Chapter 99 — The Story Going Round

Luna appeared while I was deciding how long to wait before asking Pomfrey to let me leave. She stopped at the door, listened to something I could not hear and nodded before coming towards my bed. I was smiling until I saw how closely she watched the dressing.

‘Ginny told me. She’d spoken to Ron,’ she said, sitting beside me. ‘They said a hippogriff had hurt you.’ I explained that only a small part of one had been involved, then wished I had thought of something better when she continued looking at the bandage.

I reached for her hand. ‘It missed the bone and tendon. Pomfrey’s treated it, and I have to stay while it finishes healing.’ Luna’s fingers closed round mine as I spoke, and I asked what she had heard.

‘Less than that, which made it worse.’ She looked towards the other bed, where the curtain hid Malfoy. I told her he was awake and being kept for observation, then made room as she leaned towards me. I put an arm round her shoulders, grateful she had come without knowing anything clever to say about it.

For a while we listened to Pomfrey moving behind the curtain. I had been composing a different account for Luna, full of wind and water, with a fairly accurate impression of my knees after landing. Eventually I told her I had ridden Buckbeak before the accident.

She sat back enough to see my face. ‘Tell me that part.’ I began with the bow, explaining how difficult it had been to look down while the beak remained above me. By the time I reached the lake she was asking questions, and I remembered details I had forgotten while thinking about the pain.

When she asked about the feathers, I put her hand against my sleeve to show how they lay. The cloth was a poor substitute, but describing their warmth and movement helped bring the flight back. We were still talking when Pomfrey reminded Luna that she had another lesson.

Malfoy left before I did. He stopped at the foot of my bed with his robes over one arm, looked at my leg and seemed about to speak. I waited, interested in what could have required so much preparation, but he went past without saying anything.

‘That was unusual,’ I told Pomfrey after the door closed. She was checking a tray by the window and suggested I ask him about it later. I said I would hate to spoil it, which earned no more response from her than it had from him.

During the afternoon she examined the leg again. Fresh skin covered the wound, looking strangely ordinary after the trouble it caused, and she made me stand and walk while she watched. Once satisfied, she told me to return if it hurt or swelled and to avoid running for the rest of the day.

‘Does walking to dinner count?’ I asked while gathering my damaged trousers. She said only if I did it badly. I left with them folded into a parcel and found Harry waiting outside, ready to take it despite its lack of weight.

He said Hagrid wanted to see me when I was ready, but McGonagall intended to speak to me first. I slowed at the stairs, where my leg felt less certain than it had on the ward floor. The kick, the card and Buckbeak had not disappeared because Pomfrey could mend a cut.

That evening McGonagall asked me to begin before Hagrid returned to the clearing. I described Malfoy’s performance and my response without trying to turn them into one necessary action. She listened until I explained the card, then looked up from her notes.

‘You understood that it could hurt him.’ I agreed, and she continued before I found anything to add. ‘Its being unenchanted does not answer that concern, Mr Mercer.’ I said I knew, remembering the distance between his hand and the fruit more uncomfortably than before.

She gave me a detention for the assault. What happened afterwards would be recorded separately, she said, asking me to show her where everyone had stood when Malfoy approached Buckbeak. I drew the rope and enclosure, then marked my position as accurately as I could remember.

The second account took longer. She asked about the lead, and I explained that Hagrid released it for the flights and secured it afterwards. He still held it when Malfoy crossed the rope. Where two things happened almost together, I admitted I could not confidently put one before the other.

I wanted to make the account sound better for Hagrid. Changing it would only make it less useful if somebody tried to make it sound worse, so I pointed to the place on my drawing where he first warned Malfoy. McGonagall told me she had recorded both warnings and asked me to continue.

Dumbledore spoke to me the next day. I gave him the same account, including the earlier argument, and he thanked me for distinguishing the two incidents. Before leaving, I asked whether Hagrid would lose his job.

‘We’re still reviewing what happened. I won’t give you a conclusion before that work is finished,’ he said. I pointed out that Malfoy ignored Hagrid, and he nodded. ‘That matters. So does keeping a dangerous animal apart from a student who ignores an instruction.’

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I left without the reassurance I wanted. At least he had listened to the details, which was more than I could say for some people asking about my leg. By dinner I had apparently wrestled Buckbeak, and the next morning somebody wanted to know which spell knocked Malfoy unconscious before I carried him to safety.

I explained that I mostly fell on him and then needed carrying myself. My listener looked disappointed, perhaps having expected a demonstration. The true account of my relationship with Luna seemed equally unsatisfactory to people determined to improve it.

We met when our timetables allowed, held hands and sat together when there was room. Luna also had friends in her own year and things she wanted to do, so arranging an afternoon could require rather more discussion than the rumours allowed. Apparently I had first completed twelve tasks to win her consent.

Ron repeated this at lunch with sufficient enjoyment for me to ask whether one task was listening to him describe the others. He denied inventing the story, although I pointed out that he was developing it confidently. Luna asked what the tasks were, leaving him suddenly busy with his potatoes.

‘There are different versions,’ he said at last. She thought that a shame because she might have liked some of them, then took an apple and asked about the difficult passage I had mentioned that morning. Ron tried returning to the tasks, but we gave him so little help that he eventually let us discuss the book.

My detention occupied an evening intended for reading. I scrubbed old ink from classroom desks under McGonagall’s supervision, discovering that somebody had spent considerable effort carving a name where my cloth kept catching. By the time I returned to my notes, I was less inclined to laugh about rumours which involved another assault.

I heard a worse one outside the library. A boy told his friend there must have been a potion involved, since otherwise he could not understand why I went out with Luna. I stopped beside them and asked him to explain the part he found confusing.

‘It was a joke.’ He shifted his books and looked towards the open door. I felt the familiar urge to do something with my hands and kept them at my sides, remembering how recently I had described a similar decision to McGonagall.

‘I asked because I like her. She said yes,’ I told him. ‘That’s what happened, whether you understand it or not.’ His friend muttered that it was all right, but I stayed long enough to point out that accusing Luna of using a potion was rather different from finding her difficult to understand.

Neither offered an explanation. I left because waiting for one was unlikely to improve my temper, then told Luna when we met later. She listened quietly, turning her quill between her fingers before setting it down.

‘People like an explanation that lets them keep the same opinion of everyone,’ she said. I asked whether she wanted me to leave it alone. ‘Keep saying what you mean. I’d rather you didn’t start hitting people for me.’ I agreed, and she drew her bag closer to the table.

Some belongings were still missing. Cho had helped her look and spoken to a prefect, but an item returning anonymously did not keep the next one where Luna left it. I asked what she wanted to do, and we began making a list together.

She knew which things disappeared, which came back and where she found them. I wrote the dates she remembered, leaving gaps instead of pretending we knew them exactly. Cho met us before Luna went to Flitwick and added what she had seen, clearly separating it from the incidents Luna had described to her.

Luna asked me to come with them. Flitwick listened to her first, holding up a hand when I started explaining one of the rumours before she finished. I waited, realising I had interrupted an account I particularly wanted him to hear.

He asked about the returned belongings and earlier reports, then told Luna what he would follow up. I could not hear his later conversations with other students and resisted constructing them from looks in the corridor. Over the next few days, she told me nothing else had disappeared and some older things had returned. We kept the list, with the returned items marked beside their dates.

Meanwhile, the review of Hagrid’s lesson reached a decision. I read the notice before Ron brought it to our study table: Hagrid would temporarily stop teaching Care of Magical Creatures while the lesson arrangements were reviewed. He remained at Hogwarts, which did little to improve Ron’s expression as he unfolded the paper.

‘They’ve suspended him.’ He put it between us, and Harry lowered the Quidditch book Wood had lent him. Harry pointed out that it was from teaching for now; Ron said that did not make it good. I agreed while Hermione moved our Animagus references back from the edge to clear him a space.

Ron sat down and asked whether I told Dumbledore what Malfoy did. When I said yes, he began wondering what Malfoy must have told him instead. I stopped him before the suspicion became an account of its own.

‘Dumbledore told me he agreed on the important part. He approached after being warned, and I pushed him clear,’ I said. Ron looked at the notice again. ‘Don’t give him a lie he hasn’t told.’ He rubbed a crease flat and said Lucius would not like it, which seemed probable without telling us what he was doing.

Hermione had heard he complained to the Ministry, though she had seen no letter and spoken to nobody involved. Harry asked about Buckbeak, making me turn the notice so he could read it. Buckbeak was being kept out of lessons while the incident was considered; there was no decision about his future.

‘We should ask Hagrid what he’s actually been told,’ I said. Harry nodded and marked his place before closing the book. Wood’s determination to win the Quidditch Cup in his final year was beginning to occupy several of his evenings, and he admitted he still had more to read before practice.

Ron looked between his book and our references, asking whether anyone had time to do nothing. Hermione suggested he write us an account of how it was done. He was preparing an answer when the door opened hard enough to turn several heads, and Seamus came in with a newspaper.

‘Someone’s seen him.’ He hurried towards us while I asked who he meant. Seamus lifted the paper, flattening it enough for us to see the photograph beneath the headline, and Sirius Black stared out at the room.