Chapter 132 — What I Still Wanted

The first Dementor came over the bank as I pulled the paper from its cover. I threw it into the space in front of us and called the words with Harry’s voice beside mine.

‘Expecto Patronum!’ Silver spread over the stones, rising from my released spell in a broad, uneven curtain. Harry’s mist joined one edge, and the descending figure stopped as though it had met a wind blowing the other way.

I held on to the memory I had chosen: Luna beside the Thestrals, her fingers closing round mine before we walked back. After the others had gone, we had stayed together because we both wanted to. I remembered the feel of her hand better than the words we had used, and for the moment that was enough.

The light strengthened, turning a second Dementor away from the bank. Harry drew a sharp breath beside me and muttered something about his parents, but I could not spare the attention to ask. More figures were coming down between the trees, where the silver did not reach.

‘Turn,’ I told him. ‘Keep Sirius between us.’ Harry moved round his godfather’s body while I shifted towards the open part of the bank. For a few seconds our light covered both approaches, and I could see a strip of empty shore beyond it.

Then the cold deepened inside my clothes. The pain in my shoulder became distant, less urgent than the weight settling behind my eyes, and I tried to find Luna’s hand again. It kept slipping out of the memory, replaced by older hands and a room whose edges I could not reach.

I had been alive in the wrong place before. I remembered the terror of trying to work out which pieces of the life inside my head belonged to the body that had to keep them. The Dementors were dragging me back through it, and knowing what they were doing did nothing to make them stop.

The curtain thinned at its upper edge. I held my breath until it hurt, trying to return to the afternoon on the grounds, but the cold made everything about it seem foolishly small. A girl’s hand could not matter against this; she would leave, or die, or learn enough about me to wish she had never taken mine.

I almost believed it. Then I remembered her waiting while I found something to say, without looking away or pulling free, and clung to that instead. The creatures had not been there with us. They did not get to decide what had happened.

Behind me, Harry stumbled and called my name. I could not turn without leaving the bank open, but I saw his mist break apart and his knee strike the stones. He raised his wand again before the nearest figure could reach him.

‘Expecto Patronum!’ he cried. A thinner stream of silver forced the Dementor back, giving him room to put an arm beneath himself. He tried to stand, and the stream failed before he could get his feet under him.

One of the figures bent over Sirius. Harry threw himself across the still body, his wand knocking against the stones with a small, terribly clear sound. I shouted his name again; he looked up at me and moved his lips, but no answer came.

My own light tore down the middle. I tried to hold it together, searching for anything warmer than the shore, while the shapes beyond it waited. The upper edge broke into silver tatters, and the last of the curtain went out.

I let the empty cover fall and reached for the second. The paper I had already thrown had released its spell; I could not call it back and make another attempt with the same piece. My fingers found the remaining cover just as a shadow moved close to my face.

Air seemed to draw away from my mouth. My knees bent without permission, and I caught myself against the bank with a hand I could hardly feel. Pain and voices crowded my head, the old confusion of trying to decide which memories were mine growing so loud that I could not find anywhere to put the words of a spell.

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Harry lay beside Sirius with one arm across him. I could still see them, and I needed to keep that sight larger than whatever was happening inside my head. I pushed towards them, slipped on the stones and landed on my injured shoulder hard enough to lose the next breath.

The cover crumpled in my other hand. I tore it open with my teeth and pulled out the last piece while a hood widened above Sirius’s face. A pale thread rose from near his mouth, trembling as if something were drawing it upwards; I did not understand exactly what I was seeing, but I knew it had to stop.

I wanted Harry to open his eyes. I wanted Ron to complain about his leg after somebody had made sure he would walk on it again, and Lupin to sit at an ordinary desk, alive and able to answer for what had happened. None of those things could happen if I stayed on the stones waiting for the darkness to finish with us.

And I wanted to go back to Luna. The thought hurt because there were places for it to go: conversations left unfinished, afternoons I had assumed we would have, her leaning against me beside the forest while I tried to find the right words. She had wanted me there even when I had nothing particularly useful to offer.

I wanted more time with her. The desire did not silence the other memories, but it gave me something to hold beside them as I got one foot beneath me. I lifted the paper, threw it as far as my arm would allow and forced air into the words.

‘Expecto Patronum!’ My voice broke with the effort of breathing, but light burst over the shore. At first I thought I had made another cloud; then something inside it moved with a weight I recognised.

A great head turned towards the hood above Sirius. Shoulders gathered beneath a silver mane, and the lion’s roar reached me through the cold as it drove the Dementor away from his face. The pale thread vanished into the brightness; more figures recoiled when the lion turned along the bank between them and us.

I stared at its paws moving over the stones without leaving prints. It had a whole body, a mane and a tail, and I had made it from the same spell that had barely produced a glimmer in Lupin’s office. I could scarcely lift my head, yet it stood where I needed it to stand.

‘Go on,’ I whispered. It moved towards the next cluster of figures, and for a little while there was clear ground around the three of us.

I held the wish for another day as steadily as I could. Luna was in it, and Harry breathing, and Ron choosing a pet that would actually be his. I could hear Emma opening the door to me, already beginning a question before she had finished pulling it wide.

The lion’s outline flickered. I reached for the bank to support myself, but my hand slipped, and the silver thinned from its tail forwards. I tried to keep the head clear in my mind while the body became mist, then a torn brightness above the water.

It disappeared before I could get myself upright. Both covers lay empty on the shore; there were other kinds of paper in the pouch, but nothing I could turn into another Patronus while I lay in the mud. I crawled far enough to touch Harry’s sleeve and could not make myself move again.

A roar sounded across the pool. I raised my head and saw light between the trees on the far bank, too bright to show who stood behind it. A lion came out of that light, and for one confused moment I thought mine had returned without me.

Then a stag followed it. They crossed the frozen water together, silver spreading along the ice beneath them, and the Dementors pulled away from the shore. Harry’s face turned towards the brightness; I called him, but his eyelids only flickered before closing again.

This lion drove through the figures above us while the stag turned along the bank, forcing them away from Harry and Sirius. The light held where mine had broken. I tried to see beyond it, searching between the trees for a face or a raised hand, but the far shore was lost behind the two moving shapes.

Robes streamed away into the dark overhead. The cold loosened slowly enough for me to doubt it at first; then I could feel the stones under my knee, my torn palm and the pain along my shoulder. I drew a breath that reached the bottom of my chest and put my hand near Harry’s mouth.

His breath warmed my fingers. Sirius’s chest was moving too, though neither of them stirred when I spoke, and I stayed close enough to watch them while the brightness faded across the water. Whoever had helped us had not stepped into the open.

Movement came from behind me. I tried to rise, got no further than one elbow and closed my empty hand against the mud, looking for the source of the sound. Snape appeared at the top of the bank with his wand raised.

‘Mercer.’ He came down towards us, looking from Harry and Sirius to the last of the silver on the far shore. I tried to answer, but could not quite make the words come.

He knelt beside Harry and put his fingers against the boy’s neck. Only when I saw that did I let myself lie down.