Chapter 90 — What the Minister Knew

Harry turned the cup between his hands and told us he had left after Marge swelled up. He collected his things and went out before Vernon could stop him, intending to come to our house. Then, further along the road, he saw a large black dog.

I remembered the movement in the hedge on his birthday. We had not seen what caused it, and a rustle did not give me a reason to decide he had met the same animal. I asked whether the dog came at him.

It had startled him enough to bring his wand out. ‘Then this bus appeared almost on top of me,’ he said, and Ron lowered his toast to ask whether he meant the Knight Bus. Harry recognised the name at once.

Hermione knew it as an emergency service for witches and wizards who needed transport. Ron had heard Arthur describe flagging it down with a wand, which seemed to explain why Harry’s attempt to defend himself had summoned a vehicle. Harry had been in no position to object to the ride.

‘There were beds inside. I don’t think they were attached to anything, because mine kept moving whenever we turned.’ Hermione called that dreadful with enough interest to weaken the complaint. I asked how he had ended up at the Leaky Cauldron rather than our house.

They asked where he wanted to go, and he chose somewhere he knew he could arrive with all his luggage. He had planned to take a room and send me a message, he explained, before discovering that the Minister of Magic was waiting for him.

The table went quiet. Harry looked round at us and said he had not told Fudge where he was going. The next thing he knew, however, he was sitting opposite him, expecting his wand to be snapped before he was sent straight back.

I asked what Fudge actually said. ‘That Aunt Marge had been put right and the people who saw it had been dealt with,’ Harry replied. ‘He listened when I told him what happened, then said they wouldn’t expel me over an accident like that.’

Hermione wanted to be certain those had been the Minister’s own words. Harry assured her he had kept asking until Fudge seemed annoyed, which I thought a reasonable price for the answer. Hoping the Ministry would overlook something was very different from being told how they intended to handle it.

Fudge had been much more interested in Harry’s accommodation. He arranged the room, told him to stay in Diagon Alley and warned him against wandering into Muggle London or going out late. Somebody even collected the school books on his list, with the cost charged to Harry’s account.

‘He seemed to think getting them here was terribly important.’ Harry glanced towards our parcels, and Ron frowned over his abandoned toast. Arthur had said Fudge was busy dealing with the escape; it seemed strange that he had made time to arrange a student’s shopping.

I looked past Harry towards the notices near the restaurant door. One carried the face we had seen outside Privet Drive, although this version included more information. I asked how worried Fudge had seemed about Harry leaving the Alley.

He considered it before answering. Fudge tried to make the restrictions sound like common sense, he said, repeating that Harry would be perfectly comfortable at the pub. Luna followed my glance towards the notice and suggested he might expect something worse to happen elsewhere.

‘Because of Black?’ I asked. She nodded, and Hermione looked over her shoulder while Ron tried to read the smaller print from his chair. I asked a passing member of staff for a newspaper, which Hermione spread between the plates when it arrived.

Sirius Black looked back at us from another photograph. This article named Azkaban, and Harry remembered the conductor saying nobody had escaped before. Ron muttered that perhaps nobody had admitted to it, so I pointed out that other escapes were something we did not know about. The Ministry was clearly taking this one seriously.

Luna placed a finger beside a paragraph. ‘Daddy looked through older reports when the news came out. Black was accused of helping Voldemort. They said he killed a wizard and Muggles in a street.’ She showed us where the new article repeated the old account rather than claiming she had discovered proof herself.

Harry read the paragraph. His expression changed when he reached Voldemort’s name, and he looked up to ask whether we thought Black was after him.

‘I think Fudge may be worried that he is,’ I said. ‘It would explain why he made time to see you himself.’ Hermione checked the article again and pointed out that it did not say that anywhere. I agreed, which was why I wanted an answer from someone who actually knew before we began treating the explanation as fact.

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Ron leaned back from the table. If an escaped prisoner killed Harry, he said, everyone would blame the Ministry. I thought that might be part of the concern, but it might also mean they had information which had never appeared in the paper.

I disliked the gap between Fudge’s precautions and what he had explained to the person being protected. Harry had left Privet Drive intending to walk to my house. If he had a reason not to make that journey, being assured of a comfortable room was a poor substitute for hearing it.

Ron said Arthur was still nearby and we could ask when we returned to the pub. I told him we should, while Harry stared at the photograph a little longer before pushing the paper away.

‘Why can’t we have one quiet year?’ He looked round the table without waiting for an answer. ‘The Stone, then the Chamber. We haven’t even got on the train this time.’

I could have reminded him that Dumbledore would be at Hogwarts, but he already knew. We had both been there when Quirrell tried to kill us, and the Headmaster’s presence had not kept a diary out of Ginny’s books.

‘Then we find out what the danger is,’ I said, folding the newspaper so the photograph disappeared from between Harry’s plate and cup. ‘We tell the people who can help, instead of waiting for it to turn up in a corridor.’ Hermione thought that would be a pleasant change, and none of us found much to dispute.

I would like Harry to stay with us for the remaining days, I told him, but we had to settle Fudge’s instructions before moving him. Emma needed to know what was happening too. He said he would like to come, adding that traffic and people unloading things had kept waking him at the pub.

Then there were the books. He gave my strapped parcel an unfriendly look and explained that Hagrid sent him a Monster Book for his birthday. It arrived after he returned from our house, and he kept it tied until the school list would explain why he needed it.

That morning he had opened it beside the books Fudge arranged. ‘It got two before I caught it,’ he said, while Ron made a sympathetic noise. ‘One might be repairable. The other’s missing rather a lot of pages.’

I told him Tom had acquired practice with that problem today. Then I turned my own copy so Harry could read the warning and showed him the movement along the spine. The book quietened beneath my finger, watched closely by Harry from a sensible distance.

He asked whether that was all it needed. I assured him it was, apparently leaving him to decide whether this improved the morning or made it more annoying. He read the instruction once more before I secured the strap.

After breakfast he fetched the damaged books from his room and joined us at Flourish and Blotts. Tom set one aside for repair, then showed him why the other could not be restored from what remained. Harry ordered a replacement while Ron and Hermione collected the things they still lacked.

I helped Hermione move the carrier out of the doorway as Ron searched his list. The Alley was crowded enough that keeping the animals apart needed more attention than the shopping. Crookshanks stayed close to Hermione’s feet, and Ron checked his box whenever somebody brushed past.

They left to find their families, promising to meet us at the station. Harry went ahead to the Leaky Cauldron to look for Arthur and collect his belongings if the arrangements allowed it. I said we would follow shortly, then stopped with Luna at the edge of the crowd.

She watched me fold my list before speaking. ‘You thought of the notice before Harry finished telling us,’ she said. I tightened my grip on the parcel and made myself loosen it. She had been watching where I looked, and there was little point denying it.

I said yes. Luna asked whether it was only because of Fudge’s behaviour, and I admitted that it was not, leaving her to wait while I found a way to continue. Behind her, someone argued with a shopkeeper about a brass telescope.

‘Some things seem familiar before I understand why. A name, or something that happens.’ I moved the parcel under my arm. ‘I try to fit them together, and sometimes I can’t tell whether I’ve remembered something useful or just decided I ought to know.’

It was the closest I could get without turning the pavement into a place for a conversation I had never managed with anyone. The old memories were no record I could open at the correct page. They came mixed with this life, with things I had read and things I had assumed. Ken and Mary, and then Hogwarts, had already changed events I thought I understood.

Luna said I was not telling her everything. I admitted that plainly instead of searching for a clever answer. I did not know how to explain it properly yet, and I did not want to produce something confident merely because it sounded sensible.

She looked down at our hands, then back at me. ‘You can tell me which things you know and which you only think,’ she said. ‘Especially if they involve me.’ I told her I could do that, and that Harry deserved the same. I would not ask him to risk himself on a guess I had not even explained.

She accepted that, although it did not settle everything. I still had things I did not know how to say, and she knew I had them. For a moment I listened to the argument about the telescope, aware of how ordinary it sounded beside what I had tried to tell her.

Luna stepped closer and put a hand against my cheek. Her smile began small and a little uncertain, and she paused there until I leaned towards her. The kiss was brief; when we drew apart, I could no longer remember which of the men had objected to the price.

She rested her forehead against mine and said we should find Harry. I agreed, but neither of us moved immediately. I had brought us to the edge of the crowd to finish a conversation, and needed another moment before I could trust myself to walk through it.