Flitwick of Dumbledore, who had surely asked her the same question. He had shaken his

Head and made to turn away when she spoke in a low voice.

"I stole the diadem from my mother."

"You - you did what?"

"I stole the diadem." repeated Helena Ravenclaw in a whisper. "I sought to make

myself cleverer, more important than my mother. I ran away with it."

He did not know how he had managed to gain her confidence and did not ask, he

Simply listened, hard, as she went on.

"My mother, they say, never admitted that the diadem was gone, but pretended

That she had it still. She concealed her loss, my dreadful betrayal, even from the other

Founders of Hogwarts.

"Then my mother fell ill - fatally ill. In spite of my perfidy, she was desperate to

See me one more time. She sent a man who had long loved me, though I spurned his

advances, to find me. She knew that he would not rest until he had done so."

Harry waited. She drew a deep breath and threw back her head.

"He tracked me to the forest where I was hiding. When I refused to return with

Him, he became violent. The baron was always a hot-tempered man. Furious at my

refusal, jealous of my freedom, he stabbed me."

"The Baron? You mean -?"

"he Bloody Baron, yes," said the Gray Lady, and she lifted aside the cloak she

Wore to reveal a single dark wound in her white chest. When he saw what he had done,

He was overcome with remorse. He took the weapon that had claimed my life, and used

It to kill himself. All these centuries later, he wears his chains as an act of penitence ... as

he should." she added bitterly.

"And - and the diadem?"

"It remained where I had hidden it when I heard the Baron blundering through the

forest toward me. Concealed inside a hollow tree."

"A hollow tree?" repeated Harry. "What tree? Where was this?"

"A forest in Albania. A lonely place I thought was far beyond my mother's

reach."

"Albania," repeated Harry. Sense was emerging miraculously from confusion,

And now he understood why she was telling him what she had denied Dumbledore and

Flitwick. "You've already told someone this story, haven't you? Another student?"

She closed her eyes and nodded.

"I had... no idea... He was flattering. He seemed to... understand... to

sympathize..."

Yes, Harry thought. Tom Riddle would certainly have understood Helena

Ravenclaw's desire to possess fabulous objects to which she had little right.

"Well, you weren't the first person Riddle wormed things out of." Harry muttered.

"He could be charming when he wanted..."

So, Voldemort had managed to wheedle the location of the lost diadem out of the

Gray Lady. He had traveled to that far-flung forest and retrieved the diadem from its

Hiding place, perhaps as soon as he left Hogwarts, before he even started work at Borgin

And Burkes.

And wouldn't those secluded Albanian woods have seemed an excellent refuge

When, so much later, Voldemort and needed a place to lie low, undisturbed, for ten long

years?

But the diadem, once it became his precious Horcrux, had not been left in that

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 465