Chapter 115 — Holding on to the Light

Lupin pulled a chair up beside the desk while I prepared the paper. He had watched me work on Riddikulus, but this time his questions concerned the moment of casting: what I had to hold in my mind, and how much the inscription could do before I supplied it.

‘A charged piece means I can make the attempt,’ I said, checking the first strip. ‘It doesn’t mean there’s a Patronus waiting inside.’

‘Good. I would rather establish that before opening the trunk.’ He watched me set the strip aside, then asked about the ink.

I explained the aconite preparation from Ken’s notes. Keeping to a mixture I knew would give us something consistent to work with; I had no evidence it would improve this particular spell. By the time I finished, four pieces lay separately on the desk. Preparing them had already taken paper, ink and effort, whatever came out when I threw them.

Lupin studied the last inscription with a small smile. ‘Ken would have enjoyed arguing about that. Preferably while someone else was trying to finish their work.’

‘Was he really that bad?’ I put the stopper back in the bottle. So far, my father’s friends had described a boy I would probably have liked and occasionally wanted to lock outside.

‘I thought him rather shallow at school,’ Lupin admitted. ‘Rich, confident, much too pleased with himself. Working with him afterwards obliged me to revise a few opinions.’

He picked up my notebook when I offered it. The smile faded into concentration as he turned a page, following the changes Hermione and I had made to our records. He asked which parts came from Ken, and I distinguished the inherited notes from our experiments.

‘He and Severus spent a good deal of time on this sort of work,’ Lupin said, returning the book. ‘Neither was particularly inclined to explain it to an audience they considered slow.’

My hand stopped above the ink bottle. I had recognised Snape’s handwriting before, and his interest in my work had made me ask Dumbledore about my father. Dumbledore had recommended asking Snape, an answer which had done very little for my nerves.

‘They worked together on the cards?’ I asked. ‘You actually saw them?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t tell you which ideas belonged to whom, but the collaboration was real.’ Lupin glanced at the four strips. ‘This would have interested both of them.’

I wrote that down before the conversation moved away. It confirmed a connection; it didn’t tell me that every useful thing in my notebook had been invented by Snape. There was enough work I could account for without assigning the rest by guesswork.

Harry had been listening with his wand across his knees. ‘Did you know my mum well too?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been reading Dad’s diary. There are things he writes as if everybody already knows what happened.’

Lupin settled back in his chair. He told us how Ken and Mary had sometimes helped James and Lily after a quarrel, though he stopped short of turning their private arguments into entertainment. Harry asked another question, then another. I left my notebook open without trying to take down his answers.

When I asked where Snape fitted into those friendships, Lupin rubbed a thumb along the seam of his sleeve. ‘There are parts of that history which aren’t mine to give you, Oswald. Severus can decide what he wishes to tell you himself.’

I nodded and let it rest. Across the desk, Harry was asking about something funny his father had written, and Lupin began to answer with a smile. Halfway through, he stopped. He took out a handkerchief and gave himself a moment before continuing.

‘James, Sirius, Peter and I called ourselves the Marauders,’ he said at last. ‘A rather grand name for four boys who spent too much time planning trouble.’

I reached into my pouch. ‘Then I think you ought to see something. It may explain why that name sounds familiar.’

The parchment spread across the desk beneath my hands. I touched it with my brush and gave the password; lines and lettering emerged around the four names at the top. Lupin leaned forward so abruptly that his chair scraped the floor.

‘You helped make this?’ I asked, keeping a hand on the edge. His eyes travelled over the corridors before returning to the heading.

‘James and I certainly did.’ He let out a breath that almost became a laugh. ‘Where on earth did you find it?’

I told him about the twins and the price, then explained that McGonagall and Dumbledore already knew about it. I included the gaps we had found, particularly the Room of Requirement. The names moving across the parchment made it tempting to call it a complete answer to the castle’s security; I had stood inside a room and disappeared from it myself.

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Lupin listened carefully to that part. When I cleared the map and folded it away, Harry was still looking at the place where the heading had been.

‘Sirius was your friend?’ he asked. He had tightened both hands around his wand, leaving the tip pointed at the floor.

‘Yes,’ Lupin said. ‘He was.’

Harry waited, and Lupin drew his chair a little closer. He said he had believed Sirius was the Secret Keeper, as others had. He had not been in the house when Harry’s parents died. Knowing someone as a friend had not made him a witness to everything that happened afterwards.

‘I can answer what I know,’ he told Harry. ‘I won’t pretend I was there when I wasn’t.’

Harry looked down at his wand. I wanted to put the map back on the desk and ask about every name on it, but Lupin was watching him now, giving him room to speak. Harry rubbed the heel of his hand beneath his glasses and asked whether we could get on with the lesson.

Lupin offered to postpone it. When Harry said he still wanted to learn, he agreed to begin with the trunk shut. I moved the ink out of reach, leaving the four prepared pieces where I could take them individually.

The memory I chose was Luna beside the window, holding the note I had struggled to write with my left hand. I could picture the paper turning between her fingers. There had been no danger to solve, no audience and nothing I needed to prove before she took my hand.

‘Expecto Patronum!’ I said, releasing the first piece with the warmth of her kiss against my knuckles still clear in my mind.

The paper burnt away as silver glimmered ahead of me. The light hung like a breath in cold air, bright enough to see against the desk, then thinned and vanished. I stared at the empty space until Lupin asked me what I had felt just before casting.

‘Happy,’ I said, which earned me a patient look. I tried again. ‘Comfortable. I wasn’t waiting for something to go wrong.’

‘Hold on to that feeling. You don’t need to recite the whole occasion to yourself.’ He indicated the remaining pieces. ‘Would you like to try with a distraction?’

My attention went straight to the trunk. Lupin explained the exercise before touching it: the boggart could frighten and overwhelm us, but it could not take a soul. He would stop it if either of us needed him to. Harry moved back beside the waiting chair, and I agreed to try.

The boggart had become a toad for me before. Lupin used a Confundus Charm to direct it into the Dementor shape for this exercise, keeping his wand ready as the lid opened. A hood rose above the rim, followed by a hand that made my stomach contract.

The room seemed to lose its warmth. I took the second piece before I could begin searching for another memory and brought back Luna’s fingers around mine, the untidy note, the relief of simply sitting beside her.

‘Expecto Patronum!’ The paper left my hand and was consumed as silver mist spread between me and the hood.

This time it held. The figure stopped advancing, and the pressure in my chest eased enough for me to draw a fuller breath. I pushed towards that opening, wanting more light, wanting to drive the thing all the way back into its box.

The mist began to thin. I tried harder, and the cold returned so sharply that I missed the next breath altogether. The floor shifted beneath my shoes; I reached for the desk and failed to find it.

‘Riddikulus!’ Lupin stepped across my line of sight. The hood collapsed onto a coat hanger, which bounced against the trunk before he sent it inside and shut the lid.

Harry caught my arm and guided me into the chair. I stayed there with both feet planted, waiting for the room to settle. Lupin put water within reach and checked that I could answer him before asking what had changed during the attempt.

‘It stopped,’ I said. ‘I thought I could make it retreat.’

‘And what happened to the memory?’ He crouched so I didn’t have to look up at him. When I admitted I had stopped thinking about it, he nodded towards the closed trunk. ‘You began trying to beat the boggart. That is a different feeling from the one which produced the light.’

I drank slowly, annoyed that I could remember the exact moment. The spell had worked better, and I had responded by abandoning the thing that made it work. Two unused pieces remained on the desk. I left them there while Harry came forward.

He practised the words with the trunk closed first. Lupin checked his chosen memory, waited until he was ready, then opened the lid again. The boggart needed no help finding its shape this time; the hood turned towards Harry as he raised his wand.

Harry cast once without producing any light. His second attempt broke around the words, and Lupin was already moving when his knees gave way. The trunk slammed shut. I steadied the chair as Lupin lowered Harry into it, keeping one hand behind his head.

For a moment Harry didn’t answer. I gripped the chair back while Lupin checked him, then stepped aside when Harry stirred. Nobody suggested opening the trunk again. Lupin waited until he was properly awake before offering chocolate and water.

‘There was a man’s voice,’ Harry said. He held the chocolate without eating it. ‘Telling her to take me and run. I think it was my dad.’

Lupin went very still. Harry pressed his lips together, trying to describe more, but the words tangled and he stopped. I moved the water nearer his hand without asking him to try again.

‘That isn’t cowardice, Harry,’ Lupin said. ‘You’re being made to hear something terrible. Falling doesn’t mean you wanted to give in.’

Harry took a small bite at last. When he asked to continue, Lupin agreed only to work with the trunk closed; the boggart had finished its part for the day. Harry looked at it once more, then laid his wand across his lap and nodded.

I pulled my notebook towards me and recorded the two pieces I had used. The second attempt had made more light and checked the boggart briefly, but there was no animal shape and no victory to underline. Beside the point where the mist failed, I wrote what I had started thinking instead of pretending the result was mysterious.

Harry was telling Lupin about his first flight on a broom. His voice steadied as he described leaving the ground, and I listened while putting away my two unused strips. Lupin asked him to find the moment before he had begun worrying about what came next.

‘Keep that,’ he said, resting a hand on the closed lid. ‘Now let’s find a better way to begin.’