Delilah was dressed within thirty seconds, her blouse half-buttoned and her jeans twisted around her still damp legs, but then she wheeled helplessly around the room, utterly unable to think straight. She snatched up the paper again and stared at it. Was she absolutely sure it was for her? A vain hope flared and then died as she re-read it. The title alone was unmistakeable. The snapper’s girl… the Lady of the Lake… She screwed up the magazine and pressed it to her forehead. The waning moon… what did it mean? And what ‘devastation’ would await? The ‘Lady of the Lake’ had to be Genevieve. Sunday was in a few short hours, and the threat was clear even if the instructions weren’t. She pulled on her shoes and made for the door to…
To where? To what? To whom? Snape was gone. Dumbledore was gone. Flitwick was gone. Even McGonagall and Sprout, whom Delilah didn’t know very well, but who would surely have helped, were gone. She thought desperately of Remus, but how on earth was she supposed to contact him before sunrise?
She stood still, staring out of the tiny high window at the cloudy sky, trying to marshal the screaming panic that was filling her brain.
She read the message again.
…the Lady of the Lake has received a visit from an enemy of her late husband… Her secret’s safe for now, but time’s running out. The Sunday of the waning moon is her last chance, or devastation awaits…
The message didn’t tell her what it wanted her to do, so it had to be an empty threat. What was the worst that could happen if she waited until Snape came back, even if that might be hours, or days?
The worst that could happen. Visions of Genevieve, the Lady of the Lake, helpless and scared, bound in ropes, hit her so hard that she almost gagged. Visions of a hooded figure pointing his wand at her, her screaming in agony, wounds exploding over her skin, a livid, tearstained face on a frozen corpse…
She walked very quickly to the other side of the office, around the desk and back again, pacing at random like a hamster in a ball. Why did Snape have to have left? Why couldn’t she have found the message the day before, or even just an hour earlier?
Outside the window a cloud moved, and a moonbeam illuminated the frame.
The only way to find out what the messenger wanted was to respond to them, and she had no idea how to send an urgent message to an anonymous recipient. Why hadn’t they given her any specific instructions? She couldn’t contact them via the floo network without their name and grate; couldn’t Apparate to them without their location; couldn’t Apparate at all without somehow escaping Hogwarts; was she supposed to send an owl? But addressed to whom? It’d have to be the most talented owl in the world to find them without any information…
She stopped dead.
‘Hedwig,’ she muttered. She ran to the door in order to make her way to the Owlery, but to her utter astonishment, as soon as she opened it, Hedwig swept in and landed on the desk.
‘How did you do that?’ she gasped at the owl. The owl stared back and gave a chivvying click of her beak, as if asking whether this was really the moment for a discussion about owl magic. Delilah cast around on the desk for something to write on and, throwing the copy of The Daily Prophet aside, spotted the enchanted parchment underneath it. She was seized with inspiration, tapped it to clear the messages displayed on it, and handed it to Hedwig.
‘Just take this to… well, whoever it is. You seem to know more about this than I do.’
Hedwig grasped the parchment in her claw and took off at once, gliding smartly through the open door. Delilah scrabbled for a quill and took her own piece of parchment from her handbag.
This is Delilah Blackthorn. I got your message. Tell me what you want from me.
She stared at the page, knowing it could be hours before she got a response, but unable to look away. She stared at the page so hard that her jerky handwriting became nonsense shapes. She tried to stare with such force that the visions behind her eyes were obliterated, but it was to no avail. A cold, indistinct voice rang in her mind: ‘Your daughter could have saved you, but she was too slow, too lazy, too self-absorbed, too inattentive…’ Why had she left the magazine unread in her satchel for so long? Why hadn’t she checked it at once? That was supposed to be the point of her receiving it. ‘This one is from Delilah… CRUCIO…’
The idea of her mother’s screams and sobs of agony were too horrible even for her to imagine, but somehow she couldn’t help doing so. She closed her eyes tight and wrapped her arms around herself.
‘Mum,’ she whispered. ‘Mum mum mum mum mum mum mum, mummy, maman, mum, I’m coming mum, I’m coming, I’m trying…’
When the parchment vibrated under her fingertips, she kept her eyes closed for a fraction longer, terrified of what she would see.
You took your time. Poor maman was beginning to think you didn’t care.
She snatched up the quill again. Her handwriting was now so shaky, it came out in big wonky childlike letters which sloped at a haphazard angle across the page.
Who are you? What do you want?
You’ll find out.
Tell me what to do.
Come to the Forbidden Forest. The owl will show you the way.
She looked around for Hedwig, but she was nowhere to be seen, so she grabbed her handbag and sprinted off out of the office, along the dungeon corridor, with the parchment and her wand clutched in her fist, up the steps and across the Entrance Hall, throwing her whole weight against the heavy wooden door so that it heaved laboriously open.
I’m coming mum, she thought desperately again as she ran across the grounds. She focused on the picture of Genevieve’s terrified face in order to keep her own terror at bay, and closed her hand tighter around her wand. None of this was Genevieve’s fault: it wasn’t her they wanted, they were just using her to get to Delilah. Genevieve hadn’t even known about magic when she’d had Delilah, and now she could be tortured, maimed, killed, as powerless as a puppy, and it was Delilah’s job to fight for her, since she couldn’t fight for herself.
She thought back to her duelling lessons with Ormond, and then with Snape. She had, ridiculously she now realised, always thought of herself as being quite talented at duelling. It now seemed obvious that she was nothing but a mewling little girl waving a stick around, barely able to deflect a simple curse even when she knew it was coming. A sob escaped her as she thought of Genevieve’s disappointment when Delilah couldn’t keep her safe, her hurt confusion, and her brave attempt to hide it, when Delilah was effortlessly disarmed and stood uselessly by while the assailant turned their wand on her mother…
As she approached the edge of the Forest she heard an urgent hoot, and looked up to see a flash of white feathers as Hedwig circled briefly above the treetops and then vanished again into them. Delilah crashed into the Forest without even attempting to find a path, trying to keep her eyes fixed on the spot where Hedwig had vanished, and elbowed branches out of her way, moving as quickly as she could through the dense thickets, barely feeling the smaller branches whipping back and covering her face and arms in scratches. She emerged quite abruptly onto a path and looked around, trying to work out which direction to take, when Hedwig gave another hoot. She set off in the direction of the noise, making better progress now that she was on a path, though running at such a pace that she kept stumbling over raised tree roots, keeping her eyes peeled for another sign from Hedwig–
There was a sudden loud sound like the cracking of a whip, and Delilah spluttered and gave a dull ‘oof’ as she crashed over an invisible barrier at knee height and sprawled over the Forest floor, skinning her elbows as she tried to catch herself. Before her brain had caught up with what had happened, a rope had sailed through the air from deep within the trees and wrapped itself around her waist, trapping her arms by her sides, and she was being dragged slowly along the floor, into a small clearing off the path.
The entrance to the clearing was concealed by a snapped branch which hung low so that its thick leaves formed a kind of natural curtain, which snagged in Delilah’s hair and smarted against her cheeks as she was pulled helplessly through it. She tried to shake her hair out of her face as she came to a halt, strained against the ropes, and attempted to rub her eyes on her shoulder to brush the leaf and twig debris out of them. She blinked against the darkness of the clearing. It was strangely silent.
‘Hello?’ she called.
‘Hello Delilah,’ said a voice. She struggled against the rope in the direction of the voice, squinting into the gloom. A man walked slowly into view, hands behind his back, looking at the ground.
It was Julius Prenderghast.
‘You?’ Delilah yelped. ‘You’ve kidnapped my mum? Why? What’s going on? What do you want with me?’
‘Your mother is perfectly safe, as far as I know,’ Julius said calmly, looking up into the branches as though remarking on the weather to a passing stranger.
‘Where is she? Tell me,’ she choked, still breathless with panic.
‘No idea. At home in France, I should expect.’
His words rang through her and her heart paused.
‘So…’
‘It was just a lure. It was you I wanted.’
‘And… what do you want with me?’
‘It’s not really a question of what I want.’
‘What do you mean?’
Julius didn’t answer, pacing the clearing in front of her, not looking at her. His silence caused the fear that had propelled her into the clearing to morph into irritation.
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN?’ she shouted, thrashing against the rope. ‘What’s going on? What the fuck are you doing bringing me out here? What do you want?’
‘Like I said, it’s not what I want. I actually wanted very much to avoid this. I’ve done everything I could to avoid it, but I’ve run out of time. I’ve run out of options.’
‘Avoid what?’
‘Avoid telling the Dark Lord about you, after Ormond was lucky enough to smuggle you under his radar.’
Delilah went cold all over.
‘Why would you do that?’ she said weakly.
‘Reasons, reasons,’ he muttered, so quietly that she barely caught it. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’
‘What’s it to you if Voldemort knows I exist?’
He didn’t answer her, but turned his back on her again, swinging his arms back and forth, bumping his fists together behind his back. He seemed intensely uncomfortable. He still hadn’t actually looked at her.
Delilah felt her fear subside slightly. He seemed deranged, but could he really be dangerous? Could he hurt her if he couldn’t even bring himself to look at her? She could talk herself out of this, she was sure of it. She rotated her shoulder experimentally against the rope and felt it move against her arm.
‘I thought you were in a safe house,’ she said, trying again to make him talk.
‘Safe house!’ he repeated with a bark of laughter. ‘It wasn’t a house, and it wasn’t what I’d call safe. The Death Eaters got a message to me within weeks.’
‘How did they do that?’
Since he didn’t seem to be about to look at her, she started working her arms back and forth to try and loosen the rope.
‘With no difficulty at all. Mundungus Fletcher brought it to me.’
‘Oh,’ she said, startled. ‘I thought he was with the Order of the Phoenix?’
‘Broadly speaking, he is. He agrees to send messages for the other side though, for a fee. He considers it a neutral act.’
‘What did they want from you?’
‘My services.’
‘Why did you agree though? I thought you said last time that you didn’t want to help them?’
‘Why did I agree?’ he repeated, throwing a look over his shoulder at her, which luckily was too brief to notice her struggling against the ropes. ‘I’d already refused them once, you do not refuse twice and live to tell the tale!’
‘But they couldn’t get to you could they? Not under Dumbledore’s protection?’
‘Haven’t I just told you how easily they got a message to me? Penetrated Dumbledore’s so-called protection?’ he said, his voice now rising. ‘You expect me to put my life in the hands of a leaky bucket outfit like the Order of the Phoenix?’
‘So, how did you get into Hogwarts?’ she said, hastily changing the subject to keep him calm, for fear that he would round on her and tighten the ropes. She was now moving her arm up and down, shimmying the rope, trying to get it below her elbow.
‘The safe houses are all connected to the headquarters via the floo network, so I visited the floo at Grimmauld Place periodically to try and listen in on their meetings. They were too clever to discuss anything important in earshot of the fireplace, but I appeared in the fire whilst Lupin was talking to a witch in the hallway, and I heard him saying he was going to visit Dumbledore the following day. I left the safe house, met Fletcher in Hogsmeade and borrowed an Invisibility Cloak from him, waited for Lupin at the castle gates, and slipped in after him. Then I sent an owl to Witch Weekly, using Constance’s trick, and waited for you to see it.’
‘How long have you been here then?’
‘I’ve lost track. A week and a half, maybe two.’
‘You followed Remus in the day of the Quidditch match then,’ she said, more to herself than to him. ‘You’re lucky nobody’s found you in that time. Hagrid’s always in the Forest.’
‘I fear somebody did. When I first came in, somebody followed me into the Forest shortly behind me, and seemed to be creeping along trying to listen for something… I attacked them, but I don’t know who they were. A student, judging by the robes.’
‘Ariadne!’ Delilah said loudly. ‘You attacked Ariadne!’
‘Most reluctantly – I knew it would draw attention to me, and surely enough, the Forest was searched thoroughly that evening. I had to levitate myself into a tree to avoid detection.’
‘I don’t understand though,’ she frowned. ‘Was your work for the Death Eaters just spying on the Order? Then why did you need to get into Hogwarts?’
‘They asked me to stay in the safe house to bring them any information I could glean, but that wasn’t my main task.’
‘What was?’
‘I thought you’d have worked it out,’ he said. ‘They want me to bring them Constance and Matilda. The Death Eater Avery saw me when he broke through the defences on my home. They haven’t been able to find her, and thought I would have more success since we’re friends.’
‘Some friend,’ she flared. ‘You’re trying to have her killed! You may not care about her but you cared about Dad, I know you did, and Connie was his-’
‘Connie was mine before she was his,’ Julius snapped over his shoulder.
‘What?’
‘I met her first. She would have been mine if I hadn’t made the fatal error of introducing her to Ormond.’
Delilah gaped at him.
‘So that’s what this is about? You’re bitter because you fancied Connie but she preferred my dad, so you’re trying to kill her? Doesn’t that seem a bit of an over-reaction?’
He resumed his pacing, looking agitated.
‘Of course that’s not what this is about. This isn’t even really about Connie at all. It seems to be Matilda they’re especially interested in. They told me I could kill Connie if I needed, but to bring the child alive. That’s when I realised that, if I couldn’t catch Connie, I could bring them you instead, and they might let me live.’
His naked, shameless self-interest made Delilah’s stomach turn. She gave a long, repulsed look to his turned back.
‘You couldn’t catch her then?’ she said with a hint of a taunt.
‘I never really expected to. I accepted the task, I had no choice, but I didn’t know where to start. I visited a different place every day for weeks: her home, our mutual friends’ homes, anywhere I could think of. I passed her photograph around to anyone whose services I could buy, but I didn’t have much hope of finding her. I came close though: one of the people Fletcher put me in touch with contacted me to say they’d seen her in Dover. I assumed she was going to look for you in France, so I went ahead of her, placed enchantments at both Beauxbatons and your mother’s house to alert me when she approached either, laid in wait until she arrived, and-’
‘And you attacked her at Beauxbatons,’ Delilah gasped. ‘It made the papers, the attack! It was you! But then… in the papers it said someone had died?’
‘I was aiming to Stun Connie, but she was too quick for me. Redirected the spell and it hit another witch – someone who worked for the school, I think. Connie hit me with a Whiplash Curse which took me out for a moment, and then she was gone before I recovered. I didn’t know whether the other witch had seen me before she was hit, so I killed her and left.’
The flat delivery of this sent a chill through Delilah’s chest, and a fresh dart of fear pierced her solar plexus. She realised she had underestimated him.
‘Quite what the Dark Lord wants with a child like Matilda is beyond my comprehension, but surely, surely Ormond’s other daughter will be a suitable replacement,’ Prenderghast went on, pacing in agitation, twisting his hands, knitting and un-knitting his fingers. She wasn’t sure if he was even still talking to her, or just talking. ‘The timing is exquisite really: the Dark Lord has just called a meeting…’
‘You have a Dark Mark?’ she said.
Prenderghast gave a brief shake of the head.
‘Not yet,’ he said. He lifted from under his robes a small pendant that hung on a thick chain around his neck. She fell still whilst he turned to show it to her. ‘Everyone starts out with one of these until they prove themselves. It burns when the Dark Lord needs numbers beyond his Death Eaters. Most fortunate though… I can send an owl ahead informing him that I have managed to capture one Blackthorn girl – he doesn’t even know you exist, he will be so surprised, so grateful to me for uncovering your secret, he will surely admit me fully into his protection… Maybe by tomorrow I will have a Mark…’
‘You don’t need to do that,’ Delilah said, trying to keep her voice from quavering. ‘Please, please just think, if Dumbledore knew all this he could hide you, properly this time – he could get rid of Mundungus Fletcher, you could stop hunting Connie, you wouldn’t need to be afraid…’
‘I have betrayed Dumbledore,’ Prenderghast said bleakly. ‘He won’t offer to help me again.’
‘Yes he will! He’ll forgive you, he’ll–’
‘No,’ Prenderghast said, jerking his hand like he was slapping away a wasp. ‘No, this is the only way, this is the only way I can be safe. This is the only way I can survive.’ He put his hand inside his robes and drew out a folded piece of parchment. ‘I have had the letter prepared for days, even before I got into the Forest, explaining all about Ormond’s time in France, his dalliance with a Muggle and the resulting child… I’ve been waiting for you, I was afraid Witch Weekly wouldn’t publish my letter, or that you wouldn’t see it… But you’re here. The moment has come.’
‘No,’ Delilah said, unable to keep the panic from her voice now. ‘No, please, please, think of my Dad, think what you’re doing to him, just don’t do this, don’t…’
But Prenderghast had already raised his arm straight into the air, and a tawny owl had flown down and taken the parchment. It vanished immediately through the trees and Delilah stared hopelessly at the place where it had been a moment before, unable to believe what had just happened.
The silence that followed Delilah’s vain pleading was heavy and awkward. Prenderghast didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, and Delilah was trying to process what would happen when the letter was received. Her brain seemed to short-circuit at the thought of it: she didn’t even feel afraid, just completely numb.
‘I can’t believe you really just did that,’ she said blankly. ‘You just killed me.’
Prenderghast shifted uncomfortably.
‘I am not responsible for the Dark Lord’s actions,’ he said in a reedy voice.
That was so absurd a thing to say that she felt a mad urge to laugh. The sight of him standing there with his back to her, staring up at the stars, stuffy and round-shouldered and mealy-mouthed, made her want to be sick.
‘You are disgusting,’ she said, with all the seething rancour she could muster. From the folds of his neck she could see him cringe at her words, which for some reason incensed her further. She gave an almighty wrench to the rope binding her as she pushed herself into a more upright position, and felt it shift so that her arm was almost free. ‘You are the most pathetic, despicable, cowardly little rat I’ve ever seen in my life, creeping around with no thought for anything except your own skin, trying to kill your old friend’s entire family just to get in with the big boys, killing innocent people for no reason at all, you foul little-’
‘You do not understand!’ he said shrilly, rounding on her, illuminated in a moonbeam that fell through the trees so that she saw him clearly for the first time. His hair had grown over his ears and stood straight out in wavy tufts from his temples; he had grown a patchy beard, and his robes were filthy. As he took a step towards her a waft of vile, unwashed smell hit her so powerfully she couldn’t believe she hadn’t smelt it before. Now, with his jaw working and his eyes popping, he looked totally unhinged. ‘There is no sense in dying in order to postpone the inevitable! You are on the wrong side, Delilah Blackthorn, you will lose!’
‘Even if we do, it doesn’t make us wrong.’
‘The young always think that, I thought it myself in the first war! You are idealistic – when you have lived through as much as I have, you will see that there is no right and wrong, there is only winning and losing, survival and death! You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘I don’t know what I’m talking about? I’ve already lost, I’ve lost everything. I’m in hiding, Connie and Matilda are on the run, I can’t go back to my home, my dad is dead – and he would never, never, ever have gone over to your side.’
Prenderghast recoiled at that.
‘You’re right there,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘Ormond resisted until the last.’
‘And so will I. So will Connie. We’d all, every one of us rather die than do what you’ve done. How can you live with that? Dad, Connie, Dumbledore, Remus, Snape-’
‘Snape!’ Prenderghast spat. ‘Don’t tell me he’s a hero of yours, after what he’s done.’
‘He’s a double agent, you idiot. Of course he’s done things, but he’s on our side.’
Prenderghast gave a shrill, derisive snort.
‘If you say so.’
‘He’s a thousand times the man you are.’
‘Tell that to your murdered father.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
His mentioning Ormond sent an almighty surge of rage through her, and she gave a huge wrench at the rope, freeing her arm at last in desperation to reach her wand, but before she could, she felt a powerful shove to her shoulder and toppled over onto her side, and then several things happened very quickly: a white flash passed her which she barely had time to register as Wilbur, before he had thrown himself at Prenderghast with a vicious snarl that seemed far too loud to be coming from such a small animal, and snapped his jaws closed on Prenderghast’s leg; Prenderghast gave a yell of shock and pain and sent a curse from the end of his wand which filled the clearing with an eerie flash of light and sent a terrific BANG echoing through the trees; this was immediately followed by a furious screech as Hedwig swooped in from a treetop and made for Prenderghast with her talons outstretched, taking a chunk out of his scalp and cuffing his wand out of his hand with her wing; a huge spray of blood spattered the clearing from Prenderghast’s head, then a high-pitched voice shrieked ‘curse him, Delilah!’ and Delilah, finally establishing a grip on her wand, obeyed without pause. Another flash of light lit up the clearing, and Prenderghast crashed to the ground.
It was all over within six seconds. Darkness and silence were resumed, and Delilah sat totally stunned, panting, still half-entangled in ropes. Prenderghast was face-down on a tree root, his wand flung among the dead leaves. Wilbur lay in a pitiful, crumpled heap on the ground. The scene was illuminated by a faint, shimmery glow emitting from the ghostly figure of a woman who had appeared in the clearing and now stood staring down at Delilah, who stared mutely back. She became aware that her mouth was hanging open in shock, and closed it, but still couldn’t force her brain to offer her any words.
‘Wh… who are you?’ she managed.
‘Helena Ravenclaw,’ the woman said. Her voice had a pinned-down, choral quality, as though the words were escaping from the very pit of her stomach, or like they were being ventriloquised by somebody else standing a few feet away. ‘They call me the Grey Lady.’
‘Oh. You’re the ghost of the Ravenclaw tower. I didn’t recognise you.’
‘I recognised you though, Delilah Blackthorn.’
‘You’re my… my ancestor. You started all this. You and your secret.’
‘Secret,’ she said in her strange, lyrical voice. ‘I carry hundreds of years’ worth of secrets, and I know yours too. I knew who you were when you came, even though you hid behind a pseudonym. I’ve listened to conversations concerning you and involving you, even before you arrived. I have watched you this year, as I watched your father before you and all the generations of Blackthorns who came and went through these grounds. I’ve watched you making all the same mistakes I made, falling for a man who is glamorous and cruel, revelling in secrecy, becoming the more determined to win him the more cruelly he treated you. I wonder if women will ever learn.’
‘You’ve been watching me and Snape?’ she said dazedly.
‘Oh yes. I knew at once what would happen, on the very first day you arrived in the castle. I could read the situation as easily as I see you sitting before me. I hoped I was wrong, that it would go differently, that you would see sense. You seemed so brave and strong and I hoped… but then, strong women are never content with what they can have easily. We need to conquer, although in the long term, we seldom win.’
Delilah didn’t know what to say to that, so she looked around the clearing for Hedwig. She saw her sitting on a low branch at the edge of the clearing, gazing solemnly down at the scene with her beautiful amber eyes. She followed Hedwig’s gaze to the prone bulk of Prenderghast, lying in a pool of blackening blood, and then her eyes landed on the tiny form of Wilbur, and an agonising lump filled her throat. She struggled free of the ropes still slung loosely around her and crawled over to him. His eyes were closed, his fluffy little head noble in the moonlight, and even before she reached him she knew he was dead. Tears filled her eyes as she stared down at him. She tentatively stroked his shoulder and ran her thumb gently over the soft fold of his ear, and a huge sob rose up in her chest and broke out of her.
‘Wilbur,’ she whispered, barely audibly. Somehow, it seemed like the worst blow of her life to have lost him. To have killed him.
Hedwig glided down, landing beside Wilbur, and nudged him gently with her beak. When he didn’t stir, she shuffled respectfully backwards, and sank her head deep into her shoulders, closing her eyes as she did. It was the saddest gesture Delilah had ever seen.
‘Delilah,’ came Helena’s voice beside her. ‘You have work to do.’
Delilah looked back up at her, uncomprehendingly.
‘You must not let your mother die,’ Helena said urgently. ‘I killed my mother, and I will not let you do the same and live with that torment. Once Prenderghast’s letter is received they will go immediately to your mother’s house, and she won’t stand a chance. You must go and save her.’
Delilah suddenly felt very cold and tired. Her hair was still damp from her bath, although it felt like it had been days ago, and the chill of the ground had seeped through the seat of her jeans. She turned back to Wilbur, staring at his little body through a thick fog of tears. She felt she didn’t have a single drop of energy left in her body.
‘Delilah,’ the Grey Lady urged. ‘Time is short, you must leave!’
‘There’s no way out,’ Delilah said dully. ‘There’s no way out of the grounds. I can’t do it.’
‘I can help you get out.’
Delilah just continued to stare at Wilbur.
‘I’m so tired,’ she said.
There was a silence in the clearing, and for a moment Delilah thought Helena might have left, but then an unpleasant, cold sensation flooded her shoulder; the ghost had glided down to crouch beside her, and put what was probably supposed to be a bracing hand on her shoulder.
‘Delilah, you must,’ she said, peering intently at her. ‘Do not make the mistakes I made, I implore you.’
Delilah looked into her smoky gaze, and was struck by how quite indescribably beautiful Helena Ravenclaw was, even in her ghostly form. Something in those large, sad eyes seemed to cut through her fear and exhaustion and unlock an unexpected reserve of strength, which flared lowly inside her. She took a great, shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK, let’s go.’
She turned back to Wilbur and gently kissed his head, then clambered unsteadily to her feet. Hedwig took off with a rustle of leaves, and in the thick silence of the Forbidden Forest, Delilah set off in the Grey Lady’s lambent wake.
*
The castle windows were dark, and in the silent grounds only the patchy moonlight provided any light. Once out of the Forest, Helena began to move at such speed that Delilah had to trot to keep up with her, trying to train her wandlight on the uneven ground directly ahead of her to avoid tripping on a stray hummock or root.
‘How are we going to get out?’ she said breathlessly to Helena’s retreating back.
‘We?’ Helena said. ‘I’m not coming with you. I’m just showing you the way out.’
‘How can there be a way out? Security’s so tight, I would have thought any ways in and out would have been sealed off.’
‘Only a ghost could know that this one can still be used. Come, it’s this way.’ She vanished around the side of the castle and Delilah increased her pace to catch her. Helena was waiting restively by an enormous oak tree. The wafty, timeless demeanour she’d had in the forest had been replaced by a brisk impatience, which so consumed her that it seemed to have sharpened the lines of her spectral silhouette.
‘Come on,’ she said urgently as Delilah approached. ‘You must hurry. Now, you see that window up there on the fourth floor? The smallest one, third from the right?’
Delilah had to take several paces back and crane her neck, squinting up at the sheer wall of the castle.
‘That one?’ she said, pointing with the beam of her wand. ‘The one with the tall windows either side?’
‘Yes. That is a secret passage which will take you to Hogsmeade. It used to be accessible from the castle, but it caved in at its entrance years ago: nobody realises you can access it from the outside by going through that window.’
Delilah gave Helena an incredulous look. The oak tree was so colossal, her widest arm span would barely have enveloped barely a quarter of its trunk. The lowest branches were at least nine feet above ground, and she would have to be almost at the tree’s summit to reach the fourth floor window.
‘How am I supposed to do that?!’
Helena gave her a look of equal incredulity.
‘With magic,’ she said impatiently. ‘Come on!’
Delilah remembered Prenderghast’s word’s in the Forest, I had to levitate myself into a tree… she had never tried anything like this before, but Helena’s urgency was catching, and she realised she really didn’t have any choice. She clenched her eyes shut and pointed her wand at her own chest.
‘Wingardium Leviosa.’
It was the strangest sensation. She didn’t feel like she was flying, so much as like she had been released from a great height and was moving uncontrollably through the air, except that she was bobbing upwards rather than plummeting down. She was sure she had soared at least fifteen feet when she opened her eyes a crack to find herself barely six inches from the ground, but drifting back and forth like a kite. Helena was watching her with barely-concealed disdain.
‘Go on!’ she commanded. ‘Up, up higher!’
Delilah looked upwards and gave a feeble sort of mid-air wriggle, tried a few comical flapping motions with her arms, which achieved nothing but a half-pirouette, and eventually worked out that she needed to focus her wand on the branch in order to keep rising. She grabbed with relief onto the solid wood when she reached it, and backed against the reassuring bulk of the trunk.
‘I can’t control myself in mid-air, I’ll never make it to the window like that.’
‘Well then climb,’ Helena said, floating effortlessly up to the branch, as if it were the easiest thing in the world – which, for her, of course, it was. Delilah turned reluctantly and reached up for the next branch, hauling herself uneasily onto it whilst hanging onto a small stub sticking out from the trunk. In this way she climbed higher and higher, Helena floating beside her, barely concealing her impatience at Delilah’s tentative progress, but pointing out handy footholds and the strongest branches.
About two thirds of the way up, Delilah found herself with no obvious route to proceed. She stood on her branch, clinging to the trunk, and froze.
‘You need to reach upwards and pull yourself onto the branch above,’ Helena directed, but Delilah just stood. Helena was dancing with anxiety, darting back and forth and twisting her hands, and it took her a moment to notice that Delilah had stopped moving.
‘Come on!’ she urged.
Delilah just stood.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t go any higher.’
‘You have to,’ Helena snapped. ‘Your mother is in danger, Delilah! Come now, child! Pull yourself together and climb!’
Delilah bit her lip and screwed her eyes together. Although every fibre of her being was screaming for terra firma, she grasped onto a stub of a branch with her wand hand, and reached up into mid-air with the other, painfully aware that if she lost her footing, Helena would be of no use whatsoever. She froze again for a moment, barely able to contemplate taking her right hand off the trunk, but then swung it up and pulled herself upward with an almighty wrench. After that she climbed as quickly as she could, scrambling to get the ordeal over with, and soon found the branches thinning as she approached the top of the tree.
‘Now you need to levitate yourself again.’
‘How am I going to get through the window?’
‘Smash it.’
It seemed pretty obvious once she said it. Delilah pointed her wand at the window, murmuring ‘Defenestrate’, so that the glass shattered into hundreds of pieces and, after holding together for a moment, spilled from the frame into the room beyond.
‘Go on, before you lose your nerve,’ Helena said. Delilah pointed her wand at her chest again, and once again hurtled into mid-air, this time at such a terrifying height that she didn’t dare look down, and only looked at the window through a crack in her eyelids, keeping her wand pointed directly at the emptied window frame. She jerked back and forth as if a strong wind was buffeting her through the air – although the night was perfectly still – and snagged her hair and neck on branches on her way, but after grazing herself against the castle wall, she managed to navigate herself through the window, landing in a sprawl on the pile of broken glass on the floor.
She stood up gingerly, sending a sprinkling of glass shards from her robes, and shaking loose the ones that had embedded themselves into her knees and palms. She peered around at the derelict corridor, which was thick with dust, with dead ivy crawling one of the walls. To her left was an enormous pile of rubble where the way through to the castle had caved in, but it was otherwise intact, the heavy dust creating a soft, sepulchral silence. At first she thought it must not have been used in centuries, but then, by the light of the moon outside the window, she saw a discarded sweet wrapper on the floor beside her foot. She picked it up; it was the packaging from a chocolate frog, dated but still very much recognisable. Then she noticed that on one of the walls was daubed ‘MOONY BUMS FILCH’, and underneath, in a smaller hand, ‘Fuck off Padfoot’.
‘Are you OK?’
Helena had come through the window too.
‘Yes. Just landed on a load of glass but I didn’t get hurt.’
‘Come on then, this way.’
She vanished into the shadows beyond the window, and Delilah lit her wand again and followed. Before long, they reached a dead end, but Helena pointed to the dusty ground.
‘There. There’s a trap door. Open it.’
Delilah held her wand in her teeth and scrabbled in the thick dust until she found an iron ring. The door was heavy; she had to use both arms to lift it, and clenched her jaw so that she left toothmarks in the handle of her wand, but once she’d lifted it a couple of inches, it sprang open surprisingly easily. She stood and pointed her wandlight down into a dark, fathomless space flanked by a narrow, rusty ladder.
She looked up at Helena.
‘Are you coming too?’ she said.
Helena shook her head, her eyes inscrutable. Delilah hesitated, not sure what to say; she was suddenly struck by the reality that this was her family, however distant, standing before her – potentially the only family member she had left, even if she had been dead for centuries. She wavered, but after a few seconds just said ‘thank you – bye’, put her wand back between her teeth and lowered herself down onto the iron ladder.
Helena said nothing in farewell, but the silvery light of her presence at the top of the tunnel could be seen for a long time as Delilah climbed down, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the castle.
