Chapter 27 — Terms of the Loan

By breakfast, the troll had acquired a second club. By lunch, Harry had broken one of them over its head, while somebody at the Hufflepuff table had heard that Hermione shut it in a cupboard and left Ron and me to attack through the keyhole. Seamus brought us that account in the common room while I was cutting fresh pieces of treated paper.

‘A very small troll, then,’ I said. Seamus assured me he had pointed out the problem. According to him, getting a club through a keyhole would have been difficult, which left rather more of the story intact than I had hoped.

Smiling pulled at the scratch on my cheek. I stopped and returned to the five empty sleeves beside the ink, concentrating on replacements which would be much more useful than correcting every account of the bathroom. Filling the first two Leg-Locker sleeves took longer than releasing all three had during the fight. I rested my hand before beginning the next inscription.

Neville watched from the neighbouring chair. He asked whether I had really lifted the troll’s own weapon and waited until I finished a stroke before asking anything else. When I confirmed it, he said that had been clever. I looked at the remaining work and told him it had also been heavy. The version travelling around the school seemed to have misplaced that part.

Other students wanted to know whether I would sell them talismans. One offered sweets; another wanted enough to deal with a troll himself. I declined both, more firmly in the second case. Surviving the bathroom had given me no desire to supply someone else with a way to discover what my preparations might fail to stop.

By evening, Fred and George arrived with a collection of objects wrapped in a scarf. Something inside squeaked. I told them the paper wouldn’t work for them before they had time to open the parcel, which made Fred object that they hadn’t asked for anything yet. George put a hand over the bundle, silencing it without improving its chances of being allowed in school.

I had finished replacing the five pieces by then. Their sleeves were back in the pouch, and the offcuts which couldn’t be used had gone into the waste jar. I selected an older water talisman and explained the courtyard test with Hermione, Ron and Harry. The same piece had remained intact through their attempts before releasing when I used it.

‘Perhaps it prefers experienced customers,’ Fred suggested. He turned the talisman over, inspecting the marks as though the answer might be written beside them.

I offered a test without payment. We went down to an empty stretch of courtyard, collecting interested students along the way. Fred used the motion and formula with great confidence. The paper fluttered onto a flagstone. George retrieved it, checked its orientation and made another attempt, producing no more water than his brother had.

I picked up the same piece, spoke the formula and threw it towards the drain. It spent itself in a brief splash. The audience began dispersing almost immediately, leaving the twins looking at a patch of wet stone which had ended the discussion more effectively than several explanations.

‘That does complicate the business,’ George said. He collected their parcel while I reminded him I had warned them before they opened it.

They kept the objects in the scarf, and I avoided acquiring customers with an excellent reason to demand refunds. By the following morning, the offers had almost stopped. Questions about the troll continued, but answering those didn’t involve pretending I could sell somebody the means to repeat what had happened.

November brought frost to the lawns and a draught beneath the common-room windows. We moved our table closer to the fire. Hermione still corrected Ron, but she had begun waiting until he finished explaining his work before reaching for the page. He discovered that asking what a question meant could be less painful than spending twenty minutes pretending to understand it.

It didn’t entitle him to copy her answers. When he leaned towards her essay and claimed to be checking his conclusion, she covered the parchment with a book and asked him to read his own aloud. Harry moved his work discreetly out of reach. The friendship had improved without removing all the reasons we found one another difficult.

My Potions work improved too. Snape’s notebook helped, as did expecting him to appear beside the cauldron at the worst possible moment. If I changed the heat, he wanted to know what I had seen. If I followed the textbook blindly, he wanted to know why I hadn’t noticed what was happening before the expected colour arrived.

One morning I pointed out the clouding surface and the dense bubbles beginning to gather near the edge. Waiting longer would have allowed the mixture to separate. Snape told me to keep watching it and moved on, leaving me relieved that I had spotted the change before he could explain my failure to the table.

Two desks away, he made Harry begin cutting roots again. Afterwards Harry looked at what remained in his cauldron and said Snape questioned me because he wanted me to know the answer. I told him the process didn’t feel particularly affectionate.

‘He asks me because he thinks I won’t,’ Harry said. He set down his knife and began gathering the rejected pieces. I couldn’t find a useful reply, so I helped clean the spilled ingredients instead of pretending that my own progress made his treatment easier to endure.

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Snape still hadn’t asked for his notebook. I kept the original wrapped and worked from copies, bringing Hermione the pages which seemed relevant to our questions. We reached a later section where calculations stood beside notes about delayed reactions. One diagram connected several preparations in an arrangement I followed with a finger more than once before saying what it made me think of.

‘What if the paper could wait?’ I asked. Hermione looked up, then back at the diagram while I explained. If I could leave a piece ready to respond to an approaching person, or to another talisman releasing, I wouldn’t need to throw everything while somebody tried to hit me.

She read the paragraph beneath the drawing again. ‘This is about the mixture,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t show how to make your spell stay ready after you let go of the paper.’

I agreed that the connection was the part I wanted to investigate. The idea had the satisfying shape of a concealed move in a game, something apparently harmless becoming useful at the right moment. Making it happen on a courtyard floor would require considerably more than enjoying the comparison.

We divided a fresh page between what Snape’s notes actually said and what I wanted to do with them. The second column grew much faster. Hermione pointed out that the troll had shown I could combine effects released close together, but had told us nothing about leaving a preparation behind to wait. I crossed out an attractive arrow between two sketches and replaced it with a question.

By the end of the evening, we had a clearer problem and no new talisman. At least the unused paper remained available for a trial we could explain. Harry’s first match then gave us something else to think about, and the diagrams stayed in the notebook while the rest of the school began predicting what Slytherin would do to a first-year Seeker.

Wood supplied Harry with a book about fouls. He read it at breakfast, between lessons and once on the stairs until Ron took it away long enough to get him safely onto a landing. I borrowed it for a while and found hundreds of recorded ways to interfere with an opponent. Several made the differences between Quidditch and ordinary flying seem less appealing than they had from the grass.

‘Warnings or suggestions?’ I asked Ron. He said that depended on which team was reading, then began explaining an example whose diagram I would have been happier not to understand.

Wood remained pleased with Harry’s training. That didn’t stop other students discussing whether he would leave the match before seeing the Snitch. Even people trying to encourage him kept reminding him how many eyes would be following him. By Friday evening, he looked tired of being told that nervousness was perfectly reasonable.

I caught Hermione’s attention while she was halfway through another explanation and shook my head slightly. She stopped, allowing Harry to open his eyes without somebody asking how he felt. I told him he didn’t have to entertain us. He could read, sit quietly or remove Ron from the chair if that helped. Ron objected to being included, and Harry smiled before returning to the foul book.

Wood found me later and waited until we reached the stairs to ask whether I still had the Nimbus. I told him it remained under my bed, enjoying the view of my shoes. He asked whether I would consider lending it to Harry for the match.

I stopped on the step. Wood explained that Harry could play on a school broom, but the Nimbus would give him a better chance against Higgs. I agreed before he had finished developing the argument, then added the part he might have expected me to forget. McGonagall needed to approve it. She had been specific about where my broom was to remain.

That sent us to her office. Wood described Harry’s progress while I stood beside him, keeping my hands clear of the pouch and trying not to look towards the windowsill. McGonagall listened, then asked whether I was offering a loan. I confirmed that I was.

‘Permission for Potter to use it does not extend to flying it yourself without authorisation,’ she said. ‘Is that understood, Mr Mercer?’

I told her it was. She required Hooch to inspect the broom before play and Harry to have time to become accustomed to it during the warm-up. The equipment wasn’t to be handed over as he went onto the pitch. Wood agreed promptly, looking as though any pause might allow her to discover a reason to refuse.

In the corridor, he clapped my shoulder and assured me Harry would look after the Nimbus. I said I would rather Harry returned intact; we could discuss the polish afterwards. Wood’s grin faded a little before he agreed. For all his excitement about a better broom, he cared about more than what it might do to the score.

Upstairs, I pulled it from beneath the bed. Dust marked one edge of the wrapping, but the handle shone as brightly as it had when I bought myself several weeks of enforced patience. Ron leaned over it and said Harry was going to love the surprise. I reminded him that the conditions included time to practise, so any presentation would need to happen before the match.

He denied planning a speech. He was, however, planning a banner, and produced a sheet with a small chewed corner which he blamed on Scabbers. We spread it on the floor and argued over the lettering until Neville asked whether the surprise might involve letting anyone sleep. That persuaded us to finish it in the morning.

The Great Hall smelled of toast and fried eggs when we arrived. Harry sat looking at his plate as though breakfast had joined the things he was expected to perform in front of an audience. Hermione spoke quietly beside him. I carried the Nimbus under my arm, while Ron had folded the banner inside his robes.

‘What are you doing with that?’ Harry asked. I laid the broom across the bench between us and told him about Wood’s request, McGonagall’s permission and the inspection and practice still required before he used it in the match.

He touched the handle, running his thumb over the lettering. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. His eyes remained on it until I told him I doubted he would try selling it between goals.

Harry looked up, waiting for the answer without the joke. I told him I was sure. His shoulders lowered, and he picked up a piece of toast with the hand which wasn’t resting on the broom. Apparently breakfast had become a little easier now that he knew what he would be flying.

Ron patted the folded banner and said that was only half the surprise. Hermione looked at us both and asked whether she should worry. I assured her I had checked the spelling twice, leaving the rest of the sheet for Harry to see from the air.