sagging armchairs with The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He could not imagine how much more she could get out of the book, which was not, after all, very long; but evidently she was still deciphering something in it, because Spellman’s Syllabary lay open on the arm of the chair.
Harry cleared his throat. He felt exactly as he had done on the occasion, several years previously, when he had asked Professor McGonagall whether he could go into Hogsmeade, despite the fact that he had not persuaded the Dursleys to sign his permission slip.
“Hermione, I’ve been thinking, and —”
“Harry, could you help me with something?”
Apparently she had not been listening to him. She leaned forward and held out The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
“Look at that symbol,” she said, pointing to the top of a page. Above what Harry assumed was the title of the story (being unable to read runes, he could not be sure), there was a picture of what looked like a triangular eye, its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
“I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione.”
“I know that, but it isn’t a rune and it’s not in the syllabary, either. All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don’t think it is! It’s been inked in, look, somebody’s drawn it there, it isn’t really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?”
“No . . . No, wait a moment.” Harry looked closer. “Isn’t it the same symbol Luna’s dad was wearing round his neck?”
“Well, that’s what I thought too!”
“Then it’s Grindelwald’s mark.”
She stared at him, openmouthed.
“What?”
“Krum told me . . .”
He recounted the story that Viktor Krum had told him at the wedding. Hermione looked astonished.
“Grindelwald’s mark?”
She looked from Harry to the weird symbol and back again. “I’ve never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There’s no mention of it in anything I’ve ever read about him.”
“Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there.”
She fell back into the old armchair, frowning.
“That’s very odd. If it’s a symbol of Dark Magic, what’s it doing in a book of children’s stories?”
“Yeah, it is weird,” said Harry. “And you’d think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff.”
“I know. . . . Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the titles.”
She did not speak, but continued to pore over the strange mark. Harry tried again.
“Hermione?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve been thinking. I — I want to go to Godric’s Hollow.”
She looked up at him, but her eyes were unfocused, and he was sure she was still thinking about the mysterious mark on the book.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’ve been wondering that too. I really think we’ll have to.”
“Did you hear me right?” he asked.
“Of course I did. You want to go to Godric’s Hollow. I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can’t think of anywhere else it could be either. It’ll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it’s there.”
“Er — what’s there?” asked Harry.
At that, she looked just as bewildered as he felt.
“Well, the sword, Harry! Dumbledore must have known you’d want to go back there, and I mean, Godric’s Hollow is Godric Gryffindor’s birthplace —”
“Really? Gryffindor came from Godric’s Hollow?”
“Harry, did you ever even open A History of Magic?”
“Erm,” he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in months: The muscles in his face felt oddly stiff. “I might’ve opened it, you know, when I bought it . . . just the once. . . .”
“Well, as the village is named after him I’d have thought you might have made the connection,” said Hermione. She sounded much more like her old self than she had done of late; Harry half expected her to announce that she was off to the library. “There’s a bit about the village in A History of Magic, wait . . .”
She opened the beaded bag and rummaged for a while, finally extracting her copy of their old school textbook, A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot, which she thumbed through until finding the page she wanted.