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Chapter Six

The Ghoul in Pajamas

 

The shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in the days that followed;
Harry kept expecting to see him stumping in through the back door like the other Order
members, who passed in and out to relay news. Harry felt that nothing but action would
assuage his feelings of guilt and grief and that he ought to set out on his mission to find
and destroy Horcruxes as soon as possible.

“Well, you can’t do anything about the” – Ron mouthed the word Horcruxes –
“till you’re seventeen. You’ve still got the Trace on you. And we can plan here as well as
anywhere, can’t we? Or,” he dropped his voice to a whisper, “d’you reckon you already
know where the You-Know-Whats are?”

“No,” Harry admitted.

“I think Hermione’s been doing a bit of research,” said Ron. “She said she was
saving it for when you got here.”

They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr. Weasley and Bill had just left for
work. Mrs. Weasley had gone upstairs to wake Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had
drifted off to take a bath.

“The Trace’ll break on the thirty-first,” said Harry. “That means I only need to
stay here four days. Then I can –“

“Five days,” Ron corrected him firmly. “We’ve got to stay for the wedding.
They’ll kill us if we miss it.”

Harry understood “they” to mean Fleur and Mrs. Weasley.

“It’s one extra day,” said Ron, when Harry looked mutinous.

“Don’t they realize how important –?”

“’Course they don’t,” said Ron. “They haven’t got a clue. And now you mention
it, I wanted to talk to you about that.”

Ron glanced toward the door into the hall to check that Mrs. Weasley was not
returning yet, then leaned in closer to Harry.

“Mum’s been trying to get it out of Hermione and me. What we’re off to do.
She’ll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and Lupin’ve both asked as well, but when we

said Dumbledore told you not to tell anyone except us, they dropped it. Not Mum, though.
She’s determined.”

Ron’s prediction came true within hours. Shortly before lunch, Mrs. Weasley
detached Harry from the others by asking him to help identify a lone man’s sock that she
thought might have come out of his rucksack. Once she had him cornered in the tiny
scullery off the kitchen, she started.

“Ron and Hermione seem to think that the three of you are dropping out of
Hogwarts,” she began in a light, casual tone.

“Oh,” said Harry. “Well, yeah. We are.”

The mangle turned of its own accord in a corner, wringing out what looked like
one of Mr. Weasley’s vests.

“May I ask why you are abandoning your education?” said Mrs. Weasley.

“Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,” mumbled Harry. “Ron and Hermione
know about it, and they want to come too.”

“What sort of ‘stuff’?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t –“

“Well, frankly, I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. And
Mrs. Granger would agree!” said Mrs. Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the “concerned
parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did so that
they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help.

“Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley. I’m sorry. Ron and
Hermione don’t have to come, it’s their choice –“

“I don’t see that you have to go either!” she snapped, dropping all pretense now.
“You’re barely of age, any of you! It’s utter nonsense, if Dumbledore needed work doing,
he had the whole Order at his command! Harry, you must have misunderstood him.
Probably he was telling you something he wanted done, and you took it to mean that he
wanted you–“

“I didn’t misunderstand,” said Harry flatly. “It’s got to be me.”

He handed her back the single sock he was supposed to be identifying, which was
patterned with golden bulrushes.

“And that’s not mine. I don’t support Puddlemere United.”

“Oh, of course not,” said Mrs. Weasley with a sudden and rather unnerving return
to her casual tone. “I should have realized. Well, Harry, while we’ve still got you here,
you won’t mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur’s wedding, will you?
There’s still so much to do.”

“No – I – of course not,” said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of
subject.

“Sweet of you,” she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery.

From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley kept Harry, Ron and Hermione so busy with
preparations for the wedding that they hardly had any time to think. The kindest
explanation of this behavior would have been that Mrs. Weasley wanted to distract them
all from thoughts of Mad-Eye and the terrors of their recent journey. After two days of
nonstop cutlery cleaning, of color-matching favors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming
the garden and helping Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canapés, however, Harry
started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed to keep
him, Ron, and Hermione away from one another; he had not had a chance to speak to the

two of them alone since the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing
Ollivander.

“I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting together and
planning, she’ll be able to delay you leaving,” Ginny told Harry in an undertone, as they
laid the table for dinner on the third night of his stay.

“And then what does she think’s going to happen?” Harry muttered. “Someone
else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?”

He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.

“So it’s true?” she said. “That’s what you’re trying to do?”

“I – not – I was joking,” said Harry evasively.

They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s
expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been
alone with her since those stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He
was sure she was remembering them too. Both of them jumped as the door opened, and
Mr. Weasley, Kingsley, and Bill walked in.

They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now, because the
Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place as the headquarters. Mr. Weasley
had explained that after the death of Dumbledore, their Secret-Keeper, each of the people
to whom Dumbledore had confided Grimmauld Place’s location had become a Secret-
Keeper in turn.

“And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the power of the
Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities for the Death Eaters to get the
secret out of somebody. We can’t expect it to hold much longer.”

“But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address by now?” asked
Harry.

“Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there
again. We hope they’ll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he
tries to talk about the place, but we can’t be sure. It would have been insane to keep using
the place as headquarters now that its protection has become so shaky.”

The kitchen was so crowded that evening it was difficult to maneuver knives and
forks. Harry found himself crammed beside Ginny; the unsaid things that had just passed
between them made him wish they had been separated by a few more people. He was
trying so hard to avoid brushing her arm he could barely cut his chicken.

“No news about Mad-Eye?” Harry asked Bill.

“Nothing,” replied Bill.

They had not been able to hold a funeral for Moody, because Bill and Lupin had
failed to recover his body. It had been difficult to know where he might have fallen, given
the darkness and the confusion of the battle.

“The Daily Prophet hasn’t said a word about him dying or about finding the
body,” Bill went on. “But that doesn’t mean much. It’s keeping a lot quiet these days.”

“And they still haven’t called a hearing about all the underage magic I used
escaping the Death Eaters?” Harry called across the table to Mr. Weasley, who shook his
head.

“Because they know I had no choice or because they don’t want me to tell the
world Voldemort attacked me?”

“The latter, I think. Scrimgeour doesn’t want to admit that You-Know-Who is as
powerful as he is, nor that Azkaban’s seen a mass breakout.”

“Yeah, why tell the public the truth?” said Harry, clenching his knife so tightly
that the faint scars on the back of his right hand stood out, white against his skin: I must
not tell lies.

“Isn’t anyone at the Ministry prepared to stand up to him?” asked Ron angrily.

“Of course, Ron, but people are terrified,” Mr. Weasley replied, “terrified that
they will be next to disappear, their children the next to be attacked! There are nasty
rumors going around; I for one don’t believe the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts
resigned. She hasn’t been seen for weeks now. Meanwhile Scrimgeour remains shut up in
his office all day; I just hope he’s working on a plan.”

There was a pause in which Mrs. Weasley magicked the empty plates onto the
work surface and served apple tart.

“We must decide ‘ow you will be disguised, ‘Arry,” said Fleur, once everyone
had pudding. “For ze wedding,” she added, when he looked confused. “Of course, none
of our guests are Death Eaters, but we cannot guarantee zat zey will not let something
slip after zey ‘ave ‘ad champagne.”

From this, Harry gathered that she still suspected Hagrid.

“Yes, good point,” said Mrs. Weasley from the top of the table where she sat,
spectacles perched on the end of her nose, scanning an immense list of jobs that she had
scribbled on a very long piece of parchment. “Now, Ron, have you cleaned out your
room yet?”

“Why?” exclaimed Ron, slamming his spoon down and glaring at his mother.
“Why does my room have to be cleaned out? Harry and I are fine with it the way it is!”

“We are holding your brother’s wedding here in a few days’ time, young man –“

“And are they getting married in my bedroom?” asked Ron furiously. “No! So
why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left –“

“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” said Mr. Weasley firmly. “And do as you’re
told.”

Ron scowled at both his parents, then picked up his spoon and attacked the last
few mouthfuls of his apple tart.

“I can help, some of it’s my mess.” Harry told Ron, but Mrs. Weasley cut across
him.

“No, Harry, dear, I’d much rather you helped Arthur much out the chickens, and
Hermione, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d change the sheets for Monsieur and Madame
Delacour; you know they’re arriving at eleven tomorrow morning.”

But as it turned out, there was very little to do for the chickens. “There’s no need
to, er, mention it to Molly,” Mr. Weasley told Harry, blocking his access to the coop, “but,
er, Ted Tonks sent me most of what was left of Sirius’s bike and, er, I’m hiding – that’s
to say, keeping – it in here. Fantastic stuff: There’s an exhaust gaskin, as I believe it’s
called, the most magnificent battery, and it’ll be a great opportunity to find out how
brakes work. I’m going to try and put it all back together again when Molly’s not – I
mean, when I’ve got time.”

When they returned to the house, Mrs. Weasley was nowhere to be seen, so Harry
slipped upstairs to Ron’s attic bedroom.

“I’m doing it, I’m doing – ! Oh, it’s you,” said Ron in relief, as Harry entered the
room. Ron lay back down on the bed, which he had evidently just vacated. The room was
just as messy as it had been all week; the only chance was that Hermione was now sitting
in the far corner, her fluffy ginger cat, Crookshanks, at her feet, sorting books, some of
which Harry recognized as his own, into two enormous piles.

“Hi, Harry,” she said, as he sat down on his camp bed.

“And how did you manage to get away?”

“Oh, Ron’s mum forgot that she asked Ginny and me to change the sheets
yesterday,” said Hermione. She threw Numerology and Grammatica onto one pile and
The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts onto the other.

“We were just talking about Mad-Eye,” Ron told Harry. “I reckon he might have
survived.”

“But Bill saw him hit by the Killing Curse,” said Harry.

“Yeah, but Bill was under attack too,” said Ron. “How can he be sure what he
saw?”

“Even if the Killing Curse missed, Mad-Eye still fell about a thousand feet,” said
Hermione, now weight Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland in her hand.

“He could have used a Shield Charm –“

“Fleur said his wand was blasted out of his hand,” said Harry.

“Well, all right, if you want him to be dead,” said Ron grumpily, punching his
pillow into a more comfortable shape.

“Of course we don’t want him to be dead!” said Hermione, looking shocked. “It’s
dreadful that he’s dead! But we’re being realistic!”

For the first time, Harry imagined Mad-Eye’s body, broken as Dumbledore’s had
been, yet with that one eye still whizzing in its socket. He felt a stab of revulsion mixed
with a bizarre desire to laugh.

“The Death Eaters probably tidied up after themselves, that’s why no one’s found
him,” said Ron wisely.

“Yeah,” said Harry. “Like Barty Crouch, turned into a bone and buried in
Hagrid’s front garden. They probably transfigured Moody and stuffed him –“

“Don’t!” squealed Hermione. Startled, Harry looked over just in time to see her
burst into tears over her copy of Spellman’s Syllabary.