Chapters Twenty-Five–Twenty-Seven
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Five: Shell Cottage
Griphook agrees to help them break into Bellatrix Lestrange's
Gringotts vault, but he demands the Sword of Gryffindor as payment. This
puts Harry and his friends in a bind, because if they refuse, they'll
never get into the vault to look for a Horcrux, but if they give up
the sword, they'll have no way to destroy any Horcrux they find. Harry
decides to trick the goblin, telling him he can have the sword after they
break into the vault, but not specifying how long after. Feeling
somewhat guilty, Harry gives his promise to Griphook, and for several
weeks they plan the break-in.
Lupin arrives at the cottage with the news that Tonks
has had her baby. He asks Harry to be the godfather, and Harry agrees.
Before Harry and the others embark on their mission, Bill
takes Harry aside. He does not know what Harry is planning to do
or how Griphook is involved, but he warns Harry to be careful of
goblins. He says that goblins are deeply distrustful of wizards,
believing that wizards do not respect agreements involving treasure
and tend to trample on goblin rights. He explains that goblins believe
manufactured items belong to the maker, and that ownership of goblin-made goods
should not pass from wizard to wizard but should revert to the goblins
after the first owner's death. He warns Harry of the dangers of
reneging on a deal with a goblin.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Six: Gringotts
To break into Gringotts, Hermione disguises herself as
Bellatrix Lestrange and changes Ron's appearance so he's unrecognizable. With
Harry and Griphook under the Invisibility Cloak, the four go to
Diagon Alley, where they see witches and wizards begging in the streets,
deprived of their wands by the Ministry.
A Death Eater named Travers stops Hermione/Bellatrix,
noting that he'd heard she'd been confined to her house and lost
her wand, but Hermione dismisses his questions contemptuously, in
a good imitation of Bellatrix's manner. Unfortunately, Travers is
going to Gringotts too, and they enter the bank together.
The first security obstacle they face is Probity Probes—rods
that detect the presence of Concealment spells and magical items.
Harry sneaks up in his cloak and zaps the guards working the probes
with spells of Confusion.
At the customer service counter, Hermione asks to be admitted
to Bellatrix's vault, and a goblin asks her for identification.
When the goblin says her wand will suffice, Harry realizes that
they must know Bellatrix lost her wand and must be expecting an
impostor, so he uses the Imperius curse to control the goblin's
mind. The goblin compliments her on her new wand, which makes Travers
suspicious, so Harry controls him as well.
The entire party, led by the mind-controlled goblin, gets
into a rail cart and travels deep into the vaults. Harry curses
himself for the strategy they've adopted, realizing that the Death
Eaters know all about who stole Bellatrix's wand, and that posing
as Bellatrix has already brought them too much scrutiny and attention.
When the cart passes through a waterfall and all of their Disguising
spells are undone, Griphook tells them that the Gringotts employees
have set up defenses indicating that they know impostors are present.
A dragon blocks the passageway to the vault, but Griphook shakes
metal instruments called Clankers, which the dragon has been trained
to fear, and it backs up. The mind-controlled goblin places his
palm to the door of the vault, and it opens.
Harry knows from his conversations with Dumbledore that
if a Horcrux is in the vault, it must either be the Hufflepuff cup
or else an unknown object, so they have no choice but to look for
the cup. Unfortunately, whenever they touch anything inside the
vault, it burns them and then multiplies into myriad worthless copies,
so that if they continue touching items in the vault, it will eventually
fill and crush them. They try not to touch anything as they search,
but this proves impossible.
Finally, they see the cup sitting high up out of reach.
The dragon roars outside the door, and the heat from the multiplied
treasure is overwhelming. Hermione Levitates Harry toward the cup,
but he knocks over a suit of armor, and they begin to be buried
in hot objects. Harry uses the sword to skewer the cup through a
handle as Griphook sinks beneath the burning treasure. Harry stops
to save him, letting go of the sword, and Griphook seizes the sword,
flinging the cup into the air. Harry realizes that Griphook never
believed Harry would keep his word, but he manages to catch the
cup again as Griphook disappears.
A crowd of goblins appears in the passage, there to apprehend Harry
and company. Harry uses his wand to free the chained dragon, then
the three get on the dragon's back and ride it through the tunnel,
eventually emerging in the bank lobby, exiting through the door,
and flying off into the sky above Diagon Alley.
Summary: Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Final Hiding Place
The dragon flies far off into the countryside, finally
flying lower over a mountainous lake. Harry and friends decide to
jump off into the lake, and make their way, bruised, burned, and
battered, to the shore, the cup safely in their grasp.
Harry has a vision in which he not only sees out of Voldemort's eyes
but reads his thoughts. Voldemort is questioning a goblin about the
break-in, and when told that Harry Potter was the thief and that the
cup was the item stolen, he flies into a rage and kills the goblin and
all the wizards who don't flee fast enough, using the Elder Wand.
Voldemort is not yet aware that Harry knows about his Horcruxes
and is destroying them, because he does not feel anything when they
are destroyed. Now that his cup Horcrux has been stolen, it finally
occurs to him that Harry might be after his Horcruxes, and that
Dumbledore might have given Harry the means to find them out. He
resolves to check on his ring and his locket to see that they're safe,
and to keep Nagini the snake (which is itself a Horcrux) beside him
at all times. Finally, he will check on the last and safest Horcrux, which
is at Hogwarts.
Harry relays this information to his friends. They know
they have very limited time, because Voldemort will discover that
his ring and locket are gone within a matter of hours, and may move
the final Horcrux to a new hiding place. On a more positive note,
they now know the final Horcrux is at Hogwarts, so they set off
for the village of Hogsmeade.
Analysis: Chapters Twenty-Five–Twenty-Seven
Now that Harry has made his decision and committed himself
to finishing the quest, the novel starts to move more quickly to
its conclusion, and in three chapters the trio pulls off their most
audacious mission yet, breaking into and out of the famously well-protected Gringotts
bank. When Harry was introduced to Gringotts in the first novel,
something as foolhardy as breaking into a vault was probably the
furthest thing from his, or the reader's mind.
Harry's qualms about lying to the goblin, and Bill's warning about
playing fast and loose in deals with goblins, are both examples
of foreshadowing. We know that the implicit conflict between Griphook
and Harry over the sword will eventually break out into the open,
and Harry will have to find a new way to destroy Horcruxes.
In the heist sequence, we see the results of the Ministry's
activities, as wandless witches and wizards are reduced to begging
in the gutter. The suspense of the break-in is heightened by its
being narrated from Harry's point of view, even though it is Hermione
who is under the most pressure to perform.
The image of Voldemort killing his followers brings our
attention back to Voldemort as the central threat. Now that the
conflicts in the middle of the book, between Harry and his friends
and between Harry and himself, have either been resolved or receded into
the background, the novel moves into its final phase. Voldemort
discovers the true nature of Harry's quest, and the quest brings Harry
and his friends directly into confrontation with Voldemort.
