Dark Pasts { A Harry Potter Story }

Chapter 98 - The Deathly Hallows

I fell, panting, onto a bed of grass. I stood up quickly and looked around to see that we had landed in a field. Hermione was already running around us and setting up protective enchantments.

"That treacherous old bleeder!" Ron said as he took off the Invisibility Cloak. "You girls, are brilliant!"

I gave a small laugh and shook my head.

"What d'you reckon they'll do to him?" he asked.

"Oh, I hope they don't kill him!" I said.  "That's why I wanted the Death Eaters to get a glimpse of Harry before we left, so they knew Xenophilius hadn't been lying!"

"Why hide me, though?" Ron asked.

"You're supposed to be in bed with spattergroit, Ron! They've kidnapped Luna because her father supported Harry! What would happen to your family if they knew you're with him?" I said.

"But what about your dad?"

"I didn't have time to think about that," I said as I avoided their gaze, a terrible weight tugging at my heart.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Harry as he pulled me in for a hug. I was surprised at first, but closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him as I let the familiarity of his embrace ease my worries.

"Oh, why did we go there?" Hermione groaned after we had set up the tent. "A complete waste of time! The Deathly Hallows . . . such rubbish . . . "

"The Chamber of Secrets was supposed to be a myth, wasn't it?" I said suddenly.

Hermione sighed deeply. "But the Deathly Hallows can't exist, Liz!"

"You keep saying that, but one of them can," I said. "Maybe even two, if I'm being honest  —"

" 'The Tale of the Three Brothers' is a story," she said firmly. "A story about how humans are frightened of death. If surviving was as simple as hiding under the Invisibility Cloak, we'd have everything we need already!"

"I don't know. We could do with an unbeatable wand," Harry said.

"There's no such thing, Harry!"

He ignored her and turned to me. "You said there have been loads of wands — the Deathstick and whatever they were called —"

"All right, even if you want to kid yourself the Elder Wand's real, what about the Resurrection Stone?" Hermione went on with her fingers sketching quotations marks, her voice dripping with sarcasm.  "No magic can raise the dead, and that's that!"

"When my wand connected with You-Know-Who's, it made my mum and dad appear . . . and Cedric . . ." Harry said.

"But they weren't really back from the dead, were they?" Hermione said. "Those kinds of — of pale imitations aren't the same as truly bringing someone back to life."

"But she, the girl in the tale, didn't really come back, did she? The story says that once people are dead, they belong with the dead. But the second brother still got to see her and talk to her, didn't he? He even lived with her for a while. . . ."

There was a moment of silence before he spoke up again.

"So that Peverell bloke who's buried in Godric's Hollow," he said, "you don't know anything about him, then?"

"No," Hermione said.  "I looked him up after I saw the mark on his grave; if he'd been anyone famous or done anything important, I'm sure he'd be in one of our books. The only place I've managed to find the name 'Peverell' is in Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. I borrowed it from Kreacher," she explained as Ron raised his eyebrows. "It lists the pure-blood families that are now extinct in the male line. Apparently, the Peverells were one of the earliest families to vanish."