Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

By tea, people I had never discussed Quidditch with knew exactly how many brooms I had bought. Several asked whether I intended to join the team. Another wanted to know whether I had kept a faster one for myself, apparently imagining a secret sixteenth broom which could make up for the difference between Harry’s flying and mine. I told him I would be watching from the ground.

Cedric Diggory found me outside the Great Hall. He asked whether Wood planned to put all fifteen into the air together, and I said only if he was losing. Cedric laughed and promised to warn his Beaters. He had asked sensible questions about my talismans last year, making it difficult to regard him as an enemy merely because he now captained Hufflepuff.

‘You’ve given the rest of us something to work round,’ he said. I admitted that it had been part of the idea. He did not sound as though he considered the season over, which was considerably more convincing than the twins’ predictions. He went to join his team while a group of Ravenclaws approached from the other direction.

One girl glanced at the paperwork beneath my arm. She shook her head with a rueful smile, saying that she finally got to play Seeker and everybody began buying broomsticks by the crate. A friend called her Cho and hurried her towards the Hall. Harry watched them go before asking who she was.

I could give him the name and the position we had just heard. He adjusted his glasses when I added that he would be trying to beat her soon. I had no idea how well she flew, and neither did he, so far as he told me. He looked towards the doors once more before following me inside.

Wood took custody of the new equipment seriously. The brooms belonged in the team store, available for authorised training and matches rather than a player’s private flight before breakfast. I agreed to leave the arrangements to him. Putting away the last copy of the order was a relief; for the rest of the day, I hoped to be responsible for fewer pieces of wood.

On Sunday morning I left breakfast early. Hermione looked up from the notes beside her plate and asked where I was going. I told her I was meeting Luna, which reminded her about the animals. I had mentioned the invitation while asking for advice about something else earlier in the week.

Harry called it an early start for a date. I described it as a walk, and his grin suggested that he found the distinction less important than I did. Ron looked between us with growing interest. I left before he could improve the conversation, with the small parcel in my pocket bumping against my leg as I went downstairs.

Luna had offered to show me creatures near the forest which many people walked past without seeing. Coming from her, that could have meant several things, all interesting enough for me to agree. When I asked Hagrid about visiting, he pointed out the clearing and the path we could use. We were to stay at the edge, among the animals he cared for; the woods beyond remained forbidden.

I found Luna waiting where we had arranged. She wore trousers and a white top beneath a blue knitted shawl, with her familiar necklace resting over it. Her hair moved in the breeze as she turned at my footsteps. I asked whether I was late, and she said she had been early, making me feel better about the time I had spent escaping breakfast.

Ginny was not coming. Luna had invited her, but she had said she could not, and lately she seemed worried about something. Sometimes she started when Luna spoke to her. I asked whether she had explained why, and Luna drew the shawl closer before saying Ginny had not wanted to tell her.

A first term offered plenty of reasons to feel unsettled. I could imagine schoolwork, a new house and brothers scattered through the castle being difficult enough without anything else. Imagining explanations was not the same as knowing hers. I said I would ask Ron whether he had noticed anything, then took the parcel from my pocket before the breeze persuaded Luna to set off without me.

‘For you,’ I said when she asked about it. She unfolded the wrapping carefully and lifted out the small carrot-shaped bag. A golden shoulder chain slid over her hand. She smiled at the shape before looking back at me, and I explained that I thought her radishes might appreciate the company.

She slipped a finger beneath the clasp and opened it. The space inside was larger than the outside suggested. Luna looked from it to the pouch at my belt, asking whether they were alike. I told her it was an expanded bag I had ordered. The enchantment was beyond anything I could make myself.

There was a protected fastening on the chain too. The shop had fitted it so that, once the wearer secured it, somebody else’s hand could not simply release the clasp. I showed her which part to close, then stepped back while she tried. She fastened it, opened it again and checked how it sat over her shoulder.

‘Hermione suggested asking about the clasp,’ I said. ‘I was thinking about keeping your things together. She noticed somebody might take the whole bag.’ Luna called it thoughtful of her, and I agreed. Hermione was good at identifying the part of a plan I had not reached when I started congratulating myself on having one.

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Luna placed the wrapping inside. The carrot rested against her hip, and she touched it once before telling me she liked it very much. I said it was for the magazines and the little things she had made. She pointed out that I could have read the magazines anyway, and I assured her that I knew.

There seemed to be more I wanted to say without knowing exactly what it was. Fortunately, she started along the path, giving me something straightforward to do with my feet. I fell into step beside her while she described something she had read. It was easier to listen than to remain standing there trying to improve on a gift she had already said she liked.

The trees thinned ahead. Sunlight reached the ground in irregular patches, and something large moved beyond a low branch. I stopped when it stepped clear. At first its shape suggested a black horse, though the resemblance became stranger as I looked at the narrow head and the ribs showing beneath taut skin.

Folded wings lay along its sides like dark leather. Pale eyes watched us without the soft blinking I expected from a horse. Others stood behind it, one lowering its head before turning towards Luna. I knew those shapes, though I had not looked at them properly since arriving for the start of term.

They had stood in harness before the carriages. I had been searching for Harry and Ron, with more interest in the platform and the sky than in the animals waiting to take us to school. Hermione and I had climbed inside, and I had continued worrying. Seeing one without a harness made it harder to treat as part of the ordinary arrangements.

‘These pull the carriages,’ I said. Luna turned towards me and asked whether I could see them. When I said yes, she looked from me to the nearest animal. She had not known they drew the carriages, having come across the lake herself. I explained that the boats were for first-years and moved a little closer to the clearing.

Luna took meat from the provisions she had brought. The nearest creature accepted it neatly, then remained beside her while a smaller one approached. I watched the narrow heads moving towards her hand and asked why she thought I might not see them. Whatever else was unusual about them, they were difficult to overlook once I paid attention.

‘They’re thestrals,’ she said. ‘You have to have seen death. And understood it, I think.’ I looked at the thin black body again as the name connected with a passage I had read. I had remembered the condition without spending much time considering what it meant for somebody standing in front of one.

There had been deaths in my other life. Some I had reached too late to prevent; some had happened near enough that a sound remained after other details blurred. Remembering them had not prepared me for watching Quirrell break apart beneath Hogwarts. Harry had been beside me, and I had helped make it happen.

I did not need to explain another life to account for what I could see in this one. I told Luna quietly that I had seen death. She rested a hand against the smaller thestral’s neck and did not ask me to supply a name. After a moment, I approached far enough for it to notice me without pressing myself against it.

It stretched its head towards my sleeve. I stayed still while it sniffed, aware of how easily it could move away if it chose. Luna said some people thought thestrals brought bad luck. I asked whether that was because seeing one followed something terrible, and she nodded while the creature turned its attention back towards her food.

‘That seems unfair to them,’ I said. ‘They weren’t what happened.’ The smaller one investigated the edge of her bag, found nothing to eat there and returned to her hand. Whatever people thought of its appearance, it was behaving like a living animal with an immediate interest in lunch. I found that easier to understand than making it responsible for somebody’s loss.

It allowed me to touch its neck. The skin was warm, and I could feel movement beneath the strange outline as it shifted its weight. The paragraph in the book had given me a condition for seeing it. Being close enough to feel it breathe did more to change the way I looked at it.

Luna stood in a patch of sunlight, stroking its head when it turned towards her. I watched the small smile that appeared as it pushed nearer. When she caught me looking, I did not pretend that I had been studying a tree. I said she seemed to like the animals very much, which made her smile broaden.

‘I’m beginning to think you like everything,’ I added. She shook her head and mentioned nifflers taking her things, followed by dancing. I had been expecting another animal and needed a moment to follow the change. Then I asked what I would do if I wanted to invite her to dance one day.

She considered the question seriously enough to make me aware of what I had said. ‘You could ask,’ she replied. ‘I might feel differently by then.’ I looked at her, suddenly less interested in what the thestral was doing against my sleeve. The conversation seemed to have moved somewhere I liked without giving me much time to decide how to behave there.

‘Do you like me?’ I asked. The words escaped before I could arrange them into something which sounded as casual as the question about dancing. I looked down at the thestral as though it might provide a sensible next sentence. It continued being an animal, offering no assistance at all.

‘Yes,’ Luna said. ‘You’re my friend.’ I released a breath I had apparently been holding. She watched me with the same quiet attention she gave her other answers, and I found myself smiling despite having no idea whether I should have asked the question differently.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I was hoping it was my excellent manners.’ She laughed, then allowed that they were sometimes excellent. I accepted that judgement without demanding examples of the other occasions. Several came to mind readily enough that I preferred to leave the conversation where it was.

We stayed until the food ran out and the animals became less interested in our empty hands. On the path back, Luna’s new bag swung gently beside her. She stopped to point out something moving in the branches, and I stopped with her. I wanted to see what she had noticed, and for once there was nowhere else I was in a hurry to reach.