Chapter 143 — What We Took Away

Luna came with us to the entrance hall, where she squeezed my hand and said she would leave the four of us to say goodbye. I promised to tell Lupin she hoped he found somewhere he liked, then watched her turn towards the Ravenclaw stairs before following the others to Defence.

Music drifted down from the office. I recognised the tune from our first Boggart lesson, when it had helped make a frightening room seem less serious. Now it sounded oddly cheerful for a place where someone was packing a case.

Lupin stood over a folded robe with one sleeve rolled clear of a bandage. He moved his other arm carefully, as though his side hurt, and invited us in without turning round.

‘How did you know it was us?’ Ron asked. Lupin stepped aside to reveal the map lying open on his desk, our names gathered beyond the office door.

‘An unfair advantage.’ He folded the parchment and held it out to me. ‘I should have returned this earlier. It’s yours, Oswald.’

I took it, feeling the familiar folds settle beneath my fingers. After all the times I had wondered where Pettigrew might be, the simple weight of the map was enough to make me pause before thanking him.

‘Use it with more judgement than some of its makers managed,’ Lupin said. He turned back to the case as Harry stepped forward.

‘Are they making you go?’ Harry asked. Lupin flattened another sleeve inside the case before telling him he had resigned.

‘Dumbledore’s been very fair to me,’ he continued when Harry began to object. ‘That doesn’t change what happened.’

Ron shifted his weight off his recovering leg. Lupin noticed, and his gaze moved to my shoulder before he spoke again.

‘Some people will object to what I am without caring how I teach. Others have reason to ask whether I kept their children safe.’ He rested his hand against the case. ‘I can’t answer those people by speaking only about prejudice.’

‘You taught us how to stay alive against Dementors,’ Harry said. He looked at the books waiting to be packed as though one of them might provide a reason Lupin had overlooked.

‘You did,’ I added. ‘Leaving doesn’t make that disappear.’

Lupin looked at me for a moment. ‘Nor does good teaching excuse what I failed to arrange that night,’ he said. Harry lowered his eyes, and I waited before asking the question I wanted answered before the case closed.

‘Have you given Dumbledore your account of Pettigrew? What you saw yourself?’ I held the folded map against my notebook while Lupin nodded.

‘In writing as well as in person. I described the change I forced and what Peter said afterwards.’ He turned towards Harry. ‘Snape’s is not the only account the Headmaster has.’

‘Good,’ I said, more bluntly than I intended. I left it that way; too much depended on facts that people could choose to overlook, and I wanted this one recorded by everyone who had seen it.

The gramophone reached the end of the tune. Lupin lifted the hissing needle and put the record away while I asked where he meant to go.

‘A few places I haven’t decided on yet. Travel sounds more impressive when I put it like that.’ He found a space for the record between two books, and Ron managed a small smile.

‘I could offer sponsorship,’ I said. Lupin called it a dangerous offer to make within reach of a railway timetable, so I opened my notebook on the desk instead.

Harry had returned it after writing his first questions for Sirius. Further back I found our notes from the Patronus lessons: mistakes, corrections and things we wanted to remember next time we faced the trunk. I tore the page carefully along its fold and turned the blank back upwards.

‘You’ll have to accept this first.’ I wrote a short thank-you and passed the pen to Harry, then Ron and Hermione. Each found space for something of their own; it made an untidy substitute for a proper card, but Lupin read both sides without commenting on the handwriting.

He stopped at the line about abandoning a memory to force a stronger result. ‘Keep practising the first part,’ he told me. ‘The second is seldom improved by determination.’

‘I’ve noticed.’ He folded the page and put it inside a book before thanking all four of us. I glanced at his bandage, trying to work out how to begin the next sentence.

‘You kept me away from them,’ he said before I could get past mentioning the other night. ‘I’m very glad you could.’

He did not smile to make it easier. I looked at the robe tucked round his injured arm, then back at his face.

‘I’m glad you’re here to leave,’ I said. That brought a little warmth into his expression, and he fastened the case by hand.

Harry remained beside the doorway, as though another sentence might still make departure unnecessary. Lupin paused there and told him to give Sirius time to find his footing.

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‘Will you see him?’ Harry asked. Lupin adjusted his grip on the handle before answering.

‘I don’t know. If I can safely get word to him, I shall.’ Harry accepted the possibility with a nod; neither of us mistook it for an address.

I passed on Luna’s message. Lupin thanked her through me, then looked down at the battered case as though he had only just noticed what he was carrying.

‘Does this suggest an exciting journey, or luggage that should have been replaced ten years ago?’ he asked. Hermione told him it had character, and he winced. ‘That bad?’

We laughed, and he left while we were still smiling. The office felt empty well before we went out of it.

***

The next morning’s notice announced his resignation and McGonagall’s temporary responsibility for Defence. Revised lesson times appeared beside it, combining practical groups where possible; the space around her office filled with pupils trying to discover which arrangement applied to them.

She began our next lesson with Lupin’s notes on the desk. ‘You’ll be examined on what you’ve been taught,’ she said. ‘We shall start by finding out how much of it you remember.’ Nobody mistook the change of teacher for a holiday.

At an appointment later that week, I brought her the pendant, my drawings and the surviving pieces of the pouch. Luna came too, and described the little hand movement her mother used when taking something out. There was no catch or opening large enough for an object; I had spent an evening searching for both.

With Luna’s help I had stored one folded scrap of ordinary paper. Retrieving it took several attempts: wanting something vaguely achieved nothing, but remembering that particular scrap and holding my hand near the stone brought it back against my fingers.

‘Show me,’ McGonagall said. I used the same scrap, feeling a brief resistance as it vanished at the stone. When I concentrated on its folded corner, it appeared a few inches away against my waiting hand.

McGonagall asked me to repeat the action over a tray. This time I kept my hand out of the way, and the paper appeared near the pendant and fell.

‘It supplies access,’ she said. ‘It is not throwing the object for you.’ I wrote that down beside the sketch before trying anything else.

Over several short sessions I added ordinary things one at a time, recording each: a book, gloves, the wooden rule from my desk. After storing two books, thinking only of a book produced nothing until I settled on which one I wanted. I did not learn the pendant’s full capacity; I learnt that the things on my list went in and could be brought back.

Hermione compared the engraved border with illustrations. She found overlapping patterns and marks that might belong to the reinforcing work; when she showed McGonagall, two identifications were corrected and one remained a question. We added the corrections instead of quietly leaving the prettier explanation on the page.

‘Its maker understood something I don’t,’ I said. Hermione leaned over the drawing, pointed out that several somethings might be closer, and waited while I added another question mark.

The examination gave us reason to try a limited test. It did not prove the pendant would survive anything I did to it, and McGonagall was particularly unimpressed when I suggested beginning with heat.

‘Does your difficulty usually set your pouch on fire?’ she asked. When I admitted it did not, she pushed the drawing back towards me. ‘Then begin with the difficulty you actually have.’

We agreed on an empty pendant, a loose fastening and an immediate return to human form if anything felt wrong. She would supervise, after Pomfrey approved my returning to basic transformations. Outside the office I asked Luna whether she still wanted the test to go ahead.

‘Yes, with it empty, the way you’ve arranged.’ She touched the black stone against my jumper. ‘I want to see you find out.’

‘I stop if it feels wrong.’ She said she had heard me and slid her hand from the pendant to mine. I closed the notebook, relieved to have a next step small enough to understand.

Pomfrey made me raise my arm, lower it and do it again more slowly. The shoulder still pulled, but the sharp pain had gone and the skin no longer threatened to open when I moved. She checked the palm and knee before allowing basic changes under McGonagall’s supervision, repeating basic as though it were the part of the instruction most likely to fall out of my head.

By the practice session I had become quite good at hearing that word. Harry brought the mat into the familiar room, Ron carried a tray and Hermione put the notebook on the table. Luna had a parcel she said was for afterwards.

‘It looks smaller with everyone in it,’ Ron said. I told him it had looked smaller with me in it too, and he inspected the space behind the table. ‘That was different. You took up most of it. No spiders?’

‘Did you request any?’ I asked. He said no, which settled the question until Hermione moved his tray away from the route to the door. Ron shifted it another inch to satisfy her and made an elaborate bow; she nearly smiled.

McGonagall arrived before I removed the pendant. Its original chain would stay on the table, replaced by a long, loose cord with a knot that could be released quickly. She checked the fastening and the length, making certain it could not tighten under a growing mane.

I emptied the pendant onto Ron’s tray and checked every object against my list. Then I took off the pouch and left it beside the chair, with the remaining Patronus and old Animagus spare amongst my supplies, well away from the test. Luna put the empty pendant into my hand and asked whether I was ready.

I nodded and stepped onto the mat. The cord hung well down my chest as I let the change begin, concentrating first on the altered balance and the weight coming onto my forelegs. My healing shoulder pulled, settled and held without the old stabbing pain.

Something cool rested beneath the mane. There had been no jerk, no tearing sound and no ruined lining across the mat; I stayed still despite a strong desire to celebrate that by moving.

McGonagall came beside my shoulder and had me lower my head. The pendant swung into view between the long hairs of my chest, and Luna’s smile was wide enough to make standing still more difficult.

‘There it is,’ she said. Hermione came close enough to inspect it while keeping clear of my feet.

‘It stayed outside the change.’ She bent over the drawing as McGonagall checked the loose cord, then stepped away to give me room to return.

I straightened as a boy and caught the pendant before the extra length could swing against my knees. Luna turned it over in my hand while Hermione compared the edge with her drawing; McGonagall had us check the storage access with the same folded scrap. It went in and came out again.

I started laughing. Harry slapped Ron’s arm, and Ron complained about being the nearest available surface while grinning just as much. Luna kissed my cheek before I could think of anything adequate to say.

‘That sounded nicer than the last one you described,’ Ron said. I agreed and sat down to rest before enthusiasm could become another test without anyone arranging it.

Later we tried the folded scrap inside during a second change. I returned with it available, unscorched and no more crumpled than before, and laid it beside the pendant for everyone to see. The room had given us somewhere to work; it had not needed to put anything back together afterwards.