Chapter 47 — Two Empty Places

By the time the first-years entered the Great Hall, I had looked at the doors so often that Neville asked whether I expected them to move. Hermione sat on my left. The two places on my right remained empty, despite a small boy trying to claim one until I explained that my friends were coming. I had stopped being certain of that on the journey up from the station.

Snape’s chair was empty too. I could think of several reasons why a teacher might miss the start of the feast, and none helped me eat. There was nothing on the plates yet, but anxiety seemed determined to make an early start. Hermione checked the staff table again as Professor McGonagall unrolled her list.

We had reached the castle without seeing the car. Looking along the platform had produced strangers, luggage and an irritated porter whose way I was blocking. Hermione had asked other students; nobody we spoke to had seen Harry or Ron arrive. Now the first-years stood beneath the candles, and I found myself looking for Luna among them.

She waited with her hands loosely joined, watching the ceiling. When McGonagall called her name, she walked to the stool without the anxious haste of the boy before her. The Hat slipped over her eyes. Its shout of Ravenclaw brought applause from the table in blue and bronze, where several students made room as she approached.

Luna looked across the Hall before sitting. I raised a hand, and she returned the wave with a smile that made the room seem a little less crowded. Hermione followed my glance. She said Ravenclaw might suit someone who asked so many questions, although she hoped Luna would be equally interested in checking the answers.

‘You liked talking to her,’ Neville observed. I said she had been good company on the train, then looked back at the stool rather too quickly. He accepted the explanation with a smile which suggested he had heard a different one. I decided to let him enjoy it.

Ginny was called near the end. Gryffindor cheered her arrival, with Fred and George making themselves easy to locate and Percy sitting taller as though he had helped arrange the result. Ron’s place remained bare. I wondered whether his family knew where he was, and whether I should have asked them before sitting down.

The plates filled after the welcome. Hermione put food on hers, noticed that I had not moved, and passed me the potatoes. She told me to eat before everything went cold. I obeyed because she had apparently remembered how supper worked, then found I was hungry enough for a second helping despite watching the doors between mouthfuls.

Harry did not come through them. Neither did Ron, and the conversations around me grew louder as people settled into being back. Someone described a holiday beside the sea; someone else complained about the new book list. For a few minutes I tried joining in, but every movement at the far end of the Hall pulled my attention away.

I caught Percy when the feast began to break up. He had turned towards the younger students, already gathering them for the journey upstairs, but stopped when I asked about his brother. His expression changed at Harry’s name. I had been hoping for surprise, followed by the news that they were sitting somewhere I had somehow failed to look.

‘They’ve been found,’ he said quietly. ‘They’re with the teachers.’ I asked whether both were all right, and he assured me that they were alive before glancing towards the departing staff. He could not tell me when they would be sent upstairs. We should go to the common room and wait there.

For a moment, being alive seemed an extravagant achievement. Then I remembered the car beside our window and felt angry enough to welcome the next conversation. I thanked Percy and returned to Hermione. She let out a breath when I told her, then helped me collect food before the platters disappeared.

We carried it upstairs and found seats where we could see the portrait hole. The common room gradually emptied around us. Hermione tried reading, abandoned it, and asked me twice what Percy’s exact words had been. I could not improve them on repetition, though I would have enjoyed discovering that he had said the boys were merely being congratulated on their punctual arrival.

Eventually she closed her book. ‘Tell me in the morning,’ she said, looking towards the girls’ staircase. ‘Unless they’ve been expelled. Then wake me.’

I promised, and she left after one more glance at the portrait. The fire settled lower. I rearranged the food on a plate, which did nothing to make it warmer, and began imagining explanations Harry and Ron might offer. By the time they finally climbed inside, I had rejected most of the sensible ones.

Ron had twigs in his hair and a tear in his sleeve. Harry moved carefully, keeping one shoulder a little stiff, and both stopped when they saw me waiting. I stood too quickly. They were there, on their own feet, which ought to have made my first words easier to choose.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

‘We saw you,’ I said. ‘Luna saw the car beside the train. Then you went up, and we spent the rest of the journey wondering where you’d gone.’ Harry opened his mouth, but I pushed the plate towards them. ‘Eat first. I want the explanation to make sense.’

They sat without arguing about the temperature of the food. Ron took a sandwich in both hands, apparently needing something solid to hold. Harry thanked me and looked towards the stairs. I told him Hermione knew they had been found, which relieved him until I added that she wanted the rest of the story at breakfast.

‘The barrier wouldn’t let us through,’ he said. He waited while Ron swallowed, and the two of them described reaching it after the rest of the family. Their trolleys had struck something solid. They had tried again, unable to find a way onto the platform, while the clock continued towards eleven.

‘We weren’t late,’ Harry insisted. ‘There were more than five minutes left when we first tried.’ Ron nodded and said everybody else had just gone through. I believed that they had hit the wall; the next part required more explanation.

‘Why didn’t you wait for your parents?’ I asked Ron. ‘They knew you were coming. They’d have had to come back out.’ He looked at his sandwich, and Harry said they had been afraid of missing the train. I waited to hear how stealing a car had improved that problem.

Ron explained that they could follow the tracks. The car could become invisible, so nobody would see them, and Harry knew they would eventually reach Hogwarts if they stayed with the train. In the station, with the barrier shut and time disappearing, this had apparently fitted together rather well. I imagined the platform from their side and understood the panic without admiring its solution.

‘Except the invisibility stopped working,’ Harry added. Ron began saying that it had only been unreliable at first, then gave up when Harry looked at him. They had needed to descend to check where the railway went. People had seen the car, though neither boy knew how many.

I put down the jug I had picked up. They had flown all the way to Scotland in a vehicle that was already failing, and I had been annoyed about a few minutes beside the train. Ron hurried into the next part before I could speak. Near the castle, the car had become harder to control.

‘We hit the tree,’ he finished. Harry corrected him by saying the tree had hit them back. They told me about branches striking the windows and the car struggling free, leaving behind considerably more than their hope of an ordinary first evening. It had gone off without them afterwards. They did not have it safely parked somewhere, awaiting Arthur’s approval.

Filch had found them. Snape had followed, and then there had been Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and a conversation neither seemed eager to quote. I asked the question Hermione had left with me. Harry shook his head so quickly that I suspected he had been asking it silently throughout the interview.

‘We’re staying,’ he said. ‘Letters home, though. And the trophy room for the rest of the year.’ Ron added that they had to clean it without magic, with a weariness that sounded less like polishing silver than carrying the room upstairs. The precise arrangements were still to come. They had understood the part about it being regular work.

I sat back. ‘You could have died before anyone at school knew where you were,’ I said. The words came out more quietly than I expected. Ron stopped eating, and Harry looked at the fire. I remembered leaving the common room last year after being told to wait, which made it difficult to enjoy being the sensible person in the discussion.

‘I know being frightened can make a bad idea look useful,’ I added. ‘Next time, leave some room for somebody to help.’ Harry said they would. Ron nodded, then asked whether there was any more food, and I passed him what remained rather than making them promise a third time.

As they ate, I went back to the barrier. Other people had passed through it, and Harry had already received a warning intended to keep him away from Hogwarts. I asked whether he had seen Dobby since leaving the Dursleys. His hand stopped halfway to his glass.

‘You think he did it?’ Harry asked. I said I thought it was worth considering. Intercepting letters and blocking a journey would serve much the same purpose, but we had not seen the elf at the station. Ron pointed out that Dobby had not made them take the car. That, at least, was something we could agree on without finding him.

We would tell Hermione in the morning. If Dobby appeared again, Harry wanted an explanation rather than another warning, and I suggested he start with the barrier before the elf found a way to avoid the question. I wished we could ask him now. We had a possibility, two tired witnesses and no way to know whether the person responsible had finished trying.

Upstairs, their trunks had arrived ahead of them. Harry checked his belongings, lifting the familiar silver folds of his cloak before putting them away again. Ron sat on his bed and took out his wand. I had expected a crack. The exposed fibres between the broken sections made my stomach tighten.

‘Fred’s got tape,’ he said, carefully pushing the pieces together. I told him to show McGonagall before trying to cast anything. He looked at the break for a long moment, then said he would do it tomorrow. I wanted to believe that meant before a lesson, and said so. He nodded without looking up.

By breakfast, the Daily Prophet had supplied the rest of the school with a flying car to discuss. Several boys greeted Harry and Ron with admiration, apparently finding the newspaper more exciting than the possibility of a funeral. Hermione read the article after hearing our account. She folded it carefully enough to make Ron shift away from her elbow.

‘I’m glad you’re both here,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to remain alive for the rest of the week.’ Harry accepted a piece of toast from me and promised to try. Across the Hall, owls began arriving with ordinary letters, and Ron watched every one of them as though it might be carrying a branch.