Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Madam Pomfrey let us leave on Saturday. First she made me breathe deeply, turn my head and promise not to confuse feeling better with being made of iron. Harry retrieved his cloak from the cupboard where she had put our belongings. He unfolded a corner, watched his hand disappear beneath it and packed it away with visible relief while I checked my pouch.

‘No experiments until you can laugh without holding your ribs,’ she told me. I asked what would happen if nobody said anything funny. She looked at Harry, who grinned instead of supporting a perfectly reasonable question. I decided to leave while I still had permission.

Ron and Hermione were coming along the corridor when we stepped out. For a moment all four of us stopped. Then Hermione came straight towards me and wrapped her arms round my shoulders. I returned the hug carefully, trying to keep the sudden pressure off the tender places across my chest.

‘Sorry,’ she said, letting go when I drew a sharp breath. ‘Did that hurt?’

‘Only a normal amount.’ Ron clapped Harry on the back, reconsidered doing the same to me and gripped my arm instead. He complained that we had taken our time, so I told him I had been enjoying the medicine. Harry immediately supplied the inconvenient fact that I had complained about every spoonful.

Hermione’s laugh was unsteady. Looking at her properly, I noticed the shadows beneath her eyes and remembered Dumbledore saying how determined she had been about visiting. I thanked her for bringing help. She shook her head and started to describe finding us, but stopped before she could finish. Ron looked down at the floor beside her.

I remembered him lying behind the broken horse. There was very little he needed to explain about seeing a friend who might not get up again. I asked after his leg instead, and he took two exaggerated steps to demonstrate that it was better than the horse. That got us moving towards the tower, although Hermione stayed close enough to catch my arm on the stairs.

Somebody cheered when Harry came through the portrait hole. By the time I followed, people were standing, asking questions and clearing places beside the fire as if we had brought the House Cup with us. Seamus wanted to know whether I had really set a professor alight. I told him I mostly remembered the professor trying to kill me, and he hesitated before moving his bag so I could sit.

The questions became less eager after that. There were still biscuits, and people who had recently avoided our table now wanted to hear about the chessboard. Ron borrowed pieces from Percy and began reconstructing the finish. I listened until I noticed Neville standing near the stairs, then got up before I could find an excuse to wait.

He watched me approach without moving. I thanked him for the card, and he said his gran had told him to send one. When I replied that I was glad he had, he rubbed his thumb with one finger and looked towards the sofa.

‘I heard everything after you did it,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even tell you I didn’t want the cushion there.’

The detail made it worse. I had spent days thinking about mirrors, curses and the thing inside Quirrell while Neville remembered being unable to move away from a cushion. I said I was sorry, without adding what I had thought I needed to do. He had heard that part already.

‘You called me brave.’ His eyes went past me towards the celebration. ‘Then you did that.’

‘You were brave. I wanted you out of my way.’ Saying both things together left very little room to hide behind the first. He looked back at me and asked whether I would do it again.

I could have promised never to make another bad decision. I knew how easily that promise could become something impressive I said when I wanted a conversation to end. Instead, I told him that arguing with me was no reason to hex him, and I would not treat it as one again. He considered the answer for a while before mentioning that Percy had been furious.

‘I’ve got him next,’ I said. One corner of Neville’s mouth moved, though he did not tell me everything was fine. He did let me sit beside him while Ron explained how the knight had opened Harry’s path to the king. I stayed there and listened rather than trying to obtain a better ending to our conversation.

Percy required a longer one. By the time he finished, I understood considerably more about what a prefect was expected to do when four first-years lied to him and disappeared from the tower. I had made delivering a warning harder by ignoring his instructions afterwards. There was nothing in stopping Quirrell that altered the order in which those things had happened.

I went to bed early while the cheering continued downstairs. On Sunday morning, I left my exercise clothes folded on the trunk and went with Harry and Ron to visit Hagrid. He opened the door, made a strangled noise and gathered Harry and me against his coat before I could explain the arrangement of my ribs. I managed his name, and he released us at once.

‘Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.’ He stood aside and ushered us in. ‘I’ve got tea. Come and sit down.’

Stolen novel; please report.

Fang rested his head against my knee while Hagrid searched for cups already waiting on the table. A pale scorch mark remained on one chair from Norbert’s stay. Hagrid looked at it, then began saying he should never have told a stranger how to get past Fluffy. He had not even seen the man properly, and he had given away the secret.

Harry told him he had not known. Hagrid said he should have, then mentioned the detention and what McGonagall had said about taking us into the forest. He agreed with her, which made it difficult to offer the sort of reassurance he clearly wanted. I scratched Fang behind an ear while looking for something true to say.

‘You reported what happened,’ I told him. ‘We went down after McGonagall told us to stay out. You don’t have to take responsibility for that part too.’

‘Doesn’t make it better,’ he said, staring into his tea. I agreed that it did not, and we stayed while he found a handkerchief large enough to serve me as a towel. Eventually he began asking about something other than Quirrell. We let the tea go cold rather than hurry the change of subject.

On Monday I returned to Potions. Snape inspected my work, paused beside the recorded ingredients and tapped the line with one finger. My notation remained appalling, he informed me. I said I had missed lessons, which he accepted as an explanation for the gap in my notes, but not for the work beneath his finger.

He moved on to Harry and found something else to dislike. I corrected the line, feeling pleased for reasons that would have sounded peculiar if spoken aloud. Snape had returned us to a room where a badly recorded ingredient was a problem requiring attention. After the hospital wing, I appreciated having one that could be repaired with a quill.

The following days were less dramatic. After a week, I could laugh without holding my chest; after another, I could finish my morning exercise without rediscovering an injury. Lessons filled the time we had previously spent hunting Flamel. There were essays to finish, mixtures to spoil and long hours of History of Magic in which the scratching of quills gradually gave way to silence.

I returned to the talisman work carefully. The chain had functioned when I most needed it, making it dangerously easy to remember it as reliable. Our notebook preserved a less flattering account. Hermione and I recorded the combat result beside the failed classroom arrangements, and I kept the ordinary prepared spells at the front of my pouch. One desperate success did not make every future angle correct.

Harry and Ron told each other the parts of the ordeal they had not seen. Hermione listened to the account of the mirror twice, asking different questions the second time. When I repeated Quirrell’s explanation of the Quidditch match, she stopped moving her quill. She asked whether Snape had really collided with him after catching fire.

‘That’s what he said. If Snape had stepped the other way—’ I stopped when she told me not to finish. We both knew where the thought led. After a while she opened the notebook again, but neither of us pretended that discovering the truth made our decision at the match harmless.

Winter thinned into mud and then green grass. On the fourth of April, I turned twelve. Emma sent a cake sturdy enough to survive its journey and a letter containing two pages of affection, followed by a pointed request that I reach thirteen without visiting another hospital. Harry read that part over my shoulder and pronounced her sensible.

‘Everyone’s taken her side,’ I complained. He said I made it easy, then asked whether sharing the cake required agreeing to her terms. I gave him a piece before the discussion could become another inquiry into my judgement. There were already enough people qualified to conduct one.

As examinations approached, Harry and Ron developed a sudden attachment to Hermione’s revision notes. They followed her timetable with the desperation of people who had discovered that surviving an attack did not excuse ignorance of a plant’s properties. Hermione complained less about their usual habits once they began doing the work. I had my own reasons to join them rather than watch their efforts with amusement.

Preparing a charm in advance was useful in a corridor. Beginning with blank treated Runebark under an examiner’s eye made every hesitation visible. I worked carefully, resisted the temptation to rush a line because I recognised it and kept my brush steady most of the time. The material could not rescue a design I had drawn incorrectly.

Potions was worse. Snape said nothing while I worked, which somehow felt more threatening than criticism. I checked the time, adjusted the heat and kept to the required ingredients instead of improving a mixture nobody had asked me to improve. When the results arrived, I read the Potions mark twice before trusting it.

Several subjects were marked Outstanding. Potions was the one I returned to, remembering the notebook and all the extra work I had resented at the time. Hermione came top of the year. Harry and Ron passed everything, celebrating as though the results exempted them from ever revising again. Hermione corrected that impression, and Ron begged for five minutes before she explained next year.

We had a week without classes before the feast. On its first morning, I looked round the common room and realised how little I could send home without a letter explaining why it sounded worse than it was. Photographs seemed a promising answer. When I suggested pictures of us, the castle and places where we had not nearly died, Harry looked up from his chessboard with interest.

Hagrid lent us an old camera and explained which lever we must not force. We photographed the common room, classrooms we had permission to enter and Ron pretending to remain awake at a desk. He objected when Hermione suggested taking a second picture for accuracy. I kept the camera pointed at them long enough to catch the argument.

Madam Hooch allowed one supervised afternoon on the pitch with my Nimbus. Ron borrowed it for his photograph, completed a slow circuit and returned looking unbearably pleased. He announced that flying came naturally to him. Harry accepted the broom and observed that Ron’s particular talent had involved keeping close to the ground.

For the last picture, Hagrid took us across the lake in a boat. We climbed a slope on the far bank until the castle stood behind us, its towers clear above the water. Ron put an arm round Harry, and Hermione caught my sleeve to pull me into line. Hagrid told us to move closer, so we shuffled together while he adjusted the camera.

In the finished photograph, Ron kept looking away just as everyone else faced forwards. Hermione laughed and tried to turn him back. Harry smiled without appearing to have been asked, and I stood among them with a crooked collar and the lake bright behind my shoulder. I ordered a copy for Emma, pleased to have something I would not need to explain away.