As the weeks dragged on, the weather grew colder and colder. We did not dare remain in any one area too long, so rather than staying in the south of England, where a hard ground frost was the worst of our worries, we continued to meander up and down the country, braving a mountainside, where sleet pounded the tent; a wide, flat marsh, where the tent was flooded with chill water; a tiny island in the middle of a Scottish loch, where snow half-buried the tent in the night.
We had already spotted Christmas trees twinkling from several sitting room windows before there came an evening when Harry resolved to suggest, again, what seemed to him the only unexplored avenue left to us. We had just eaten an unusually good meal: I had been to a supermarket under the Invisibility Cloak (scrupulously dropping the money into an open till as Hermione instructed), and Harry thought that we might be more persuadable than usual on a stomach full of spaghetti Bolognese and tinned pears.
Hermione and I were reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard along with Spellman's Syllabary, trying to figure out any hidden codes when Harry interrupted us.
"Hm?" I said, barely looking up from the children's book.
Harry cleared his throat and from the corner of my eye, I could see him awkwardly scratching his neck.
"I've been thinking —"
"Harry, could you help us with something?" Hermione spoke over him. My jaw slightly dropped a little at Hermione's disinterest. "Come look at this symbol," she pointed to the triangular eye with its pupil crossed with a vertical line.
"I never took Ancient Runes, Hermione."
"I know that, but it isn't a rune and it's not in the syllabary, either," Hermione said. "All along I thought it was a picture of an eye, but I don't think it is! It's been inked in, look, somebody's drawn it there, it isn't really part of the book. Think, have you ever seen it before?"
"No... No, wait a moment." Harry looked closer. "Isn't it the same symbol Luna's dad was wearing round his neck?"
"Well, that's what I thought too!" I said.
"Then it's Grindelwald's mark."
We stared at him, openmouthed.
"What?" we said.
"Krum told me..."
"Grindelwald's mark?"
Hermione looked from me to Harry to the weird symbol and back again. "I've never heard that Grindelwald had a mark. There's no mention of it in anything I've ever read about him."
"Well, like I say, Krum reckoned that symbol was carved on a wall at Durmstrang, and Grindelwald put it there."
"That's very odd," I looked up from the books. "If it's a symbol of Dark Magic, what's it doing in a book of children's stories?"
"Yeah, it is weird," said Harry. "And you'd think Scrimgeour would have recognized it. He was Minister, he ought to have been expert on Dark stuff."
"I know," Hermione said. "Perhaps he thought it was an eye, just like I did. All the other stories have little pictures over the titles."
Grabbing Spellman's Syllabary, I looked through all of the different triangles and eyes I could find, but nothing.
"Maisey? Hermione?"
Again, I looked up from the book to see Harry looking at us with another warry look.
"I've been thinking. I- I want to go to Godric's Hollow."
"Yes," Hermione said. "Yes, I've been wondering that too. I really think we'll have to."
"Did you hear me right?" he asked.
"I agree," I said. "I knew you'd want to go to Godric's Hollow. I want to as well. I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else it could be either. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems it's there."
"Er— what's there?" asked Harry.
Hermione and I looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Well, the sword, Harry!" Hermione exasperated. "Dumbledore must have known you both'd want to go back there, and I mean, Godric's Hollow is Godric Gryffindor's birthplace —"
"Really? Gryffindor came from Godric's Hollow?"
"Harry," I sighed, "did you ever even open A History of Magic?"
"I might've opened it, you know, when I bought it... just the once..."
"Well, as the village is named after him I'd have thought you might have made the connection," said Hermione.
"Look —" I said and pulled out A History of Magic and flipped to the page I wanted.
" 'Upon the signature of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689, wizards went into hiding for good. It was natural, perhaps, that they formed their own small communities within a community. Many small villages and hamlets attracted several magical families, who banded together for mutual support and protection. The villages of Tinworth in Cornwall, Upper Flagley in Yorkshire, and Ottery St. Catchpole on the south coast of England were notable homes to knots of Wizarding families who lived alongside tolerant and sometimes Confunded Muggles. Most celebrated of these half-magical dwelling places is, perhaps, Godric's Hollow, the West Country village where the great wizard Godric Gryffindor was born, and where Bowman Wright, Wizarding smith, forged the first Golden Snitch. The graveyard is full of the names of ancient magical families, and this accounts, no doubt, for the stories of hauntings that have dogged the little church beside it for many centuries.'
"Our parents and we aren't mentioned," I said, closing the book, "because Bagshot doesn't cover anything later than the end of the nineteenth century. But you see? Godric's Hollow, Godric Gryffindor, Gryffindor's sword; don't you think Dumbledore would have expected us to make the connection?"
"Oh yeah," Harry mumbled.
I don't think he made the connection.
"Remember what Muriel said?" Harry asked after a while.
"Who?" Hermione said.
"You know," he hesitated: I knew he did not want to say Ron's name. "Er— Ginny's great-aunt. At the wedding. The one who said you had skinny ankles."
"Oh," said Hermione. It was a sticky moment: I knew that she had sensed Ron's name in the offing. Harry rushed on:
"She said Bathilda Bagshot still lives in Godric's Hollow."
"Well, I suppose —"
But Hermione gasped so dramatically that I stopped talking and almost fell off the sofa as Harry drew his wand.
"What?" Harry said, half angry, half relieved. "What did you do that for? I thought you'd seen a Death Eater unzipping the tent, at least —"
"Harry," Hermione breathed, "Maisey, what if Bathilda's got the sword? What if Dumbledore entrusted it to her?"
Bathilda would be an extremely old woman by now, and according to Muriel, she was "gaga." Was it likely that Dumbledore would have hidden the sword of Gryffindor with her? If so, I felt that Dumbledore had left a great deal to chance: Dumbledore had never revealed that he had replaced the sword with a fake, nor had he so much as mentioned a friendship with Bathilda. Now, however, was not the moment to cast doubt on Hermione's theory, especially since it falls into play of my dearest wish... any connection to my family.