94 Diagon Alley

Explore something Harry can't see.

"This is just the vestibule, the entrance hall," Dumbledore said after a moment, "we need to get in... Now it's Voldemort's trap, not nature's setting, that's blocking us. obstacles..."

Dumbledore approached the wall of the cave, stroked it with his charred fingertips, and whispered something in a strange language that Harry could not understand. Dumbledore walked around the cave twice from the left, touching the rough walls as much as he could, pausing occasionally to run his fingers up and down somewhere. Finally, he finally stopped and pressed his palm on the cave wall.

"Here," he said, "here we go in. The entrance is hidden."

Harry did not ask how Dumbledore knew. He had never seen a wizard solve a puzzle like this: see with his eyes and touch with his hands. But Harry had known for a long time that the ping-pong-pong and the smoke were usually the characteristics of lesser people, not the style of masters.

Dumbledore stepped back from the wall and pointed his wand at the rock. Suddenly, the outline of an arch appeared there, emitting a dazzling white light, as if there was a strong light shining behind the crack.

"You've—succeeded!" said Harry, his teeth chattering, but before he could finish, the outline was gone, and the rock was still the same Hard and thick, with nothing on it. Dumbledore turned to look.

"Harry, I'm so sorry, I forgot," he said, pointing at Harry with his wand, and Harry's clothes were immediately dry and warm, like hanging on a roaring stove It was baked before the fire.

"Thank you," said Harry gratefully, but Dumbledore had turned his attention to the solid walls again. He didn't try any other magic, just stood there, staring intently at the cave wall, as if there was something extremely interesting written on it. Harry stood motionless, not wanting to interrupt Dumbledore's train of thought.

Then, after a full two minutes, Dumbledore said softly, "Oh, of course not. Too low."

"What did you say, Professor?"

"I think," said Dumbledore, using his uninjured hand to draw from his robe a short silver knife, the kind Harry used to cut potions ingredients, "we There is a price to pay to pass.”

"The price?" said Harry. "You have to give this door something?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore, "if I'm not mistaken, blood."

"Blood?"

"That's why I said too low." Dumbledore said, his tone was contemptuous, even disappointed, as if Voldemort failed to meet Dumbledore's expected standards, "I believe you too Understand, the reason is that you want your opponent to weaken yourself to get in. Once again, Voldemort fails to understand that there are many things that are far more terrible than physical damage."

"Yeah, but if it can be avoided..." Harry said that he had suffered too much and was reluctant to go through more.

"Sometimes it's unavoidable." Dumbledore said, shaking the sleeve of his robe up, revealing the forearm of the injured hand.

"Professor!" Harry saw Dumbledore raise the knife, and quickly stepped forward to stop him, "Let me come, I—"

He didn't know what to say - younger, stronger? But Dumbledore just smiled slightly. A silver light flashed, and a bright red spurted out, and the surface of the rock was immediately covered with shiny, dark red blood beads.

"You are very kind, Harry," said Dumbledore, running the tip of his wand through the deep wound he had cut in his own arm, and the wound healed in no time. Like when Snape healed Malfoy, "but your blood is worth more than mine. Ah, that seems to work, doesn't it?"

The outline of the dazzlingly white arch appeared again on the wall of the cave, this time it did not disappear. The blood-splattered rock in the arch disappeared suddenly, revealing a doorway that seemed to be endless darkness.

"Follow me," said Dumbledore, and walked through the doorway. Harry followed him in and hurriedly lit his wand.

A very strange sight was in front of them. They were standing on the shore of a large black lake, so wide and endless that Harry couldn't see the other side in the distance. The cave they were in was so high that they couldn't see the top of the cave when they looked up. In the distance, like in the middle of the lake, a dim, green light flickered, reflected in the dead lake below. Except for the green light and the light from the two wands, there was an inextricably thick darkness all around, and the penetration of these lights was not as strong as Harry expected. The darkness here seems to be more than ordinary. Thicker and heavier.

"Let's go ahead," said Dumbledore softly, "be careful not to step in the water. Follow me closely."

He walked around the lake shore, Harry following him. Their footsteps echoed on the narrow rocks by the lake. They kept going forward, but the scene around them did not change in the slightest: the rough cave walls on one side, and the endless, mirror-smooth black lake on the other, with the mysterious green light shining in the center of the lake. Harry found the place and the silence depressing and disturbing.

"Professor?" he couldn't help asking, "Do you think the Horcrux is hidden here?"

"Oh, yes," said Dumbledore, "yes, I believe it's hidden here. The question is, how are we going to find it."

"We can't... can't we try the Flying Charm?" Harry said, he knew it must be a stupid suggestion, but although he didn't want to admit it, he was eager to hurry up Get out of this ghost place.

"Certainly," Dumbledore stopped abruptly and Harry nearly bumped into him, "why don't you give it a try?"

"Me? Oh... well..."

Harry didn't expect this, he cleared his throat, raised his wand, and exclaimed, "Flying Horcruxes!"

With a loud explosion, a big white guy jumped up from the dark lake twenty feet away. Before Harry could see what it was, with a clatter, it disappeared again, making large, deep ripples on the calm water. Harry jumped back in shock and slammed into the rock wall. He turned to Dumbledore, his heart still beating wildly.

"What's that?"

"I think if we tried to grab the Horcrux, it would react."

Harry turned to look at the lake again. The lake became like black glass again, bright and smooth. The ripples vanished bizarrely fast, but Harry's heart was still beating like a drum.

"Did you know that would happen, sir?"

"I knew for a long time that if we blatantly tried to get that Horcrux, something would happen to us. Harry, your idea is very good, in the easiest way to figure out our relationship what is right."

"But we don't know what that thing is," said Harry, looking at the calm and dangerous surface of the lake.

"You should say those things," said Dumbledore. "I don't believe there is only one of them. Shall we move on?"

"Professor?"

"What's the matter, Harry?"

"Do you think we need to go down into the lake?"

"Down the lake? Unless we're particularly unlucky."

"Don't you think the Horcrux is under the lake?"

"Oh no...I think the Horcrux is in the middle of the lake."

Dumbledore pointed to the hazy green light in the middle of the lake.

"Then we have to go to the middle of the lake to get it?"

"Yes, I think so."

Harry said nothing. All he thought about was water monsters, water monsters, water ghosts, pythons and ghosts...

"Aha!" Dumbledore said and stopped again, this time Harry really bumped into him. Harry staggered by the dark lake and looked about to fall, and Dumbledore grabbed his arm tightly with his uninjured hand and pulled him back. "I'm so sorry, Harry, I should have said hello. Please stand back and stick to the wall, I think I've found a place."

Harry did not understand what Dumbledore meant. To him, this dark lakeshore was no different from anywhere else, but Dumbledore seemed to sense something special. This time, instead of stroking on the rock wall, his hand was stroking slowly in the air, as if trying to find and grasp something invisible.

"Ho ho!" Dumbledore said happily after a few seconds. He closed his hands and caught something in the air that Harry couldn't see. Dumbledore moved slowly towards the edge of the lake, and Harry watched nervously as Dumbledore's brass-buckled toes moved to the outermost edge of the rock. Dumbledore, still holding that hand in the air, held his wand in the other and tapped his fist with the tip of the wand.

Immediately, a thick green copper chain suddenly emerged from the depths of the lake and rushed towards Dumbledore's clenched fist. Dumbledore tapped the chain with his wand, and the chain began to slid through his fist like a snake, coiling up in a pile on the ground, and the clanging sound echoed loudly against the rock wall. The chain dragged something up from the dark lake bottom. Harry watched in astonishment as the bow of a small boat suddenly appeared out of the lake like a ghost, glowing green like a chain, and floated towards the shore where Harry and Dumbledore were standing, barely making a ripple.

"How did you know it was there?" Harry asked in surprise.

"Magic always leaves its mark," said Dumbledore, and with a soft thud the boat hit the shore, "sometimes right and wrong.