‘When did it appear?’ asked Dumbledore, and his hand clenched painfully upon Harry’s shoulder as he struggled to his feet.
‘Must have been minutes ago, it wasn’t there when I put the cat out, but when I got upstairs -’
‘We need to return to the castle at once,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Rosmerta,’ and though he staggered a little, he seemed wholly in command of the situation, ‘we need transport — brooms -’
‘I’ve got a couple behind the bar,’ she said, looking very frightened. ‘Shall I run and fetch -?’
‘No, Harry can do it.’
Harry raised his wand at once.
‘Accio Rosmerta’s brooms.’
A second later they heard a loud bang as the front door of the pub burst open; two brooms had shot out into the street and were racing each other to Harry’s side, where they stopped dead, quivering slightly, at waist height.
‘Rosmerta, please send a message to the Ministry,’ said Dumbledore, as he mounted the broom nearest him. ‘It might be that nobody within Hogwarts has yet realised anything is wrong… Harry, put on your Invisibility Cloak.’
Harry pulled his Cloak out of his pocket and threw it over himself before mounting his broom; Madam Rosmerta was already tottering back towards her pub as Harry and Dumbledore kicked off from the ground and rose up into the air. As they sped towards the castle, Harry glanced sideways at Dumbledore, ready to grab him should he fall, but the sight of the Dark Mark seemed to have acted upon Dumbledore like a stimulant: he was bent low over his broom, his eyes fixed upon the Mark, his long silver hair and beard flying behind him in the night air. And Harry, too, looked ahead at the skull, and fear swelled inside him like a venomous bubble, compressing his lungs, driving all other discomfort from his mind…
How long had they been away? Had Ron, Hermione and Ginny’s luck run out by now? Was it one of them who had caused the Mark to be set over the school, or was it Neville, or Luna, or some other member of the DA? And if it was… he was the one who had told them to patrol the corridors, he had asked them to leave the safety of their beds… would he be responsible, again, for the death of a friend?
As they flew over the dark, twisting lane down which they had walked earlier, Harry heard, over the whistling of the night air in his ears, Dumbledore muttering in some strange language again. He thought he understood why as he felt his broom shudder for a moment when they flew over the boundary wall into the grounds: Dumbledore was undoing the enchantments he himself had set around the castle, so that they could enter at speed. The Dark Mark was glittering directly above the Astronomy Tower, the highest of the castle. Did that mean the death had occurred there?
Dumbledore had already crossed the crenellated ramparts and was dismounting; Harry landed next to him seconds later and looked around.
The ramparts were deserted. The door to the spiral staircase that led back into the castle was closed. There was no sign of a struggle, of a fight to the death, of a body.
‘What does it mean?’ Harry asked Dumbledore, looking up at the green skull with its serpent’s tongue glinting evilly above them. ‘Is it the real Mark? Has someone definitely been — Professor?’
In the dim green glow from the Mark Harry saw Dumbledore clutching at his chest with his blackened hand.
‘Go and wake Severus,’ said Dumbledore faintly but clearly. Tell him what has happened and bring him to me. Do noth ing else, speak to nobody else and do not remove your Cloak. I shall wait here.‘
‘But -’
‘You swore to obey me, Harry — go!’
Harry hurried over to the door leading to the spiral staircase, but his hand had only just closed upon the iron ring of the door when he heard running footsteps on the other side. He looked round at Dumbledore, who gestured to him to retreat. Harry backed away, drawing his wand as he did so.
The door burst open and somebody erupted through it and shouted: ‘Expelliarmus!’
Harry’s body became instantly rigid and immobile, and he felt himself fall back against the Tower wall, propped like an unsteady statue, unable to move or speak. He could not understand how it had happened — Expelliarmus was not a Freezing Charm Then, by the light of the Mark, he saw Dumbledore’s wand flying in an arc over the edge of the ramparts and understood… Dumbledore had wordlessly immobilised Harry, and the second he had taken to perform the spell had cost him the chance of defending himself.
Standing against the ramparts, very white in the face, Dumbledore still showed no sign of panic or distress. He merely looked across at his disarmer and said, ‘Good evening, Draco.’
Malfoy stepped forwards, glancing around quickly to check that he and Dumbledore were alone. His eyes fell upon the second broom.
‘Who else is here?’
‘A question I might ask you. Or are you acting alone?’
Harry saw Malfoy’s pale eyes shift back to Dumbledore in the greenish glare of the Mark.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve got back-up. There are Death Eaters here in your school tonight.’
‘Well, well,’ said Dumbledore, as though Malfoy was show ing him an ambitious homework project. ‘Very good indeed. You found a way to let them in, did you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Malfoy, who was panting. ‘Right under your nose and you never realised!’
‘Ingenious,’ said Dumbledore. ‘Yet… forgive me… where are they now? You seem unsupported.’
They met some of your guard. They’re having a fight down below. They won’t be long… I came on ahead. I — I’ve got a job to do.‘
‘Well, then, you must get on and do it, my dear boy,’ said Dumbledore softly.
There was silence. Harry stood imprisoned within his own invisible, paralysed body, staring at the two of them, his ears straining to hear sounds of the Death Eaters’ distant fight, and in front of him, Draco Malfoy did nothing but stare at Albus Dumbledore who, incredibly, smiled.
‘Draco, Draco, you are not a killer.’
‘How do you know?’ said Malfoy at once.
He seemed to realise how childish the words had sounded; Harry saw him flush in the Mark’s greenish light.
‘You don’t know what I’m capable of,’ said Malfoy more forcefully, ‘you don’t know what I’ve done!’
‘Oh, yes, I do,’ said Dumbledore mildly. ‘You almost killed Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley. You have been trying, with increasing desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts… so feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether your heart has been really in it…’
‘It has been in it!’ said Malfoy vehemently. ‘I’ve been work ing on it all year, and tonight -’
Somewhere in the depths of the castle below Harry heard a muffled yell. Malfoy stiffened and glanced over his shoulder.
‘Somebody is putting up a good fight,’ said Dumbledore conversationally. ‘But you were saying… yes, you have managed to introduce Death Eaters into my school which, I admit, I thought impossible… how did you do it?’
But Malfoy said nothing: he was still listening to whatever was happening below and seemed almost as paralysed as Harry was.
‘Perhaps you ought to get on with the job alone,’ suggested Dumbledore. ‘What if your back-up has been thwarted by my guard? As you have perhaps realised, there are members of the Order of the Phoenix here tonight, too. And after all, you don’t really need help… I have no wand at the moment… I cannot defend myself.’
Malfoy merely stared at him.
‘I see,’ said Dumbledore kindly, when Malfoy neither moved nor spoke. ‘You are afraid to act until they join you.’»
‘I’m not afraid!’ snarled Malfoy, though he still made no move to hurt Dumbledore. ‘It’s you who should be scared!’
‘But why? I don’t think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe… so tell me, while we wait for your friends… how did you smuggle them in here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out how to do it.’
Malfoy looked as though he was fighting down the urge to shout, or to vomit. He gulped and took several deep breaths, glaring at Dumbledore, his wand pointing directly at the latter’s heart. Then, as though he could not help himself, he said, ‘I had to mend that broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one’s used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year.’
‘Aaaah.’
Dumbledore’s sigh was half a groan. He closed his eyes for a moment.
That was clever… there is a pair, I take it?‘
‘The other’s in Borgin and Burkes,’ said Malfoy, ‘and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the Cabinet was travelling between them, but he couldn’t make anyone hear him… in the end he managed to Apparate out, even though he’d never passed his test. He nearly died doing it. Everyone thought it was a really good story, but I was the only one who realised what it meant — even Borgin didn’t know — I was the one who realised there could be a way into Hogwarts through the Cabinets if I fixed the broken one.’