Harry Potter: Master of Talismans

I woke to Ron telling Fred that the visitor was not a spare pair of hands. Fred thought I might enjoy whatever he had in mind, despite Ron’s reminder that Fred himself had found it unbearable the previous week.

Their argument moved away from the bedroom door. Harry was awake on the mattress beside mine, looking at a sloping patch of ceiling with the calm of someone who knew what was coming.

‘Gnomes,’ he explained when I asked. I wanted to know whether that was an explanation or a warning, and he told me it was both before sitting up to find his glasses.

Breakfast supplied the rest. The garden needed attention, Ron had promised to show us the hill behind the house, and Molly wanted the shed kept out of bounds until Arthur had cleared something from the workbench. By the time the plates were stacked, I had volunteered for more of the morning than I remembered agreeing to.

Arthur took us to the shed first, once he had made it ready. Old radios occupied a shelf beside an electric fan, and the screws from an opened washing machine stood in a careful row. The mechanism next to them looked a long way from going back inside, but I recognised the smell of dust, oil and things that ought to be wiped before anyone touched the furniture.

I pointed to the fan and asked whether it worked. ‘It did,’ Arthur said, lifting it down. ‘I wanted to find out why.’ Hermione laughed at my expression and asked what he had learnt, bringing a screwdriver and a copper coil into the explanation.

He was less helpless with the objects than some of his questions at the bookshop had suggested. He could take them apart patiently, repair certain faults and become distracted by others until the original purpose almost disappeared. Hermione suggested a repair shop, and Arthur looked around with pleasure.

‘Molly occasionally says I already have one. She would prefer paying customers.’ He admitted that he had not yet reached that part of the arrangement, then returned to the coil while Hermione asked another question.

I left them talking long enough to ask Ron about the pickup. He lowered his voice, although his father remained within hearing, and said Molly had checked this one several times. Harry examined the ground beside the shed while I agreed that this sounded sensible.

None of us mentioned the car still wandering somewhere near Hogwarts. Remembering its doors opening in the Forest made the quiet pickup look especially respectable, and I was glad to leave it with all four wheels on the ground when we went up the hill.

Ron called it Stoatshead Hill and showed us a path through grass and low scrub. From above, the Burrow’s additions looked less precarious, fitting among the trees in a way they had not from the lane. Fields, woodland and the scattered roofs of Ottery St Catchpole lay beyond it.

‘There are other wizarding families round here,’ Ron told us, pointing towards the roofs. ‘Not everyone in the village knows.’ Hermione sat on the grass and spread her jumper beneath her elbows, listening to the quiet before saying she could hear how far away the roads were.

A bird called below us. A distant engine grew a little louder, then faded without ever interrupting the wind in the grass. Harry lowered himself beside me and said he would like somewhere like this.

I suggested visiting more often. ‘I mean to live,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the fields. ‘After school. Somewhere that’s mine.’ Ron began pointing out places for another house until Hermione asked whether any of the land was actually available.

He revised the proposal twice, then reminded her that we did not have to build it today. I was relieved, since I wanted lunch first. Harry laughed, but his gaze stayed on a patch of ground near the trees.

‘A place where I can invite people without asking whether they count as normal.’ I understood enough about the Dursleys to follow that, and asked him to reserve a room for me. A sofa would do, provided he understood I intended to be a difficult guest.

Ron said I already was. I had praised the garden within his mother’s hearing, he explained, which made it harder to persuade her that nobody wanted to spend a morning in it. He stood and brushed grass from his trousers before offering Hermione a hand up.

The gnomes emerged from the flower beds when he disturbed them, grumbling in small, furious voices. The first one I caught had a head like a knobbly potato and a strong objection to being moved. It bit my glove before Ron advised me to hold it further away.

‘Excellent suggestion,’ I told him, stretching my arm. ‘Slightly late.’ He showed us how to turn one until it lost its sense of direction, then send it beyond the garden boundary towards the grass.

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I chose a clear patch away from the stones, but my first attempt landed closer than intended. The gnome sat up, shook its head and began swearing at the hedge. Harry laughed so hard that he almost dropped the one he was holding, which seemed to recognise an opportunity and redoubled its efforts.

Ron assured me I would improve. When I asked whether they would stay out, he said they would for a bit, making me wish I had asked about the lasting value of the work before volunteering. I returned to the flower bed with my hands further apart and watched where I put my feet.

By lunchtime we had cleared enough to satisfy Molly. I had grass on my trousers, dirt inside a cuff and greater respect for whoever did this every week. Arthur put the tables in the garden, and we ate beneath an uncertain patch of sunshine while the twins gave competing accounts of whose gnome had travelled furthest.

Ginny corrected both of them. Ron forgot to apologise for the size of the house, and I managed to finish a meal without promising to improve any more of the garden. We stayed until the middle of the afternoon, when Molly began gathering the departing luggage.

She explained the fireplace to me twice, then listened while I repeated the destination. ‘The Leaky Cauldron, clearly,’ she said, checking that Leo’s cage cover was secure. ‘Keep your elbows in. Harry, you remember.’

He assured her that he did. The hearth had been cleaned, although his expression suggested neither of them regarded that as a complete answer to what had happened on his previous journey. Hermione went first, speaking into the green flames before they carried her away, and Harry followed after checking the position of his trunk.

I stepped into the hearth with Leo’s cage held securely and the rest of my luggage beside me. The fire was warm without burning. After two years learning how much effort it took to make a piece of paper useful, I was standing in a household fireplace which was about to send me across the country.

‘The Leaky Cauldron!’ The kitchen twisted out of sight, replacing it with too many fireplaces and no reliable sense of which way my stomach ought to point. I kept my elbows in until my shoes found solid ground, where Harry caught my sleeve before I walked straight into a chair.

He asked whether I was all right. I swallowed and said I might prefer trains, while Hermione brushed soot from my shoulder. Leo made an offended noise beneath his cover, apparently prepared to support that preference.

Outside, London continued as though we had arrived by an ordinary door. We used a telephone to confirm we were back, then helped Harry arrange his journey to Surrey while waiting for Hermione’s father and Emma. Before he left, Harry reminded us of the invitation to visit him.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I said, shifting Leo’s cage so I could lift a hand. ‘Ring me when you’re settled.’ Harry promised to send Hedwig if he could not call, and we waited until he was on his way before separating.

At home, Emma let me put Leo down before she hugged me. She held on longer than usual, then examined my face and hands despite there being very little left to see of January’s injuries. I stood still and let her finish.

‘You look taller,’ she said. I observed that it was generally the direction I was going, and she informed me that wisdom had failed to keep pace. Dinner would be ready in half an hour; I could start behaving sensibly by washing before I came down.

I put my brush and map safely away, settled Leo with food and water, and unpacked enough to find clean clothes. Downstairs, the place opposite Emma had been waiting since the previous evening. I sat there and began telling her about the Burrow, including Arthur’s fan and the garden work I would ask more questions about next time.

Harry’s letter arrived while we ate. He had reached home, where his uncle had complained about the luggage, the delay and the likelihood of owls. His school things had stayed with him, however, and he had not been shut in his room. Harry called that a good beginning.

I read the short letter twice before explaining it to Emma. ‘Invite him round,’ she said, moving the bread towards me. ‘Give him something else to put in the next one.’ I set the letter beside my plate and told her I would.

The first few days of the holidays were pleasant until I unfolded the History of Magic assignment. Binns wanted an essay on wizards in the Middle Ages, although after three mornings I suspected he expected a second textbook. I had managed five hundred words, several appearing much too often.

My previous life had given me practice at putting facts into reports. It had not left a reliable argument about medieval wizarding life, and half-remembered history became less helpful when magic had altered events. I looked at the same unfinished paragraph for another ten minutes before ringing Hermione.

She asked what I was trying to say. ‘That I’m on holiday,’ I told her, but she meant in the essay, which exposed most of the difficulty. I could list things from the book without knowing why they belonged together.

Hermione made me choose a narrower question and find the chapters which dealt with it. Then she asked which claims came from the textbook and which I had supplied myself. I began copying page references and making notes in my own words, discovering several places where I had treated a guess as an explanation.

Once I had something to argue, the length stopped being the worst problem. During the next call I suggested she could have told me that at the beginning, and she reminded me that she had tried. I had said I wanted to complain first.

Before I finished the essay, Ron sent a letter large enough to suggest he had solved his own homework by posting it to someone else. Inside lay a newspaper cutting: Arthur Weasley had won the Daily Prophet’s annual draw, and the prize was seven hundred Galleons.

Ron had underlined the amount, then underlined the news beneath it more heavily. They were going to Egypt to see Bill, and his father had promised him a new wand. I remembered the tape around his old one and how carefully he had returned the school’s loan after each lesson.

I said ‘Good’ aloud, making Emma look up from her post. While she read the cutting, I began a reply asking Ron for a better account of Egyptian magic than anything Binns had supplied. Then I added a line about the wand, pleased that this time he would have something chosen for him from the beginning.