Chapter 21 — Polished Mahogany

By Sunday morning, the notebook had become more encouraging than the results. Hermione and I sat in the unused classroom with two unsuccessful trials between us. One preparation had refused to settle into the Runebark. The other had consumed its piece in an ordinary pulse after my throw and spoken ‘Impello!’, adding nothing we hadn’t already managed before the experiment.

I reached towards the remaining sample, then stopped. Trying again might tell us something, but I couldn’t explain what I would change or why it ought to help. Hermione put the stopper back in and waited while I considered how much paper that kind of hope could eat.

‘We need to know what we’re testing,’ she said. I agreed and drew a line beneath the morning’s entries. We could keep the work without pretending that the next improvement had to arrive before lunch.

I had brought copied pages from Snape’s notebook. Hermione read the first, reached the second and went back to check a warning about concentrated extracts. She could see why it mattered to Ken’s ratios. Neither of us could explain all the preparation which followed, so we gathered the copies and went to the library to find out what the unfamiliar terms meant.

The remaining morning produced no new talismans, but I understood more of the notes when we left. Ron was still asleep when I returned to our dormitory. I opened his curtains, removed the pillow he tried to use as a substitute and mentioned lunch. That finally persuaded him to sit up without promising another minute.

Harry was already in the Great Hall with his timetable smoothed beside his plate. A grease mark had appeared near Thursday afternoon, where his finger kept returning. He told me we had Flying that week before I could ask what required so much attention.

I leaned across to check. There it was, an actual lesson in leaving the ground. I had spent enough time staring at the brooms in Diagon Alley to find the prospect much more exciting than another exercise involving an object on a desk.

Hermione joined us with a book she thought might help. Ron asked whether it flew, and she set it beside his plate with an explanation of why understanding the equipment could improve his chances of remaining on it. Harry glanced at the cover, then asked whether Hogwarts would supply Nimbus Two Thousands for the lesson.

Ron swallowed too quickly and had to cough into his napkin. Bill had described the school brooms as old even when he attended, he explained. Expecting a class set of the model we had admired through the shop window was apparently optimistic enough to interfere with eating.

‘They’re still old,’ Fred said from behind him. George stood at his other shoulder with toast in his hand. ‘Very dependable about that.’

The twins described Shooting Stars which drifted off course, accelerated unevenly and, in one case, supposedly objected to hills. Hermione wanted to know how a broom could have an opinion about a hill. George said the details were private. By then I suspected some of their examples owed more to the audience than to equipment they had actually ridden.

Harry asked whether the brooms were dangerous. George became serious long enough to say that Madam Hooch checked them and wouldn’t have us racing on our first day. Then Fred stole part of his toast, the argument moved away with them and I began considering how much of the description I wanted to believe.

I remembered telling Harry that first-years couldn’t bring their own brooms. I also remembered the polished handle of the Nimbus in the shop and how little resemblance it seemed likely to bear to the school’s oldest equipment. Somewhere between those thoughts, I began constructing an exception which nobody had offered me.

I hadn’t brought a broom to school. Ordering one now would be different, and I only wanted to use it under supervision during a lesson. A reliable machine ought to help a beginner. The argument improved steadily as long as I didn’t examine the part where the person affected by the rule had decided what it meant.

‘How do I send a letter without my own owl?’ I asked. Ron directed me towards the school owls and suggested asking a professor which ones I could use.

Hermione wanted to know whether I was writing to Emma. I said she was among the people I intended to contact. Harry watched me for a moment, but Ron had found something objectionable in the grip illustrated in Hermione’s book, and their discussion allowed me to finish lunch without explaining the purchase I was planning.

I sent two letters that afternoon. The one to the broom shop gave an order with instructions to confirm the price before dispatch. Emma’s took longer. I told her about lessons, my friends and the progress with practical work, then tried placing the broom near the end. After rereading the letter, I moved it higher. She knew too much about important details hidden in correspondence to be distracted by news about dinner.

Back in the common room, I continued copying Snape’s notes while Ron dismantled Harry’s position on the chessboard. I kept a question sheet beside the assigned work. Some passages made me want to run straight back to the classroom, until the next instruction required equipment we didn’t have or a preparation neither Hermione nor I knew how to perform.

By Wednesday, the shop had confirmed payment and dispatch. Emma’s separate reply asked whether I had checked the school rules. I read that question more than once, then decided I could give her a much better answer after speaking to Madam Hooch. The fact that I hadn’t spoken to Hooch before ordering became easier to avoid while I was thinking about delivery.

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On Thursday morning, Harry took my toast while I watched for the post. He said I had been waiting since the porridge arrived. I told him something was coming, which failed to satisfy him but did make him look up when the first owls swept into the Hall.

A parcel landed beside Neville, while Ron received a letter and a newspaper. Other packages went to students farther down the tables, including several long ones which turned out to have nothing to do with me. I watched their progress until Neville unwrapped a glass ball padded with wool. Pale smoke drifted inside it.

‘Gran sent a Remembrall,’ he said. The smoke turned red as he closed his fingers around the glass, and Hermione explained that it meant he had forgotten something.

Neville looked at it without much relief. He knew that part, he told her; what he couldn’t remember was the thing it wanted him to remember. Ron offered to check his timetable, and Harry looked under the table for his bag. I was considering whether any of that would persuade the smoke to help when a large grey owl arrived behind the others.

Its burden was long enough to make nearby students lean away. I half stood as it lowered the package over our table, and Harry caught one end before it reached the milk. He looked at the wrapping, then at me, with an expression which suggested my letter had become much easier to explain.

‘Oswald, you didn’t,’ he said. I loosened the paper rather than answer, uncovering polished mahogany beneath the candlelight.

The Nimbus was as handsome as I remembered. Gold lettering ran along the shaft, and the tail looked almost too carefully trimmed to belong on something meant to carry a person through the air. I ran my palm along the handle while Ron asked whether he could hold it. For a moment, the purchase justified every part of my argument without needing words.

I passed it across, and Ron kept it well clear of the butter. Students leaned towards us for a better look. Harry admired the lettering, then reminded me quietly that I had been the one to point out the rule in the Alley. I admitted I remembered it and hoped Hooch would permit supervised use.

‘Then you should have asked before you paid,’ Hermione said. She gathered the loose wrapping away from a plate, leaving the broom and my explanation much more exposed than before.

Ron defended the purchase on the grounds that owning a good broom wasn’t a crime. Hermione agreed, which briefly encouraged him, then explained that ownership did not provide permission to fly it. Before I could improve on that distinction, Malfoy arrived with Crabbe and Goyle and supplied an opinion nobody had requested.

‘Enjoying something you’ll never afford, Weasley?’ he asked. His eyes moved along the handle while Ron set it down with more care than his expression suggested he wanted to use.

Ron stood. Malfoy suggested I might extend my generosity to buying him one, and Harry got up beside him to say it was none of Malfoy’s business. I slid the Nimbus clear of their elbows. I hadn’t ordered it to give somebody else a convenient place to start a fight.

‘You’ve seen the broom,’ I told Malfoy. ‘You can move on now.’

He looked at my pouch and asked whether I intended to throw paper at him. Behind him, Fred rose from the bench and George joined him. I glanced towards them, giving Malfoy a reason to turn before he continued discussing Ron. When he looked back, his attention settled on the purchase instead.

His father was already interested in the next model, he said. A Nimbus Two Thousand and One would be waiting when he joined the team, making mine old equipment. I had no way to judge the promise beyond his confidence in delivering it. I told him he could enjoy it when it arrived, which failed to produce the reaction he seemed to expect.

He tried again, pointing at the Nimbus. Ron’s ears were red, Harry’s hands were clenched and students around us had stopped pretending they were only interested in the broom. I could have let Malfoy’s boast sit there until he got tired of it. Instead, I chose something considerably more expensive to say.

‘If your father buys you the latest model when you join, I’ll sponsor Gryffindor’s brooms and equipment,’ I told him. ‘The whole team, each year I’m here. Current models.’

Fred went still behind him. Malfoy told me not to promise what I couldn’t afford, and I suggested he apply the same advice before reporting the conversation at home. We looked at each other across the table until he turned away. Crabbe and Goyle followed, leaving the Gryffindors much more interested in what I had said than in finishing breakfast.

Ron reached for my shoulder with a delighted noise. I picked up the Nimbus before celebration put it in more danger than the argument had. By the time we returned to the common room, Fred wanted to know whether boots counted as equipment and George had offered to find parchment for a written agreement.

I reminded them that the promise depended on Malfoy’s father actually buying the new broom. That slowed the discussion enough for me to get the Nimbus away from the doorway. When the twins left, Ron stayed beside me, looking less triumphant now that he had time to consider the number of purchases involved.

‘You meant the whole team?’ he asked. ‘Seven brooms, every year?’

I told him I had heard myself make the promise. Harry sat on the arm of a chair and said he had seen my vault, so paying for it wasn’t the problem Ron thought. Ron looked between us before explaining that Lucius Malfoy was a school governor and, according to his father, donated money in a great many places.

Hermione pointed out that the Mercer businesses were substantial in the Muggle world too. I thanked her before the explanation became a comparison of family assets. Whatever I could afford, none of it had answered the question about taking my own broom to a first-year lesson.

She asked what Emma had said. I handed over the letter, and she found the relevant question without needing to search very far. I was beginning to think I ought to have left the broom in its wrapping until after speaking with someone who could authorise more than the payment.

McGonagall supplied the opportunity before lunch. She intercepted me outside the portrait hole and examined the Nimbus without touching it. I began with the advantages of supervised use, which was as far as the argument got before she gave me a decision.

‘You will use a school broom with the other first-years,’ she said. ‘Yours may remain packed away pending arrangements. It is not to leave the tower for flying without permission.’

I agreed. She told me to consult the school before making my own exception next time, then let me return upstairs with the purchase. I wrapped it carefully and pushed it beneath the bed, making room beside my slippers for a very fine broom I would not be riding that afternoon.