The Other Black - Book 7

Chapter 25 - Gringotts

Their plans were made, their preparations complete; in the smallest bedroom a single long, coarse black hair (plucked from the sweater Hermione had been wearing at Malfoy Manor) lay curled in a small glass phial on the mantelpiece.

"And you'll be using her actual wand," said Harry, nodding toward the walnut wand, "so I reckon you'll be pretty convincing."

Hermione looked frightened that the wand might sting or bit her as she picked it up.

"I hate that thing," she said in a low voice. "I really hate it. It feels all wrong, it doesn't work properly for me . . . It's like a bit of her."

Aurora could not help but remember how Hermione had dismissed Harry's loathing of the blackthorn wand, insisting that he was imagining things when it did not work as well as his own, telling him to simply practice. She, and Harry, chose not to repeat her own advice back to her, however, the eve of their attempted assault on Gringotts felt like the wrong moment to antagonize her.

"It'll probably help you get in character, though," said Ron. "Think what that wand's done!"

"But that's my point!" said Hermione. "This is the wand that tortured Neville's mum and dad, and who knows how many other people? This is the wand that killed Sirius!"

Aurora had not thought of that: She looked down at the wand and was visited by a brutal urge to snap it, to slice it in half with Gryffindor's sword, which was propped against the wall beside her.

"I miss my wand," Hermione said miserably. "I wish Mr. Ollivander could have made me another one too."

Mr. Ollivander had sent Luna a new wand that morning. She was out on the back lawn at that moment, testing its capabilities in the late afternoon sun. Dean, who had lost his wand to the Snatchers, was watching rather gloomily. Harry looked down at the hawthorn wand that had once belonged to Draco Malfoy, and Aurora looked at the wand that was her father's.

It was a little weird, thinking about the wand. She'd had her wand by her side for years. Six years, she'd been with it. And now it was in Malfoy Manor, quite possibly destroyed, and the chances of her ever seeing it again were slim.

The door of the bedroom opened and Griphook entered. Harry drew the sword closer to him, but looked as though he regretted the action: the goblin had noticed.

Evidently seeking to gloss over the sticky moment, he said, "We've just been checking the last-minute stuff, Griphook. We've told Bill and Fleur we're leaving tomorrow, and we've told them not to get up to see us off."

They had been firm on this point, because Hermione would need to transform in Bellatrix before they left, and the less that Bill and Fleur knew or suspected about what they were about to do, the better. They had also explained that they would not be returning. As they had lost Perkin's old tent on the night that the Snatcher's caught them, Bill had lent them another one. It was now packed inside the beaded bag, which, Aurora was impressed to learn, Hermione had protected from the Snatchers by the simple expedient of stuffing it down her sock. Though he would miss Bill, Fleur, Luna, and Dean, not to mention the home comforts they had enjoyed over the last few weeks, Aurora was looking forward to escaping the confinement of Shell Cottage.

She was tired of trying to make sure that they were not overheard, tired of being shut in the tiny, dark bedroom. She was tired of everyone asking her how she was.

Precisely how and when they were to part from the goblin without handing over Gryffindor's sword remained a question to which Harry had no answer. It had been impossible to decide how they were going to do it, because the goblin rarely left Harry, Ron, Aurora, and Hermione alone together for more than five minutes at a time: "He could give my mother lessons," growled Ron, as the goblin's long fingers kept appearing around the edges of doors. Hermione disapproved so heartily of the planned double-cross that Harry had given up attempting to pick her brains on how best to do it: Ron, on the rare occasions that they had been able to snatch a few Griphook-free moments, had come up with nothing better than "We'll just have to wing it, mate." Aurora knew she was no help, hardly there mentally and barely speaking a word for long stretches of time.