Chapter 146 — Plans for the Summer

Harry wanted to go to the library, which struck Ron as a worrying response to finishing our examinations. He stopped checking Pig’s cage and asked whether anyone had set us more work.

‘The World Cup,’ Harry said, rescuing his sleeve from the owl’s reach. ‘I want to know who we’re watching, if we can go.’

‘You could ask me.’ Ron began naming players before Harry could agree. By the third team, I had found a blank sheet for the questions we might actually get answered in a library.

Hermione declined the invitation from behind her own book. She wanted to finish it before we went home, and when I asked how she had managed to find time, she lifted it slightly.

‘By choosing this.’ She caught my glance towards her collar and lowered her voice. ‘I’ve returned it, Oswald. To Professor McGonagall, after the examinations.’

Ron let the cage cover fall into place. Harry stopped halfway through telling me which shelf to try, and I sat on the arm of the chair beside Hermione.

‘Won’t you miss the extra hours?’ I asked. I remembered the chain round all three of our necks, though the hours which followed had hardly felt like spare time.

‘I’ll miss fitting everything in. I won’t miss trying to fit everything in.’ She kept a finger between the pages. ‘We’ve agreed my subjects for next year. Dropping Divination helped, but I was still doing too much.’

I had sometimes imagined what I could accomplish with her timetable. Usually I forgot to include being tired at the end of it; our walk back to the hospital wing supplied a less flattering picture.

‘I’m glad you had it that evening,’ I said. Hermione nodded, and I left her to read. She had chosen where she wanted to be for the next hour, and none of us needed her anywhere else.

The library gave Harry and me histories of the competition, descriptions of teams and several accounts which disagreed over the greatest catch ever made. Harry seemed prepared to investigate that question thoroughly. I turned our sheet over and wrote down the things older books could not tell us: tickets, transport and this summer’s arrangements.

Ron had said Arthur was finding out. It would be useful to know what to ask him, even if we had to wait until Harry finished explaining a Seeker’s change of direction.

He was still explaining it when Ron appeared outside the Great Hall. Pig was absent, which was unusual enough; Ron’s expression made me check whether something had happened to him.

‘Did you buy it?’ he demanded, stopping in front of me. I looked behind him for a clue and found Seamus hurrying towards us.

‘Can I have a go after you, Harry?’ Seamus asked. Harry had barely opened his mouth when Ron took him by the elbow and led us into the hall.

A long parcel lay open on the Gryffindor table. Peeled-back paper surrounded polished wood with a deep reddish sheen, and gold lettering shone along the handle. Harry stopped so abruptly that I nearly walked into him.

‘A Firebolt,’ he said softly. Ron repeated it at the volume he thought appropriate, drawing another small crowd towards the table.

Hermione held up the outer label. ‘It’s addressed to Harry. Ron decided that meant he could open it.’

‘The end was loose,’ Ron said. Harry looked at the paper trapped beneath his thumb, and Ron released it. ‘All right, I opened it. Sorry.’

Harry ran his eyes along the handle before turning to me. I told him it was nothing to do with me, which seemed to leave him even less certain what to do with his hands.

Hermione passed him something else from the wrapping: a long grey feather. I recognised its shape and colour, and Harry held it carefully between his fingers.

‘Buckbeak?’ he whispered. His smile began before I answered, making my next thought particularly unwelcome.

‘It looks like one of his. We should still have the broom checked.’ I touched the wrapping, where we had found no note. ‘And ask Sirius whether he sent it.’

Harry’s hand stopped over the handle. Around us, people were already discussing who would fly it next, but he folded the feather inside a clean piece of paper and said we would ask McGonagall.

She arranged the examination before anybody could ride it. Harry sent Hedwig with a short question for Sirius, then endured enough enquiries about the Firebolt to make me regret knowing so many people who liked Quidditch.

When Hedwig returned, he brought the letter upstairs and opened it with us. Sirius confirmed the gift, said Buckbeak was doing well and remembered Harry helping him climb onto the hippogriff when his leg refused to cooperate. He was sorry he could send a broom more easily than he could come and watch Harry fly it.

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Harry read that part twice. The letter gave no address, but for the moment he seemed content to have words written specifically for him, with more promised when Sirius could send them.

Once McGonagall released the broom, we went down to the grounds. Harry’s first wide turn brought him back above us grinning; his second was tighter, and he landed laughing as though the Firebolt had surprised him halfway through it.

‘Well?’ Ron demanded. He had followed the whole flight with his mouth slightly open and seemed unlikely to accept an answer shorter than a lecture.

‘It’s brilliant.’ Harry looked down at the handle, then held it out to him. ‘Stay where we can see you. And bring it back.’

Ron obeyed both instructions, though the second required shouting. Seamus went next, and I eventually made a cautious circuit of my own. The broom responded so precisely that I could feel how easily enthusiasm might take me beyond what I knew how to do.

When I landed, Harry took it back almost tenderly. He said he would write to Sirius about the flight, and I suggested mentioning that the rest of us had been allowed near it.

‘That ought to impress him,’ I added. Harry smiled and tucked the broom under his arm, keeping it close as we walked uphill.

He had received gifts from people who loved him before. This one belonged to a part of his life he was only beginning to have, and I let him carry it without finding anything else to say.

At the final feast, Gryffindor won the House Cup again. The banners changed above us while Ron cheered hard enough to threaten his goblet. Pig remained in his cage upstairs; I thought several people ought to thank us for that.

Across the hall, Luna raised her glass to me beneath the new colours. I raised mine in return, then discovered it was empty when I tried to drink from it.

Before packing, I finished the arrangements for our visit home. Emma had agreed to have Harry, Ron, Hermione and Luna once we had settled the day and everybody’s onward journey. Their parents had been informed, Harry’s visit had been agreed with the adults handling his holiday arrangements, and Emma’s last letter told me where to meet her.

She had underlined the instruction to count people as well as luggage. On the train I counted four friends, three owl cages and Crookshanks’s carrier, which Hermione put well beyond Pig’s reach. Ron checked the cage fastening before producing his World Cup plan.

‘Go on, then,’ he said, spreading his sheets over the little table. Luna moved closer to me while Harry leaned forward to read.

Ron had listed teams, matches he hoped to follow and information Arthur had passed on about the arrangements. He knew which players made a fixture worth watching and could explain why without looking down. Harry pointed to a line neither of us had found in the library.

‘You should have waited for my answer,’ Ron told him. He sat back, leaving the paper where we could admire it.

‘This helps,’ I said. ‘How do we get there?’

Ron turned the sheet over. The back was blank, and he looked at it for a moment before explaining that his dad was going too.

‘He’ll know,’ he added, with less confidence. Harry asked whether we would be staying with Arthur and whether tickets had actually been confirmed.

‘He’s asking about those.’ Ron drew the page towards himself when Hermione offered him a pen. ‘I’ve never been before, you know.’

‘Neither have we,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re asking while we’re still on a train which goes somewhere we know.’

Luna laughed against my shoulder. Hermione turned the blank side upwards and suggested a second list for the things we still needed to confirm: transport, tickets, sleeping arrangements and food.

‘I was going to remember food,’ Ron said. He accepted the pen, though, and Hermione stayed beside him while he wrote the questions down.

I asked him to keep the player notes as well. Arthur probably would not want to explain those all the way there, and Ron looked sufficiently restored to begin telling Harry about another match.

Outside, fields and hedges slipped past in the afternoon light. Luna’s hand rested in mine, and the pendant lay warm beneath my shirt. I had a folded map to take home, a notebook full of failures that had finally become useful, and several people I wanted to see around our dinner table.

Other things travelled with me less comfortably. Pettigrew was free, Sirius could not safely name where he was, and I could still picture Lupin closing his case with our thank-you note inside it.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Luna asked. She rubbed her thumb gently across my hand, bringing me back from the window.

‘Home,’ I said. ‘It’ll be noisier with everyone there.’

She looked towards Ron, who was demonstrating a manoeuvre with the pen while Hermione moved her sleeve out of the way. ‘Did you warn Emma properly?’

I watched him attempt a sharper turn. ‘Probably not properly enough,’ I admitted, and Luna settled against me for the rest of the explanation.

At King’s Cross we gathered beyond the barrier before heading for the car park. Emma stood beside a people carrier I had never seen, and I left my trolley with Harry long enough to hug her.

‘Let me look at you,’ she said, holding me at arm’s length. Her eyes went towards the shoulder beneath my shirt.

‘I wrote about it.’ I tried to sound reassuring, though she had already turned me slightly towards the light.

‘I read about it. Looking is different.’ She finally kissed my cheek and released me to greet the others. Harry received a familiar hug, Luna greeted her warmly, and I introduced Ron and Hermione before we started loading the luggage.

‘Did we always have this car?’ I asked. Emma opened the back and pointed to the space she wanted kept clear for the cages.

‘I bought one with enough seats for what you actually wanted to do.’ She counted us with a glance. ‘Thank you for giving me notice. Now help Harry with that.’

With the luggage secured, there was room for all six of us. Ron examined his seat belt before fastening it, and Luna sat beside me. For once, seeing her did not require arranging another journey; we were already going the same way.

Halfway home, Ron’s stomach announced that lunch had become a distant memory. Hermione remarked that the food question had been worth asking, and Emma promised dinner soon after we arrived. Ron thanked her with enough feeling to make Harry laugh.

The garden distracted him when we drove through the gate. He got out slowly, keeping Pig’s cage level while he looked at the house.

‘It’s rather a lot of house,’ he said. Harry gave me a dangerous smile as he reached for his bag.

‘There are others,’ he told Ron. Ron turned so quickly that Pig objected, and I took my trunk before Harry could begin a tour of possessions which were nowhere near us.

Emma had opened the front door. Luna waited beside the path, bag in hand, and I beckoned everyone towards her.

‘Come in,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you where to put your things.’