Chapter 158 — The Journey Back

Ginny emerged from the nearest tent before Bill had finished counting us. Fred and George followed, their questions dying when Bill unfolded Harry’s instructions and the lamplight caught the dressing on my hand.

‘Let them sit down first,’ Bill said, steering Harry towards the entrance. Fred lifted the flap, and George moved a pile of blankets from a camp bed. For once, nobody argued about who had got the best room.

The tents were for returning groups waiting while officials checked the routes past the village. Bill had claimed places for us and given our names to the witch sending messages to families; Molly and Emma already knew that some of us had returned. Now the witch could send another message saying that all five were safe. Luna supplied the address her father had left and stayed beside the table until his message joined the others.

Charlie brought water while we told Bill what had happened. Bill read the healer’s instructions twice, then settled Harry within reach of his chair. I sat on a folded blanket with my bad knee stretched out, watching the tent flap whenever someone passed outside.

An official came before we lay down. Arthur and Percy were accounted for, still helping at the site, and Arthur had sent instructions for us to wait for him. Ron finally put away the programme he had been rolling between his hands.

Luna found a place beside my blanket as the voices around us faded. She touched the watch on her wrist, turning its face towards the lamp.

‘You said we’d watch together,’ she murmured. ‘I wanted to remember that part as well.’

I thought of her beside me in the stands, following Krum across the sky, and moved my good hand towards hers. There had been a match before the smoke. For most of it, our greatest difficulty had been getting Ron to sit down.

‘We did,’ I said, and she squeezed my fingers. ‘I’m glad we did.’

She leaned forward to kiss my cheek, then told me to sleep. This time I obeyed before finding another job which supposedly required my immediate attention.

Arthur and Percy joined us before morning. We reached the Burrow later, tired enough that Molly’s insistence on chairs and food felt like excellent government. Harry was checked again, and Emma spoke to Bill and read the healer’s account before taking Luna and me home.

The other accounts arrived over the following days. Rupert confirmed that our staff had reported safely and that anyone needing treatment was receiving it. After the names came damaged stock, payments still due and the costs of closing a site which had stopped being a place of business halfway through the evening.

Our accommodation had survived behind the open strip of ground. Once the stewards permitted staff to return, our bags and papers were collected. Emma unwrapped Ken and Mary’s notebook with me at the kitchen table; the cloth smelled of smoke, but the pages were dry. My phone was still in the bag where I had left it. I set it aside and checked the notebook’s corners before turning another page.

Harry got his belongings back too, including Sirius’s letter. I was grateful to the people who had searched the tents, although the first note I tried to write them sounded as if I were thanking someone for returning a lost umbrella. I started again.

Neither the bills nor Bagman’s signed promise disappeared when the smoke cleared. Emma and Rupert worked through the lists with me, keeping the wages we had reserved available while we established what could be recovered. A few days were nowhere near enough to calculate the final loss.

By the time we packed for Hogwarts, the cuts on my hand were closing. The attack, meanwhile, had acquired several explanations from people who had not been in our lane. Hermione brought one of them onto the train.

‘Listen to this.’ She held the newspaper across her knees as the Hogwarts Express pulled away. ‘“Persons exploiting the appearance and reputation of former Death Eaters.” They make it sound like a fancy-dress party that got out of hand.’

‘Some of them might have been pretending,’ Ron said, turning from the last waving hands outside. When Hermione began to object, he put a finger on the word appearance. ‘I’m not defending what they did. We don’t know who everyone in a mask was.’

She lowered the paper a little. I remembered how little we had seen of the people running between the tents, compared with the one man whose face I could still picture far too clearly.

‘We don’t,’ I agreed. ‘But we saw someone cast the Dark Mark and try to kill Harry. They could give that as much space as the people they haven’t identified.’

Hermione passed me the article. It distinguished the Ministry’s confirmed information from what it called speculation, then hurried past the accounts from people who had been attacked. I read it twice without finding a mention of the volley which had put me on the ground.

‘They took our statements,’ Harry said, leaning close enough to follow my place. ‘Did they lose them on the way to the office?’

‘I’ve kept mine, and Rupert has our staff reports.’ I folded the page back rather more sharply than I meant to. ‘We can ask what happened to them. This doesn’t tell us.’

Harry withdrew into the corner while Ron and Hermione tried to agree on what the article actually claimed. He had admitted on the platform that he was sleeping badly, but had not wanted to explain with people squeezing past us. I had left the question until we could talk somewhere quieter.

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Beside me, Luna opened a packet of sliced apple. She offered me a piece, then found the rest of the report on an inside page and held it where we could both read. Her shoulder rested against mine whenever the carriage swayed.

‘Would either of you let someone else see that?’ Harry asked. He was looking at the newspaper, though I chose to misunderstand him.

‘The apple?’ I lifted the packet towards him. ‘It’s a very good example.’

Luna gave him the fruit and lowered the newspaper. ‘You can have both,’ she said, passing that over too. ‘Oswald has nearly finished inspecting it.’

Harry laughed despite himself. Luna’s fingers settled against the uninjured side of my hand, and I moved mine to make a more comfortable space for hers.

The next page held the Triwizard Tournament. I had noticed the name in the reports after the attack; by the end of the week it had begun occupying the space I would have preferred to see given to our unanswered questions.

‘It’s supposed to be at Hogwarts,’ I said when Harry asked about the headline. ‘That is roughly the end of my expertise.’

Ron glanced at Hermione. ‘You looked it up, didn’t you?’ he asked, then grinned when she reached for the paper. ‘I was joking, but I’m glad one of us spent the holidays usefully.’

‘I was interested,’ she replied, spreading the article where he could see it. ‘It’s an old competition between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Each school has a champion, and they compete in three tasks. The results are added together to decide the winner.’

Ron examined the headline with mock approval. ‘Three champions, three tasks. A name that actually tells you something. They should let these people name potion ingredients.’

‘It leaves out why they stopped holding it.’ Hermione’s finger came to rest beneath the paragraph promising an extraordinary year. ‘The accounts I found describe serious injuries and deaths. Eventually the tournament was abandoned.’

Harry looked from her to the article. The train rattled over a junction before anybody spoke again.

‘And they’re bringing it back?’ he asked. ‘Does it say what they’ve changed?’

Hermione shook her head and handed him the paper. There were promises of demanding challenges, but rather less about the arrangements behind them. Ron suggested that the history of people dying deserved a position nearer the beginning, and she agreed without finding anything wrong with his phrasing.

I could understand wanting to test myself against students taught somewhere else. I had spent enough time persuading teachers to let me try difficult things to recognise the attraction. That did not oblige me to greet an old death toll as an exciting new opportunity.

‘You’d have a chance,’ Harry said, catching my eye across the paper. ‘Being chosen, I mean. And doing well.’

‘I’d like to see what they made of your paper,’ Ron added. He glanced at my pouch, and Hermione admitted she would too. Apparently my friends had found an efficient way of arranging an international demonstration without troubling me with the invitations.

‘We could ask them to watch me cast a charm,’ I said. ‘It seems a useful first step before entering me in something famous for people not coming back.’

Harry raised both hands. ‘Nobody’s entered you anywhere. I’m only saying you’d be good.’

Luna’s thumb moved against the side of my hand. ‘What would you like to do?’ she asked, bringing my attention back from the argument I had nearly started.

‘Meet them. See how they learn, and ask questions.’ I considered the unfamiliar names on the page. ‘If somebody knows a different way of preparing magic, I’d like to hear about it without having to fight them first.’

Harry smiled and suggested that I might change my mind when I heard about the tasks. I told him I would decide when someone had explained them, and that getting through the first week without another written account of my injuries would be an encouraging start. Ron glanced at my hand before laughing.

I took another piece of apple and asked Hermione about the other schools. Ron supplied the fact that Krum attended Durmstrang before she could answer, as though the presence of one Seeker might settle all further questions.

‘You weren’t so pleased with it yesterday,’ Hermione reminded him. ‘You objected to their admission rules.’

‘I still do.’ Ron sat back, his amusement fading. ‘I heard they only take pure-bloods.’

Hermione shook her head. ‘The account I found said they don’t admit Muggle-born students. That’s different, although it doesn’t make it a good rule.’

Harry looked out of the window. ‘What are they going to think of us, then?’ he asked. ‘If that’s the school they’ve come from.’

‘We haven’t met them yet,’ Luna said. She looked around the compartment before adding, ‘We don’t all agree with every rule at Hogwarts.’

Ron opened his mouth, caught me watching him and began to smile. ‘I was about to say that. I have quite a lot of supporting evidence.’

Luna reached for the newspaper again. People writing about Durmstrang always seemed to mention Grindelwald, she said, as though everyone who studied there had to answer for him. I knew the name from accounts of Dumbledore, and it hardly improved the school’s advertisement. Then again, there were former Hogwarts students I would have objected to being asked to represent.

‘They can meet us before deciding what we are,’ I said. ‘We can probably manage the same.’

Ron agreed, although the admission rule still bothered him. A moment later he admitted that he very much wanted to see Krum, which nobody in the compartment found difficult to believe.

Beauxbatons drew a different response from Hermione. She straightened, moving the article aside as she described the Pyrenees and the valley she had visited during the previous summer’s trip to France. I remembered her letters, and the things she had told us after coming home with Crookshanks.

‘Did you get inside?’ I asked. ‘Or did they keep visitors at a distance?’

‘It wasn’t a visit to classes.’ She looked briefly disappointed, as if the lost opportunity were still in front of her. ‘I saw enough from the valley to wish it had been. Most of what I know about the teaching is from books, though I asked questions in the magical shops.’

She described a pale building against the mountains and students coming from countries beyond France. Ron listened without interrupting. When she mentioned Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel among its former pupils, Harry looked up from the newspaper.

The names brought back other corridors and our attempts to discover what somebody had hidden in the school. We had learned several things that year by getting close enough for them to try to kill us. I would have preferred to begin this one with questions asked across a desk.

‘I want to hear how they teach charms,’ I said. ‘Especially what they try when a method won’t work for somebody. They might know materials I’ve never even heard of.’

‘You could show them what you do,’ Harry suggested. ‘If they’re willing to show you theirs.’

That interested me far more than the headline. I looked at the three school names again, imagining a conversation in which I might leave with something useful besides advice to keep practising with a wand.

The apple packet reached Ron. He offered it to Hermione before taking the last piece, and the conversation moved towards familiar chairs, library shelves and the pudding he hoped would appear at dinner. With Luna’s hand still in mine, I let the newspaper lie folded on the seat.