𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐑

the one with the abysmal magic

"A child who's lost everything
sits on the doorstep of a home
that's no longer there."

•

HARRY'S MIND WHIRLED as he stood with Hermione, Polyjuiced as two old muggles, at the entrance to the graveyard. With just one Horcrux left, and no feasible ideas to get it, he had managed to convince Hermione to accompany him to Godric's Hollow, a place Dumbledore had told him to visit at least once. Hermione believed that he might find some clue relating to the Horcrux there. He didn't care much. He just wanted to visit his parent's graves. Hermione had told him that Skylar had mentioned in the Journal that in the foretold, they wouldn't be visiting the Hollow before Christmas. But he knew things were moving faster now. His sister-he knew she was his cousin but she had become more family to him than anyone else could've been-had saved many lives that were meant to be taken and also taken many lives that were meant to remain. He still believed that there was a large possibility that all the Death would come following them soon, but he liked to dwell on the thought that everything was different now. Everything was better now.

Ron had come down with a fever moments after the murder of Yaxley. Although it had been a few weeks since that event, all of them were pretty shaken up about it, except Draco Malfoy, who had seen murder and committed murder and had learnt to shut off his feelings just like Skylar. So Draco had stayed back at Grimmauld Place with his healing supplies with Ron-Harry agreed completely when Fred and George had said he'd be a great healer-and Hermione had accompanied him here.

"Keep your wand ready," he told quietly to Hermione, as he shifted his sight from the war memorial that materialized in front of them. It was a statue of three people: a man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy sitting in his mother's arms. He had looked away.

There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. Hermione pushed it open as quietly as possible and they edged through it. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the rainwater glimmered. It was October, with the onslaught of European showers. They moved off through the puddles, carving deep splashes behind them as they walked around the building, keeping to the shadows beneath the brilliant windows. Behind the church, row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from a blanket of pale blue that was flecked with dazzling red, gold, and green wherever the reflections from the stained glass hit the water. Keeping his hand closed tightly on the wand in his jacket pocket, Harry moved toward the nearest grave. "Look at this, it's an Abbott, could be some long-lost relation of Hannah's!"

"Keep your voice down," Hermione begged him. They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard, stooping to peer at the words on old headstones, every now and then squinting into the surrounding darkness to make absolutely sure that they were unaccompanied.

"Harry, here!" Hermione was two rows of tombstones away; he had to wade back to her, his heart positively banging in his chest.

"Is it -?"

"No, but look!" She pointed to the dark stone. Harry stooped down and saw, upon the frozen, lichen-spotted granite, the words Kendra Dumbledore and, a short way below her dates of birth and death, and Her Daughter Ariana. There was also a quotation: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

So Rita Skeeter and Muriel had got some of their facts right. The Dumbledore family had indeed lived here, and part of it had died here. Seeing the grave was worse than hearing about it. Harry could not help thinking that he and Dumbledore both had deep roots in this graveyard, and that Dumbledore ought to have told him so, yet he had never thought to share the connection. They could have visited the place together; for a moment Harry imagined coming here with Dumbledore, of what a bond that would have been, of how much it would have meant to him. But it seemed that to Dumbledore, the fact that their families lay side by side in the same graveyard had been an unimportant coincidence, irrelevant, perhaps, to the job he wanted Harry to do.