Life Changing Adventure 2

Chapter 15

Was this why Dumbledore would no longer meet Harry's eyes? Did he expect to see Voldemort staring out of them, afraid, perhaps, that their vivid green might turn suddenly to scarlet, with catlike slits for pupils? Harry remembered how the snakelike face of Voldemort had once forced itself out of the back of Professor Quirrell's head, and he ran his hand over the back of his own, wondering what it would feel like if Voldemort burst out of his skull.

He felt dirty, contaminated, as though he were carrying some deadly germ, unworthy to sit on the underground train back from the hospital with innocent, clean people whose minds and bodies were free of the taint of Voldemort.

He had not merely seen the snake, he had been the snake, he knew it now. And then a truly terrible thought occurred to him, a memory bobbing to the surface of his mind, one that made his insides writhe and squirm like serpents

"What's he after apart from followers?" "Stuff he can only get by stealth like a weapon. Something he didn't have last time."

I'm the weapon, Harry thought for the thousandth time, staring on the ceiling of the in the room shared by him and Ron.

"Harry," said Ron's voice, from far, far away, "Mum says dinner's ready, but she'll save you something if you want to stay in bed."

Harry opened his eyes, but Ron had already left the room. He doesn't want to be on his own with me, Harry thought. Not after what he heard Moody say, after what he supposedly did to Mr. Weasley. He supposed none of them would want him there anymore now that they knew what was inside him.

He would not go down to dinner; he would not inflict his company upon them. He turned over onto his other side and after a while dropped back off to sleep, waking much later in the early hours of the morning, with his insides aching with hunger, and Ron snoring in the next bed. Squinting around the room he saw the dark outline of Phineas Nigellus standing again in his portrait and it occurred to Harry that Dumbledore had probably set Phineas Nigellus to watch over him, in case he attacked somebody else. The feeling of being unclean intensified. He half wished Percy is here. He may know what to do but he was also relieved that he isn't. He couldn't bear the look of horror on his face; he didn't want to look his face when he realized that he is the monster who he nearly died to save last year. With these thoughts spiralling around he fell asleep again.

Everybody else spent the following morning putting up Christmas decorations. Harry could not remember Sirius ever being in such a good mood; he was actually singing carols, apparently delighted that he was to have company over Christmas. Harry could hear his voice echoing up through the floor in the cold and empty drawing room where he was sitting alone, watching the sky outside the windows growing whiter, threatening snow, all the time feeling a savage pleasure that he was giving the others the opportunity to keep talking about him, as they were bound to be doing.

When he heard Mrs Weasley calling his name softly up the stairs around lunch time, he re[1]treated farther upstairs and ignored her. It was around six o'clock in the evening that the doorbell rang and Mrs. Black started screaming again. Assuming that Mundungus or some other Order member had come to call, Harry merely settled himself more comfortably against the wall of Buckbeak the hippogriff's room where he was hiding, trying to ignore how hungry he felt as he fed Buckbeak dead rats. It came as a slight shock when somebody hammered hard on the door a few minutes later.

"I know you're in there," said Percy's voice. "Will you please come out? Or I will break the damn door. You know I am perfectly capable of doing it"

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked her, pulling open the door, as Buckbeak resumed his scratching at the straw-strewn floor for any fragments of rat he might have dropped. "I thought you were in camp with your friends".