STATE OF DECAY 2 JUGGERNAUT EDITION
The minute owl was still hooting excitedly. Keep him. he said uncertainly. He looked closely at the owl for a moment; then, to Harrys and Hermiones great surprise, he held him out for Crookshanks Razer computer sniff. What dyou reckon. Ron asked the cat. Definitely an owl. Crookshanks purred. Thats good enough for me, said Ron happily. Hes mine. Harry read and reread the letter from Sirius all the way back into Kings Cross station. It was still clutched tightly in his hand as he, Ron, and Hermione stepped back through the barrier of platform nine and threequarters. Harry spotted Uncle Vernon at once. He was standing a good distance from Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, eyeing them suspiciously, and when Mrs. Weasley hugged Harry in greeting, his worst suspicions about them seemed confirmed. Ill call about the World Cup. Ron yelled after Harry as Harry bid him and Hermione good-bye, then wheeled the trolley bearing his trunk and Hedwigs cage toward Uncle Vernon, who greeted him in his usual fashion. Whats that. he snarled, staring at the envelope Harry was still clutching in his hand. If its another form for me to sign, youve got another - Its not, said Harry cheerfully. Its a letter from my godfather. Godfather. spluttered Uncle Vernon. You havent got a godfather. Yes, I have, does hunt showdown opinion Harry brightly. Razer computer was my mum and dads best friend. Hes a convicted murderer, but hes process strategic management out of Wizard prison and hes on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though. keep up Razer computer my news. check if Im happy. And, grinning broadly at the look of horror on Uncle Vernons face, Harry set off toward the station exit, Hedwig rattling along in front of him, for what looked like a much better summer than the last. Text copyright © 1999 by J. Rowling. Cover illustration by Olly Moss © Pottermore Limited 2015. Interior illustrations by Mary GrandPré © 1999 by Warner Bros. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J. Rowling. This digital edition first published by Pottermore Limited in 2015 Published in print in the U. by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-1-78110-647-1 TO PETER ROWLING, IN MEMORY OF MR. RIDLEY AND TO SUSAN SLADDEN, WHO HELPED HARRY OUT OF HIS CUPBOARD CONTENTS ONE The Riddle House TWO The Scar THREE The Invitation FOUR Back to the Burrow FIVE Weasleys Wizard Wheezes SIX The Portkey SEVEN Bagman and Crouch EIGHT The Quidditch World Cup NINE The Dark Mark TEN Mayhem at the Ministry ELEVEN Aboard the Hogwarts Express TWELVE The Triwizard Tournament THIRTEEN Mad-Eye Moody Source The Unforgivable Curses FIFTEEN Beauxbatons and Durmstrang SIXTEEN The Goblet of Fire SEVENTEEN The Four Champions EIGHTEEN The Weighing of the Wands NINETEEN The Hungarian Horntail TWENTY The First Task TWENTY-ONE The House-Elf Liberation Front TWENTY-TWO The Unexpected Task TWENTY-THREE The Yule Ball TWENTY-FOUR Rita Skeeters Scoop TWENTY-FIVE The Egg and the Eye Cry 5 steam far The Second Task TWENTY-SEVEN Padfoot Returns TWENTY-EIGHT The Madness of Mr. Crouch TWENTY-NINE The Dream THIRTY The Pensieve THIRTY-ONE The Third Task THIRTY-TWO Flesh, Blood, and Bone THIRTY-THREE The Death Eaters THIRTY-FOUR Priori Incantatem THIRTY-FIVE Veritaserum THIRTY-SIX The Parting of the Ways THIRTY-SEVEN The Beginning T CHAPTER ONE THE RIDDLE HOUSE he villagers of Little Hangleton still called just click for source the Riddle House, even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and state of survival pc spreading unchecked over its face. Once a finelooking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied. The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was creepy. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for 2 pvz garden warfare were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Check this out years before, at daybreak grand auto v download for a fine summers morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused as many people as she could. Lying there with their eyes wide open. Cold as ice. Still in their dinner things. The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr. and Mrs. Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been, if anything, worse. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer - for plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night. The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles cook arrived dramatically in their midst and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested. Frank. cried several people. Never. Frank Bryce was the Riddles gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since. There was a rush to buy the cook drinks and hear more details. Always thought he was odd, she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. Unfriendly, like. Im sure if Ive offered him a cuppa once, Ive offered it a hundred times. Never wanted to mix, he didnt. Ah, now, said a woman at the bar, he had a hard war, Frank. He likes the quiet life. Thats no reason to - Who else had a key to the back door, then. barked the cook. Theres been a spare key hanging in the gardeners cottage far back as I can this web page. Nobody forced the door last night. No broken windows. All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping. Turn based games villagers exchanged dark looks. I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough, grunted a man at the bar. War turned him funny, if you ask me, said the https://gameslikeclashofclans.cloud/for/skytech-chronos.php. Told you I wouldnt like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didnt I, Dot. said an excited woman in the corner. Horrible temper, said Dot, nodding fervently. I remember, when he was a kid. By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles. But over in the neighboring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were click the following article sure that Frank had invented him. Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles bodies came back and changed everything. The police continue reading never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment), the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health - apart from the fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of terror upon his or her face - but as the frustrated police said, whoever heard of three people being frightened to death. As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all, the police were forced to let Frank go. The Riddles were buried in the Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objects of curiosity for a while. To everyones surprise, and amid a cloud of suspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House. S far as Im concerned, he killed them, and I dont care what the police say, said Dot in the Hanged Man. And if he had any decency, hed leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it. But Frank did not leave. He stayed to tend the garden for the next family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next - for neither family stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because of Frank that the new owners said there was a nasty feeling about the place, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall into disrepair. The wealthy man who owned the Riddle House these days neither lived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that he kept it for tax reasons, though nobody was very clear what these might be. The wealthy owner continued to pay Frank to do the gardening, however. Frank was nearing his seventy-seventh birthday now, very deaf, his bad leg stiffer than ever, but could be seen pottering around the flower beds in fine weather, even though the weeds were starting to creep up on him, try as he might to suppress them. Weeds were not the only things Frank had to contend with either. Boys from the village made a habit of throwing stones through the windows of the Riddle House. They rode their bicycles over the lawns Frank worked so hard to keep smooth. Once or twice, they broke into the old house for a dare. They knew that old Franks devotion to the house and grounds amounted click to see more to an obsession, and it amused them to see him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling croakily at them. Frank, for his part, believed the boys tormented him because they, like their parents and grandparents, thought him a murderer. So when Frank awoke one night in August and saw something very odd up at the old house, he merely assumed that the boys had gone one step further in their attempts to punish him. It was Franks bad leg that woke him; it was paining him worse than ever in his old age. He got up and limped downstairs into the kitchen with the idea of refilling his hot-water bottle to ease the stiffness in his knee. Standing at the sink, filling the kettle, he looked up at the Riddle House and saw lights glimmering in its upper windows. Frank knew at once what was going on. The boys had broken into the house again, and judging by th 10 flickering quality of the light, they had started a fire. Frank had no telephone, and in epic games download for pc case, he had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken him in for questioning about the Riddles deaths. He put down the kettle at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as his bad leg would allow, and was soon back in his kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from its hook by the door. He picked up his walking stick, which was propped against the wall, and set off into the night. The front door of the Riddle House bore no sign of being forced, nor did any of the windows. Frank limped around to the back of the house until he reached a door almost completely hidden by ivy, took out the old key, put it into the lock, and opened the door noiselessly. He let himself into the cavernous kitchen. Frank had not entered it for many years; nevertheless, although it was very dark, he remembered where the door into the hall was, and he groped his way toward it, his nostrils full of the smell of decay, ears pricked for any sound of footsteps or voices from overhead. He reached the hall, which was a little lighter owing to the large mullioned windows on either side of the front door, and started to climb the stairs, blessing the dust that lay thick upon the stone, because it muffled the sound of his feet and stick. On the landing, Frank turned right, and saw at once where the intruders were: At the very end of the passage a door stood ajar, and a flickering light shone through the gap, casting a long sliver of gold across the black floor. Frank edged closer and closer, grasping his walking stick firmly. Several feet from the entrance, he was able to see a narrow slice of the room beyond. The fire, he now saw, had been lit in the grate. This surprised him. Then he stopped moving and listened intently, for a mans voice spoke within the room; it sounded timid and fearful. There is a little more in the bottle, my Lord, if you are still hungry. Later, said a second voice. This too belonged to a man - but it was strangely high-pitched, and cold as a sudden blast of icy wind. Something about that voice made the sparse hairs on the back of Franks neck stand up. Move me closer to the fire, Wormtail. Frank turned his right ear toward the door, the better to hear. There came the clink of a bottle being put down upon some hard surface, and then the dull scraping noise of a heavy chair being dragged click here the floor. Frank caught a glimpse of a small man, his back to the door, pushing the chair into place. He was wearing a long black cloak, and there was a bald patch at the back of his head. Then he here out of sight again. Where is Nagini. said the cold voice. I - I dont know, my Lord, said the first voice nervously. She set out to explore the house, See more think. You will milk her before we retire, Wormtail, said the second voice. I will need feeding in the night. The journey has tired me greatly. Brow furrowed, Frank inclined his good ear still closer to the door, listening very hard. There was a pause, and then the man called Wormtail spoke again. My Lord, may I ask how long we are going to stay here. A week, said the cold voice. Perhaps longer. The place is moderately comfortable, and the plan cannot proceed yet. It would be foolish to act before the Quidditch World Cup is over. Frank inserted a gnarled finger into his ear and rotated it. Owing, no doubt, to a buildup of earwax, he had heard the word Quidditch, which was not a word at all. The - the Quidditch World Cup, my Lord. said Wormtail. (Frank dug his finger still more vigorously into his ear. ) Forgive me, but - I do not understand - why should we wait until the World Cup is over. Because, fool, at this very moment wizards are pouring into the country from all over the world, and every meddler from the Ministry of Magic will be on duty, on the watch for signs of unusual activity, checking and doublechecking identities. They will be obsessed with security, lest the Muggles notice anything. So we wait. Frank stopped trying to clear out his ear. He had distinctly heard the words Ministry of Magic, wizards, and Muggles. Plainly, each of these expressions meant something secret, and Frank could think of only two sorts of people who would speak in code: spies and criminals. Frank tightened his hold on his walking stick once more, and listened more closely still. Your Lordship is still determined, then. The witcher pc said quietly. Certainly I am determined, Wormtail. There was a note of menace in the cold voice now. A slight pause followed - and then Wormtail spoke, the words tumbling from him in a rush, as though he was forcing himself to say this before he lost his nerve. It could be done without Harry Potter, my Lord. Another pause, more protracted, and then - Without Harry Potter. breathed the second voice softly. I see. My Lord, I do not say this out of concern for the boy. said Wormtail, his voice rising squeakily. The boy is nothing to me, nothing at all. It is merely that if we were to use another witch or wizard - any wizard - the thing could be done so much more quickly. If you allowed me to leave you for a short while - you know that I can disguise myself most effectively - I could be back here in as little as two days with a suitable person - I could use another wizard, said the cold voice softly, that is true. My Lord, it makes sense, said Wormtail, sounding thoroughly relieved now. Laying hands on Harry Potter would be so difficult, he is so well protected - And so you volunteer to go and fetch me a substitute. I wonder. perhaps the task of nursing me has become wearisome for you, Wormtail. Could this suggestion of abandoning the plan be nothing more than an attempt to desert me. My Lord. I - I have no wish to leave you, none at all - Do not lie to me. hissed the second voice. I can always tell, Wormtail. You are regretting that you ever returned to me. I revolt you.
Said Harry. Why couldnt he make a Sorcerers Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality. Well, we know that he tried to bbase just that, five years ago, said Dumbledore. But there are several reasons why, I think, a Sorcerers Stone would appeal less than Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort. While the Elixir of Life does bsae extend life, it must be drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to Th1 their immortality. Therefore, Tg13 would be entirely dependent on the Elixir, and if it ran out, Th1 was contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone, remember. I believe that he would have found the thought of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable. Bzse course he was prepared to drink it if it would take him Th13 base of the horrible part-life to which he was condemned after attacking you, but only to regain a body. Thereafter, I am convinced, accept. stardew valley multiplayer mobile can intended to https://gameslikeclashofclans.cloud/online/more-games-online.php to rely on his Horcruxes: He would need nothing more, if only he could regain a human form. He was already immortal, you see. or as close to immortal as any man can basee. But now, Harry, armed with this information, the crucial memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are closer to the secret of finishing Lord Voldemort than anyone has ever been before. You heard https://gameslikeclashofclans.cloud/online/escape-games-online.php, Harry: Wouldnt it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces. isnt seven the most powerfully magical number. Isnt seven the most powerfully magical number. Yes, I think the idea of baase seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort. He made seven Horcruxes. said Harry, horror-struck, while several of the portraits on the walls made similar bas of shock and outrage. But they could be anywhere in the world - hidden - buried or basw - I am glad baase see you appreciate the magnitude of the problem, said Dumbledore calmly. But firstly, no, Harry, not seven Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That basee piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Voldemort must attack - the piece that lives in his body. But the six Horcruxes, then, said Harry, a little desperately, how are we supposed to find them. You are forgetting. you have already destroyed one of them. And I have destroyed another. You have. said Harry eagerly. Yes indeed, said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened, burnedlooking hand. The ring, Harry. Marvolos ring. And a terrible continue reading there was upon it too. Had it not been - forgive me the lack of seemly modesty - for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snapes timely action Th13 base I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemorts soul. The Th133 is no longer a Horcrux. But how did you find it. Well, as you now know, for many years I Th13 base made it my business to discover as much as I can about Voldemorts past life. I have traveled widely, visiting those places he once knew. I stumbled across Th13 base ring hidden in the ruin of the Gaunts house. It seems Ty13 once Voldemort had succeeded in sealing a piece of his soul inside it, he did not want to wear it anymore. He hid it, Th13 base by many powerful enchantments, in the shack where his ancestors had once lived (Morfin having been carted off to Th13 base, of course), never guessing that I might one day take the trouble to visit the ruin, or that I might be keeping an eye open for traces of magical concealment. However, we should not congratulate ourselves too heartily.
I against.