Chapter 154 — A Place to Come Back To

The tent had chairs beside a low table, a dining area beyond them and a passage leading to bedrooms and washing facilities. Harry went halfway up the staircase, looked back through the entrance and stopped with his hand on the banister.

‘I know it can be done,’ he said. ‘I still don’t understand how all this fits through that door.’

‘It doesn’t have to fit through at once,’ Fred replied. He passed Harry on the stairs while Hermione inspected the workmanship where the banister met the landing.

‘It must have taken a great deal of work.’ She looked towards me, and I pointed back to Rupert before she could ask how much of it I understood.

‘The makers did that. Rupert arranged the purchase with the other equipment, and they checked it before we started promising beds to everyone.’ I stepped aside while Arthur asked where the facilities were and what we needed to know about using them.

Rupert explained the fittings, then reminded us that the ropes outside were still tent ropes. Arthur’s glance towards the twins gave the instruction an audience neither of them seemed to think it deserved.

We went upstairs to choose rooms. Two larger bedrooms had three beds apiece, and the smaller rooms provided enough places for the rest of our twelve. Luna looked through a doorway with Ginny and called Hermione over to see the morning light.

Ginny put her bag on a bed. Harry glanced from them to me, grinning as I reached the landing.

‘I thought you’d have reserved a room with Luna,’ he said. Luna turned before I could answer, still holding the door open for Hermione.

‘Oswald has reserved rather a lot of things. I thought I’d choose this one myself.’ She smiled at me, and I agreed that she was entitled to a decision without consulting my list.

‘Besides, Ginny promised to tell me what Fred said in his sleep,’ she added. Fred objected from further along the corridor, but Ginny reminded him that he had announced it downstairs the previous night.

Ron laughed and took the other large bedroom. Harry followed, leaving the third bed for me, and I put my things beside it before moving the original notebook Hermione had returned onto the writing table, well away from the water jug.

I checked the fastening on my pouch. The prepared pieces were dry, and I separated the shield and fire markings from the others so I could reach what I wanted without pulling out a handful of paper. Once it was back at my belt, I hoped that would be my last use for it all day.

Harry was returning a folded letter to his bag. He noticed me looking and told me Sirius had written again before he came to the Burrow.

‘He’s given me somewhere I can send things now.’ Harry smoothed the envelope before putting it away. ‘He said to write if I needed him.’

‘Is he staying there?’ I asked. Harry said he did not think the offer meant for ever, but it was enough to let him answer without wondering whether the owl would make things worse.

George appeared in the doorway to announce the discovery of a proper bath. He said Fred now intended to write me a considerably better letter of thanks, which prompted me to suggest starting with the prompt delivery of other people’s post.

‘We have apologised,’ George said. I assured him I remembered, and was giving the memory time to settle. He left laughing before I could find another service his gratitude might cover.

Luna waited by the landing window in a softer pair of shoes. She tested them against the floor and said she should have worn them that morning; I asked whether she would sit down for a while before testing them across the rest of the site.

‘If you’ll sit with me.’ She moved onto the window seat, leaving room beside her. I joined her, pleased to discover somewhere I could go without first deciding whether it ought to be moved.

Below us, people followed the path towards the stalls. I could see the upper edge of a display and a flag beyond it, but nobody in either place was asking for my attention. Luna took my hand and turned it palm upwards.

‘What are you checking?’ I asked. She looked at me, then at our joined hands.

‘Nothing. Must I be checking something?’ Her fingers settled between mine, and I admitted I might have been doing rather too much of it myself.

I rested my shoulder against hers. ‘Do you like it?’ I asked. ‘All of it, I mean. Having everyone here.’

‘I like that you wanted us to come.’ She looked towards the display. ‘And your face when the picture worked.’

‘Relieved?’ I suggested. She said I had looked pleased, and that I ought to remember that part as well.

On , the author publishes this chapter; this copy was made without consent, and reading that posting supports the writer.

I bent towards her. She met me halfway, her free hand resting against my sleeve, and stayed close after the kiss with her hair brushing my cheek.

‘Will you have time to watch with me?’ she asked. When I mentioned the seat I had reserved, she waited until I looked at her properly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘With you.’

She squeezed my hand and leaned against me again. We sat until Ron appeared at the far end of the landing, stopped belatedly and apologised for interrupting with a question about lunch.

The morning passed between rest and short excursions. Rupert left us to settle while Arthur took people out in smaller groups; I slept, woke to voices below and discovered that lunch had been found without my supervision.

Later, I walked the stalls with Luna and the others. Food was selling, which encouraged me, until I reached a counter whose queue had spread in front of its neighbour. I asked the staff to redirect it into the space behind the sign, where people could wait without blocking the path.

They tried it. A woman with a pushchair passed the counter again, and I stayed long enough to make sure the next arrivals followed the new line before going on.

At the performance area, a juggler had persuaded three enchanted clubs to follow him. They obeyed until he bowed, when one tapped the back of his head. Ron laughed so hard that Hermione moved his drink away from her sleeve.

I had worried that things I remembered from fairs would look dull to this audience. Watching the performer glare at the club while the crowd cheered, I decided the joke had survived the journey perfectly well.

Rupert found me near the service entrance that afternoon. The man beside him retained an athlete’s broad build and offered a cheerful handshake almost before the introduction.

‘Ludo Bagman,’ he said. ‘Good to meet you properly.’

I knew his name from the programme and the papers sent through the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Rupert waited until Luna had joined the others at the next stall before explaining that Bagman wanted a private word about an advance.

‘For the event?’ I asked. Bagman shook his head, making the conversation less comfortable almost immediately.

There were earlier bets to settle, he explained. Money expected from other people had not arrived, leaving a temporary difficulty which he could put right very soon. He smiled as though the explanation had already dealt with its least pleasant part.

‘Why aren’t you asking the people who owe you?’ I said. He spread his hands, presenting the question as one he had anticipated.

‘I am. That’s precisely the trouble with timing.’ He leaned a little closer, lowering his voice as someone passed the entrance behind us.

I should have ended the conversation there. Instead I discussed it with Rupert, then went with him towards the outer service gate to try my telephone. The first call broke up; further along the boundary, away from the installations, I found enough signal to reach Emma.

She made me repeat the amount and explain what it was for. By the time I finished, we were discussing a smaller advance from money identified as available, separate from wages and the site’s running costs. Rupert insisted on a written acknowledgement and a repayment date before he would arrange it.

Bagman signed when we returned, with an ease which suggested he considered the discussion more laborious than necessary. I watched the pen move across the page, aware that having something in writing did not make the money waiting to come back.

‘You won’t regret it,’ he said. He held out the acknowledgement to Rupert and reached for my hand again.

‘I’d prefer to hear from you when it’s repaid.’ He laughed, thanked me and went to prepare for the commentary. Rupert filed the signed page and had the office make the agreed advance.

‘He makes a difficulty sound very temporary,’ Rupert said. ‘Remember that if he asks again.’

I intended to. It did not make the first decision better, and when I returned to the others Luna took one look at me before asking whether I had found another problem.

‘Possibly one I’ve agreed to have.’ I told her about the advance while we walked back, and she listened without trying to make it sound clever.

‘I hope he keeps his word,’ she said. She took my hand, and I told her I did too. At the tent I returned the telephone to my bag before we sat down to eat.

By six, eleven of us had gathered round the dinner table, trying to persuade one another to taste dishes from several stalls. The match was scheduled for eight, and Percy’s empty place attracted my attention while Ron reached past it for a serving dish.

‘Still working?’ I asked. Ron nodded, setting the dish down rather harder than he needed to.

‘He’d probably enjoy dinner more if Mr Crouch sent an instruction telling him to eat.’ He looked towards the entrance, which showed no sign of supplying his brother.

‘He has a job,’ Hermione said. ‘He’s trying to do it properly.’

‘He’s got a family too.’ Ron began serving himself, then paused when Arthur put down the spoon in his own hand.

‘He’ll join us when he can,’ Arthur said. ‘He knew there would be work today.’

Hermione told me Percy had joined the Department of International Magical Cooperation as Barty Crouch’s personal assistant. His attention to the morning’s instructions made more sense now, though Ron still looked towards the entrance between mouthfuls.

Ginny asked whether he had eaten at all. Arthur said Percy had told him he had, and Ron passed her the dish she wanted before asking whether some pie could be left in case he came back hungry.

Everyone finished long before the food did. I had barely put down my fork before Harry stood to gather his things, and the twins had checked the time often enough that I wondered whether their watches disagreed.

On the way to the stadium, they stopped at a betting counter to place a small stake of their own on Ireland. Arthur reminded them that they would still enjoy the match if they lost; George said they would enjoy it more if they did not, and hurried to catch up before Ron finished another explanation of why Krum mattered most.

The path filled near the entrances. Stewards checked tickets and sent people towards different stairs, while above us spectators kept climbing into the growing noise. Our box had room to sit without borrowing space from somebody else’s elbows, but it did nothing to make the stadium smaller.

I went to the front. The pitch shone below us in the gathering evening, the last sunlight catching the highest tiers. Beyond one entrance, a display showed the same field from another angle.

‘Does it look like the drawing?’ Luna asked, coming to stand beside me. I laughed before admitting that it did not, and she leaned against my arm while we watched people finding their seats.

Someone opened a programme behind us. I remembered I had brought one too, and sat down beside her to discover what the evening expected me to understand.