“So, you have come. I thought you would… one day. But your journey was pointless. I never had it.”
“You lie!”
As Voldemort’s anger throbbed inside him, Harry’s scar threatened to burst with pain, and he wrenched his mind back to his own body, fighting to remain present as the prisoners were pushed over gravel.
Light spilled out over all of them.
“What is this?” said a woman’s cold voice.
“We’re here to see He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named!” rasped Greyback.
“Who are you?”
“You know me!” There was resentment in the werewolf’s voice. “Fenrir Greyback! We’ve caught Harry Potter!”
Greyback seized Harry and dragged him around to face the light, forcing the other prisoners to shuffle around too.
“I know ’es swollen, ma’am, but it’s ’im!” piped up Scabior. “If you look a bit closer, you’ll see ’is scar. And this ’ere, see the girl? The Mudblood who’s been traveling around with ’im, ma’am. There’s no doubt it’s ’im, and we’ve got ’is wand as well! ’Ere, ma’am—”
Through his puffy eyelids Harry saw Narcissa Malfoy scrutinizing his swollen face. Scabior thrust the blackthorn wand at her. She raised her eyebrows.
“Bring them in,” she said.
Harry and the others were shoved and kicked up broad stone steps into a hallway lined with portraits.
“Follow me,” said Narcissa, leading the way across the hall. “My son, Draco, is home for his Easter holidays. If that is Harry Potter, he will know.”
The drawing room dazzled after the darkness outside; even with his eyes almost closed Harry could make out the wide proportions of the room. A crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, more portraits against the dark purple walls. Two figures rose from chairs in front of an ornate marble fireplace as the prisoners were forced into the room by the Snatchers.
“What is this?”
The dreadfully familiar, drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy fell on Harry’s ears. He was panicking now. He could see no way out, and it was easier, as his fear mounted, to block out Voldemort’s thoughts, though his scar was still burning.
“They say they’ve got Potter,” said Narcissa’s cold voice. “Draco, come here.”
Harry did not dare look directly at Draco, but saw him obliquely; a figure slightly taller than he was, rising from an armchair, his face a pale and pointed blur beneath white-blond hair.
Greyback forced the prisoners to turn again so as to place Harry directly beneath the chandelier.
“Well, boy?” rasped the werewolf.
Harry was facing a mirror over the fireplace, a great gilded thing in an intricately scrolled frame. Through the slits of his eyes he saw his own reflection for the first time since leaving Grimmauld Place.
His face was huge, shiny, and pink, every feature distorted by Hermione’s jinx. His black hair reached his shoulders and there was a dark shadow around his jaw. Had he not known that it was he who stood there, he would have wondered who was wearing his glasses. He resolved not to speak, for his voice was sure to give him away; yet he still avoided eye contact with Draco as the latter approached.
“Well, Draco?” said Lucius Malfoy. He sounded avid. “Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”
“I can’t—I can’t be sure,” said Draco. He was keeping his distance from Greyback, and seemed as scared of looking at Harry as Harry was of looking at him.
“But look at him carefully, look! Come closer!”
Harry had never heard Lucius Malfoy so excited.
“Draco, if we are the ones who hand Potter over to the Dark Lord, everything will be forgiv—”
“Now, we won’t be forgetting who actually caught him, I hope, Mr. Malfoy?” said Greyback menacingly.
“Of course not, of course not!” said Lucius impatiently. He approached Harry himself, came so close that Harry could see the usually languid, pale face in sharp detail even through his swollen eyes. With his face a puffy mask, Harry felt as though he was peering out from between the bars of a cage.
“What did you do to him?” Lucius asked Greyback. “How did he get into this state?”
“That wasn’t us.”
“Looks more like a Stinging Jinx to me,” said Lucius.
His gray eyes raked Harry’s forehead.
“There’s something there,” he whispered. “it could be the scar, stretched tight… Draco, come here, look properly! What do you think?”
Harry saw Draco’s face up close now, right beside his father’s. They were extraordinarily alike, except that while his father looked beside himself with excitement, Draco’s expression was full of reluctance, even fear.
“I don’t know,” he said, and he walked away toward the fireplace where his mother stood watching.
“We had better be certain, Lucius,” Narcissa called to her husband in her cold, clear voice. “Completely sure that it is Potter, before we summon the Dark Lord… They say this is his”—she was looking closely at the blackthorn wand—“but it does not resemble Ollivander’s description… If we are mistaken, if we call the Dark Lord here for nothing… Remember what he did to Rowle and Dolohov?”
“What about the Mudblood, then?” growled Greyback. Harry was nearly thrown off his feet as the Snatchers forced the prisoners to swivel around again, so that the light fell on Hermione instead.
“Wait,” said Narcissa sharply. “Yes—yes, she was in Madam Malkin’s with Potter! I saw her picture in the Prophet! Look, Draco, isn’t it the Granger girl?”
“I… maybe… yeah.”
“But then, that’s the Weasley boy!” shouted Lucius, striding around the bound prisoners to face Ron. “It’s them, Potter’s friends—Draco, look at him, isn’t it Arthur Weasley’s son, what’s his name—?”
“Yeah,” said Draco again, his back to the prisoners. “It could be.”
The drawing room door opened behind Harry. A woman spoke, and the sound of the voice wound Harry’s fear to an even higher pitch.
“What is this? What’s happened, Cissy?”
Bellatrix Lestrange walked slowly around the prisoners, and stopped on Harry’s right, staring at Hermione through her heavily lidded eyes.
“But surely,” she said quietly, “this is the Mudblood girl? This is Grander?”
“Yes, yes, it’s Granger!” cried Lucius, “And beside her, we think, Potter! Potter and his friends, caught at last!”
“Potter?” shrieked Bellatrix, and she backed away, the better to take in Harry.
“Are you sure? Well then, the Dark Lord must be informed at once!”
She dragged back her left sleeve: Harry saw the Dark Mark burned into the flesh of her arm, and knew that she was about to touch it, to summon her beloved master—
“I was about to call him!” said Lucius, and his hand actually closed upon Bellatrix’s wrist, preventing her from touching the Mark. “I shall summon him, Bella. Potter has been brought to my house, and it is therefore upon my authority—”
“Your authority!” she sneered, attempting to wrench her hand from his grasp. “You lost your authority when you lost your wand, Lucius! How dare you! Take your hands off me!”
“This is nothing to do with you, you did not capture the boy—”
“Begging your pardon, Mr. Malfoy,” interjected Greyback, “but it’s us that caught Potter, and it’s us that’ll be claiming the gold—”
“Gold!” laughed Bellatrix, still attempting to throw off her brother-in-law, her free hand groping in her pocket for her wand. “Take your gold, filthy scavenger, what do I want with gold? I seek only the honor of his—of—”
She stopped struggling, her dark eyes fixed upon something Harry could not see. Jubilant at her capitulation, Lucius threw her hand from him and ripped up his own sleeve—
“STOP!” shrieked Bellatrix, “Do not touch it, we shall all perish if the Dark Lord comes now!”
Lucius froze, his index finger hovering over his own Mark. Bellatrix strode out of Harry’s limited line of vision.
“What is that?” he heard her say.