Chapter 159 — The Face in the Dream

The trolley arrived shortly after Ron began describing a pudding with enough feeling to make the apple seem a personal insult. I got up to answer the witch before he could start on its historical importance to Gryffindor House.

‘Quite a few things, please,’ I said, holding our door clear of her wheel. Luna called suggestions from the window seat while Ron warned me against sweets he intended to eat anyway. Soon boxes and paper bags occupied the middle of the bench.

‘You’ve bought enough for another compartment,’ Hermione said, rescuing her book before a packet slid onto it. ‘Are we expecting guests?’

‘We could invite some.’ I handed over the money, trying to remember whether I had chosen anything that required keeping the lid shut. On my first journey I had made several discoveries by letting them loose.

Harry remembered that too. He described my attempt to learn about wizarding sweets by buying examples of everything, and the trolley witch laughed as she counted my change. There was still a train full of children to feed and considerably more stock on her trolley than I could have fitted on our seat. I thanked her and watched the wheel safely past my foot.

Ron selected a Chocolate Frog and inspected the box. ‘They should put more chocolate round the legs,’ he announced. ‘Slow them down a bit. I’m paying to eat it, not train it.’

‘Perhaps catching it is part of the attraction,’ Luna suggested. She moved her sleeve just before the frog jumped from the box.

Harry caught it against his chest. Ron claimed ownership immediately, which was a pity: it had been an impressive catch, and I thought Harry deserved at least a foot. He returned the frog whole, with considerably less ceremony than Ron seemed to think it merited.

We were still sorting the bags when Cho Chang appeared at the door. She saw Luna first and smiled, then looked at the collection spread between us.

‘I was looking for the trolley,’ she said. ‘I can see it found you.’

‘It’s still operating further up the train,’ I assured her, shifting a box from the edge of the seat. Luna asked about her summer, and Cho said that most of it had been good. ‘If you’re in a hurry, we can probably supply something.’

‘Some liquorice, if you have it? And a Chocolate Frog.’ Cho took out her money and glanced along the corridor. ‘I promised a friend I’d bring one back.’

I told her to take them, leaving her with the awkward little pause of someone who had already prepared to pay. Luna found the liquorice while I reached for the frogs. Harry got there first.

‘We’ve got loads,’ he said, placing a box in Cho’s hand. He added another, then found a packet she had not requested. ‘These are quite good too, if you—’

‘Harry.’ I waited until he looked at me and nodded towards Cho’s increasingly complicated arrangement of sweets. ‘She has two hands.’

He stopped with the extra packet halfway between them. Cho had trapped the liquorice against her robe with an elbow and was trying to keep the first frog box from sliding off the second. Harry apologised, taking back the spare packet as carefully as though she were returning a live Bludger.

‘Two frogs is plenty, thank you,’ Cho said, adjusting the boxes. The top one shifted again, and Harry reached out before it could fall.

‘I could carry those,’ he offered. ‘If you like. Wherever you’re sitting.’

She smiled and let him take the boxes. They were a few compartments along, she explained, and started to turn towards the corridor. Luna called Harry’s name, but he was already rising and saying he would be back in a minute.

His knee struck the table edge. He managed not to make a noise, which I regarded as almost as impressive as the catch. Cho waited while he joined her, thanked us again and led the way.

Ron watched them go with a widening grin. ‘Did you see his face?’ he asked, leaning across to follow them for another moment.

‘He offered to carry the ones that jump,’ Hermione pointed out. She retrieved a wrapper from beneath his elbow. ‘That was useful.’

Ron protested that he had not said otherwise. Luna was still looking towards the empty doorway, so I asked what she had wanted to tell Harry.

‘Cedric is sitting in their compartment,’ she said. Ron’s hand stopped over his next frog box, and she looked at him. ‘That doesn’t stop Harry going there. I only thought he might be surprised.’

‘Are they going out?’ Ron asked. His fingers tightened on the box when its occupant tried the lid.

Luna shook her head. ‘Cho told me he’d asked her, but she hadn’t decided. I don’t think anything’s changed since she said that.’

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She gave the information without the relish with which news about someone else could become a weapon. Still, I could imagine Harry walking in with his two boxes and finding Cedric looking up from a seat beside Cho. I hoped nobody would demand that he give an account of himself while he was still holding the chocolate.

‘Perhaps he’ll sit down,’ I said. Ron gave me a look which suggested I had missed the entire point. ‘For a conversation. People sometimes have them.’

Luna slipped the frog box out of Ron’s hand and set it on the bench. ‘He probably doesn’t need us making it worse when he comes back,’ she said. Hermione raised her eyebrows at Ron before he could finish promising that he would do no such thing.

Harry returned before the promise acquired any qualifications. He closed the door, sat down and chose a sweet without looking at it. His knee seemed to have survived its earlier collision; his expression suggested the rest of the expedition had been more difficult.

‘Everything delivered?’ I asked. ‘Including the frog for her friend?’

He confirmed both in a voice which discouraged further questions. Ron drew breath anyway, and Hermione put the empty apple packet into his hand with unexpected precision, asking him to put away the rubbish.

Harry glanced between them. ‘You knew Cedric was there,’ he said, turning the sweet over without unwrapping it.

‘I tried to tell you,’ Luna replied. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t quicker.’

Harry told her she did not need to apologise. He opened the sweet at last, discovered liquorice and regarded it as though it had arranged the whole visit. Then he looked up at us again.

‘Cedric said hello and asked whether I’d recovered from the World Cup. Cho offered me a seat.’ He pulled a strip of wrapper free. ‘I stayed for about a minute.’

‘Was anyone horrible?’ Hermione asked. She had left her book closed, though Ron was still studying the rubbish she had given him as if expecting another instruction.

‘No,’ Harry said, rather forcefully. ‘That’s the trouble, isn’t it?’

I knew enough about being fourteen to suspect that any wisdom I produced would deserve to be thrown out of the window. Cedric being pleasant did not mean Harry felt obliged to enjoy his company, especially just then. I pushed the open bag of sweets within his reach.

‘There’s still a seat next time you want a conversation,’ I said. Harry suggested it would probably be beside Cedric, and I shrugged. ‘He isn’t a portcullis.’

Harry laughed before he could stop himself. Ron lost his own battle a moment later, then tried to explain when Harry glared at him.

‘Sorry. I’ll carry the chocolate next time; you take the girl.’ Ron caught Hermione’s expression and hastily corrected himself. ‘Talk to the girl. That was what I meant.’

Harry threw the wrapper at him. It missed, which deprived Ron of the chance to complain and left Hermione holding out a hand for the remaining rubbish. The whole expedition was becoming much less serious than it had seemed when Harry shut the door.

I passed him a fresh frog to mark his safe return. He told us we were all terrible, though he accepted the box, and Luna reminded him that we had saved his seat.

The train entered a cutting. Sunlight flickered across the compartment walls while our chief concern became keeping frogs off the floor. Harry joined in, even mentioning something Cho had said without first having to inspect his shoes.

Luna leaned towards me while Ron disputed the fairness of receiving a card he already owned. Her hair brushed my cheek, and I turned so I could hear her over his explanation of what a fair collection ought to contain.

‘You would have carried the whole bag,’ she said. ‘If I’d asked you.’

‘Then it’s fortunate you’re sitting here.’ I moved a bag away from her elbow. ‘I can be useful without getting up.’

She took my right hand under the table, fitting her fingers between mine. ‘You’re useful when you stay too,’ she said, then looked out at the little wooden bridges beyond the cutting.

For a moment I watched her instead. There were crumbs on the seat, the cupboard door at the end of the corridor kept banging, and Ron was demanding an independent judgement on his card. I settled back beside her and decided the cupboard could remain somebody else’s problem.

Harry grew quiet as the afternoon wore on. At first I thought he was considering another visit to Cho. Then he rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, exactly where the scar disappeared beneath his hair.

‘You said you weren’t sleeping much,’ I said, catching his eye. ‘Back on the platform.’

He glanced at Ron. ‘Before you ask, it wasn’t about Cho,’ he said. Ron protested that he might have been about to ask whether Harry snored, and Harry briefly smiled.

Then he looked towards the compartment door. I got up and closed it properly, checking that the catch had taken before returning to my seat. Luna asked whether he wanted all of us there. He nodded, and Hermione put down the book she had opened again.

‘I had a dream before the World Cup,’ Harry began. ‘While I was staying with the Dursleys. Except I’m not sure it was a dream.’

He described a dark room and a chair turned away from the door. Wormtail had stood where Harry could see him, with someone in the chair. As Harry struggled to describe its occupant, his hands closed around the empty frog box.

‘Voldemort,’ he said, and Ron flinched. Harry kept looking down. ‘He didn’t look like a person. More like a baby, only wrong. Small enough to carry. I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘You don’t have to make it sound sensible,’ I said. ‘Tell us what you remember.’

There had been another man in the room. Harry stopped twice to correct the description he was giving us: pale skin, a strong jaw, a face he had not known when he saw it in the dream. I sat back as he tried to recall it.

‘But I think I knew it at the campsite,’ he said. The wheels struck a set of points, and for a moment the carriage’s lurch brought back stone against my knee and smoke scraping my throat.

‘The man who attacked us?’ I asked. Harry nodded, saying he meant the face before I had burnt it, when the man turned round. ‘You’re sure?’

Harry’s fingers crushed a corner of the box. ‘I think so. I was hardly having a good look, was I?’

I had asked too quickly. He had woken on the ground and been threatened with death within minutes; making him defend the precision of his memory would not improve it. I eased my own hand open against my knee.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘You think it was the same man. What happened after that?’

Harry swallowed before answering. There had been somebody else, an old man at the door, and the people in the room had spoken as if he should not have understood them. Ron shifted closer while Harry tried to get the next part out.

‘A Muggle, I think. Then Voldemort turned the chair.’ Harry’s thumb went to the scar, and he stared past us at the closed door. ‘He killed him.’

The frog box lay bent on his knee. None of us reached for the sweets still scattered across the seat.