Chapter 144 — The Last Few Inches

Luna opened her parcel while I replaced the pendant’s original chain. Inside was a roast-beef sandwich cut in half, with a loose strip of meat where the knife had passed through the bread. She held the strip up and looked thoughtfully at me.

‘I was going to offer you this while you were still a lion,’ she said. Harry had already begun making an unsuccessful effort to be quiet behind her.

‘Would I have had to sit?’ I asked. Luna said I could have stood if I preferred, then added that she had not intended to throw it.

‘I’d like the bread too.’ She put the meat back where it belonged and handed me half the sandwich, calling me a very particular lion. I kissed her knuckles, to Ron’s immediate disgust; then he asked whether anybody had brought another sandwich.

That evening I recorded exactly what we had tested. The pendant had survived two changes and returns, first empty and then carrying ordinary paper; it stayed outside the animal body, and its access worked afterwards. No charged talisman had yet been through a change inside it.

I wanted to try that next. Wanting it so much was a useful reason to write the plan carefully before asking McGonagall for another appointment.

At the following session I prepared two weak Impello pieces, each intended to move the wooden practice block a small distance. I dried them separately and showed their purpose in the notes. Only those two went into the pendant; every other prepared piece remained in the pouch on the table.

Luna checked the loose practice cord with me. Harry and Ron stood behind McGonagall’s protection at the observing table while Hermione opened a fresh page, and I stepped onto the mat. The transformation was uneventful enough to make me impatient for the part I had not tried.

I pictured the first talisman. It appeared beneath my muzzle, fluttered past a foreleg and settled on the mat, where I stared at it for a moment.

‘Was that meant to happen?’ Harry asked. I lifted a paw, caught the paper briefly on a claw and lost it again. It landed upside down, no further from me and considerably less convenient to look at.

Ron turned towards Hermione. She looked back at him before he had finished forming the question. ‘I don’t have his paws, Ron,’ she said, keeping her pen over the page.

I called the second piece nearer the raised forefoot. The pendant brought it within reach, just as it had brought the folded scrap to my hand; it did not throw it across the room because I wanted it to. Paper brushed my fur and fell beside the first attempt.

‘You’re trying to make the little movement you do with your fingers,’ Luna said. She was watching the paw rather than the talisman. ‘You haven’t got those fingers.’

I lowered my head until my nose almost touched the second piece. Its familiar mark looked ridiculous from this angle, and McGonagall waited until I looked at her before signalling that I should return.

I became human with my feet on either side of two serviceable talismans. ‘I can get them out,’ I said. ‘I can’t throw them, and I couldn’t pronounce the incantation even if I did.’

‘I thought access would be the difficult part.’ Hermione put down the pen while I picked up both pieces by their blank edges. Neither had released its charge, so I put them in separate sleeves and returned them to the pouch.

Luna came round the table and touched the pendant. ‘That part worked,’ she said. ‘You can keep it.’

I exhaled, mildly annoyed at needing the reminder before I could be grateful for it. Ron asked whether we could also keep the part where we went to lunch, but I was looking at the table and remembering a different arrangement of paper.

My own pulse had struck a waiting piece and released it in the relay experiments. The second talisman had never needed fingers to throw it. I fetched the notebook before the thought could become a result simply because I liked it.

‘Professor, I think there may be another way to release these,’ I said. ‘I’d like to try it as myself first.’ McGonagall came to read the sketch over my shoulder, then checked the holder and target before letting me set the first weak piece in place.

I touched its blank edge and spoke the incantation. The attempt ended in a flash against the stand and a curl of burnt paper, leaving the wooden block exactly where it had begun.

I withdrew my hand and inspected my fingers. McGonagall checked them too before pointing to the place I had marked on the drawing.

‘Where did you intend the force to go?’ she asked. When I said forwards, she indicated the scorched surface. ‘You put the release against the stand.’

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I studied the mark. The relay had given me the idea, but I had treated contact as though it could replace everything the incoming pulse did. Its direction had mattered too; removing the thrown starter had left me with a charged piece and an arrangement that sent its effect into the wrong object.

I changed the holder’s angle so the working face pointed towards the block and the blank edge remained within reach. With the second piece, I concentrated on the connection I used while preparing the charge and spoke again. The paper curled into ash, and the block slid a little way across the tray.

Hermione marked its position before anyone touched it. I watched the empty holder, then wrote down what had happened: my contact, a charged piece and the spoken incantation had produced that small pulse without a throw. Beneath it I added that a lion still could not say the word.

The following sessions dealt with release separately from transformation. McGonagall’s extra Defence classes left limited time for watching me move a block by half an inch, so I arrived with each attempt laid out. Hermione kept the results distinct and suggested asking for less movement, instead of demanding the full effect without my usual way of making it.

I prepared three more weak pulse pieces. With the first, the silent attempt did nothing; I could feel the paper, remember its pattern and achieve absolutely nothing with either sensation. After a pause I spoke, and the piece discharged, proving it had been ready even when I had not.

For the second I stopped trying to shout the word inside my head. I concentrated on the brief connection itself, the one I had made with my own magic in the relay work, and kept the intended movement small. The edge browned, and a tiny kick moved the block less than the width of my nail.

‘Did you see it?’ I asked. Hermione was already marking the position and told me not to touch anything. I pulled my hand back as though the tray had bitten me.

The third piece repeated the result more cleanly. By then I had a headache and a tremor in my thumb, but wanted to try something bigger so badly that McGonagall did not bother arguing about it. She put the holder away and said next time.

Luna met me outside and looked from the notebook to my face. ‘It worked?’ she asked, taking my hand carefully when I told her it had worked a little.

‘I’m trying not to look too pleased,’ I said. ‘I might frighten the next attempt.’ She noticed the tremor and loosened her grip, leaving our fingers together without pressure. When she suggested food, I went without asking for another moment.

Fire needed its own work. A pulse answering my touch did not make every pattern in the pouch understand what I wanted, so I used a low Incendio charge facing a shallow fireproof tray. My fingers stayed on the blank edge, clear of the working part and the wood shaving I meant to burn.

The first piece resisted the silent attempt. Finishing with the spoken incantation produced a short flame that blackened the shaving; at a later appointment, the second answered contact without the word. It lasted barely a breath, and my wrist shook afterwards as though I had held a weight much longer than I had.

Five pulse pieces and two fire pieces had gone into the human work. Several had failed at the part I wanted while still consuming their charge, leaving me with two familiar effects I could release at very short range. Everything else needed the method I already knew; I made no alteration to the Patronus in reserve.

The animal test fitted on one page when I brought it to McGonagall. One weak pulse, one ordinary target and no second effect before I returned so we could inspect the result. She read it, then made me draw where everyone would stand.

At the next session Harry moved the observing table back. Ron helped Hermione arrange the notebook where she could see the mat, Luna took the nearer end behind the protection, and McGonagall examined the target and the space in front of it. I prepared a fresh pulse piece, let it dry and placed it alone in the pendant.

The pouch stayed on the far table, and the practice cord replaced the chain. ‘If it falls, I return,’ I said. ‘I’m not chasing it round the room.’

‘That will improve the dignity of the occasion,’ Ron said. I thanked him for concerning himself with that and stepped onto the mat.

On four feet I remembered the hours spent trying to make a movement so small Hermione needed a pencil mark to measure it. That was reassuring; I did not have to invent the whole method inside this body. I called the talisman beside my raised forepaw, with its working face turned away from me.

Before it drifted past, I brought the blank edge lightly against the side of the paw. There was no grip, only the brief contact I had practised. I kept the target in view and reached for the connection.

A white flash broke against the front of the mat. The block jumped, struck the raised edge of the stone support and sheared off a chip that skittered through the gap beneath the protection’s end.

‘Impedimenta!’ Luna’s wand followed it. The chip slowed sharply, tumbled and stopped short of Ron’s shoe while McGonagall signalled for me to return. I did so immediately.

My first human breath caught between a laugh and a curse. ‘Is everyone all right?’ I asked, looking at Ron before the target.

‘Yes. Thanks, Luna.’ Ron inspected his shoe while Harry bent towards the chip without touching it, then turned to me.

‘I saw the paper against your paw before the flash,’ Harry said. I confirmed it, wanting to explain everything I had felt and making myself inspect the target first.

The block had moved along the line of my foreleg. My paw had turned as I lowered it, taking the pulse towards the raised stone edge rather than the clear length of tray.

‘I changed the angle at the last moment,’ I said. McGonagall examined the strike, then the gap under the protection.

‘And this must be closed. Both are to be corrected before another attempt.’ She set the holder aside, ending any argument I might have been tempted to make about repeating the result immediately.

I went to Luna and thanked her. She said the chip had been heading for Ron’s foot, and he pointed out that he remained attached to that foot, particularly at the moment.

‘You did it, though,’ Luna told me. Only now that I knew nobody was hurt did the words reach me properly.

The release had been small, badly angled and far too exciting for a wooden block. It had still been mine. We ended there, collecting ash and resetting the loose equipment while McGonagall put the chipped support aside for repair; the room left the mark of my mistake exactly where it had struck.