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𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐄

now we're in the ring, and we're coming for blood

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Here are the women with ancient

anger in their veins and the cruelty

of a goddess in their hearts.

You will beg before her, you

will scream; but Hera never flinched

from the words of a mortal,

so why should she?

Do not stand in her way.

She will burn down your kingdoms,

herself with it, if it meant

your ruin.

·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .

𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐍𝐎 means of steering; the dragon could not see where it was going, and Elara knew that if it turned sharply or rolled in midair they would find it impossible to cling onto its broad back. Nevertheless, as they climbed higher and higher, London unfurling below them like a gray-and-green map, Elara's overwhelming feeling was of gratitude for an escape that had seemed impossible.

Crouching low over the beast's neck, she clung tight to the metallic scales, and the cool breeze was soothing on her burned and blistered skin, the dragon's wings beating the air like the sails of a windmill. Behind her, whether from delight or fear she could not tell, Harry clung to her back, Ron kept swearing at the top of his voice, and Hermione seemed to be sobbing.

To think that in the past that she would have fainted at the idea of riding a dragon. The wind soared through her hair. The weightlessness she experienced with each beat of the beast's brilliant wings thrilled her greatly.

She resisted the urge to raise her arms in the air as Harry's grip on her tightened. His scar was prickling again.

The dragon seemed to crave cooler and fresher air: It climbed steadily until they were flying through wisps of chilly cloud, and Elara could no longer make out the little colored dots which were cars pouring in and out of the capital. On and on they flew, over countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads and rivers winding through the landscape like strips of matte and glossy ribbon.

"What do you reckon it's looking for?" Ron yelled as they flew farther and farther north.

"No idea," Elara shouted back.

Her hands were numb with cold but she did not care. When, she wondered, had the beast itself last eaten? Surely it would need sustenance before long?

We need to land soon.

The sun slipped lower in the sky, which was turning indigo; and still the dragon flew, cities and towns gliding out of sight beneath them, its enormous shadow sliding over the earth like a great dark cloud.

"Is it my imagination," shouted Ron after a considerable stretch of silence, "or are we losing height?"

Elara looked down and saw deep green mountains and lakes, coppery in the sunset. The landscape seemed to grow larger and more detailed as she squinted over the side of the dragon, and she wondered whether it had divined the presence of fresh water by the flashes of reflected sunlight.

Lower and lower the dragon flew, in great spiraling circles, honing in, it seemed, upon one of the smaller lakes.

"We jump when it gets low enough!" Elara called back to the others. "Straight into the water!"

They agreed, Hermione a little faintly, and now Elara could see the dragon's wide yellow underbelly rippling in the surface of the water.

"NOW!"

She slithered over the side of the dragon and plummeted feet first toward the surface of the lake; the drop was greater than she had estimated and she hit the water hard, plunging like a stone into a freezing, green, reed-filled world.

She kicked toward the surface and emerged, panting, to see enormous ripples emanating in circles from the places where Harry, Ron, and Hermione had fallen. The dragon did not seem to have noticed anything: It was already fifty feet away, swooping low over the lake to scoop up water in its scarred snout.

It looked back at Elara and she could of sworn it had nodded at her.

As Harry, Ron, and Hermione emerged, spluttering and gasping, from the depths of the lake, the dragon flew on, its wings beating hard, and landed at last on a distant bank.

Elara, Harry, Ron, and Hermione struck out for the opposite shore. The lake did not seem to be deep: Soon it was more a question of fighting their way through reeds and mud than swimming, and at last they flopped, sodden, panting, and exhausted, onto slippery grass.

Hermione collapsed, coughing and shuddering. Though Elara could have happily lain down

and slept, she staggered to her feet, drew out Bellatrix's wand, and started casting the usual protective spells around them.

When she had finished, she joined the others. It was the first time that she had seen them properly since escaping from the vault. All three had angry red burns all over their faces and arms, and their clothing was singed away in places. They were wincing as they dabbed essence of dittany onto their many injuries.

Hermione handed Elara the bottle, then pulled out four bottles of pumpkin juice she had brought from Shell Cottage and clean, dry robes for all of them. Elara pushed her sopping wet hair out of her face and began to braid it. They changed and then gulped down the juice.

"Well, on the upside," said Ron finally, who was sitting watching the skin on his hands regrow, "we got the Horcrux. On the downside —"

"— no sword," said Harry through gritted teeth, as he dripped dittany through the singed hole in his jeans onto the burn beneath.

"No sword," repeated Ron. "That double-crossing little scab . . ."

Harry pulled the Horcrux from the pocket of the wet jacket he had just taken off and set it down on the grass in front of them. Glinting in the sun, it drew their eyes as they swigged their bottles of juice.

"At least we can't wear it this time, that'd look a bit weird hanging round our necks," said Ron, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

Elara laughed and looked across the lake to the far bank, where the dragon was still drinking.

"What'll happen to it, do you think?" she asked. "Will it be all right?"

"You sound like Hagrid," said Ron. "It's a dragon, Lara, it can look after itself. It's us we need to worry about."

"And — ?"

"Well, I don't know how to break this to you," said Ron, "but I think they might have noticed we broke into Gringotts."

All four of them started to laugh, and once started, it was difficult to stop. Elara's ribs ached, he felt lightheaded with hunger, but he lay back on the grass beneath the reddening sky and laughed until his throat was raw.

"What are we going to do, though?" said Hermione finally, hiccuping herself back to seriousness. "He'll know, won't he? You-Know-Who will know we know about his Horcruxes!"

"Maybe they'll be too scared to tell him?" said Ron hopefully. "Maybe they'll cover up —"

The sky, the smell of lake water, the sound of Ron's voice were extinguished: Pain cleaved Elara's head like a sword stroke. She was standing in a dimly lit room, and a semicircle of wizards faced Voldemort, and on the floor at his feet knelt a small, quaking figure.

"What did you say to me?"

His voice was high and cold. The goblin was trembling, unable to meet the red eyes high above his.

"Say it again!" murmured Voldemort. "Say it again!"

"M-my Lord," stammered the goblin, its black eyes wide with terror, "m-my Lord . . . we t-tried t-to st-stop them. . . . Im-impostors, my Lord . . . broke — broke into the — into the Lestranges' v-vault. . . ."

"Impostors? What impostors? I thought Gringotts had ways of revealing impostors? Who were they?"

"It was . . . it was . . . the P-Potter b-boy, the Le-Lestrange girl, and t-two accomplices. . . ."

"And they took?" said Voldemort, his voice rising. "Tell me! What did they take?"

"A . . . a s-small golden c-cup, m-my Lord . . ."

The scream of rage left Voldemort. The Elder Wand slashed through the air and green light erupted through the room; the kneeling goblin rolled over, dead; the watching wizards scattered before him, terrified: Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy threw others behind them in their race for the door, and again and again Voldemort's wand fell, and those who were left were slain.

Alone amongst the dead he stormed up and down, and they passed before him in vision: his treasures, his safeguards, his anchors to immortality. He paced the room, kicking aside the goblin's corpse.

Elara's eyes flew open as she wrenched herself back to the present: She was lying on the bank of the lake in the setting sun next to Harry, and Ron and Hermione were looking down at them. Elara pushed herself up, holding a hand out to Harry, who gratefully took it.

"He knows, whispered Harry. "He knows, and he's going to check where the others are, and the last one is at Hogwarts. I knew it. I knew it."

"What?"

Ron was gaping at him; Hermione sat up, looking worried.

"But what did you see? How do you know?"

"I saw him find out about the cup, I — I was in his head, he's — he's seriously angry, and scared too, he can't understand how we knew, and now he's going to check the others are safe, the ring first. He thinks the Hogwarts one is safest, because Snape's there, because it'll be so hard not to be seen getting in, I think he'll check that one last, but he could still be there within hours —"

"Did either of you see where in Hogwarts it is?" asked Ron, now scrambling to his feet too.

"No, he was concentrating on warning Snape, he didn't think about exactly where it is —"

"Wait, wait!" cried Hermione as Ron caught up the Horcrux and Harry pulled out the Invisibility Cloak again. "We can't just go, we haven't got a plan, we need to —"

"Listen," began Elara, "as a responsible person — "

"You literally blew up half of Gringotts!"

"Yes, and I take responsibility for that!"

"We need to get going," said Harry firmly.

Elara agreed, although she had been hoping to sleep, looking forward to getting into the new tent, but that was impossible now.

"Can you imagine what he's going to do once he realizes the ring and the locket are gone? What if he moves the Hogwarts Horcrux, decides it isn't safe enough?"

"So, how will we get in?" asked Elara.

"We'll go to Hogsmeade," said Harry, "and try to work something out once we see what the protection around the school's like. Get under the Cloak, I want to stick together this time."

"Will we fit?"

"It'll be dark, no one's going to notice our feet."

The flapping of enormous wings echoed across the black water: The dragon had drunk its fill and risen into the air. They paused in their preparations to watch it climb higher and higher, now black against the rapidly darkening sky, until it vanished over a nearby mountain.

Elara pulled the Cloak down as far as it would go, and together they turned on the spot into the crushing darkness.

Her feet touched road. She saw the achingly familiar Hogsmeade High Street: dark shop fronts, and the outline of black mountains beyond the village, and the curve in the road ahead that led off toward Hogwarts, and light spilling from the windows of the Three Broomsticks, and with a lurch of the heart she remembered, with piercing accuracy, how she had landed here nearly a year before, supporting a desperately weak Dumbledore; all this in a second, upon landing — and then, even as she relaxed her grip upon Harry's and Ron's arms, it happened.

The air was rent by a scream that sounded like Voldemort's when he had realized the cup had been stolen: It tore at every nerve in Elara's body, and she knew immediately that their appearance had caused it.

Even as she looked at the other three beneath the Cloak, the door of the Three Broomsticks burst open and a dozen cloaked and hooded Death Eaters dashed into the street, their wands aloft.

Elara seized Ron's wrist as he raised his wand; there were too many of them to Stun: Even attempting it would give away their position. One of the Death Eaters waved his wand and the scream stopped, still echoing around the distant mountains.

"Accio Cloak!" roared one of the Death Eaters.

Elara seized its folds, but it made no attempt to escape: The Summoning Charm had not worked on it.

"Not under your wrapper, then, you two?" yelled the Death Eater who had tried the charm, and then to his fellows, "Spread out. they're here."

Six of the Death Eaters ran toward them: Elara, Harry, Ron, and Hermione backed as quickly as possible down the nearest side street, and the Death Eaters missed them by inches. They waited in the darkness, listening to the footsteps running up and down, beams of light flying along the street from the Death Eaters' searching wands.

"Let's just leave!" Hermione whispered. "Disapparate now!"

"Great idea," said Ron, but before Elara or Harry could reply a Death Eater shouted, "We know you're here, Potter, and there's no getting away! We'll find you!"

"They were ready for us," whispered Harry. "They set up that spell to tell them we'd come. I reckon they've done something to keep us here, trap us —"

"What about dementors?" called another Death Eater. "Let 'em have free rein, they'd find them quick enough!"

"The Dark Lord wants Tonks and Potter dead by no hand but his —"

"— an' dementors won't kill him! The Dark Lord wants their lives, not their souls. He'll be easier to kill if he's been Kissed first!"

There were noises of agreement. Dread filled Elara: To repel dementors they would have to produce Patronuses, which would give them away immediately.

"We're going to have to try to Disapparate!" Hermione whispered.

Even as she said it, Elara felt the unnatural cold begin to steal over the street. Light was sucked from the environment right up to the stars, which vanished. In the pitch-blackness, she felt Harry take hold of her arm and together, they turned on the spot.

The air through which they needed to move seemed to have become solid: They could not Disapparate; the Death Eaters had cast their charms well. The cold was biting deeper and deeper into Elara's flesh. She, Harry, Ron, and Hermione retreated down the side street, groping their way along the wall, trying not to make a sound.

Then, around the corner, gliding noiselessly, came dementors, ten or more of them, visible because they were of a denser darkness than their surroundings, with their black cloaks and their scabbed and rotting hands. Could they sense fear in the vicinity?

Elara was sure of it: They seemed to be coming more quickly now, taking those dragging, rattling breaths she detested, tasting despair on the air, closing in —

She raised her wand: She could not, would not, suffer the Dementor's Kiss, whatever happened afterward. It was of Harry, Ron, and Hermione that he thought as she whispered, "Expecto Patronum!"

The silver doe burst from her wand and charged: The dementors scattered and there was atriumphant yell from somewhere out of sight.

"It's her, down there, down there, I saw her Patronus, it was a doe!"

The dementors had retreated, the stars were popping out again, and the footsteps of the Death Eaters were becoming louder; but before Elara in her panic could decide what to do, there was a grinding of bolts nearby, a door opened on the left-hand side of the narrow street, and a rough voice said, "Tonks, in here, quick!"

She obeyed without hesitation: The four of them hurtled through the open doorway.

"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" muttered a tall figure, passing them on his way into the street and slamming the door behind him.

Elara had had no idea where they were, but now she saw, by the stuttering light of a single candle, the grubby, sawdust-strewn bar of the Hog's Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through a second doorway, which led to a rickety wooden staircase that they climbed as fast as they could.

The stairs opened onto a sitting room with a threadbare carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single large oil painting of a blonde girl who gazed out at the room with a kind of vacant sweetness.

Shouts reached them from the street below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak, they crept toward the grimy window and looked down. Their savior, whom Elara now recognized as the Hog's Head's barman, was the only person not wearing a hood.

"So what?" he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send dementors down my street, I'll send a Patronus back at 'em! I'm not having 'em near me, I've told you that, I'm not having it!"

"That wasn't your Patronus!" said a Death Eater. "That was a doe, it was Tonks's!"

"Doe!" roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. "Doe! You idiot — Expecto Patronum!"

Something huge and horned erupted from the wand: Head down, it charged toward the High Street and out of sight.

"That's not what I saw —" said the Death Eater, though with less certainty.

"Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of his companions told the barman. "Someone was out in the street against regulations —"

"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!"

"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"

"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out my own front door? Do it, then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Dark Marks and summoned him. He's not going to like being called here for me and my old cat, is he, now?"

"Don't you worry about us," said one of the Death Eaters, "worry about yourself, breaking curfew!"

"And where will you lot traffick potions and poisons when my pub's closed down? What'll happen to your little sidelines then?"

"Are you threatening — ?"

"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"

"I still say I saw a doe Patronus!" shouted the first Death Eater.

"Doe?" roared the barman. "It's a goat, idiot!"

"All right, we made a mistake," said the second Death Eater. "Break curfew again and we won't be so lenient!"

The Death Eaters strode back toward the High Street. Hermione groaned with relief, wove out from under the Cloak, and sat down on a wobble-legged chair. Elara drew the curtains tight shut, then pulled the Cloak off herself, Harry, and Ron. They could hear the barman down below, rebolting the door of the bar, then climbing the stairs.

The barman entered the room.

"You bloody fools," he said gruffly, looking from one to the other of them. "What were you thinking, coming here?"

"Thank you," said Elara. "We can't thank you enough. You saved our lives."