“I think we must resign ourselves to the fact that they will, at some point, realize we are not Lord Voldemort. Thus far, however, we have done well. They have allowed us to raise the boat.”
“But why have they let us?” asked Harry, who could not shake off the vision of tentacles rising out of the dark water the moment they were out of sight of the bank.
“Voldemort would have been reasonably confident that none but a very great wizard would have been able to find the boat,” said Dumbledore. “I think he would have been prepared to risk what was, to his mind, the most unlikely possibility that somebody else would find it, knowing that he had set other obstacles ahead that only he would be able to penetrate. We shall see whether he was right.”
Harry looked down into the boat. It really was very small.
“It doesn’t look like it was built for two people. Will it hold both of us? Will we be too heavy together?”
Dumbledore chuckled.
“Voldemort will not have cared about the weight, but about the amount of magical power that crossed his lake. I rather think an enchantment will have been placed upon this boat so that only one wizard at a time will be able to sail in it.”
“But then—?”
“I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers will register compared to mine.”