Chapter 30 — The Back of a Chocolate Card

Ron took Harry’s bishop while Hermione and I waited beside the chessboard with our luggage. The bishop objected to being dragged away by its head, though it had been considerably less concerned when its own side was doing the dragging.

‘You might have warned me,’ Harry told Ron. He watched his surviving pieces huddle together.

‘I did. Last time you put it there.’ Ron reached for another piece, then noticed Hermione leaning over the board. ‘We’re nearly finished.’

‘We’re leaving,’ she said, setting her bag on the bench. ‘You can carry on losing after we’ve gone, Harry.’

He grinned and abandoned his position. Around us, the Great Hall smelled of pine, and departing students were gathering coats, exchanging addresses and discovering essential belongings still upstairs. A Christmas tree brushed my shoulder as I let someone past. I picked glitter from my sleeve while Ron explained that his parents were visiting Charlie in Romania.

‘You didn’t want to go?’ I asked. ‘You’ve told us enough about his dragons.’

‘Hearing about them’s different from spending Christmas near them.’ Ron pushed his chair back and stretched. ‘Besides, somebody has to stay and teach Harry chess.’

Harry seemed quite happy with the arrangement. He wanted to see Christmas at Hogwarts, and I had heard enough about the Dursleys to understand why he might prefer the castle. I took three wrapped parcels from my pouch and handed them round, with instructions to wait until Christmas morning. Ron immediately tested his by weight, insisting that this did not qualify as opening it.

Hermione put hers away and gave us presents of her own. Harry turned his parcel over, rubbed a thumb across the paper and got up to hug us. His glasses pressed against my shoulder before he stepped back, looking rather pleased and slightly embarrassed.

‘Have a good holiday,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’

‘You too. If the chess gets unbearable, there’s still Flamel.’ I nodded towards the library doors, which made Ron groan. Our unsuccessful searches were beginning to catalogue the school.

‘We’ve only searched particular sections,’ Hermione reminded him. She adjusted the strap of her bag. ‘There are gaps. We haven’t touched the Restricted Section, for instance.’

‘We’d need permission for that,’ I said. ‘Don’t let finding the right shelf get you thrown out of the library altogether.’

Hermione agreed that permission was necessary. Harry was tucking his present safely away, and I left without making certain he had listened to the whole exchange. At the time, there had seemed very little to misunderstand.

Emma hugged me before I could put my case down. She then held me at arm’s length, inspected me and announced that I was taller and thinner. I said the school did feed us, but she had already taken possession of my luggage and was asking what I had eaten that morning. Apparently, dinner would need to supplement it.

After Hogwarts, the house felt almost disconcertingly manageable. I could reach the kitchen without choosing a staircase, and my bedroom remained exactly where I had left it. For an hour I enjoyed recognising everything. Then I caught myself listening for the other boys beyond the door, and went downstairs to find Emma.

She wanted to know about lessons, meals and whether the dormitory was warm enough. When I mentioned Hermione, she asked whether I helped her as much as she helped me. I assured her that we worked together, then realised she was waiting for examples rather than a description of the arrangement. Fortunately, we had managed to help each other with enough ordinary schoolwork to keep the laboratory experiments out of my answer.

Over dinner, I told her about Snape’s notebook and how he could spot a ruined potion from across a classroom. Eventually the account reached Halloween. I began with an assurance that everyone was all right, which seemed a sensible way of introducing a story containing a troll. It became less effective when I used my hands to show her the size of its club.

‘You just said you were all right.’ She set down the plate she had been clearing. ‘Did that thing actually swing at you?’

‘It missed. I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t.’ Hearing the words aloud, I wished I had found a better answer.

Emma sat down again. ‘Oswald, you can tell me the frightening parts. Finding them out a little at a time doesn’t make them less frightening.’

I lowered my hands and started again with the search for Hermione. This time I explained the blocked door, how little room there had been to move and why I had needed Harry and Ron to distract the troll. I described seeing its loosened grip without making the discovery sound like something I had calmly planned from the beginning. By the time I reached the teachers’ arrival, my dinner had gone cold.

Emma put her hand over mine and left it there. ‘I’m glad you found your friend,’ she said. ‘I’m very glad you’re home.’

I stayed to help with the washing-up, although she usually preferred me out of the kitchen when there were wet plates involved. Neither of us hurried through it. Afterwards we went into the sitting room, and I let her choose what to put on the radio.

On Christmas morning, the owls added to the presents beneath the tree. Emma opened the window for the first and almost closed it on the second, then decided to leave a saucer of water on the sill. She was still checking for further arrivals when I handed her my present, a small glass robin ordered from a wizarding catalogue.

It turned its head towards her voice, shook out its wings and settled on its transparent branch. Emma laughed and addressed it again to see whether it would repeat the performance. Soon it was on the mantelpiece, receiving more conversational attention than anything else in the room. I had spent weeks struggling to make paper obey me; choosing something that made her happy had been much easier.

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My parcels from Harry, Ron and the others accumulated beside the tree. I opened them, wrote my thanks at the kitchen table and was repeatedly moved out of the way of Christmas dinner. Emma maintained that the quantity of food was entirely reasonable because leftovers were the point. By evening, I had begun to suspect she was planning to feed us through January.

Harry’s letter arrived on Boxing Day. The first part announced an Invisibility Cloak, which made me read it twice before carrying the page upstairs. There was no sender’s name, only a note saying that the cloak had belonged to his father. Harry had already discovered that it worked and used it to enter the Restricted Section.

He had escaped without being caught. There was also something important he wanted to tell us in person, and he would not put it in the letter. I folded the page and looked out at the ordinary road beyond my window. Evidently, chess had failed to occupy him for the entire holiday.

Before returning to school, I went through the materials I had left at home. I wrapped a modest stack of treated Runebark flat to replenish my supply, taking care not to crease its edges while packing. Dad’s original notes stayed behind; I selected only the copies I needed. By January I missed our cluttered table in the common room, although that did not make it easy to let go when Emma hugged me goodbye.

Hermione was already waiting on the platform. Once we had found a compartment, I gave her Harry’s letter and put our luggage away while she read. When I sat down opposite her, she had reached the library expedition.

‘I didn’t tell him to sneak in,’ she said. She looked back at the beginning of the letter, frowning. ‘Who’s had his father’s cloak all this time?’

‘He doesn’t know. Whoever sent it didn’t sign the note.’ I stretched my legs into the space between the seats. ‘You can explain the library instructions when we get there. I thought I’d mentioned permission too.’

She read the letter again as London passed the window. By the time the trolley reached us, she was still finding questions it failed to answer. I declined food on the grounds that Emma had spent the holiday preparing me for a siege, then changed my mind when Hermione began opening a Chocolate Frog.

‘My father would have something to say about that,’ she observed as I took another box. She held out a hand to catch her own Frog before it reached the seat.

‘Your father has already had quite enough to say about my teeth.’ I trapped mine against the lid, broke off a piece and tipped the card into my palm. Dumbledore looked up at me from it, then began moving out of the frame.

I turned it over without expecting anything useful. My eyes passed through the account of his achievements and stopped at the reference to alchemy. There, among words I had heard months ago, was Nicolas Flamel’s name. I lowered the chocolate and leaned across the compartment.

‘Hermione, read this.’ I handed her the card with my finger below the line. ‘Harry read it aloud on our first journey. I was sitting opposite him.’

She glanced down and drew the card closer. ‘His alchemical work with Nicolas Flamel,’ she read. Then she looked at me, and for a moment neither of us said anything. We had been working through shelves while Harry collected packets containing the answer.

Hermione recovered first. She reached into a small beaded bag and pulled out a book which should not have fitted inside it. I recognised the bag I had wrapped for her before the holiday, although it already appeared to have acquired a substantial library.

‘Your present’s useful, by the way.’ She put the book across my knees and opened it. ‘Hold that steady. I think I know where to look.’

I supported it while she checked a heading and turned back several pages. Her finger came to rest beside an entry for Nicolas Flamel: alchemist, more than six centuries old, maker of the Philosopher’s Stone. The last words brought an unwelcome flash of recognition. I knew that title from my other life; it belonged with Harry Potter, even if almost everything attached to it had slipped away.

A parcel, a dog and an unfamiliar name had failed to bring it back. Now, with the words in front of me, I could hardly believe I had missed the connection. I leaned nearer as Hermione continued reading, determined to learn what the book actually said rather than rely on the scraps my memory had chosen to return.

The Stone could turn metal into gold and produce the Elixir of Life. Its drinker could stay alive by continuing to take the Elixir, which was rather different from swallowing it once and becoming permanently impossible to kill. Hermione checked the entry against the name on the card, then rested both hands on the open pages.

‘That would explain why it needs guarding,’ she said. ‘Especially if this is the only one.’

‘And why somebody might want it badly enough to try the dog.’ I picked up the card before it could slide between the cushions. ‘We need to show Harry and Ron.’

After supper at Hogwarts, I fetched them from the dormitory while Hermione secured our usual table. Ron read Flamel’s age twice and complained that we had been looking for a modern wizard. Harry seemed less interested in the failed search than the possibility that we had finally identified the thing beneath the trapdoor. He waited until Hermione finished explaining the Elixir, then leaned over the book.

‘There’s something else from the night I went to the library,’ he said. ‘I heard Snape threatening Quirrell. He told him to decide where his loyalties lay.’

‘Did either of them mention the Stone?’ I asked. Harry shook his head, but insisted that Snape had sounded threatening. I believed that he had heard an unpleasant conversation; I still needed to know what it meant.

Hermione suggested that other teachers might have helped protect the Stone. Something that valuable deserved more than one obstacle, and Quirrell taught Defence Against the Dark Arts. Ron immediately thought Snape must be trying to obtain the secret of Quirrell’s protection. It fitted our suspicion, though it depended on two things we had yet to establish: that Quirrell had provided a defence, and that his argument with Snape concerned it.

‘We can ask Hagrid about the teachers,’ I said, checking the time. ‘If we go now, we can still get back before curfew. He’s already promised to pass on what we saw at the match.’

Harry got up before I had finished putting the card away. On the stairs, he began telling us about the other thing he had left out of his letter: a mirror he had found while escaping Filch. He had seen his parents in it. Ron, on a later visit, had seen himself as Head Boy and Quidditch captain.

Dumbledore had eventually found Harry there and explained the Mirror of Erised. According to Harry, it showed a person’s deepest desire, and people could waste away in front of it because they could not stop looking. He slowed as he described going back, and the others moved a few steps ahead of us.

‘Seeing them must have made it difficult to leave,’ I said. I thought of Dad’s notebooks and Emma’s hand resting over mine, then tried to imagine walking away from a room where I could see my parents again.

Harry nodded, watching the stairs. I could have told him that wanting something did not make it real, but he already knew his parents were dead. Another person explaining it was unlikely to help. I said I was glad Dumbledore had found him, and stayed beside him until we caught up with Ron and Hermione.

Outside, the cold reached through my coat before we had crossed the lawn. Hagrid’s window glowed yellow beyond the dark grounds, and Ron called for us to hurry. I followed, trying to put aside the question of what I might have seen in that glass. There were enough things in front of us that we still did not understand.