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.
