Harry Potter and the Order Of the Phoenix [185]
“What did you do, Harry?” asked Ron.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it had something to do with the fact that I saved that worm’s life two years ago. Maybe its like when someone sacrifices their life for you, and they give you a protection. If I let him live, maybe it gave me some sort of protection against him attacking me.”
“We don’t have time to discuss it now,” sad Hermione. It was the first thing she’d said for almost an hour, and she sounding exhausted. “We have to go back to Hogwarts and tell Dumbledore what happened.”
“Um, aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Harry.
“No, what?” said Ron.
“I’m frozen here!” yelled Harry. Ron and Hermione had forgotten that Voldemort had put that Shield Spell on Harry in the excitement of the moment.
“Oh man, why did you have to agree to that, Harry?” said Hermione, desperately shooting random counter curses on Harry. None of them were working, though. That shield was one of Voldemort’s new spells.
“He would have done it anyway,” said Harry, trying to reassure himself from his actions. How could he have been so stupid?
“Oh… none of these are working!” yelled Hermione, desperately flailing her wand in the air. “This spell is practically unbreakable! Probably only You-Know-Who-”
“Please, Hermione,” said Harry, “you’ve seen him now, you can call him by his name. Okay?”
“The counter curse is probably one of his new spells as well. Probably only V- Vol… Voldemort would know how to break this shield.”
“Yeah,” said Ron, “either him or Dumbledore.”
“Did someone say my name?” came a voice from far away. It had an enchanting effect over everyone, it seemed to flow all over them, not just through their ears. It reached inside them, and brought out hope and joy.
“Professor Dumbledore!” yelled the three of them at once, turning their heads in the direction they heard the voice come from. Sure enough, the tall, blue-cloaked, long bearded fellow popped into view from the bushes.
“We have to get out of here,” he said in a very non-imperative voice, as if what he said was important, but not necessarily the top priority.
“Professor Dumbledore,” squeaked Hermione, “how did you? I mean… how are you… here?” Dumbledore came slightly closer, but still stayed in the bushes, as if he was keeping watch for Voldemort to return any second.
“Ah, well… I was in my office about an hour ago,” he said, “when I turned my attention towards my phoenix, Fawkes. While I had been noticing for the past few months that his brightness has been going down, along with his beauty, today he looked absolutely horrid. He was a deep green and gray all over, and he was melting and flaking off in certain places. I knew that could be the result of only one thing: a clone that has used up all of its energy.”
Harry swallowed hard. So, Dumbledore knew that someone had copied Fawkes, and he had already suspected Harry. That, along with being in the Forbidden Forest, would surely be enough to get him expelled… and then some.
“Well, there is a very simple spell that can show the user where the original of a clone is-”
“I wish we’d known that one when we were trying to convince our clones we were the real ones,” whispered Ron loudly to himself.
“-so I used it, and sure enough, it led me here. I heard screaming, and I knew that only one person could be responsible for this: Voldemort.”
“Well, you got it Professor,” said Harry. “But, can you please help us out of here? I mean, we’d rather be expelled alive instead of dead.”
“Some of us anyway…” whispered Hermione to herself. All Dumbledore did was laugh.
“Harry, come now, you don’t really think I could possibly expel you, now do you? Few wizards have even met with Voldemort once and lived to tell about it.