Snowy ground. Her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave an impression of

Extreme age. They watched in silence as she drew nearer. Harry was waiting to see

Whether she would turn into any of the cottages she was passing, but he knew

Instinctively that she would not. At last she came to a halt a few yards from them and

Simply stood there in the middle of the frozen road, facing them.

He did not need Hermione's pinch to his arm. There was next to no chance that this

woman was a Muggle: She was standing there gazing at a house that ought to have been

Completely invisible to her, if she was not a witch. Even assuming that she was a witch,

However, it was odd behavior to come out on a night this cold, simply to look at an old

Ruin. By all the rules of normal magic, meanwhile, she ought not to be able to see

Hermione and him at all. Nevertheless, Harry had the strangest feeling that she knew that

They were there, and also who they were. Just as he had reached this uneasy conclusion,

She raised a gloved hand and beckoned.

Hermione moved closer to him under the Cloak, her arm pressed against his.

"How does she know?"

He shook his head. The woman beckoned again, more vigorously. Harry could think of

Many reasons not to obey the summons, and yet his suspicions about her identity were

Growing stronger every moment that they stood facing each other in the deserted street.

Was it possible that she had been waiting for them all these long months? That

Dumbledore had told her to wait, and that Harry would come in the end? Was it not likely

That it was she who had moved in the shadows in the graveyard and had followed them to

this spot? Even her ability to sense them suggested some Dumbledore-ish power that he

Had never encountered before.

Finally Harry spoke, causing Hermione to gasp and jump.

"Are you Bathilda?"

The muffled figure nodded and beckoned again.

Beneath the Cloak Harry and Hermione looked at each other. Harry raised his eyebrows;

Hermione gave a tiny, nervous nod.

They stepped toward the woman and , at once, she turned and hobbled off back the way

They had come. Leading them past several houses, she turned in at a gate. They followed

Her up the front path through a garden nearly as overgrown as the one they had just left.

She fumbled for a moment with a key at the front door, then opened it and stepped back

To let them pass.

She smelled bad, or perhaps it was her house; Harry wrinkled his nose as they sidled past

Her and pulled off the Cloak. Now that he was beside her, he realized how tiny she was;

Bowed down with age, she came barely level with his chest. She closed the door behind

Them, her knuckles blue and mottled against the peeling paint, then turned and peered into

Harry's face. Her eyes were thick with cataracts and sunken into folds of transparent skin,

And her whole face was dotted with broken veins and liver spots. He wondered whether

She could make him out at all; even if she could, it was the balding Muggle whose

Identity he had stolen that she would see.

The odor of old age, of dust, of unwashed clothes and stale food intensified as the

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 832