The Girl Who Hid | ✓

|129| Bathilda Bagshot

Just before we could get through the gates, I heard a rustling towards my right. Hermione heard it too.

"Wait, stop."

"What's wrong?" said Harry.

"There's someone there. Someone watching us. I can tell. There, over by the bushes."

We stood quite still, holding on to each other, gazing at the dense black boundary of the graveyard. Harry and I narrowed our eyes and gave Hermione a weird look. She broke from Harry to free her wand arm.

"We look like Muggles," I pointed out.

"Muggles who've just been laying flowers on your parents' grave! Maisey, I'm sure there's someone over there!"

I thought of A History of Magic; the graveyard was supposed to be haunted: what if —? But then I heard a rustle and saw a little eddy of dislodged snow in the bush to which Hermione had pointed. Ghosts could not move snow. I quickly withdrew my wand arm as well.

"It's a cat," said Harry, after a second or two, "or a bird. If it was a Death Eater we'd be dead by now. But let's get out of here, and we can put the Cloak back on."

We glanced around the graveyard as Harry put the Invisibility Cloak over us. Walking down the road, Harry led Hermione and me down the street and through the town.

"How are we going to find Bathilda's house?" I asked as I was shivering a little and kept glancing back over my shoulder. "Harry? What do you think? Harry?"

Something must have caught Harry's eye because, with his hands in ours, he dragged us down the street; Hermione slipped a little on the ice.

"Harry —"

"Look— Look at it..."

"I don't— oh!" Hermione gasped.

Looking up, I also gasped. The Fidelius Charm, that was supposed to protect the Potter house, must have died with James and Lily. The hedge had grown wild in the sixteen years since Harry and I were taken from the rubble that lay scattered amongst the waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow, but the right side of the top floor had been blown apart; the curse had backfired. Harry, Hermione, and I stood at the gate, gazing up at the wreck of what must once have been a cottage just like those that flanked it.

"I wonder why nobody's ever rebuilt it?" whispered Hermione.

"Maybe you can't rebuild it?" I mumbled. "Maybe it's like the injuries from Dark Magic and you can't repair the damage?"

I let my hand slip out from underneath the Cloak and held onto the thickly rusted gate.

"You're not going to go inside?" Hermione said quickly. "It looks unsafe, it might— oh, Harry, Maisey, look!"

My touch on the gate seemed to have done it. A sign had risen out of the ground in front of us, up through the tangles of nettles and weeds, like some bizarre, fast-growing flower, and in golden letters upon the wood it said:

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily, James, and Maisey Potter lost their lives. Their son and brother, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.

My name was crossed out of the little plaque and scribbled in above Harry's name. And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Twins Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.