Black's Daughter and the Half-Blood Prince [Book 2]

Dreamless Sleep

Soon they had reached the stone gargoyle. Dumbledore gave the password, it sprang aside, and he, Harry and Alecto went up the moving spiral staircase to the oak door.

Dumbledore pushed it open. Sirius was standing there. His face was white and gaunt as it had been when he had escaped Azkaban. In one swift moment, he had crossed the room and pulled his daughter into his arms.

Alecto sighed softly and held onto him, it was a comforting feeling, yet she still felt that bit of emptiness inside her.

"Alecto, are you all right?" He whispered, she merely nodded and he helped her into a chair.

“Harry, are you all right? I knew it — I knew something like this — what happened?”
His hands shook as he also helped Harry into a chair in front of the desk.

“What happened?” he asked more urgently
Dumbledore began to tell Sirius everything Barty Crouch had said.

Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, be­hind his desk. He looked between Harry and Alecto, Harry, avoided his eyes, and Alecto met them but her expression was blank and numb.

Dumbledore was going to question them. Alecto didn't entirely mind but poor Harry, he was going to make him relive everything.

“I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore, turning his gaze to Harry.
“We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let them rest.”

But Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes.

“If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has hap­pened tonight, I would do it.

But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.”

He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, vi­sions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup, Alecto saw these things in those horrid visions she got when she was still among the stands.

Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say some­thing, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder while he occasionally glanced at Alecto to make sure she was fine, Dumbledore raised his hand to stop Harry.
When he told of Wormtail piercing his arm with the dagger, however, Sirius let out a vehement exclamation and Dumbledore stood up so quickly that Harry started. Dumbledore walked around the desk and told Harry to stretch out his arm. Harry showed them the place where his robes were torn and the cut beneath them.

“He said my blood would make him stronger than if he’d used someone else’s,” Harry told Dumbledore. “He said the protection my — my mother left in me — he’d have it too. And he was right — he could touch me.

“Very well,” he said, sitting down again. “Voldemort has over­come that particular barrier. Harry, continue, please.”

Harry went on; he explained how Voldemort had emerged from the cauldron, and told them all he could remember of Voldemort’s speech to the Death Eaters. Then he told how Voldemort had un­tied him, returned his wand to him, and prepared to duel.
But when he reached the part where the golden beam of light had connected his and Voldemort’s wands, he found his throat ob­structed. He tried to keep talking, but the memories of what had come out of Voldemort’s wand were flooding into his mind. He could see Cedric emerging, see the old man, Bertha Jorkins … his father … his mother …