He thought at first when he knocked on Hagrid’s cabin door that he was out, but then Fang came charging around the corner and almost bowled him over with the enthusiasm of his welcome. Hagrid, it transpired, was picking runner beans in his back garden.
“All righ’, Harry!” he said, beaming, when Harry approached the fence. “Come in, come in, we’ll have a cup o’ dandelion juice…”
“How’s things?” Hagrid asked him, as they settled down at his wooden table with a glass apiece of iced juice. “Yeh—er—feelin’ all righ’, are yeh?”
Harry knew from the look of concern on Hagrid’s face that he was not referring to Harry’s physical well-being.
“I’m fine,” Harry said quickly, because he could not bear to discuss the thing that he knew was in Hagrid’s mind. “So, where’re you been?”
“Bin hidin’ out in the mountains,” said Hagrid. “Up in a cave, like Sirius did when he…”
Hagrid broke off, cleared his throat gruffly, looked at Harry, and took a long draught of juice.
“Anyway, back now,” he said feebly.
“You—you look better,” said Harry, who was determined to keep the conversation moving away from Sirius.
“Wha’?” said Hagrid, raising a massive hand and feeling his face. “Oh—oh yeah. Well, Grawpy’s loads better behaved now, loads. Seemed right pleased ter see me when I got back, ter tell yeh the truth. He’s a good lad, really… I’ve bin thinkin’ abou’ tryin’ ter find him a lady friend, actually…”
Harry would normally have tried to persuade Hagrid out of this idea at once; the prospect of a second giant taking up residence in the Forest, possibly even wilder and more brutal than Grawp, was positively alarming, but somehow Harry could not muster the energy necessary to argue the point. He was starting to wish he was alone again, and with the idea of hastening his departure he took several large gulps of his dandelion juice, half-emptying his glass.
“Ev’ryone knows yeh’ve bin tellin’ the truth now, Harry,” said Hagrid softly and unexpectedly. He was watching Harry closely. “Tha’s gotta be better, hasn’ it?”
Harry shrugged.
“Look…” Hagrid leaned towards him across the table, “I knew Sirius longer ’n yeh did… he died in battle, an’ tha’s the way he’d’ve wanted ter go—”
“He didn’t want to go at all!” said Harry angrily.
Hagrid bowed his great shaggy head…
“Nah, I don’ reckon he did,” he said quietly. “But still, Harry… he was never one ter sit aroun’ at home an’ let other people do the fightin’. He couldn’ve lived with himself if he hadn’ gone ter help—”
Harry leapt up.
“I’ve got to go and visit Ron and Hermione in the hospital wing,” he said mechanically.
“Oh,” said Hagrid, looking rather upset. “Oh… all righ’ then, Harry… take care o’ yerself then, an’ drop back in if yeh’ve got a mo—”
“Yeah… right…”
Harry crossed to the door as fast as he could and pulled it open; he was out in the sunshine again before Hagrid had finished saying goodbye, and walking away across the lawn. Once again, people called out to him as he passed. He closed his eyes for a few moments, wishing they would all vanish, that he could open his eyes and find himself alone in the grounds…
A few days ago, before his exams had finished and he had seen the vision Voldemort had planted in his mind, he would have given almost anything for the wizarding world to know he had been telling the truth, for them to believe that Voldemort was back, and to know that he was neither a liar nor mad. Now, however…
He walked a short way around the lake, sat down on its bank, sheltered from the gaze of passers-by behind a tangle of shrubs, and stared out over the gleaming water, thinking…
Perhaps the reason he wanted to be alone was because he had felt isolated from everybody since his talk with Dumbledore. An invisible barrier separated him from the rest of the world. He was—he had always been—a marked man. It was just that he had never really understood what that meant…
And yet sitting here on the edge of the lake, with the terriblc weight of grief dragging at him, with the loss of Sirius so raw and fresh inside, he could not muster any great sense of fear. It was sunny, and the grounds around him were full of laughing people, and even though he felt as distant from them as though he belonged to a different race, it was still very hard to believe as he sat here that his life must include, or end in, murder…
He sat there for a long time, gazing out at the water, trying not to think about his godfather or to remember that it was directly across from here, on the opposite bank, that Sirius had once collapsed trying to fend off a hundred Dementors…
The sun had set before he realised he was cold. He got up and returned to the castle, wiping his face on his sleeve as he went.
Ron and Hermione left the hospital wing completely cured three days before the end of term. Hermione kept showing signs of wanting to talk about Sirius, but Ron tended to make hushing noises every time she mentioned his name. Harry was still not sure whether or not he wanted to talk about his godfather yet; his wishes varied with his mood. He knew one thing, though: unhappy as he felt at the moment, he would greatly miss Hogwarts in a few days’ time when he was back at number four, Privet Drive. Even though he now understood exactly why he had to return there every summer, he did not feel any better about it. Indeed, he had never dreaded his return more.
Professor Umbridge left Hogwarts the day before the end of term. It seemed she had crept out of the hospital wing during dinnertime, evidently hoping to depart undetected, but unfortunately for her, she met Peeves on the way, who seized his last chance to do as Fred had instructed, and chased her gleefully from the premises whacking her alternately with a walking stick and a sock full of chalk. Many students ran out into the Entrance Hall to watch her running away down the path and the Heads of Houses tried only half-heartedly to restrain them. Indeed, Professor McGonagall sank back into her chair at the staff table after a few feeble remonstrances and was clearly heard to express a regret that she could not run cheering after Umbridge herself, because Peeves had borrowed her walking stick.
Their last evening at school arrived; most people had finished packing and were already heading down to the end-of-term leaving feast, but Harry had not even started.
“Just do it tomorrow!” said Ron, who was waiting by the door of their dormitory. “Come on, I’m starving.”
“I won’t be long… look, you go ahead…”
But when the dormitory door closed behind Ron, Harry made no effort to speed up his packing. The very last thing he wanted to do was to attend the Leaving Feast. He was worried that Dumbledore would make some reference to him in his speech. He was sure to mention Voldemort’s return; he had talked to them about it last year, after all…
Harry pulled some crumpled robes out of the very bottom of his trunk to make way for folded ones and, as he did so, noticed a badly wrapped package lying in a corner of it. He could not think what it was doing there. He bent down, pulled it out from underneath his trainers and examined it.
He realised what it was within seconds. Sirius had given it to him just inside the front door of number twelve Grimmauld Place. “Use it if you need me, all right?”