Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

Knowing where to stand on the platform made me feel absurdly experienced. First-years passed with their trunks, stopping to stare at the train, the owls and the apparently solid barrier behind them. I remembered doing much the same thing. Then Emma adjusted my collar, placing a reasonable limit on the impression of competence.

‘Letters,’ she said. I pointed out that I had an owl of my own now, which she regarded as the removal of an excuse rather than an answer. I promised to write and hugged her before she found another instruction to add. Leo watched from his cage with no apparent interest in our agreement.

Hermione arrived early, and we found a compartment before the main rush. Once our luggage was secure, Leo settled his feathers and turned his back on us. Hermione admired his manner. I said I hoped it was shyness, then sat opposite her and began explaining Ollivander’s suggestion while we watched the platform fill.

‘A partnership,’ she repeated. ‘That fits some of what we’ve seen.’ When I added that he wanted us to look for the places it failed, she said she liked him. I could have predicted that part of the conversation without needing a wandmaker.

She put down her book when I mentioned Knockturn Alley. I tried answering the question I preferred, describing what I had bought, but she repeated whether I had gone alone. I admitted that I had and gave her the list, with the labels and quantities I had recorded. She read it before saying we must check everything before using it.

‘A name on a packet isn’t the same as knowing what’s inside,’ she said. I agreed, then reminded her that I had spent the summer learning about shopkeepers. She observed that becoming one was an unusual method of research and reached into her beaded bag.

Her own contribution came in little bottles, each labelled in careful handwriting. Some names belonged to preparations from books we had only started examining near the end of term. She had made small batches over the summer and kept the notes. I picked up a bottle, read its label again and told her I was impressed, which made her look pleased despite an effort to remain matter-of-fact.

‘We’ve got plenty to try,’ I said. She specified a proper desk at school, removing the possibility of an experiment on the compartment table before I suggested one. I put the bottle down unopened and waited until she had packed the others away. Then I closed the door while most of the noise still came from the platform.

‘These didn’t come from Knockturn Alley,’ I told her. ‘I need you to know that first.’ I took the stoppered bottle from my pouch and laid the wrapped horn beside it. The liquid remained silver, bright against the tabletop.

Her eyes moved between them. I assured her I had not drunk any before she finished asking whether it was unicorn blood. When I loosened the wrapping to show the horn, she got up to check the door. She returned without sitting, watching me rather than either object.

‘From the forest,’ she said. I nodded. ‘You’ve had them all this time? Why didn’t you tell me?’

I could have mentioned the next night, the hospital or the examinations. Each had once provided a reason to wait. Together, they explained very little about saying nothing until September. I told her that at first I had not known what to do, and afterwards staying silent had become easier than explaining why I had not told her sooner.

She sat down slowly. ‘Explain now,’ she said, leaving the bottle where it was.

I described kneeling beside the unicorn, wanting its blood for my work and finding that the wounds made my original interest feel inadequate. I had promised to stop whoever hurt it and use what it allowed me to take to help people. Then the horn had appeared in my hand, without being cut or pulled away. Saying it aloud made me remember the warmth of its neck beneath my palm.

‘You think it gave the horn to you,’ Hermione said. I answered that I did, and that Firenze had heard my promise. ‘That doesn’t mean the blood is safe.’

‘I know. I don’t understand what the promise means to the magic, if anything.’ I looked at the unopened bottle. ‘That’s one reason I’ve left it alone. Can you help me find out?’

Her expression softened a little. She lifted the bottle carefully and said that its appearance could not tell us what state it was in after so long. We would begin by finding out, rather than mixing it into ink and hoping a promise protected me. I agreed before she reminded me how much stronger Voldemort had been.

‘I’m not looking for another fight tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I haven’t forgotten what I promised either.’ She held my gaze for a moment, then asked whether she could keep both things with the research materials, separate from the other bottles. We would record anything we did with them. I agreed, adding that they remained mine, and she said she knew.

She wrapped the horn properly and placed it with the bottle in a protected part of her bag. I watched her close it. Entrusting them to someone felt different from leaving them at the bottom of my pouch, where I could postpone deciding what came next. Hermione said Harry and Ron should hear the story before we tried anything with them. I told her they could hear it when they arrived, then looked out at a platform containing neither of them.

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We watched more students board. The compartment door opened while Hermione checked the time, and a girl stood there holding a magazine. She had dark gold hair, pale eyebrows and grey eyes which rested on us without the hurried glance towards the luggage I expected from someone seeking a seat. Small radish-shaped earrings hung beside her face, and a cork dangled from a cord round her neck.

I forgot to say hello. ‘May I sit here?’ she asked, with a quiet assurance that made it sound entirely reasonable. Hermione’s shoe touched my ankle beneath the table, bringing my attention back to the answer I had failed to give. I said yes and moved the bag nearest the window.

‘I’m Luna Lovegood.’ She sat and smiled at us in turn. I introduced myself, explaining that this was my second year. Hermione gave her name and said we were both in Gryffindor. Luna greeted each of us as though she had plenty of time, despite the final goodbyes growing urgent outside.

I asked whether she was a first-year. She said she was, then mentioned her father telling her how lovely the lake looked when the light changed. We had taken photographs there, I told her. When she asked from which side, I took out the copy I had kept and showed her the castle behind us.

She watched Ron turn away inside the picture and laughed. I liked the sound enough to find myself hoping she would do it again. While Hermione looked along the corridor for Harry and Ron, Luna asked about the boat and the slope on the far bank. I described Hagrid trying to line us up, and she returned the photograph with another smile.

Hermione came back as the train gave its first shudder. She said the boys must be in another compartment. I nodded, although I would have preferred to see them rather than accept another reasonable explanation for their absence. Luna opened her magazine upside down, with The Quibbler’s title facing away from her.

Hermione noticed the title before the direction of the pages. She asked whether it was the latest issue, and Luna said her father edited it. Hermione’s mouth closed on whatever she had been preparing to say. I looked at the cover, then at Luna, who seemed quite content to continue.

‘There’s an article about a creature people keep looking for in the wrong places,’ she said. ‘They say it doesn’t exist because they haven’t found it.’

‘Sometimes not finding evidence is a reason to doubt something,’ Hermione replied. Her voice was careful rather than dismissive. Luna agreed, then pointed out that looking in the wrong place was still possible.

‘How would you tell the difference?’ I asked. Luna considered the platform moving past us before suggesting we ask somebody who had seen the creature. Hermione added that we would need to check what they had actually seen. Luna accepted that too, without the offence Hermione seemed prepared to explain herself against.

I did not know whether the creature existed. A year earlier, I would have treated a three-headed dog as an unnecessarily enthusiastic piece of fiction, which seemed a good reason to ask questions. It was less convincing as a reason to believe every answer. Hermione returned to her book while Luna and I carried on talking, with London giving way beyond the window.

She asked about classes, then Leo, then the prepared strips I had taken out while checking my pouch. The subjects arrived without warning, but I found them easy enough to follow once I stopped expecting a formal change of direction. When she asked whether the paper was for magic, I gave her a water preparation to examine. She held it carefully, taking care not to bend the edges.

‘For my magic,’ I explained. ‘Other people haven’t been able to set them off.’

‘Did you make it?’ she asked. I told her my father and a friend had begun the work, leaving me enough to start learning. I had been discovering what I could do with it, with Hermione helping with the experiments. Hermione added the records without looking up, and I acknowledged that contribution as especially important.

Luna looked from the strip to me. ‘It must be lovely when something works,’ she said. I remembered a pulse crossing the chamber floor towards the final piece, then the quieter satisfaction of a bell staying silent at a classroom desk. I told her it could be. She returned the preparation without trying to cast, and I put it away intact.

Fields replaced the buildings outside. Somewhere down the corridor, somebody was arguing over a seat he claimed to have reserved. Luna turned a page of the upside-down magazine, then asked whether I had ever seen a flying car. I was becoming accustomed to following her questions, but that one still took me a moment.

‘No. A friend’s family has one, though.’ I glanced at the window. ‘His father modified it.’

‘Is that your friend?’ Luna asked. She pointed outside, and I looked without initially understanding what was beside the train. An old car floated beyond the glass. Then someone leaned from the passenger window, with dark hair flattened by the wind, and I recognised Harry.

I said his name loudly enough to make Hermione look up. Her book slid from her lap when she saw him. I moved nearer the window, trying to see the driver, but the angle concealed his face. Unless Arthur Weasley had adopted a very unusual way of taking his children to school, I could make a fair guess who sat beside Harry.

‘Ron,’ I said. Hermione stood quickly and caught her knee against the table, barely seeming to notice. She wanted to know whether they were trying to get themselves expelled. Luna asked whether they were trying to reach the train, which struck me as a more immediately useful question.

I pulled at the window. By the time I had it open far enough to call, the car was climbing. The wind carried my words away, Harry’s head disappeared inside and the vehicle rose beyond our view. I waited beside the open gap in the hope that it would come down again. It did not.

‘There must be a reason,’ Luna said. Hermione sat heavily and replied that she hoped it was an extraordinarily good one. I closed the window, unable to improve either statement with what little I had seen.

For the rest of the journey, I kept looking up from whatever I was doing to search the sky. Luna returned to her magazine, and Hermione spent a long time on a page she did not turn. I had looked forward to introducing my friends properly. Now I would be satisfied to find them on the ground.