Ternion || Oliver Wood

Chapter 133

Lupin

Bill and Fleur's cottage stood alone on a cliff overlooking the sea, its walls embedded with shells and whitewashed. It was a lonely and beautiful place. I could hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea, like the breathing of some great, slumbering creature.

I spent time out of the Shell Cottage from the constant blabbering of Ron's mouth about: "What if Dumbledore wanted us to work out the symbol in time to get the wand?" "What if working out what the symbol meant made you 'worthy' to get the Hallows?" "Harry, if that really is the Elder Wand, how the hell are we supposed to finish off You-Know-Who?"

As usual, Harry gave no answers. I know Harry is also confused and doubting his decisions but he's trying to stick to his guts on not racing Voldemort to the Elder Wand.

"But is he dead?" uttered Ron, three days after we've arrived at the cottage.

Harry started to join me on the cliff near the cottage. He also wanted to escape the two. We've been staring to the beyond when Ron and Hermione had found us both; we both wished they had not.

"Yes, he is, Ron, please don't start that again!" said Hermione.

"Look at the facts, Hermione." said Ron, speaking across Harry, who continued to gaze at the horizon. "The silver doe. The sword. The eye Harry saw in the mirror —"

"Harry admits he could have imagined the eye! Don't you, Harry?"

"I could have," uttered Harry without looking at her.

"But you don't think you did, do you?" Ron asked him.

"No, I don't." replied Harry.

"There you go!" said Ron quickly, before Hermione could carry on. "If it wasn't Dumbledore, explain how Dobby knew we were in the cellar, Hermione?"

"I can't — but can you explain how Dumbledore sent him to us if he's lying in a tomb at Hogwarts?"

"I dunno, it could've been his ghost!"

"Dumbledore wouldn't come back as a ghost," I uttered. "The grandmaster would have gone on."

"What d'you mean, 'gone on'?" asked Ron, but before I or Harry could say any more, a voice behind us said, "'Arry?"

Fleur had come out of the cottage, her long silver hair flying in the breeze.

"'Arry, Griphook would like to speak to you. 'E ezz in ze smallest bedroom, 'e says 'e does not want to be overheard." said Fleur.

Her dislike of the goblin sending her to deliver messages was clear; she looked irritable as she walked back around the house.

Griphook was waiting for us, as Fleur had said, in the tiniest of the cottage's three bedrooms, in which Hermione, Luna and I slept by night.

"I have reached my decision, Harry Potter," uttered the goblin, who was sitting cross-legged in a low chair, drumming its arms with his spindly fingers. "Though the goblins of Gringotts will consider it base treachery, I have decided to help you —"

"That's great!" said Harry, relief surging through him. "Griphook, thank you, we're really —"

"— in return," said the goblin firmly, my eyebrows furrowed, "for payment."

I saw that Harry was taken aback.

"How much do you want? I've got gold." said Harry.

"Not gold," said Griphook. "I have gold."