Harry Potter and the HQL - Chapter - 34

From high above the clearing, Harry hovered under the folds of his invisibility cloak, every muscle in his body strung tight as a drawn bow. The little broom held steady in the night air, but Harry’s heart was thundering in his ears.

Below, Professor Theron Greaves and Bellatrix Lestrange were locked in a duel that looked nothing like the tidy, practiced sparring Harry had seen in the Dueling Club. This was raw, vicious.

Real.

Spells cracked the air in bursts of searing color. Branches splintered. Flames licked along the mossy floor before being doused by Greaves’ counter-curses.

Bellatrix’s laughter rose over the chaos—high, shrill, unhinged.

“Stupefy!” Greaves barked, his voice hoarse.

Bellatrix flicked her wand, twisting the Stunning Spell away in a burst of blue sparks. She returned a jet of green light, but Greaves ducked behind a half-toppled pillar.

“You were always so earnest, Theron!” she called, circling him like a vulture. “Always scribbling in your little journals, measuring every rune, every pit! Tell me—did you ever stop to consider you were just a pawn?”

“You mistake caution for servitude,” Greaves panted back.

He flicked his wand again, and thick vines erupted from the soil, wrapping around Bellatrix’s legs. For an instant, she looked startled. But with a furious snarl, she slashed her wand in a vicious arc.

“Diffindo!”

The vines shredded, curling away as if sliced by invisible blades.

Harry pressed a hand over his mouth to steady his breathing. He could hardly process the speed—curse, dodge, counter-curse, shield. Over and over in dizzying succession.

Bellatrix’s curses were relentless. A violet bolt cracked across the clearing, slamming into the shrine and showering Greaves in fragments of stone.

I should help him, Harry thought. I should—

His hand hovered over his pocket.

And yet…

His eyes shifted to the iron-bound book lying where Greaves had dropped it behind the broken pillar. The skull on the cover gleamed under moonlight.

The power Voldemort hoarded.

The thought chilled him.

If he wins… what will he do with it?

Harry tightened his grip on the broom handle. He wanted to believe the professor would simply destroy it—but he couldn’t be sure.

Below, Greaves lunged from cover, roaring, “Expulso!”

The curse struck a nearby tree. Wood exploded in a deafening crack. Bellatrix tumbled sideways into the debris.

For a heartbeat, she disappeared in the swirling dust.

Greaves leveled his wand, chest heaving. “End this, Bellatrix. You can still walk away!”

A dark chuckle drifted from the smoke.

“Oh, you poor, stupid man.”

Bellatrix stepped free, her hair tangled, her eyes alight with cruel glee.

“I am Bellatrix Lestrange. I do not walk away.”

“Then you will fall.”

Bellatrix’s smile widened.

“Perhaps.”

With a flick of her wrist, she hurled a jet of black fire. Greaves barely conjured a shimmering silver shield in time. The flames struck it and rebounded, setting the earth alight.

Harry’s stomach twisted.

If she wins… she’ll take that book back to whatever hole she crawled from.

If he wins… I’ll never get close to it.

He swallowed, feeling sweat bead under his collar despite the chill air.

He slowly, deliberately, slid his hand into his cloak pocket.

His fingers brushed familiar holly—then he hesitated, and switched grips, wrapping them around the wand Sirius had given him.

Untraceable.

Cold certainty settled over his shoulders.

He would wait.

If Bellatrix struck Greaves down, he would act. If Greaves struck Bellatrix down… he would still act.

Neither of them could be trusted with that book.

Far below, curses lit the night, and the Shrine of Loki stood silent witness as good and evil clashed—so alike in their hunger for what Voldemort had left behind.

And high overhead, Harry Potter sat in the darkness, hidden and unseen, watching through borrowed eagle eyes, his heart beating in grim resolve.



Harry’s heart beat so loud in his ears he barely heard Bellatrix’s triumphant laugh.

She stood over Professor Theron Greaves’ fallen body, the dead man’s wand rolling from his limp hand, his glassy eyes fixed on the mossy sky.

Bellatrix exhaled in a shuddering thrill. “Oh, you foolish little Unspeakable,” she crooned to the corpse. “Did you really think you could—”

A single thought drove the pounding in Harry’s skull.

No more.

He leveled his wand from beneath the cloak, voice low and clear:

“Petrificus Totalus.”

Bellatrix’s eyes widened—she had no time to spin, no time to raise her wand. The jet of blue light struck her in the side.

Her arms snapped to her sides, legs locked, spine stiffening in a grotesque mimicry of parade rest. Her wand clattered from her fingers. She toppled backward onto the ground, still and frozen, her face frozen in a half-formed snarl.

Harry descended slowly on his broom, the invisibility cloak pooling around his boots. He stepped into the clearing, his breath fogging in the cold.

He flicked his wand.

“Accio wand.”

Bellatrix’s yew wand leapt from the ground into his waiting hand. Her dark eyes—fixed and wide—followed him in silent fury.

He crouched over her, close enough that he could see the tiny flecks of spittle frozen at the corner of her mouth.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he murmured.

Her pupils dilated in recognition.

Harry Potter.

But she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t curse him. Couldn’t do anything.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Professor Graves lay motionless. For a flicker of a moment, guilt bit into him. He could have intervened earlier. He could have saved the professor’s life.

But another, colder part of him reminded him: the professor had been ready to take that book and vanish. Perhaps to become something worse than Voldemort in the end.

Harry took a slow breath. There was no undoing it now.

He conjured thick, black ropes that wound themselves around Bellatrix’s arms, her ankles, her throat. Magic-resistant, charmed against the strongest of counter-curses.

“Mobilicorpus.”

Her stiff body lifted from the earth. Harry guided her out of the clearing, moving quickly, every sound in the night rasping against his nerves. He did not dare let her remain here—he didn’t know how long the body bind would hold someone like her.

When they were deep enough into the forest that no one could glimpse the scene, he stopped. He shifted the floating figure beside him and whispered:

“Norky!”

With a pop, the little elf appeared. His long nose wrinkled as he caught sight of the bound Death Eater.

“Master Harry, you is calling—oh!”

“I need you to take her to Runestone Castle. Lock her in the lowest dungeon. The one with the magic suppression wards. No one goes near her without me. No one.”

Norky’s ears drooped in dread. “Master Harry… this be dangerous.”

“I know,” Harry said softly. “But it’s necessary. She can’t get free, and she can’t vanish again. I’ll deal with what to do next after exams.”

His gaze dropped to the book Bellatrix still clutched in her locked hands. Its cracked cover gleamed with the faint imprint of a skull.

He swallowed.

“And take that book to the restricted library. Lock it in the iron case. If anyone tries to open it, alert me immediately.”

Norky nodded and snapped his fingers. Bellatrix vanished with a muffled pop, her stiff shape disappearing into thin air. The air felt abruptly colder without her presence.

Harry closed his eyes. For a long moment, he stood there, alone with the night sounds and the wind in the trees.

Then he mounted his little broom, pulled the invisibility cloak over his head, and rose into the sky.

He didn’t look back at the place where Professor Theron Greaves had fallen.


When he stepped through the portrait hole into Gryffindor Tower, no one looked up. Neville was reading by the fire. Hermione was scratching notes in a thick revision book. Fred and George were trying to balance a cauldron on one another’s shoulders.

Harry drew a steadying breath and forced his voice to stay even.

“Evening,” he said, crossing the common room like any other tired student.

Only Hermione glanced up with a quizzical frown.

“Where were you?”

“Library,” Harry lied smoothly, sitting down in the armchair opposite her. “Working on something… advanced.”

Neville yawned, oblivious. “Better you than me.”

And just like that, it was as though nothing had happened. As though he hadn’t just captured one of Voldemort’s most loyal lieutenants and stolen a dark relic that could change the world.

Harry folded his hands in his lap, feeling the phantom weight of the untraceable wand.

Some part of him knew the night’s work would haunt him later.

But for now, he allowed himself to close his eyes and pretend—for a little while—that he was just another boy in Hogwarts.



The morning after the duel in the forest dawned grey and tense. A hush had settled over Hogwarts, the sort of hush that made Harry’s chest feel tight the moment he opened his eyes.

He knew before anyone told him.

It wasn’t until halfway through the morning that the first whispers reached the Gryffindor table:

“Centaurs found someone,” Seamus Finnigan said in a low voice, eyes wide. “They came right up to Hagrid’s hut at dawn.”

Hermione’s head snapped up. “Who did they find?”

Seamus swallowed. “Professor Greaves. They say…he’s dead.”

Neville’s hand clenched around his fork. Fred and George looked up from their conversation, their expressions abruptly serious.

Harry sat very still.

He didn’t say a word.

By midday, the news had spread to every corner of the castle. A strange hush fell over the corridors. The staff began quietly instructing students to stay out of the forest and off the lawns after dark. Hagrid looked worse than Harry had ever seen him, his shoulders stooped, as he trudged up to the castle to speak with Professor McGonagall.

No one mentioned Bellatrix aloud. But everyone was thinking it.

In the afternoon, the Aurors arrived. Four of them in long grey travelling cloaks, their boots still crusted with snow. Harry spotted them as he came out of the library: the leader, a tall, hook-nosed wizard with keen eyes, was already questioning Hagrid by the entrance to the grounds. Another Auror was conferring in a low voice with Dumbledore near the staff room.

The rest had gone straight to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, wands raised, to examine whatever remained of the scene.

Hermione caught up to Harry in the corridor, breathless.

“Did you hear?” she whispered, eyes bright with worry. “They found his wand snapped clean through. They think whoever did it ambushed him.”

Harry swallowed, his throat dry. “Did they… Did they say who?”

She hesitated. “They think it was Bellatrix Lestrange. But they’re not certain yet.”

“Of course it was her,” Neville said from behind them. His voice was rough. “It’s always her.”

By evening, everyone in Gryffindor tower was talking about it. Theories, gossip, fear—it was all the same. Someone lit a fire and it crackled so loudly it seemed to fill the gaps in conversation.

No one knew exactly what Professor Greaves had been doing in the forest alone. No one knew why Bellatrix Lestrange would have wanted him dead.

Harry did.

And the knowledge coiled in his stomach like a sickness.

That night, he didn’t sleep at all.

It was the following morning that the Daily Prophet finally appeared on the tables in the Great Hall, delivered in flurries of owl wings and trailing parchment.

BELLATRIX LESTRANGE SUSPECTED IN MURDER OF HOGWARTS PROFESSOR

Hermione read it aloud in a low, shaking voice.

“Professor Theron Greaves, Defence Against the Dark Arts instructor and former Unspeakable, was discovered dead near the edge of the Forbidden Forest two days ago. Aurors have confirmed that traces of Bellatrix Lestrange’s magic were identified on the scene. She remains at large.”

Neville closed his eyes briefly. Fred pushed his plate away. George rested his chin on one hand, staring at the table.

Harry didn’t move.

He could feel Hermione watching him, her question unspoken but loud all the same.

But she didn’t ask.

No one did.

And so the day passed—like all days did, in the end.

With a hush.

With secrets.

With guilt that no headline could print.