7th Year: Harry Potter and the Snares of Fate

Chapter Two

GODRIC'S HOLLOW

HERMIONE

Hermione Granger tossed and turned in her sleep. Centaurs cantered in and out of her dreams, their prophetic wonderings punctuated by screams and blasts of green light.

“Hermione!” a harried voice hissed in her ear.

She rolled over, pulling her blankets up to her chin.

“Hermione! Hermione, wake up!”

Her eyes fluttered open and she glimpsed a face floating above her in the dark. She cried out in terror, but the figure waved a wand through the air, “Silencio!”

“H-Harry?” Hermione fumbled for her wand in the darkness and the tip lit of its own accord, casting the room into sharp relief. “Oh, Harry - you gave me such a fright!”

“Sorry,” he said hastily, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Hermione ran her fingers through her ratted brown hair, ruing the bedraggled state he had found her in. Harry, however, wasn't looking at her. He sank down on the edge of the bed, brooding and thoughtful.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Aunt Petunia - you know Aunt Petunia? - she's just told me everything.”

Hermione sat upright. “Everything?”

Harry nodded stoically, “About mum and dad, and Hogwarts…” He paused, then turned to face Hermione, suddenly excited, “and about Godric's Hollow - where it is…how to get there…”

Hermione crawled out of bed and ran a comb through her tangled hair, but it was a lost cause.

“Hermione - I need to see it. That's where it all begins, isn't it?” Harry looked at her earnestly.

Hermione nodded. “I'm coming with you. Just give me a moment - you know -- to write a note to Mum and Dad.”

Harry wondered vaguely why he had chosen to come to Hermione's doorstep rather than Ron's. The Weasleys would have understood, but here he was, sneaking out of the Grangers' kitchen window with Hermione in tow.

* * * * *

Two hours later, Hermione and Harry edged out of a shadowy forest and ambled down a winding country road. The sky glowed pinkish-gray above them and dew clung to the grass. They moved silently; there was nothing to be said. Harry kept craning his neck for a glimpse inside the houses they passed. Lights flickered on in the kitchens and small silhouettes walked back and forth carrying breakfast plates, ties, and unironed shirts.

The houses became fewer and farther between, and Hermione knew that they were drawing closer. Harry stopped abruptly at her side and gestured wordlessly towards the half-hidden ruins of a small cottage. Before Hermione could reach out to stop him, he was trudging through the dense thicket towards the skeleton of a house. He climbed nimbly over a crumbled stone wall and looked about.

“This is it,” Harry said with a painful finality.

Hermione scaled a pile of debris and joined him in the middle of the ruins. It felt like hallowed ground. “Harry -” she began, not at all sure what she wanted to say to him. “Harry-”

“Ah! There you are!” A plump, middle-aged woman wearing a magenta dress suit was plodding towards them, fending off branches and thistles. “You must be the Wattisons!” She stuck out a hand for Harry to shake. “I am Wendoline Johnstone, your realtor.”

Harry and Hermione exchanged startled glances.

“Nice place, isn't it?” she asked conversationally. “Needs a bit of fixing up, of course! But with a little TLC, the possibilities are endless!”

“We weren't-” Harry began, but Wendoline Johnstone wasn't interested in hearing what he had to say.

“All the young couples are interested in fixer-uppers, nowadays.” She tittered, studying the pair of them closely. Hermione felt her face flush pink.

“No,” Harry said, more firmly this time. “We're not interested in buying…we're just looking around.”

Wendoline Johnstone looked highly affronted, “Excuse me? Why would you call me here so early in the morning if you were just going to `look around'?” She glowered at them.

“We didn't call you here!” Hermione exclaimed.

Wendoline Johnstone sat down on the stone wall and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Always the same,” she said moodily, lighting one and jabbing it between her highly-glossed lips. “No one wants the place - and who can blame them? - after such terrible goings-on. Why, it must have been fifteen, twenty years ago now…fishy business, if you ask me. Family gone. House destroyed. Weird people everywhere. Weird…you know the type.”

She eyed Harry and Hermione beadily.

“So, young couple, eh? Newlyweds?”

“No,” Harry said, looking at Hermione in bewilderment.

“Well, you'd make a lovely pair,” the realtor replied, oblivious to the embarrassment she had caused.

She sighed and looked around hopelessly. “Well, if you aren't the Wattisons, then you'd best be going. I expect they'll be here any moment, and I'm not authorized to show the property to anyone without an appointment. City Council doesn't want too many people tramping around and I can't say I blame them.”

Hermione and Harry didn't need telling twice; they bade the disgruntled realtor good-bye and set off through the dense thicket.

* * * * *

HARRY

A heavy fog settled around Harry and Hermione as they meandered through the graveyard. Tall granite angels loomed above them, alongside crumbling stone monuments.

An eerie silence pressed in upon their ears for the fog deadened all sound. They stepped softly through the dewy grass, eyes peeled for the Potters' graves.

At long last, Harry and Hermione found the graves in an overgrown corner of the graveyard. Ivy blanketed the face of the gravestones and weeds sprouted from a cranny in the rock. A gnarled peach tree towered overhead, and the ground was littered with rotting fruit. Overcome with emotion, Harry knelt down and ran his fingers over the headstone, carefully tracing his parents' names.

James Potter

November 6, 1959 - October 31, 1981

Lily Evans Potter

April 2, 1960 - October 31, 1981

 

Carefully, he cleared away the tangled weeds and rotten peaches. His parents' graves should not look like this, he thought sadly. Squatting on the mound of earth that was his parents' grave, Harry felt the loss doubly hard.

* * * * *

The silence was broken by the dull thud of heavy footsteps. Harry and Hermione wheeled around and spotted a sere old man hobbling towards them. Harry reached into his pocket and drew out his wand. The old man laughed harshly and pushed the wand tip away.

“I was there, you know…” he said in rattling voice. “…the night…”

Whatever Harry had expected, it wasn't this. “You mean, here - in Godric's Hollow?”

The old man nodded wearily. “Good folks, James an' Lily Potter. Didn't deserve what happen' to `em. That son of theirs survived somehow. Don't know how myself. Mum an' dad killed just like that - an' great witch and wizard they were too. An' he lived. They're calling him the Chosen One nowadays.”

“Me.” Harry murmured.

“Mighta known. Not many people come `round these parts anymore. Right after, of course - witches and wizards everywhere…Ministry had to set up some sort of barricade just to keep people out - couldn't have Muggles noticin' things. Nah - already noticin' things, they were. Not as thick as we think, Muggles.” He sighed and gazed over the headstones, seemingly unaware of the two teenagers standing beside him. “Of course, Muggles caught on purdy quick, what with the house blown up an' all. Told `em a gas main exploded, tha's all.” He chuckled to himself. “Lotta gas mains exploding in those days, eh? `Round `bout a week later, that Sirius Black and those Muggles - well you know what happened...now they say it was some Peter Pettigrew, but I don't buy that…”

Harry's hand clenched into a fist. “Sirius Black was innocent,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Whate'er you say. Ministry says he was…my gut says he wasn't.” The old man shrugged. “That night though, flames shooting twenty, thirty feet in the air. Strange colors too, never seen anything like it - red and green and gold-like. No gas main ever…well, tha's beside the point. Lemme just say it was a lucky thing Frank Longbottom was firs' on the scene. Plunged right in, he did. Found the boy,” he said this without acknowledging Harry's presence. “an' James an' Lily. An' a pile of robes - all that was left of the Darkest wizard we'd e'er known. Good man, Longbottom - best Auror the Ministry ever had. Got himself attacked `bout a month later. Some say he was jus' in the wrong place at the wrong time…some say he knew too much.” His eyes misted over. “Potters, always bad luck for the Potters. But you'll be different, you will, boy. World's counting on you now.”

The old man nodded grimly; Harry paled slightly but said nothing.

“Course, won' be easy, will it? Don' reckon you'd wanna die for a lot of ungrateful ol' witches and wiz'rds, eh? But don' have mucha a choice, do ye?”

Hermione seemed to snap out of a reverie. She grasped Harry's arm. When she spoke, there was a note of urgency in her voice, “We'd really better be going, Harry.”

“Just as well,” said the old man, rather gruffly, and without further ado, he Disapparated.

Harry turned slowly to Hermione, who was carefully avoiding his eyes - this was what she hadn't wanted to think about...the end. The end of what, precisely? Of Voldemort? Of Harry? She swallowed hard.

“You can't bear to think about it, can you?” Harry asked softly.

“Harry, please, don't start.”

“You don't have to put yourself in danger. It's my burden to bear; I don't think I could bear it if I was responsible for your d--”

“Don't be ridiculous!” Hermione exclaimed shrilly. “Of course I'm coming with you.” With that, Hermione clamped his arm firmly under her own and Apparated them to the lump of earth called Stoatshead Hill.

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