Chapter 52 — Keeping Company

Ron carried his book back from the hospital wing with both hands. Loose pages protruded between the covers, several ending in neat little bites. Madam Pomfrey had kept Neville to treat his ears and check his dizziness. After examining the rest of us, she had dismissed our bruises with instructions which left little room for returning to class to collect more.

‘It was new,’ Ron said. Harry offered to share his copy, while Hermione tried arranging the damaged pages in order. She thought some could be repaired. Ron showed her a gap where a corner ought to have been and asked what she proposed to do about the parts inside the pixies. She put that page carefully beneath the others.

Ron said I would be more use at the front of the classroom than her brilliant professor. I told him I would rather have somebody there who could teach me. Being pleased with the binding strips made it dangerously easy to accept the lesson as a chance to demonstrate them. I had used work done elsewhere to escape a problem the teacher had created, which seemed a poor reason to attend his class.

‘Perhaps it was one bad lesson,’ Hermione said. Harry agreed that it had certainly been bad, and she did not defend it further. She carried some of Ron’s pages for him as we walked. I appreciated that more than another attempt to explain why Lockhart might have wanted us frightened and Neville hanging from the ceiling.

Ron asked what the invitation at the door had been about. I repeated what Lockhart had said, and he immediately connected it with the bookshop. He warned me not to pay for anything. I assured him that I had no plans to finance another cage, but what troubled me most was the difference between the man we had watched and the man described in his books.

Beneath the admiration Lockhart lavished on himself, the accounts contained convincing details. I had found reports in the Prophet of some of the incidents he described. That did not prove he had done everything he claimed, but it meant there was more to investigate than whether he wrote entertaining fiction. I asked how he had survived those encounters if he could not manage a room of pixies.

Nobody had an answer. In the book Harry shared with Ron, the entry on Cornish pixies soon acquired additional crosses beside its danger rating. Ron added a qualification applying specifically to Lockhart. Harry let it stand, which was a generous response to somebody improving his book with an opinion and too much ink.

The next Defence lesson contained no live creatures. Neither did the one after it. Lockhart told stories and occasionally gave someone a part to act, demonstrating an ability to fill the hour which the pixies had not allowed him to display. I continued reading for the subject, but the useful practice increasingly happened outside his classroom.

Leo returned from delivering our order, and the supplies arrived separately. We checked the packets before adding them to the workshop boxes. Harry noticed when a trial differed from the one I thought I was repeating. Ron could arrange the next steps so that I spent less time reaching past things to find what I needed, provided he first stopped complaining about the room.

Hermione kept the batches labelled and the records clear. Having more people prepare ordinary ingredients made a difference, but the inscriptions still needed my brush and the charge still came from me. No amount of organisation persuaded a failed piece to work. It did make the failure easier to investigate without first arguing over what I had put into it.

By the middle of October, producing the spells I already knew had become more dependable. I could practise without emptying the pouch and spending the next two days trying to restore it. We still spoiled pieces. Treated paper continued to disappear from the reserve I had brought from home, and I wrote down what needed replenishing before it became urgent.

The improvement felt substantial because I could use it. There were prepared pieces left after practice and clearer notes beside an unsuccessful alteration. I no longer had to trust my irritated memory of a trial when deciding whether to repeat it. That was freedom enough to appreciate without pretending the supplies had become endless.

The unicorn’s blood and horn remained in Hermione’s keeping, stoppered and wrapped. We read about them and compared accounts without using either. Becoming more reliable with ordinary talismans had answered none of the questions about the gift. I found it easier to leave the materials alone now that leaving them alone was something we had discussed, rather than something I avoided explaining.

Snape contributed through faults in my classwork. The copying he assigned could be infuriatingly useful, often covering preparations I had been trying to stabilise. At first I suspected I was remembering the helpful passages and forgetting the rest. Then a problem with material refusing to remain suspended was followed by an assignment which sent me straight to settling and separation.

One evening I laid the borrowed notebook beside my copies of Dad’s notes. The friend Ken called Dead Face had understood this work. Snape understood it too, and his choice of tasks had begun to feel less accidental. I wrote the possibility at the top of a spare page: was Snape the friend?

It explained some things without explaining everything. I knew that useful copying did not prove a nickname, however satisfying it would be to solve it. After a lesson I tried asking about my parents, choosing an approach I considered cautious. Snape looked at the task still waiting on my desk and supplied an answer about that instead.

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‘Your curiosity would be more impressive, Mercer, if it extended to the work directly in front of you,’ he said. The exchange cost Gryffindor points without providing any useful information. I completed the task and kept the question in my notes. It would have to remain a question until I found something better than my preference for the answer.

Outside lessons, I kept seeing Luna. Some meetings happened by chance; others required a route back from the library which had become noticeably longer. She did not ask me to account for it. Once, however, she noticed that the book I was carrying was one I had already finished and asked whether I was enjoying it again.

I claimed to be considering the ending. She assured me that it was still there, smiling as she moved her things to make room beside her. I sat down and put the book away. The conversation improved once I stopped pretending that it was the reason I had come.

Her belongings continued to disappear. One afternoon I found an older student holding an earring above the stairwell while his friend encouraged him to drop it. Luna stood a little way behind them, watching. I went straight over, positioning myself where I could see the hand without crowding him towards the open space.

‘Give it back,’ I said. He closed his fingers and told me it was a joke. I looked at Luna, then back at the fist above the stairwell. ‘She can hear it with her earring back. Or we can take it to Professor Flitwick together.’

He hesitated. I stayed where I was, keeping my voice level while he decided whether the entertainment was worth the trouble. At last he placed the earring in Luna’s hand. His friend complained that people could not take a joke, and they left before I needed to find a teacher who could hear how amusing it had been.

Luna checked the fastening. She thanked me, then looked up and said she did not like people making a great deal of noise about her, even when they meant to be kind. I had been preparing a stronger version of the conversation for the next person I caught. I put that aside and told her I would remember.

We walked away together. I nearly suggested leaving the unusual earrings in her room, where at least nobody could snatch one from her. Before I finished, I considered who would have to change something and who would carry on exactly as before. Luna noticed my hesitation and asked what I had been going to say.

I admitted the idea, along with my doubts about it. She looked down at the earring still in her hand. ‘I like them,’ she said. I told her to keep wearing them, because she was right and the suggestion had been poor. She put it back on, and we continued without making her clothes responsible for somebody else’s behaviour.

At a distance she sometimes looked like any other first-year in school robes, with a bag held close and hair blowing across her face. Then she would turn, and I would recognise the cork, the earrings or her interest in something everybody else had passed. I found myself looking for those details among the students ahead of me. Seeing them made a walk across the grounds more promising.

She lent me a bundle of Quibbler back issues. Some accounts amused me; others raised questions I would have liked to ask their writers. Hermione examined a cover and looked towards my more conventional books. I reminded her that reading a magazine did not oblige me to believe it, which she accepted before pointing out a particularly doubtful headline.

Ron was more interested in why I kept spending time with Luna than in anything the magazine claimed. I told him I liked her company. He waited for an explanation long enough to make me suspect he wanted something else to tease, then returned to his homework when I provided none. I did not need his agreement to keep meeting a friend.

Luna made small gifts for Ginny and me. A little folded paper creature appeared inside a book she returned, its legs arranged with more care than I could have managed. It did not move when I put it on my desk. I liked the time she had spent on it without requiring magic to make it worth keeping.

Harry became harder to find as Wood increased training. I renewed the loan of my Nimbus for his use on the team, taking it from my luggage and returning it to the equipment store. Harry handled it as though the summer had been a long interruption between flights. Wood discussed fixtures and tactics with an intensity Ron followed far more readily than most lessons.

Colin continued appearing with his camera. Harry learnt alternative routes across the grounds and occasionally arrived at supper looking as though he had been pursued. I could understand his reluctance to keep refusing the same request. Fame was proving less useful for getting from one place to another than a reliable knowledge of the side doors.

At dinner, Fred and George drew me away from the table. They had heard that Slytherin’s new Seeker was Malfoy and that his father had bought Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones for the whole team. Fred reminded me of my promise in the Great Hall last year. He need not have bothered; I remembered it with considerable clarity once new broomsticks entered the conversation.

‘You’re sure about the equipment?’ I asked. George said they were sure enough to give me time to arrange something. The two of them looked pleased before I had answered, which suggested that they remembered my promise almost as well as I did. I told them I would look into the order, and they returned to dinner in an unnecessarily cheerful state.

The purchase required a price and confirmation that the money could be released from my account. Emma’s reply included the amount and a short question asking whether I was certain about the number. I checked the total before answering. Fifteen Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones, with proper protective equipment, would be a substantial purchase even when I could afford it.

Seven were for the starting side. The others would serve training, replacements and whoever earned a reserve place. Having inherited enough to buy them did not mean the money remained mine afterwards, and the arrangements involved adults as well as my enthusiasm. I confirmed what I wanted, then asked Hagrid whether he would collect the order when it was ready.

He agreed. By the next open training session, the arrangements were made and the twins could scarcely look at me without grinning. I had something to look forward to beyond imagining Malfoy’s expression: Wood’s players would get the equipment I had promised. Still, I found myself hoping Malfoy would be there when it arrived.