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“Yes, but could you keep your trap shut?” said Hermione, looking skeptical. “You know, the only true thing he said to us was that there have been stories about extra-powerful wands for hundreds of years.”

“There have?” asked Harry.

Hermione looked exasperated: The expression was so endearingly familiar that Harry and Ron grinned at each other.

“The Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, they crop up under different names through the centuries, usually in the possession of some Dark wizard who’s boasting about them. Professor Binns mentioned some of them, but — oh, it’s all nonsense. Wands are only as powerful as the wizards who use them. Some wizards just like to boast that theirs are bigger and better than other people’s.”

“But how do you know,” said Harry, “that those wands — the Deathstick and the Wand of Destiny — aren’t the same wand, surfacing over the centuries under different names?”

“What, and they’re all really the Elder Wand, made by Death?” said Ron.

Harry laughed: The strange idea that had occurred to him was, after all, ridiculous. His wand, he reminded himself, had been of holly, not elder, and it had been made by Ollivander, whatever it had done that night Voldemort had pursued him across the skies. And if it had been unbeatable, how could it have been broken?

“So why would you take the stone?” Ron asked him.

“Well, if you could bring people back, we could have Sirius … Mad-Eye … Dumbledore … my parents. …”

Neither Ron nor Hermione smiled.

“But according to Beedle the Bard, they wouldn’t want to come back, would they?” said Harry, thinking about the tale they had just heard. “I don’t suppose there have been loads of other stories about a stone that can raise the dead, have there?” he asked Hermione.

“No,” she replied sadly. “I don’t think anyone except Mr. Lovegood could kid themselves that’s possible. Beedle probably took the idea from the Sorcerer’s Stone; you know, instead of a stone to make you immortal, a stone to reverse death.”

The smell from the kitchen was getting stronger: It was something like burning underpants. Harry wondered whether it would be possible to eat enough of whatever Xenophilius was cooking to spare his feelings.

“What about the Cloak, though?” said Ron slowly. “Don’t you realize, he’s right? I’ve got so used to Harry’s Cloak and how good it is, I never stopped to think. I’ve never heard of one like Harry’s. It’s infallible. We’ve never been spotted under it —”

“Of course not — we’re invisible when we’re under it, Ron!”

“But all the stuff he said about other cloaks, and they’re not exactly ten a Knut, you know, is true! It’s never occurred to me before, but I’ve heard stuff about charms wearing off cloaks when they get old, or them being ripped apart by spells so they’ve got holes in. Harry’s was owned by his dad, so it’s not exactly new, is it, but it’s just … perfect!”

“Yes, all right, but Ron, the stone …”

As they argued in whispers, Harry moved around the room, only half listening. Reaching the spiral stair, he raised his eyes absently to the next level and was distracted at once. His own face was looking back at him from the ceiling of the room above.

After a moment’s bewilderment, he realized that it was not a mirror, but a painting. Curious, he began to climb the stairs.

“Harry, what are you doing? I don’t think you should look around when he’s not here!”

But Harry had already reached the next level.

Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends … friends … friends …

Harry felt a great rush of affection