Chapter 171 — Something Worth Looking At

Thursday’s Daily Prophet made the interview look shorter than the time Rita Skeeter had spent arranging her quill. The photograph was good: Krum looked serious, Fleur composed, and I appeared to have been told to stop smiling just before the flash. Beneath it, the article celebrated the Tournament’s return, distinguished guests and excited students.

It got my age right. I accepted that modest victory before reaching Hogwarts’ unexpected representative, who supposedly denied any personal involvement in submitting his name. Rita had left a convenient space for somebody else to have done it at my request. She also found room for confidence beyond his years, although none of the Minister’s reassuring commitments survived.

‘She doesn’t like the programme as much as you do,’ Harry said. It was Saturday morning, and we had occupied a common-room table without anyone making a public objection. That should not have felt like progress.

Hermione read the paragraph again. ‘She’s narrowed your answer,’ she said, placing a finger beneath the offending words. ‘You told her you hadn’t asked anyone else.’

‘And I told Crouch when he took the record.’ I pulled a sheet of ordinary paper towards me and wrote the question and my full answer while the words remained clear. Beneath them I added the names of the two people who had heard both.

Harry thought keeping Fleur and Krum present had been clever. It had not made Rita print what I wanted, I reminded him, but Ron suggested that I sounded less dreadful than she had probably intended. I offered to put that inspiring testimonial beneath my next photograph.

‘Don’t assume she’s finished,’ Hermione warned, folding the newspaper. I had no intention of making that mistake, and put my account with the notes for McGonagall. Keeping evidence of a perfectly clear conversation had become an unexpectedly tiring occupation.

We had received no explanation from the inquiry. Ordinary conversations with classmates supplied guesses, rumours and one detailed account whose supposed witness admitted to Harry that he had heard it from somebody else. I had begun writing Who actually saw this? above those notes.

‘What about Sirius?’ I asked. Harry shook his head and looked towards the window before answering.

‘Hedwig came back on Tuesday. The school owl’s back too.’ He moved the folded paper away from his elbow. ‘Neither brought anything.’

I suggested that Sirius might prefer a different route for his reply. Harry offered the other possibility, that something had happened, and I could not promise him it had not. Two birds had finished their journeys without bringing the answer we wanted.

Neville came downstairs carrying a book and several jars wrapped in cloth. He asked whether we were busy, which Ron answered by describing himself as professionally disliked but otherwise available. Neville took that as permission to put his book on the table.

‘I’m going to the lake,’ he said. ‘There are a few things I want to look for. Would anyone like to come?’

The open pages showed water plants, with drawings of roots, leaves and portions of stem I would generally have called the green bits. When I asked about the book, Neville kept one hand on its cover.

‘Professor Moody gave it to me. After that lesson.’ He turned towards a drawing with notes clustered round the roots. ‘He said Professor Sprout thought I’d find it interesting.’

I remembered the open classroom door and the offer I had heard without knowing its outcome. Ron asked whether Neville had read the whole thing already, and Neville admitted there were parts he had not reached. Something near the shallow bank looked like the plant on this page, though the leaf tips were wrong.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. Hermione glanced at the clock before agreeing that she could use a walk. I went to find Luna while the others gathered their things.

She was in the library, finishing a short piece of writing she had planned to complete before lunch. I described our expedition and offered to wait. Her explanation of how long she needed was perfectly reasonable, though I still looked towards the door twice.

‘You can go ahead,’ she said. When I insisted I could wait, she indicated the book beside her. ‘Then you could hold that page flat. It keeps turning over.’

I held it while she finished a sentence, replaced one word and read the paragraph to herself. At last she packed the work away, stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek.

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‘Thank you for your valuable assistance,’ she said. I assured her I had trained for the responsibility, and we collected some food before joining the others.

Neville had chosen a shallow bank where he could stand near the edge with his trousers rolled above his ankles. He went directly to work. We spread a cloth on the grass and discovered how pleasant it was to have no immediate reason to leave.

Bright folds moved across the lake, and the breeze brought damp earth and water towards us. Something further out made a widening ring on the surface before disappearing. I kept watching the empty place until Luna settled beside me.

‘You look as though it might be a task,’ she said. Our shoulders touched as I opened the food bag. ‘It could just be a fish.’

‘That was my preference.’ I looked out once more, then handed her a sandwich. She pointed out that preference had not improved the view, and I laughed before I could turn the ripple into another item in my notebook.

Neville called us over within minutes. Small leaves floated above pale tangled stems, and he kept the book well clear of the wet ground while showing us the drawing. His muddy fingers stayed away from the page.

‘The tips don’t match,’ he said. Harry asked whether that ruled out the plant he had expected, and Neville looked back towards the water. ‘I think so. There might be another drawing further on.’

He sounded interested rather than disappointed. I had spent most of the week hoping every question would end in an answer I could immediately use. Neville seemed pleased to have ruled something out, which was an approach I could probably stand to practise.

Luna crouched beside him and asked how he traced the roots when they tangled together. He showed her, following one with the end of a clean twig. By the time he finished, Ron had returned to the cloth and taken a second sandwich.

‘The book’s done him good,’ Harry said quietly. ‘Moody noticed what would interest him.’

I watched Neville explain another difference to Hermione. ‘Sprout noticed first,’ I said. ‘Moody listened to her.’

Harry nodded. The gift mattered, but so did the way Neville had stood beside the spider while it twisted on Moody’s desk. I could not fit the two things into one comfortable opinion of the man responsible for both.

Luna returned to the cloth and admitted she had not known Neville understood so much about the plants. I suspected there were several things he knew which nobody asked him about. She suggested asking more, an improvement requiring neither special equipment nor a dangerous demonstration.

I called him to eat. He arrived carrying a sample jar with a thread of weed I would have walked past, then rinsed his muddy hands with water brought for the purpose before accepting a sandwich.

‘I haven’t identified it yet,’ he said. Ron observed that he had said this about three things, and Neville looked towards the bank. ‘There are a lot of things down there.’

‘I’d like to see the differences when you’ve worked them out,’ Hermione said, offering him cake. He asked whether she meant it, and she confirmed that she did before handing Ron the bag. ‘You can listen while you eat.’

Ron approved that arrangement. Neville sat between Harry and Hermione, explaining why the plant he had hoped to find probably grew further along the shore. I leaned back on my hands while Luna shifted until her arm rested against mine.

The wind kept blowing a strand of hair across her mouth. She tucked it behind her ear twice, then declined my offer to move somewhere more sheltered. I moved nearer instead, blocking some of the breeze with my shoulder, and she smiled up at me.

Sitting on a cloth beside the lake was not a particularly impressive achievement. I had done harder things and liked the result less. For a while I listened to Neville explaining the bank and felt no urgency to improve our arrangement.

‘Somebody’s looking for us,’ Luna said. Cedric was coming down the slope carrying a heavy paper bag against his side.

Ron sat up and began asking what he was doing. I suggested he might be coming to talk, then rose as Cedric raised a hand towards me.

‘If you’ve brought homework, Neville’s provided enough,’ I told him. Cedric smiled and handed over the bag, admitting that some of it probably counted.

Books lay inside with a packet of notes tied in string. He had collected them when the Tournament’s return was announced: old tasks, spells and accounts which might prove useful if I could work out what their authors had meant.

‘You did all this?’ I asked, loosening the string enough to see the first heading. Cedric glanced down at the packet.

‘I thought I’d need it.’ He made no demand that I pretend he was not disappointed. ‘The books are mine, so you can borrow those. I copied the notes for you to keep.’

I thanked him. He advised reading before becoming too grateful, since one account spent three pages on a judge’s robes and half a sentence on the champion’s actions. I told him it sounded promising, and we both smiled.

‘I thought you might be angry,’ I admitted, looking towards the castle. Cedric let the answer wait a moment before giving it.

‘I was. I wanted to be chosen.’ He looked back at me. ‘That doesn’t mean you asked for this.’

Something loosened in my chest. I repeated that I had not, and he said he believed me, as plainly as Neville had done in the common room.

‘You’re good, Oswald, but you still need to prepare,’ Cedric said, touching the side of the book bag. ‘If anything in there needs explaining, come and ask.’

I promised I would. Luna moved a plate towards an empty place on the cloth, but Cedric thanked her and declined because work was waiting. Hermione asked about N.E.W.T.s, provoking Ron’s surprise that he had begun so early.

‘I’m in sixth year,’ Cedric replied. ‘It seems better to start now than the evening before the exams.’

Ron protested that nobody had suggested the evening before. Cedric laughed and left us to the picnic, while I sat with the bag between my feet. Luna rested a hand briefly on my arm before I opened the copied notes. For once, I was reading something about the Tournament written by a person who had wanted me to have it.