CHAPTER THIRTY
THE
PENSIEVE
The door of the office opened.
“Hello, Potter,” said Moody.
“Come in, then.”
Harry walked inside. He had been inside Dumbledore's office
once before; it was a very beautiful, circular room, lined with pictures of
previous headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts, all of whom were fast
asleep, their chests rising and falling gently.
Cornelius Fudge was standing
beside Dumbledore's desk, wearing his usual pinstriped cloak and holding his
lime-green bowler hat.
“Harry!” said Fudge jovially, moving forward. “How are
you?”
“Fine,” Harry lied.
“We were just talking about the night when Mr.
Crouch turned up on the grounds,” said Fudge. “It was you who found him, was it
not?”
“Yes,” said Harry. Then, feeling it was pointless to pretend that he
hadn't overheard what they had been saying, he added, “I didn't see Madame
Maxime anywhere, though, and she'd have a job hiding, wouldn't
she?”
Dumbledore smiled at Harry behind Fudge's back, his eyes
twinkling.
“Yes, well,” said Fudge, looking embarrassed, “we're about to go
for a short walk on the grounds, Harry, if you'll excuse us ...perhaps if you
just go back to your class—”
“I wanted to talk to you. Professor,” Harry said
quickly, looking at Dumbledore, who gave him a swift, searching look.
“Wait
here for me, Harry,” he said. “Our examination of the grounds will not take
long.”
They trooped out in silence past him and closed the door. After a
minute or so, Harry heard the clunks of Moody's wooden leg growing fainter in
the corridor below. He looked around.
“Hello, Fawkes,” he said.
Fawkes,
Professor Dumbledore's phoenix, was standing on his golden perch beside the
door. The size of a swan, with magnificent scarlet-and-gold plumage, he swished
his long tail and blinked benignly at Harry.
Harry sat down in a chair in
front of Dumbledore's desk. For several minutes, he sat and watched the old
headmasters and headmistresses snoozing in their frames, thinking about what he
had just heard, and running his fingers over his scar. It had stopped hurting
now.
He felt much calmer, somehow, now that he was in Dumbledore's office,
knowing he would shortly be telling him about the dream. Harry looked up at the
walls behind the desk. The patched and ragged Sorting Hat was standing on a
shelf. A glass case next to it held a magnificent silver sword with large rubies
set into the hilt, which Harry recognized as the one he himself had pulled out
of the Sorting Hat in his second year. The sword had once belonged to Godric
Gryffindor, founder of Harry's House. He was gazing at it, remembering how it
had come to his aid when he had thought all hope was lost, when he noticed a
patch of silvery light, dancing and shimmering on the glass case. He looked
around for the source of the light and saw a sliver of silver-white shining
brightly from within a black cabinet behind him, whose door had not been closed
properly. Harry hesitated, glanced at Fawkes, then got up, walked across the
office, and pulled open the cabinet door.
A shallow stone basin lay there,
with odd carvings around the edge: runes and symbols that Harry did not
recognize. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which were
like nothing Harry had ever seen before. He could not tell whether the substance
was liquid or gas. It was a bright, whitish silver, and it was moving
ceaselessly; the surface of it became ruffled like water beneath wind, and then,
like clouds, separated and swirled smoothly. It looked like light made liquid—or
like wind made solid—Harry couldn't make up his mind.
He wanted to touch it,
to find out what it felt like, but nearly four years' experience of the magical
world told him that sticking his hand into a bowl full of some unknown substance
was a very stupid thing to do. He therefore pulled his wand out of the inside of
his robes, cast a nervous look around the office, looked back at the contents of
the basin, and prodded them.
The surface of the silvery stuff inside the
basin began to swirl very fast.
Harry bent closer, his head right inside the
cabinet. The silvery substance had become transparent; it looked like glass. He
looked down into it expecting to see the stone bottom of the basin—and saw
instead an enormous room below the surface of the mysterious substance, a room
into which he seemed to be looking through a circular window in the
ceiling.
The room was dimly lit; he thought it might even be underground, for
there were no windows, merely torches in brackets such as the ones that
illuminated the walls of Hogwarts. Lowering his face so that his nose was a mere
inch away from the glassy substance, Harry saw that rows and rows of witches and
wizards were seated around every wall on what seemed to be benches rising in
levels. An empty chair stood in the very center of the room. There was something
about the chair that gave Harry an ominous feeling. Chains encircled the arms of
it, as though its occupants were usually tied to it.
Where was this place? It
surely wasn't Hogwarts; he had never seen a room like that here in the castle.
Moreover, the crowd in the mysterious room at the bottom of the basin was
comprised of adults, and Harry knew there were not nearly that many teachers at
Hogwarts. They seemed, he thought, to be waiting for something; even though he
could only see the tops of their hats, all of their faces seemed to be pointing
in one direction, and none of them were talking to one another.
The basin
being circular, and the room he was observing square, Harry could not make out
what was going on in the corners of it. He leaned even closer, tilting his head,
trying to see...
The tip of his nose touched the strange substance into which
he was staring.
Dumbledore's office gave an almighty lurch—Harry was thrown
forward and pitched headfirst into the substance inside the basin—
But his
head did not hit the stone bottom. He was falling through something icy-cold and
black; it was like being sucked into a dark whirlpool—
And suddenly, Harry
found himself sitting on a bench at the end of the room inside the basin, a
bench raised high above the others. He looked up at the high stone ceiling,
expecting to see the circular window through which he had just been staring, but
there was nothing there but dark, solid stone.
Breathing hard and fast. Harry
looked around him. Not one of the witches and wizards in the room (and there
were at least two hundred of them) was looking at him. Not one of them seemed to
have noticed that a fourteen-year-old boy had just dropped from the ceiling into
their midst. Harry turned to the wizard next to him on the bench and uttered a
loud cry of surprise that reverberated around the silent room.
He was sitting
right next to Albus Dumbledore.
“Professor!” Harry said in a kind of
strangled whisper. “I'm sorry—I didn't mean to—I was just looking at that basin
in your cabinet—I—where are we?”
But Dumbledore didn't move or speak. He
ignored Harry completely. Like every other wizard on the benches, he was staring
into the far corner of the room, where there was a door.
Harry gazed,
nonplussed, at Dumbledore, then around at the silently watchful crowd, then back
at Dumbledore. And then it dawned on him...
Once before. Harry had found
himself somewhere that nobody could see or hear him. That time, he had fallen
through a page in an enchanted diary, right into somebody else's memory... and
unless he was very much mistaken, something of the sort had happened
again...
Harry raised his right hand, hesitated, and then waved it
energetically in from of Dumbledore's face. Dumbledore did not blink, look
around at Harry, or indeed move at all. And that, in Harry's opinion, settled
the matter. Dumbledore wouldn't ignore him like that. He was inside a memory,
and this was not the present-day Dumbledore. Yet it couldn't be that long ago...
the Dumbledore sitting next to him now was silver-haired, just like the
present-day Dumbledore. But what was this place? What were all these wizards
waiting for?
Harry looked around more carefully. The room, as he had
suspected when observing it from above, was almost certainly underground—more of
a dungeon than a room, he thought. There was a bleak and forbidding air about
the place; there were no pictures on the walls, no decorations at all; just
these serried rows of benches, rising in levels all around the room, all
positioned so that they had a clear view of that chair with the chains on its
arms.
Before Harry could reach any conclusions about the place in which they
were, he heard footsteps. The door in the corner of the dungeon opened and three
people entered—or at least one man, flanked by two dementors.
Harry's insides
went cold. The dementors—tall, hooded creatures whose faces were concealed—were
gliding slowly toward the chair in the center of the room, each grasping one of
the man's arms with their dead and rotten-looking hands. The man between them
looked as though he was about to faint, and Harry couldn't blame him ...he knew
the dementors could not touch him inside a memory, but he remembered their power
only too well. The watching crowd recoiled slightly as the dementors placed the
man in the chained chair and glided back out of the room. The door swung shut
behind them.
Harry looked down at the man now sitting in the chair and saw
that it was Karkaroff.
Unlike Dumbledore, Karkaroff looked much younger; his
hair and goatee were black. He was not dressed in sleek furs, but in thin and
ragged robes. He was shaking. Even as Harry watched, the chains on the arms of
the chair glowed suddenly gold and snaked their way up Karkaroff's arms, binding
him there.
“Igor Karkaroff,” said a curt voice to Harry's left. Harry looked
around and saw Mr. Crouch standing up in the middle of the bench beside him.
Crouch's hair was dark, his face was much less lined, he looked fit and alert.
“You have been brought from Azkaban to present evidence to the Ministry of
Magic. You have given us to understand that you have important information for
us.”
Karkaroff straightened himself as best he could, tightly bound to the
chair.
“I have, sir,” he said, and although his voice was very scared, Harry
could still hear the familiar unctuous note in it. “I wish to be of use to the
Ministry. I wish to help. I—I know that the Ministry is trying to—to round up
the last of the Dark Lords supporters. I am eager to assist in any way I
can...”
There was a murmur around the benches. Some of the wizards and
witches were surveying Karkaroff with interest, others with pronounced mistrust.
Then Harry heard, quite distinctly, from Dumbledores other side, a familiar,
growling voice saying, “Filth.”
Harry leaned forward so that he could see
past Dumbledore. Mad-Eye Moody was sitting there—except that there was a very
noticeable difference in his appearance. He did not have his magical eye, but
two normal ones. Both were looking down upon Karkaroff, and both were narrowed
in intense dislike.
“Crouch is going to let him out,” Moody breathed quietly
to Dumbledore. “He's done a deal with him. Took me six months to track him down,
and Crouch is going to let him go if he's got enough new names. Let's hear his
information, I say, and throw him straight back to the dementors.”
Dumbledore
made a small noise of dissent through his long, crooked nose.
“Ah, I was
forgetting... you don't like the dementors, do you, Albus?” said Moody with a
sardonic smile.
“No,” said Dumbledore calmly, “I'm afraid I don't. I have
long felt the Ministry is wrong to ally itself with such creatures.”
“But for
filth like this...” Moody said softly.
“You say you have names for us,
Karkaroff,” said Mr. Crouch. “Let us hear them, please.”
“You must
understand,” said Karkaroff hurriedly, “that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named operated
always in the greatest secrecy... He preferred that we—I mean to say, his
supporters—and I regret now, very deeply, that I ever counted myself among
them—”
“Get on with it,” sneered Moody.
“we never knew the names of every
one of our fellows—He alone knew exactly who we all were—”
“Which was a wise
move, wasn't it, as it prevented someone like you, Karkaroff, from turning all
of them in,” muttered Moody.
“Yet you say you have some names for us?” said
Mr. Crouch.
“I—I do,” said Karkaroff breathlessly. “And these were important
supporters, mark you. People I saw with my own eyes doing his bidding. I give
this information as a sign that I fully and totally renounce him, and am filled
with a remorse so deep I can barely—”
“These names are?” said Mr. Crouch
sharply.
Karkaroff drew a deep breath.
“There was Antonin Dolohov,” he
said. “I—I saw him torture countless Muggles and—and non-supporters of the Dark
Lord.”
“And helped him do it,” murmured Moody.
“We have already
apprehended Dolohov,” said Crouch. “He was caught shortly after
yourself.”
“Indeed?” said Karkaroff, his eyes widening. “I—I am delighted to
hear it!”
But he didn't look it. Harry could tell that this news had come as
a real blow to him. One of his names was worthless.
“Any others?” said Crouch
coldly.
“Why, yes ...there was Rosier,” said Karkaroff hurriedly. “Evan
Rosier.”
“Rosier is dead,” said Crouch. “He was caught shortly after you were
too. He preferred to fight rather than come quietly and was killed in the
struggle.”
“Took a bit of me with him, though,” whispered Moody to Harry's
right. Harry looked around at him once more, and saw him indicating the large
chunk out of his nose to Dumbledore.
“No—no more than Rosier deserved!” said
Karkaroff, a real note of panic in his voice now. Harry could see that he was
starting to worry that none of his information would be of any use to the
Ministry. Karkaroff's eyes darted toward the door in the corner, behind which
the dementors undoubtedly still stood, waiting.
“Any more?” said
Crouch.
“Yes!” said Karkaroff. “There was Travers—he helped murder the
McKinnons! Mulciber—he specialized in the Imperius Curse, forced countless
people to do horrific things! Rookwood, who was a spy, and passed
He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named useful information from inside the Ministry
itself!”
Harry could tell that, this time, Karkaroff had struck gold. The
watching crowd was all murmuring together.
“Rookwood?” said Mr. Crouch,
nodding to a witch sitting in front of him, who began scribbling upon her piece
of parchment. “Augustus Rookwood of the Department of Mysteries?”
“The very
same,” said Karkaroff eagerly. “I believe he used a network of well-placed
wizards, both inside the Ministry and out, to collect information—”
“But
Travers and Mulciber we have,” said Mr. Crouch. “Very well, Karkaroff, if that
is all, you will be returned to Azkaban while we decide—”
“Not yet!” cried
Karkaroff, looking quite desperate. “Wait, I have more!”
Harry could see him
sweating in the torchlight, his white skin contrasting strongly with the black
of his hair and beard.
“Snape!” he shouted. “Severus Snape!”
“Snape has
been cleared by this council,” said Crouch disdainfully. “He has been vouched
for by Albus Dumbledore.”
“No!” shouted Karkaroff, straining at the chains
that bound him to the chair. “I assure you! Severus Snape is a Death
Eater!”
Dumbledore had gotten to his feet.
“I have given evidence already
on this matter,” he said calmly. “Severus Snape was indeed a Death Eater.
However, he rejoined our side before Lord Voldemort's downfall and turned spy
for us, at great personal risk. He is now no more a Death Eater than I
am.”
Harry turned to look at Mad-Eye Moody. He was wearing a look of deep
skepticism behind Dumbledore's back.
“Very well, Karkaroff,” Crouch said
coldly, “you have been of assistance. I shall review your case. You will return
to Azkaban in the meantime...”
Mr. Crouch's voice faded. Harry looked around;
the dungeon was dissolving as though it were made of smoke; everything was
fading; he could see only his own body—all else was swirling darkness...
And
then, the dungeon returned. Harry was sitting in a different seat, still on the
highest bench, but now to the left side of Mr. Crouch. The atmosphere seemed
quite different: relaxed, even cheerful. The witches and wizards all around the
walls were talking to one another, almost as though they were at some sort of
sporting event. Harry noticed a witch halfway up the rows of benches opposite.
She had short blonde hair, was wearing magenta robes, and was sucking the end of
an acid-green quill. It was, unmistakably, a younger Rita Skeeter. Harry looked
around; Dumbledore was sitting beside him again, wearing different robes. Mr.
Crouch looked more tired and somehow fiercer, gaunter... Harry understood. It
was a different memory, a different day ...a different trial.
The door in the
corner opened, and Ludo Bagman walked into the room.
This was not, however, a
Ludo Bagman gone to seed, but a Ludo Bagman who was clearly at the height of his
Quidditch-playing fitness. His nose wasn't broken now; he was tall and lean and
muscular. Bagman looked nervous as he sat down in the chained chair, but it did
not bind him there as it had bound Karkaroff, and Bagman, perhaps taking heart
from this, glanced around at the watching crowd, waved at a couple of them, and
managed a small smile.
“Ludo Bagman, you have been brought here in front of
the Council of Magical Law to answer charges relating to the activities of the
Death Eaters,” said Mr. Crouch. “We have heard the evidence against you, and are
about to reach our verdict. Do you have anything to add to your testimony before
we pronounce judgment?”
Harry couldn't believe his ears. Ludo Bagman, a Death
Eater?
“Only,” said Bagman, smiling awkwardly, “well—I know I've been a bit
of an idiot—”
One or two wizards and witches in the surrounding seats smiled
indulgently. Mr. Crouch did not appear to share their feelings. He was staring
down at Ludo Bagman with an expression of the utmost severity and
dislike.
“You never spoke a truer word, boy,” someone muttered dryly to
Dumbledore behind Harry. He looked around and saw Moody sitting there again. “If
I didn't know he'd always been dim, I'd have said some of those Bludgers had
permanently affected his brain...”
“Ludovic Bagman, you were caught passing
information to Lord Voldemort's supporters,” said Mr. Crouch. “For this, I
suggest a term of imprisonment in Azkaban lasting no less than—”
But there
was an angry outcry from the surrounding benches. Several of the witches and
wizards around the walls stood up, shaking their heads, and even their fists, at
Mr. Crouch.
“But I've told you, I had no idea!” Bagman called earnestly over
the crowd's babble, his round blue eyes widening. “None at all! Old Rookwood was
a friend of my dad's... never crossed my mind he was in with You-Know-Who! I
thought I was collecting information for our side! And Rookwood kept talking
about getting me a job in the Ministry later on ...once my Quidditch days are
over, you know ...I mean, I can't keep getting hit by Bludgers for the rest of
my life, can I?”
There were titters from the crowd.
“It will be put to the
vote,” said Mr. Crouch coldly. He turned to the right-hand side of the dungeon.
“The jury will please raise their hands... those in favor of
imprisonment...”
Harry looked toward the right-hand side of the dungeon. Not
one person raised their hand. Many of the witches and wizards around the walls
began to clap. One of the witches on the jury stood up.
“Yes?” barked
Crouch.
“We'd just like to congratulate Mr. Bagman on his splendid
performance for England in the Quidditch match against Turkey last Saturday,”
the witch said breathlessly.
Mr. Crouch looked furious. The dungeon was
ringing with applause now. Bagman got to his feet and bowed,
beaming.
“Despicable,” Mr. Crouch spat at Dumbledore, sitting down as Bagman
walked out of the dungeon. “Rookwood get him a job indeed... The day Ludo Bagman
joins us will be a sad day indeed for the Ministry...”
And the dungeon
dissolved again. When it had returned, Harry looked around. He and Dumbledore
were still sitting beside Mr. Crouch, but the atmosphere could not have been
more different. There was total silence, broken only by the dry sobs of a frail,
wispy-looking witch in the seat next to Mr. Crouch. She was clutching a
handkerchief to her mouth with trembling hands.
Harry looked up at Crouch and
saw that he looked gaunter and grayer than ever before. A nerve was twitching in
his temple.
“Bring them in,” he said, and his voice echoed through the silent
dungeon.
The door in the corner opened yet again. Six dementors entered this
time, flanking a group of four people. Harry saw the people in the crowd turn to
look up at Mr. Crouch. A few of them whispered to one another.
The dementors
placed each of the four people in the four chairs with chained arms that now
stood on the dungeon floor. There was a thickset man who stared blankly up at
Crouch; a thinner and more nervous-looking man, whose eyes were darting around
the crowd; a woman with thick, shining dark hair and heavily hooded eyes, who
was sitting in the chained chair as though it were a throne; and a boy in his
late teens, who looked nothing short of petrified. He was shivering, his
straw-colored hair all over his face, his freckled skin milk-white. The wispy
little witch beside Crouch began to rock backward and forward in her seat,
whimpering into her handkerchief.
Crouch stood up. He looked down upon the
four in front of him, and there was pure hatred in his face.
“You have been
brought here before the Council of Magical Law,” he said clearly, “so that we
may pass judgment on you, for a crime so heinous—”
“Father,” said the boy
with the straw-colored hair. “Father... please...
“that we have rarely heard
the like of it within this court,” said Crouch, speaking more loudly, drowning
out his son's voice.
“We have heard the evidence against you. The four of you
stand accused of capturing an Auror—Frank Longbottom—and subjecting him to the
Cruciatus Curse, believing him to have knowledge of the present whereabouts of
your exiled master, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named—”
“Father, I didn't!” shrieked
the boy in chains below. “I didn't, I swear it. Father, don't send me back to
the dementors—”
“You are further accused,” bellowed Mr. Crouch, “of using the
Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom's wife, when he would not give you
information. You planned to restore He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to power, and to
resume the lives of violence you presumably led while he was strong. I now ask
the jury—”
“Mother!” screamed the boy below, and the wispy little witch
beside Crouch began to sob, rocking backward and forward. “Mother, stop him.
Mother, I didn't do it, it wasn't me!”
“I now ask the jury,” shouted Mr.
Crouch, “to raise their hands if they believe, as I do, that these crimes
deserve a life sentence in Azkaban!”
In unison, the witches and wizards along
the right-hand side of the dungeon raised their hands. The crowd around the
walls began to clap as it had for Bagman, their faces full of savage triumph.
The boy began to scream.
“No! Mother, no! I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I
didn't know! Don't send me there, don't let him!”
The dementors were gliding
back into the room. The boys' three companions rose quietly from their seats;
the woman with the heavy-lidded eyes looked up at Crouch and called, “The Dark
Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He
will
rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other
supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!”
But the boy
was trying to fight off the dementors, even though Harry could see their cold,
draining power starting to affect him. The crowd was jeering, some of them on
their feet, as the woman swept out of the dungeon, and the boy continued to
struggle.
“I'm your son!” he screamed up at Crouch. “I'm your son!”
“You
are no son of mine!” bellowed Mr. Crouch, his eyes bulging suddenly. “I have no
son!”
The wispy witch beside him gave a great gasp and slumped in her seat.
She had fainted. Crouch appeared not to have noticed.
“Take them away!”
Crouch roared at the dementors, spit flying from his mouth. “Take them away, and
may they rot there!”
“Father! Father, I wasn't involved! No! No! Father,
please!”
“I think. Harry, it is time to return to my office,” said a quiet
voice in Harrys ear.
Harry started. He looked around. Then he looked on his
other side.
There was an Albus Dumbledore sitting on his right, watching
Crouch's son being dragged away by the dementors—and there was an Albus
Dumbledore on his left, looking right at him.
“Come,” said the Dumbledore on
his left, and he put his hand under Harrys elbow. Harry felt himself rising into
the air; the dungeon dissolved around him; for a moment, all was blackness, and
then he felt as though he had done a slow-motion somersault, suddenly landing
flat on his feet, in what seemed like the dazzling light of Dumbledore's sunlit
office. The stone basin was shimmering in the cabinet in front of him, and Albus
Dumbledore was standing beside him.
“Professor,” Harry gasped, “I know I
shouldn't've—I didn't mean—the cabinet door was sort of open and—”
“I quite
understand,” said Dumbledore. He lifted the basin, carried it over to his desk,
placed it upon the polished top, and sat down in the chair behind it. He
motioned for Harry to sit down opposite him.
Harry did so, staring at the
stone basin. The contents had returned to their original, silvery-white state,
swirling and rippling beneath his gaze.
“What is it?” Harry asked
shakily.
“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “I sometimes find,
and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and
memories crammed into my mind.”
“Er,” said Harry, who couldn't truthfully say
that he had ever felt anything of the sort.
“At these times,” said
Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons
the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines
them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you
understand, when they are in this form.”
“You mean... that stuff's your
thoughts?” Harry said, staring at the swirling white substance in the
basin.
“Certainly,” said Dumbledore. “Let me show you.”
Dumbledore drew
his wand out of the inside of his robes and placed the tip into his own silvery
hair, near his temple. When he took the wand away, hair seemed to be clinging to
it—but then Harry saw that it was in fact a glistening strand of the same
strange silvery-white substance that filled the Pensieve. Dumbledore added this
fresh thought to the basin, and Harry, astonished, saw his own face swimming
around the surface of the bowl. Dumbledore placed his long hands on either side
of the Pensieve and swirled it, rather as a gold prospector would pan for
fragments of gold... and Harry saw his own face change smoothly into Snape's,
who opened his mouth and spoke to the ceiling, his voice echoing
slightly.
“It's coming back... Karkaroff's too... stronger and clearer than
ever...”
“A connection I could have made without assistance,” Dumbledore
sighed, “but never mind.” He peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles at
Harry, who was gaping at Snape's face, which was continuing to swirl around the
bowl. “I was using the Pensieve when Mr. Fudge arrived for our meeting and put
it away rather hastily. Undoubtedly I did not fasten the cabinet door properly.
Naturally, it would have attracted your attention.”
“I'm sorry,” Harry
mumbled.
Dumbledore shook his head. “Curiosity is not a sin,” he said. “But
we should exercise caution with our curiosity... yes, indeed ...”
Frowning
slightly, he prodded the thoughts within the basin with the tip of his wand.
Instantly, a figure rose out of it, a plump, scowling girl of about sixteen, who
began to revolve slowly, with her feet still in the basin. She took no notice
whatsoever of Harry or Professor Dumbledore. When she spoke, her voice echoed as
Snape's had done, as though it were coming from the depths of the stone basin.
“He put a hex on me, Professor Dumbledore, and I
was only teasing him, sir, I
only said I'd seen him kissing Florence behind the greenhouses last
Thursday...”
“But why. Bertha,” said Dumbledore sadly, looking up at the now
silently revolving girl, “why did you have to follow him in the first
place?”
“Bertha?” Harry whispered, looking up at her. “Is that—was that
Bertha Jorkins?”
“Yes,” said Dumbledore, prodding the thoughts in the basin
again; Bertha sank back into them, and they became silvery and opaque once more.
“That was Bertha as I remember her at school.”
The silvery light from the
Pensieve illuminated Dumbledore's face, and it struck Harry suddenly how very
old he was looking. He knew, of course, that Dumbledore was getting on in years,
but somehow he never really thought of Dumbledore as an old man.
“So, Harry,”
said Dumbledore quietly. “Before you got lost in my thoughts, you wanted to tell
me something.”
“Yes,” said Harry. “Professor—I was in Divination just now,
and—er—I fell asleep.”
He hesitated here, wondering if a reprimand was
coming, but Dumbledore merely said, “Quite understandable. Continue.”
“Well,
I had a dream,” said Harry. “A dream about Lord Voldemort. He was torturing
Wormtail... you know who Wormtail-”
“I do know,” said Dumbledore promptly.
“Please continue.”
“Voldemort got a letter from an owl. He said something
like, Wormtail's blunder had been repaired. He said someone was dead. Then he
said, Wormtail wouldn't be fed to the snake—there was a snake beside his chair.
He said—he said he'd be feeding me to it,
instead. Then he did the Cruciatus
Curse on Wormtail—and my scar hurt,” Harry said. “It woke me up, it hurt so
badly.”
Dumbledore merely looked at him.
“Er—that's all,” said
Harry.
“I see,” said Dumbledore quietly. “I see. Now, has your scar hurt at
any other time this year, excepting the time it woke you up over the
summer?”
“No, I—how did you know it woke me up over the summer?” said Harry,
astonished.
“You are not Sirius's only correspondent,” said Dumbledore. “I
have also been in contact with him ever since he left Hogwarts last year. It was
I who suggested the mountainside cave as the safest place for him to
stay.”
Dumbledore got up and began walking up and down behind his desk. Every
now and then, he placed his wand tip to his temple, removed another shining
silver thought, and added it to the Pensieve. The thoughts inside began to swirl
so fast that Harry couldn't make out anything clearly: It was merely a blur of
color.
“Professor?” he said quietly, after a couple of minutes.
Dumbledore
stopped pacing and looked at Harry.
“My apologies,” he said quietly. He sat
back down at his desk.
“D'you—d'you know why my scar's hurting
me?”
Dumbledore looked very intently at Harry for a moment, and then said, “I
have a theory, no more than that... It is my belief that your scar hurts both
when Lord Voldemort is near you, and when he is feeling a particularly strong
surge of hatred.”
“But... why?”
“Because you and he are connected by the
curse that failed,” said Dumbledore. “That is no ordinary scar.”
“So you
think... that dream... did it really happen?”
“It is possible,” said
Dumbledore. “I would say—probable. Harry—did you see Voldemort?”
“No,” said
Harry. “Just the back of his chair. But—there wouldn't have been anything to
see, would there? I mean, he hasn't got a body, has he? But... but then how
could he have held the wand?” Harry said slowly.
“How indeed?” muttered
Dumbledore. “How indeed...”
Neither Dumbledore nor Harry spoke for a while.
Dumbledore was gazing across the room, and, every now and then, placing his wand
tip to his temple and adding another shining silver thought to the seething mass
within the Pensieve.
“Professor,” Harry said at last, “do you think he's
getting stronger?”
“Voldemort?” said Dumbledore, looking at Harry over the
Pensieve. It was the characteristic, piercing look Dumbledore had given him on
other occasions, and always made Harry feel as though Dumbledore were seeing
right through him in a way that even Moody's magical eye could not. “Once again.
Harry, I can only give you my suspicions.”
Dumbledore sighed again, and he
looked older, and wearier, than ever.
“The years of Voldemort's ascent to
power,” he said, “were marked with disappearances. Bertha Jorkins has vanished
without a trace in the place where Voldemort was certainly known to be last. Mr.
Crouch too has disappeared... within these very grounds. And there was a third
disappearance, one which the Ministry, I regret to say, do not consider of any
importance, for it concerns a Muggle. His name was Frank Bryce, he lived in the
village where Voldemort's father grew up, and he has not been seen since last
August. You see, I read the Muggle newspapers, unlike most of my Ministry
friends.”
Dumbledore looked very seriously at Harry.
“These disappearances
seem to me to be linked. The Ministry disagrees—as you may have heard, while
waiting outside my office.”
Harry nodded. Silence fell between them again,
Dumbledore extracting thoughts every now and then. Harry felt as though he ought
to go, but his curiosity held him in his chair.
“Professor?” he said
again.
“Yes, Harry?” said Dumbledore.
“Er... could I ask you about... that
court thing I was in ...in the Pensieve?”
“You could,” said Dumbledore
heavily. “I attended it many times, but some trials come back to me more clearly
than others ...particularly now...”
“You know—you know the trial you found me
in? The one with Crouch's son? Well...were they talking about Neville's
parents?”
Dumbledore gave Harry a very sharp look. “ Has Neville never told
you why he has been brought up by his grandmother?” he said.
Harry shook his
head, wondering, as he did so, how he could have failed to ask Neville this, in
almost four years of knowing him.
“Yes, they were talking about Nevilles
parents,” said Dumbledore. “His father, Frank, was an Auror just like Professor
Moody. He and his wife were tortured for information about Voldemort's
whereabouts after he lost his powers, as you heard.”
“So they're dead?” said
Harry quietly.
“No,” said Dumbledore, his voice full of a bitterness Harry
had never heard there before. “They are insane. They are both in St. Mungo's
Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. I believe Neville visits them, with
his grandmother, during the holidays. They do not recognize him.”
Harry sat
there, horror-struck. He had never known... never, in four years, bothered to
find out...
“The Longbottoms were very popular,” said Dumbledore. “The
attacks on them came after Voldemort's fall from power, just when everyone
thought they were safe. Those attacks caused a wave of fury such as I have never
known. The Ministry was under great pressure to catch those who had done it.
Unfortunately, the Longbottoms' evidence was—given their condition—none too
reliable.”
“Then Mr. Crouch's son might not have been involved?” said Harry
slowly.
Dumbledore shook his head.
“As to that, I have no idea.”
Harry
sat in silence once more, watching the contents of the Pensieve swirl. There
were two more questions he was burning to ask... but they concerned the guilt of
living people...
“Er,” he said, “Mr. Bagman...”
“...has never been accused
of any Dark activity since,” said Dumbledore calmly.
“Right,” said Harry
hastily, staring at the contents of the Pensieve again, which were swirling more
slowly now that Dumbledore had stopped adding thoughts. “And ...er ...”
But
the Pensieve seemed to be asking his question for him.
Snape's face was
swimming on the surface again. Dumbledore glanced down into it, and then up at
Harry.
“No more has Professor Snape,” he said.
Harry looked into
Dumbledore's light blue eyes, and the thing he really wanted to know spilled out
of his mouth before he could stop it.
“What made you think he'd really
stopped supporting Voldemort, Professor?”
Dumbledore held Harrys gaze for a
few seconds, and then said, “That, Harry, is a matter between Professor Snape
and myself.”
Harry knew that the interview was over; Dumbledore did not look
angry, yet there was a finality in his tone that told Harry it was time to go.
He stood up, and so did Dumbledore.
“Harry,” he said as Harry reached the
door. “Please do not speak about Neville's parents to anybody else. He has the
right to let people know, when he is ready.”
“Yes, Professor,” said Harry,
turning to go.
“And-”
Harry looked back. Dumbledore was standing over the
Pensieve, his face lit from beneath by its silvery spots of light, looking older
than ever. He stared at Harry for a moment, and then said, “Good luck with the
third task.”
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