It tottered over to Ron, and as it came more into the light Harry could see that it was an incredibly old man, bent double with age, his waist-length beard so white it looked like thin curling strands of bone.

The old man lifted a wand with shaking hand, and pointed it at Ron.

“Het ye done this te me?”  he creaked.

Ron tried to answer, desperately attempting to shake his head no, but like Harry he was bound too tight to move, and his mouth was closed shut.

“En Cruciate!” cried the old man, and Harry flinched — it wasn’t exactly the Cruciatus curse, but Harry could guess that maybe it was an older form of it, and it would probably have the same effect. Poor Ron…

But nothing happened. The old man shook his wand and cried out unintelligibly, but still, there was no effect at all. He’d been struck squib, all right.

Finally, he screamed incoherently at his house elves, and they obliged. Three of the twisted creatures stepped forward, and silently gestured at Ron in unison. Ron still couldn’t scream — his locked jaw wouldn’t let him — but he twisted and writhed, and emitted a high-pitched, shuddering, animal-like moan unlike anything Harry had ever heard before.

Then from behind him he heard Hermione scream, “Stupefy!” Her spell shot past him and struck one of the house elves, knocking it back into the other two and sending all three sprawling. Gormenghast collapsed. Now Hermione was landing next to him and hopping off her broomstick, casting more Stupefies in quick succession; and Neville was landing too, following suit; and now dozens of Ministry house elves were Apparating with a thunderous cacophony, casting attack spells of every kind. Gormenghast’s house elves quickly rallied, however, and battle was joined.

Harry’s bindings disappeared, and he crawled over to Ron, who appeared to have passed out. Lying next to him was Gormenghast, breathing hard, looking up at Harry with frightened watery eyes. Two of his house elves were fallen next to him, knocked out while desperately trying to fight off the assault.

“Call off your elves!” said Harry. He tried to point at Gormenghast with a steady hand. “Call them off!”

Gormenghast shook his head, apparently not understanding. Did he speak Old English or something? Harry wondered if even Hermione would know how to communicate with him…

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the dark wizard’s fallen house elves acting very strangely. It was lying next to Gormenghast as if knocked out, but it was slowly and stealthily reaching towards something hanging around its neck.

It was a Time Turner!

“Oh no you don’t!” cried Harry. “Immobulus! Immobulus!”

The elf stopped, its features frozen in a look of utter hatred and frustration. Harry breathed out in relief. With a Time Turner, the elf could have gone back and changed the past. Gormenghast’s elves wouldn’t have been caught by surprise this time.

But, in fact, had they been caught by surprise? After all, they’d arranged some kind of rock fall or ceiling collapse to happen right when Ron flew in the window. Maybe this wasn’t the first time that Time Turner had been turned…

Well, he’d stopped it this time. But they could still lose unless Harry managed to convince Gormenghast to surrender.

“Stop this!” Harry shouted at Gormenghast. “Give up! Surrender!” He racked his brains to come up with some other words that the dark wizard might understand. The wizard looked frightened; he would probably a agree if only Harry could get the idea across to him. “Yield! Capitulate! Relent! Submit! Abdicate! Forswear! Concede!”

“Concedo,” muttered Gormenghast. “Concedo.” And then louder: “Concedus! Concedus! Ons geifan et off!”

And slowly, reluctantly, his house elves lowered their hands and bowed their heads in defeat.