LITMIR.BIZ

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and he felt sick and giddy.

      ‘Voldemort –’

      ‘Easy, now,’ said Ted Tonks, placing a hand on Harry’s shoulder and pushing him back against the cushions. ‘That was a nasty crash you just had. What happened, anyway? Something go wrong with the bike? Arthur Weasley overstretch himself again, him and his Muggle contraptions?’

      ‘No,’ said Harry, as his scar pulsed like an open wound. ‘Death Eaters, loads of them – we were chased –’

      ‘Death Eaters?’ said Ted sharply. ‘What d’you mean, Death Eaters? I thought they didn’t know you were being moved tonight, I thought –’

      ‘They knew,’ said Harry.

      Ted Tonks looked up at the ceiling as though he could see through it to the sky above.

      ‘Well, we know our protective charms hold, then, don’t we? They shouldn’t be able to get within a hundred yards of the place in any direction.’

      Now Harry understood why Voldemort had vanished; it had been at the point when the motorbike crossed the barrier of the Order’s charms. He only hoped they would continue to work: he imagined Voldemort, a hundred yards above them as they spoke, looking for a way to penetrate what Harry visualised as a great, transparent bubble.

      He swung his legs off the sofa; he needed to see Hagrid with his own eyes before he would believe that he was alive. He had barely stood up, however, when a door opened and Hagrid squeezed through it, his face covered in mud and blood, limping a little but miraculously alive.

      ‘Harry!’

      Knocking over two delicate tables and an aspidistra, he covered the floor between them in two strides and pulled Harry into a hug that nearly cracked his newly repaired ribs. ‘Blimey, Harry, how did yeh get out o’ that? I thought we were both goners.’

      ‘Yeah, me too. I can’t believe –’

      Harry broke off: he had just noticed the woman who had entered the room behind Hagrid.

      ‘You!’ he shouted, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, but it was empty.

      ‘Your wand’s here, son,’ said Ted, tapping it on Harry’s arm. ‘It fell right beside you, I picked it up. And that’s my wife you’re shouting at.’

      ‘Oh, I’m – I’m sorry.’

      As she moved forwards into the room, Mrs Tonks’s resemblance to her sister Bellatrix became much less pronounced: her hair was a light, soft brown and her eyes were wider and kinder. Nevertheless, she looked a little haughty after Harry’s exclamation.

      ‘What happened to our daughter?’ she asked. ‘Hagrid said you were ambushed; where is Nymphadora?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ said Harry. ‘We don’t know what happened to anyone else.’

      She and Ted exchanged looks. A mixture of fear and guilt gripped Harry at the sight of their expressions; if any of the others had died, it was his fault, all his fault. He had consented to the plan, given them his hair …

      ‘The Portkey,’ he said, remembering all of a sudden. ‘We’ve got to get back to The Burrow and find out – then we’ll be able to send you word, or – or Tonks will, once she’s –’

      ‘Dora’ll be OK, Dromeda,’ said Ted. ‘She knows her stuff, she’s been in plenty of tight spots with the Aurors. The Portkey’s through here,’ he added to Harry. ‘It’s supposed to leave in three minutes, if you want to take it.’

      ‘Yeah, we do,’ said Harry. He seized his rucksack, swung it on to his shoulders. ‘I –’

      He looked at Mrs Tonks, wanting to apologise for the state of fear in which he left her and for which he felt so terribly responsible, but no words occurred to him that did not seem hollow and insincere.

      ‘I’ll tell Tonks – Dora – to send word, when she … thanks for patching us up, thanks for everything. I –’

      He was glad to leave the room and follow Ted Tonks along a short hallway and into a bedroom. Hagrid came after them, bending low to avoid hitting his head on the door lintel.

      ‘There you go, son. That’s the Portkey.’

      Mr Tonks was pointing to a small, silver-backed hairbrush lying on the dressing table.

      ‘Thanks,’ said Harry, reaching out to place a finger on it, ready to leave.

      ‘Wait a moment,’ said Hagrid, looking around. ‘Harry, where’s Hedwig?’

      ‘She … she got hit,’ said Harry.

      The realisation crashed over him: he felt ashamed of himself as the tears stung his eyes. The owl had been his companion, his one great link with the magical world whenever he had been forced to return to the Dursleys.

      Hagrid reached out a great hand and patted him painfully on the shoulder.

      ‘Never mind,’ he said gruffly. ‘Never mind. She had a great old life –’

      ‘Hagrid!’ said Ted Tonks warningly, as the hairbrush glowed bright blue, and Hagrid only just got his forefinger to it in time.

      With a jerk behind the navel as though an invisible hook and line had dragged him forwards, Harry was pulled into nothingness, spinning uncontrollably, his finger glued to the Portkey as he and Hagrid hurtled away from Mr Tonks: seconds later Harry’s feet slammed on to hard ground and he fell on his hands and knees in the yard of The Burrow. He heard screams. Throwing aside the no longer glowing hairbrush, Harry stood up, swaying slightly, and saw Mrs Weasley and Ginny running down the steps by the back door as Hagrid, who had also collapsed on landing, clambered laboriously to his feet.

      ‘Harry? You are the real Harry? What happened? Where are the others?’ cried Mrs Weasley.

      What d’you mean? Isn’t anyone else back?’ Harry panted.

      The answer was clearly etched in Mrs Weasley’s pale face.

      ‘The Death Eaters were waiting for us,’ Harry told her. ‘We were surrounded the moment we took off – they knew it was tonight – I don’t know what happened to anyone else. Four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us –’

      He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the plea for her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her sons, but – ‘Thank goodness you’re all right,’ she said, pulling him into a hug he did not feel he deserved.

      ‘Haven’t go’ any brandy, have yeh, Molly?’ asked Hagrid a little shakily. ‘Fer medicinal purposes?’

      She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back towards the crooked house Harry knew that she wanted to hide her face. He turned to Ginny and she answered his unspoken plea for information at once.

      ‘Ron and Tonks should have been back first, but they missed their Portkey, it came back without them,’ she said, pointing at a rusty oilcan lying on the ground nearby. ‘And that one,’ she pointed at an ancient plimsoll, ‘should have been Dad and Fred’s, they were supposed to be second. You and Hagrid were third and,’ she checked her watch, ‘if they made it, George and Lupin ought to be back in about a minute.’

      Mrs Weasley reappeared carrying a bottle of brandy, which she handed to Hagrid. He uncorked it and drank it straight down in one.

      ‘Mum!’ shouted Ginny, pointing to a spot several feet away.

      A blue light had appeared in the darkness: it grew larger and brighter, and Lupin and George appeared, spinning and then falling. Harry knew immediately that there was something wrong: Lupin was supporting George, who was unconscious and whose face was covered in blood.

      Harry ran forwards and seized George’s legs. Together, he and Lupin carried George into the house and through the kitchen to the sitting room, where they laid him on the sofa. As the lamplight fell across George’s head, Ginny gasped and Harry’s stomach lurched: one of George’s ears was missing. The side of his head and

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