Albus Dumbledore was forbidden to contact anyone outside his duties at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and, to guarantee his law-abiding behavior, he was made to take an Unbreakable Vow to ensure the purity of the investigation.
Neither the fame of the brightest wizard of the twentieth century, nor the Order of Merlin, First Class, nor the position of Head of the Wizengamot saved him. He was accused of such crimes as sentencing innocent Sirius Black to life imprisonment without investigation or trial, deceiving society in connection with Black's completely unconfirmed service to Lord Voldemort. They did not let him say a word, accusing him of consciously obstructing the investigation.
Finally, they had acquitted the little rat, and he, the victor over Grindelwald, was sentenced to an investigation, stunned, and not allowed to reach his wand.
After today's longest Wizengamot session, for the first time in his life Albus Dumbledore thought that somewhere he had made a small and therefore unnoticed mistake, which over time had grown to such unprecedented proportions that it was about to collapse, burying beneath it both Albus himself and his Brilliant Plan for the Greater Good.
"Aunt," Harry said in the evening after dinner and an extensive story, told over one another by three narrators, about what had happened in the wizarding court, at Grimmauld Place earlier, and in Miss Bones's office even earlier, so that Uncle Vernon could calmly reflect later and predict for them the further, most likely development of the process. "We have three days of complete freedom. Let's go to Diagon Alley tomorrow to buy textbooks and manuals for my second year and try to pick a wand for Dudley at Ollivander's."
The more solidly built boy liked this proposal, and he began jumping, spinning around the sofa, shouting some inarticulate sounds from overwhelming delight, very much like the howl of a baboon. His parents looked at the dance of the white savage until he calmed down, and continued their conversation with their more serious nephew.
"All right, Harry," Petunia agreed, and then, smiling slyly, looked first at Dudley, then at her nephew. "Wouldn't you like to call that classmate of yours whose parents are dentists, so you can meet and walk around the shops with her?"
It would have been foolish to reject his aunt's proposal; Harry assumed that she needed the company of adult people for tomorrow, and two dentists were the most useful acquaintance for her, so he agreed, fearing only the shock wave of his friend's targeted questions.
Earlier in the summer—it seemed to him that it had been a hundred years ago and in some other life—he had dreamed of a week's rest in Hermione's house, and that rest had been the height of luxury and desire for him. The young wizard decided that a few hours with her in "Flourish and Blotts" could not be so frightening and would only do him good.
"Call the dentists," Uncle Vernon approved the idea and tugged at his mustache, then stroked it thoughtfully. "In the morning I'll drive you to London to that 'Cauldron,' and in the evening, by five o'clock, I'll pick you up. All right, let's go to our rooms, we have to get up early tomorrow."
Early in the morning Diagon Alley greeted them with a motley and crowded throng of wizards, among whom future first-years were slipping through.
Hermione's buzzing drowned out all possible conversations of the others. She chattered like a magpie, telling and asking at the same time, not waiting for an answer from Harry, and again asking more and more questions. The adults—Dr. Granger and Mrs. Dursley—walked behind the three teenagers, but under this pressure of the girl's enthusiasm, the boys kept silent in a suppressed way and followed her with a doomed look.
Finally Harry could not restrain himself, overtook Hermione, blocked her path and, to stop her, grabbed her with both hands. Straightening up in front of the girl, he noticed that he had already grown enough to look into her slightly frightened eyes without raising his head. Very softly and attentively he said to his friend:
"Hermy, stop. You've outtalked all the gossip girls of Hogwarts; what are Lavender Brown or Pansy Parkinson compared to you! Let's be calmer, I'm not in a hurry. Do you even remember your first question?"
The girl blinked her huge brown eyes in confusion, and the boy discovered a second important fact connected with Hermione today—how long, fluffy and curled her eyelashes were, and how they adorned her.
"You see, you don't remember it. I didn't have time to answer you, and you didn't even notice. And the question was important and needs an answer."
"Yes, yes! I remembered! I asked you whether you had received an invitation from the Weasley family to spend the rest of the summer at their home, in some burrow?"
"No, I didn't receive an invitation. For my birthday I received a box of junk, heavily wound with all sorts of spells of subordination, friendship, lowered judgment and other muck, but there was no letter there. But one evening the twins, together with Ronald, flew to us on some flying cart to take me away. They didn't reach the house and flew away." The boy enjoyed looking at his friend's stunned face and decided to finally finish off her sense of loyalty to the red-haired family by revealing one more fact. "By the way, Hermione, do you know what was on that invitation letter that you received, and why Mrs. Granger, after opening it, immediately felt drawn to go to the Burrow? By the way, the Burrow is the name of the Weasleys' house, not a burrow—a hole for moles in the ground."
The eyes of the adult Grangers, standing a little behind their daughter, widened with curiosity.
"The same thing that was on the box sent by the Weasleys for my birthday. My house-elf Dinky..."
A pop, and the boy's personal house-elf appeared before him, squealing with delight all over the street:
"Dinky listens, young master, sir!"
"You're free, Dinky, I didn't call you," Harry said, and the small creature disappeared just as he had appeared.
Seeing the strange small creature, Hermione jerked back, freed herself from her friend's hands and, squeaking, ran and hid behind her mother. A frightened brown eye looked out from behind the back of the equally frightened woman, who asked in a thin trembling voice:
"Harry, what was that?"
But it was not her daughter's friend who answered her, but his aunt, Petunia Dursley, pleased to shine with her knowledge of the wizarding world:
"That, dear Dr. Granger, was our house-elf. Every magical family consisting of wizards strong enough to sustain the life and magical power of these creatures has house-elves."
"What, what do they do?" Hermione's mother asked with the deepest curiosity.
"Essentially—everything. But first of all, they protect the family, the house, the magic of the line. In order to be able to cope with this to a sufficient degree, a house-elf must be healthy and magically strong, that is, be bound to a wizard and be loyal to him. A wizard is needed by a house-elf to sustain the elf's life and magic, an elf is needed by a wizard in order to arrange a good and peaceful life for himself, his family, and the elf himself."
"Do you mean to say that these poor creatures are slaves to wizards?" the girl squeaked from behind her mother and jumped out in front of her with the angriest look—ruffled and bristling. "Harry Potter, how could you fall so low as to treat a living being like a slave? And why do you have an elf, while Ron does not?"
She thought she was right, that even in primary school she had well learned the basic rule of a humanist—not to treat another living being the way you do not want to be treated. A lonely childhood had taught her that people—children most of all—were unfamiliar with this rule, and therefore she, whatever it cost her, tried to be a proper girl and thus differ from shameless boors. In Harry Potter she had found a like-minded person, and this was what had drawn her to him. This became the fundamental factor of their friendship.
But why had this friend grown so cold and flinched away from her, what had she done and said wrong for the light and warmth to disappear from his emerald eyes, suddenly replaced by stinging, burning arctic ice?
He stepped back and turned so that she could not see how, silently, with his eyes, he was talking to his aunt. With their glances these two came to some understanding, and the boy moved several steps forward, standing with his back to the others.
His cousin was examining her, Hermione Granger—the very best student of her year at Hogwarts—as a most interesting, annoyingly buzzing little bug.
The awkwardness that had appeared because of the girl's rash words was ended by Mrs. Dursley, who, smiling at her, began to explain in a warm voice the house-elf-master bond:
"Hermione, you have already been studying at a magical school for a year. According to Harry, you are a smart, but, somewhere, overly impulsive girl. You attacked your friend with reproaches without first figuring out the initial data. You accused him—and offended him with this—of owning a slave. But I have already explained that the house-elf-master bond is vitally necessary for the elf. For an elf, caring for his master and his family is a fair payment, if these most complex relationships of complete trust and care can be called that, for receiving magic and life in return. I do not know why your fellow student's family lost their house-elves, but for them it must have become a catastrophe in connection with the level of protection of their place of residence and the stability of the house."
Suddenly Harry, who had gone ahead, turned and, through clenched teeth, step by step approaching the girl, hypnotizing her with cold, lightning-radiating eyes, hissed:
"All the Weasleys are branded with the mark of Blood Traitors, Miss... Hermione—I saw this mark on the aura of all of them, but did not spread it around. Don't look at me with that condemning gaze; no one—including me, first of all—must immediately tell you about all their newly discovered abilities. Wizards, by their very nature, are rivals and do not speak publicly about themselves, their Gifts, achievements, or wealth. Remember that."
"But we..." the girl began.
"Yes, yes, that is so, we are friends, but if you want us to remain friends further, never again attack with thoughtless accusations." Then, after thinking a little, Harry remembered what they had been talking about before being diverted—the Weasleys, so he changed the subject. "I will certainly find out because of whom, when, and for what the Weasley bloodline acquired the mark of Blood Betrayal, but I already know one thing—they will never again have a single normal house-elf. That ghoul Ronald constantly talks about is nothing other than a house-elf degraded because of the family's corrupted magic."
"I somehow haven't heard of that, but since you say so..." Hermione, ashamed of her rashness, mumbled and, lowering her gaze, turned to her parents.
"Hermione," Dr. Granger spoke in an even and impassive voice. "You have committed a very serious offense and did not even remember to apologize to your classmate and friend, to whom I will have to offer apologies. Mr. Potter, my family asks your forgiveness because of my daughter's long tongue." Seeing the boy's nod, the older man looked reproachfully at his reddened daughter and said coldly to her. "And with you, young miss, we will talk at home."
Having calmed down, the whole group again began to walk measuredly along Diagon Alley, heading toward Gringotts. At the end trailed the best student of her year, deeply suffering and worrying because of her lack of restraint, who at that moment did not feel like an excellent student at all.
"Yes, and without a house-elf," Harry continued telling the adults, "in the Burrow, all sorts of pestilence has appeared, lives and flourishes, like those garden gnomes Ron jokingly told us about."
"From your words, Harry," Dr. Granger spoke thoughtfully, "it seems to me that this Weasley family is not worth associating with. What do you think, ladies?"
"Hm," Petunia said with a mysterious look, watching with interest the noisy horde of Weasley teenagers coming toward them, ahead of whom their plump, disheveled mother was scurrying, in turn shouting in a shrill voice at her loose sons.
Mrs. Weasley was dressed in an incredible mismatched pile of brightly colored rags, from which the eyes began to ripple. With her right hand she held her daughter, Jacomina—as Harry thought—equally red-haired and equally tastelessly dressed in a light-green robe, who was looking around in all directions.
Seeing Harry, the girl stopped abruptly and, bulging her eyes, suddenly turned pale, then became covered with red blotches, and finally blushed redder than her hair. She began tugging her mother, pointing a finger at the dark-haired boy and saying to her in a hoarse voice:
"Mum, Mum! Look, look! It's Harry, Harry Potter, Muuum, look ahead, Harry has come there..."
The whole horde of red-haired Gryffindors froze, fixing their gaze only on Ron's classmate, seeing only him—Harry, but not the companions surrounding him. Suddenly all of them, except the eldest—Percy—ran toward him with such greedy faces that Harry became frightened for his integrity. With such an expression predators throw themselves at their prey in order to devour it.
The boys' run unexpectedly began to slow and did not allow the redheads to fall upon the skinny boy as a herd of mustangs, and they approached more and more slowly, trying to reach out to the boy. The strange behavior of his housemates surprised young Potter, and he wondered what protection had activated, and whether this was not that mysterious maternal protection with which Lily Potter, dying, had endowed her son.
But it had reacted to the approach of the Weasley children as to an attack by malefactors, preventing direct contact. In roughly the same way, the specially tuned protection over 4 Privet Drive had reacted earlier in the summer, when the same boys had flown in on a flying jalopy.
Maybe they really were plotting something bad?
While the green-eyed boy pondered this mystery, Mrs. Weasley also approached the bristling group of Grangers, Dursleys and Potter. The latter, until now, had met her only twice—last September, when she had told him how to get onto Platform 9 3/4, and this summer, when she had rushed at them with hugs and cooing. In total, these were five, no more, minutes of communication between them, but the red-haired hanger-on had put on her face such a sugary expression, as though she had spent the previous ten years inseparably nursing him.
"Harry, my dear boy, how glad I am that we met you today!" she said in an equally sugary voice. "Why didn't you answer our invitation to stay with us at the Burrow for the summer?"
She probably expected the gloomy dark-haired boy to start making excuses, but, not getting what she needed, continued speaking as if nothing had happened.
"These scamps—the twins, together with Ron, even came to the house of your disgusting relatives to rescue you, but got lost among the silly Muggle farms and didn't find you. But since we have all been so lucky to meet you, let's go shopping together, buy school supplies, and right after that we'll leave for the Burrow. I'll make you such a tasty dinner there that you'll lick your fingers. And then you'll spend all of August flying on brooms. Here, Ginny was waiting for you so much at our house," saying this, Mrs. Weasley pushed forward her beet-red little daughter, whose name apparently was not Jacomina, hoping that, seeing her embarrassment, Harry would immediately rush to them to comfort and calm the girl.
No such luck. Harry looked with ice-cold eyes at the Blood Traitors, and it did not even fit into his head how this middle-aged fool dared to lie so much and aim so high as to invite him—the owner of castles, cottages, an island, a title—where? To the Burrow! Had they all gone completely mad or what? He raised his eyes and looked at his aunt, giving her carte blanche to settle accounts with this clucking hen.
Petunia had been waiting for this. Taking a step forward, noting out of the corner of her eye that Mrs. Granger followed her initiative, she waved her hand to demonstrate to the red-haired fat woman three things—the elegance of the movement of her thin wrist, her new expensive manicure, and the recently mastered hypnotic dance of rainbow reflections of light from the beautiful diamond on her ring.
Harry, Dudley and Mr. Granger remained, portraying a silent and admiring audience, a little behind and to the side of the ladies, giving them the opportunity to fight on the women's front. Hermione also thought of joining them, but her father pulled the girl back and she wilted.
"Mrs." The arrogance in Petunia's voice fell like a granite slab on the Weasleys standing ahead. "Are you blind, deaf, or half-witted if you do not notice that my nephew is not alone in Diagon Alley, but accompanied by his own aunt, his cousin and his friends? No one introduced you to us, Mrs. You are unknown to me, yet you dared shamelessly throw yourself at my only and dearly beloved nephew like a beast at prey, not noticing us, his relatives. I do not want to know you, and I forbid my nephew to associate or even exchange a word with people whose behavior is that of savages, let alone live in your Hole. But today I am kind and will tell you a secret—the madhouse is crying for you."
Matron Weasley bristled all over, took out her wand and stepped toward the two ladies, resembling a beggar before two queens.
"Filthy Muggle," the red-haired woman shrieked, "I know who you are! You treated the poor boy like a house-elf, forced him to cook and clean instead of you. Your boar of a husband and your killer whale of a son beat him. Professor Dumbledore told us..."
"You crazy woman," Dudley roared, unable to tolerate being called a killer whale, "look at me. Where do you see a killer whale?"
The tall, still plump teenager looked nothing like the poor aquatic mammal, but Mrs. Weasley, having gained momentum, could not be stopped by anyone.
"You stole his money and spent it on your son, while Harry lived in your cupboard under the stairs....I wanted to take care of him, feed him for the summer. Professor Dumbledore told us that associating with a large happy family would do him good."
"Mrs., we have heard enough from you, I do not intend to delay you any longer. We have urgent business; by evening we still have a trip to our island in the company of this wonderful Granger family. Harry, Dudley, let's go to the bank."
Mrs. Dursley majestically marched forward, going around the fat woman, but the voice of Hermione's mother, filled with contempt and coldness, caught up with her, and she turned around to listen.
"No, no, we are not done yet," Mrs. Granger said in a poisonous tone. "When your dead owl flew to our home and brought a letter from you inviting little Hermione to stay in the Hole, I was the one who opened the letter. And for two days, until help came from this kind boy"—she stroked Potter's silky black hair—"I was desperate to visit you, to meet your son Ronald. We were told that friendship and sympathy charms had been hung on the letter, but besides those, there were also worse charms, which lower critical judgment and make a person devoted and loyal. There were also love charms, Mrs. I will not ask who cast them, but if anyone from your family, your entire family, raises even a little finger against my daughter," she met the warning gaze of green eyes, but continued, "this letter will fly straight to your Ministry together with my statement of claim against you. Now go your way; we are Muggles, but you are far from our level of communication."
Percy—the eldest of the present sons, who stood redder than a tomato a little behind his mother—suddenly turned around and, walking quickly, moved away from his family. His mother, not noticing her son's departure, began breathing convulsively with anger and blazing with hatred. Potter expected that she was about to explode.
Grabbing the pale and ashamed Hermione by the hand, Dr. Granger gave the red-haired family a wide berth, hissing one short thing to her daughter: "Silence!" Petunia Dursley followed her, dragging the boys after her. Mr. Granger, with an independent air, examining the strange goods in shop windows, followed his family.
Molly's children, tightly surrounding their mother, followed with their eyes the retreating group, together with which their rosy dream was floating away.
"Do not worry," Molly said conciliatorily to her children. "They will not run away from us. In the evening we will invite Professor Dumbledore home for dinner and discuss with him Ginny's betrothal to Harry and Ron's to this overreaching worthless Mudblood."
How was she to know that Professor Dumbledore was unable to move away from his office in Hogwarts or talk to whomever he wanted because of the DMLE's sudden interest in his affairs.
Gringotts greeted them with silence and cool gloom. Across the mirror-smooth white marble of the floor, like ballerinas of an alien bowlegged kind, a swarm of goblin clerks glided in a swift dance known only to them. Dressed in identical black tailcoats, the green-skinned creatures—the bankers of the Wizarding World—paid no attention, probably quite deliberately, to the group of newly arrived adults with teenage children looking around, all of them dressed in Muggle clothes.
After the third minute of waiting, the goblins' disdain annoyed Petunia Dursley so much that she took a step toward the counters and announced in a loud voice:
"Harry James Potter, together with his guardian, is in the hall to meet with his account manager."
The skin color of the clerk who happened to be closer to her changed beautifully and took on an amusing yellowish shade. The goblin's small eyes widened and fixed on the boys behind her.
After waiting for the bank employee's unspoken question to be voiced, which never happened, and after a two-minute pause and a stupid staring contest with him, Harry sighed in the most doomed and comical way, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and brushed his fringe from his forehead with his hand so that the famous scar would assure the goblin that this was indeed him, the Boy-Who-Lived.
The lightning-shaped flaw on the boy's face affected the clerk more sharply than a ship's siren, and he dashed toward the doors leading into the depths of the bank as if a pack of manticores were chasing him.
A few minutes later he returned accompanied by an older goblin, in whom Potter recognized his new account manager, Griboyad, appointed after the ritual execution by beheading of the former account manager—the traitor Kolbrukh.
"Welcome to us again, Mr. Potter!" the newcomer addressed the famous boy in the deep and rough voice characteristic of goblins. Then he looked over the group, mentally divided it into two parts and nodded to the junior clerk to deal with the Grangers. "Please, come with me to my office together with your relatives."
"Hermione, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, wait for us and do not leave the bank alone. I think communication with the Weasleys will not end here, and, in my opinion, we should expect further development of today's meeting. In any case, I will warn one of my house-elves to keep an eye on you," Harry said. "Kreacher! Look here...."
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