Chapter 160 — The Way Back

Footsteps passed our compartment, followed by someone calling for a lost cat. Harry waited for them to fade before explaining that he had woken with his scar hurting. He had considered writing to somebody, then struggled to decide what he could possibly say.

‘I was in a house I’ve never visited, watching someone who hasn’t got a body.’ He pushed the bent frog box aside. ‘It sounded stupid every time I tried.’

‘You could have told us,’ Hermione said. Harry’s expression made her pause and draw back from the edge of her seat. ‘I mean you wouldn’t have had to prove it first.’

Luna rested her hand beside his elbow. ‘It sounds frightening,’ she said, leaving it there while he took a breath. ‘That’s different from stupid.’

I could think of explanations, which was not the same as having one. The scar, the diary and Harry’s ability to speak to snakes offered enough resemblance to tempt me into fitting everything together. I had already seen where acting on half an answer could take us.

‘After the Chamber, Dumbledore said some of Voldemort’s magic might have passed into you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps the dream has something to do with that connection.’

Harry looked straight at me. ‘You think I actually saw him?’ he asked, his hand returning to his forehead.

‘It’s possible. I don’t know whether you saw something happening or dreamed about things you’d already felt.’ I wished I could give him an answer which did more than add another uncertainty. ‘Dumbledore knows more about what happened to you than I do. He needs to hear this, especially if you recognised the man afterwards.’

‘Sirius first,’ Harry said with an abruptness which made the words sound rehearsed. ‘He’s given me somewhere I can write now. I was going to when we got to school.’

I told him to write, and to speak to Dumbledore as well. They could both know. Harry drew his bag closer with his foot, then asked what happened if Sirius came back because he was worried.

‘Tell him what you want,’ Hermione suggested. ‘Advice and a reply. Tell him you’re at Hogwarts and you’re speaking to Dumbledore.’

‘And that you don’t want him caught because of a dream,’ I added when Harry voiced that fear. ‘You can put that in the letter too.’

He looked down at the bag containing the letter we had thought might burn with the tents. After a while he agreed to write that night. Luna withdrew her hand from beside his elbow and began gathering the wrappers which had slipped onto the floor.

Ron waited until she had finished. ‘The green curse at the campsite,’ he said quietly. ‘Was that the same one?’

‘The Killing Curse.’ I could still picture Ken’s warning in the margin of an old page. Recognising the words had offered very little comfort while someone aimed them at Harry.

Hermione named it as one of the three Unforgivables. Ron asked what made those three different when plenty of other spells could kill, and she considered the question before answering.

‘They have very particular uses: killing, torture and controlling another person. Avada Kedavra, the Cruciatus Curse and the Imperius Curse.’ She spoke quietly, though hearing the first name still tightened something beneath my ribs.

‘Dad told me about Imperius,’ Ron said. ‘After You-Know-Who disappeared, people said they’d been made to do things for him.’

Harry immediately mentioned Malfoy’s father. I pointed out that being controlled was what Lucius had claimed, and Harry’s expression hardened as though I were proposing we accept his explanation.

‘I’d want to know how anyone tested his story,’ I said before he could accuse me of believing it. ‘I wasn’t there to see.’

Hermione had read that the curse could be resisted, though she was careful not to present that as easy. Harry asked whether it could make someone do anything, and I considered how much we were in danger of granting it simply because it frightened us.

‘Make you try, perhaps,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t expect an order to play the violin to give me ten years of lessons.’

Ron nearly smiled. ‘You’d be a very disappointing puppet,’ he said, stretching his legs beneath the table. ‘They’d ask for a tune and have to curse you again to make you stop.’

The small joke gave us room to breathe. My body obeying somebody else while I watched from inside was quite horrible enough without adding every skill I had never learned.

Harry asked about Cruciatus next. Hermione described deliberately inflicted pain and the lasting damage it could cause; she stopped short of supplying an example, and nobody asked her for one. Across the compartment Harry rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb.

‘So it can still hurt you afterwards,’ he said. ‘Even when they’ve finished.’

‘Yes,’ Hermione answered. Her hands lay flat on her closed book. ‘The spell stopping doesn’t mean someone simply gets up again.’

The country outside had grown rougher, with stone breaking through the grass and dark water beyond it. Harry borrowed Hermione’s quill and began a letter to Sirius. I turned towards the window to give him space, but the face he had described stayed with me: an unfamiliar man near Voldemort, perhaps the same face beneath the Dark Mark. I wanted a name or a place, something firmer than the resemblance between two frightening moments.

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When Harry set the quill down, Ron returned to the Killing Curse. He had heard of a vest meant to protect its wearer, something Ministry people were supposed to have discussed. For one foolish instant I wanted it to exist so badly that the wanting felt like evidence.

‘Who told you?’ I asked. ‘Has your dad actually seen one?’

‘I only heard about it,’ Ron said, looking faintly defensive. ‘I didn’t mean he’s got one hanging in the wardrobe.’

Luna had heard her father mention a similar idea. Small living creatures would be carried in the vest, supposedly taking the curse instead of the wearer. Hermione stared at her, and Luna quickly explained that it had not been her father’s invention.

‘Would it work?’ Harry asked. He glanced down at his chest, then towards me.

I pictured the flash passing us at the campsite. ‘How would you make it hit the right place?’ I asked. ‘A vest wouldn’t cover my head or legs, and I’d want more than somebody’s promise that it would strike the creature inside.’

‘You wouldn’t want to find out the hard way,’ Hermione said. Luna added that she would not want to be one of the creatures either, and Harry looked away from his robes.

I was annoyed with that first eager moment. After the campsite, I understood wanting an answer I could buy and wear beneath my clothes. I could also imagine what somebody selling it would charge.

‘Until someone who knows can explain it, I’m treating it as a rumour,’ I said. Ron muttered that he had only thought it might help, and I touched his sleeve. ‘I know. I wanted it to as well.’

Harry said that getting out of the way had worked. I turned my left hand over, feeling the new skin pull as I opened my fingers fully.

‘We started moving before he cast,’ I reminded him. ‘I wouldn’t like to race the light. And ordinary shields won’t stop that curse.’

I described what I understood about putting something solid in its path, then looked at my knee. Cover had protected us from spells at the campsite, and I had broken cover myself to bring the man down. I could hardly recommend crouching behind any convenient wall as an answer which required no further thought.

‘You’re very encouraging today,’ Ron said. He tried to make it light, but his gaze followed mine to the place the cloth had torn.

I had been thinking about that lane more than I had admitted. The spells I knew had kept us alive, but I could still feel the prepared paper between my fingers while I tried to guess what the man would cast next. I wanted more choices before the next time somebody forced that decision on me.

‘I need to understand more of the magic people use to hurt each other,’ I said. Hermione looked up sharply, and I continued before she could mistake what I meant. ‘What it does, what it needs and how to stop it. How to stop the person using it too, if there isn’t time for anything else.’

‘Those can be different questions,’ she said. She watched me for another moment. ‘What happened out there isn’t all down to the spells you know.’

Harry reminded me that I had beaten the attacker. I knew that, just as I knew why he had escaped. Knowing neither removed the memory of liking the certainty of striking back, nor made it easy to discuss beside the people I had been trying to protect.

‘I’m still not satisfied with what I can do,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask Dumbledore where to start.’

Ron predicted books, which seemed a reasonably safe prediction. He declared himself relieved to be facing a threat he understood, and Harry smiled as he folded the unfinished letter. People were beginning to move their trunks in the corridor.

We took turns changing, with the others waiting outside the compartment. Afterwards Luna placed a folded form on my knee with great ceremony. Her father’s signature sat at the bottom of her Hogsmeade permission slip.

‘This year,’ she said, watching me read it. ‘They’ve allowed me to finish second, so there shouldn’t be any difficulties.’

I grinned and handed it back carefully. I had brought things from the village for her before, but now we could walk past the windows together and stop where she wanted. I suggested the bookshop as an entirely unbiased starting point.

‘And somewhere you aren’t making a list,’ Luna said, putting away the form. ‘You could hold my hand. You’ve had practice.’

‘I’ll try to keep up.’ I helped her retrieve the bag wedged beside the seat, and she leaned close enough to kiss my cheek before taking it.

Hogsmeade still held the last of the afternoon’s colour when we arrived. Steam blew across the platform while Hagrid called for first years. His cheerful greeting became a more searching look when he saw us, and I assured him we were all right before following the others towards the carriages.

Luna paused beside the nearest thestral. It lowered its long head towards her, and Harry followed her gaze before moving to the carriage door.

‘Still can’t see them,’ he said. He climbed in while I watched Luna offer the creature her hand.

I remembered the first one she had introduced me to without a harness. Then she stepped into the carriage and reached back for me, and I took her hand. We jolted up the hill with Ron complaining that the sweets had somehow made him hungry.

Harry’s letter was tucked inside his bag. At least something from our conversation would travel further than the compartment, once he finished it. I watched the towers appear above the trees, dark against the sky with their windows lit, and began thinking about dinner.

Harry pointed towards the lake. Something narrow had broken the water well out from shore; before I could decide what it was, a huge shadow passed over our roof.

The thestrals tossed their heads. Wings thundered above us, drowning Ron’s next word, and I looked up at twelve pale horses descending towards the grounds. Behind them hung a carriage the size of a small house.

For several seconds I could not see how there would be room for the whole thing to land. Hagrid was already moving across the grass, waving people clear while the horses came down in a succession of great hoofbeats. Air flattened nearby robes against their owners’ legs. The carriage rocked and settled behind its enormous team.

‘Beauxbatons,’ Hermione said breathlessly as we climbed out. Ron remarked that she had failed to mention this part of the valley, and she informed him it had not been there when she visited.

Nobody was going straight inside. Seamus had acquired binoculars and was balancing on a low wall, with Dean gripping his robe to prevent him falling. Colin Creevey kept shifting his camera, trying to include the horses and everything else that might happen before he pressed the shutter.

‘A mast!’ Seamus called. He pointed towards the lake, and Dean tightened his grip as the thing in the water rose.

Rigging emerged first, then another mast. Water broke into a wide, boiling ring as a ship shouldered up through the surface, its black hull pouring streams back into the lake. I stared at the curved sweep of its prow until a flag snapped open above it.

Hermione identified Durmstrang, scarcely louder than the people around us gasping. I had wanted to find out how other schools did things. They had begun answering before dinner.