Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice

Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice, “Dumbledore… the doe? I mean,” Ron was watching Harry out of the corners of his eyes, “he had the real sword last, didn’t he?”

Harry did not laugh at Ron, because he understood too well the longing behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had managed to come back to them, that he was watching over them, would have inexpressibly comforting. He shook his head.

“Dumbledore’s dead,” he said. “I saw it happen, I saw the body. He’s definitely gone. Anyway his Patronus was a phoenix, not a doe”

“Patronuses can change, though can’t they?” said Ron, “Tonks’s changed didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but if Dumbledore was alive, why wouldn’t he show himself? Why wouldn’t he just hand us the sword?“

“Search me,” said Ron. “Same reason he didn’t give it to you while he was alive? Same reason he left you an old Snitch and Hermione a book of kid’s stories?”

“Which is what?” asked Harry, turning to look Ron full in the face desperate for the answer.

“I dunno,“ said Ron. ”Sometimes I’ve thought, when I’ve been a bit hacked off, he was having a laugh or – or he just wanted to make it more difficult, But I don’t think so, not anymore. He knew what he was doing when he gave me the Deluminator, didn’t he? He – well,“ Ron’s ears turned bright red and he became engrossed in a tuft of grass at his feet, which he prodded with his toe, ”he must’ve known I’d run out on you.“

“No,” Harry corrected him. “He must’ve known you’d always want to come back.”

Ron looked grateful, but still awkward. Partly to change the subject, Harry said, “Speaking of Dumbledore, have you heard what Skeeter wrote about him?”

“Oh yeah,” said Ron at once, “people are talking about it quite a lot. ‘Course, if things were different it’d be huge news, Dumbledore being pals with Grindelwald, but now it’s just something to laugh about for people who didn’t like Dumbledore, and a bit of a slap in the face for everyone who thought he was such a good bloke. I don’t know that it’s such a big deal, though. He was really young when they –”

“Our age,” said Harry, just as he had retorted to Hermione, and something in his face seemed to decide Ron against pursuing the subject.

A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles. Harry took aim at it with the wand Ron had given him the previous night, which Hermione had since condescended to examine, and had decided was made of blackthorn.

“*Engorgio*”

The spider gave a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web. Harry tried again. This time the spider grew slightly larger.

“Stop that,” said Ron sharply, “ I’m sorry I said Dumbledore was young, okay?”

Harry had forgotten Ron’s hatred of spiders.

“Sorry – *Reducio*”

The spider did not shrink. Harry looked down at the blackthorn wand. Every minor spell he had cast with it so far that day had seemed less powerful than those he had produced with his phoenix wand. The new one felt intrusively unfamiliar, like having somebody else’s hand sewn to the end of his arm.

“You just need to practice,” said Hermione, who had approached them noiselessly from behind and had stood watching anxiously as Harry tried to enlarge and reduce the spider. “It’s all a matter of confidence Harry.”

He knew why she wanted it to be all right; She still felt guilty about breaking his wand. He bit back the retort that sprung to his lips, that she could take the blackthorn wand if she thought it made no difference, and he would have hers instead. Keen for them all to be friends again, however, he agreed; but when Ron gave Hermione a tentative smile, she stalked off and vanished behind her book once more.

All three of them returned to the tent when darkness fell, and Harry took first watch. Sitting in the entrance, he tried to make the blackthorn wand levitate small stones at his feet; but his magic still seemed clumsier and less powerful than it had done before. Hermione was lying on her bunk reading, while Ron, after many nervous glances up at her, had taken a small wooden wireless out of his rucksack and started to try to tune it.

“There’s this one program,” he told Harry in a low voice, “that tells the news like it really is. All the others are on You-Know-Who’s side and are following the Ministry line, but this one… you wait till you hear it, it’s great. Only they can’t do it every night, they have to keep changing locations in case they’re raided and you need a password to tune in… Trouble is, I missed the last one…”

He drummed lightly on the top of the radio with his wand muttering random words under his breath. He threw Hermione many covert glances, plainly fearing an angry outburst, but for all the notice she took of him he might not have been there. For ten minutes or so Ron tapped and muttered, Hermione turned the pages of her book, and Harry continued to practice with the blackthorn wand.

Finally Hermione climbed down from her bunk. Ron ceased his tapping at once.

“If it’s annoying you, I’ll stop!” he told Hermione nervously.

Hermione did not deign to respond, but approached Harry.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He looked at the book still clutched in her hand. It was * The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.*

“What?” he said apprehensively. It flew through his mind that there was a chapter on him in there; he was not sure he felt up to hearing Rita’s version of his relationship with Dumbledore. Hermione’s answer however, was completely unexpected.

“I want to go and see Xenophilius Lovegood.”

He stared at her.

“Sorry?”

“Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna’s father. I want to go and talk to him!”

“Er – why?”

She took a deep breath, as though bracing herself, and said, “It’s that mark, the mark in Beedle the Bard. Look at this!”

She thrust The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore under Harry’s unwilling eyes and saw a photograph of the original letter that Dumbledore had written Grindelwald, with Dumbledore’s familiar thin, slanting handwriting. He hated seeing absolute proof that Dumbledore really had written those words, that they had not been Rita’s invention.

“The signature,” said Hermione. “Look at the signature, Harry!”