Chapter 157: 3-3
"—Are we leaving at dawn?"
A quiet voice asked Ron, who was repacking his rucksack in the guest room that had been hastily cleared out for the two of them.
"Yeah. We have to start by finding those two, after all."
There was no need for questions like, Are you coming too? at this point. Even if it wasn't a fun journey, and even if there was a rather delicate distance between them, their presence to one another had become a matter of course.
Suddenly, Ron stopped his hands. He looked around with a stunned expression. He muttered—that he had heard Hermione's voice.
"Ron, I know how you feel, but—"
"It's true! I really did, look, there it is again—"
They strained their ears. This time, Draco heard it too. It was Harry's voice.
"Where is it coming from—is it this?"
Ron fumbled in his pocket, and the Deluminator, which had seemingly lost all its use, tumbled out. Click. The light in the room was sucked inside. Click. The light turned back on—outside the window.
"Eh?"
Click. When he sucked in the outside light once more, astonishingly, it didn't go into the Deluminator, but vanished right into Ron's chest. The two boys looked at each other in dumbfoundment. Feeling the heat in his chest, Ron abruptly understood what he needed to do.
"I—I get it. This light will guide us. That's why Dumbledore left the Deluminator to me. He knew I was going to run away. I—I—I can catch up to them with this!"
How could he wait for dawn? Shaking off Draco's attempts to stop him, Ron dashed out into the corridor, only to be caught by Bill. Dumbledore wasn't the only one who saw right through Ron.
"Are you two really leaving without even getting your Christmas presents? As your older brother, that makes me feel incredibly lonely."
"Bill..."
"It's late, you know." Lowering his voice softly, he pushed Ron back into the room with an object in his hand.—It was a radio.
"The next password is 'Our Hope'. I hope it brings a bit of color to your journey."
Although his handsome face was now tinged with something dangerous thanks to Fenrir Greyback, Bill hadn't lost his endearing, mischievous charm. The eldest brother, exactly as Ron knew him, wrapped his little brother in a tight hug before releasing him with a captivating smile. —Their departure was set for dawn.
Ron learned the meaning behind the password on the night they resumed their journey. Potterwatch, broadcasted by hijacking the independent communication network—it made Ron's heart leap with excitement. Draco, too, chuckled at the sheer recklessness of whoever was doing it. The guiding light, the existence of those still fighting without losing hope, and the friends who gave him the courage to catch up. Ron felt strongly that, this time, he wouldn't lose to the Horcrux. —And then, the time for the best friends to reunite arrived. The silver doe Patronus guided Ron and Draco to the lake, offering a mix of help and just a tiny bit of malice. Throwing caution to the wind, Ron rescued Harry from drowning in the freezing lake. The Sword of Gryffindor, the Horcrux, and the one who had earned the right to wield the blade—the stage was set.
"I can't."
"You can. You can because it's you."
Overriding Ron's cowardice, Harry opened the locket using Parseltongue. The tip of the sword pointed toward the sky, aiming at the inside. Naturally, the Horcrux—Riddle's soul—began to resist. Taking the forms of Harry and Hermione, it tried to tear Ron's heart to shreds. Even so, Ron swung the sword down.
"Ron..."
Standing before the cracked-open locket, Ron was crying. It wasn't despair. It wasn't sadness. Yet, they weren't tears of joy, either. All Harry could do was stroke his shoulder.
"Hermione is like a sister to me. Maria would say the same."
After waking up the sleeping Hermione and enduring her fury, 'his' beloved friends were finally reunited as one. Case closed—or so they would have liked, but the times wouldn't allow it. All three of them looked terrible. Hermione's appearance was in a "splendid" state that would leave women of the world speechless, and Harry's hair had returned to the bird's-nest state that Draco used to ruthlessly mock during what he now considered his dark past. Maria's efforts had gone down the drain. Ron went without saying. Even so, to Draco, the three of them looked endlessly radiant. They appeared far whiter than the falling snow.
—As expected, he was no match for those two.
"Draco."
To think that 'he' would reach out a hand to him—it was an almost too convenient miracle.
On the night they returned to being a traveling party of four, new facts came to light one after another through their exchange of information. The guidance of the Deluminator, the silver doe Patronus that didn't belong to Harry and its caster, the existence of Grindelwald whom Voldemort was pursuing— And then, look at this. Harry opened Rita Skeeter's book, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, which he had "borrowed" from Bathilda's house. His finger traced a certain section. It was a part of a letter Dumbledore had addressed to Grindelwald.
"It is true that this power gives us the right to rule. But at the same time, we must emphasize that this also gives us a responsibility over the ruled—"
"Does this—sound familiar to you?"
"What do you mean?"
As Ron and Hermione blinked in confusion, Harry thought to himself. It wouldn't be surprising if neither of them remembered. It was from years ago, and on top of that, just a passing comment in everyday life. It was too trivial a memory to hold onto. But Harry was the only one who wouldn't forget. Because Harry was—her brother.
"Maria said it. When we were researching Salazar Slytherin—'Noblesse Oblige'."
Ah! As expected of her, perhaps. Hermione's memory was unraveled by that single phrase alone.
"She certainly did say something similar... That Salazar Slytherin's pure-blood supremacy might have originally existed to guide the weak—though it was just one theory."
Harry nodded. Ron still didn't seem to recall, merely nodding along with Hermione half-heartedly. However, Hermione's eyes as she looked at Ron were exceptionally cold, not helped by the recent commotion.
"Judging from this—I really think Maria 'knew' Dumbledore."
Ultimately, it always came back to that. The air grew intensely heavy. The presence of the girl they had intentionally avoided thinking about inevitably threw the three of their minds into chaos. It highlighted her abnormality. —At times like this, it was always Ron who acted as the buffer.
"Hey, Hermione. Why did you call my name?"
Remembering just how much courage his beloved's voice coming from the Deluminator had given him, Ron gazed at Hermione with rapturous eyes. In response, Hermione's face turned red, then pale, and finally white as her eyes darted around.
"Well... I was just thinking that since—you know, you originally used Charlie's old wand as a hand-me-down, right? If you still had it—meaning, if you happened to possess two wands right now—you might have been able to give one to Harry..."
"What do you mean? Harry has his own wand, doesn't he? The one with that highly-appreciated, cursed history."
"...He doesn't."
"Hm?"
"It's broken. When we were escaping from Nagini."
Harry thrust his fist between Ron and Hermione, who was desperately trying to choose her words carefully. The twin phoenix core wand, which had been one of his connections to Voldemort, lay ruthlessly snapped in two within Harry's hand.
"...Wow, so even Hermione didn't have Spellotape prepared for this."
This time, an oppressive atmosphere settled over them that even Ron's joking couldn't dispel. —Amidst it all, there was only one person shaking his shoulders with laughter. It was Draco.
So this was what it was for. Inside Draco's head, the image of a girl with a maddeningly adorable, smug grin was urging him, Go on, hand it over. Tilting her red hair—which wouldn't even be properly groomed without someone else's help—she was laughing loudly, acting as if she had foreseen everything. In the end—ironically, his own wand seemed destined to help the hero rather than its master.
"Use this, Harry."
Having Draco's hawthorn wand shoved toward him, Harry's round eyes grew even rounder as he looked back and forth between the wand and Draco.
"You're... a wizard, aren't you?"
"Yes. A wizard giving up his wand is—well, with a few exceptions, impossible."
"Then why—"
"And I happen to be holding onto this from one of those 'exceptions'."
Harry's green eyes widened sharply at the second wand pulled from Draco's pocket. There was no mistaking it. Twenty-eight centimeters, just like his own, made of cypress—it was Maria's wand.
"Why?"
"She forced it on me too. Take your complaints up with her."
Because this wand will protect what I want to protect—she had told him, with eyes that looked as though she were praying.
"Maria is, as expected, completely absurd."
To Harry's deeply heartfelt mutter, everyone present silently answered, Yeah.
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