Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

The Great Hall was green and silver. Slytherin’s banners hung between the tables, and an enormous serpent occupied the space above the teachers’ seats. Somebody had polished the silver edging until it caught every candle in the room. Ron sat down hard enough to rattle his cutlery, apparently unimpressed by the effort.

Across the hall, Malfoy found our table and smiled. I refused to give him an interesting response and reached for the bread. Fred and George sat farther along our bench without their usual betting arrangements. Six successive Slytherin victories seemed to have persuaded even them that pessimism might be a sound financial policy.

‘We could have done it,’ Harry said. Hermione looked towards the hourglasses, and I knew the number we were all trying not to mention. Two hundred points had disappeared in January. Even after the rest of that month’s events, the missing rubies had remained missing.

McGonagall tapped her glass. Conversation faded, and Dumbledore stood beneath the serpent looking entirely comfortable with the decorations. He began announcing the year’s totals. Gryffindor had two hundred and fifty-two points, which made Ron close his eyes before the other houses were mentioned.

Hufflepuff had three hundred and fifty-two, Ravenclaw four hundred and twenty-six. Slytherin’s four hundred and seventy-two brought enough noise from their table to make the winner impossible to misunderstand. I leaned towards Harry while they celebrated and pointed out that adding back our two hundred would still have left us twenty behind.

‘That doesn’t help,’ he said. He kept looking at the banners rather than at me.

‘It means we didn’t personally lose the entire cup. Only a very impressive amount of it.’ I got a reluctant smile before he looked away again. The distinction was mathematically useful and emotionally about as effective as my explanation outside McGonagall’s classroom had been.

Dumbledore waited for the cheering to settle. He did not sit down. When he said there were still a few matters to recognise, I put the bread on my plate and listened more carefully. At our end of the table, everybody else seemed to have reached the same conclusion.

‘First, Miss Hermione Granger. For clear thinking in great danger, and the judgement to turn knowledge into help when it was needed: fifty points.’

Hermione stared at him as though another girl with her name might be sitting nearby. Ron got to his feet first, with Harry following as the table erupted. I clapped while she went pink and tried to decide where to look. Fifty points would not close the gap, but Dumbledore was waiting for us to let him speak again.

‘Mr Ronald Weasley,’ he continued. ‘For a game of chess requiring considerable skill and considerable courage: fifty points.’

Ron sat down so abruptly that I briefly wondered whether somebody had hexed him. I told him Dumbledore meant him, and he replied that he knew without looking away from the teachers’ table. Percy reached across three people to shake his hand. By then I had worked out that we were level with Hufflepuff, and the Slytherins had stopped cheering.

Dumbledore awarded Harry sixty points for his bravery under pressure and refusal to abandon a friend. Harry ducked his head when the shouting began, while Ron almost knocked his glasses off congratulating him. I remembered Harry coming at Quirrell when the wand was pointed at my face. For a moment I stopped adding the numbers and joined the applause.

‘Mr Oswald Mercer,’ Dumbledore said next. ‘For resourcefulness against a much stronger opponent, protecting what was entrusted to him, and remarkable spellwork under attack: sixty points.’

I was briefly back on the chamber floor, watching the first pulse strike the preparation against the pillar. Then Hermione caught my arm, Ron hit the table and Harry grinned at me, bringing the hall into focus again. People stood around us. Somebody shouted my surname, and Fred leaned across the bench with both hands raised as if I had scored on the pitch.

‘We’re level,’ Hermione said. Four hundred and seventy-two: I checked the sum once more before looking across the room. Malfoy’s expression had become difficult to ignore for reasons I enjoyed much more than his earlier smile. Ron began telling anyone prepared to listen that a tie was considerably better than fourth.

‘Wait,’ I told him. Dumbledore was still standing, looking down our table. Ron stopped mid-explanation and turned towards him.

The final award was ten points for Neville. Dumbledore spoke about the courage needed to tell friends they were wrong, and Neville sat motionless while the words reached him. For a second the rest of us were still too. Then the shouting seemed loud enough to lift the hall from its foundations.

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Ron grabbed Neville’s shoulders. Percy smiled so broadly that he scarcely looked like himself, and Harry climbed halfway across the bench to reach him. I laughed while clapping, with no pain in my ribs at all. My sixty had brought us level; Neville’s ten made four hundred and eighty-two and put us ahead.

He looked at me over Ron’s arm, bewildered by the noise. ‘You did that,’ I told him. He glanced towards Dumbledore, who raised his hands as the green banners began changing around us.

Scarlet spread between the candles, and the silver edging warmed to gold. The serpent gave way to a lion above the teachers’ table. I could barely hear the announcement of Gryffindor’s victory under the shouting, but the decorations had made the result clear. Fred and George celebrated with the enthusiasm of people who had just discovered how much money they might have won.

Neville was still smiling when pudding arrived. I hoped his gran would have something sensible to say about those ten points. Across the table, Ron attempted to describe the finish of his chess game again and kept being interrupted by congratulations. I stayed beside them, letting the feast continue without looking for another number to add.

The next morning, the tower filled with trunks, missing socks and complaints about belongings nobody remembered moving. I wrapped my brush-wand, checked my pouch and secured the Nimbus for the journey. Emma’s copy of the lake photograph went between pieces of stiff card, where it would survive my less orderly packing. Hermione’s luggage looked as though it had never been unpacked, which Ron found personally irritating.

Hagrid waited near the station. I returned his camera and thanked him, then noticed the album he was holding for Harry. He offered it almost awkwardly, explaining that he had asked people who had known Harry’s parents for photographs. Harry opened it and stopped paying attention to the rest of us.

A young man with untidy hair smiled from the first page. Beside him stood a woman whose eyes made Harry’s suddenly familiar in a different way. Harry turned the page with the care I used for Ken’s oldest notes. When he thanked Hagrid, the words carried much more than their length suggested.

Hagrid became interested in a strap on somebody else’s trunk until he could answer. We waited without trying to hurry Harry through the pictures. On the train, he kept the album open on his knees while Ron pointed out a moving figure in the background and Hermione leaned closer to see. I watched Harry follow his parents from page to page and thought of the mirror. These images could come home with him.

That did not make him eager to reach the Dursleys. As the journey continued, he grew quieter, leaving Ron to fill the gaps with plans for summer. Hermione had books to read and a family holiday ahead. I wanted Emma, my own bed and at least one morning when nobody could assign an essay. Harry watched the country pass outside the window.

‘We’ll keep in touch,’ I said. He turned towards us and replied that we had better. We began writing out addresses before reaching London, making the promise into something more useful than an assurance shouted across a platform.

Hermione and I added telephone numbers. Ron examined mine, then wrote the name of his house and the village nearby: the Burrow, outside Ottery St Catchpole in Devon. I asked whether an ordinary letter would reach him. He considered it before recommending an owl instead.

‘Your address seems designed to frighten a postman,’ I told him. He said the owls managed perfectly well, and went back to comparing the numbers we had supplied. Harry gave me his own, with instructions about who might answer and when I had the best chance of speaking to him. I folded the paper into my wallet.

We changed out of our robes before the train arrived. T-shirts, trainers and ordinary jackets appeared along the corridor, making the crowd look unexpectedly colourful after months of school clothes. Harry closed the album before lifting his things down. He kept it where he could reach it rather than packing it at the bottom of his trunk.

Vernon Dursley waited beyond the barrier. He saw Harry, regarded the rest of us as though the railway had made an error by admitting us and took hold of the trolley handle. His instruction to come along left little room for further conversation. Harry raised a hand while his uncle steered him towards the crowd.

‘Write when you get home,’ I called. He nodded before they disappeared between the other passengers. Ron watched them go and observed that Harry’s uncle looked cheerful. I said I had the address and number, although I was unsure what comfort that offered at that precise moment.

Hermione folded her own copy more carefully than it needed. Then her parents found her, the Weasleys began gathering their children, and the platform broke our group into separate departures. I saw Emma standing a little beyond the busiest part of the crowd. She looked me over before opening her arms.

‘All in one piece?’ she asked. I told her I was mostly original parts, and her arms tightened round me. I rested my head against her shoulder and stayed there until the platform felt less crowded.

In the car, I handed her the photograph from the lake. She held it by the edges and watched Ron turn away for the third time. Hermione’s image laughed, Harry kept smiling and my crooked collar remained beyond anyone’s ability to repair. Emma looked from the moving figures to me.

‘You look happy,’ she said. I told her I had been, and she watched the photograph a little longer. ‘Good. You can tell me about it over supper. The version that wasn’t in your letters.’

I settled against the seat, looking at the castle above our heads in the picture. There were enough ordinary days to tell her about now, along with the parts I would rather have left on the paper. I suspected supper would take considerably longer than the drive home.