Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Harry said my name twice before I managed to open my eyes. I had been trying to ignore him because everything hurt, including several places I had not previously considered separate enough to complain. He leaned over me in hospital pyjamas, with scratches on his face and a dressing near his hairline. Beyond him, tall windows admitted a flat winter light.

I tried to tell him he looked awful. The sound made him reach for a glass instead of answering, and he helped me take a little water. Swallowing hurt, though less than trying to speak with a throat full of sand. When I could ask whether we were in the hospital wing, he nodded and put the glass where I could reach it.

Clean sheets covered me, and bandages supported the places across my chest that felt worst. My hands were both present. I could not feel my pouch, and reached towards the pocket where the Stone had been before remembering that somebody had changed my clothes. Harry said he did not know what had happened to it; he had only been awake a short while himself.

Parcels crowded both our bedside tables. Somebody had balanced a Chocolate Frog on a folded card, with my name written across the front in Neville’s careful hand. I stared at it before asking about Ron and Hermione. Harry pointed out their notes among the gifts and said they had visited, though he thought Madam Pomfrey had sent them away before he woke.

My pouch stood on a chair beside the bed. The brush-wand lay across it, and both looked whole from where I was sitting. Farther down the ward, a curtain stirred as somebody moved behind it. We had got out. The thought arrived slowly, as if I needed to recognise enough ordinary objects before I could believe it.

‘Do you remember everything?’ Harry asked. He sat on the edge of his own bed, watching me instead of the parcels.

‘Up to the thing that came out of him.’ I could still hear pieces striking the chamber floor. Harry said he remembered that much too, and we stopped talking without either of us suggesting another subject.

Dumbledore appeared at the end of the ward in plain brown robes. He spoke to Madam Pomfrey, received a look that made even him wait, and eventually approached with a chair. He put it between our beds and told us not to get up. I had not intended to, but Harry settled back against his pillows.

‘How long have we been here?’ I asked. Two days, Dumbledore told us. Our injuries had responded well to treatment, but Madam Pomfrey would decide when we could leave. I asked about Ron before he could describe any more of mine.

‘His leg has been treated. He is walking again, although he has been forbidden to demonstrate that by running.’ Dumbledore rested his hands on his knees. ‘Miss Granger is well too. They have been very determined about visiting.’

I let my head sink against the pillow. ‘She got help, then. She made it back.’

‘She did. Mr Weasley had already delivered your message to Professor McGonagall. Miss Granger met her on the way to the corridor and explained what lay below. I had just returned from the Ministry.’

He meant Percy. For a moment I had pictured Ron dragging his injured leg back through the room of flying keys, and the correction came with relief. Dumbledore confirmed that he had found us, then glanced at the gifts. Accounts of what we had done were travelling round the school, some more inventive than others. One apparently involved me bringing the ceiling down on Quirrell.

‘I didn’t,’ I said. Dumbledore answered that he knew, and that what I had actually managed was quite enough. I looked at my bandaged hands, trying to fit those words to the fight I remembered. There was very little between Quirrell turning from the mirror and the chamber going dark that felt suitable for a story told over breakfast.

Harry asked about the Stone. Dumbledore said it was safe from Voldemort, and that he and Nicolas Flamel had arranged for it to be destroyed. By now, it had been. I sat up too quickly, catching a pain across my ribs which made Harry reach towards me before I waved him back.

‘Destroyed?’ I repeated. Dumbledore nodded, and the least polite of several questions escaped first. ‘Then what was all that for?’

‘To prevent someone else deciding what to do with it,’ he said. ‘You succeeded.’

‘It could have been destroyed before.’ I kept one hand against my ribs while waiting for an answer. Dumbledore did not smile or suggest that I would understand when I was older.

‘Nicolas could have chosen that. For a great many years, the Stone has allowed him and his wife to remain alive. Giving it up was not a small decision, and it was theirs to make.’

I remembered the book on the train. The Elixir required a continuing supply; Flamel’s age had been more than an impressive number attached to an object we wanted to identify. I had thought of the Stone as something to keep away from a thief. Two people we had never met had been drinking what it made and waking the following morning because of it.

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‘They’ll die,’ Harry said. Dumbledore told him they had enough Elixir to put their affairs in order, and that they had made the choice together. I looked towards the windows, trying to imagine making that decision after six centuries of finding another way.

‘He didn’t get it,’ I said at last. Dumbledore confirmed it, without adding anything about how that should make me feel.

Harry drew his knees up beneath the sheet. ‘Why did the mirror give it to Oswald? I saw myself take it out and put it in his pocket.’

I said I had seen the same thing. Dumbledore explained that the enchantment allowed somebody to find the Stone if they wanted to find it without wishing to use it. Harry had wanted it kept away from Quirrell. The reflection had entrusted it to me because he trusted me to keep it safe.

‘Did you arrange for it to pass to me?’ I asked. Dumbledore shook his head. That part had been the enchantment’s response to what we brought to it, he said. Harry looked pleased in a quiet, exhausted way, and I remembered the weight against my leg while Quirrell tried to reach my pocket.

‘You moved the mirror there after Christmas.’ I watched Dumbledore’s face as I said it. ‘You thought somebody might get past the other protections.’

‘I believed they could be breached. The mirror was intended to keep the Stone safe if that happened.’

I asked about Quirrell. Dumbledore paused before saying that Snape had concerns and so had he, but they had not known Voldemort was sharing Quirrell’s body. That answered one part of the question. I asked why, if they knew enough to watch him, he had still been teaching us.

Harry became very still beside me. Dumbledore looked briefly towards the gifts on our tables before replying. ‘Suspicion can justify an investigation without telling us what we will find. I received Hagrid’s reports, and Severus was watching Quirrell. There were things I wished to establish before confronting him. I believed we could contain the danger while we did so.’

‘McGonagall said the protections were enough.’ The words came out more sharply than I intended. ‘We told her what we thought that morning.’

‘She took your account of the forest seriously. We placed too much confidence in the protections, and we did not understand how close the danger was.’ He looked back at me. ‘My belief that we could contain it was wrong.’

I wanted a reason that made the whole thing sensible. Failing that, I wanted somebody to blame so completely that I would not have to think about my promise to Percy or Neville lying on the sofa. Dumbledore said we could have waited for McGonagall, and I admitted that I knew. He added that we should not have been left wondering whether anybody would listen.

He said it without asking me to agree. For the first time since he sat down, I had no immediate question ready. Harry filled the pause by asking whether Voldemort would die now that the Stone was gone. Dumbledore said he had survived without it for years and might find another way to return.

My chest tightened for a reason unrelated to the bandages. I had burned Quirrell, bound him and broken what remained of him. The thing behind his face had simply left. I asked why Harry touching him had done what my blows and spells could not, while Harry flexed the fingers of his unbandaged hand.

‘There was a protection,’ Dumbledore said. ‘An older one. Your mother died to save you, Harry. Her sacrifice left something Voldemort could not bear to touch.’

Harry reached towards his scar. Dumbledore gently told him that he meant something he carried without being able to see it, and continued speaking about his mother. I listened without interrupting. There was no question about magic that I needed answered badly enough to put it between Harry and what he was hearing.

When Dumbledore turned towards me again, I was looking at my pouch. He said my name, and I admitted I had been thinking about how to stop Voldemort properly. I liked being at Hogwarts. I would prefer to go on liking it without finding him inside another teacher.

‘A reasonable ambition,’ Dumbledore replied. ‘It is also a question to which a hurried answer could be dangerous. Bring me anything you believe concerns him. You need not try it first.’

‘I don’t enjoy nearly dying,’ I said. Harry gave me a look and suggested I practise demonstrating that. It hurt to laugh, but I managed a little with one hand over my ribs. Dumbledore waited until I could breathe comfortably again before rising.

Harry stopped him with a question about Snape. If he had been protecting Harry, why did he seem to hate him? Dumbledore sat back down long enough to explain that Snape and James had disliked each other, and that James saving his life had made the relationship no simpler. Snape disliked owing the debt; protecting Harry might be how he understood repaying it.

It sounded like an explanation with parts missing. Harry frowned while considering it, and I thought of the handwriting in the notebook beneath my bed. I asked whether Snape had known my father in the same way. Dumbledore looked at me, waiting until I explained the useful extra work and the attention he gave what I was trying to learn.

‘Perhaps you should ask him,’ he suggested. I said I had hoped for a version involving less risk of detention, which finally made him smile. Apparently, I had chosen a difficult subject for that particular condition.

He noticed the sweets as he turned to leave and selected a brown Every Flavour Bean after some consideration. A moment later, his expression changed so completely that Harry began laughing before he announced the flavour. Dumbledore said ‘Earwax’ with injured dignity, then left us to face Madam Pomfrey. I waited until the laughter stopped hurting before reaching for Neville’s card.

The message was short. He hoped we would be better soon and was glad Ron could walk again. At the bottom, pressed firmly enough that I could feel the writing through the paper, he had added that we still needed to talk. I placed it where I could see it rather than returning it to the pile.

‘He’ll be angry,’ Harry said. I told him Neville should be, and drew my pouch carefully onto the bed.

The folded map was inside. Beneath it, the stoppered bottle and wrapped horn remained in their protected pockets. I touched the wrapping before closing the pouch again. The unicorn had died beyond the grounds, and I had stopped the man who had killed it; I had not stopped the thing that made him do it. Its blood and horn were still waiting for me to do something useful with them.

Harry opened a Chocolate Frog and offered me a piece. I took it carefully, relieved to discover that my hand worked even though it shook. Outside the window, snow lay along the ledge. I let myself watch it while we ate, with Neville’s card standing beside the glass of water.