火热哈7英文原版:第九章 A Place to Hide 第二部分
2007-07-21 18:10阅读：
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“Brilliant!” said Harry, clapping her on the back.
“Take care of the other one and
the waitress while Ron and I clear up.”
“Clear up?” said Ron, looking around at the partly destroyed café.
“Why?”
“Don’t you think they might wonder what’s
happened if they wake up and find
themselves in a place that looks like it’s just been
bombed?”
“Oh right, yeah . . .”
Ron struggled for a moment before managing
to extract his wand from his pocket.
“It’s no wonder I can’t get it out,
Hermione, you packed my old jeans, they’re
tight.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” hissed Hermione, and as
she dragged the waitress out of sight
of the windows, Harry heard her mutter a suggestion as to where Ron
could stick his
wand instead.
Once the café was restored to its previous
condition, they heaved the Death Eaters
back into their booth and propped them up facing each other. “But
how did they find us?”
Hermione asked, looking from one inert man to the other. “How did
they know where we
were?”
She turned to Harry.
“You – you don’t think you’ve still got your
Trace on you, do you, Harry?”
“He can’t have,” said Ron. “The Trace breaks
at seventeen, that’s Wizarding law,
you can’t put it on an adult.”
“As far as you know,” said Hermione. “What
if the Death Eaters have found a
way to put it on a seventeen-year-old?”
“But Harry hasn’t been near a Death Eater in
the last twenty-four hours. Who’s
supposed to have put a Trace back on him?”
Hermione did not reply. Harry felt
contaminated, tainted: Was that really how the
Death Eaters had found them?
“If I can’t use magic, and you can’t use
magic near me, without us giving away
our position – “ he began.
“We’re not splitting up!” said Hermione
firmly.
“We need a safe place to hide,” said Ron.
“Give us time to think things through.”
“Grimmauld Place,” said Harry.
The other two gaped.
“Don’t be silly, Harry, Snape can get in
there!”
“Ron’s dad said they’ve put up jinxes against him – and even
if they haven’t
worked,” he pressed on as Hermione began to argue “so what? I
swear, I’d like nothing
better than to meet Snape!”
“But –“
“Hermione, where else is there? It’s the best chance we’ve
got. Snape’s only one
Death Eater. If I’ve still got the Trace on me, we’ll have whole
crowds of them on us
wherever else we go.”
She could not argue, though she looked as if she would have
liked to. While she
unlocked the café door, Ron clicked the Deluminator to release the
café’s light. Then, on
Harry’s count of three, they reversed the spells upon their three
victims, and before the
waitress or either of the Death Eaters could do more than stir
sleepily, Harry, Ron and
Hermione had turned on the spot and vanished into the compressing
darkness once more.
Seconds later Harry’s lungs expanded gratefully and he
opened his eyes: They
were now standing in the middle of a familiar small and shabby
square. Tall, dilapidated
houses looked down on them from every side. Number twelve was
visible to them, for
they had been told of its existence by Dumbledore, its
Secret-Keeper, and they rushed
toward it, checking every few yards that they were not being
followed or observed. They
raced up the stone steps, and Harry tapped the front door once with
his wand. They heard
a series of metallic clicks and the clatter of a chain, then the
door swung open with a
creak and they hurried over the threshold.
As Harry closed the door behind them, the old-fashioned gas
lamps sprang into
life, casting flickering light along the length of the hallway. It
looked just as Harry
remembered it: eerie, cobwebbed, the outlines of the house-elf
heads on the wall
throwing odd shadows up the staircase. Long dark curtains concealed
the portrait of
Sirius’s mother. The only thing that was out of place was the
troll’s leg umbrella stand,
which was lying on its side as if Tonks had just knocked it over
again.
“I think somebody’s been in here,” Hermione whispered,
pointing toward it.
“That could’ve happened as the Order left,” Ron murmured
back.
“So where are these jinxes they put up against Snape?” Harry
asked.
“Maybe they’re only activated if he shows up?” suggested
Ron.
Yet they remained close together on the doormat, backs
against the door, scared
to move farther into the house.
“Well, we can’t stay here forever,” said Harry, and he took
a step forward.
“Severus Snape?”
Mad-Eye Moody’s voice whispered out of the darkness, making
all three of them
jump back in fright. “We’re not Snape!” croaked Harry, before
something whooshed over
him like cold air and his tongue curled backward on itself, making
it impossible to speak.
Before he had time to feel inside his mouth, however, his tongue
had unraveled again.
The other two seemed to have experienced the same unpleasant
sensation. Ron
was making retching noises; Hermione stammered, “That m-must have
b-been the T-
Tongue-Tying Curse Mad-Eye set up for Snape!”
Gingerly Harry took another step forward. Something shifted
in the shadows at
the end of the hall, and before any of them could say another word,
a figure had risen up
out of the carpet, tall, dust-colored, and terrible; Hermione
screamed and so did Mrs.
Black, her curtains flying open; the gray figure was gliding toward
them, faster and faster,
its waist-length hair and beard streaming behind it, its face
sunken, fleshless, with empty
eye sockets: Horribly familiar, dreadfully altered, it raised a
wasted arm, pointing at
Harry.
“No!” Harry shouted, and though he had raised his wand no
spell occurred to him.
“No! It wasn’t us! We didn’t kill you –“
On the word kill, the figure exploded in a great cloud of
dust: Coughing, his eyes
watering, Harry looked around to see Hermione crouched on the floor
by the door with
her arms over her head, and Ron, who was shaking from head to foot,
patting her
clumsily on the shoulder and saying, “It’s all r-right. . . . It’s
g-gone. . . .”
Dust swirled around Harry like mist, catching the blue
gaslight, as Mrs. Black
continued to scream.
“Mudbloods, filth, stains of dishonor, taint of shame on the
house of my fathers –“
“SHUT UP!” Harry bellowed, directing his wand at her, and
with a bang and a
burst of red sparks, the curtains swung shut again, silencing
her.
“That . . . that was . . . “ Hermione whimpered, as Ron
helped her to her feet.
“Yeah,” said Harry, “but it wasn’t really him, was it? Just
something to scare
Snape.”
Had it worked, Harry wondered, or had Snape already blasted the
horror-figure
aside as casually as he had killed the real Dumbledore? Nerves
still tingling, he led the
other two up the hall, half-expecting some new terror to reveal
itself, but nothing moved
except for a mouse skittering along the skirting board.
“Before we go any farther, I think we’d better check,”
whispered Hermione, and
she raised her wand and said, “Homenum revelio.”
Nothing happened.
“Well, you’ve just had a big shock,” said Ron kindly. “What
was that supposed to
do?”
“It did what I meant it to do!” said Hermione rather
crossly. “That was a spell to
reveal human presence, and there’s nobody here except us!”
“And old Dusty,” said Ron, glancing at the patch of carpet from
which the corpse-
figure had risen.
“Let’s go up,” said Hermione with a frightened look at the
same spot, and she led
the way up the creaking stairs to the drawing room on the first
floor.
Hermione waved her wand to ignite the old gas lamps, then,
shivering slightly in
the drafty room, she perched on the sofa, her arms wrapped tightly
around her. Ron
crossed to the window and moved the heavy velvet curtains aside an
inch.
“Can’t see anyone out there,” he reported. “And you’d think,
if Harry still had a
Trace on him, they’d have followed us here. I know they can’t get
in the house, but –
what’s up, Harry?”
Harry had given a cry of pain: His scar had burned against
as something flashed
across his mind like a bright light on water. He saw a large shadow
and felt a fury that
was not his own pound through his body, violent and brief as an
electric shock.
“What did you see?” Ron asked, advancing on Harry. “Did you
see him at my
place?”
“No, I just felt anger – he’s really angry –“
“But that could be at the Burrow,” said Ron loudly. “What
else? Didn’t you see
anything? Was he cursing someone?”
“No, I just felt anger – I couldn’t tell –“
Harry felt badgered, confused, and Hermione did not help as
she said in a
frightened voice, “Your scar, again? But what’s going on? I thought
that connection had
closed!”
“It did, for a while,” muttered Harry; his scar was still
painful, which made it hard
to concentrate. “I – I think it’s started opening again whenever he
loses control, that’s
how it used to –“
“But then you’ve got to close your mind!” said Hermione
shrilly. “Harry,
Dumbledore didn’t want you to use that connection, he wanted you to
shut it down, that’s
why you were supposed to use Occlumency! Otherwise Voldemort can
plant false images
in your mind, remember –“
“Yeah, I do remember, thanks,” said Harry through gritted
teeth; he did not need
Hermione to tell him that Voldemort had once used this selfsame
connection between
