Chapter 165 — A Dangerous Index

Madam Pince read Moody’s permission twice while I waited across her desk. The library smelled reassuringly of books which other people had already survived reading. After the classroom, I was willing to appreciate small comforts.

‘Professor Moody authorised this?’ she asked, inspecting the signature again when I confirmed it. I could hardly complain: I remembered Lockhart signing for Moste Potente Potions with rather more interest in his own name than the title beneath it. Pince had paid attention then too.

She told me to wait and went towards the Restricted Section. Cedric appeared behind me carrying a folded permission of his own, asking whether I had found anything cheerful.

‘I doubt it,’ I said. He looked at the disappearing librarian, then showed me the heading on his note. Trelawney had authorised a book on interpreting magical portents.

‘Partly for the Tournament,’ he explained when I asked. ‘I don’t expect it to tell me what happens on Thursday. I’d like to know when a warning is worth listening to.’

‘Start with the one about entering.’ He assured me he had read that, and I reminded him I had witnessed several attempts. ‘Has it improved since then?’

Cedric smiled and leaned against the desk until a glance towards the librarian’s empty chair made him straighten again. ‘I want to enter. That doesn’t mean the Goblet owes me a place.’

He asked whether I was certain I would not try if I could. I told him I had other things to work on, and his gaze moved briefly towards the pouch at my belt.

‘I’d be considerably less confident with you applying,’ he admitted. I liked hearing it, although I pointed out that he had two more years of lessons. ‘You seem to have found quite a bit to do between yours.’

‘Some of it worked.’ I shifted my bag to my other hand, thinking of what had not. There was enough room between his compliment and my answer for both.

I had methods he had never needed to learn; he had spent longer with subjects I had scarcely begun. Even Ron, whose complaints about homework arrived with impressive regularity, could name household spells I had never encountered. Familiarity helped without deciding how far any of us could go.

Pince returned and held out her hand for Cedric’s note. She checked the signature and the requested title before disappearing between the shelves again. Apparently being Hogwarts’ favourite candidate did not eliminate paperwork.

‘She looks as though she’ll search us on the way out,’ I murmured. Cedric asked whether I had anything I should not. ‘Only an expression she doesn’t trust.’

He laughed quietly. We both stopped when Pince reappeared with the books and entered them in her ledger. Cedric’s was narrow and faded blue; mine had a dark cover rubbed almost smooth at the corners.

‘No passing them to other students or copying complete sections for them,’ she said. ‘No marks on the pages, no experiments involving the books, and both returned on the dates recorded here.’

She pointed until we had looked at our entries, then handed the books over. We thanked her and escaped without any further examination of my expression. At the stairs I promised Cedric a cheer if his name came out on Thursday, and he said he would listen for it.

After lunch I took the compendium to the Room of Requirement. I asked for somewhere to study and received a desk, a comfortable chair and enough light to read without bending over the page. The room supplied no answers, which at least left me with an honest amount of work.

The book opened reluctantly near the back. Its index listed curses by purpose, symptoms and the damage they left behind. Most names were unfamiliar, and the three from Moody’s demonstration occupied surprisingly little of the available space. I opened my notebook beside it.

The author cared about more than successful spells. Accounts of victims appeared alongside failed attempts, effects returning upon their casters and people misunderstanding what they were trying to make happen. I found that more useful than a promise that memorising certain words would make me dangerous.

I began with the Killing Curse. Its entry placed weight on intention, distinguishing the sound of the incantation from the effect a caster actually produced. Stubborn pieces of paper had taught me that doing everything visible in a set of instructions could still leave the important part undone. Here the important part involved wanting something I had no desire to make familiar.

A passage on repeated use stopped me. The author described casters reaching more readily for the same brutal answer, finding its necessary intention easier with practice. Elsewhere he attributed disturbances to the magic itself, though his examples did not all support the same certainty. I gave the separate claims separate lines in my notes.

Practice could make a movement familiar; I knew that in my muscles. I disliked the thought of practising a desire until it came as readily as lifting my hand. That did not require me to believe an old book explained every person who had ever used a curse. I had met people who made cruel decisions quite calmly.

The pages on Cruciatus were harder after watching Neville. I worked through the effects, then shut the book for a moment and listened to the quiet room. Nobody stood beside a desk waiting for a teacher to stop. I wrote a question for Moody, underlined it and moved to another section.

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Fiendfyre occupied a page opposite an illustration of fire rising into a creature’s shape. Small figures fled beneath its open mouth. I read the caption, then went through the account twice.

The curse could consume enchanted material, pursue living targets and swell into forms which appeared to have appetites of their own. Control was described as a continuing task. Getting the fire started was only the beginning, and several examples concerned people who had understood that too late. One list of the dead included the caster.

I looked towards my pouch. Preparing a charge might change how I released the spell, but it did not follow that the flame would behave differently once it existed. I could not put a spreading blaze back into a strip of paper because I had finished with it.

Further on, a note mentioned Ashwinders. I nearly treated it as another property of Fiendfyre before following the reference back to ordinary magical fires left burning too long. I recorded the page number rather than letting two neighbouring entries become one convenient explanation. Valuable eggs and a warning about burning down a building were facts worth keeping distinct as well.

The claim about enchanted objects drew me back. I remembered the diary resisting beneath my hand, the fang piercing its cover and the boy in the Chamber losing substance while Ginny lay on the floor. Dumbledore had heard my question about why someone who made one object would not make another. He suspected there might be others; he had not supplied a list of known objects waiting to be destroyed.

If we found something like the diary again, could this fire damage it? I wanted that answer badly enough to write the question before anything resembling a plan. The fang had worked, and Dumbledore had taken it into his custody with the other objects from the Chamber. Another destructive method might be useful without being suitable to release beside the people I wanted to protect.

I looked again at the enormous mouth in the illustration. There was power in those pages, and the prospect excited me. Pretending otherwise would only make my notes less honest, so I began listing what I needed to understand: direction, limits on the spread, what happened when control failed. The book did not give me adequate answers to all three.

By the time the light at the window changed, I had useful references and several more pages of questions. I had cast nothing. The desire to try something practical remained strong, but I had just read what could happen when making it work came before understanding what followed. My revised timetable contained a stopping point, and I obeyed it.

Students were hurrying towards the Great Hall when I left the room. I assumed dinner had begun until one mentioned another name going into the Goblet. Harry spotted me through the gathering crowd and waved me towards Ron and Hermione, standing a little way back from the Age Line.

‘Did you get the book?’ Hermione asked. I lifted my bag and told her Pince had checked the permission thoroughly. When I supplied the title, her eyebrows rose. ‘That sounds cheerful.’

I told her Cedric had made a similar observation. Harry wanted to know where I had seen him, so I explained that he was doing some reading of his own. Hermione was still looking at the bag.

‘You spent the afternoon reading?’ she asked. I confirmed it and mentioned the section on Fiendfyre. Her expression changed before I could explain what I had found.

‘I haven’t tried it,’ I added. ‘I don’t know how to control it.’

‘An excellent reason to leave it on the page.’ She held my gaze, and I agreed that it was, at present. The unfinished possibility in my answer did not escape her; she looked towards the book again before letting the subject rest.

Ron preferred discussing the cup. I asked him to rescue us with news of the entries, and Harry pointed towards the Gryffindor table: Alicia and Angelina had submitted their names just before I arrived. Ron added that Fleur had already entered, to enough noise that she might have been announced as the winner.

A Ravenclaw boy crossed the line while we watched. He hesitated with his parchment above the flame, then released it and returned to his cheering friends. I kept looking at the place the paper had vanished. Such a small movement carried a remarkable amount of consequence.

‘Three years,’ Ron said. I asked whether he meant until we could do that, and he nodded. ‘Old enough, at least.’

‘I thought you were attached to staying alive.’ I turned towards him, and he assured me that had not changed. He wanted the glory without necessarily wanting everything that might stand before it.

Harry compared that to wanting pudding without dinner. Ron regarded it as a perfectly sensible position and admitted that a thousand Galleons would be useful too. Hermione smiled while Harry declared that we had reached his real motive.

‘You’d turn it down?’ Ron asked. Harry had not decided what he would do in three years, and I pointed out that they might not hold the Tournament again. Ron sighed at both of us. ‘Let me have a pleasant thought for half a minute.’

The entrance doors opened behind us. Fred’s announcement that they had done it travelled across the Hall without assistance, and George appeared beside him holding up a small bottle. People hurried to improve their view.

Ron looked at the bottles and briefly closed his eyes. The twins reached us to encouraging applause from an audience which had not volunteered to test anything itself. Fred proudly declared that their preparation had been completed that morning.

‘Tested,’ George added, raising his bottle beside Fred’s. Hermione asked on what, and he described a demanding audience. Ron translated that as each other.

‘Ageing Potion?’ I asked after studying the pale liquid. Fred’s grin widened as he confirmed it. ‘You intend to look old enough?’

‘We intend to be received as old enough,’ George replied. Hermione folded her arms and directed his attention towards the pale circle.

‘It’s meant to keep out people who aren’t seventeen,’ she said. ‘Changing your appearance doesn’t change when you were born.’

Fred acknowledged the obvious objection with a solemnity which suggested he had no intention of considering it. I suggested that obvious objections could be useful ones, and George examined his bottle as though hurt by our lack of confidence.

‘I have complete confidence you’ll make an impression,’ I told him. Harry laughed, prompting Fred to thank him before Harry clarified that he had not been agreeing.

The twins moved towards the line with their parchments ready. People around us described earlier failed attempts with great authority, though their stories disagreed about nearly everything except the result. I found myself watching the empty space beyond the circle rather than the Goblet.

George looked at Fred, who declared himself ready. They tapped bottles together and drank. For a moment nothing happened, allowing them to inspect one another and exchange compliments on their distinguished appearances.

Ron made a noise behind his hand as they stepped forward together. Their leading feet crossed the pale line without any visible response, and George turned towards us to announce our error.

The circle flashed. Both twins rose off their feet; Fred’s parchment flew one way and George’s the other, with neither reaching the flame. They landed in a tangle outside the circle while I tried to see whether either had struck his head.

Then Fred sat up. A magnificent white beard hung almost to his waist, and George stared at it until Fred’s expression made him reach towards his own chin. Around them, the Hall erupted.