Chapter 147 — An Evening at Home

Ron followed me through the front door still looking as though the garden had asked him a difficult question. He waited until Emma had gone towards the kitchen before asking how many other houses there were.

‘Properties which came with the estate,’ I said, steering my trunk clear of the wall. ‘I don’t sleep in a different one whenever I get bored, whatever Harry was about to tell you.’

Harry took Hedwig’s cage from me without attempting a denial. We put the luggage where Emma wanted it and settled the animals in a quiet room, keeping Crookshanks’s carrier well away from the owls. Pig complained when Ron checked his water and began to leave.

‘He doesn’t like me going,’ Ron said. He paused with his hand on the door as the little owl rattled the cage again.

‘He might be objecting to being shut in,’ Hermione suggested. Ron told her Pig could have more than one opinion, which made her smile before she followed him out.

Luna stopped beside the photographs in the sitting room. Harry recognised a younger version of me with a haircut Emma had since apologised for, and I went to offer my help in the kitchen before he could explain it to everyone.

Emma put a stack of plates in my hands. ‘Useful timing,’ she said, adding the cutlery on top. I had apparently arrived at the precise moment she had been waiting for.

By the time the table was set, Ron and Harry were arguing about World Cup fixtures again. Luna had asked to look through a book of photographs and taken it to the window; Hermione sat near the empty table with her bag on her knees.

‘Would you mind showing me your parents’ notebooks?’ she asked when I came in. ‘The originals you copied those early observations from. You said some of the diagrams ran across both pages.’

We had worked from selected extracts for so long that I sometimes forgot she had never seen the shelf they came from. I went upstairs and chose the stitched volume which held the first Runebark observations. Its cloth corners had worn smooth, and I supported the loose pages when I brought it down.

‘This one needs to stay flat,’ I told her. ‘Don’t bend the cover back underneath it.’

Hermione moved her drink away before setting the notebook on the table. She opened it with both hands, turned a page and recognised a drawing almost immediately.

‘You copied this one.’ Her finger hovered above the edge without touching the ink. ‘But not the version opposite.’

‘It was crossed out. I thought including it would confuse things.’ I looked at the original beside Ken’s correction, seeing what my tidy copy had left behind.

‘It shows what he changed,’ she said. She turned back to the previous page, following the beginning of the experiment.

Mary’s smaller writing ran alongside a conclusion Ken had apparently considered finished. Hermione followed the added line, smiled and checked the result it referred to. I sat beside her long enough to explain an abbreviation, enjoying the familiar pleasure of discovering that my parents had disagreed over something before I was old enough to interrupt them.

The argument near the window had reached which match to choose if Arthur could only arrange one set of tickets. Ron wanted the final; Harry wanted to watch Krum. Luna asked whether those wishes were likely to be incompatible, depriving them of several seconds of conversation.

‘You could let them carry on,’ I murmured, sitting on the arm of her chair. She showed me the photograph she had reached, then glanced towards them.

‘They’ll think of something else.’ She sounded confident, and Ron promptly began explaining why a different opponent would make a better match.

When Emma called us to dinner, everyone moved except Hermione. I went back to the table and waited until she noticed my shadow across the page.

‘Just this paragraph,’ she said. I looked over her shoulder and found that it continued onto the next page, where an arrow sent the reader back to an earlier experiment.

‘That’s an ambitious unit of time.’ I pulled out the chair beside her. ‘You can borrow this volume for part of the holiday, if you want to keep going through it.’

Her hand stopped above the page. ‘Really? I’ll be careful with it.’

‘I know you will. Bring it back when we meet at the Burrow, and ask if anything on a loose sheet stops making sense.’ I held the cover while she closed it. ‘The other originals can stay here until we know what we need from them.’

She thanked me twice before reaching the dining room. Ron had already found something to admire about Emma’s cooking; during the meal he supported his opinion with enough evidence from his plate that she made him pause before another helping.

Harry knew where things were now. When Emma asked him to pass a dish, he reached for it without looking to me first, and I found myself watching him do it. Then Luna asked about the photograph, and my attention became urgently necessary elsewhere.

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Emma corrected Harry’s account of my haircut by supplying a worse one. I tried to defend myself, but none of my friends had been present and everybody believed her. Ron, who had entered the house wondering what to say about it, looked entirely at home laughing at its owner.

After dinner we carried the plates through. Hermione wrapped the borrowed notebook in a clean cloth and fitted it securely into her bag; the remaining volumes stayed upstairs. I checked the loose pages with her before she fastened the bag, then took everyone into the garden to wait for the first car.

Luna walked beside me, stopping occasionally to examine things the rest of us had passed. When she paused at a flower leaning over the stones, I waited while she lifted its head clear of the path.

‘You’re very patient this evening,’ she said. She let the stem go and brushed her fingers together.

‘Nobody’s examining me on how quickly I reach the gate.’ I offered my hand, and she took it. We followed the others at a pace which would have appalled anyone trying to get us to Potions.

Hermione’s parents arrived first. She thanked Emma and showed her mother the wrapped notebook, explaining enough of its contents that her father had time to load the luggage before she finished.

‘Several other things,’ Hermione said when her mother asked whether she intended to do anything else that summer. Ron began to speak behind her; she pointed at him without turning round, and he decided to help with Crookshanks instead.

Harry left in the car arranged to take him to Privet Drive. I helped with Hedwig and promised to call while he checked the Firebolt’s wrapping once more.

‘Write if the phone’s awkward,’ I said. He agreed, gave Emma another hug and climbed in with his broom settled carefully beside his things.

Arthur collected Ron after finishing in London. By then Emma had packed food for him to take home, and he had to rearrange his bag to carry the parcel alongside Pig’s cage.

‘You shouldn’t have troubled yourself,’ he told her. He was holding the food with unusual care, and I looked at it until he caught me.

‘I mean it,’ he said. He grinned when I agreed that he sounded thoroughly distressed, then thanked Emma again before following Arthur to the gate.

Luna’s car was due last, taking her to the fireplace arranged for the rest of her journey. Emma went inside to check for forgotten belongings, and we walked towards the bench beneath the trees.

She sat close enough for her shoulder to rest against mine. The garden had begun to cool, but we could still hear Ron’s voice beyond the wall as he explained something to his father.

‘Did you have a good time?’ I asked. Luna turned my hand over and traced a crease across my palm, where the old scrape had healed.

‘Yes. I like seeing where you disappear to when school ends.’ Her fingers stayed in mine as she looked towards the house.

‘I wasn’t planning to disappear.’ I shifted a little closer, giving her more of the bench. ‘You can ring me now.’

‘Then you’ll have to answer.’ She smiled, making it difficult to pretend I needed to consider the arrangement.

I promised I would. For a while we sat without discussing school or the things I could do with the pendant. Her hand was warm, and there was no reason to turn that into a conversation about how much I had changed.

‘You looked happy at dinner,’ she said. When I told her I had been, she tilted her head. ‘Even during the haircut story?’

‘I’m hoping you’ll forget that.’ I leaned towards her as she began to say she probably wouldn’t, and she met me halfway. Her smile lingered against my mouth before her fingers tightened round mine.

Leaves moved above us. Somewhere beyond the wall a car passed, its sound fading while Luna settled closer and I put my arm around her. The pendant pressed awkwardly between us; she caught it by the chain and tucked it back against my shirt.

‘Much better,’ she murmured. I kissed her again, and her hand came to rest against the back of my neck.

When Emma called from the house, Luna rested her forehead against mine before standing. I fetched her bag and walked her to the car, where she turned at the open door and hugged me with both arms round my waist.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said, looking up at me. ‘I’ll ring after breakfast.’

‘I’ll be here.’ I waited until she had fastened her seat belt, then stood back and waved as the car pulled away.

Inside, Emma held up a pen she had found beneath the sitting-room sofa. I suggested Ron as its likely owner, explaining that he had been demonstrating Quidditch with it.

‘That explains the distance,’ she said. She left it on the table for me to return, and I helped her put away the last things from dinner.

The house felt quiet afterwards. I stopped at the sitting-room door, looking at the chairs everyone had occupied, and decided that the next invitation ought not to wait until another year had passed.

Luna rang the following morning while I was finishing breakfast. Emma brought me the receiver with an expression I chose not to investigate, and our attempt to choose an afternoon became a conversation long enough for my tea to go cold.

Harry said the Dursleys were mostly leaving him alone. He preferred it to shouting, and sounded more cheerful once we had a time and place to meet. Sirius’s letters were less predictable: the exchange about the Firebolt had worked, but a later message asked Harry to wait before sending another owl because he needed to move.

Harry showed me those lines and folded the letter away carefully. At least he had a reason for the silence, even if knowing it did not make the wait much easier.

Ron divided his messages between the telephone and Pig. His calls no longer required holding the receiver away from my ear; the owl’s arrivals still involved rescuing whatever lay closest to the window. I sent the pen back with a note asking whether it had survived its manoeuvre.

Hermione described each new section of the notebook when we invited her out. She did join us once we chose a day far enough ahead for her to finish a comparison, bringing notes of her own and several questions for me.

Ron asked whether she had learnt the whole book yet. She asked whether he knew everything about every Quidditch team, and he found something else to discuss while I looked through her notes.

Luna and I kept our afternoons. We walked, argued gently over a book she lent me and once spent so long choosing somewhere to eat that we became hungry enough to settle it. I wanted to visit her home properly and see her father there, but Xenophilius had gone to France for work.

‘I’d like him to be back when you come,’ she said. We were looking at the next week in my diary, her finger keeping our chosen afternoon clear of my other appointments.

‘Then we’ll choose a day when he is.’ I left space beside the date, and she kissed my cheek before returning the diary. There were plenty of things I could arrange while we waited for him, including the afternoon already marked for her.