Warning: This story contains spoilers. If you haven't finished reading HBP yet, turn back now! You've been warned.
When the moon is on the wave,
And the glow-worm in the grass,
And the meteor on the grave,
And the wisp on the morass;
When the falling stars are shooting,
And the answer’d owls are hooting,
And the silent leaves are still
In the shadow of the hill,
Shall my soul be upon thine,
With a power and with a sign.
Prologue: In the Garden
Harry Potter sat on a gnarled stump in the moonlit garden, scribbling a letter on a piece of parchment. For a moment he considered waiting until morning to leave, but decided that it would be even more difficult to do so. His eyes stung with hot tears at the thought of his friends discovering the letter, and hoped they would not be too upset.
As he silently crept into the kitchen and placed the letter on the table, he glanced towards the staircase, saying a silent goodbye. Then, he picked up his broom and backpack, threw his invisibility cloak over himself, and Disapparated into the dark night.
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Molly Weasley awoke at dawn. Something seemed unusual, but she could not decide what it was. Everyone else in the house was still asleep, and Ron’s snores cut through the surrounding walls like a badly-oiled chainsaw. She got out of bed, put on a pair of old fuzzy slippers, and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen in her dressing-gown.
The sun was creeping up over the horizon, and Molly began to make breakfast. The ominous feeling had not left her, but she continued with her morning routine nonetheless. As she placed a plate of toast and eggs on the table (Arthur would be awake any minute and getting ready for work), she noticed a piece of parchment lying on the table, folded in half. Molly picked up the parchment, her eyes widening as she read the words, and sank into a chair, sobbing uncontrollably with a terrible pain in her heart.
Arthur Weasley came down the stairs, adjusting the sleeves of his robes. Immediately he noticed his wife, and rushed over to her. “Molly? Dear, what’s the matter?” he asked worriedly, gripping her shoulders as he noticed the letter in her hand. When Molly did not answer him, he carefully lifted the letter out of her hands, sat down, and read it:
By the time you read this letter, I will be far away. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since June, and now I have to leave. I can’t say where I’m going, because I want to do this alone. Please do not come looking for me.
Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me. I don’t think I could have made it through the past seven years without you. Ron, take care of yourself, you’re my best mate but you’ll have to keep going without me for now. Hermione, tell Ron how you feel, because although he probably knows already, he needs to hear it from you. I’ll miss you both, I wish things could have worked out differently. Ginny, all I can say is, I love you. I love you more than you could possibly imagine, which is why you have to be very careful, because everyone I care about is in danger, especially you. When this is all over, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
Fred, George, thanks for helping me keep my sense of humour, I think I’m going to need it. Bill and Charlie, I wish I could’ve gotten to know you better. If I make it through this alive, I’d like to think of you as my brothers in the same way I think of Ron, Fred and George.
To my friends who will probably read this later, Remus and Tonks, I know you will do everything in your power to find me no matter what I say, but please, this is something I have to do alone, something that no one else could ever understand. Dumbledore told me before he died what I would have to do, and I swore to him that I would do it.
I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, or if I’ll ever come back. I will not return until I have found both Snape and Voldemort. If I have to spend years tracking them down, so be it, because I will not stop searching until they are both dead.
-Harry Potter
Arthur dropped the letter on the table, closing his eyes and blinking back tears. “I can’t believe he’s done this. I just can’t believe it.”
“Oh, Arthur, he’s out there somewhere, all by himself, and he’s only seventeen! We have to find him, he’ll be killed if we don’t!”
“Molly, please calm down. We’ll find him soon enough, he can’t have gone very far yet. Go wake the children, while I send word to Remus and Mad-Eye.”
Mad-Eye Moody paced back and forth in the Weasleys’ kitchen, every other step a resonating ‘clunk’ in the near-silence. Remus, Tonks and Arthur watched him curiously, wondering what on earth could be going on inside his head. Finally, he stopped pacing and muttering, and looked up at them. “Well, we can’t tell the Ministry he’s missing.”
“Why not? The more people that are looking for him, the faster we’ll track him down,” Mr. Weasley replied.
Moody shook his head. “Nah, that won’t work. If the Ministry finds out, then the Death Eaters and Voldemort will find out soon enough, ‘cause it’ll be all over the papers. D’you think it’s a good idea for them to know Potter’s out there on his own, unprotected?”
“No, that’s the last thing we want,” Remus said, running a hand through his greying hair with a sigh as Tonks squeezed his other hand. Out of the four of them, Lupin had been the most concerned. He had been sick with worry even before the Weasleys had shown him Harry’s letter, and was still having trouble accepting that Harry had just packed up and disappeared.
“So, we’ll have to do this by ourselves?” Tonks asked, her voice unusually high-pitched. “He could be anywhere by now, and we can’t be everywhere at once, there’s too few of us.”
Moody’s brow furrowed in thought, and then he slammed his fist down on the table.“I’ve got an idea. It’s a long shot, but it could work. My old partner is still around, and I’m willing to bet she knows about what happened last month. Convincing her to do us a favour could be tricky, though; she works for no one but herself.”
“Is she any good? At tracking people, I mean,” Remus inquired.
“Good? Do you think she’d have been my partner if she wasn’t damn good at what she does? She can find anyone, anywhere. Mind you, if Potter doesn’t want to come back, she’d never force him. If she found him, she’d tell us, but she wouldn’t be likely to bring him back. Doesn’t believe in telling people what to do, see.”
“Well, it’s worth a try,” Mr. Weasley sighed. “Send her an owl, make sure she knows this is urgent.”
Mad-Eye chuckled. “Who needs owls?” He pointed his wand out the window, and shot some silvery light into the blue sky.
For many hours, they waited in the kitchen. Ron, Hermione and Ginny joined them after a while, looking fearful and upset. Ginny in particular was very pale, and clutched her mug of tea with shaking hands. “Don’t worry, you three,” Moody told them in an uncharacteristically kind voice. “If she can find him, he’ll be in good hands.”
Lupin and Tonks appeared in the room; they had just Disapparated to various places, alerting certain people who owned and operated places where Harry frequented. “Rosmerta, Aberforth and Tom agreed to keep an eye out,” Remus said. “Aberforth insisted on getting a reward if he catches Harry, so we had to agree to pay him a hundred Galleons.”
“Honestly! Can’t do anything just out of the goodness of his heart, can he?” Mrs. Weasley spat in disgust.
Then, as the sun was beginning to sink below the horizon, Tonks gasped and pointed out the window. Something silvery was streaking towards the Burrow, gliding above the grass with far more grace than befitted its size. The Patronus was four-legged, and as it got closer, they could see it was a large polar bear. It stopped in front of the window, watching the group of people now filing out onto the lawn. In a corner, Kreacher the house-elf, who was hanging clothes on the clothesline, narrowed his eyes at them, muttering to himself. Mad-Eye strode over to it, running a gnarled hand over the bear’s head. Then, the bear turned and flew off once more. “She’ll do it,” Moody said, and the others cheered.
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Author's Note: The poem fragment at the beginning of this chapter (and every chapter from this point on) is from Byron's "When the Moon is on the Wave".